Faithfulness through Suffering

Last weekend was hectic for our hosts here in Sri Lanka. Monday through Thursday an Asian Access conference was planned and annually a dearly loved professor from Gordon-Conwell, Dr. Gary Parret was planning to teach. On the way to the airport in Korea the bus he was in attempted to dodge another car but instead hit the barricade on the side of the road and fell 30 feet. 12 people were instantly killed including a close friend of Gary's and the rest of the people were critically injured. Gary was rushed to the hospital and had sustained multiple broken bones, a punctured lung, and some brain damage which may result in some memory loss. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/asia_pacific/10498724.stm
Please continually pray for his healing and the comfort of his family who has joined him in Korea.
I was amazed at the response to the news from the Pastor and the congregation here. There was mourning, and there has been passionate prayer and intercession for Dr. Parret, and they have continued to trust in God in the midst of the pain. I was blessed by the faithfulness and decision from Pastor Adrian to still hold the Asian Access conference.
On the first day, I learned of how we as Christians are to compassionately love the poor. In the session we studied the parable of the Samaritan and the man who was robbed and beaten alongside the road. As pastor Adrian said, the poor are not held in poverty because of a lack of wealth, they are held by poverty because they have a mindset of rejection. He told a story of how he once was given money from a missions organization to give to a group of people called the untouchables in Sri Lanka. By night time, everyone in the village was drunk and they had slaughtered their chickens for a feast. Learning from that experience, he then took various people out of the village, separated them, put them into a home with new clothes, new names, and connected them with a local church. To this day, almost all of them have been successful. Some are pastors, some are chefs, and some are businessmen. Part of escaping poverty is restoring a sense of dignity, worth, and identity.
This past week I was extremely blessed to be a part of an Access conference which occurs about once every three months. Pastor Adrian De Visser is the South Asia president for Asian Access, and so whenever a meeting is held, it often takes place at Ape Kadella. Asian Access is a ministry that gathers together pastors from all over the nation and for a period of four days, the pastors discuss church issues and challenges and are trained by various scholar practitioners from around the world who are also involved in the organization. The ministry has been expanding to different nations all over Asia and is currently in Mongolia, Japan, Cambodia, India, Sri Lanka, and four other countries. Asian Access is looking into spreading the ministry to involving Myanmar as well. There were two guys representing Bangladesh trying to get a feel for the ministry and looking at having the ministry started in Bangladesh. I really enjoyed conversing with these guys from Bangladesh and hearing their stories. It was an incredible experience to simply sit under, ask questions, and learn from so many pastors leading their church's in the midst of persecution. On Wednesday the president of the ministry arrived with a friend and a native Sri Lankan who is currently pastoring a church in Austrailia and helped in mentoring pastor Adrian. I specifically enjoyed asking questions, conversing, and learning from the Austrailan pastor. My eyes have really been opened through my experience here of holistic ministry. The Sri Lankan doing ministry in Australia said he was really struck by what he had heard at a hillsong conference years ago. "Would the city be hurt and at a loss if the church were to suddenly disappear?" Since then, the church has created a daycare in which many parents in the city have enrolled their children into. Everyone in the church is involved with multiple small groups throughout the week. One of the small groups is a Bible study. The church has also provided various other small groups which have different topics that nurture fellowship. One small group gathers to dialogue and share on world war II war strategies. Once a year, the church also renovates a local public school, paying at least $100,000.00, with no strings attached or catches. These different public schools have now begun asking the church to provide school chaplains. "Our people built a center which is not the church, but they, the church, meet inside the center". The Church allows the city to use the massive center for many of its typical events. This is long term relational church, aimed at nurturing the process of discipleship. The pastor shared with me a certain scale. The scale goes from a negative 8 all the way to a positive 8. The pastor remarked that for those who are at a negative 8 response to the Gospel message, the aim is to bring them to a negative seven, six, and so forth. A theme I consistently heard throughout the week was "process". Discipleship is a "process". I gained tools from these Asian Access classes centered on compassionately reaching the needs of people through a creative viewing of each different cultural atmosphere. Most of all, our time in ministry must be rooted in a deep and daily reflection on the heart of God, we must live out of the overflow of our devotion to God. When we become distracted and pulled away from the heart of God, ministry simply becomes another avenue wherein we seek to fulfill our desire for affirmation. The pastors were warned against doing ministry and serving for the uplifting appraisal of the congregation rather than the glory of God.
The team and I have continued spending time with the boys at the boys home and have enjoyed getting to know them better and are not looking forward to leaving these kids who have become attached to us, and us to them. The opportunity to learn from these kids and their joy in the midst of a painful past has continued to be a blessing. The opportunity to bless these kids with love and a genuine heart of compassion has been incredible.