This is an old post card from our mission talking about the need in Mexico.  It’s old, but it still applies (at least until CAM changes its name!) – so here it is!

Here are some more opportunities in Mexico.

This is the next part of verse #26.  I was a day late posting a verse, so I’m catching up today.

Hebrews actually has some pretty important instructions for the church.  For example, we should meet together, as we see here.  Later in the book, the author tells us to obey our leaders because they keep watch over our souls (Hebrews 13:17).

Sometimes people email me and tell me they want to become missionaries.  One of the first things I suggest is that they talk to the leadership of their church.

More than once it has turned out that this is a problem.  It could be that this person has no relationship with any leader (which could make it difficult to obey Hebrews 13:17).  But it also could be that this person has the habit of not meeting together with other believers at all.

In those two verses – and excuse me for joining them together like this, but – in those two verses there really is a lot to learn about the assembly – the local church.

How many people really have any opportunity to obey a leader?  How many leaders are truly keeping watch over souls?  How many people really feel the urgency to meet together ("all the more as you see the Day drawing near")?

And perhaps sadest of all, how many "go to church" all their lives, and hardly ever encourage – or receive encouragement?

How many are never thinking about how to help their fellow believers to love more?  To do more good works?

These aren’t verses long in instructions and programs and procedures and regulations – and yet how many of us are missing out on the wonderful basics of the family of God?

So let’s not get in the habit of avoiding fellow believers.  Or the habit of just … doing other things.

Instead, let’s get together and spur each other on to great things.  Time is short.

At the end of March/beginning of April we hosted a team from two churches in Alberta Canada – Mirror Alliance Church and Innisfail Baptist Church.  Below are some clips from their time here.

The time with the team was filled with a lot of new friendships, a lot of fun activities, and always the unexpected.  But every person on the team adapted well to the changes and showed themselves willing to learn.

Among other things they were involved in a kids’ club, they did some work for the community centre (including building shelves, painting, and building a swing set), and they were involved in services and studies (where they shared testimonies, and more).  But they were also willing to simply spend time interacting with people, and that’s what it all has to come down to.

At the farewell party for the team, some people from the church here shared that they were inspired and motivated by the work of the team to do more for the Lord here.  We also had some new confessions of faith, and there are brand new people attending Bible studies and services now that we had never met before the team came!

So although only God knows the impact that the team made, He has allowed us to see some little glimpses of what He’s doing.

We would love to see some – all – of the people from the team come back!  And maybe more from these churches.  And what about your church?  Do you think you might like to come and help out?

The video below has a few clips from the team’s visit.  As usual, the clips are somewhat random, but they should show a little of what the team did.  You can also check out the video from their first four days here.  That video shows more of the activities from those days – this video includes those days but is a little more MI Team-centric.

[If you're reading this in an RSS feed, you may need to jump to the blog to see the video here]

By the way, I also posted almost every day the team was here.  Here are the posts, in case you’re interested:

• MI Team: First Day+
• MI Team and Easter Egg Hunt
• MI Team: Days 1-4 (video)
• MI Team on a Monday
• MI Team on Tuesday
• A very full day!
• Video Clips from Today
• Never what you expect…
• Pass
• Resurrection Sunday – and Despedida
• Departed (on the plane)

Below is a somewhat rough video with clips from the past 4 days (Thursday to Sunday).  It will give you an idea of what the MI Team has been up to in their first few days.  It’s not all video of the people on the team, but more clips of the activities they were involved in.

I didn’t take a lot of video in downtown Mexico City.  One thing we did was go to the Basilica in the city, and you can see a video from another visit back in 2010 here.

The team has already been a big help, but they are really just going to be diving into some of their main ministries today.  But through the activities and social times of the past few days, new friends have been made, they’ve worshipped together with the Mexican believers, and there have even been some who have prayed to receive Christ.

The team is doing well, although as I have mentioned there has been a bit of sickness – two or three of the guys – but they seem to be getting over it quickly.

Today the kids’ club begins, and there’s an English class in the afternoon, plus some construction work… stay tuned!

Jesus isn’t preaching some kind of easy religion here – like tell everyone to ask me into their heart and have a vague feeling of love for me.  No, we are to make disciples – of all nations – and these disciples make a public stand for Jesus (baptism) – and they are taught to obey Jesus.

Jesus is building His Church.  We are not to only preach the word and then move on.  Of course there are times when we do that individually, but it’s not our goal.  Our goal is … well, everything Jesus has said in these three verses.  We’ll looking toward the end goal – disciples in every nation – baptised believers following the commands of Christ (Revelation 5:9-10).

These are not easy verses.  Not because they’re not clear – but because Jesus takes His position of authority and He issues commands.  And they’re radical – both for the disciples who were listening, and those who are believers today – and for those who are being asked to follow Him in the future.

However, the commands of Christ are sandwiched between two very comforting statements.  First, Jesus has authority.  We are going under the command of Someone who knows all things and has all power.

Now He affirms that He will be with us.

Us, I say – because He uses the words to the end of the age.  Jesus is clearly not just commanding the disciples who are there watching Him physically.  He’s commanding also those who will believe in Him through the disciples’ word (see John 17:20).  Every disciple – to the end of the age – has this promise of the presence of Christ.  And we know that the glory will be God’s – in the Church and in Christ – forever (Ephesians 3:14-21).

A lot has been made of the word "Go" in this passage.  Some people have argued that it doesn’t actually mean go (which kind of begs the question – why do Greek scholars keep translating it that way?!).  No, it means as you are going (they say).

In other words, don’t worry about going anywhere – that’s not the point.  Just share the Gospel wherever you happen to be.

However, this simply isn’t the case.  Now I’m no Greek scholar, but if you want an easy example, look at another place where this form is used – Matthew 2:13-14.  The angel tells Joseph to get up, take the Child and His mother, and flee to Egypt.  No, the angel was not suggesting that, if Joseph happens to be getting up, or sometime someday when Joseph gets up – no, it’s a command!  Get up Joe!  Move it!  Get the Child and GET OUT OF HERE!

I wrote a little about this before here: Great Commission: What does GO mean?

No, this is a command – go, make disciples, and baptize.

Jesus of course reinforces this idea when He says all nations.  No, this was not just if you happened to bump into someone from Samaria (ouch!).

The Jewish disciples really needed extra encouragement that they needed to go – and in fact needed to go to all nations.  As we read about the early days of the Church, we can see God reinforcing this point again and again.  He commands them to go, He tells them how the Word would spread (Acts 1:8), He first sends the Gospel in many languages at a time when people from many nations came to Jerusalem (Acts 2:4-11), and He allowed persecution to move them on (Acts 8:1).

Going to all nations was (is?) not easy.  But again, the authority of Jesus was with them.

And Jesus is not being overly arrogant here to include Himself with the Spirit and the Father – here we have Jesus very clearly equating Himself with the other two.  This job of reaching the world comes from the Triune God – Father, Son and Spirit.

Today we start a three-verse run.  Like the last set of verses, they include some of the last words that Jesus said to His disciples before His ascension.

Of course, no self-respecting missionary should forget to memorize these!

I had never really thought about the first part of this verse.  Jesus came to them.  If you look at the passage, you can see that He was already there – at least in the order of the verses.  The disciples had come to the mountain and they saw Jesus, and worshipped Him.

Maybe He just came closer to them – the way you might do if you wanted to tell everyone something very important.

All authority had been given to Jesus.  This is the authority that the disciples could be confident of as they went out into the world.  It also gave authority to their message – with confidence they could tell people to obey the Gospel (ie 2Thesselonians 1:5-10).

This authority came from the Father (1Corinthians 15:27; John 5:26-27).  Of course, this doesn’t take away from the equality of the persons in the Trinity – it just shows that they each have different roles, perfectly coordinated, as one God.

Our confidence – as those in Christ – is that He has all authority, anywhere we go.  Anywhere.

This spring CAM International of Canada will be changing its name, and logo.  We mentioned the name change before, but left out one clarification.  Not only will CAM International of Canada become Camino Global, the name will be the same for our sister organization, CAM International, in the USA.  So don’t get confused.

The organizations will also share a logo.  Do you want to know what it is?  Really?  All right, go ahead and click the link…

*sigh*

Just remember, CottrillCompass.com is now 12 years old, so it was here long before the name and logo of Camino Global was thought of.

The good news is, the logo doesn’t look anything like the logo for Camino – the makers of the yummy Camino Chocolate bars.  (Do you think anyone would get confused if we started fundraising using Camino Chocolate?)

One thing I don’t get about the new logo – it’s supposed to represent a path (camino).  Well, if you start along the path in the logo, you end up just about right where you started.  If you enter it like a maze, no matter which way you go in you hit a dead end.  Should I be worried?

Well, as I’ve said before, the change in name and logo is not about a change in purpose.  As CAM completes 122 years of service this November, we’re reminded that the purpose remains the same – to make disciples.  God give us grace to be a part of that vision – which is not only 122 years old, but almost 2000 years old.

And Jesus came and said to them,"All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.  And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age."
(Matthew 28:18-20)

An update on the team coming from Canada in three weeks, family health update, and some news about other things we’ve been up to.  Just a chat on my way home from a meeting.

I was just reading about stress levels in missionary life.  Now, you may have heard of the Holmes-Rahe Scale, which is one way health professionals measure stress in people’s lives.  The idea is that a certain number of life events can build up the level of stress until it gets dangerous.

Some of these might be the death of a family member, a child leaving home, trouble with the boss, change in social activities, a vacation, or marriage.

I’m not going to analyze the pros and cons of the scale, but it does say something about our lives and our ability to cope and react to change.

Back in 1999, Drs Lois and Larry Dodds (of Heartstream Resources) were studying the levels of stress on the mission field, using a modified version of the Holmes-Rahe Scale.

In Holmes and Rahe’s original study, they found that if you reached a level of 200 on the scale in a year, the cumulative stress would have consequences for some time to come.  In fact, they found that 50% of those who reached this level were hospitalized within two years.  The reasons included heart attack, diabetes, cancer, and other severe illness.

If ever the level reached 300, the person was almost certain to end up in the hospital within two years.

So frankly, you don’t want to have that much change and transition in your life.

So, the Dodds wanted to find out what the typical missionary went through.  As you might have guessed, the news wasn’t good.

The typical missionary had not just peaking levels above 300 – they had sustained levels over 300 – - – year after year.

The typical missionary, in fact, had double that level – 600 on the scale!

Admittedly, the missionaries in the original study were Americans in Latin America, so we’re not in the category.  Well, not exactly.

These numbers are truly mind-boggling.

The recommendations of the Dodds?  Here’s a summary.

• First, be very serious about selection, training, and placement of missionaries.
• Second, missions should think twice about sending first term missionaries into especially isolated situations.
• Third, they should think twice about sending missionaries with young children into isolated situations.
• Fourth, provide people trained in member care who can provide continuous support to missionaries.

What about those of us who are friends or supporters of missionaries?  (Yes, I know we’re missionaries ourselves – but we’re also friends of missionaries!)

Well, here are some ideas, just off the top of my head.

• Pray for them:  Pray that they would find support and friendship on the field (coworkers, national believers – and even unbelievers).  Pray for God’s grace in their lives, for times of rest and refreshment, for wisdom.
• Encourage them:  Letters, calls, surprises, financial support (not just normal support – but maybe a gift for the kids or a bit for a holiday/vacation), visits, help when they’re in your area…
• Be informed:  What does the mission do to ensure missionaries are being taken care of?  How do they decide how missionaries are placed?
• Show grace:  Missionaries need to be accountable to their supporters.  But this has to be done with grace.  Recognize that missionaries are not miracle workers who can transform the world on their own; they’re not super-humans (or Vulcans) who can never be disturbed by the realities of life.  When people say to us "I could never do what you do" we often reply,"neither can we".  Missionaries will get frustrated, depressed, confused and they will fail.  Give them grace and support, and don’t be too shocked if they even take a week off now and then.
• Don’t Pretend to Completely Understand:  We never know, really, what someone else is going through.  This applies to a death in the family, an illness, a divorce, a problem at work – no matter what it is, we can only understand to a point.  The same goes for cross cultural work.  If you want to offer help, advice, criticism, ideas, whatever it is – do it with grace and humility.  Hopefully the missionary will take it the same way.
• Be a part of sending more missionaries:  Why in the world would I add this to the list?  Why would we want to send more people into such a stressful situation?  Because in the end, God has sent us into the world, and He has the grace to sustain us.  Suffering is a reality of life.  And God uses it in our lives.  The work must continue.  If we can be excited about the work, support it, and encourage it, that will go a long way.  It’s wonderful to know that people believe in the Great Commission and that we’re working as a part of a worldwide team.
• Realize it’s not hopeless:  No, not all missionaries need to burn out or be completely depressed all the time.  While we recognize that suffering is a part of the missionary life, it is still possible for missionaries to serve long term with joy.  We just need to allow God to use us to help one another.

In the end, it’s worth the stress.  This rescue-mission that we’re on is more important than personal comfort.

But that’s not to say that we should ignore the issue – instead, we should minimize the problem as much as we can, so that missionaries can be more effective in their ministries.

And we as missionaries – we should not be using some stress scale as an excuse.  But again, we should be aware of the challenges, and ask God for wisdom as we try to balance our lives.

As I look around at other people here, it’s hard to feel too hard done by.  Our friends have challenges that we can only imagine, and we are humbled by their faith (if they are believers).  Though there are challenges, and we must be careful to run the marathon with patience, we know that our sacrifice is really a small one when you look at the big picture.

Yes, the work must go on.

via Laura Parker