One of the biggest blessings of this mission trip to India had, in some respect, nothing to do with India itself. And that blessing is, as you probably surmised from the title of this post, getting to know and interacting, both individually and as a group, with all my fantastic teammates.
For the readers who don't know, my church, FCBC-LA, is kind of ridiculously huge, population-wise: well into the thousands. And huge congregations tend to naturally develop a lot of cliques and divisions, simply because after a certain point, it's just not practical for everyone to try to know everyone, much less be close with everyone. So you stumble upon some group of people whom you can relate with, whose company you find preferable, and you focus on those relationships. And thus, a clique of sorts is born. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. In fact, I believe God wants us to have a few close brothers and sisters in Christ whom we can confide freely in and share our souls with, and certainly FCBC and several other churches rightfully promote these "deeper" relationships with small/cell groups, accountability partners, discipleship/mentoring, and other such modes. But then this grouping becomes further accentuated when on the larger scale of things, groups receive divisive labels like "Mandarin-speaking", "Cantonese congregation", "English-speaking adults", "young adults", "college group", "youth congregation", "children's"... Still, this is not in itself a bad thing. In fact, for such a highly populated church, these are very necessary and practical divisions in order to effectively minister to everyone. The problem arises when in people's minds, boundaries are drawn between these macro-groups because they can spend decades at this church and never see those boundaries crossed. There is little to no interaction between these different congregations separated by language and age, and so for all practical purposes it seems as if we are multiple churches in one place rather than simply one church. Now, by God's good grace this issue is not actually as bad as I may be making it sound, but it certainly has plenty of room for improvement.
This has been a recurring concern of mine for the past year or so, and therefore something that I believe God is putting on my heart. First, I had the opportunity to serve the Mandarin congregation in July 2009 by going with them on their summer retreat and working in childcare there. Then I remember a month after that there was this funny old Chinese-speaking lady that wanted to keep playing with my camera on the bus up to (and down from) College/Young Adult/Family Camp. Then this past March, a bunch of Chinese-speaking collegians and adults joined us on the Amor house-building trip to Mexico, and they were bunches of fun and excitement to work with! Through all these experiences, I've been gradually made conscious of "the other sides" of the church that I've mostly never really gotten to know in the former 19-some years that I've been here. (What a shame!) And then this India trip came and epitomized all these experiences.
Not gonna lie. It was kind of awkward looking around the room at our first India team meeting after the team had been finalized and realizing that I was the only collegian and furthermore the youngest one on the team. All other mission trips that I've been on have been with people whom I can call my peers: I went to the Navajo reservations in Arizona when I was a high school student with other high school students; I went on the house-building Amor trip to Mexico as a collegian with other collegians. But on this trip, out of a group of 15 people from FCBC, I was the sole representative of my age category. Instead of being with my peers, I was now with my peers' parents (Steph's dad, Ryan's dad (/Josh's uncle), Ethan's mom, Nathan's dad, Christiana's mom) and many of their peers (/my parents peers). We also had a couple of adults from the Chinese-speaking "side" with us. For sure, I was a bit intimidated. Everyone just seemed to be in a further stage of life than me, and I wasn't sure that I "fit" the team. But ultimately, I was confident of the call that I had to fulfill, so I stood firm in it and didn't allow any sort of social awkwardness, lonesomeness, or feeling of lack of belonging to deter me. And I'm so glad I did! I now believe that one of the very reasons that the Lord wanted me on this trip was to interact with people outside of my ordinary social "boundaries". In a church as big as FCBC, there were definitely some people on the team whom I didn't even know existed 7 months ago! But in a short time, I found that all these so-called "adults" on the team are such wacky and ridiculous yet passionate and heaven-minded people. After months of meeting and training together, I was comfortable with the group and eager to finally embark on this journey with them!
So there the 15 of us were from FCBC, and then by the time we got to the hotel in Hyderabad, India, we had rendezvoused with 14 other teammates from across America. (Among these 14 there were two collegians and even one high school student, but I was so over that by this time.) The group from FCBC was already pretty diverse, but throwing in the additional 14, we were even more so. Among the 29 of us we represented all of high school, college, middle-aged, old, Chinese, Mexican, African, Caucasian, Filipino, single, married, engaged, divorced, experienced, and first-time missionaries. It took a little while for everyone to get familiar with each other, but then we just melded in a really special way. There's just something about sharing a common salvation in Christ, being obedient enough to come halfway across the world to share that salvation, facing persecution and running away from certain opposition, and then getting back on your feet to readily do it all over again that brings people together.
I had the privilege of leading worship for the team a few times over the course of the trip. I've been a worship leader for five-some years now (depending on how you count/when you start counting) and I must confess that my personal worship when I lead is probably wrongly based largely on the quality (as far as I can imperfectly gauge) of the congregation's worship. And so occasionally, I do find a group "difficult" to worship with because they seem "difficult" to lead in worship because they don't seem like they're worshiping! To some degree, I feel a bit of responsibility for that and so find that discouraging, perhaps wrongly so, but honestly and bluntly, I do. But I have to say that with this India team, it was the exact opposite case. If ever I found a group that was "easy" to lead in worship, it was these guys! Every worship time alongside them was incredible! It was a gulp of heaven as our passionate praises gloriously rang out to exalt the Exalted One. A couple of times when I led I would invoke them to lift up words of personal praise prayers aloud. Usually when I have groups do this, there's one praise prayer followed by a lot of awkward silence, followed by more awkward, then another praise prayer, then back to awkward silence, etc. But with this group, there would be one praise right after another, right after another; they'd overlap each other and keep going on and on and on and on, recognizing the marvelous attributes of our God that are beyond count. Even in the darkest night, when we would receive bad news about Livingston and be concerned for the nationals and for our mission, they knew what they came for and they kept their eyes on the prize. They trusted the Lord, ceased striving, and surrendered themselves to His sovereign hand. Their confidence in His power and His plan was so evident in their poise, in their prayers, and in their worship. I felt like at any moment I could bust out in any worship song and they would quickly enjoin their hearts with mine in exalting our God. (And that actually happened once or twice just randomly and spontaneously when we were in the car driving somewhere! Definitely one of the most memorable worship experiences I've ever had! So awesome!) It was so encouraging and definitely spurred me and my faith onward in the moments of the trip that seemed outwardly perilous.
Singing praises of worship during one of our team meetings. (Photo credit: Clark Edmond.)
Working with this team gave me a deeper understanding of what it means to bear one another's burdens (Gal. 6:2), what it means to sharpen one another (Prov. 27:17), and what Paul means when he calls his fellow brothers and sisters of the church his hope, joy, crown, and glory (I Thes. 2:19-20). And this certainly helped to make us as useful and effective as possible during our time together on the mission field. So once again, I close this blog with a challenge to you for your edification. Can you say that you are experiencing this same sort of relationship with your church (both local and universal)?
I'd say for a few months earlier this year, in my evangelism life I had "gone solo" in my thinking. I saw God and me trying to impact the unbelievers whom I came into contact with at school. Of course, I was still going to church at the time. But for some reason during that period of time I became distant from the life of the church and was not sharing in this deep mutual fellowship that Paul so longs to have with the church in his epistles. And so after a while, I began to burn out; my joy was lacking without the love and unity with the church that makes our joy complete (Phil. 2:2). I fatally forgot that the church plays such a vital role in missions and evangelism! Too often we view them almost as opposites: "inreach versus outreach". But the Bibles instructs us otherwise. Jesus said, "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another" (John 13:34-35 NASB, italics mine). And Paul wrote, "that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church" (Eph. 3:10 NASB, italics mine). Inreach and outreach, fellowship with the church and evangelism to the world are interconnected. One is incomplete without the other. But it starts with (loving your God, and then) loving your church, His church, His bride. And it's hard to love the church when you don't actually even know everyone in it. So yes (trying now to bring this full circle and come back to where I started at the beginning of this post), it may be practical to make certain groupings in the local church to promote the kind of deep fellowship, accountability, and brotherhood/sisterhood that I've been describing, but don't let those groupings become boundaries. Don't become complacent with the few good relationships that you have in the church and think that those are "good enough". In fact, don't ever become complacent, period. Always be striving to find creative ways to love the church, the whole church, as Christ loves the church. For it is through this love for each other, that God will make His name famous.
Thank you, India team! You guys are amazing!
No comments:
Post a Comment