Arctic Hope

One of our objectives for our summer was to get confirmation that God had called us to relocate to Ft McPherson, NT to partner in helping establish churches in the remote communities of the region.  As I mentioned in my last blog, most of the communities have an ongoing evangelical work. Our previous vision hinged on the great ‘need’ for a consistent gospel witness in multiple communities.  The plan hinged on building relationships in each community with the hope of planting a healthy church in each place.

I learned a truism in my military days, ‘Our best plans seldom survive first contact with the enemy.’ However upon first contact, we found growing evangelical churches exist in many of the communities and determined it would be counter productive to begin a new work in a community which might be viewed as competing with the on-going work.  Such competition would tend to confuse rather than enlighten the people and potentially do damage to the cause of Christ.  This was a case where we would need to reevaluate our thinking based on what we saw in the region. 

As we worked through the evaluation process, one thing became extremely clear in our hearts.  We are called and passionate about making disciples who make disciples.  Many times during our visit we were counseled that we should not expect to enter into disciplemaking relationships until we had been in the area for a number of years.  Based on previous experiences, we had difficulty understanding how this might be so.  Surely we might expect to find at least one person whose heart was open? We did not have a language barrier. (Or did we?)  Surely it would not take so long to find someone who was ready to enter into a mentoring relationship?

As Michelle and I prayed through our experiences, we discovered that we were round pegs where what was needed were square ones.  The more we struggled to fit, the more clear it became that we did not. While we strongly believe God has a great plan for us to serve Him, that place of on-going service is not Ft McPherson.

So we found ourselves asking ourselves, “What now?”  “Lord we thought you had called us to this.  We saw you work magnificently to provide an unbelievable level of resources.  If this is not your plan, what is it?” In those ‘what now’ moments, God reminded us of Proverbs 3:5-6, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge Him (i.e. put His will first) and He will direct your path.” 

God had a plan.  He had already given us hints of it.  In fact it was extremely obvious to some who were quite close to us. God’s plan is … so counter cultural … yet so obvious … so revolutionary … yet so clearly spelled out … really quite strange … yet modeled by God Himself.  God’s plan is for us to make disciples who make disciples (Matthew 28:19-20).

In the next few days, we will explain the details of the new path we believe the Lord is leading us upon.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 22nd, 2008 at 09:07 and is filed under Summer of Exploration, Blogroll. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.