It’s sometimes difficult to recognize a real hero. Heros never brag about being heros. In Christ’s upside down (turns us rightside up) definition of heros it’s the last who will be first and the smallest who will be greatest. That can make it, therefore, difficult to distinguish who will be great in heaven.

Other times it’s obvious like it was for me tonight. An older gentleman emailed me out of the blue and told me he was coming to my country. He called earlier this week and I helped him get a hotel in the capital and invited him to come up here and speak tonight since he said he speaks Arabic. I met him at the hotel today before our Bible study and it became apprent to me that I was in the presence of someone who deserved much honor but expects none.

Richard grew up in Nebraska. It wasn’t long after the second World War was over that a missionary with the North African Misison came to speak at his church. As Richard was going out the door that day this missionary pointed at him and said, “What will you do with your life for God?” Richard responded, “I was thinking about being a missionary to Latin America.” “Why don’t you go to the Muslims?” was the argument from the young missionary. From there God set his path toward North Africa.

In 1958 Richard arrived single and 27 years old to North Africa. He learned French and Arabic. He lived 10 years in Alg@ria before being kicked out “for making too many converts”. From there he moved to M@rocco where he started a church in the capital. He has now spent the last 20 years ministering in France and coming in and out of North Africa to minister at least twice per year.

He is retired now and at 77 still traveling around by himself in North Africa to come and preach in our little Wednesday night Bible study. He taught tonight against the modern use tounges and the Charasmatic movement and did a great job. We were all blown away by his dedication. He is consumed with a passion for Jesus’ glory in Muslim countries. Most 77 year old checked out 20 years ago and went somewhere to hybernate until they die. He’s still going strong!

Tomorrow he’ll be teaching about the Holy Spirit to all of us for 3 hours in Arabic. Did I mention he’s 77?!

I just wanted to invite all of you to this year’s Summit event hosted by the Our Generation Training Center. The event takes place at the Music Road Hotel in Gatlinburg, Tennessee from December 31, 2009 through January 2, 2010.

If you are interested in learning how to become more involved in world evangelization, how to be more effective in your global outreach, or if you believe you are called to be a missionary yourself this is an event that you won’t want to miss for anything.

Missionaries from all over the world will gather together for a three day event to share their experiences and exciting new ministry opportunities.

This year’s theme is “Equip for Battle” focussing on the very real war that we are in the middle of in our daily Christian lives.

For more information click here to check out the “OG Summit” website.

Here is some additional information on deadlines and specials.
Deadlines for registration:

* Early Bird Discount ($15 off)…………………………..November 1, 2009
* College Student Discount* ($30 off)…………………………December 5, 2009
* Hotel Reservation………………………………………..December 5, 2009
* Conference Registration………………………………..December 15, 2009

* Groups must all register and pay the $50/person non-refundable deposit at one time to qualify for the discount. Only one discount can apply per person. (i.e. You cannot qualify for both a group discount and a student discount.)

This Sunday we tried having a joint meeting of the two Bible studies that are four hours apart. So we met in the middle with 18 of us. Two of the believers from our meeting in the North were unable to come and three from the south. So that was a bummer but the meeting we had was awesome. One young man who has recently accepted Christ and had contacted our website was there. He won the newest believer prize in our contest. This was his first time to be in a meeting with other believers and sing to God. He was so excited. It was awesome to see. He gave a testimony that made everybody cry, laugh, and rejoice.

Another who was there was Mohammed who is almost 60 years old! (He tops our oldest believer by almost 30 years!)

We met him three weeks ago in front of a grocery store after he contacted our website. It was the first time in his whole life that he had met Christians. He had just become one himself in April after studying the Bible alone for over 25 years! One thing I loved that Mohammed said was that for the first time in his life he has experienced love. He said that in 28 years of fatherhood he had never told his kids that he loved them until now .. now that his life was changed by the love of Jesus.

How sad that he has gone through so much of his life without love. How joyful that he has now experienced love before he passes from this life! Praise God who alone can do such wonders!

Extra special prayer request: One of my greatest friends and mentors Austin Gardner is with his father Charles right now in the hospital. He is on a feeding tube (which is against his desires as expressed by his will but since the will wasn’t present that wasn’t possible to prove). So obviously he is probably close to his graduation to glory. Please pray for wisdom and peace for his family. Every time I would speak at Pastor Gardner’s church, Charles would put $100 dollars in my hand and tell me that I remind him so much of Austin when he was young. The $100 was nice but the compliment was priceless.

Please pray for the family and if you know them send Pastor Gardner a word of encouragment through his blog or gardner@bcwe.org.

This is from my good friends Tyler and Gretchen Masters. Congratulations!

Our son, Judson Elías, was born this morning at 9:28 A.M.

He weighed in at 7 pounds 8 ounces and measured 19 inches.

Everything went quickly and smoothly (easy for me to say) being delivered only three hours after we arrived at the hospital.

Judson is doing well, is in excellent health, and is incredibly alert. Praise the Lord he has a cleft lip but not a cleft palate! It doesn’t effect his eating or any other new born baby habits. In fact, he’s been eating all day with only a few naps in between just to give him enough energy to eat some more. That’s my boy!”

Click here to view pics on his blog.

I’ll be attending SGI ‘10 this coming January and wanted to invite you if you live in the Detroit area. Here is what they have on their official blog:

“Paul tells us in Ephesians 6 that in order to survive and thrive as followers of Jesus Christ we must protect ourselves with God’s armor: belt of truth, breastplate of righteousness, gospel shoes, shield of faith, helmet of salvation, sword of the Spirit, and the secret weapon of prayer.

These pieces are not to be used for decoration or as status symbols. They are crucial aspects of a believer’s perseverance in the faith. Without them we cannot survive the onslaught of the evil one, let alone wage an offensive and rescue others from his prison house of sin.

On January 4-6, 2010, hundreds of college students and young adults will gather in the metro Detroit area for the SGI National Conference, under the theme: “God’s Armor: Put It On.” It is crucial for future leaders to understand what God’s Word says about Jesus, the gospel, the church, missions, and their lives.

Join us as we focus on the Word through preaching, practical and academic workshops on missions issues, and fellowship with other young adults who love Jesus.

After much anticipation, registration for the 2010 SGI National Conference is now open. Details about the conference are available on the SGI page of MM.

The registration fee includes food, lodging, and conference materials. More information is provided on theregistration page. Take note of the registration deadlines. Register early and save yourself some cash!

For updates on conference details check back with the SGI page, the MM blog, read the MM Express, and join the MM Facebook group so you can view the SGI event.

More details soon about the theme, conference speakers, and other great info.”

If you love missions and you love being around young people excited about missions you’ll love this conference in Gatlinburg, TN.

A follow up from the last post, we are trying to answer the question, “Is the usefulness of a life in direct parallel to the number of people I stand in front of every Sunday?”

Written to encourage myself and my brothers working especially on Muslim fields but also those other fields of the world that seem as slow as mud like Western Europe and other “Missionary Graveyards”.

4. Can you leave the results to God? And the glory of the results to God?

Everyone wants to eat bread that’s already cooked but few are willing to invest the years planting and plowing in hope that wheat will grow so that you can harvest it, grind it, and finally cook it. Do you need to fill your pews with people who have hopped into your church from the church down the street to feel purpose in life?

Next time you are in your church, look around you. How many people have a parent who was a Christian before them? How many of them were saved before they were 15 years old? How many of them had a grandma praying for them to be saved long before they believed? Then come with me to my city. You won’t find anyone that I know of (out of 1 million people) who have Christian parents. The rate our crowd will grow is slower because there is much less witness.

As my friend and mentor Austin Gardner has often said, “Our responsibility is to obey, His is to give the fruit.” Trust God that he WILL bring fruit in his time to His work. Don’t loose hope or whine that you work on a “hard” field. But remind yourself that God WILL do a great work. This city will never be the same after I leave it!

5. Examine your methods

Sometimes we accuse a people group of being resistant to the gospel when in truth they are resistant to us! Maybe your wife glares at everyone who comes. Maybe your meeting place is a dump. Maybe your music is the only thing uglier than your meeting place. Maybe your language is so bad that they have no idea what your saying? Maybe you sit at home playing computer games and chatting on Skype with friends back home till noon?

Here are some questions we all must ask ourselves:

What could I do to get the Word out more? I’ve never seen a fish jump in a boat. But I have sat in a boat all day with my dad with only two strings in the water and caught just a couple fish. Could I put more poles out? Could I use a net? Am I utilizing every possible tool in the search for what works best in this culture?

We have found that internet is a great way to find those interested in the Gospel here in North Africa. It may not be necessary in China but here it has catapulted our ministry years ahead of where it would have been otherwise. We’ve seen people saved and baptized and churches started through the internet outreach alone. What might work in your country? Maybe those little pink and grey tracts aren’t cutting it in your culture? Maybe?

6. See a crowd by faith that you may never see with your eyes

If you can only serve a God who can bring you a visible crowd then you’ll never serve by faith and never please God. Faith is not sight. Once it becomes sight it is no longer of faith.

Some men won’t ever stand in front of a large crowd of the people group God has given them to work with. If a man dedicates his wife to evangelizing Saudi Arabia, the chances are he’ll never stand in Mecca at the pulpit of the First Baptist Church and preach to a crowd of hundreds (or even one!). But what an amazing and wise use of a life to poor it out as  love sacrifice to the Savior on the greatest “enemies” of the cross of Christ on the globe today!

Jim Eliot and Nate Saint never saw the first Auca come to Christ. He never saw the first church meeting. He never sang with them. Never prayed with them. Never stood in front of them and led an invitation. But what an amazing meeting they are going to have when all the spear carrying Auca’s are gathered together at the throne of the Lamb to worship Him in their tongue. Jim will be there. And he’ll be SO happy that he didn’t seek crowds but God’s glory.

I have NO idea how big a crowd God will allow me to pastor. Right now it just hit double digits and we’re PUMPED! Maybe we’ll get kicked out before we ever hit triple digits. Maybe. Who knows? Only God. And He has called me and I believe with all my heart that these guys we are training will pastor hundreds. Together in heaven we’ll all gather with everyone who had part and no one will be looking at a pulpit. No preacher will feel like “the big shot” as he spins his brilliant oration. But we’ll all be lifting up holy hands to our Savior singing, “Worthy is the Lamb to receive honor, and power ,and riches, and glory for ever and ever.”

I see by faith an immense crowd that has come out of the darkness of Islam. It may take years after my death or the whole of my life but it will happen. Can you see that crowd? If not, you aren’t serving God in faith.

A while back a friend of mine who pastored a good sized church in his country was speaking with me when we had only one person in our church. (We had 10 North Africans this weekend) He made this statement, “I couldn’t do what you do. I kinda like preaching every Sunday to hundreds.”

Some things that people say really stick with you and you roll them over and over in your mind. This statement, made in passing of course, caused me to think, “Should I, too, seek crowds? Can I really be content here? Should I seek a field where I’ll see bigger crowds faster?”

I have another friend who left the Assistant Pastor position in a good sized church in OH three years ago to go to Turkey where his crowd is not even comparable.

Those working in Muslim and other people groups that are resistant to the Gospel will all struggle with this thought: “I am wasting my life on these people. I’ll never impact a large number at this pace.” This thought may be just a silent, nagging ache of the heart or may actually be spoken by well-intentioned preachers in places where churches of hundreds and thousands are common (at least among charismatics if not Baptists).

So here are some things that I’d like to encourage people ministering in resistant people groups to remember:

1. Do you serve God or the crowd?

What will you do when the crowds are no longer there? What will you do when you have to compromise what you know is right to get the crowds? What will you do when God calls you to obey Him by serving in an unreached and resistant people where you know you’ll loose your crowd? Would you go? If not, you aren’t a servant of God but of a crowd. That’s a scary place to be.

2. Every people group is resistant until they hear over and over and over…

Did you know that India had no Christians when William Carry arrived? He labored preaching and translating for six years before the first convert. Today there are millions of believers in India. The same story is told of Adoniram Judson of Burma.

Places where the gospel has never been planted are hard. They must be plowed, planted, and watered over many years. The first missionaries one hundred years ago that served in the Muslim country I am in during the push of the Student Volunteer Missions Movement served for sometimes 10 to 20 years with no converts. Just fifteen years ago the number of believers here was around 100 after almost a century of sowing. Today the number is in the thousands and growing faster than anyone really knows though it’s still less than .01%.

A friend who is a missionary in China asked me the other day how long it takes for someone here to accept Christ on average after hearing the Gospel for the first time. The answer was years, not days or weeks. Actually the quickest I had known someone here to believe on Christ was after two years. The average is a lot more. That being the case, if I drop into a city where few have ever heard the Gospel and there is massive pressure against conversion, I can expect to sow more than I reap in the first few years of ministry.

So what can I do? I can sow like a wild man. I can be creative and throw the seed out in as many ways as I can imagine. I can use internet, TV, mailouts, DVDs, booklets, New Testaments, friendships, …and a hundred ideas I haven’t thought of yet.

3. Can you pray and search for 4 to 5 faithful men?

I was recently with my brother-in-law, Dave, who serves as a first Sergeant in the US military. He has 100 men under his command. However, he really only leads 5. Each one of his direct reports commands 25. But really, they each only lead five who also lead five. He told me something that we need to implement in our understanding of ministry: “One man can really only direct 4 or 5 men effectively. He can influence an unlimited number directly dependent on the ability of his direct reports. He only has enough time to keep track or what 4 or 5 are doing each day. By the time an enlisted man raises to the rank of First Sergeant (commanding 100 men) he will have been in training for that position for over 10 years.”

I’ve often hurt because we only have about 7 believers in our new work here (a little over a year and a half old). The number is growing but slowly. When Dave told me this, though, I realized that I desperately need to train 4 or 5 men who will be leading others. Those 4 or 5 need to be with me every day and be ready to lead leaders of leaders. That’s the only way we’ll grow disciples and not just believers. But Dave joined the Army who trains these men for him and organizes the whole leadership system. How long would it take Dave to train 4 or 5 himself and have them training 4 or 5 and those 4 or 5  train another 4 or 5 until they arrived to 100? A lot longer than it took him just to join the organization.

Do a mental evaluation of the pastors you know running 500 to 1,000 in church. How many of them won to Christ and trained the men serving under them as their closest assistants? Probably one in 100 or less. Why? Because the only way you can get big numbers is having faithful men shouldering the work with you. The only way you can get men to shoulder the work with you is if they were already won and discipled when you arrived or if you do it yourself, which will take many years. The chances are the young men (30-40 years old) who are pastoring large churches (or really any sized church for that matter) have assistants who were saved and discipled in another ministry. It’s not wrong, it’s just impossible with the people group you work with.

God has called you to come as an outsider to come into culture with no (or extremely few) believers and start an army. Those you are training now will be the First Sergeants (leaders of hundreds). If it takes the greatest army in the history of the world (I know, a little over-patriotic) 10 years or more to train that man to lead 100 men, how long do you think it will take you?

What can you do? A Sergeant who has a Private Second Class as his direct report will be that much less effective in leading. He has a leach sucking his time who won’t be ready to lead others for years. Make sure that those men you are spending your time with are learning to lead others. If they aren’t capable or willing to lead others then you need to stop spending your time with them and look for another. If I only can effectively guide the daily activities of 4 or 5 I want them to be the best men possible who will be capable of training others.

It is better to be pouring your life into 4 or 5 young men while pastoring 20 than to be pastoring 500 and be training none. The success of our ministries is wholly resting on our successors.

Sequel coming tomorrow…Click here to read “To those ministering to resistant peoples continued…”