The Kingdom: Global Mindset

Good morning Southeast family. It's good to see ya. It's my great pleasure to share with you about the missional world here at Southeast and beyond. I was told, I thought, three hours and 33 minutes I had to talk, but as it turns out, it's just 33 minutes. So we're going to abbreviate things a little bit here. About 1979, I started in full-time mission. So I've been doing it for a while. Been able to do it in 65 different nations, and people asked me question about that all the time. One of those is, have you ever been in danger because they're watching the news, they're reading stories and certainly where you're at isn't a good place. And not really, people tried to stone me, you got to be careful about using that phrase in Colorado. People tried to stone me in Nairobi, but was quick to get out of the way and get out of that place.

I'm not an adrenaline junkie, so I don't look for dangerous things. But one of the most dangerous situations was actually not for me, but for the person I was baptizing. We regularly would take teams into Jordan working up on the Syrian border with Syrian refugees. And on the way back would stop in Israel and people would want to be baptized in the Jordan River. So I would do a number of them, was just finishing up with our group when a man comes running down the hillside, "Are you a priest? Are you a priest?" And well, not necessarily, but yes, I'm available. And he said, "I have three women who want to be baptized" in his bus. He said, I said, "Well, where are they? Where are they from?" And he said, "Oh, they're from Ghana." And I thought, well, Ghana's fine because they speak English.

As it turns out they were from Angola and I don't speak Portuguese. So anyway, I figured, well between me and the Lord and them, we could do it anyway. And so I baptized them. Well, what I've learned over the time in the Jordan River is, or in any river baptism, you always baptize up river so that when you go to lift them, the water, the river pushes them up. The Jordan River in particular is a difficult place because it's got slippery lime stone on the bottom. And it's got those wee little fish that kind of bite and suck on your toes and you can get these in massage stores or pedicure stores, but they're doing it for free. So it's kind of strange when you're out there and you feel them. And with this lady, for some reason, I got turned around and I was baptizing her downstream and she was not a small woman.

And so I go and baptize her and try to lift her up. And I thought for a moment, oh my goodness, I'm going to have the world's first baptism/drowning. And so I'm trying to lift and I'm thinking, oh, I can't just reach and grab and who knows what I'll get, but we were able to get her up and she came up just very excited, jumping. And so it didn't bother her near as much as me, but that was about as dangerous as it got for me. Today I'm going to be asking you to be careful, to put aside all of what media, news, what you've read, what you've seen has told you is true about the world, to hear me speak about what I and other missional organizations and mission leaders are experiencing in the world that will be quite a contrast to that.

I don't know that everything I know is the full extent of knowledge. I'm quite sure it isn't, but there are things happening in the world as regards to the kingdom. We're in the series on the kingdom, the kingdom of God is coming broadly and rapidly in ways we have never seen before. So I'd like to be able to speak about that and ask you to set aside all those other things that I see and read as well. On these screens and with the data, I'm going to be sharing, there are security concerns, none of which you need to worry about, but you'll see obscured voices and faces. I won't use the names of organizations of who is doing what and where they're doing it apart from our partner in India, Dr. Ajai Lall, some of you have met him and he's going to announce himself. And that's fine because his information is public in India, as well as here.

And so some of the data and stats and current ideas and thoughts about global missions should be both encouraging and possibly challenging to you because things are happening in a global scale in missional circles, where we're looking at things in a very different way that would suggest we may be at a shift never before available in the world of missions. And I'd love to share that with you as well, so I'm going to start by doing some updates for you.

This is going to be the mission statement for my department, for your global missions here at Southeast. We invest mission resources to multiply disciples of Jesus amongst the world's least reached. Okay, pretty simple. We're going to be about multiplying disciples and we're going to do it amongst the least reached. That's the program and the locations, which means it's a very good filter for me because we get a lot of requests. Can you partner with us? We're doing this and I'll say, what are you doing and where are you doing it? And if there isn't an alignment, it's a pretty short discussion. I can say, thank you for serving. God bless you. It just simply doesn't align with who we are and what we're doing. But you need to know that because it's very key to who we choose to partner with in the world. We have the largest mission budget we have ever had this year thanks to your giving, your investments at $578,000 or $48,000 a month. We are investing in 17 partners.

You'll see some of the information up here that our 17 partners have recorded 438,000 church plants and 10.7 million people have received Christ, which is really good news. And I'm going to continue over the years to be sharing these numbers, but I also want to remind us, we've heard this sermon here, and Aaron bring it up since, form and substance. It is important that churches are planted. It is important that people raise their hand and accept Jesus. But what we are engaged in is growing disciples, what we are engaged in is transformation. Matthew 28, the great commission, will emphasize this. Jesus says and came and said, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Not some, but all. Go therefore and plant churches. Wait a minute, 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've commanded to you and behold I'm with you always to the end of the age.

Planting churches is necessary to grow disciples, or what I'll be talking about shortly is, should we not probably be growing disciples who plant churches? It's a very interesting discussion we're having. If all we did is as a church when you came in is count how many people came and how much you gave, that would not honor you for our responsibility in your life. Our responsibility to you is to help you grow as disciples. Our responsibility to you is to help you have transformed lives. I call it the butts and bucks syndrome. A lot of folk do that. How many people came and it's kind of bragging rights? Well, we got a big church and they give a lot of money. Well, interesting. But does it speak to the deeper levels of transformation that you should expect from us to be able to provide for you?

And so some of the challenges in that of course are as subjective and objective metrics. It's easy to count how many people came. How many people have returned. What percentage come on a regular or basis and how much do they give. Okay, interesting, but that's the form. The substance has to be about who has been transformed. Have you an increasing observation in your walk as a disciple of the fruit of the spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Is that evident? A year ago to today, has there been a change? And if you don't know, I'll ask your wife. Or if you don't know, I'll ask your husband. And if they don't know, I'll ask your kids. There ought to be a measurable change, even in these subjective areas, to know that I am in fact, growing as a disciple. And so our responsibility to you is that. And globally, it's becoming an increasing observation of the missional world that it's not just about planting churches and getting people to raise their hands. Are they, in fact becoming disciples?

Some of our partner churches have been doing some amazing things. What are the stats I'm looking for? Oh, I just did that one on the church's church plants. Matthew 28. Let's go on to, I'm just learning how to use this. Church planning versus disciple making. Here we go, funding. The column on the left, your left, is in blue, is how much pennies per dollar we invest in unreached people groups. Here at Southeast, 96 cents of every dollar you give is invested in unreached people groups. You'll see right next to that, the global church investment is one penny on a dollar is going to reach unreached. The other end, how much is going reached the already reached parts of the world. At Southeast, 2 cents on the dollar, and globally it's 87. Now that's not to brag, it's to be transparent with you about how we're using the resources you provide to complete the great commission and reach all people groups. In the church planning world, there is this discussion, as I mentioned about growing disciples or planting churches.

If we plant churches, do they grow disciples? Maybe. If we grow disciples, they certainly plant churches. And we're seeing that over and over, but it's the much more subjective thing of how to make that happen. You've heard Aaron speak about the fastest growing church in the world. And I'll give you some insight onto that with the video clip we'll do here, that this church is in Iran. And most of us would think, well, that's not what media tells us. Iran's a bad place with bad people. There is a significant and rapid growth of the church of the kingdom of God in Iran that is important for us. It's a difference though, between Eastern and Western thinking. You'll hear clips about people who are being discipled before they become believers. Where in the west, we tend to think I become a believer and then I get discipled.

Think about Jesus and his disciples, when he walked along the sea of Galilee, the beach and called out James and John and Peter, went in and called out Matthew. Were they yet believers in him? No, but he called them to follow him and he discipled them to such a point where they ultimately became believers. And so the Eastern church that is growing rapidly is following these principles. Pretty amazing.

The story is shared over and over and over again throughout the Muslim world. Dreams and visions, an Afghani friend, I've just been spending time with in the last two weeks, who's been busy getting his family out of Afghanistan. But himself, at 12, was in a position where he was in danger of his life from the Taliban in such a place that he cried out to Allah. No answer. He cried out to Mohammed. Silence. But the Quran, he said to me, allows him to cry out to Isa, to Jesus. And he did. And there was a miraculous series of events where he was able to escape the Taliban. He's 12 at this time. Then he said, for five years, I was discipled. I met believers. I was able to get portions of scripture. And at 17, sitting on the roof with my Afghani friends, I said, I want to accept Jesus. And they all looked at him and said, would you teach us as well?

So discipleship is happening long before they are becoming believers. And if you think about it, for your own testimony, when did you become a believer and what circumstances before that were leading you to him? It's an important thing for us to learn from, and perhaps even apply to our own pursuit of Jesus and our own sharing of him even if we speak no gospel to the people we love and care for in our families, our neighbors, the people we work with so that they can pre-belief in him, be discipled towards him.

The disciple making mission, and it was referred to in this, and the growth of the church and around is predominantly led by women. And what's important to consider there is that in the church planning world of the planted churches in the world are led by men. It's in patriarchal societies, it's traditional. It's what we, as the Western church have launched as we've begun a church. They would identify typically, not always, typically men to lead them. In the disciple making movement in places like Iran, the women are fully empowered to grow disciples. And in fact, are often much more powerful at discipling and raising up believers than the men are because the women are downtrodden. They are equal to a dog in many of these societies so that their freedom to disciple is growing the church rapidly and then their influence on their family, with their children. Then it moves into the college students and the growth and their dissatisfaction with the world of Islam is really making significant differences.

I mentioned before that we're looking at the possible beginning of a fourth era of missions. There were three eras here previously, the first one, about 1800 when global missional work really began and it was very holistic. People's physical felt needs were being met while the gospel was being shared to them. The second era moved a little bit away from that and began to focus much more on evangelism than it did caring for people's physical needs. Then in the mid 1900s, 1935 forward, there was a return to, we must meet both the physical and spiritual needs of people. The fourth era that I'm going to speak about a little bit right now is a current discussion that the missional world is having and having as a result of the kind of experiences we're having reported from nations like Iran.

So what is the fourth era? It's about gum. What is gum? Anyone know? Wrigley's? Hubba Bubba? Trident, whatever it is. Gum is the acronym for globalization, urbanization, and migration. Globalization has to do with how small our world has become. I've got a chart up here that'll show you the number of cell phones currently in the world. What the world population is not yet 8 billion, but as of 2021, we're about six and a half billion. I know it's coming up. Cell phones, you add to that number tablets, laptops, desktops, smart televisions. I thought about saying, okay, Siri or something like that up here. Hey, Google, and listen to how many phones came on out there. There is nothing you cannot get immediate access to in today's world.

And what's interesting about globalization is, it is also available to people in developing and closed nations as much as their governments may wish to shut that down. Peoples inside these parts of the world are now aware of what's going on outside of their world. Those of us outside of it are able to look in and to see the conditions that these peoples are living in and their awareness of, in the missional sense, the gospel good news, what God has done to reconcile them to himself through Jesus. So there's amazing opportunities today that we have never had before. Urbanization speaks to the rural world moving to the cities. In the 1930s, what was the number up there? 30% of the world's population lived in cities. 70% were farming, lived out in the rural areas. Today those numbers are dramatically and will continue to shift. In 2050, it's expected that 70% of the undeveloped or the third world nations, and 90% of the first world or developing, developed nations will live in cities.

What does that mean to us? That means is the world is coming in into exposure to all the cities have for them, the good, the bad, the otherwise. But if you're coming from a part of the world where you had never heard good news, and now you are hearing it, stories are told of people, a young lady in Jakarta, who comes from her Muslim family to go to her job downtown, working in a business. And she leaves her home in her hijab. And when she gets on the bus slips off her hijab and she's wearing a nice Western suit, she goes into the office and works and her workmates share the gospel with her, invite her to a Bible study at lunch. At the end of the day, she goes back and puts on her hijab, gets on the bus and goes home. These kind of stories are happening over and over, but people are being exposed because of their movement into the cities to good news.

In fact, there are churches, there are organizations who believe that there's an unreached people they've been trying to reach for many years and go out to visit them only to discover that they're no longer there, only to discover that those people have left the rural areas and gone to the cities. And the M stands for migration. Because of all of the unrest in the world, wars, because of all of the opportunities when borders open, peoples are moving. You see the number up there in 2019, it was estimated that a billion people of 8 billion at that time, less than 8 billion were on the move. And we're beginning to see peoples come to Denver. Since 1980, 60,000 refugees have been resettled and now call Denver their home. In fact, in recent weeks, we've had 300 Afghanis resettled here in Denver, and there are 800 more coming very soon. We have an opportunity to be engaged in reaching them.

James chapter two tells us what our responsibility is to be for these people. What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith, but does not have words? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, go in peace, be warmed and filled without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works is dead. But someone will say, you have faith and I have works. Show me your faith apart from your works and I will show you my faith by my works.

I created a chart some time ago to reflect the two hands of the gospel, the great commission and great commandment. So we'll throw that up there and we'll look at the first verse about great commission. I read it earlier. Jesus commandment with all authority for us to go make disciples of all peoples. The great commandment is in fact, the Shama. One of the Pharisees asked Jesus teacher, what is the greatest commandment? And he answers with two things. And he answers with the Shama from Deuteronomy chapter six. They should know this. They prayed the Shama twice a day. It was as important to the people of Israel as the Lord's Prayer might be important to us. He said to them, you shall love the Lord, your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. That is the great and first commandment.

And the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two come commandments depend all the law and the prophets, loving God, loving people. You can see some comparisons between the two here. While the great commission is about good news and the great commandment, good deeds. We go and tell, we go in love. We teach and we reach. Light and salts. People need to know that you care before they'll listen to what you know. Faith and works, very important that we understand the two work in tandem, hand in hand. One without the other is only half the message according to Jesus, that we love God and love our neighbor as ourself.

I'm going to show you another video clip from our brother, Ajai Lall in central India. And what's interesting is some of things he will share are as a result of COVID. For all of the terrible things we've understood COVID has done globally, locally, maybe in your own family, it has opened the door for people to hear good news. Let's look at what Ajai Lall says.

Hello, Southeast family in Parker, Colorado. I'm Ajai Lall from central India, wanting to share greetings on behalf of our family. We feel a deep relationship with your family. We are working together in many areas. We have this partnership for many years, and I want you to know that what God is doing here, you have a significant part, a major role in this. Let me summarize briefly what God has done in last year and a half. We all have gone through a very, very difficult time because of COVID-19. We live in a different world, but in spite of negatives, in spite of difficulties and adversities, God continues to move his hand. I'm standing here as a result of the adversities, my grandparents who came from different backgrounds, different religious backgrounds, they were raised in an orphanage because their parents were killed in epidemics and tragic situations. And as a result of that, they grew up knowing Jesus Christ. And because of that legacy, I'm standing here.

Well, just in year and a half, our Bible college, we had 300 students and we went online and now we have, it's very difficult to believe, over 8,000 students. And now from January, there will be over 12,000 students in 15 language groups. Also, we want you to know that we started Hindi church online for Hindi speaking people. We have over 640 million Hindi speaking people around the globe. That's a major language of India. Right now in year and a half, the number of viewers grew from 300 to over 5 million in 81 countries. We praise God for these victories.

And we have seen amazing growth in some of the areas in India during this epidemic, because people see the hope that we have in Jesus Christ and darker it gets, brighter Jesus' witness becomes. Thank you so much for your partnership. Thank you for your love and prayers to Central India Christian mission, to Indu and I, and also to [inaudible] Greg and their family. We love you very much. May God bless you.

Actually, I get to happily correct Ajai, on that. Their enrollment in their Bible schools is now 14,000 and all of that happened as a result of COVID. They had to decentralize their localized Bible school and spread it out, translating all of their curriculum to the many languages Ajai referred to spreading it through India. And now it is multiplied to that kind of an so what the deviled intended for their harm, the Lord is using for their good. In fact, through the Bible school program and through their own evangelism, they have seen 2,932 new churches planted, and they have seen 110,000 people make Jesus their Lord as well, so it's pretty amazing.

Our next screen shows one of our partners who work in the Himalayas. And for 20 years, they have been busy working in the heights of the Himalayas predominantly among the Tibetan Buddhist people groups, 23 identified people groups. In this last year through caring for people, rescuing trafficked ladies, battling child labor issues, providing fresh water, meeting the needs of people, they can now announce that five of those people groups in this last year can be classified as reached. Again, great commandment, great commission working well together.

And I'll finally show you a few stats from China. China, there is now a recorded 128 million Christians, approaching 8% of their population. We don't hear a lot about this. And these are people who claim Jesus at cost of, or at the risk of their very lives. In the United States, we are numbered at 240 million believers, none of us at the risk of our life. So you consider what's going on there and that every day there are 15 to 20,000, is that the number, we're 20 to 25,000. 15 to 20,000 new believers every day in China. So they're growing rapidly. And in fact, during COVID, the Chinese church, which is all underground, were able to not only care for the needs of people who were suffering, but because they were wearing masks and in China, where there are cameras on everything, they were able to evangelize openly and freely as they met the needs of people, because they could not be identified behind their masks. Isn't that great?

So digital ministry is huge. Our partners are reaching tens of millions of people through social media, where you can invite people to securely connect with you. You can share gospel, you can offer teaching. You can offer opportunities for them to reach out and meet with someone. And so there are hundreds and hundreds of Muslims in North Africa and the Middle East who are coming to Jesus as a result of social media. Others of our partners are doing creative things like helium balloons and floating thumb drives and micro SD cards over the borders, or even taking water bottles and putting thumb drives and micro SD cards and floating them down rivers to the peoples who are down river to pick up. There's some incredible and creative things being done as a result of globalization, technology that's available. And there are creative ways of doing things.

In closing, I want to talk to us a little bit more about the responsibility of planting and watering. Paul says to the Corinthians, I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants, nor he waters is anything, but only God who the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one and each will receive his wages according to his labor, for we are God's fellow workers. Important. He who plants and he who waters are one. One of the challenges of the church world, the missional world today is we have not behaved as one. Unity has been a challenge and there has been divisiveness between the church and between missional organizations globally. And the cry of our world, our world here at Southeast, and our world of missions is let's come together. Let's lay aside our differences. Let's roll up our sleeves and get the job done. And so that is increasingly part of what we're experiencing.

Matthew tells us in Matthew 24, and this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations and then the end will come. The end will come. God's plan will be completed. The kingdom of God, as promised, will be established on earth. And we may in this fourth era of missions, see the kingdom of God come more rapidly than you or I could ever imagine. I don't know when the day or the hour is, I do know that we are seeing such a rapid expanse of the gospel, that it could be in your life and mine that we see this.

Let's look at the implications of God for us. First implication, we each play a part in planning and watering. This is not for somebody else to do, somewhere else to do it. It's your responsibility and mine. Let's do it and do it in unity with one another, that the kingdom of God might be established.

Number two. Disciples make disciples. Discipleship isn't accidental. It's a intentional behavior of those who have been discipled and accepted Christ and are being discipled now, you and I, to replicating that amongst those in our family that are unbelievers and our children who are young and I impressionable, and others that we will engage with. Third one, as believers Jesus' return is our great hope and most anticipated moment. When all have been reached, the end will come. There will be a day when Jesus will sit on the throne of David and rule and reign. We, as a church, must again have that great anticipation and excitement considering that this day will indeed happen and our part in making this happen is relevant.

Fourth implication is that God wins. Revelation chapter 11 reminds us of this. And the seventh angel bluest trumpet and there were loud voices in heaven saying the kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ. And he shall reign forever and ever. And the 24 elders who sit on their thrones before God fell on their faces and worship God saying, we give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty, who is and who was, for you have taken your great power, and begun [inaudible].

As we move into communion, I'd like us to give some consideration of what we've heard today. The movement of this world toward God and the establishment of his kingdom is upon us. So let's consider that as we move to communion. On the night that he was betrayed, Jesus took the bread, gave thanks, gave it to his disciples and said, this is my body, when you eat it, eat it in remembrance of me. And after supper, he took the cup and he told them that this cup is the new covenant in my blood. And when you drink it, drink it in remembrance of me.

Father, thank you for all that you've done to equip us to join you in the establishment of bringing your kingdom to this world. Father, help us this week to be careful in our listening and obedience, to step out as disciples, investing in the life of those who will be disciples or are disciples for your glory. Let's stand and sing our last song.