First week back from Asia! Thoughts on Mission and Evangelism

There are many points of reflection for me as I spend my first week back after traveling overseas. My journey took me (and our team) to several cities in the southern Philippines, to a large Asian nation north and to Hawaii. Of course, the last destination was a time to recharge and celebrate with friends at a wedding. But that locale too brought in some data points that I wish to talk about in this blog. While I don’t expect many to read this, I do hope to collect some of my thinking and use it to govern future decisions on ministry and life.

I want to reflect on evangelistic ministry or mission overseas. It is true that Jesus has all of us on mission. We are participating in his mission to “make disciples of all nations.” Every facet of my life I want focused on some aspect of mission. I want to be a missional believer. That seems sort of redundant but in the west we’ve made allowances for all kinds believers in the church. Of course, I believe that all believers should be missional. Certainly the early church was missional in every way; in life at home, in occupation and in the worshiping community. They lived and died the good news – there was no compartmentalization of life separating sacred and secular. They were holistic beings, touched by Jesus and commissioned to go. In response, they governed their entire life on God’s mission to reconcile humanity with God.

So mission in Mindanao had many components that had both direct and indirect sharing of good news. And what moved my heart more were words coupled with tangible action. As a team we tried to express God’s love through ways that ministered to very practical needs of humanity – health care, food and clothing. Evangelism occurred in large group contexts like arena based preaching – I got to participate in this – where the good news was declared and a call to respond was made. Many hands were raised in a large venue of several thousand. The only hope was that local believers could make the connections as they saw the hundreds of hands raised. No effort was made by our team to make those connections happen. It had to occur within the context of our team partnership with local believers. Trusting God’s Spirit to work in those who sincerely responded.

We evangelized in the high school and university contexts putting on a program of dance, drama, sharing and music with a call to meet this God we were proclaiming. For some kids – mostly between 12 and 20 – they genuinely sought out prayer from the team. Others felt compelled to receive prayer at the prompting of their peers. This connection was a bit more personal between our team and the school kids but follow-up was again left to our local student ministry partners. Where student leadership is strong, these kids receive follow-up and are fostered into a healthy discipleship community.

We also evangelized in medical clinics. In this context, people would pass through a counseling station before receiving their medicines. In a way they were captivated to at least hear the good news. For many, they made decisions to follow Jesus as Lord. Some were healed in the process of healing prayer. All were interacted with at a life level from caring bible college students, local pastors and volunteers. Some of our team participated in this process. We saw about 1200 people during 5 days of medical mission.

In contrast to ministry in Mindanao was ministry in the greater Asian north. I want to write more thoughts on this but realize the sensitive nature of what I can share and what I should keep in my private journal.

While evangelism opportunities are abundant in the Philippine context, Jesus called us to make disciples. Hmm. Is there a problem here? More to come on discipleship.