Review of Note To Self

This is the first book review that I'm doing for the blog. I probably won't do a very academic style book review, but keep it fairly short and sweet. I will also be taking these as an opportunity to show you guys maybe what we are reading over here and if we are able to utilize any of it in ministry. NOTE: We are not getting any sort of kick-backs from these reviews, we are not getting paid to write a review for any company and we don't get anything if you guys do decide to buy any of these books via the link provided. Thanks!

I have recently been binge-listening to the podcast Doctrine and Devotion, which is a SBC/reformed baptist pastor and a perennial elder-candidate talking about anything and everything in church life. Joe Thorn, the pastor and co-host, has written a few books, and I hope to review almost all of his here sooner or later, especially as I hope to maybe use some of them for future ministry training here in the Philippines.

Joe Thorn writes this book essentially to himself, something he says generally about his writing. He wrote this book with the discipline of preaching the Word to himself in mind.  This book is very devotional in nature, and the short chapters are perfect as short little daily devotionals in and of themselves. The point of the book is Thorn preaching to himself the Gospel over and over again in various forms, emphasizing various aspects of the Christian life, which in turn shows us a glimpse how to do that ourselves.

The 48 chapter book(let) is divided into three sections: The Gospel and God, The Gospel and Others, and The Gospel and You. Each small chapter begins with a passage of Scripture and then about a page and a half long note to Self about a specific topic like Love (Chapter 1), God Does Not Answer to you (Chapter 9), Hating Well (Chapter 28, and yes, you read that correctly), and many others. While I do wish that the chapters were a little bit longer to elaborate more on the topics and how to essentially preach them to myself, I understand that the purpose (and general writing of Joe Thorn) is to be short and to the point. In some ways that is part of what makes the book so handy. The shortness of the chapter allows you to have virtually the whole thing to mull over during the rest of your day, you don't really have to worry about forgetting a part of the chapter as you go throughout the day. You also don't have to fret about the chapter taking forever to remind why you need to love others or why you need to be reminded to hate the things that God hates.

I would highly recommend this book(let) if you are looking for a new devotional book, and are looking for something that can be challenging and shows you how to practice the art of preaching the Gospel to yourself. It is a very useful task in daily going through the task of checking your heart and testing yourself to make sure that you are indeed keeping the faith (2 Cor. 13:5). This book is a very valuable little way to help point you in a biblical direction for accomplishing such a job as checking your own heart.

You can get your own copy of the book here.

Going Green

We have posted a few times about experiencing loneliness while being here. This is not one of those posts, but in some ways it will probably be very similar.
DISCLAIMER: This is NOT a post about whining or complaining about anything. It is, if nothing else, me simply trying to think through some of the feelings that we have had over the past couple of weeks.

There are some new missionaries in town. Two new families, to be exact. There are two families with a collective 6 1/2 kids that have moved in to Butuan, and they all live within a few minutes of us. Now, two new families moving to town may not sound all that crazy or like it's big news, but boy howdy it is! With new Americans (one of them is Canadian, but that's ok) here that means a few things. First, it means that we're no longer the noobies here as far as missionaries go and second, we are not alone.
Wait? Did I just say alone? I mean, we've been here 8 months now, we have friends, we have contacts on at least two different islands, we have gone to events and parties that we have been invited to by our Filipino friends. We know people, we would even consider some of them really good friends, and really awesome brothers and sisters in Christ. But yeah, we are (or we at least we were) alone.
Why is that, you may ask, since we have contacts and friends here and are in contact with our friends and family back Stateside? Well dear Reader, I will try to explain it to you, and I will need a nifty illustration* to do so.

Jimmy lives in the land of the Yellow peoples, and he himself is a Yeller. He has always grown up Yellow and speaks the Yellow language, knows all of the cultural Yellow things, understands Yellow thoughts and feelings and what causes them. He knows the history and religious background of the Yellers, and his heart stirs within him with patriotism and pride when he thinks about and reflects on these things.
But one day Jimmy hears from his God that there are people in the land of Blue that need to know about Him and His plan of redemption. So Jimmy follows that calling, and goes through years of difficult struggle and training to get ready to go to where the Blues live. He may even have visited there a few times, and he may even know a few Blue people that have visited the Yellers. So he prepares himself to go live in the land of Blue.
As he transitions to living with the Blues and learning the Blue language and history he realizes that these people are different. He recognizes that they are people made in the Image of God just the same, but they act differently than he is used to. More importantly, they think different than he and other Yellers think. At first this doesn't bother him, and to an extent it still doesn't bother Jimmy, as he has been living for years in the land of Blue.
But he has changed. Jimmy can no longer call himself truly Yeller, because as he has lived in the land of Blue he has ingrained within himself some Blue culture and some Blue-ways of thinking. But he can't call himself Blue either, because he doesn't look like a Blue or really think like a Blue. No matter how long Jimmy stays in the land of the Blue he will never be Blue, but now when he goes back to the land of Yellow, people there will probably realize that he really isn't Yeller anymore, but he's more Green, a mix of both Yellow and Blue. But! while he is still living in the land of Blue some other Yellers come to live and work near him! Oh man, to be able to speak true Yeller with others, and not really have to explain what he means (unless it's a bad joke) and to be able to understand the feelings of being separated from his Yellow family and friends. He gets to introduce them to his Blue friends and all the cool places that he has found, and soon they get to settle in to a mutual-isolation of sorts. You see, while some of the Blues understand a little of what it means to be Yellow, they can't really, not able to think exactly like a Yeller. But neither can the Yellers and Jimmy really be able to empathize with the Blues , because there are major cultural barriers to break down, language being the most visible. So the Yellers do sometimes feel alone, isolated in a sea of peoples who may love them and want to help them in their work. And they may try to feel desperate to talk to other Yellers who pass through their part of Blue or on the social media site bluebook or the yellowpages (anybody? anybody? jokes people!). That shouldn't scare any of the Yellers away from being friends with Jimmy and the others, because they're Yeller, and they aren't scared of anything (Ok I'm done with the jokes now).

Man, I told you that was nifty right?

Ok, so these new families are pretty cool from what we've seen of them so far. They are both here as part of a team for doing medical mission work here in the Philippines. So we have been getting to know them, helping them around town, helping them get set up and finding specific things they need and all the good stuff. It has been fun and it feels good to have people here that we can relate to. A short term team is awesome, we get to see people that we have solid, already established relationships with. But they go home. They get to experience the culture a little bit and then go back to America. There's nothing wrong with that, in fact we want more of you Americans here to help us! But there is something fundamentally different about a family that comes here and plants themselves here that we can share our struggles with and they get it, they understand what we are going through because they too are going through the same things.
This blue/yellow illustration even works between other countries. Because the shade of green that we are becoming is different from the shade of green that other missionaries we know who have served or are serving in far flung parts of the globe like China, or Italy, or Mexico. So even missionaries can have a hard time relating to each other if they work in different countries, or even different parts of the country. I think that's why teamwork and these new relationships are so important. It is someone with you fighting the same fight in the trenches of mission work that you can look to and rely on and they can do the same for you. This community can take a negative turn and missionaries can put themselves up in compounds where they only time they interact with the people they are there to serve is when they go out of their compound, while inside the walls it's like a little America. That's bad. But this type of community is also able to replicate a small, teeny-tiny bit of America that can be used to draw strength from during hard times before going back out into the challenging life of mission work.

Ok, I hope that wasn't too bad, or too emotionally harrowing.

On a different note. We are really appreciative of our church family, Solid Rock for all of their support for us! We are super thankful that we don't have to do the crazy stressful work of fund-raising (or as one friend calls it, friend-raising) and asking for donations. Some of you guys who love us and want to support our work have stepped in and helped us out with a few donations, and that is awesome! In the coming months we are going to be having some slight changes, all good ones, that will dramatically affect our ministry here. Right now I want to let you guys know that we will be highlighting some of the different areas that we will be working in, and I will be trying to launch a prayer program of sorts, enlisting you readers to help us as we start to pull back the big curtain on what we are/will be doing. If you feel inclined to step alongside us and help us out financially in our work we would greatly appreciate it. We know that there are thousands of worthy causes that you can give your money to and with all that is happening stateside there are causes and people that need support. But, we hope and pray that you guys will feel led to support us in our work here. To be apart of what God is doing here in the Philippines and to see lives changed and churches planted and strengthened because of your gifts. We can't do it alone, we need your prayers and support. Thanks!

*This is not my illustration. I read it on a mission blog somewhere and it was just so....true, that I decided to use it. Unfortunately I can't give full credit because I can't remember where I read it.

The Need

Recently in church we heard a really convicting sermon about the need for missions and how only through  resting in Christ are we able actually to do the task that He has given us. There was this video that we watched at the end of the sermon, listing facts and statistics about world missions and other related issues. That video is posted below.

This sermon and especially the video has got me thinking. There is so much work for the church to do in the world. And even though we live here, even though we work here, we can and will never able to do enough. That is the reality of the situation. We will never be able to "save" enough people before we are done with our work here.  But none of us are called to do any more than what we have been given. We (and that includes you too, Reader), as servants, are only told to share the Gospel as we go throughout the world. We are not able to save the world, but our God is able and willing to do that through us. This means that we don't have to feel that weight of responsibility for people's souls. We can't do anything to save any other person. We can't even save ourselves! But we need to be faithful and let God do the work that only He can through us.

After the service I decided to look up some more statistics on missions because of the video and I was shocked to see some of these numbers. It's a really long page, so I'll just link it here. It's a really good resource because it compiles a lot of different sources for this rather interesting list that breaks down not only where money tends to go, but where missionaries tend to go, and where they are actually needed (in terms of lost unreached people groups).

Most of the money that we as North American Christians put towards international missions is just spinning wheels "out there", not being put to use to evangelize the lost but sometimes to other Christian denominations (!) or training of local churches. I don't really have anything to say about where or how money is spent by organizations. But to this last point (training local churches) I do want to say something. The work we are doing and will soon be doing out in the villages of Dinagat are among the unreached. These people are trapped in darkness of cults and false religions that bind their people to false beliefs. These people are trapped in a system of works-salvation, thinking that they can do something to earn their way to heaven.  But the more gospel-centered churches that actually are here are the ones that need to be doing the bulk of the work, not us. I think that one reason that money is going more towards training and facilitating is that once there is a national, local gospel-centered church on the ground in any country, that church then bears the responsibility to plant other churches. Part of problem that we have seen in Tubajon is that they don't really know how to go about taking the gospel out to people who need it.  So we will go in hard and heavy first and help the few churches that are there and actually want our help with continuing the training of the pastors and helping them with evangelism and discipleship because without these things they will not be able to go and do the work God has given them. Without helping some weak churches see the value and utmost importance of God's Word and how the Spirit uses the Word through preaching and discipleship, they are likely to slip more into the muck of syncretism and accepting false beliefs as part of the gospel. These healthy churches can then be used by God to expand His kingdom in Dinagat as they are seeking to lift Him up and have Him glorified through the preaching of the Word, the proper administration of the ordinances and the sharing of the Gospel.

While we will be doing the training with them we hope that we will be able to be part of planting a church (by God's grace) in an area that we know has people who are interested in Truth and the Gospel. So we will be working with churches, this is true, and ultimately we think, right. But we will be working with them so that they are fully equipped and ready and able to share the gospel and plant churches that are vibrant and growing and that are able to replicate themselves, not American-style churches.

But this issue of evangelism and discipleship even touches our churches in the States, doesn't it? We are not equipping Believers in America to do the work that needs to be done, or at least not enough. Emphasis is not placed on evangelism, it's not placed on teaching people how to be strategic and purposeful in where we live and how we spend our money. According to the stats that I linked to, most non-Christians do not even know a Christian. The reverse of that fact, that most Christians don't know non-Christians, is shameful. We are living in our Christian bubbles effectively cut-off from the people that actually need the thing we have - the Gospel! What makes this fact worse is that we currently live in an age of hyper-connectivity and our world feels smaller than it did fifty years ago (from what I've been told by people old enough to say that).

Paul tells us in Romans 10 that non-believers won't come to salvation outside of the Gospel being preached to them. That means that people have to preach the gospel. Which means people have to be sent, by being taught and trained how to do just that. But I think that the reason we aren't doing the preaching of the Gospel part of the Great Commission and Romans 10 goes beyond lack of training by churches. I think consistent, solid evangelism-discipleship is absent from church culture today because our theology about this whole thing is flawed. More specifically, our theology may not be affecting our heart. It's all up in the head, and the brokenness, the misery, the suffering, we simply don't care. We need to realize that people that we know (and that we don't yet know) are living and dying without access to the very same thing that you desperately need every single day. God's grace. God's mercy. God's salvation. We don't know how to move the knowledge that there are people destined for hell for all eternity from our head down to our hearts. If we did, then we wouldn't have such a sorry state of evangelism-discipleship and church planting in the world. So we need to see the people that are around us as people who cannot pull themselves up by their bootstraps in true American fashion, grit their teeth and be saved. They are dead. They can't do that. Even if they could put in the effort, they wouldn't reach it, God's righteousness is too high above us for us to reach. And since we are unable to save ourselves, someone had to preach the Gospel to us and the Holy Spirit had to move within us, making us alive to salvation.

It's almost a cliche now, but you don't have to be a missionary to reach the world, especially in America. No matter your political view on refugees and immigrants, you can't deny that most of them are lost and need a Savior. Forget refugees and immigrants, we can't even deny that we are living in a post-Christian culture in which millions of people are leaving nominal Christianity to embrace the spirit of the age. You can't deny that they need Jesus. The only thing you can deny is them the opportunity to hear about salvation by grace through faith in Christ alone. You can deny that. And most of us do, to our eternal shame.

So attend that evangelism training that your church offers. If your church doesn't do anything, for whatever reason, ask your pastor for some recommendations on evangelism. Learn what biblical evangelism is and what it isn't. Pray, get courage and strength from God and go share the Good News with someone. We may not be responsible for saving people, but we are responsible to tell them Who can.