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.

The Makililimos and Me

Most people know that there is real, hard poverty here, with people openly begging on the street, at intersections and in front of churches. Depending on where in the city you may be, you might be noticed by someone who is begging, and they might know enough English to walk up to you and say, “Hey! Give me money!”. This can be jarring. Other times it’s when you are coming out of Mcdo (McDonalds for you Americans) and there will be a small, shoeless, disheveled kid who is barely whispering, asking for money or food. This can be devastating.

Mga makililimos (beggars) are sometimes people in legitimate need. Some can't walk, they might be missing limbs, or they just might be able to physically work any longer. Others, we've been told, don't want to work, they may own farms but don't want to work them, or their parents might have "too many kids" to take care of and so they send them out on the street to beg for food or money to take back to their family.

Initially we were told to not give money to anyone begging. This is, after all, what we tell team members.  If we did, we’re told, they would come to expect us to continue to give to them every single time we see them, since many makililimos hang out in the same spots.

This was hard for us, but it was especially hard on Hollie. The kids who would beg always look so sad and Hollie wants to just pick them up and take them home and take care of them.

After being here for a while we had a chance to ask our teacher about mga makililimos and the proper response that we should have when we go to the mall or to the city plaza and run into someone begging. She said that we can indeed give something, but we just need to be careful and we need to be discerning. Just like in other parts of the world (I'm assuming) a preferred method of missionaries is to give food to beggars so that money would not be given to possible drug addicts or an alcoholics and something nourishing and life giving is obtained. We were told to especially look for the kids with things hidden in their shirts who were begging. They were sniffing glue or other inhalants. They most likely they were kids who ran away from the child service homes.  

So we began to notice, to look at the people holding their hands out, looking for mercy. They are not nuisances, merely noise to ignore while you wait for the light to turn to cross the street. These are people,often hurting people, made in the image of God, lovingly crafted, hand-knit in their mother's womb and loved by the Father enough to send His Son to die on the cross so that they could know hope for an eternal blessing that comes with faith in Christ. These are people who have stories, families, friends, good days and bad. To say it another way: they may not be clean and presentable, they may not be one of the fashionable Christian causes at the moment, and some of them may lie to your face and try to take advantage of you, but they are people.

They are people.

Now i want to tell a short story about one of these people, these mga makililimos. I don't know his name, but I have seen him three times now I think, and each time it is shortly after we have had a conversation about responses to beggars. The first time I saw him, I'm deeply ashamed to say, I hid from him. It was afternoon around one or so when I heard what sound like an old man singing. "Maayong hapon! Maayong hapon!" I may not remember all the words to his song, but basically he is saying "Good afternoon! Good afternoon! Would you like to bless me today? Good afternoon sir, good afternoon mam!" He would walk up to each apartment and stand outside of the gate singing, most people ignored him and stayed inside. Since we were still trying to acclimatize ourselves to Philippine weather all of our doors and windows were wide open and the girls were watching tv and singing the Doc McStuffins theme song loudly, so we couldn't just ignore him and act like we weren't home or something.

But man did I try.

Since at this time we still thought that we shouldn't give to anyone asking for money, I tried (in vain) to quiet the girls and get them to go upstairs as quickly and quietly as possible. Sophia asked me why we were doing this and asked what the man was doing, and I regurgitated what we were told. We hid upstairs until he was clear from the entire complex.

The next time I saw the makililimos was after we had been here a while longer. We had a chance to ask our teacher about begging (our lesson was on begging and actually how to relate to people we encounter begging. She told us that we should give, but we just need to be careful, we just need to be discerning to whom we gave money. I heard him singing just like before, 'Maayong utdo sir! Maayong utdo mam!' This time I went out to take a look, to see him this time.

When I walked up to the gate where he was standing I noticed that he was an older man, dirty and stiff clothes with worn flip-flops. His face was smudged with dirt but his eyes lit up when I actually looked at him, when I acknowledged him instead of treating him like a good work or a nuisance. He blessed me a few times as I gave him 10 pesos, singing happily on his way next door.

The more and more I think about this the more I wonder about the role that following what is called "host culture" plays in ministry. I firmly believe that as Christians, no matter where we live or where we are from, we are essentially "above" or “outside” the culture, not cherry-picking parts that we like or don't like of the values and mores that we find in our surroundings, but because our first citizenship is in the Kingdom of Heaven, and our values come from that kingdom and the Bible. We cannot just adopt any and all of the culture of the Philippines, but just like American (and all other human cultures) it is fallen and corrupt.

So what does the Bible say about giving? What does the Bible say about how to take care of the poor?

In the Old Testament, God gives quite a few laws with regards to taking care of the less fortunate among the Israelites. One such law is  that they need to leave some of their field unharvested so that the poor can come and get what they need to survive (Deut. 24:19-22). We are told all throughout Scripture how we need to treat the poor, and how they are the receivers of God’s justice and care.

We are told that we will always have the poor among us (John 12:8) and we even have the example of churches collecting money to give to the poor (Gal. 2:10; 1 Cor. 16:1).  We are told by Christ that we if someone asks for money we need to give to that person without asking or expecting anything in return. The money that is in our pockets and bank accounts are not ours, but all money, everything, belongs to God (Psalm 50:8-12). It’s not our money, it’s God’s. Since it belongs to Him, doesn’t that mean that He gets to decide how it is used? If He tells us to use what He has blessed us with to bless others and to be His hands and His feet to take care of others, then what in the world is stopping us?

The hard part for all of this is trying to be discerning. How do we make the call that this person is actually in need but that person is trying to get money out of you by pretending that they are collecting “tithes” for their church? Prayer and wisdom are the best answers that I’ve found. Praying for the poor and for your eyes to be opened so that you can see the needs that are in front of you is important. Seeing people as they really are will be crucial to being discerning. Wisdom is the actual use of discernment. Unfortunately, wisdom typically comes through trial and error, which takes time.

Giving to the poor and taking care of those who are in need is part and parcel of what it means to be a Christian. We can’t not give to the poor and call ourselves Believers. We also can’t simply make a blanket statement that all people who are begging or panhandling or whatever are simply looking for a hand-out. Even if we did do that, what are we doing? Thinking that they just need to get a job or that there sad state is solely their fault and therefore they do not deserve mercy from us? This reminds me of the dying words of Martin Luther, “We are all beggars, this is true.”

We are all beggars, waiting with open hands for mercy from God.