A Cross Cultural Covenant... Stopping short term mission team disaster before it strikes!

Rod Fry in Oaxaca with my Men's Ministry last February

One of the hardest things for people serving cross-culturally is giving up the comforts of home. That’s true if you go for a week, a month, or years. There is just something about having things your way that causes us to struggle when we are faced with something that changes that reality.

Recently I was in Mexico City with Rod Fry, a 20-year Missionary there with Mexico Matters. We work together on a program called missionXchange where people come to Mexico for 6 weeks alongside both our ministries. Rod’s in Mexico City and Adventures in Life in Oaxaca.

As part of our orientation, we touched on the subject of our “right” to have things as we want them. We included them in a Cross-Cultural Covenant that Rod developed. Everyone who serves with us reads and agrees to follow the covenant their time here in Mexico.

Today I’m going to share part of that Covenant. It has been my experience that if someone going "over there" can get, or understand this, their time serving will be much more effective and rewarding. It can even save your mission and ministry by heading off difficult issues before you ever get on a plane. And, it gives you a basis for resolving the inevitable conflicts that arise when you are in a foreign place.

Thanks Rod for all of your work on this!

Cross Cultural Covenant

We live in world full of rights. Our particular culture is one where we take pride in rights. As a matter of fact, the rights of the individual are constitutional, but as we see the demanding of those individual rights increase, we are seeing the moral fiber of our society decrease. Jesus laid down his rights to the heavens and all his glory to become man and serve, not be served. 

We are asking you to consider laying down your rights on this short-term mission. Not to lay them down for better or worse, but to entrust them to Jesus. While many of these rights may seem reasonable, indeed, who can argue about a comfortable bed, on short-term mission, they can become an unnecessary distraction.

Please take the time to search your heart and consider this… are you willing to surrender your rights to God?

I Give Up My Right To:

• A comfortable bed
• Three meals a day on a set schedule
• Eating familiar food
• Dressing cool and fashionable
• Seeing the results and fruits of my labor
• Control what I do
• Control what others do
• Control the circumstances around me
• Have pleasant circumstances around me
• Make decisions about all that I am doing
• Be offended
• Be successful
• Be understood
• Be heard
• Be right, or correct
• To worry

I Will Entrust To God

• My strength and energy
• My health and hygiene
• My likes and dislikes of food
• My security in him
• His purposes, results and fruit in His time
• My need for the Holy Spirit
• His work in others
• His purposes in making me more Christlike
• The privilege of suffering for His sake
• His sovereign hand on my life
• My deepest needs
• My security in His love
• My reputation
• My need for recognition
• My need for His righteousness
• Divine Control

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Wheelchairs, Love and an Essential Gospel in Mexico City

Pastor Chable, Dave and Rod Fry together in Mexico City with a wheelchair for someone in need

I’d like the introduce Rod Fry to the Adventures in Life family.  I’ve known of Rod for years since he has been a tremendous friend and mentor to frequent AIL Ministry participant, Brigam Ziehm.

In May I was privileged to be part of a conference that Rod and his circle of churches in Mexico City organized to encourage their people to respond to God’s missional call on our lives.  One practical blessing that came out of that conference was a stronger connection between the ministries of Adventures in Life and those of Rod through his sponsoring organization, Camino Global.

It is this relationship that is enabling AIL Ministry partner Pastor Chable to provide wheelchairs where we are working in Oaxaca, and it is these wheelchairs that are the inspiration for Rod’s post this week in our Monday Mission Moment.

The Essential Ingredient by Rod Fry

I found myself talking for a long while about all sorts of very good stuff yesterday, in a home I had only been to once before. My doctor friend was interested in helping distribute free wheelchairs to his neighborhood. I immediately understood one of his motivations the first time I visited his house. His sister-in-law, who suffers from cerebral palsy, was lying alone in the bottom of a bunk bed, covered with blankets. She smiled at me, waving her free hand as best she could. I greeted her with pleasure. The least of these always deserve special treatment.

I went back yesterday, loading up 4 more wheelchairs still in their boxes, bringing the total to 7 chairs now waiting at my doctor friend's house. His wife was there yesterday, and after the normal awkwardness of "what in the world is a gringo doing in my house," she opened up, and we talked about everything from the fact that Christians (the evangelical sort) don't believe in the Pope, and do not follow Catholic church doctrine that has been passed down through the centuries. "I don't confess to the priest," she confessed to me, "he's just a man. I talk straight to God."  Yes, He is our High Priest. No need for another mediator.

I was in a home, way up against the back side of the canal de la Compañía, the canal that, fortunately for my new friends, has always ruptured on the south side, the other side. Otherwise their house would have been completely covered with water. I gained entrance to their home, and in a remarkably rapid fashion, by doing such a simple thing...providing wheelchairs to needy people.

I do not mean to make church planting or evangelism sound too easy, but sometimes I think we make it too hard. I bet, I just bet that when I present a simple, gospel story tomorrow, people will be wide open to receiving it. And I can only imagine that if I would offer to teach a Bible study at that house every week, people would come to it. And people will come to the Savior.

In this case it was wheelchairs...what else can it be? A warm, apple pie, technical advice for one's computer, clean water, soccer equipment, English classes, homework help, construction or mechanical assistance, a strategically given financial gift, a hug, a hospital visit, an ongoing care visit, mowing someone's lawn. And the list goes on and on.

Paradoxically the methods that are perhaps the most effective in today's world do not fall into any religious category, no "churchiness" here. Just people, normal people with something increasingly rare and abnormal...and that special ingredient is LOVE. 

Rod's Blog...