Upcoming Events Around the World

Nov 14 Early Acceptance Deadline for Summer Internships www.whm.org/work/internships

Dec 8-13 Missionary Assessment & Orientation in Jenkintown, PA go@whm.org

Dec 27-31 Cross Con Missions Conference in Louisville, KY

W ide awake and wearing a grin a mile wide, Filipino Pastor Jomar

Ison launches into the story of his first introduction to Gospel Transformation by an American professor and missionary at seminary and how it impacted him.

“When I went through the lessons it was not only exciting, it was new for me,” says Jomar. “Here in the Philippines one of our greatest problems is the absence of reformed materials. That’s why the Sonship

and Gospel Transformation material was very unique... It’s the best reformed material I have seen so far.”

As chairman of the education committee for his presbytery, Jomar has been working to provide free reformed materials for church leadership across the Philippines. In 2010 while WHM was still self-publishing all their materials, Jomar wrote for permission to translate Gospel Transformation into Tagalog. The content team suggested that he and his wife first go through World Harvest’s intensive

discipleship program for leaders--Sonship--with a WHM mentor so that they could better understand the mindset behind the materials they would be translating. The timing could not have been better.

“I was experiencing burnout [and] was ready to leave the ministry. I still remember the question Jack Miller asked [in the first lecture]: “Where is your joy?”…It spoke to me so much because… I [didn’t] have any joy. I had been doing the ministry from one Sunday to the next Sunday. I just dragged myself through the ministry to preach, teach, but I [didn’t] have any real joy to share with my congregation.”

Sonship’s grace-centric focus, and particularly insights into God’s love as not contingent on our performance, struck a chord with Jomar.

“For both my wife and me it was a freeing experience to know that… even if I fail, even if I fall in the dust, God still loves me,” says Jomar. “I never thought that I [could] bless other people by acknowledging my weaknesses. As a pastor,

Dropping Pretensions in the PhilippinesBy Andrew Shaughnessy

November 2013

grow

“C hurch is often a place of merely functional community rather

than formative community,” explains Robert Thune, pastor and co-author of The Gospel-Centered Community (New Growth Press, 2013). “People are polite and courteous to each other, but they often do not form the nittygritty, authentic, life-on-life relationships that the Bible seems to see as normal and expected."

That’s why Thune and Will Walker offer this new, nine-lesson small group study calling believers to genuine community. The Gospel-Centered Community, published in conjunction with World Harvest Mission, practically helps participants to get beyond the

peripheral issues that divide Christians and become the community God is calling us to be.

Community is hard, and it doesn’t come naturally even within the church. But The Gospel-Centered Community

is written to be extremely accessible to participants and leaders alike. Each lesson is self-contained, featuring clear teaching from Scripture, and requires no extra work outside of the group setting. The Leader’s Guide provides small group

we have been trained not to show our weaknesses before our congregation. Otherwise, we were taught that they may feel weak as well, so I need to be strong for them. And because I can’t show who I am before other people, particularly my congregation, I tend to fake being righteous. That pressure built up to the point where I was ready to resign and get out of the ministry. It was refreshing [to hear] that even if I acknowledge my shortcomings, [I] can still be used by God to bless other people.”

Jomar and his wife are about 60% finished with the translation process.

“We’re still in the process of finishing up,” says Jomar. “God willing we’ll be able to finish by next year.”

When the Gospel Transformation translation is completed, Jomar plans on distributing the material to churches throughout his Presbytery in the Philippines, spreading the same discipleship that brought him so much

joy and renewal, in the language of the Filipino people. In the mean time, Jomar has been using Gospel Transformation and Sonship to train elders in his church, and has used some of the lessons for sermons and cell group discipleship.

“It was really a great help to my congregation,” he says. “Both my wife and I agree that the questions dig into your heart. They expose those things that are good, those things that are bad, even sinful…. That’s something that set [Sonship] apart. It enables me to really see who I am before the Lord – no pretensions anymore before God, because God knows me… [P]age after page the material gives encouragement that, in spite of all my shortcomings, God still loves me and is still willing to use me. He still is the God who embraces me in my failures.”

Update from Jomar: Our area and the churches of our presbytery were not much affected by Haiyan. However, the Visayas Presbytery just adjacent to us received the brunt of the super typhoon. Towns have been literally wiped out especially in the islands of Leyte, Samar, Cebu, Iloilo, Aklan, Capiz and Antique because of the very strong winds and storm surge that reached more than 7 meters high. As of today, around 2,000 people have been confirmed dead but we fear this number may rise since a lot more towns and areas haven’t been contacted yet. Our hearts are gravely heart-broken by our countrymen’s suffering and we are also doing our share to extend help. Thousands are in need of food, water and other necessities. Continue to uphold us in your prayers.

go

S t. Lucy’s Ward is tucked away on the third floor of the very back wing of

the hospital. It was on a quiet Saturday afternoon that I made my first visit. After struggling to locate her name, the weekend nurse walked me to Room 12-15, and pointed toward bed 12 where she lay still and wan by the window.

Brigid was perfunctorily courteous the first two years we lived next door. Our conversations were usually rushed and one-sided as she said her piece and then hurried on her bent-over way - mostly to or from Mass. Yet, she was the one who first called me ‘Katty,’ alerting me to an Irish way of dispensing with our ‘th’ in favor of just a ‘t’ sound. She was also the one who had expressed annoyance at my accent, claiming she couldn’t understand anything I was saying - I was shocked to realize I had one!

About a year ago, she stopped me as I was hurrying to an evening bible study. She got out of the drizzly rain, slowly bending her 85-year-old body into our lowriding car. Putting her hands on her upright cane, she told me her younger sister had just died. She said she was having a hard time of it, shared her own health issues and then, before getting out, told me it was her birthday the next

week. She asked me please, not to do anything except say a prayer for her. I agreed to pray, and she smiled at me in a new way that seemed to say her heart was now open and we could become friends.

Since that night, we have been privileged to walk through a very difficult year with Brigid as vascular dementia has left her more and more frail and confused in body and mind.

One paranoid episode left her convinced that another neighbor’s sinister activity was causing water to flood her kitchen floor. As I watched her resignedly mop up for the third time that day, her phone rang in another room. This allowed me a minute to look under her sink to see that the drainpipe had come unglued from the sink basin.

When she returned, she skeptically let me show her what I had found, then turned to me with bright eyes to say, “Oh Katty! You’re God’s instrument! You are God’s instrument, Katty!” My eyes filled with tears, because earlier that very day, Bruce had spoken to our WHM team about seeing ourselves as being more

than mere conduits of God’s grace, but as His instruments! She was the one who was His instrument of grace to me that day, even as I was to her.

I’ve been to St. Lucy’s Ward four times now. Though a stroke took Brigid’s speech while we were in the States, her eyes say that she knows it’s me. By blinking hard and long or squeezing fingers in the one hand she can still control she has given me permission to read Scripture and pray with her. In her dying, as in her living, I am being given grace gifts. Watching the prolonged indignities of her dying, I am invited to trust ever deeper - to admit how very little I have control over or can even understand and to choose to accept the Mystery surrounding the knowable beauty of Jesus as unspeakably good and trustworthy.

I will keep visiting in St. Lucy’s Ward - to sit beside her bed and remind us both of Jesus’ presence and promises, to pray and to wait with her because we are friends and instruments of God’s grace.

Friends and Instruments of GraceBy Kathy Alwood

leaders with discussion questions and background material that clearly explains and applies the gospel truths of each lesson.

“We are excited about this material because our world is full of people who have given up on Christian community. But we can’t live out the full gospel of

Jesus Christ in isolation from others,” explains Barbara Miller Juliani, editorial director for New Growth Press.

Thune and Walker’s first small group study, The Gospel-Centered Life, has been used from youth groups in Michigan to church plants in Russia. Walker comments, “I think this speaks to the real

power of the gospel to sanctify as well as save us. I believe everyone is made for the kind of community that can only be experienced in Christ, and that wherever this material is learned and lived, it will connect with that deep human longing.”

These and other resources are available at www.newgrowthpress.com.

“I f you polled the American church and asked them to rank in order the

top 5 reasons why the average Christian would not consider missionary service, I’m willing to bet that support raising would probably be number 1 or number 2.”

First exposed to World Harvest through their Richmond, VA church, Kevin and Katie Shaffer’s journey started back in 2006 when Kevin joined a short-term team to Harrow.

“My first comment to our pastor was: ‘Well I have a job, so I’ll just pay for my way to London’,” says Kevin. “He laughed, pulled me over, and said: ‘Not everybody is able to sell their house and move overseas, but some people feel called to be a part of that experience. When you support raise… they can be just as much a part of this mission [as you], seeing God working in contexts and places that they would never get to experience on a local level.’”

“That would not happen if World Harvest just gave me a pay check like a traditional company,” says Kevin. “It’s a way to bring the larger body of Christ into mission work that goes beyond just the missionary and the people.”

The Shaffers had both worked at Capital One in Richmond: Kevin for 11 years in marketing, and Katie for 6 years in IT before she chose to stay at home with their daughter. Then, in 2008, just two years after Kevin’s short term trip to Harrow, Kevin brought Katie and their daughter Madeline back to Harrow to see and experience the ministry there, Though still only a few years into following Christ, Kevin and Katie felt called to London and decided to pursue full time missions with World Harvest, working with New Life Suwarta Sungit Church in Harrow, England, ministering

to the local British-Asian community. The Shaffers gave up a comfortable, secure life in the corporate world, took a significant pay cut, and began a three year, forgive the pun, harrowing journey of raising support.

“The average American is bombarded with people peddling their causes. I think at best we humor them and at worst we get irritated and we strike back. I mean, think how you treated the last telemarketer who interrupted your dinner... Now, what happens when I’m the guy who’s calling you to support my cause? For me it brought up a lot of strong emotions, like guilt. Feeling like a burden… an annoyance. My experience has been… that the stronger your struggle with pride, [the bigger] your struggle with support raising.”

When you put yourself out there you become very vulnerable and you risk people saying no. [And that] can make you feel like they’re rejecting you as a person even if that’s not necessarily so.”

I suppose pride is exactly what’s at play here. Support raising isn’t, or shouldn’t be, about missionaries “peddling their cause,” or peddling themselves, or even about two people making a deal. It’s about God enabling both the supporter and the supported to be faithful to their distinct and different callings for his larger kingdom purposes. But that truth is a hard one, and one that is often missed by both the giver and the receiver in the midst of the support raising process.

Katie chimes in. “Four times a week we’re going out and we’re having to preach the Gospel to ourselves just to be in a support raising appointment… For us, support came largely from a lot of places and people we would not have predicted and on a level that we would not have predicted.”

“Yeah, I would say God made it completely clear to us that it was through no effort of our own,” says Kevin. “I think God uses those surprises to remind us who’s really at work here: Is it our great presentation? Is it my winsome storytelling? Or is it God’s mission?

“Our culture tells us that [we achieve] through our own individual effort, hard work, and ingenuity – not a dependence upon God. Well I think the dependent life, the life of faith in Jesus, is exactly the opposite. It’s one where I have to give up my agenda. I have to give up my rights, in order to surrender to Jesus. American culture was built off of this idea of rugged self-sufficiency, and support raising stabs at that.”

There’s quite a bit of surrendering involved it seems. Surrendering pride and independence, agendas and paychecks, the comfortable and the familiar. But there’s also callings being lived out, truth being captured, and, inevitably, preparation for the field.

“Support raising is the boot camp of missionary life,” says Kevin. “[It’s] calling and visiting lots of people, it’s sharing your personal story, which can be very uncomfortable… often to people who aren’t very receptive to what you have to say. Having been on the field, that’s a heck of a lot what missionary life is about… There’s no better on the job training for full time mission work than support raising.”

Lessons learned or not, the struggle doesn’t just end. “Ironically, we just re-upped for another 3 years, so we’re actually in the middle of support raising [again],” says Kevin. “I talk this big game about all the things that I learned, and I’m right back in it.”

Katie is juggling a baby and grinning: “We still need support! Put that in.”

Giving, Receiving, and the American WayBy Andrew Shaughnessy

give