My wife and I received an invitation from a friend at church to reach out to the city of Glasgow on a long-term full-time basis. When my wife first received this invite, she felt a bit tentative to present it to me as up to that point, I had only short-term, part-time experience in the mission field whereas she has spent several years as a full time missionary prior to marriage.
Immediately when she presented it to me I repeated the same phrase, thinking out loud, "Could this be true? Could this really be true?". I immediately thought (out loud as usual) "This could be the very thing that I was born to do!". With fasting, prayer, and seeking wisdom from some great men and women of God in our lives, we responded to the Lord, "Here am I. Send me!" or, well, "us" but that somehow doesn't sound as cool as the actual Bible verse.
We said 'yes' and began our relationship with Foursquare Missions International (FMI), the missions branch of Foursquare International, of which our church is a part. FMI is a great organization which believes that the church should be interdenominational and comprised of nationals of a particular culture ministering to other nationals of that culture which was our heart long before we even knew about FMI!
We attended an intensive training session along with some other amazing missionaries from around the world! We drank diligently from the fire hose for nearly two weeks and looked at each other afterward and asked again, "Do we really want to do this?". Again, more prayer, more seeking and an arrival at the same conclusive response: "Here am I Lord, Send me." (or us).
But why is the Lord raising people up from around the world to come to Glasgow? An initial investigation from my safe home thousands of miles away would reveal that there is a wonderful Christian community in this great city but it is very small, comparatively speaking, to the population and need. I felt that the Lord gave me a vision from above Glasgow of a wall being built by his people but it was needing more work and more workers. It was like seeing a scene out of the book of Nehemiah captured in a still shot where I could see the work happening but also the necessity for additional workers.
And just what is the work that is required? Great question, I'm glad you asked that. In order to answer it properly it might require a bit of church history in the region. In the early 16th century, protestant Christians were persecuted for their faith by Queen Mary the daughter of King Henry VIII. Many fled the country for friendlier environs. One such "Marian" exile was a Scotsman named John Knox. Knox fled to Geneva in southern Switzerland where he heard of a protestant French exile named John Calvin. Calvin gave Knox the freedom to practice his faith under the protection of the Swiss government (now a protestant government due to the work of Ulrich Zwingli in Zurich, Calvin in Geneva, and Luther in Germany). Knox learned from Calvin and, after Queen Mary had died, he returned to his native Scotland and brought his newly refined doctrine and liturgy with him. He formed Presbyterianism which became the Church of Scotland (or vice versa depending on your view of church history). This resulted in a widespread acceptance of the Gospel throughout Scotland but unfortunately, like many state churches, the fire for Jesus would be replaced with a fire for ecclesiology.
Storm after storm of secular ideology and atheistic world views would take its toll on the Church of Scotland. Today, CofS reports that membership is down by as much as 50% and of those that consider themselves members of the church, only 10% attend regularly. Churches are closing almost weekly. A cursory search of the CofS website reveals an exhaustive (and exhausting) list of vacant churches for sale. Glasgow is now experiencing widespread second and third generation atheism whereby parents and grandparents may have rejected the Gospel, children and grandchildren in their twenties and teens have never even heard the Gospel! Yes, like many western European cities, Glasgow is moving in the direction of becoming "unreached".
As we've discovered here in America, where the Gospel is removed, something worse moves in to take its place: alcoholism, homelessness, hopelessness, teenage pregnancy, violence among youth - the list goes on and on. Our heart is to bring the Gospel along with a Pentecostal witness and through Jesus, raise up a community of Glaswegians to minister to other Glaswegians to restore the hope of Jesus and the power of his Holy Spirit and Resurrection into what appears to be an ever-darkening situation. Jesus said, "The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Pray the Lord of the harvest to send out workers." If you've prayed for the Lord to send out workers, we believe the Lord is answering that prayer by calling us and many others out into the field to bring healing, hope, and restoration to people He cares for passionately.
Will you join us? Will you come to Glasgow? Will you partner with us financially and go with us in spirit? Will you pray for this work and for our boldness and effectiveness to engage in the work of the Kingdom in Glasgow?
Here is a link to our page at FMI where you can learn more about FMI and our work in Glasgow. You can also support and partner with us financially directly from this page:
http://give.foursquare.org/Hamilton
From both Sarah and myself, we want to say God bless you and thank you for joining us in our journey into the wild blue yonder!
No comments:
Post a Comment