Being the Church

I don't have any amusing anecdotes today about animals -- sorry. Lately I've been thinking about the American Church. One of the most incredible and the most discouraging aspects of trying to get to the mission field involves the Church.

Let's start with the positives. It is amazing to meet so many wonderful people who comprise the Body of Christ. People who love the Lord, who earnestly seek to live their lives in His love and grace and truth, and people who have a deep understanding of what we're doing and why we're doing it. I cannot fully explain what an incredible experience this is, and it's something that we could only experience doing what we're doing.

So, let's explore the Church's lack of vision. As I began to grow in my faith, and wanted to do more to serve others in the Name of Christ, I figured that this service would be in the American context. My own attitude mirrored the attitudes we come across now: why go to a foreign country when there's so much that needs to be done here? I used to believe that. I used to think that, especially with the expansion of the International Church, foreign missions was a romantic but outdated vocation.

Jesus has a beautiful sense of humor -- perfect in fact.

I suppose He figured my attitude into the equation when He called me to marry a man deeply in love with Germany, and then clearly led us into this process into foreign missions. God has clearly led us to Germany, and since He prepares my path before me, I can only conclude that God must have specific work for us to do there -- work that He has prepared in advance for us to do. So now as my heart has become increasingly burdened for the German people who don't know the Lord, and as I am convinced that foreign missions is still a necessary and viable vocation, I constantly come across my previous attitude manifested in so many others.

I try not to be offended or impatient. And recently as I was meditating on these issues, I began to ponder why foreign missions had been so socially acceptable at one point in time. And why is it seen as abandoning your own country now? I came to this realization: there are hundreds of thousands or millions (?) of churches, church plants, church home groups, Bible studies, and general gatherings of Christian fellowship. With this many people professing Christianity as their faith of choice, it should be okay for Kevin and I to go to another country and be a light for Christ in a dark place. There are enough people here professing Christian faith to be the Church to America.

There's also the financial aspect that has been discouraging. Kevin and I read a recent statistic that on the average in America, 95% of a church's funds go towards its maintenance of facility and staff. Now, that leaves 5% to go to outreach, and that just makes me sad.

I know, I know... this is an often visited issue by some of us -- and one that many people don't want to really take a look at. It's an issue I didn't want to take a look at for a time, but I can't help but think of it almost every day now as we are swimming upstream against the current of American Christianity.

Thank you !!! To the hundreds of individuals who believe in what we're doing!!! Who never cease to encourage us!!! You who have helped us along this journey!!! And to those of you who are stepping out and being the Church in this increasingly dark country -- May God bless your work!

And in case you didn't read my husband's similar blog, here's an incredible quote by Carlo Corretto -- an author I admire greatly:

How baffling you are, oh Church, and yet how I love you! How you have made me suffer, and yet how much I owe you! I should like to see you destroyed, and yet I need your presence. You have given me so much scandal and yet you have made me understand sanctity. I have seen nothing in the world more devoted to obscurity, more compromised, more false, and I have touched nothing more pure, more generous, more beautiful. How often I have wanted to shut the doors of my soul in your face, and how often I have prayed to die in the safety of your arms. No, I cannot free myself from you, because I am you, although not completely. And where should I go?