The Difference

Sometimes you see it so clearly you’re dazzled by reality.

I’m looking into movement case studies around the world. This morning I did a video interview with a brother in SE Asia. We’ll call him Isaiah. It’s a Muslim nation. He’s seen two decades of advance resulting in thousands of new churches and tens of thousands of disciples.

His English is good, but not a native speaker. So I’m just getting the main points. I’ll visit near year to dig deeper.

But in the space of thirty minutes, I saw it. The difference between his world and mine.

He grew up in a Christian family, ended up in jail where he understood the gospel for the first time. When he got out he headed for seminary and then struck out to plant churches.

Eight hours a day, every day, he was out sharing the gospel with Muslims. That’s all he knew to do. He had no idea how to plant a church, but he believed the gospel that had saved him in prison could save Muslims. He took the gospel to the Mosque, the marketplace, schools and neighborhoods. Two years without a breakthrough. Then one new disciple. Another year of hard work and the movement began.

I asked him if there was persecution. The answer came back, “That’s the price we pay. We teach our disciples to suffer for Christ.”

Leaders in my world get some pressure around Jesus’ teaching on sex and marriage and they bow the knee. They don’t pay the price.

Isaiah told me, “I don’t plant churches. Our workers take the gospel to unreached places and peoples and then help the new disciples plant churches. The workers spend eight hours a day entering unreached communities and sharing the gospel. They don’t go home until they’ve shared the gospel with 5–10 people. Everyday.

The leaders in my world, preach to believers, counsel believers, administer churches. I know one or two who are out every week sharing the gospel. That’s one or two.

The leaders I know have reinvented the Great Commission to serve a vision to “transform” their community, city and society. Something Jesus, the Twelve, Paul and the disciples in Acts never managed to do. Wherever they went, trouble followed them. They took the gospel to unreached places and the fruit was always disciples and churches to the glory of God. Two thousand years later, that’s what Isaiah does.

That’s the difference between the world I inhabit most of the time and Isaiah’s world.