Five tips for grads

                                                        

It’s graduation season, when bright young students must endure one final, mind-numbing lecture before collecting their degrees: the commencement address.

This speech seldom contains advice you can actually use. The speaker often receives a generous check for his or her remarks, but dares not utter anything that might offend someone for fear of being protested, “disinvited” or blacklisted from future graduation ceremonies.

Not being a celebrity, a politician or a rich donor, I have little chance of ever being invited to deliver a commencement address, much less disinvited. But I’ll share a few practical tips for you grads anyway, at no charge:

1. If you need to move back home for a while — or delay moving out — it’s OK. Millions of others share your plight. But make your bed and help with the dishes. And offer to pay rent, whether it’s asked for or not.

2. Don’t check your text messages during job interviews. Trust me on this one.

3. If you’re graduating with significant student loan debt (2011 grads walked the aisle owing an average of nearly $27,000), pay it off before you incur more debt. Don’t start your adult life in bondage to creditors. It will set a pattern you might never escape. Stay available to God. As long you are servicing debt, you won’t be fully available to serve Him.

4. The job market still stinks. You’ve probably heard about that. The unemployment rate for older teens and post-college 20-somethings hovers around 16 percent and tops 25 percent if you include young adults who have given up looking for work or are underemployed part-timers. Don’t lose hope while waiting for your dream job. Any honest work is honorable work in God’s economy. He will open the right doors in His time if you follow Him. In the meantime, learn everything He wants to teach you where you are.

5. The research about Millennials, the generation born between 1980 and 2000, says you want to experience the wider world up close — to see it, touch it, interact with it. OK, now is your opportunity to do that, unfettered by the family and school commitments of the past or the major adult responsibilities you will face in the future. Go out there and find a place to serve God and others for a year or two, or more, regardless of whether it specifically contributes to your career path.

“One of the characteristics of Millennial life has become the image of the traveler,” observes David Kinnaman, president of the Barna Group, which has exhaustively studied Millennials and their relationship to spiritual life. “They want to wander the world, both in real life and in digital ways. They want to feel untethered. There is a trend among young adults of delaying the pressures of adult life as long as possible; they want to embrace a lifestyle of risk, exploration and unscripted moments. …

“This transience stands in contrast to the staid, predictable, and often overprotective experience that most churches seem to offer. The gap is simple: Millennials are a generation that craves spontaneity, participation, adventure and clan-like relationships, but what they often find in churches are featureless programs and moralistic content. Leaders who hope to alter the spiritual journeys of today’s Millennials need to embrace something of a ‘reverse mentoring’ mindset, allowing the next generation to help lead alongside established leaders. … Millennials are more willing to be challenged than most church leaders are willing to challenge them.”

If you recognize something of yourself in that generational profile, embrace it — even if Mom, Dad and your own internal clock are desperately urging you to get a job and settle down. But don’t wander for the sake of wandering. Wander with a purpose: God’s purpose.

He might lead you to the ends of the earth to proclaim His love to people who have never heard the name of Jesus. He might lead you to serve within walking distance of the street or the church where you grew up. He might lead you to do both.

Follow Him. Those two words are the best graduation advice you will ever hear.

(To investigate the global possibilities of “wandering with a purpose,” visit http://going.imb.org/)

Boston and Syria, through God’s eyes

                                                   

Amid the tsunami of sympathy expressed after the Boston Marathon attack, a photo making the rounds online caught my eye.

It showed a group of young men and boys standing in front of what appeared to be a bombed-out building in a town in Syria. They held a banner emblazoned with these words in bold black letters: “Boston bombings represent a sorrowful scene of what happens every day in Syria. Do accept our condolences.”

I don’t know whether the photo is authentic or not. But the truth about what is happening in that suffering land is unquestionable. In fact, a day when only a few innocents are killed in Syria’s bloodbath of a civil war would be welcomed. An average of 100 civilians die each day as the fighting there drags on. More than 70,000 have lost their lives since the war began.

The numbers numb the mind. Millions of Syrian civilians have been displaced inside the country. They wander the countryside in search of shelter and food, dodging the crossfire of war and fleeing deliberate terror attacks on them as government forces and rebel groups battle for territory. Rape and torture abound.

In the latest of many reports of civilian slaughter, opposition activists claimed April 21 that government forces had killed at least 80 people — and as many as 250 — in a strategic town south of Damascus. Soldiers and loyalist militias burned houses, seized field hospitals and killed the wounded, according to the activists. A British-based human rights group said the dead included men, women and children.

“They’re just scattered limbs and charred bodies that are completely unrecognizable,” a resident of the area told The New York Times. Video images posted online appeared to show a row of bodies wrapped in carpets or bags. Several had been shot in the face. The damaged town’s electricity and water reportedly have been cut off. The only bakery has been destroyed. Those who don’t flee face starvation.

That hideous pattern has been repeated in many other Syrian towns. And rebel bands — some led by Jihadist fighters from outside Syria — stand accused of similar massacres.

“After nearly two years of violence, over 4 million people are in need of assistance,” Jeff Palmer, executive director of Baptist Global Response, told Baptist Press in March. “The number of refugees from Syria [in neighboring Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon] is approaching 1 million, with 80 percent of those being women and children. IDPs [internally displaced persons] in Syria are now approaching 3 million.”

Palmer told of a field partner who traveled into affected areas and “witnessed heartbreaking scenes of human suffering and darkness. In one area, a package of seven pieces of pita bread, a staple food, was selling for US $4. In another area, one liter of fuel was going for $10 — the equivalent of about $40 per gallon.”

Most Southern Baptist relief work so far has focused on Syrian refugees in surrounding countries. But the massive suffering inside Syria cannot be ignored, despite the danger involved in delivering aid. “We have had four project sites, with three being outside the country and one inside,” Palmer said. “Now, because of the deepening crisis in the country, we feel compelled to mobilize more resources through trusted partners inside Syria, while still supporting work in the refugee areas in Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq.” The aid will include staple foods, medicine and hygiene supplies, shelter, heaters and oil, clothing, blankets, mattresses, carpets and survival-based business assistance.

We mourn the victims of the Boston attack because they are innocents and because they are our own. The death of an 8-year-old boy breaks our hearts. The tragedy hits close to home. The seemingly endless violence in Syria, meanwhile, seems far away, impersonal.

But I can’t forget the Syrian refugee family I met last fall in a Jordanian border town. The Muslim father and mother had crossed the Syria-Jordan border with their five children. They had watched in horror as their teenage son was shot in the head in an ambush. As he lay bleeding in his mother’s arms, she screamed for help. A soldier approached, gun pointed. Their 4-year-old son, who rarely speaks, stood and held up his arms. “I beg you, Uncle, don't hurt us anymore. Have mercy on us,” he appealed.

The child’s eloquent words must have moved the soldier, who took the wounded older brother to a hospital for treatment. The whole family later made it into Jordan, where they found comfort and aid from a Christian church that helps many refugees. The older boy has recovered, but walks haltingly and needs physical therapy.

The Syrian crisis isn’t far away for me, because I have looked into the eyes of mothers, fathers and children who are suffering its consequences. But you don’t have to go to the Syrian border to sense their suffering. If you follow Christ, you can look through His eyes, feel with His heart and touch with His hands. He is inside Syria right now, seeking and comforting the lost and the suffering — just as He was at the finish line in Boston.

“Seeing the people, He felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd. Then He said to His disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few’” (Matthew 9:36-37, NASB).

When you think of Boston, remember Syria, too.
(Contributions to relief ministry among Syrian refugees can be made by visiting www.imb.org/syrianrefugees
and designating “Syria relief” in the comment line. For updates on how God is at work through the crisis in Syria and ways to pray and help, email love4syria@pobox.com)

Generational challenge confronts global church

                                      

(PHOTO) SEARCHING FOR ANSWERS—In a Cairo neighborhood, a child walks by an Egyptian flag painted on a wall — with apparent symbols of a Muslim crescent and Christian cross added. As the often-violent struggle for freedom continues in Egypt and other countries, larger demographic forces are at work. Sixty percent of all Egyptians are under 25. The total population of the Middle East and North Africa surpassed 430 million in 2007 and likely will top 700 million by 2050. One in every three people in the region is between 10 and 24. About one in every five people on earth is between the ages of 15 and 24. They want jobs and better lives, but prosperity alone isn’t enough. They want something more. “People here are craving life,” said a mission leader in the Middle East. “They’re craving change and not just political and economic change. Their deep heart cry is for answers.” PHOTO by Joseph Rose


The global spread of democracy doesn’t look nearly as promising as it once did.

High hopes for lasting freedom appear to be fading in Russia, Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, Egypt and Tunisia, to name a few countries where authoritarians, extremists, corruption and other forces have undermined fledgling democratic institutions. Dictators have fallen like bowling pins in some places, but the vacuum they left behind hasn’t necessarily been filled by freedom. Elsewhere, police states have proven surprisingly resilient in the face of challenges from globalization, demands for change and the spread of social media.

In the Middle East, epicenter of massive movements for change, “observers are increasingly cynical about the prospects for democracy, arguing that the Arab Spring has turned into an Islamist winter,” reports the journal Foreign Affairs. Radical Islamism is the biggest threat to liberty in the region. However, Foreign Affairs argued that “instead of fretting over Islamists, the international community needs to have a more nuanced conception of political transition in the Arab world and should strive to bolster institutions and economic reforms in post-Arab Spring countries.”

Maybe, but diplomats and democracy activists said the same thing when now-deposed dictators were still in power. Building durable democratic institutions and reforming national economies take time, even under favorable conditions.

Meanwhile, there are larger demographic forces at work worldwide.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman recently compared three major countries: China, India and Egypt. Very different societies, very different governments. “But there is one thing that all three have in common: gigantic youth bulges under the age of 30, increasingly connected by technology but very unevenly educated,” Friedman wrote. “[T]he one that will thrive the most in the 21st century will be the one that is most successful at converting its youth bulge into a ‘demographic dividend’ that keeps paying off every decade, as opposed to a ‘demographic bomb’ that keeps going off every decade. That will be the society that provides more of its youth with the education, jobs and voice they seek to realize their full potential.”
India counted 560 million people under the age of 25 in 2011. Of that number, 225 million were between the ages of 10 and 19. In Egypt, the largest country in the Middle East, a million people are born every nine months, according to one estimate. Sixty percent of all Egyptians are under 25. The total population of the Middle East and North Africa surpassed 430 million in 2007. It’s expected to top 700 million by 2050. One in every three people in the region is between 10 and 24. Asia, by far the largest demographic region of the globe with more than 4 billion people, likely will increase to 5.3 billion by mid-century.

About one in every five people on earth is between the ages of 15 and 24. Eight in 10 of them live in Africa and Asia. As population growth rates stabilize or even decline in the West — particularly Europe — future growth will come almost entirely in the global East and South. That doesn’t have to be a bad thing. The “demographic dividend” Friedman identified could benefit many countries — if young workers can fuel productivity and prosperity in once-poor areas of the global East and South.

They want jobs. They want better lives. But prosperity alone isn’t enough for them. Even freedom and democracy aren’t enough. They want something more — and they are absorbing ideas from all directions.

“We’re sitting on a tectonic plate that is shifting,” a mission leader in the Middle East told me last year. “If expectations continue not to be met, we'll see another [political] earthquake. But this is a really good time for anybody who wants to discuss ideas. The marketplace of ideas has changed radically. For the Gospel, we need to be in the conversation.”

Another Christian worker in the region put it this way: “People here are craving life. They’re craving change and not just political and economic change. Their deep heart cry is for answers. What they grew up with is not giving them answers. [The current political turmoil eventually] will create even more of a spiritual harvest. What men meant for evil, God will use for good.”

Most of the people groups currently unreached or unengaged by the Gospel live in the vast eastern and southern regions experiencing rapid population growth. Most of the countries in those regions have a high percentage of children, teens and young adults.

Making disciples among them is the great generational challenge facing the 21st-century church.

Zombies and the resurrection

                               

Watch out. They’re coming. And if they bite you, you’ll soon be joining them — after you die an agonizing death, reanimate and become one of the “undead,” that is.

I’m talking about zombies, of course. You can find them stumbling around looking for their next human snack in countless comics, books, computer games and movies. “The Walking Dead,” one of the most popular shows on TV, follows the grim adventures of survivors of the zombie apocalypse as they fight off hordes of mindless-but-hungry creatures in Georgia. No wisecracks, please; that’s my home state.

How did zombies become so big all of a sudden? It’s not all that sudden. George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead,” the low-budget movie that started the flesh-eating zombie craze, oozed onto theater screens in 1968. In fact, zombies entered American pop culture long before that. American soldiers who occupied Haiti in the 1920s brought back fearful tales of dead men working the fields, controlled by evil voodoo masters — part superstition, part folklore emerging from the brutal Caribbean legacy of slavery. “White Zombie,” starring Bela Lugosi (the original movie Dracula), came out in 1932.

There are any number of theories floating around about why folks are fascinated with zombies, ranging from our timeless appetite for scary stories to heavy-duty dissertations analyzing our fear of global pandemics, terrorism, world-ending wars and even the dehumanizing effects of consumer culture.

But there’s a deeper and more universal human fear underlying the zombie obsession: our dread of death itself. And what comes after.

“The zombie’s horror is that he is … a slave forever,” wrote theologian Russell Moore in a Baptist Press column last year. “After all, if even death cannot free you, you can never be free. That’s exactly the point, and here’s why it should matter to Christians. Zombies are horrifying not simply because they’re mean and aggressive. They’re horrifying because they represent what ought to repulse us: the rotting decay of death. But they still walk. And beyond that, they still crave. … [T]hey are driven along by their appetites, though always under the sway of a slave master’s will. That’s our story” — the story, in other words, of fallen human beings enslaved by sin and death.

No matter how hard our youth-obsessed culture tries to convince us otherwise, we know death is coming. I appreciated the honesty of actress Valerie Harper, whose recent announcement that she has incurable brain cancer brought a national wave of sympathy. “We’re all terminal,” she responded to well-wishers in one interview. “And we have a lot of fear [about] death.”

To allay that fear, secularists and pop spirituality hucksters assure us there are no such things as heaven, hell or a God who will judge our sins in view of eternity. We know deep down they are wrong, but many of us go along with the charade or fail to challenge it. It’s a comforting fiction for folks who reject or redefine biblical truth. It won’t be very comforting on Judgment Day.

Then there are the millions who ignore death (and any other serious subject) altogether. They also tend to ignore their own souls and consciences. They “live” for the moment — like zombies. Perhaps you have noticed this tendency among those who have turned themselves over to technology, one of our contemporary false gods. Psychiatrist Keith Ablow described one of the worst manifestations of this form of idolatry in an article about the Ohio teens who stood by and watched, even taking and posting pictures and videos, as a female classmate rendered helpless by alcohol was sexually assaulted for hours:

“Having watched tens of thousands of YouTube videos with bizarre scenarios unfolding, having tweeted thousands of senseless missives of no real importance, having watched contrived ‘reality TV’ programs in which people are posers in false dramas about love or lust or revenge, having texted millions of times, rather than truly connecting, and having lost their real faces to the fake life stories of Facebook, they look upon the actual events of their lives with no more actual investment and actual concern and actual courage than they would look upon a fictional character in a movie. They are absent from their own lives and those of others. They are floating free in a virtual world where nothing really matters other than being cool observers of their own detached existence. …”

What a pathetic way to waste a life, which is intended by God to prepare us for eternity.

Evil takes ever-changing forms, but it comes from two ancient sources: sin and death. Only one Person has defeated both. Jesus knew His beloved friend Lazarus was dead before he reached Bethany, as the story is told in the Gospel of John, chapter 11. Lazarus’ sisters had sent word, begging Jesus to hurry to the village to heal their ill brother. But He delayed His arrival. By the time He got there, Lazarus had been in the tomb for four days.

“Jesus said, ‘Remove the stone.’ Martha, the sister of the deceased, said to Him, ‘Lord, by this time there will be a stench, for he has been dead four days.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Did I not say to you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?’ So they removed the stone. Then Jesus raised His eyes, and said, ‘Father, I thank You that You have heard Me. I knew that You always hear Me; but because of the people standing around I said it, so that they may believe that You sent Me.’ When He had said these things, He cried out with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come forth.’ The man who had died came forth, bound hand and foot with wrappings, and his face was wrapped around with a cloth. Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him, and let him go’ (John 11:39-44, NASB).

Jesus had authority over death, and He glorified His Father by raising Lazarus. On Easter morning, God glorified Himself by raising Jesus. At that moment, the power of sin and death was crushed for all time. For all who believe and follow Him, there is no longer any reason to fear death — or what follows. What follows is eternity in the presence of God.

Our zombified world desperately needs that message.

Bill Hyde: ‘John Wayne of missions’

                                                   
                                                      

Ten years ago March 4, a bomb planted at a Philippine airport by a Muslim rebel group killed 23 people — including one American, a Southern Baptist missionary named Bill Hyde.

It’s ironic that Hyde, 59, died at the little airport in Davao City where he’d walked countless times — a place considered safe. He had made a habit of going into some of the most dangerous places in the Philippines. Places where you could get kidnapped, shot at, or worse, especially if you were a foreigner. He’d just returned from such a place that day.

Why did he willingly go to those dangerous places? After surviving the Vietnam War more than 30 years before, he vowed never to leave the United States again — or if he did, never to go anywhere near Southeast Asia. To understand his change of heart, you have to understand Hyde.

He grew up in a small farming town in Iowa, the home state he shared with his movie hero, John Wayne. He was a big, athletic kid with a ready smile — and ready fists. “His nickname was ‘Slugger,’” his older brother remembered. “He got into lots of fights.”

He had a strong will and a fierce competitive streak, but he wasn’t a bully. Mostly, he proved himself in sports — especially basketball and baseball. When he wasn’t working at his father’s hardware and farm implements store, he starred in both sports in high school and later earned a basketball scholarship to college.

Hyde was no one-dimensional jock; his competitive instinct extended to all games, including chess, and he was a voracious reader. “I could almost see Bill looking at the world like a giant ‘Risk’ game, thinking of how the most people could come to Christ in the shortest possible time,” said a missionary in later years.

He accepted Christ as his Savior at 12 during a Vacation Bible School and renewed his commitment during college. Music eventually overtook sports as top priority, and he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music and choral literature from the University of Iowa in Iowa City. While attending Bethany Baptist Church near the university, he accepted a part-time job directing the choir and met Garlinda (Lyn) Gage, an attractive young woman singing in the alto section. They married in 1966.

Their early months of married life revolved around the church and college studies. But the U.S. Army intervened with a draft notice. Hyde served at the height of U.S. military involvement in Vietnam in 1967-68.

He suffered no physical wounds, but bore unseen scars. When he returned, he stepped off the plane carrying a bag. Inside was a large piece of shrapnel. During a mortar attack on his camp, the shrapnel had ripped through the top of his tent — and through the center of his cot, where he had been lying only minutes before.

“God had spared Bill’s life,” said Lyn. “We didn’t know why, but we were thankful that for him the war was over. When Bill returned from the war, he informed me that he would never leave the United States again.”

But the Word of God changed his mind and heart.

“Bill’s favorite verse in the Bible was Matthew 28:16, which says, ‘Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go,’” Lyn explained. “The verses we know as the Great Commission follow. Bill lived by this passage. … He would tell people that if they went where Jesus told them to go, they would be able to carry out the Great Commission in those places.”

For the Hydes, that meant missionary service in the Philippines. They were appointed Southern Baptist missionaries in 1978. Their first assignment fit their skills and experience perfectly: teaching at Faith Academy, a school for children of missionaries near Manila. They spent 11 productive years there shaping young lives, including those of their sons. Never one to stay inside the bounds of walls and programs, Hyde seldom missed an opportunity to take students and choir groups on mission trips around the country.

He sensed God leading him toward a new task: teaching Filipinos studying theology at Southern Baptist College in M’lang, on the island of Mindanao.

“He had a passion to equip Filipinos for ministry and leadership,” says former missionary Don Phelps, a friend and co-worker in the Philippines. “On the weekends he would go out and invest himself in their lives and ministries. He had such a rapport with them; he was a natural at spending time with them and encouraging them.”

A grand vision began to grow inside him: to equip believers to train other believers, to equip churches to start churches, to multiply the Gospel throughout Mindanao and beyond. In 1997 the Hydes transferred to Davao City, and Bill began to focus all his energies on training church planters.

“Bill could be kind of intimidating until you got to know him,” said another missionary friend. “He was tall and barrel-chested, with a deep voice that boomed with authority and confidence. … He had an extensive collection of John Wayne movies, and we would always want to watch the Westerns while our wives would want more ‘sensitive’ selections. Bill even developed a theory on how John Wayne had influenced American theology.

“Bill himself was much like an ‘apostolic John Wayne.’ … Aside from the physical similarities, he approached life and ministry in a similar way. He took on the devil and refused to accept defeat, with a vision to expand the kingdom that was as big as the West. As big as Bill was, he was doing something that was bigger than himself.”

The key to his church-planting strategy was simple: like the Apostle Paul, he multiplied himself in other faithful men, who could in turn multiply themselves in others. He started by training a core group of seven Filipino men committed to church planting. As they became trainers, the circle widened into a network of hundreds.

He never went anywhere alone. He always took at least one young Filipino or missionary — and usually as many as he could pack into his vehicle — on his trips into the hinterlands. He trained Filipinos to start churches, then let them take the lead while he observed and encouraged. Most important, he flatly refused to do anything in ministry leadership that Filipino believers could do themselves.

One of those Filipino men was Eddie Palingcod, a member of Hyde’s original core group. Palingcod became the leading Baptist church-planting trainer for an entire province in the Philippines.

Hyde’s approach departed from the traditional idea of starting one church at a time. “He said to me, ‘Eddie, you need to train others to plant churches. It’s not that you’re doing the wrong thing now, but you need to multiply,’” Palingcod recalled after Hyde’s death. “It was hard for me to understand at first, but when I applied it, I got excited.

“Even though he is now living in heaven,” said Palingcod, “I told Bill, ‘It works!’”

Today Hyde’s legacy lives on in the hundreds of churches started through his ministry of multiplication. In the thousands of Filipinos won to Christ. In the ongoing ministries of missionaries he mentored and encouraged. In the ministry of his life partner, Lyn, who courageously returned to the Philippines in early 2004 and continued her work until retiring in 2009. In the lives of his sons, who followed in his mission footsteps.

Perhaps most of all, it lives on in the hundreds of Filipino men like Eddie Palingcod, who continue to live out the passion for church multiplying Hyde instilled in them.

“Every day I read the Bible Bill gave me before he died,” said Palingcod. “He was my discipler, but he was also just like a father. After his death, it was hard to continue. But at his memorial service, I told him in my heart, ‘Bill, I will continue.’
“Bill died, but his ministry is still alive.”
(To read more about Bill Hyde and other contemporary missionaries who have given their lives for Christ, read "Lives Given, Not Taken: 21st Century Southern Baptist Martyrs." Order the book at http://imbresources.org/index.cfm/product/detail/prodID/1330.)

'Lord, bless the missionaries'

           

(Listen to an audio version at http://media1.imbresources.org/files/169/16904/16904-95293.mp3)

It’s a familiar prayer. Too familiar, some say, to mean much.

“Lord, bless the missionaries.”

For church folks of a certain age, these words are as comfortable and automatic as “Bless this food to the nourishment of our bodies” or “Bless the gift and the giver.”

Mission leaders who’ve heard this prayer uttered countless times sometimes criticize it as perfunctory, meaningless or ritualistic. Which missionaries? Where? Bless them how? And what about the people missionaries are trying to reach with the Gospel? Don’t they need prayer, too? A quick “Lord, bless the missionaries” gives people an excuse to check praying for missions off their to-do list, like dropping a buck or two in the offering plate takes care of supporting missions.

Effective praying for missionaries and their ministries needs to be a bit more specific.

“I continue to be intrigued that God, a sovereign God, would link His activity over the nations to the prayers of His people,” said Jerry Rankin, retired IMB president. “But are we willing to move beyond a simple ‘God bless the missionaries’ and pray to invoke His blessings on their efforts? Prayer is not simply a way to bless the strategies and methods of our missionaries. It is the foundation of the strategy. Missionaries go to tell the story and to reap the harvest, but if the doors are to be opened, if the barriers are to crumble, if hearts are to be softened, it’s our responsibility to pray them into the kingdom.”

Wanda Lee, Woman’s Missionary Union executive director-treasurer, made a similar observation years ago: “Praying ‘God bless the missionaries’ once you are informed is not specific enough to open these dark places to the light of Jesus Christ. It will take informed, inspired praying to reach our world with the message of salvation.”

“Informed” is a key word. There are many ways to become informed about the needs of missionaries and the people groups they strive to reach. A good place to start is www.imb.org/compassionnet, IMB’s main prayer network, which offers a variety of ways to pray strategically for missionaries, mission teams and people groups. You and your church might even become part of one of those teams as you discover God’s heart for making disciples among all nations.

Storming the gates of darkness requires informed, committed spiritual warriors willing to pray big prayers — and “small” ones. God cares about little things, because they aren’t so little in the grand scheme of His work.

“It’s been another challenging week for us,” a missionary wrote recently. “My husband’s back suddenly started to spasm on Wednesday and by Thursday he was in real pain. Our crate arrived Thursday, which was a great encouragement. It’s been a little slow trying to get everything in place by myself, but I’ve done pretty well and things are shaping up. Did I forget to mention that my husband also slashed his finger pretty badly Wednesday afternoon? We just washed it, put a dab of super glue on it and bandaged it.

“Why do you need to pray for missionaries?” she asked. “Because these are some of the more minor things we face. Because a cut finger and severe back issues mean we’re a man down. Because we can’t just run down the road for medical attention. And because little things can become big things if you let them. God doesn’t need us to do His work. He can get it done however He chooses, with us or without us. He does need us to cooperate with Him if we are to be made holy and sanctified saints. And this requires the right attitude. Pray for us to persevere through all circumstances and to rejoice in all things. In this way, we honor the Lord and bring glory to His name. And that is what will draw the nations to Him.”

Are back spasms and a cut finger too trivial to pray about when the world is falling apart? Not if you’re the one experiencing them. Not if they prevent you from focusing on the work of God. Back spasms can shut you down faster than being arrested for spreading the Gospel. If you’re jailed, at least you can share Jesus with fellow inmates. Back spasms put you on the couch, afraid to move a muscle.

Lord, bless that missionary. But let’s get more specific: Heal his back, if You are willing, or teach him to rejoice in weakness and trust Your grace completely. Help him and his wife to persevere day by day when the going gets tough, when discouragement blots out hope like an eclipse. Give them joy. Give them strength and energy. Help them to lift Your light in the dark place where they live and use them to bring many new disciples into Your kingdom. And show us how we can do our part — through prayer first, but also through action.

Amen.

A new generation of black missionaries

To see a multi-media package celebrating African Americans on mission, visit http://commissionstories.com/

One half of 1 percent.

That’s the percentage of the 4,900 Southern Baptist international missionaries who are African American. They number 27. Even that tiny total represents progress. Not so long ago, you could count black Southern Baptist missionaries on two hands — and have some fingers left over.

Times have changed. Attitudes have changed. Demographics have changed. Leaders have changed: Fred Luter, current president of the Southern Baptist Convention, made history last year as the first African American elected to lead the nation’s largest Protestant church body.

And SBC churches have changed. More than 10,000 of the convention’s 50,000-plus congregations now identify themselves as non-Anglo. That’s a 66 percent jump since 1998, according to the latest statistics from the North American Mission Board’s Center for Missional Research. The largest increase has come in African-American congregations, which grew by a whopping 82.7 percent between 1998 and 2011. Some 1 million African Americans in about 3,400 churches now represent 6.25 percent of total SBC church membership.

So why aren’t there more black Southern Baptists taking the Gospel to the nations? The daily challenges on their own doorsteps have something to do with it.

“A lot of our African-American churches are in the ’hood,” says Luter, pastor of Franklin Avenue Baptist Church in New Orleans. “[People ask me], ‘Why do I need to go to Africa, Asia or Europe? We need to get people saved in this community.’”

Luter, who visited IMB offices recently and preached to staff members, pledges to help overcome that mindset by modeling missions commitment, educating churches about global needs — and instilling God’s vision for missions in a new generation of African Americans.

“I want to challenge the pastor to start with our young people,” he says.

Young people like Jonathan Marshall,* 26, who is completing his service in North Africa and the Middle East. Last summer Marshall told about his work during Black Church Week at LifeWay Ridgecrest Conference Center in North Carolina. “My topic is ‘Young Black Men in Missions,’” he told listeners with a grin. “But I’m the only one, so I’m going to talk about myself.” At the time, Marshall was the only single, male African American serving as an IMB worker.

But 1,200 people from predominantly black churches attended the conference, including a contingent of teens and college-age folks, and they heard mission challenges from Marshall and others.

Seeing, hearing and following others who are blazing the trail — those are keys to nurturing a generation of African Americans with a heart for the world, according to Keith Jefferson, IMB’s African-American church missional strategist. Jefferson served for 16 years as an IMB missionary in Brazil. But he never seriously considered overseas service until he was personally challenged by David Cornelius, his predecessor as African-American strategist, who was a missionary for many years in Africa.

Increasing exposure to the world in a hyper-connected age is another key.

“The world is becoming smaller and smaller,” Jefferson says. “African-American professionals are traveling worldwide. Communication is becoming greater and greater. Younger people especially are communicating with people throughout the world, and they are more adventurous. They’re not ‘set.’ They’re open to new things.”

From early childhood through high school and college, young African-American Christians need to be “groomed” for missions, Jefferson stresses. He urges pastors, teachers and mentors to tell young people, “You’re going to be a doctor, you’re going to be a lawyer, you’re going to be a teacher, you’re going to be a nurse, yes, but some of you are going to be missionaries.”

Young people who start out by serving overseas for a few weeks or a summer through programs such as International World Changers are more open to serving for a semester, Jefferson says. Those who give a semester are more likely to give two years through the Journeyman Program or International Service Corps. And many two-year workers go on to become career missionaries.

The opportunities are limitless. The time for delay or rationalization is over.

“God is calling us, because like every other child of God, we have a responsibility,” Jefferson says. “We don’t have any excuses.”

*(Name changed)

To learn more about how your church can play a key role in reaching the world, contact Keith Jefferson, IMB African-American missional church strategist, at kjefferson@imb.org or (800) 999-3113, ext. 1422