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Heroes
Posted by Strider in Church & Missions
I was at my very first Annual General Meeting in 1997 when I saw him. He spoke passionately and eloquently. It seemed that he was full of faith and he dared us to be as gutsy and adventurous as he was. At the end of the week I told him I wanted to become a man like him. He had started new work in one country and then went on to start work in another formerly ‘closed’ country. Then he moved on again to another project. After several years of moving from one project to another he left our organization and is now working back in the West. This is not a story of moral failure. This is not a story of a great leader letting us all down. This is a story of me finding out who I really want to be. This man may have been faithful to all that God was calling him to, I can’t know for sure. What I do know is that he is not my hero anymore. Today I want to show you what I think a real hero is and give some solid examples. We have all seen the cult of personality that can grow up around larger than life characters. Men and women who communicate well and build big organizations or have large followings are not interesting to me anymore. We have real heroes in SBC life and I think we are the poorer for not celebrating them and promoting them as the real examples to follow. I need to add this disclaimer: I am speaking from a missions perspective. I am well aware that there are great men and women of faith back in the West. Someone else should write about them.
Four days before my wife and I were deployed to the field in 1996 we had breakfast with Gandalf and his wife. Gandalf is my father’s age. He was a printer for over thirty years printing gospel tracts when his first wife died of cancer. His business went bankrupt and he jumped on a motorcycle and rode up to the Pacific Northwest where he stopped in a little country church. It didn’t have a pastor so he became the pastor. After a couple of years he went to Seminary and met his future wife. She had been divorced and through that painful process had come to faith in Jesus. She felt called into missions though her church leaders told her that she could not be called into missions since she had been divorced. She and Gandalf shared their faith together in some street ministries during Seminary and eventually she persuaded him to marry her. I can’t tell you the names of any of the five countries they have worked in for security reasons but suffice it to say that they have worked in many major hot spots often alone and always bearing fruit for the Kingdom. They came with us to Gondor and helped us open the work here in this formerly closed country. I remember having a team meeting once where I encouraged everyone to be much more intentional about sharing their faith. Gandalf’s wife looked at me and said, “What are you talking about? Every morning I wake up and pray for the opportunity to share Jesus with someone, all day I look for opportunities to share my faith in every conversation I have, and every night I go to bed thinking about how I could have shared better.” She was mystified to know that most of us don’t live like this. Gandalf did most of the overseeing of the remodeling of my home and is responsible for me having a real flush toilet. He served faithfully and constantly. He left here to go to Mordor and now he serves in Northern Harad where just last week the bullets were flying down the street outside his door. I don’t know anyone in our area who have led more people to faith than Gandalf and his wife. Gandalf turned 73 years old this year. Since his wife was divorced they can not be appointed career and so they do everything on two or three year contracts with the ISC program and now the Master’s Program. He can’t retire because one, he doesn’t want to and two, he can’t afford to. They are real heroes that you will not likely ever know this side of Heaven.
I have been privileged to work with great men and women through the years. Many were people of great faith, others were loving, and still others were immensely gifted. The people that I admire most, the ones that I really want to be like are the ones who persevere. I was a teenager in the 1970′s and was a part of the huge youth movements that swept through America. We had over 50 kids in our little youth group when I was a senior in high school. I don’t know if even ten of those kids are serving the Lord today. I am not better than any of them. I not smarter, more ‘spiritual’, or more blessed. The difference between those who are not serving and those that are is simple perseverance. Will I keep being faithful when no one else is looking? When there is no financial benefit? When there is no perceivable fruit for my efforts? When I size up the situation and everything points to a sensible tactical retreat will I continue to be too stupid to quit? I pray so.
There is a price to be paid for living on the edge. Gimli was a small church pastor when God called him to come and help Gandalf and I start the work in Gondor. He and his wife had two unmarried grown children when they signed up for a two year ISC term. They asked their children if they had any ‘special’ plans like marriage in the near future. Nope. No one on the horizon. Four months after their arrival in Gondor we took Gimli and his wife (whom their son asked me to please name Galadrial) on a picnic to take their minds off of the fact that their daughter was getting married that day and they were not able to travel back for the wedding. Gimli and Galadrial later went to Ithilien to open the work in that difficult remote region. They have labored there largely alone for nine years. Last month they led a young lady to faith in Jesus, the second convert in nine years of hard and difficult work. Galadrial did ok with missing their daughter’s wedding but she is not ok with being so far from her first grandchild. She still cries when ever they are able to get a call in and talk to them. Her knees are shot and she is in a lot of pain working in such a mountainous difficult region but she can’t leave ‘her’ people. ‘Her’ people are lost and in desperate need of the saving power of Jesus. She loves them well everyday. Time completely fails me to tell you about Gimli and how he shares boldly and loves well the people God has called him to serve. These people are real heroes but you will not likely ever meet them and security keeps me from telling you as much about them as I wish I could.
In all the talk about the GCR some have been very discouraged about the SBC. Some have expressed that God has turned his back on us. As long as Southern Baptist Churches disciple and empower men and women like these then God is not through with us yet. Of course there are self-serving charlatans among us. Probably every human institution has them. They want to use us for their own personal glory but don’t get confused on this issue: They are not us. God’s people are still being saved, discipled, empowered, and utilized for His glory. His Kingdom is coming and it is beautiful. We need to decide to be a part of it now.
I have given some examples of Southern Baptist heroes but in eternity we will not be the ones who are standing the highest. We know too much, have seen too much, God has blessed us abundantly. We are the guy with five talents and if anyone thinks we are even using two of them I would say you are self-deceived. I know two couples who live where no one should live. They came to faith in Jesus out of strict Muslim backrounds four years ago. Their village is the poorest in Gondor and they are continually malnourished and in need. They work hard under a brutal sun with almost nothing to show for it. They read the Word everyday and pray for God’s guidance but they really know very little. They are not educated and they don’t understand much of what they read. But in spite of being born and raised as Muslims, in spite of being miles and miles from the next nearest believers, in spite of persecution from their neighbors and former friends and family they stand. They stand every day because He is able to make them stand. Surely the angels in Heaven stand amazed that men and women with so little light yet look to our Lord and worship Him with thanksgiving. These men and women are the real heroes of the faith. We need to encourage them, celebrate them, and imitate them.
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Brother Strider,
So very true,…. that real perseverance is God effected and lasting and we are more apt to spot it as we follow Christ.
Your post reminds me of the grace so gloriously bestowed on the beloved….patience, kindness, meekness, longsuffering, … things that are rare for many who remain malnutritioned on selfish motives.
May God continue to show us those great in the faith He provides!…so that we can encourage and be encouraged by them as well.
Blessings,
Chris
Strider, another fantastic post.
I am convinced that the first will be last and the last will be first. The reason we do not hear about the real heroes is because that is how God has designed it. If it were about personalities and celebrities, Jesus would have told us so. But instead he said that the way to greatness in the kingdom is to assume the role of lowliest servant. Even the Son of Man did not come to be pandered to, but to minister and sacrifice his own life for others.
I believe the great saints in the American church are the ones we never hear about and will likely never hear about for a couple reasons, first of all that they do not believe themselves to be great, second that those around them do not regard them as great.
I have no problem with high-profile saints and headline-grabbing celebrity saints. Every age has its Diotrophes who loves to have the preeminence or the religious leaders who seek the highest seats at the feasts and delight in honoraria. They have their reward, the accolades of their peers.
I used to be dismayed by my lack of celebrity status. Now I am delighted in it. My goal is to be like yeast, working quietly, silently, but effectively to make the rest of the loaf look good.
rick
Wow, what a post. What you write puts so much of what is going on in the SBC into proper perspective. I so totally agree with the statement, “The people that I admire most, the ones that I really want to be like are the ones who persevere.” Many years ago a retiring M couple were given the opportunity of sharing what they had learned after 30 years on the field. In essence, the lesson was, don’t give up. Perseverance seems to be a rare trait anymore in an ever-changing and mobile world. Thanks for helping us today get our minds off ourselves and onto the One who is worthy of our perseverance.
Strider,
Very good post. We all have people like that we’ve met. People who are extraordinary in the normalcy of lives lived for Christ. Watchman Nee wrote about the “normal Christian life” in such a way as to evoke from those of us not yet there, a wistfulness to live such a life.
I’m convinced that the heros of many of us are not those most prominent, but those who have continued on, even when it seems impractical to do so.
I, too, believe the SBC has more usefulness to His kingdom, but that doesn’t mean we don’t need to do some tweaking organizationally.
God, in His wisdom, has chosen to have most believers serve without fanfare. I appreciate those He has elevated to be the face of His work, but the quiet faithfulness of the untold numbers of nameless refugees from Jerusalem permeated Asia Minor so that Paul could coalesce them into local assemblies. So, today. We seldom hear of those who serve quietly and faithfully, yet who used mightily by Almighty God.
Thanks again for reminding me to remember those I know who serve thusly.
As one of your co-workers, I can only say thanks for posting this.
Continue to persevere. Run and finish the race. Endure. Be steadfast. And be found faithful.
And do it for the Lord and him alone.
I’m not sure I understand all the Bible says about rewards and crowns and such. But whatever crowns there are are likely to go to faithful people like you described more than the brightly burning stars in the SBC galaxy.
When we went to Taiwan as missionaries (I was 12 at the time), we traveled with a retired Sears executive who had been given a golden parachute at age 55 and sent out to pasture. Instead of buying an RV and hanging out with his grandkids, he and his wife headed to Taiwan to be dorm parents at Morrison Academy.
They started doing something that was unique at the time. They would invite Chinese and Taiwanese people into their home and teach them English – using the Bible as a “textbook.” They had more success than a lot of career missionaries, so after their first term they were sent back and put near a Taichung university and did this full-time. They stayed several terms in Taichung and only came home when they were forced to by the effects of age.
I’ve had the chance to meet some “bigwigs” in the SBC. But I suspect somehow that when we get to heaven, it will be people like Earl and Lois Langley who will be the greatest of the great. Few ever heard of them, but they were heroes to me.
On this I agree with David Miller; not a doubt in my mind.
When I hear stories like this I think about James Broome in my Dad’s Church 40 years ago in South Carolina, or my own Grandfather with an 8th grade education.
Papa used to read his Sunday School lessons month at a time. Had a little free standing cuppola out in his yard and he’d go out for 90 minutes first of the Month on a Saturday afternoon and bone up for the whole month.
Both these men probably had a view of Scripture more in common with you fellows than with me; but I am convinced the Truth of the Scripture is not diminished by investigation.
In fact both of them I am convinced had their circumstances been different and they had proper guidance they would be about where Cecil Sherman was.
Strider:
I agree with you that perserverace is a major aspect in using our Christian talents.
Winston Churchill gave what I believe to be one of the best speeches given in the 20th century. He got up in front of a class at an exclusive Boy’s Prep School in England during the time that the Nazi’s were occupying most of Western Europe just across the Channel from England. London was receiving nightly V-2 attacks.
This is Churchill’s speech:
Never, never, never, never, never give up!
Then he sat down.
All good comments guys, Thank you. Any other examples of heroes you want to share?
I just finished day 2 of the East Asia Summit held in OKC. I think I have met some worthy heroes. One who, with her huband has been in East Asia for 35 years and is helping focus on unreached and unengaged people groups. One who has been there about 15 years. A young gun who wept as he told what God was doing. These are our M’s, and they are heroes.
Steve in Montana
Yes, I can think of various heroes who have stuck it out through thick and thin in Spain and in Portugal, the two countries I know best on the international mission field. They have seen paradigms come and paradigms go. They have won the love and respect of national believers and non-believers, something that is not always so easy to do in these countries. Several of these couples have now retired, and several others are getting close to that time. I would say their names, but I haven’t asked their permission, and they might be embarrassed that I mentioned them here.