Advertisement in Turkey

This month starting the day after Easter an organization called the BCC (Bible Correspondence Course) began running an ad on 45 metro buses in Istanbul and on 2 large 2 meter advertisement billboards. This is what the ad looks like.

In essences it says, "What if what we believe is false?"  The ad has been running now for 11 days. It has 11 days left to be run. The police said that they have gotten so many complaints that they are having the ads taken down. Now this is good and bad. The good thing is that what it means is lots of people have checked out their website. There is nothing right away that would lead you to believe this is a religious ad. Pray that the taking down of the advertisement would lead to even more publicity.

What we see though is that what we know to be true about the human heart is true here. The heart is deceitful and desperately wicked. (Jer. 17:9) According to the constitution there is nothing illegal about this ad. The organization is a recognized organization. There is technical freedom to do these sort of things. It doesn't change the fact that the people are blind to their need for a Savior. Whether a country is what some people term closed or open, the fact remains that the Holy Spirit must work in people's hearts. Pray that the Holy Spirit would work in the hearts of people throughout this country.

Advertisement is something that is being used to spread the Good News. Pray for genuine interest and curiosity and that lasting fruit would come from advertisements like those mentioned above and others on the internet.

1st Week Back

We have been able to hit the ground running. Since our return just over a week ago we have been cleaning house and catching up with friends and looking for rental property. We have also been able to make contact with some people who say they are interested in learning more about God's Word. What was really exciting was we had a man join us in our worship yesterday. He contacted us through our website and met with my friend prior to coming. He said that he was determined to go down this road (God's way). I preached on John 4. We talked about the fact that when we meet Jesus there are some things that we must leave behind. The woman had prejudice, pride, a past, and piety in her life. Jesus dealt with all these with her. In the end, she believed He was the Messiah and left her water pot to go bring others to Him.

It is interesting to learn the perspective of the hearers of the message. Afterwards we were talking and the man said that sometimes there might be good things in our life that we need to leave behind like our wives. I was a little shocked. I didn't think I heard him right. He was thinking about the verse where Jesus said that he who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is not fit for the kingdom of God. (Luke 9:62) We had a good discussion with him. The bottom line is he is struggling with the fact that if he makes this decision to follow Christ he may loose his wife, family, job, etc...So he is wondering if he should just go ahead and loose it now. I shared with him about my time in North Africa and about how the believers there decided to follow Christ even though it is against the law. I pray that after counting the cost he sees that Jesus is worthy of following.

More of my notes from North Africa

Here are some more of my notes. Maybe they will be a help to some of you.

One day, my friend when dealing with the men who Lord willing will lead churches in North Africa, talked about three categories of separation:

What must a person believe to be a Christian?
What things can we believe and be members of the same church? (For example because a Presbyterian believes in baby baptism, we cannot be members in the same church.)
What things can we disagree on yet still be members of the same church? (music, end-times etc...

This is a very good study because these men will face questions like this as they come in contact with other leaders in the country.

There is a tendency to want to make it easier on people, but we are not doing them a favor if we do this. For example one of the young men that is in training plays the guitar. Not as well as 3 other people there but he plays good enough. He is not good at staying on time, but how would he learn if he didn’t play? If he doesn’t learn, what happens when the foreigners are gone?

My friend also said that he is constantly talking about Jesus. In this way, if someone doesn’t want to follow Jesus they are not going to want to hang around him.

Steps before major leadership
1. I do. You watch
2. We do together.
3. You do. I watch.
4. You do.

Since discipleship is life-on-life you begin dealing with what they are experiencing in their life.
3 main ideas to get across to new converts immediately:
The importance of the church
The importance of being daily in the Word
The sanctification process. (We must spend enough time with them that we know what sins they are struggling with and other areas where they need to grow.)
Along with these comes the teaching of eternal security and baptism....

Some Things I Learned

After my trip of a week to North Africa, I began to recall what I had seen and learned from my friend. At first, I thought there were many small principles that I had learned and nothing really monumental. Then I thought about it some more and realized that what I had seen and learned was monumental. It is a ministry philosophy that changes everything. It is something that ever since the Our Generation summer camp that I attended in 2004, I have been wanting to practice in my own ministry, but I could never really hash out in my mind or actions how exactly to put feet on this philosophy. What is it that I’m talking about? I’m talking about being men trainers. Every missionary would say, “I want to plant churches and train men.” If we focus on planting a church without being men trainers, what happens is we have people but no leader to turn over the church to. So what happens is a missionary goes on furlough and another missionary takes over his work. If we focus on training men, then from the beginning when God gives us teachable men they are growing as the church is. Then when the time comes, you have a leader ready to take over and not a church with no leader. This is really what I came away with from my trip. I saw from my friend a clear vision and a bull-dog like mindset to accomplish that vision. Sometimes leaders have to be rear-ends for the sake of the vision and the team. You can’t let someone come in and get you or the team off the goal of training men. With that said, here are some things that I noted that should keep anyone on focus when training people. With this focus in mind, you want to use all your valuable time in training the people God has given you. In the end what I saw was the Great Commission in action. Would you pray that God would give us faithful men?

Trip to North Africa

I had a great time in North Africa visiting a friend of mine. Over seven days I was able to see what God is doing throughout the country. Men are being trained, believers are gathering together, and souls are being saved. In fact, while I was there a young woman put her faith in Jesus. I'll be sharing with you some of the things that I learned. Here is a link to some photos I took. I'm not good with a camera, but at least you can see the landscape of the areas I visited.
Slideshow

Thankful for God's Protection for a Friend

Today I was able to chat with one of my friends back in Turkey. He was on his way to a city in the southeast part of the country when the bus he was riding on crashed. Because he bought his tickets late, he was in the back of the bus. I was really thankful because some people were injured and there might have been 1 or 2 deaths. All of these people were sitting near the front. I started our conversation with this line, "I saw the picture of the bus crash. I'm glad you're ok. God's hand was on you." He then said that he was not afraid to die. I told him maybe he should be afraid to die. From there we talked about how death was separation from God. I was able to chat with him over Romans 2:14&15. Then he moved on to the fact that he actually wished he would have died. He said he was tired of life. We then talked about the life that we can have when we know the Creator God. It was really an opportunity from God. I have shared the Gospel with him before, but I often wondered if he was listening. He was this time. I wanted him to think about how good God is in providing a way of salvation for mankind, and also for protecting him. I do pray that God would let my lost friends live long enough to trust Christ. Pray that God would use the bus crash to cause my friend to think about eternity.

The Summit

This June will be 8yrs. since the Lord worked in our hearts to be involved in world evangelism and take the Gospel to another country. It was a Baptist Camp for world evangelism put on by bcwe.org that God used to convict our hearts. This year we had our first opportunity to attend the Summit, put on by the same organization, in Pigeon Forge, TN. It was such an encouragement to see how God is using men and women in Peru, Chile, Argentina, North Africa, China, etc... It was just as encouraging to see the young men and women who are preparing to go into all the world. It was a conference that focused my mind on the heart of God to begin the new year. Let me encourage you to take some time visit www.bcwe.org, subscribe to the blogs of God's servants around the world, and get excited about what God is doing.