When I was in seminary and even before that I would dream of preaching to thousands from a well appointed platform. I dreamed my voice would carry a message to a world that once they heard it, they would drop to their knees and worship the one true Savior. I may be the only one to publicly admit that, but I am sure I am not the only one to ever have that dream. Even though I have preached to many, many people over the years, the message from my voice never penetrated deep into the community that I was in. No matter how loud I could scream or pound my fist into the pulpit the majority of my world still was lost and dying without Jesus.
I served a “going and blowing” church in Central Florida back in the 90s. Many envied my position. Our church had the very real potential of being a mega-church. We were growing like a weed. I was the education/administration pastor, which today would be called the executive pastor, and I was asked to speak at conferences everywhere. I was asked to do training events and to write articles. The church’s success could have easily gone to my head, but I found myself sitting alone in my office at First Baptist Mt. Dora, Florida, with my heart hurting, not from any problems in my arteries, but rather from looking out the window into my world, knowing that people were alone, they were hurting, they weren’t healing, and they were choosing to hurt themselves or others with decision after decision. I found myself thinking, “God, is this all there is?” I would whisper in my prayers to God, “You placed me here. You called me for this purpose - to change the world or at least my part of it, and I am not doing it. I have failed you.” Something stirred deep in my soul. The thought crossed my mind, “Why are you in this office?” I don’t know if it was something I had heard from a message or a song on the radio, but I knew that I no longer needed to be in that office. I can write many articles behind my computer. I can do all the accounting the church needs. I can make decisions on this curriculum or that. I can help make plans for events and sometimes I can even counsel deeply with someone in that office, but I knew deep down that I could never change the world from that office. I had to leave.
I moved to another church in another state. I moved to a church that I loved very much and still do. Apparently, West Hartselle Baptist Church didn’t want me to be in an office. One of the deacons actually asked me three days after I began serving that church, “Why are you in here? You ought to be out there?” That deacon will never know what he taught me that day. That church to me became a little slice of heaven right here on earth. My very first Wednesday evening while I was leading a prayer meeting a wonderful saint who was a leader in our church’s women’s mission ministries stood and prayed. She boldly asked, “God we have been asking for a long time that you send a missionary out from among us.” BOOM, for me it felt like her prayer was on a direct line from her heart and lips directly to God in Heaven who threw it right back down to where it exploded in my heart. I knew from that moment, that I would not be at that church for the rest of my life. The truth of the matter is that we only spent three years in that wonderful church, but it is the church that my family still to this day calls “home.”
After tearfully leaving there, my little family of three found itself living in Central America tasked with getting Jesus’ saving message into 4.5 million people’s ears that will hear. Good grief, how in the world does one actually do that? Thankfully the mission agency that sent me was very clear that success was not in getting all those people saved, but rather all I had to do was get the message in a clear voice to their ears. It was then their responsibility to respond to the call of Jesus or not. I strategized and planned. I came up with many expensive ideas. Perhaps getting the message out on radio and TV. The internet wasn’t yet a big thing. My rude awakening came when my supervisor said, “That’s a good plan, where are you going to get the money? Because I don’t have it to give you. What else have you got?” I didn’t have anything. Everything that I knew was based on what I had seen growing up, and everything was way out of my budget. I knew how to start churches the traditional way, but I couldn’t build enough for 4.5 million people. I knew how to start seminaries. I didn’t have the funds. I knew how to plan and successfully hold events, rallies, and meet and greets. How, how, how, LORD GOD, please let me know. I don’t know what to do. YOU CALLED ME HERE. HOW CAN YOU GIVE ME THIS TASK? HOW CAN YOU ABANDON ME HERE WITH NOT MORE DIRECTION THAN TO “GO AND TEACH”?
The problem I faced was that religion in the US is a rich
religion, and it does rich things very well. I was never
taught and no one ever showed me how to do
Driving over a ridge top road at the setting sun, I could see the Pacific Ocean on one side and the darkening Central Mountain range on the other. Between me and the ocean was a smaller mountain range. It was so beautiful. I pulled over to the side of the road. I looked out toward the ocean. I don’t know I was probably 4ooo feet above sea level where I was. As the sun was setting the mist started settling down into the valleys. I watched as lights began to turn on one by one, sometimes several at the same time in a little village far below. I silently confessed to God, “How am I going to do what you asked me to do, when I don’t know how to even reach that little village down there.” Let me be very clear, I always am suspicious of people who say they heard clearly a Word from God, but that moment a thought entered my mind from somewhere - I don’t know it could have come from a long lost sermon buried deep down in my memories and chose that very moment to pop to the top. I don’t know where it came from, so I choose to say that God spoke to me clearly that evening. He said, “Well, you can’t do it from here.”
I searched hard for that little community. I finally had to buy a very expensive Government survey map just to find the dirt road that led to that little place on earth. It’s name was Barroeta. (Little Mud Hole.) It was a hard driving hour off the pavement down a very steep cliff. The community may have numbered 100 people - maybe not that many. It sure seemed like a strange place to get the saving message to 4.5 million people. More than once, I asked God, “Are you sure about this?” He didn’t answer, but instead He allowed me to meet José Manuel Rojas Sosa.
José wasn’t much. He was a drunk. He couldn’t read. He had only very recently come to know Christ. He told me the following story about the change Jesus made in his life. The Costa Rican rain water woke him up from a drunk that he regularly pitched. He sat up while the water was running over him. He saw sober for the first time his situation. He no longer had his wife, whose name was Felicia. She left with his 4 sons awhile back. He lost his job from his drinking. While soaking wet sitting up in a gutter filled with rain water run off, he looked down, and he had lost his shoes. When a man loses his shoes he has pretty much lost everything he has. José said to no one in particular, because no one ever listens to the ramblings of drunks, “God, is this all there is?” Apparently God was listening, because before the day was through a stranger passed through and told him, “There is more to life than this. Can I share with you a story that changed my life?” After the story, he asked José, “Would you like to know a Jesus like I know?” The stranger taught him to pray and José said, “SÃ, Señor. Te seguiré!” (Yes, Lord. I will follow you.)
That man taught José a few more things that day and then left him. No one will ever know his name. José doesn’t remember it. I never met him, but José discovered through him that Jesus loved him and was searching for him. He would forgive him and would change him. For José this changed everything. He left the bottle. He got a job at the chicken plant. He saved enough money and bought a little lot on the side of a cliff. He found enough materials to put a dry roof over his head, and Felicia came home with his sons. One morning, he sat there in his homemade chair drinking coffee telling me this story. He said, “I know God is telling me to do something, but I don’t know what it is?”
I said, “José, I do.”
This little book is not about José or the thousands that have followed Jesus just like he and I have, but rather this book is for those dreamers just like me, who don’t know how to do what God has asked of them. They clearly know that they want to see their churches, communities and their piece of the world change. They want to see tens, hundreds, thousands, and millions bow to the one called Jesus. This little book is for you. The idea is that you clearly see a process that you can use where God has placed you to do what HE has called you to do wherever you may be.
God has been kind. He has allowed me to see Him work on three continents. People by the hundreds and now by the hundreds of thousands coming to know Jesus. Their lives changed forever when Jesus replaced the anger, disillusionment, frustration, and pain in their hearts with His name. Now that I have watched God work, I realized that while I sat in my office at First Mt. Dora, I was praying for success, but I was planning for failure. If I had succeeded in doubling the size of my church in Florida, everyone in my circle would have been seriously impressed. Our Sunday attendance would have been over 2000. I would have been asked to write books, be interviewed, and the accolades would flow, but the reality of that amazing success would have been that while we fit a few more people into the building, there still would have been almost 100,000 people outside those walls within driving distance desperately missing the peace that only Jesus Christ provides.
The little book that follows is a snapshot of what we see God doing through His movement that we are allowed to watch in Central Africa. I’m convinced that God would like to move just like that here in North America, but for that to happen, it will mean a shift in thinking. Success will be redefined completely.
