Combined with the influence of the missionaries and national pastors, I began to take missions trips to third world countries. I would come home and share with my family and church what the LORD was doing. So profound was the impact of these things that when I made the announcement to the church, they told me they had been expecting this to happen for over a year.
My heart was discouraged when I saw the dependency of churches on the missions field to US churches. Missionaries were raising money to build church buildings in the third world. It seemed like a good idea. They got a needed building which the US churches could fund for under $20,000-$40,000. The reality is that we will never have enough money to evangelize the world. The US cannot build every church in every nation of the world, especially if the third world churches grow as they should. I began to question how this process could be duplicated.
In January of 2009, an invitation was given to our family to work with a missionary in Uganda. God did not allow us to go to Uganda. By this time I was certain God would move me to the missions field, but I did not know where, and I did not know when
My heart turned to the problem of Islam in Africa as well as the greater problem of reaching effectively into the middle-east. The realization that God has called us to reach the world burned in my mind. I could not rest with the idea that someone might someday go. I knew God wanted me to go, not just to go, but to train up an army of preachers who CAN effectively take the gospel into all of Africa and the world.
Without even hinting at crtotsucning a law, I would like to express agreement with Ian’s conviction that the ideal, God’s best for us, but no means a law, is that Body members meeting together live in as close proximity as possible for the reasons Ian indicated. My wife Judy and I have been in fellowship with some precious brethren in Christ Jesus for eleven years, meeting in the simple/house manner. These sisters and brothers are inexpressibly dear to us, yet our homes stretch over an area about thirty miles diameter; therefore, the cost and time required for travel sharply limit frequency and extent of life interaction, and therefore limit love expressed in deed and truth, limit mutual discernment, encouragement, admonishment, correction, training in righteousness, and joint outward ministry involvement. If they could look more deeply into my daily life, I’m confident our Lord would use them to a greater extent, as iron sharpens iron, to confess sins and repent, to stimulate me to love and good deeds, and to stimulate my growth in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, all to the glory of God and my own peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.