Reflections from a Flat Seat

 After an intense trip like this one to Central Africa, I find the flight home is always the best. This time, United has made it doubly special by giving me a complementary upgrade to Business Class—one that has those cool seats that actually recline all the way into a flat bed! What better place to jot down some final reflections on this trip?

Discussing organizational development

• Traveling with Al Hawthorne on behalf of Wycliffe Associates has given me even greater respect for the incredibly important role Scripture translation must play in the healthy development of a national church. Unfortunately, Congolese leaders have admitted that recent focus by many missions on primarily planting new churches has significantly sidelined the priority of Bible translation. I leave this trip more convinced than ever that the two ministry thrusts must work hand-in-hand if long-term sustainability of a strong national church can ever be expected.

• After presenting my seminar on Board Governance to one of the national Bible translation organizations, I’m impressed by how much emerging African leaders truly want to learn for themselves better methods of managing their ministries.  The response I got was not just a polite nod of thanks, but a genuine hunger for truly wanting to learn how to organize and function more effectively. This was confirmed when I shared the seminar outline with other national Bible translation groups and immediately received invitations to return and present it to their organizations.

• More than ever, African ministry leaders are facing the stark reality that funding from the West is no longer something they can depend upon as they did in the past. And, more than ever, I see the need for them to grasp a completely new perspective on Biblical stewardship that could empower them to successfully manage their own fund-raising efforts. Despite perceptions of local churches being too poor to help, I’m convinced there is much more hidden potential in the “widows’ mite” from African churches than expected. This has birthed in me a desire to prepare a new training seminar on Biblical stewardship and local fund raising specifically to offer African ministry leaders. I hope to have something ready to offer in both French and English in the next three to four months.

With veteran WEC missionary, Dr. Phil Wood

• It was amazing to bump into so many friends from the past on this trip. What surprised me was how many of them were folks I met and even flew around DRC back in the early 1980s.  Some of them were veteran missionaries with WEC like Dr. Phil Wood and Maud Kells. Others were Wycliffe Bible translators like Tim Raymond and Bettina Gottschlich. Walking through the big SIL center in Addis Ababa, I was introduced to a key visiting Wycliffe instructor doing seminars on leadership development, only to find out that Carol McGee was also a former missionary from Zaire days who I knew and used to fly to and from her remote mission station. Without doubt, the emerging national ministries I’ve visited are being built up on the shoulders of these faithful, veteran missionary servants.

Well, the flight attendants have just come around with tablecloths, so I guess it’s time to raise my flat-bed seat up a bit and enjoy the shrimp-salmon appetizer they’re offering to begin the four-course meal that comes with this Business Class upgrade. 

I know, I know… it’s all part of suffering for the Lord!