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!