Resource Development for Africa

The Lufthansa Senator Business Lounge at the Frankfurt airport feels a bit like a land in between realities. Whether I’m traveling to or from Africa, the few hours spent here always offer me a time to process where I’ve been and what to prepare for next. In this case, I’m on my way home from a week in Accra, Ghana, where among other things, I led a two day workshop on Biblical Stewardship and Resource Development.

The event was a leadership gathering of MANI – the African network focused on promoting a missions movement across the continent. Recognizing that they must learn new ways to fund and resource their ministries, this topic is of keen interest to African leaders today. So as I prepared to share with them, I worked hard at shaping the material so that it would be truly practical and applicable in an African context.

I had four key presuppositions:

1. African ministries can no longer depend on 100% funding from the West
2. Although West’s ability to contribute has greatly reduced, it still has much offer. But, it will take much greater understanding, wisdom and accountability to tap those funds.
3. There is much more resource available locally in Africa than most might expect or believe.
4. Learning to access funds either locally or from the West will take a whole new mindset about fundraising than what most African leaders have had in the past.

It was neat to see these thoughts strongly affirmed by the participants as well which, in turn, fueled their enthusiasm to learn all about a Theology of Stewardship which I proposed was foundational for this new fundraising mindset.  Thanks to some wonderful resources made available to me by my friends, Scott Rodin and Rob Martin, as well as a couple great Tim Keller sermons on radical generosity, I was able to explain how a paradigm of biblical stewardship totally changes the way we should think about fundraising for missions. Here are a couple of the PowerPoint slides that generated a lot of interesting discussion.

The second day was focused on as much practical advice as I could think of that would help my African friends promote their ministries among local communities and churches. We covered such topics as how to craft a compelling case statement, how to present PowerPoint with most impact, how to build an effective, portable display, and how to build a successful website. I tried to illustrate each point with a bunch of cool tech gadgets, such as mini LED projectors, Bluetooth micro speakers, presentation remote controls, simple digital HD cameras and even a half-size portable display. I guess I was successful in demonstrating their effectiveness, because I’m returning home without a single one of those items having sold everything to folks wanting to implement their use right away!

So, as I munch on piece of German swartz brot (black bread) with cucumber and tomato here in the Lufthansa lounge, I feel really good about this past week in Ghana.  I think it is a true indication that African ministry leaders are ready to take on new responsibility for resourcing their mission outreach and not only look to the West for their funding. 

And if that’s true, I just may find that this workshop could be in demand again sometime in the not too distant future!

More eBook Christmas Stories

A few days ago, I announced on Facebook that I had just added four more Christmas stories to the Amazon Kindle marketplace making a total of eight short eBooks I now have available for sale. 

These are all part of a tradition I started years ago of reading a short story to my family every Christmas Eve. Although all of them have a theme linking them to Christmas, many were inspired by travel to other countries for visits with national ministry leaders. Here’s a bit of background on some of the latest stories I just uploaded to Amazon:

The Forbidden Christmas  The setting for this story is Timbuktu, Mali, site of one of the ancient Islamic university centers of the 1500’s. I've had a chance to visit Timbuktu on multiple occasions both while working with MAF and Partners International. My good friend, Pastor Nouh, gave me the official tour of the city, including a visit to the famous Sankore Mosque and a camel ride out into the surrounding desert. Unfortunately, Timbuktu has been the center of horrific rebel fighting during the past two years which has forced the evacuation of most Christians from the region.

The Christmas Card  Years ago, MAF was exploring how it might be able to start a flight program and possibly a radio communication service in the country of Kazakhstan. As the VP of Research back then, I was sent to check it out. Accompanied by John Charlier, we traveled from the capital, Almaty, all the way across the country to the fascinating cities of Actau and Atyrau, both on the Caspian Sea. Although our interviews with government officials didn't produce any new possibilities for MAF, it certainly gave me plenty of ideas for writing this Christmas story.

Bread Upon the Waters  My friend, Maher Fouad, founder of the Arab World Evangelical Ministers Association in Cairo, Egypt, was the reason for my visit to that city a number of years ago. Not only did we spend plenty of time discussing the challenges of mobilizing Arab church-planters across North Africa and the Middle East, but he also graciously arranged for a tour of the pyramids and the Cairo Museum. It didn't take long to dream up a Christmas story based on the sights and sounds of that ancient city.

The Box

Sorry – no cool mission trip connection on this story. It just happens to be the second one I ever wrote dating back to 1993.

The other four eBooks I have on Amazon are:

The Boy who missed Christmas

The Tale of the Odd Soldier

The Bridge

The Broken Circle

Hope you might have as much fun sharing some of these stores with your family has I have had reading them to mine.

More Than Maps

What would you guess an organization like Global Mapping International (GMI) is mostly involved with?

If your answer is “mapping,” guess again!

I have just returned from my first experience of acting as chairman for a GMI board meeting and I’m amazed and impressed at some of the new ventures the dedicated staff of GMI have produced in the past six months. With Jon Hirst completing his first full year as CEO, it is obvious his vision that GMI become a strategic source of information that helps mission leaders make informed decisions is really starting to take off.  That’s why Jon has been steering GMI beyond mapping to do things like mission research and then present results in creative digital and print publications.  Here are three recent examples we were shown during our meetings:

1. 1.       Mission CEO Survey 2013: Navigating Global Currents – a research project commissioned by Missio Nexus that involved interviewing CEOs from 150 different organizations to understand the trends they are facing as global mission leaders.
2. 2.       Agency Web Review 2013 – A comprehensive study of how well US mission websites are being used to attract and accommodate new missionary staff candidates.
3. 3.       India Decision Makers Research – A special study to learn how decision-making is done among leaders of key Indian mission organizations. Already this report is reshaping how GMI is preparing resources to equip Indian mission leaders of tomorrow.

The GMI website will soon have information on where and how to download all these reports. (www.GMI.org)

If that isn’t impressive enough, another very cool venture of GMI is launching Missiographics: eye-openning infographics telling the story of global mission. Using its own team of experienced mission/mapping technicians along with a cadre of young local graphic designers, GMI is attempting to crunch complex mission data into powerful one-page presentations that tell the story in a glance. You can actually sign-up to receive two of these missiographics each month—free!  (Learn more at http://www.gmi.org/missiographics.htm)  On top of that, GMI is now offering to produce custom-designed missiographics specifically for mission organizations to tell their story to friends and donors.

Besides board members with impressive credentials like Scott Moreau, professor of Intercultural Studies at Wheaton Grad School and Editor of the Evangelical Missions Quarterly, Greg Jensen – Microsoft Division Director for MS Office Applications on the Apple Mac, Joseph Vijayam – Founder of the multinational software company, Olive Technology, we were happy to welcome new board member, Timothy Beals. Tim is the president of CREDO Communications, a company that offers both publicist and publishing services to Christian authors. We’re all expecting that Tim will be able to help GMI significantly expand its own goals to publish and offer eBooks for the global mission community.

Who knows? With all these new resources, maybe GMI will finally inspire me to sit down and write that book on mission strategy I keep thinking about!

MozMed

One of the most significant ministries MAF is supporting here in northern Mozambique is a flying doctors service to rural clinics called MozMed. Comprised of a Dutch doctor, a Brazilian dentist, Mozambican nurses and, of course, American pilots, MozMed is a great example of global missions working together in partnership.

Dave LePoidevin in the MAF hangar

Although the country’s government has said no Mozambique citizen should ever be more than 50 kilometers from a health clinic, the fact is that is still far from reality. Clinics have yet to be built and the ones that have are seriously lacking in supplies and trained personnel.

Which is why MozMed was created.

Waiting patients at the Tupuita clinic 

When Dr. Pim (short for his real Dutch name) and MAF program manager, Dave LePoidevin got their heads together to do something about it, they targeted two communities seriously lacking in health care and worked out a way to fit a small medical team and their equipment into a six-place Cessna that could bring them to each place on a consistent monthly basis. I got a chance to visit one of them—a place called Tupuita right on the Mozambique coast along the Indian Ocean.  

Brazilian dentist, Ida, ready for another extraction

What’s really cool about Tupuita is that MozMed was able to get a nearby multi-national titanium mine to use their required social sector contribution as the source of funding for a brand new clinic desperately needed by the surrounding area. When we arrived, already a hundred patients filled the waiting area and the floor space around the clinic doorways. Ida, the Brazilian dentist, went right to work with her cool portable dentist chair checking out the first of many patients suffering from an abscessed tooth needing extraction. In the maternity area, midwives began examening the endless stream of local pregnant women usually facing one complication or another.

Meanwhile, Dr. Pim showed us how new medical technology is helping them do things never before possible at remote clinics such as this one. A small, battery-operated sonogram invented by the U.S. Army is now standard operating equipment for Tuptuita. And simple finger-prick blood tests can now give a quick, early-sign test for both malaria and HIV-AIDS without the need of microscopes or complex lab equipment.

“Despite our state-of-the-art facility and service,” Dr. Pim confesses, “we still find ourselves competing with the local witchdoctor as the first place people come to for medical help. The power of an animistic worldview is so strong in this culture that people simply can’t break away from tradition. Unfortunately, many children die from the witchdoctor’s fetish practices before we get a chance to see them. But slowly, as we share God’s love and provide consistent care with our medical service, we are seeing changed mindsets begin to happen.”

Dr. Pim with his cool portable sonagram

Without question, the potential MozMed radius of impact for both physical and spiritual transformation in northern Mozambique is huge. MAF has the ability to replicate this service to many other regions of the country. But the bad news is that family issues are forcing the departure of both Dr. Pim and Dr. Ida next August paralyzing this valuable community effort until new replacements can be found. “Everything is set up here ready to go,” says Ida. “We just need to find a doctor and dentist with vision to carry on what we have started. Can you please help us find such people?”

 So, how about it?  Got any names I could pass on to them out here in Mozambique?

Colonial Comparison

The year was 1498. The Portuguese explorer, Vasco da Gama, had just anchored his caravella sailing ship in the sheltered waters of the inlet and was making his way in the longboat with a landing party to a rocky island that dominated the bay. Soon, he would meet the sultan of the island, a successful Arab trader by the name of Mussa Al Bique. At the moment they would meet, a new chapter of history would begin—one that would be dominated by Portuguese colonial presence in southeast Africa for several hundred years. Vasco da Gama would initiate that era by naming the island after his host, a name that Portugal would later call its new colony: Mozambique.

Dave Wunsch and I interview US and Brazilian missionaries

For the past several days, Dave Wunsch, VP Operations, and I have been here in the northern part of Mozambique continuing our job of helping MAF take a strategic look at its flight programs. Thanks to the hospitality of three dedicated MAF staff families based in the city of Nampula, we’re enjoying good fellowship, great meals and some amazing Indiana Jones-type Land Rover rides around town on roads that would belong better on a dirt-bike racing track. Our days have been filled with back-to-back interviews conducted with mission and national church leaders. As we ask questions and take copious notes, an interesting picture of this country is emerging.

Having just completed similar interviews in Angola, the other former Portuguese colony of southern Africa, I really expected to find similar conditions in Mozambique.  I couldn't have been more mistaken. Differences in tribal groups, geography and colonial history seem to have produced significant differences in how these two countries function today. Here are just two examples:

·         Because Angolans are deeply grateful for the national peace they've enjoyed since the end

of their civil war ten years ago, there is a unified sense of readiness to embrace progress in economy, technology and even in church collaboration. In contrast, Mozambicans seem stuck in a past paradigm of tribalism that is causing everything from business to church relations to be fragmented and frozen in tradition         .

·         In Angola, we were impressed with the maturity of national church leaders who have not only prioritized the importance of graduate level seminary education but are also actively engaged in church-planting outreach efforts among the remaining unreached people groups of their country. In Mozambique, some churches have produced prolific daughter missions in nearby villages, but we found none that were committed to a true missionary effort among the yet untouched tribal groups along the coast or in the far northwest. Additionally, we were told there were only two pastors who had completed a bachelor-level seminary degree in the entire northern region of the country.

Three little friends from a local orphanage

One thing that both countries share, however, is an incredibly strong influence of animism in their current cultures. It was interesting to find Angolan church leaders who really believed that one particular tribe’s witchcraft empowered them to swim underwater for over an hour without surfacing and ride crocodiles like horses. In Mozambique the power of fetish traditions and ancestor worship is not unlike that of Muslim cultures that prohibit family members from becoming a Christian and may even disown them if they do.

Interviewing one of the two church leaders in Nampula
who have graduated from seminary

 It will be an interesting challenge to see how MAF can best serve the mission and church community here in northern Mozambique. I hope by the time we wrap up this trip, we will have some new and creative ideas about how to answer that question.

Diesel Power!

One of the most impressive parts of my time visiting the MAF program in Angola was to personally experience the impact of two Cessna 182 aircraft that were newly equipped with diesel engines. Having been added to the fleet last April, these two planes are already changing the way the program is able to serve churches and missions in this country. 

Up until now, the main workhorse of the program was a Cessna 208 Caravan aircraft. This is a ten-passenger airplane that uses a jet-powered turbo-prop engine. Although it is still an ideal plane to transport large loads in the African bush and on rough airstrips for long, four-to-five hour legs, it tends to be a bit too pricey for the mission/church community to afford on a regular basis, especially if they only need to haul one or two people. Other smaller piston-engined planes do not work well either because the cost of the avigas has been $15 per gallon.

Unusual front cowling on the the C-182 

Enter the diesel-powered C-182! After years of testing, this new plane/engine combination could mark the beginning of new revolution in light aircraft design. Able to use the same jet-fuel as the Caravan (only $5.00 per gallon or less) These smaller planes offer both the perfect size and cost for the typical church or mission need in southern Angola.

Note the yellow lightning-strikes on our flight course!

The MAF pilots wanted to show us this point in action, so four of us headed out on a 55 minute flight from Lubango to the Caluquembe Hospital up north. The new plane not only had a super-simple computerized throttle control system, but were also equipped with the latest “glass-cockpit” avionics.  I was particularly impressed to track the lighting strikes from a huge storm along our path as we made our way home again!

Happy users of the new diesel-powered C-182

Because of the availability of these planes, MAF Angola is now considering offering new types of “round-robin” field trips where a pilot could head out for a three or four day trip with a three-man medical team or discipleship-training group participating in their ministry during the overnights. As we talked about this to local ministry leaders, it was fun to see how new interest in MAF service was sparked by this possibility.

All MAF pilots are still hoping a diesel solution will become available for the larger, six-seat Cessna 206, and apparently, such an engine is actually on the way. But in the meantime, these new diesel-powered C-182’s certainly can play a key role in offering affordable mission aviation service in certain key places of the world—like southern Angola.

Angola Impressions

Question: What is UIEA, IESA, IECA, AEA, CICA, ICCA and CMEL?

Answer: They’re all acronyms for church and ministry organizations that I had a chance to interview during the past few days here in Angola.

 It’s all part of my assignment to help the Mission Aviation Fellowship program do some strategic planning for the next few years. What a privilege it has been to meet these national Christian leaders and hear their stories of what God is doing here in the fourth largest country of Africa.

I now have another big map of Angola filled with scribbles and notes indicating just what is happening where.  It’s hard to encapsulate all of it, but here are some of my main observations and impressions from what I've heard:

·         Angolan people are still deeply impacted by the thirty years of civil war that ended only a decade ago. Every single person is grateful for the peace that now exists across the country and see this time of peace as an opportunity for new growth—economically and spiritually.

·         Two-thirds of Angola is today quite accessible by road. Although transportation on those roads is not always easy and sometimes demands a Land Cruiser or Toyota HiLux, it still is possible for people, including pastors and doctors, to get to many of the towns and villages of this country. This accessibility is actually quite remarkable compared to so many other under-developed African countries.

·         The remaining third of Angola is really remote. In the south and east, the land area is vast, desolate and inhabited by the most unreached people groups in the nation. These groups, like the clans of the African Bushmen, are still living in some of the most primitive and nomadic circumstances of any in the world.

·         The good news is that Evangelical churches are definitely growing and planting new churches throughout the entire country. The official number of church members has quadrupled since the end of the war.

·         The bad news is that these churches are not demonstrating much collaboration or partnership but instead seem to be building their own little kingdoms with their own Bible institutes and own medical work.

·         New life is being breathed into the MAF flight program with new opportunities to serve such things as remote medical work, Bible translation and Theological Education by Extension (TEE) using two new Cessna 182 aircraft that use a new type of diesel engine. (More on this in my next blog.)

These are only six bullet points out of 35 that I have in my notebook! Now my job is to synthesize all this good information down into some helpful conclusions and recommendations for the pilots and staff of the MAF Angola flight program.

Rusting Doors and Secret Missions

For more than thirty years, Angola was caught in a devastating civil war. It finally came to an end in 2002 when government forces succeeded in killing one single person—Jonas Savimbi, the leader of the rebel movement called UNITA. Within hours of that event, arms were laid down and a new era of peace began.

During this trip of mine to Angola, I’m learning how much influence Savimbi held over the people of this country. Not only did his rebel followers believe he had special powers, but even the opposing government troops were deathly afraid of what he might do to them with his witchcraft ability.

The fear of Savimbi's witchcraft is still demonstrated today by a most unusual memorial set up in the far southeast corner of the country.

It’s the remains of a metal door propped up against a tree—the very tree under which he was killed. In order to prove the famous rebel leader was no longer alive, his body was laid out on a metal door ripped off of a nearby house and paraded around for all to see. So powerful was the news of his death that the entire UNITA rebel force dissolved almost immediately. But, then, people, including the government authorities, began to fear that the powerful witchcraft associated with Savimbi would linger around him infecting even the door his body laid on. Hoping to appease evil spirits, they quickly returned it to the tree where he was killed. To this day, folks give it wide berth as its rusting remains rests up against the tree trunk.

When MAF Canada first got started in Angola back in the late 1980s, there was a major concern that its planes might become targets of a rebel rocket attack by Savimbi’s UNITA militia. Shoulder-fired Stinger missiles had already brought down more than one Soviet cargo plane supplying communist government forces. MAF sent telex messages to a blind address somewhere in Europe before each flight hoping that UNITA contacts would receive the information and inform rebels on the ground that MAF was embarking on another humanitarian and non-political flight. No response was ever received and MAF never had any certainty its flights were being recognized as peaceful.

So I was asked to conduct a secret mission. While on a furlough in the US in 1990, I was asked to attend a prayer breakfast in Washington DC hosted by an ultra-conservative, anti-communist group.  The guest of honor? Savimbi himself! Before the event began, I was ushered into a back room and given five minutes of personal time with the infamous warrior. Using my best childhood Portuguese, I was able to confirm that the MAF telex messages were indeed being received. On top of that, Savimbi told me he knew all about the MAF plane and the service it was offering to the mission hospitals. “You have nothing to worry about from us,” he said, “We know MAF is doing a good job for our people.”

Because of the political sensitivities of that time, I could not share with anyone I had made this secret mission and had contact with Sivimbi...until now!

Even after ten years since Savimbi’s death, people still talk about the war as if it happened just yesterday. Everyone is incredibly grateful for the season of peace Angola now enjoys. It’s also amazing to see the impact MAF flight service has had for all these years. Over the next few days, I’ll be interviewing key church leaders to find out how that service should continue on into the future. 

Stay tuned!

Memories and Maps

I watch the Russian Antanov cargo plane take off from the long runway and immediately bank into a sharp left-hand climbing turn. As it continues to circle upwards right over the center of the airfield, it begins dropping blinding magnesium flares out of each wingtip, a counter-measure to ward off the success of a shoulder-mounted Stinger missile launched from rebel fighter hiding in the nearby tall grass. The sight was both exhilarating and sobering to me, knowing that a similar plane had been brought down this way just weeks before in this same part of Africa.

That was twenty-five years ago.

Today, I landed at that very same airport here in Lubango, Angola after a forty-hour marathon trip from my home in Spokane, WA. The sight of the Soviet-era MiG fighters hiding in their bunkers next to the runway brought back lots of memories of my first visit here back in 1988. It was smack in the middle of the civil war that devastated this former Portuguese colony for over thirty years. And, it was the very time that MAF-Canada had asked me to help them begin a brand new flight program with a Cessna Caravan aircraft that was designed to support several mission hospitals. During all these intervening years, this program has been faithfully serving the people, hospitals and churches of Angola.

So, I count it a real privilege to be invited back here again to once again help MAF-Canada conduct an assessment of their flight program.  This time, I’m accompanied by Dave Wunsch, VP of Operations for MAF-USA who will also be lending his hand in this review. Together, we truly hope to be used by God as an encouragement to the team of expat and national staff who make this MAF program a reality. In addition, I’m looking forward to interviewing as many key national ministry leaders as possible to learn just how God is moving them to reach this country for Christ. Hopefully, any final advice and counsel that might result from our visit will help enhance the level of collaboration and partnership between MAF and the Angolan church.

As I’m handed a glass of water to quench my thirst after my long trip, another surprising ghost from the past materializes. Gary Goertzen, current MAF program manager spreads out a map of the country with all sorts of hand markings on it. I take a closer look and realize the markings are my own! This was the very same map I used years ago to catalog key mission information all across the country! No other document exists anywhere quite like this one! I learn from Gary that it is still being used today for strategic planning purposes.

Hopefully, before I depart seven days from now, I’ll be able to leave the MAF team another valuable document like this one that will serve them in creating an even more effective aviation ministry for this huge country.

6,000 Words

They say a picture is worth a thousand words.

Last week, when I shared at the Mission Mobilization Summit meeting in Abuja, Nigeria, I was asked to offer advice on how Nigerian missionaries could be most effective in future ministry settings. I decided to highlight my three main points each with a pair of pictures they would be easy to remember. Here they are:

Point #1 – Don’t just look for ministry that will have fast results. Recognize that much of the remaining mission task will be among unreached people groups that will take a long time and lots of patience, endurance and stamina to fully reach.

Point #2 – Don’t just pursue ministry that is done all alone or even in a paternalistic partnerships (like the Lone Ranger and Tonto.) Instead, intentionally seek out opportunities for collaborative partnership with like-minded churches and organizations equally passionate about ministering in that same part of the world.

Point #3 – Don’t just look for easy ministry that involve people just like yourself (i.e. planting churches among Nigerians in Poland.) Be willing to reach out to those with a very different background and learn to minister effectively cross-culturally.

It will be interesting to see if these key points—and their pictures—have any impact on the next generation of Nigerian mission workers! 

Crossing the "Red Line"

I never thought that Obama’s “red line” in the current Syria crisis would be a dramatic object lesson for a board governance seminar!

I was wrapping up a day-long workshop with the Board of Directors of the Nigeria Bible Translation Trust and trying to impress upon them the difference between what a board is supposed to deal with and what management should be handling. As with so many African boards (and US ones, too, for that matter) it is easy for boards to step across into management details start micro-managing operational issues ultimately reducing the effectiveness of the organization. When I explained this in a graphic PowerPoint slide, the lights came on for the board chairman when he said, “So this is like the Obama ‘red line.’ If we cross it, we can get in trouble!”

It was even more rewarding two days later, to hear another board member tell the manager of public relations that the board was no longer going to be involved in choosing new logo colors. “Now we understand that sort of decision would be crossing the line and taking on something your department is supposed to do."

It may seem like a little thing, but it’s just one example of how the subject matter of these workshops I’ve been offering have had practical application for day-to-day operations of these national ministries. Every little bit of increased efficiency is hopefully leading to greater effectiveness for the ministry  result of  these organizations.

Another good example of this was during a workshop I led a few days ago for managers and their secretaries on how to improve office work-flow. “We have so many interruptions,” one manager said. “People simply knock on our office door and then come right in regardless of what we’re doing. It’s the African way.” After discussing this a bit, we concluded that one solution was to re-position the secretaries’ desks so that they blocked easy access to the manager’s office and allowed for more chance of scheduling up future appointments for office visits.

Whether from greater efficiency or greater leadership vision, it’s exciting to hear that NBTT has started 22 new translation projects just since the beginning of the year. Considering there are over 350 languages in Nigeria with no Bible (100 of them being a priority) this signifies a significant step forward. It has been very fulfilling this past week playing a small part in these ministry results by 

leading four different management development workshops.

The Nigerians Are Coming!

Have any idea what the fifth largest missionary-sending country of the world might be?

Nigeria.

There are now more than 6,600 Nigerians serving as expat mission workers somewhere in the world. And if what I heard the past few days here in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital city, is going to be true, that number will explode several times over in the next few years.

I’ve been attending and participating in a conference called “Blow The Trumpet--The World Mission Mobilization Leadership Summit.” Invited to be one of the ten speakers at the event, I’ve enjoyed getting a brand new feel for the passion and potential of Nigerians as a force in global missions. You can hardly help it when some three hundred and fifty brothers and sisters all around you surge with palpable emotion every time there is a challenge from the platform for recommitment in reaching the remaining unreached of the world.

About half the attendees are pastors of churches. The other half are mission agency leaders. Interestingly, there has been a growing gap between these two groups in recent years as mission endeavor becomes more fragmented and compartmentalized. One of the important objectives of this conference has been to bring the two back together. From the way the concluding sessions have played out with groups of leaders down on their knees at the altar in visible repentance surrounded by others laying hands on them, I believe this objective was definitely achieved.

These are the two talks I was asked to give:

The New Game-Changers in World Mission--Understanding the new dynamics changing the face of world missions and what challenges Global South leaders from Africa must face in order to engage successfully in global ministry.    

Mobilizing African Churches for Global Mission Relevance—Understanding what leads to greatest relevance in today’s global mission outreach and how African churches can effectively mobilize their members to achieve powerful mission impact.

Using my best PowerPoint skills, I tried to lay out just what it will take for the next generation of African mission workers to successfully build God’s Kingdom around the world. From the number of folks lining up afterwards for copies of my presentations, I must have been fairly successful.

Young Nigerians committing themselves to become mission
mobilizers

I also got to lead two break-out sessions on resource development for missions. These were particularly meaningful to me as I offered ideas for practical solutions on raising local support for their ministry endeavors. It even appears that several significant missions may be inviting me back again to run a two day seminar for them just on this topic.

During the three days of this “Blow the Trumpet” conference, I actually did not hear a single trumpet blown. But I’ve certainly sensed the equivalent results of people stirred to a new level of readiness for action and engagement in global missions.

So, better watch out… because the Nigerians are coming!

Reason to be Excited

Adam during a recent tech training trip to Madagascar

It’s not just because he’s my son that I’m excited.  But what is happening through the Technology Advance team of Wycliffe Associate—which now does includes my son, Adam—has got to be one of the cutting-edge, history-making stories in world missions today.

For years, Bible translation has been the passion of people we called “Wycliffe missionaries.” These faithful linguists labored away, sometime for 30 or 40 years, in some of the most difficult circumstances imaginable to transform God’s Word into a new language.

Today, however, “Wycliffe” is the label for a whole family of global organizations dedicated to translation work. One of those is Wycliffe Associates. Known for years as the agency that mobilizes volunteers to assist others doing translation work, WA now is dedicated to accelerating Bible translation using people in all sorts of new and creative ways. The Technology Advance division is the newest thrust in doing just that. Let me give a few examples:

·         In the past two years, the WA Tech Advance guys have installed more than 70 remote satellite transmitters and countless cell-phone repeater units in remote geographic areas connecting tribal villages with language consultant resources continents away.

·         Tech Advance staff, including Adam, are being deployed to equip and train “mother-tongue” translators with laptop computers and then provide training on how to use translation software such as ParaText.  Without question, the computer is the single most effective technology tool speeding the translation process, yet many grass-roots workers have never even touched one before and need patient, caring help to get started.

·         Looking for creative ways to break dependency on U.S. funds and resources, WA’s Tech Advance group has spearheaded the formation of small, profit-making companies that will help sustain local communication and language experts in the future allowing them to complete translation projects in their own country without needing outside subsidy. Eight such companies have already been started and more are on the way.

·         Currently, the Tech Advance team is in discussion with creators of proprietary commercial software that has powerful new capability to provide computer-based translation for such things as websites and textbooks. If the partnership is successful, it could revolutionize the speed at which Bible translation could get done for the remaining languages of the world that need it.      

     Every time I get to hang out with some of the WA Tech Advance guys, I learn about something new they are working on to further accelerate Bible translation. For example, Adam is currently deploying some cool new solar panel units that are more powerful, stronger, and much more portable than anything before.

     So, I want to strongly encourage you to click on this link to Adam’s own personal blog and learn more about his work with Wycliffe Associates: 

      http://keepintouchadamsblog.blogspot.com/2013/08/friends_21.html

d    And, while you’re at it… please consider joining his personal support team. There are few ministry investment opportunities out there with more multiplicative power to accelerate Bible translation than the sort of thing Adam and the WA Tech Advance Team are doing today.

Another Tech Advance staff member providing training in Nigeria

The Gray and the Black

The Gray and the Black--that’s what I decided to call the session when it was about to begin. Why? Because both of us guests—Brent Ropp and myself—were clearly the only ones in the room with silver-gray hair while the other thirty people there had jet-black hair, primarily because they were a group of young leaders who were all native Nigerians.

Meeting with Prosper Isichei, MANI's Director for the
Emerging Leaders Networki

When my friend, Prosper Isichei learned that I might have a free 12 hours in the capital city of Abuja before departing on an evening flight, he asked permission to recruit a group of his young “emerging leader” friends to gather for an informal time of learning exchange. “We would simply like to sit at your feet and learn anything from your years of leadership experience,” he claimed. Not really knowing what I was getting into, but feeling intrigued by such an open-ended request, I accepted.

What followed was about four hours of some of the most meaningful time I’ve spent in my years of ministry in Africa. With such freedom on presentation content, I prepared a PowerPoint covering eight “Life Lesson” that included such things as how to write a personal missions statement, developing a model of balanced personal growth, ministry and marriage, and the difference between being a leader and knowing how to lead. I felt that I was addressing a room full of thirsty sponges. Rarely have I experienced an interaction with 20 and 30-year olds where they hung on to every word I shared and followed up with deep, penetrating questions for personal application.

My guess is there are two reasons for such a positive reaction. One is that younger African generations tend to be regarded more as a threat by the established older leaders preventing healthy mentoring relationships from happening. A second reason is that what is often presented as leadership training tends to either be a highly academic lecture, a Bible Study sermon or some other top-down experience with little chance for interaction. Instead I paused at the end of each point to allow for plenty of personal application questions plus further insight to be shared by my colleague, Brent Ropp.

 At the end of the day, I asked for feedback about which topics were most relevant. It seemed to be a tie between balancing ministry and marriage and that of being a leader but not really knowing how to lead. The later was shared via a TED Talk video clip which was the first time any had seen such a thing. As a result, we brainstormed a bit about creating a similar TED-Talk-type ministry designed to share worthy ideas for the global mission world, something my son, Nathaniel is thinking seriously about doing. They were enthusastic about it. And, at the suggestion of returning to Nigeria with a prepared weekend seminar on balancing ministry and marriage, not only did every hand in the room go up but several seriously wanted to put their names on an advance sign-up list.

There was something amazingly refreshing for me about this one day interaction with these young men and women. It is even more fulfilling to think that some of the Life Lessons I’ve passed on to them seem to be worthy topics and truths that can help them become a generation with the capability to significantly advance God's Kingdom in their own continent and around the world.

A Retreat to Advance

Twenty-two have complete Bibles (green), fifty-three New Testaments (yellow) and forty-seven some portion of Scripture (orange.)  But the rest of the 350 languages of Nigeria do not have a single word of God’s Good News translated into their own language (red.)

 That’s why the challenge of the Nigerian Bible Translation Trust  (NBTT), the principal national translation entity in the country, is so daunting. Eclipsing the number of all other African countries in language translation needs, Nigeria actually is second in the world in terms of remaining languages that still need a Bible translation project initiated.

Since last January, NBTT has been led by a new executive director, Yakubu La’ah, a man short in height, but certainly not in vision.  Soon after stepping into his role, Yakubu contacted me asking if I could lead his new management team through another organizational development seminar similar to one I gave last year. But, this time, he decided to do something different—invite all 34 of his national staff to the first part of the workshop for purposes of restoring a new sense of excitement and commitment in their ministry task.

When I arrived in Jos, Nigeria, where NBTT is located, I learned that Yakubu had decided to move the workshop an hour out of town to a beautiful retreat center on the grounds of an MK school built by SIM missionaries back the early 1900’s. As the staff arrived, I learned that this was the first time in over twenty years that NBTT had offered such a retreat. That made it a double privilege for me to be the facilitator of the event and lead them in an animated review of their vision, mission and values.

The second part of the weekend involved a focused time with the new five-man NBTT management team going over basic leadership principles of strategic planning, organizing, teambuilding and accountability. Because this was the first time for several of them to be managers, they were intently interested to know exactly how to apply each of the topics discussed. It was particularly exciting for me to see that part of the motivation they had for ramping up their leadership efforts was a new commitment to advance Vision 2025--an attempt to initiate a translation project for all the remaining language of the world that need it. 

One evening, I decided to show the classic movie, Apollo 13, as an example of how to lead in a crisis situation.  It was so cool seeing how the team really connected the dots from our workshop and pulled out so many great lessons from the film.

If somehow affirmation is proportional to the brightness of the appreciation gift, the orange caftan I received at the end of the workshop has certainly made me feel that my weekend contribution toward helping NBTT accelerate Bible translation in Nigeria has definitely been worth it!

Madagascar's Explosive Growth

Church Planters equipped with GPS units

One of the more fascinating reports I heard at the recent MANI conference I attended in Nairobi was on mission outreach currently happening in Madagascar.  Off the coast of southeastern Africa, Madagascar is the fourth largest island of the world, about the size of the state of Texas.  It’s also one of the more unreached areas of the continent, especially in the rain forest area which dominates the entire eastern seaboard of the island.

Villages in the Madagascan rain forest now identified
for church-planting outreach

Sharing all this with me at the conference was Dinah Ratsimbajona, Director of the Islands Mission and also MANI Regional Coordinator for the Island countries of the Indian Ocean. He claims his mission has seen explosive growth in new churches thanks to an aggressive strategy called CPM (Church Planting Movements.)  Three generations of trained national workers, 480 in all, have been deployed with GPS satellite receivers to map out where unchurched villages are located in the forest. Then, using the CPM strategy to seek out the “man of peace” in each village and initiate a Discovery Bible Study in his home, the workers have successfully started over 2000 churches in just 20 years!

Twelve-year old boy already a veteran church-planter

One of the amazing stories Dinah shared is that his third generation of church planters includes a young boy only 12 years old.  This lad has actually been the key to getting three different Bible study groups initiated, all which are on their way to becoming house-churches.

There are most likely over 15,000 villages in the rain forest, most of which are not even known to the government. “The GPS information our church planters have gathered on the villages have actually given us better data than any of the authorities have to date,” Dinah said. “Now, our plan is to expand to both northern and southern regions of the rain forest where there is still much work to be done.

Island Mission has benefited extensively from the help of both Mission Aviation Fellowship and Hellimission, a Swiss helicopter mission, that have tranported church planters from the capital of Antananarivo to remote areas in the rain forest.

What an encouragement it is to learn about an indigenous ministry like this one that is making significant progress in advancing God’s Kingdom in the mission fields found right in its

own country.

On-going Movement

During the closing days of the of the AD2000 & Beyond Movement in 1999, veteran New Zealand missionary, Ross Campbell, gathered a cross-continental team of aspiring African leaders and together committed themselves to continue encouraging African mission outreach.  That commitment became a new movement by the name of MANI. Now, fourteen years later, MANI is a mature, proven network of outstanding contemporary African leaders honing their strategy to catalyze a new generation of African mission endeavor.

Why all this interest in MANI? Because I’ve been invited to participate in MANI’s three day leadership forum held here in Nairobi, Kenya. Using the facilities of a Catholic guest house in a quiet, wooded area outside of town, our team of 30-some folks are engaged in back-to-back meetings from 7:00 AM till 9:00 PM at night. Reuben Ezemadu, a key Nigerian mission statesman and long-time friend, is the continental coordinator leading our sessions. He has each day focused on a different theme: 1) leadership transitions,    2) ministry focus and 3) strengthening partnerships.

As I listened to the first full day of regional reports, I was given a strong reminder that Africa’s demographics is a lot more diverse than I usually think. Leaders from West, Central and East Africa may look alike because of similar Bantu heritage, but when you add in an Ethiopian from the upper Nile, a Dutch Afrikaner for South Africa, an islander from Madagascar and even a Chinese-background citizen of Mauritius, I have to remember that all these folk have equal right to call Africa their home continent.

With this richness of perspective, I am anxious to see how these three days will unfold and look forward to learning how this team of men and women are helping to promote MANI’s three key objectives: 

1. To Catalyze an African Mission’s Movement
2. To Redefine the African Mission Field
3. To Mobilize an African Mission Force.

Stay tuned for some follow-up reports. I’m sure there will be some neat things to pass along about what God is doing through this important network called MANI.

Under His Wings

Every once in a while, something happens that reminds vividly how much I must depend on God's upholding power to make it from day to day--especially while flying different national airlines.

This morning, I borded my flight in Singpore and picked up the newspaper only to be greeted with this picture of a Lion Air plane that had missed it's landing and crashed into the shallow waters off the Bali International Airport.

What made the story doubly impactful for me is that I was flying the exact same kind of aircraft on Lion Air the very day this incident happened. Departing my daughter's home in Papua, we made several stops on the way to Jakarta, one being very close to where this incident happened. The story is even more tragic when you read that the plane was a brand new 737-800 New Generation delievered to Indonesia just last month--again, just like the one I was on that day.

The good part of the story, however, is that because of crashing in such a shallow area, all of the passengers were evacuated safely, although a few had some minor injuries.

Last month, in Congo, Al Hawthorne and I were forced to fly on the local CAA airline which also had sustained a cargo plane crash the week before.

All these experineces are valuable simply for the one reason of never taking for granted our need to trust in God's sustaining grace every step of the way--especially in international travel.

Papua Perspective

I’ve just completed four days of very special time with my daughter’s family in Meruake, Indonesia, located on the far south coast of the island of Papua. When you’re grandkids live 7500 miles away from you and it takes four days and six airline flights to get there, you can understand why every minute together is so special. From building rocket darts and having toy tea parties to watching Winnie the Pooh and reading bedtime stories, I did my best to cram as much grandpa experience as possible into this short time with Juile, Tom and their three kids, Christopher, Elizabeth and Brennan.

As I now wing my way homeward from these two weeks in Indonesia, I can’t help but wonder, however, about the current state of the church in Papua reported to me during my visit. Without question, the “hot button” of the mission world these days is CPM—Church Planting Movements. These rapidly multiplying  communities of churches are indeed exciting trends to witness in various areas of the least-Christian world.  But what happens to these CPM areas 20, 30 or even 60 years later?  Is Papua a possible example of one answer to that question?

Before 1960, Papua (then known as Irian Jaya) was a wild, untouched land with hardly a single Christian among its indigenous tribal populations. But within a few short years, missionary endeavor produced one of the most dramatic church planting movements in recorded history.  By the end of the 1980s, churches of multiple denominations could be found everywhere and the last remaining untouched of the island were being systematically reached by the first generation of indigenous missionaries. So successful was this evangelistic effort that by 2000 most Western missionaries felt their job was done and were leaving Papua to be guided by new national leadership.

(Curtesy of Google Maps)

However, what I’ve learned now is how much of a reversal  this positive trend has taken in the past few years. Sadly, the Papuan church today is known more for its materialism, infighting, lack of strong leadership and inability to positively reach out to non-Christian neighbors. Thanks in part to a large gold mine that has flooded the economy with wealth and a huge number of Islamic-background transmigrants moving in from Java, Papua today seems once again more defined as a mission field than a mission force.

One example of this was hearing about several Bible schools and seminaries with student bodies that included many who had never made a profession of faith before let alone understood what it meant to lead others to Christ. An even sadder story was learning about the rampant pornography now flooding the local culture. A friend who has lived in Papua for years said she was shocked to discover how much porn is normal TV content in most homes, even for housewives and young girls. Most people now want to buy their cell phone already pre-loaded with “the stuff” as porn is called in the local shops.

My perception is that many mission groups have been somewhat blindsided by this turn of events in Papua and are now scrambling to find meaningful ways to help their national church partners regain the solid ground they had twenty-some years ago.

 Does every CPM need to have this sort of future? Of course not. But what is today being experienced in Papua should be a sober reminder that Christ’s Great Commission to disciple the nations must be a life-long commitment and not just a flash-in-the-pan missional strategy.