Piles of Crap and Effective Ministry...

It was early in the history of my ministry, Adventures in Life and we were getting ready to start on our first project in northern Mexico. 

We had been asked to help a small community of people, living in the village of Santa Rosa, on the free road to Ensenada, build a church.  But before we could begin, we told the locals that their part was to get land for this new church.

When I received the call from Pastor Jorge that they had the land, we headed south for a chance to see the site and pray with the leaders of this new church.

We went out in the evening, saw the site and soon it was dark.  In an area with no electricity, when it gets dark, it gets really dark.  I talking you couldn’t see your face dark.  I was thinking it was time to leave, particularly since I couldn’t see anything, but Pastor Jorge and his team were having none of that.

We went there to pray, and we were going to pray.  So we circled up on the land where the church would be built.  Along with Pastor Jorge were a few members of his church in El Sauzal, the first believers from Santa Rosa and, standing next to me, a man who was to become the pastor of this new church, Carlos Rios.

There we stood in the darkness beseeching God to bless this new work, asking for his guidance, mercy, provision and will to be done.  And then somewhere in the middle of all this praying, Carlos Rios leaned over to give me what I expected to be a personal word of encouragement.

“Hermano David” he said in his broken English... “You’re standing in crap!”  I was thinking that yes, our ministry was indeed in crap because we really had no idea how to build a church and everuone there was counting on us.  But Carlos wasn’t talking about our ability to build a church... he had another concern.

There in the middle of the village of Santa Rosa, on the free road to Ensenada, with a group of Christian leaders praying to God to guide this new ministry that I was soon to be helping with Adventures in Life, I was standing in crap!

Literally.

I still did not understand until my not so finely tuned city nose got the message and I looked down and realized what had happened.  I had stepped in a giant fresh pile of cow crap, had broken the crust and in addition to what was all over my shoes, the smell was now killing our prayer time.

Despite the smell and the jokes that followed, that night literally launched Adventures in Life Ministry.  Within a few months we had a church built there for the 100 residents of that small village.

And with that experience, we have gone on to help churches all over Mexico realize their dreams of a place to freely worship Jesus.

Sometimes in ministry, to be effective, you need to step in crap.  And that, I fear is what is happening to me again.

In May, I will be heading into the Sierra Mixteca, an area two hours north of Oaxaca City.  I am going because AIL Ministry has been asked by local community and political leaders to help their people get fish farms so they can have food on their tables.

My partner Chablé and I are trying to build, through helping meet the very real needs of people in this region, authentic Christian relationships that will enable us to share one day about the love of Jesus.

In this area, in order not to split communities and pit families against each other, we must work with people most Christian missionaries shun.  One local Christian missionary from the US was recently given the opportunity to serve alongside Chablé in this very area.  He decided that he couldn’t, because, to sum it up, the people with whom he would have to spend his time were real big sinners, not interested in Jesus.

Jesus understood a little about this type of attitude.  Jesus was a man who stepped in a lot of crap to connect with people.

Sitting alongside a Samaritan woman at the well?  Pile of crap.

Welcoming and eating with sinners and tax collectors?  Another pile of crap.

Take a close look at this picture.

Pastor Chablé is using my computer, with a picture of our fish farm, to explain the idea to people in San Juan Escutia Coquilla.  These are the men who are asking for our help and who know we are evangelicals trying to share about Jesus.

Unfortunately, what you are also seeing are piles of crap all over the table with the name Victoria... bottles of beer.

To me, this is a great picture.  Evangelical Christians, meeting with leaders, on their turf, to discuss how to save lives and connect with people.  We are, in Young Life lingo, earning the right to be heard later on the question of Jesus.

Unfortunately, with the beer in the picture, many people will be critical of us.  They’ll look disapprovingly on the picture and decide against helping simply because there was beer on the table.  

Many will see this picture and decide there is no way we are even Christians because we did not condemn the Oaxacan people with us because of the beer.

Ministry is messy.  

Especially so when we are crossing cultural and linguistic barriers.  My fear is that in our zeal to be pure, or very Christian, we are choosing to avoid the piles cows leave behind. And that is compromising our message.

We are in effect, sending the subtle message, well understood by those not like us, that we are better than they are.  Is that what Christ intended?  What was he really saying when he ate with sinners and sat down with the woman at the well?

Sometimes to be effective in ministry we don’t need to do much.  We just need to step in the proverbial pile of crap.

What about you... have you stepped in it lately?

AIL Ministry, Evangelism and Being Fishers of Men...

Sometimes you give a man a fish, and other times you teach him to fish.

My friend David Phipps of The Global CHE Network explains it this way... sometimes the situation is so dire, you have no choice but to give someone a fish to keep him alive.  It's called relief.  But effective relief should always be followed with development.  That's called teaching people to fish.

Sadly, because development is painstakingly difficult and time consuming, it has been very hard for short-term mission to be effective in this realm.  In our growing Facebook and Twitter culture, anything that requires an attention span of more than a few moments, gets pushed aside for the instant, the quick and the demands of a 140 character lifestyle.

Think of it like this.

A lot of short-term mission has become like the greeter at the church door who asks everyone how they are doing, never hearing anything other than not bad, and certainly not having the time, or skills necessary to do anything if someone was to say, "You know what? Right now my life is falling apart."

One of things that has been pressing hard on my soul the last few years in Oaxaca has been the question of development.  How, in a Christian context, can Adventures in Life come alongside people in a way that not only provides relief when necessary, but also development to make that relief long lasting.

What I am talking about here is a way for short-term mission to see long-term impact in the lives of some of the poorest people in Mexico.

Last week I was at a meeting with leaders from about 20 different communities from the mountains around Oaxaca.  Places with names like Eloxochitlán, La Raya San Pedro and Llano de Cedro.  These are people who work hard to provide for their families and communities in areas where electricity is spotty at best and water, if available is never clean enough to drink.

I listened as a dedicated group of Christian activists with whom I work in Oaxaca shared about opportunities to have clean drinking water and not only to get some fish, but learn how to fish.

We shared about Sawyer Water Filters, answered questions and then moved on to the subject of fish, specifically, tilapia.

Adventures in Life was in the process of setting up a hydroponic garden and tilapia farm the leaders were told.  In this "farm" regular people can raise up to 200 tilapia at a time and have tables full of fresh vegetables like lettuce, broccoli and tomatoes.

You could sense the excitement in the room from the leaders of these communities.  Many of them returned, at great time and expense, later in the week when we were up and running.  Lots of people, they told us, had heard about this, but they had never seen it in practice.

Government leaders, colleges and university representatives from around Oaxaca were showing up at our demonstration farm to see how, not to give people fish, but to teach them to fish.  And then came the biggest question... Why?  And each time, Pastor Chable was able to explain that we are trying to live out our call to love one another as God has loved us.

Next week I will be in some of those very communities with Pastor Chable.  We've been invited to come and speak to the town councils, and to different groups of leaders about what we are doing and how together, people can learn to fish.  Few of these people are Christians and most have a pretty jaded view of both the Catholic and Protestant church.

The problem with Christians and development has been that historically we have failed to connect that aid and help to the living Gospel of Jesus.  This is the hard word work that us in country missionaries must do.  It is our part of the unwritten contract between long and short-term mission.  

Short-term missionaries come to help us and support our ministries, oftentimes through development projects and we then take that development and the Gospel message to areas where we have learned to communicate within the local cultures.  

It is wholistic Gospel missions work.

It's not just about fish... it's about teaching people to fish... and then being "fishers of men!"

Please be praying for AIL Ministry and our efforts with Pastor Chable to do just that in the next few weeks.