She Had an Iranian Passport

As I began writing this from the bedroom of my hotel in Istanbul, the Muslim prayers that piped through loudspeakers drowned the urban white noise of the massive city. The sound of honking car horns, revving motorcycle engines, and wailing police sirens all disappeared eerily.  

We had traveled to visit Turkish missionaries that our church has supported for many years. And I hope we continue supporting them for many more years. Although their ministry harvest might seem relatively small to some, they have their hands to the plow and labor not in vain.

I’ll say a bit more about Christianity and the country of Turkey at the end of this post, but I’d like to start elsewhere. The first reflections I had in Turkey prove to be the ones that linger loudest: The people of the world simultaneously share so much and so little.

Our sameness and differences hit me while standing in the passport line when the woman directly in front of us took three passports out of her purse. She kept one and handed the others to her children, a small boy in a stroller and a young girl standing beside her. The little girl’s suitcase appeared kid-sized and made of bright pink rubber. The woman had a giant mom-bag, and out of the top of the bag poked a red tube of Pringles.

All three of their maroon passports had the word IRAN embossed in gold on the cover. And it hit me that just weeks ago my country dropped bunker buster bombs on her country, at least that’s what I remember them being called in the news. President Trump said in his press conference that no other nation could have done what we did so spectacularly. I believe that. Yet I stood there wondering what the leader of her country told her. The day after the bombing the Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, actually flew to Istanbul to give a press conference, perhaps using one of the airport runways our plane used. I hadn’t listened to what he said and had to Google his name to write this paragraph. My passport is dark blue.

Standing in line, I realized the woman and I share so much of what it means to be human—both made in God’s image, both scarred by the fall, both well-acquainted with wrangling young children through an airport. We both need clothing and shelter. We need love and hope. We need Jesus. Our children like Pringles.

Yet she and I also share so little of our experience of the world, the same world but a very big and variegated world. Worlds within the world exist.

The temperature outside in Turkey rose above ninety degrees, and it felt at least eighty degrees in the airport. My wife wore a sleeveless shirt. The woman wore a full-length covering and a scarf over her head. Probably one-third of the women in the airport wore something similar.

How were this woman and I supposed to feel toward each other? We share human sensibilities, like the innate desire to seek transcendence in purposes larger than our own, for example. We both want to protect our loved ones. We both struggle to live moral lives.

Yet our religious sensibilities differ greatly—as did, I’m sure, our civic sensibilities about pride toward our respective nations. What place should healthy patriotism hold for each of us? More to the point, how should we respond when her impulses and mine, many of them subconscious, conflict? The Augustinian view of rightly ordered loves could help us if we could agree on the right order.

Standing there, I knew none of our likely differences could ever be discussed without an interpreter. Yet even with a shared understanding of words, how would one even begin to cross such a bridge? Or is it more like ten bridges? Maybe twenty? How does one ask another person whether it bothers them or blesses them to know that Isfahan no longer has weapons-grade uranium?

I tried to smile at her son. He didn’t smile back. They all looked super sleepy. So was I.

The time arrived for her to hand over her passport. Without any questions, the police officer flipped to the proper page, thudded the stamp, and let her and her children into Turkey. Next, he did the same for us. Never will I see her again in this life and likely in the next, though I pray otherwise.

Returning to where I began this post, juxtaposed with the beauty of a place like Istanbul, I struggle to comprehend the scale of spiritual lostness in Turkey. Maybe one Christian lives among every ten thousand people. The seven churches mentioned in the book of Revelation, for example, exist as ruins scattered across this country we call Turkey. However, today, several of those seven cities have no church preaching the gospel. Their lampstand is gone. A city like Sardis (now called Sart), has a handful of Christians, I’m told, but no church. Contrast this with my context. I live a long way from the Bible Belt, but from my house in Harrisburg, I can put on my running shoes and easily jog past six churches I would gladly send any believer to visit.

When we worshiped in Istanbul on the Lord’s Day with our missionary friends, nearly one hundred believers filled the room, a veritable mega church. I didn’t know most of the songs, but I did smile after the call to worship when we sang a Chris Tomlin classic translated into Turkish. We closed the service with “Shout to the Lord,” and the phrase “all the earth” took on more meaning in the lines, “all the earth let us sing, power and majesty, praise to the King.”

I’m finding myself praying like never before that all the people of the earth—in all our differences and in all our sameness—would know that God sent his only Son into the world so that whosoever believes in him might have eternal life. Or to say John 3:16 in Turkish, “Zira Allah dünyayı öyle sevdi ki, biricik Oğlunu verdi; ta ki, ona iman eden her adam helâk olmasın, ancak ebedî hayatı olsun.”

* Photo by Asal Mshk on Unsplash

Let the Nations Be Glad in God: A Pastoral Prayer

Only rarely do I share on my blog a sermon or pastoral prayer from our church. This week I wanted to share my pastoral prayer from last Sunday. You can also watch it here.

Our church leaders, and me in particular, were recently gently rebuked for not seeing and preaching often enough what appears often enough in the Bible, especially the book of Acts, which we’re currently studying. And we were right to be rebuked.

What had we failed to see? That God loves the nations of the world, and we should too.

*     *     *

Depending on which way you enter and leave the building, whether by the front doors or the office doors, you will walk through a hallway that has on one wall pictures of our church outreach partners and a map of the world, and on the other wall a Bible passage. The passage comes from Psalm 67. I’ll read you verse 3–4:

Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you! Let the nations be glad and sing for joy.

There’s a rather famous book about world missions written nearly thirty years ago that draws its title from a line in that passage: Let the Nations be Glad. The opening three paragraphs go like this:

Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn’t. Worship is ultimate, not missions, because God is ultimate, not man. When this age is over, and the countless millions of the redeemed fall on their faces before the throne of God, missions will be no more. It is a temporary necessity. But worship abides forever.

Worship, therefore, is the fuel and goal of missions. It’s the goal of missions because in missions we simply aim to bring the nations into the white-hot enjoyment of God’s glory. The goal of missions is the gladness of the peoples in the greatness of God. . . . “Let the peoples praise thee, O God; let all the peoples praise thee! Let the nations be glad and sing for joy!” (Ps. 67:3-4).

But worship is also the fuel of missions. Passion for God in worship precedes the offer of God in preaching. You can’t commend what you don’t cherish. Missionaries will never call out, “Let the nations be glad!” who cannot say from the heart, “I rejoice in the LORD. . . . I will be glad and exult in you, I will sing praise to thy name, O Most High” (Ps. 104:34; 9:2). Missions begins and ends in worship. (John Piper, Let the Nation’s be Glad, second edition, 17, emphasis original)

We’ve been preaching through the book of Acts on and off for the last 18 months. This morning is the fortieth sermon on our way to a total of forty-nine sermons throughout the book. We’ve talked lately about each week looking for the biggest, most clear, most significant aspects of the book and preaching about them.

While our preaching pastors have repeatedly called our attention to the good news of the sovereignty of the risen and ascended Lord Jesus Christ who extends grace and mercy to his people and builds his church through preaching and sacrificial deeds of mercy, and while we have repeatedly spoken of the joy and urgency to share this good-news message with others in our lives—friends, family, neighbors, co-workers, and so on—we have missed singing a note that the book of Acts sings: this God who lives and loves and reigns, is God of the nations.

Just in our passage from last week, Acts 20:1–16, we read of 20 different cities and regions from several nations: Macedonia, Greece, Syria, Macedonia (again), Berea, Thessalonica, Derbe, Asia, Troas, Philippi, Troas (again), Assos, Assos (again), Mitylene, Chios, Samos, Miletus, Ephesus, Asia (again), and Jerusalem.

In forty sermons we have not directly addressed the cross-cultural missionary zeal and pattern that seeks to take the gospel across the borders of nations for the joy of the nations. This has been an oversight on my part. And I’m sorry. I’d like to highlight this theme now in a short prayer.

Would you bow your heads and pray with me?

Heavenly Father, we believe, as Paul preached in Acts 17 that you are the God who made the world and everything in it. We believe that, being Lord of heaven and earth, you do not live in temples made by man. We believe that you are not served by human hands, as though you needed anything since you yourself give to all mankind life and breath and everything. And we believe that from one man you made every nation to live on all the face of the earth and that you determined allotted periods and the boundaries of our dwelling place with the purpose that we—the nations of the earth, the people of your creation—should seek you, our God and Creator, that we should feel our way toward you by observing your power and might and majesty and find you because you are not far from each one of us (cf. Acts 17:24–27).

Heavenly Father, we praise you that you are the type of God whose mercy triumphs over your wrath (James 2:13). We thank you that when Adam and Eve sinned against you, you went looking for them. “Adam, where are you?” you said (Gen. 3:9).

We thank you that this missionary zeal climaxed in your messiah, our messiah, the person of Jesus Christ, who went looking for lost sheep and tells us he came “to seek and save the lost” (Luke 19:10).

We thank you that this rescue mission includes anyone and everyone who would want to find joy and gladness in you.

And we ask that you would make us, your people, to embody your missionary zeal, your passion to reach not only our friends, our family, our neighbors, our co-workers, and our enemies but the nations of the world. Fill us with white-hot worship for the sake of your name among the nations.

We pray for our speaker today, a long-time missionary and member of our church. That you would fill him with your Holy Spirit and our hearts with a readiness to receive from you.

We pray all of this in the name and power and authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

* Photo by Brett Zeck on Unsplash

Podcast Interview: Don’t Just Send a Resume to a Missions Agency

Today I’m sharing an interview I recently did on a podcast about the hiring process in local churches and missions. The Missions Podcast is hosted by Scott Dunford and Alex Kocman, who both work for ABWE, an international mission’s organization. Until recently, Scott was one of the pastor-elders at our church. Both Scott and Alex are good friends. Hopefully that’s clear by the way they tease me a bit, which is a favor I tried to return. This is my second invitation to the show; this winter we talked about the struggle with pornography (here).

I know I was the one being interviewed, but I will say this: in the last 10 minutes of the interview we talk about the way the gospel makes a difference in our identity. And last night as I re-listened to the conversation, I needed to hear these truths again. Maybe you do too.

You can listen to the podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, and Google Play. Or you can simply listen below.

 Here’s what Alex wrote for an intro to our conversation:

Too often in pursuit of full-time ministry abroad or at home, ministry applicants simply email a church or missions agency their resume and leave the rest of the hiring process to chance. Whether you’re fresh out of seminary or transitioning to ministry after a full career in the outside workforce, such a haphazard approach is bound to fail. Maybe we need to learn more about how to conduct ourselves professionally during the onboarding processes into pastoral or cross-cultural ministry.

Benjamin Vrbicek returns to the show to discuss his newest book, Don’t Just Send a Resume: How to Find the Right Job in a Local Church. He believes that the typical pastor or missionary, while fully equipped to do his job, is not equipped to transition effectively when God calls him to move to another ministry context. The book also features short contributions by 12 published authors and ministry leaders including David Mathis, Jared C. Wilson, and others. In the interview, Scott and Alex catch up with Benjamin on a personal level and explore the similarities and dissimilarities between hiring in the ministry world and the secular world, and wrap up with some wisdom on transitioning well.

Porn: The Killer of Missions

I’d love to share with you an interview I recently did on a podcast about the topic of pornography and how to struggle against it. The Missions Podcast is hosted by Scott Dunford and Alex Kocman, who both work for ABWE, an international missions organization. Scott has also been one of the pastor-elders at our church for the last few years and has become a good friend.

You can listen to the podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, or Google Play. Or you can simply listen below.

One thing to note: A few times in the interview we reference my new book about this topic. Well, it’s so “new” that it’s not even out yet! Bummer. Please be patient and stay tuned. It’s in the publication process now!

Buy on Amazon

Here’s what Alex wrote for an intro to our conversation:

In our culture, sexual temptation is hitting the church like a tidal wave, and those serving overseas as missionaries are far from immune. Porn is a fatal undercurrent that Satan uses to eliminate gospel workers sniper-style and cripple missions efforts, and overseas workers separated from accountability and friends are particularly vulnerable.

What factors drive a person in full-time ministry to pornography for comfort, control, or stress relief—and what gospel hope is there for someone struggling? This week we sat down in-studio with Benjamin Vrbicek, teaching pastor at Community Evangelical Free Church in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and author of the upcoming book Struggle Against Porn: 29 Diagnostic Tests for Your Head and Heart.

* Photo by Tom Ritson on Unsplash