I must be involved in missions!

It was the first time that someone had gone through the Bible and walked through all the logic and the theology of how God‘s heart is to reach the nations. And you can see through history God doing that. And I said, why has no one ever told me this before? I need to be involved somehow.

George Verwer challenged everyone to commit to two years to cross-cultural service and to stand up. And I stood up at the time. And he also mentioned that they had this ship ministry, and I thought maybe I could work in the engine room.

In some ways to this day, I’m still debriefing my time on the ship.

Fish don’t realize they’re wet. Growing up in my home country and then leaving for five years and living in an international context, you start looking at your home country in a different way, evaluating the good and the bad, or before you wouldn’t even necessarily think to evaluate those things.

After I did the perspectives course, I walked away and thought, how can I not be involved?

Leaving the ship’s ministry

In many ways, the ship’s ministry is a young person’s thing. It’s an incredible training program.

I wanted to take some of the things I learned and apply it to other areas.

We would go to some of these state schools and go to some of these in varsity or Cru meetings, and I would meet the students, and I was like, wow, these guys, because they live in an environment that’s not Christian, they are forced to think through their faith more quickly, how would it apply to their life, what does that mean for their relationships? They knew their Bible. They were on fire.

At the Christian school, I went to, you didn’t have to really work at your faith, we were just all Christians.

Insights into recruiting

In the newer generations, there’s less interest in the standard missions model of raising support and being sent out, but there is more of a desire for tent-making, taking your job and getting employed, and living a more normal life in relation to people.

Some Christian schools have actually closed their missions departments because no one is signing up for them.

Living in the Middle East

When we got married, we thought it would be good. It’d be great if we as a married couple could have some cross-cultural missions experience together.

So fairly early on, we decided where we could serve for a number of years.

Although we enjoyed it, living in the Middle East was probably the most stressful time of our lives.

In normal life, there’s always kind of a baseline stress, you know, just daily life. Then maybe there’s some health crisis that adds stress. There are kind of levels of stress. But then when we move to the Middle East, you shift everything up at least a level. So baseline is always a bit more stressful. And then when you have a real crisis, it’s like oh my goodness!

My wife had a doctor’s appointment. We needed to get to the hospital. And it was pouring down and we lived on the side of a mountain and we were going through crazy traffic. I could barely see through the windshield wipers and I had a breakdown. I had to pull over on the side of the street and have a cry. I said, “I can’t do this. We need to turn around and go home.”

I learned to navigate the city we lived in without taking left turns.

Leaving the Middle East early

We realized that doing that particular role was not going to help us thrive in the long term.

I had my engineering background and what we were doing was not very engineering.

Definitely now I feel much more fulfilled in a sense in my gifting and in what I’m able to contribute to the kingdom.

Things weren’t totally what we expected, and we were doing good stuff, but could things be different? Is this really the best fit for us?

We weren’t at a burnout level, but we could see it’s coming.

For us, we had a very small community of people. It was a bit isolating, it was a bit lonely. And we weren’t sure if this was healthy or good for us in the long term.

What is Christian Nationalism?

In many ways growing up, I had a Christian Nationalist lite world view to a degree.

As I was watching it, I thought this felt a bit off, and I didn’t know how to put my finger on it.

When I had been on the ship ministry, you had a group of 300 people from 50 different nations and we would do the same thing, we would use our nationalities to attract people to an event where we could proclaim Christ, but the difference was we were celebrating all of our nationalities on equal footing, and it was secondary to pointing into Jesus. But in my home country, it was like who’s the focus? Is this a political rally or a Jesus thing?

If you believe that America is a Christian nation and that the government has a role in keeping it that way, that is a simple version of what Christian nationalism is.

There’s a kind of synchronism happening in this country. There’s a blending of the Christian faith and the secular state.

There’s a mixing of the Christian faith in the secular state.

Christian nationalism is a form of the prosperity gospel. The prosperity gospel says if I just pray the right prayer and get my act together, then God’s going to bless me with what I want. God is simply a means to an end. And we see that today with Christian nationalism, if we just elect the right people, if we just enact the right laws, God’s going to bless our nation with prosperity.

God becomes a means to an end.

A definition of Christian Nationalism 

A definition of what a Christian nationalist might say is, they would say something like, it’s a call for Christians to uniquely shape national law according to biblical principles, recognizing a shared heritage, and pursuing communal flourishing within a specific nation, aiming for a virtuous society under God‘s general laws.

I think the aims are a good thing, promoting Jesus, but I think that means Christian nationalism is a problem.

Jesus said I’m going to win the nations through sacrifice and humility, I’m not going to dominate them.

The Jews were looking to Jesus to make Israel great again. When it became obvious that Jesus was not interested in establishing that kind of kingdom, when Pilate said, “Do you want Jesus or Barabbas?” they cried out for Barabbas.

Why would they have the same kind of morality that we do when they are not regenerate and they’re not trying to follow Jesus?

Christian Nationalism’s effect on missions

Going back to George Verwer, one of the main themes in his books is surrendering your rights, and then the current climate there’s this idea that we need to keep our rights so much so that we need to push out other people and trample on other people in order to maintain our rights. Which I would say is contrary to the gospel.

I hear all the time how the church is under attack and we’re being persecuted, but I have friends who have literally been beaten up for their faith. We hear at most we’re being annoyed, we’re not really being persecuted.

There’s no way of salt and light when we look like everyone else.