Introducing....The Cross and Anchor

As some of you may know, my wife and I have recently taken a step of faith in following God's call and I have become a chaplain in the United States Navy. We see this as a both an amazing opportunity to engage in a unique ministry and also great training for future mission work. To document this journey I have started another blog, The Cross and Anchor.
I will continue to post here from time to time and keep posts at The Cross and Anchor solely focused on issues related to the Chaplaincy. At least that's the plan. So stop on by and journey on this new adventure with us!

by His grace
for His glory
jrf

Litmus test for Great Commission faithfulness

Just wanted to share something that I heard listening to Al Mohler's podcast this morning.

In response to a caller's question he stated that a good test of whether or not the American church is faithfully fulfilling it's Great Commission mandate is not so much by looking at whether there are those who are ready to go as missionaries (which there are) but whether or not our churches are eager and mobilized to send those missionaries.

What do you think? Is the American church taking their mandate seriously? Are we spending as much time, money, and effort in seeking the salvation of souls, the healing of bodies, and the glory of Christ among the nations as our unbelieving counterparts are in seeking a profit in the Global community?

Did you know that more people know the name of Coca-Cola than they do the name of Jesus? Just sayin.

Word of God more important than freedom?

"All who are under the yoke as slaves are to regard their own masters as worthy of all honor so that the name of God and our doctrine will not be spoken against."
- I Timothy 6:1

If I'm reading this right Paul is saying that the honor and reputation of the Word of God is more important than the freedom of slaves that are believers in Christ.

Would you agree? Disagree? Let me know what you think.

PS I don't think this is a case for dismissing Christian Social Action

Ralph Winter pt III

Here is a 16-minute video from the U.S. Center for World Mission telling the story of Ralph Winter's life and ministry.

Ralph D. Winter Tribute from U.S. Center for World Mission on Vimeo.

Ralph Winter pt II

In my previous post I shared some quotes from one of Ralph Winter's many monumental articles. Sadly for us, two days ago, Ralph Winter passed into eternity.
It blows my mind to think about what he is now experiencing, being in the presence of his King and seeing the fruit of his long years of missionary service and mobilization. I can imagine he is meeting many families of the earth that he never met while here but who came to know Christ as a result of his work and voice.

here is a link to John Piper's Personal Tribute to Ralph Winter.



for the King
jrf

Reconsecration to a Wartime, Not a Peacetime, Lifestyle - by Ralph Winter

Below are some quotes from Ralph Winter's classic article:

Obedience to the Great Commission has more consistently been poisoned by affluence than by anything else. The antidote for affluence is reconsecration.

There will only be a way if there is a will. But we will find there is no will:
- so long as the Great Commission is thought impossible to fulfill
- so long as anyone thinks that the problems of the world are hopeless or that, conversely, they can be solved merely by politics or technology
- so long as our home problems loom larger to us than anyone else's
- so long as people enamored of Eastern culture do not understand that Chinese and Muslims can and must as easily become evangelical Christians without abandoning their cultural systems as did the Greeks in Paul's day
- so long as modern believers, like the ancient Hebrews, get to thinking that God's sole concern is the blessing of our nation
- so long as well paid evangelicals, both pastors and people, consider their money a gift from God to spend however they wish on themselves rather than a responsibility from God to help others in spiritual and economic need
- so long as we do not understand that he who would seek to save his life shall lose it


When will we recognize the fact that the wrath of God spoken of in the Bible is far less directed at those who sit in darkness than it is against those who refuse to share what they have?

If the the average mission supporter is only five pounds overweight, it means he spends [on food], to his own hurt, at least five times as much as he gives for missions. If he were to choose simple food (as well as not overeat) he could give ten times as much as he does to mission and not modify his standard of living in any other way!...the overall lifestyle to which Americans have acquiesced has led us to a place where we are hardening our hearts and our arteries simultaneously.

I believe that God cannot expect less from us as our Christian duty to save other nations than our own nation has required of us in times of war in order to save our own nation

Mercy vs. Evangelism = false dichotomy?

Below is a great conversation between D.A. Carson, John Piper, and Tim Keller about how ministries of the Word and ministries of mercy need not be at odds, but rather natural, necessary outflows of keeping the Gospel at the core of what the church is and is for.

Quotes from Samuel Zwemer and Friends

Samuel Zwemer has been called the "Apostle to the Muslims". He was a pioneer missionary who spent his life sharing the Gospel with the Muslim world and calling the church to take seriously it's mission of preaching the message of Christ's kingdom in all the world, especially the "unoccupied fields" of the Muslim world. Here are a few quotes from an article he wrote called "The Glory of the Impossible".

Our willingness to sacrifice for an enterprise is always in proportion to our faith in that enterprise. Faith has the genius of transforming the barely possible into actuality.

You have a factor here (speaking on the Great Commission) that is absolutely infinite, and what does it matter as to what other factors may be. 'I will do as much as I can,' says one. Any fool can do that. He that believes in Christ does what he can not do, attempts the impossible and performs it." - Charles Spurgeon

Does it really matter how many die or how much money we spend in opening closed doors, and in occupying the different fields, if we really believe that missions are warfare and that the King's glory is at stake?

The unoccupied fields of the world must have their Calvary before they can have their Pentecost.

The unoccupied fields of the world await those who are willing to be lonely for the sake of Christ.

Who would naturally prefer to leave the warmth and comfort of hearth and home and the love of the family circle to go after a lost sheep, whose cry we have faintly heard in the howling of the tempest? Yest such is the glory of the task that neither home ties nor home needs can hold back those who have caught the vision and the spirit of the Great Shepherd. Because the lost ones are His sheep, and He has made us His shepherds and not His hirelings, we must bring them back.

There is nothing finer nor more pathetic to me than the way in which missionaries unlearn the love of their old home, die to their native land, and wed their hearts to the people they have served and won; so that they cannot rest in England, but must return to lay their bones where they spent their hearts for Christ. How vulgar the common patriotisms seem beside this inverted homesickness, this passion of a kingdom which has no frontiers and no favored race, the passion of a homeless Christ! - P.T. Forsyth


There is no instance of an Apostle being driven abroad under the compulsion of a bald command. Each one went as a lover to his betrothed on his appointed errand. It was all instinctive and natural. They were equally controlled by the common vision, but they had severally personal visions which drew them wither they were needed. In the first days of Christianity, there is an absence of the calculating spirit. Most of the Apostles died outside of Palestine, though human logic would have forbidden them to leave the country until it had been Christianized. The calculating instict is death to faith, and had the Apostles allowed it to control their motives and actions, they would have said: "The need in Jerusalem is so profound, our responsibilities to people of our own blood so obvious, that we must live up to the principle that charity begins at home. After we have won the people of Jerusalem, of Judea and of the Holy Land in general, then it will be time enough to go abroad; but our problems, political, moral and religious, are so unsolved here in this one spot that it is manifestly absurd to bend our shoulders to a new load." - Charles H. Brent

When Judson was lying loaded with chains in a Burmese dungeon, a fellow prisoner asked with a sneer about the prospect for the conversion of the heathen. Judson calmly answered, "The prospects are as bright as are the promises of God"

There are hundreds of Christian college men who expect to spend life in practicing law or in some trade for a livelihood, yet who have strength and talent enough to enter these unoccupied fields. There are young doctors who might gather around them in some new mission station thousands of those who "suffer the horrors of heathenism and Islam," and lift their burden of pain, but who now confine their efforts to some "pent-up Utica" where the healing art is subject to the law of competition and is measured too often merely in terms of a cash-book and ledger. They are making a living; they might be making a life.


Do not pray for easy lives; pray to be stronger men. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers; pray for powers equal to your tasks. Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle, but you shall be a miracle. - Phillips Brooks

Faithful versus Dutiful (Perspectives #3)

Each week's reading for my Perspectives class begins with a key word and a brief explanation of that word in the context of missions. This weeks word is "Faithful"

"Faithful: Faithful people know they are being trusted. Zeal to fulfill that trust distinguishes the faithful from those who are merely dutiful. The dutiful perform what is required, and so they are sometimes daunted in the face of sacrifice. The faithful remain dedicated to the One who entrusts them despite the high cost. Sacrifice is a light thing for them, because they have already entered into some of the joy of their Master, who commends them for being not only good, but also faithful."

Perspectives on the World Christian Movement - #`2 The Great Commandment and the Great Commission

In Matthew 22:34-40 Jesus states that the Greatest Commandment is total love for God which will express itself in selfless love of one's neighbor. All of God's commandments are summed up in this.

In Matthew 28:18-20 declared to all his disciples that He had universal authority, "Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them ina the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

So how do the Great Commandment and the Great Commission work together? Are they merely two different ways of expressing the same mandate?

While certainly much could be said about how they complement each other there is one major distinction that must be pointed out.

The Great Commandment will never be completed. We will be loving God and our redeemed neighbors in heaven for eternity.

The Great Commission however will be fulfilled and will eventually become history. As pointed out in the previous post, the Great Commission's fulfillment is founded on God's promise to "bless all the nations", a promise reiterated by Jesus Himself (Matthew 24:14). There is a linear point in history where the Great Commission will become the Great Fulfillment.
We are closer than ever to that point.
As you strive for faithfulness to the Great Commandment, may you be used by God to complete the Great Commission.

Perspectives on the World Christian Movement - #`1 The Living God is a Missionary God

A few weeks ago I began taking the Perspectives on the World Christian Movement class offered through the U.S. Center for World Mission. So far the class has been mind and heart blowing. It is so encouraging, convicting and motivating to be in a theology class and actually get excited about God! I also am enjoying this class because of all the connections it has been making for me. I came out of seminary knowing how to exegete, exposit and preach a passage, but this class is helping me see the big picture of how God is working in the world to bring people to Him. I can now say without hesitation that God is a missionary God and that everything He has revealed about Himself is connect to that purpose.
I hope to post some thoughts from time to time about what I am learning in this class.
To get us started let's look at the Abrahamic Covenant in Gen 12:1-3:

The Lord had said to Abram, “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you.
“I will make you into a great nation
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.”

Previously when I thought of missions the texts that would first come to my mind were the Great Commission in Matthew 28:16-20 and Acts 1:7-8. I thought of mission almost exclusively as a New Testament phenomenon. Studying this passage changed that. I saw that missions is not something that Jesus made up but that Jesus fulfilled and enabled. I was profoundly impacted by the statement, coming from the Abrahamic Covenent, “Missions is not a duty or a task, it is a promise”. God promises that He will use His people to bless the world and through Jesus (the seed of Abraham) not only does the world receive that blessing but Gentiles like us are able to be included in that blessing (Gen 3:14), which in turns enables us to be bearers of that blessing to the rest of the unreached world.

God will keep His promise to bless all the nations through the seed of Abraham, the question is will we surrender ourselves to be used to fulfill that promise, or will we choose to miss out on God's exhilirating work of redemption in this world.

blessed to be a blessing,
jrf

Pray for the DRC - UPDATED

As some of you know, an African church meets in our church building. The majority of the church members are refugees from the DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo), a place which God has put on our hearts. Through this church Sarah and I have gotten to know some of the wonderful people from The Light of Africa missionary organization. Two of their primary missionaries, Esther and Camille Ntoto, are strongly connected with the African Church. They minister in Goma, a region of DRC which has seen some of the worst fighting over the years. In the last few years of relative peace, the Ntoto's have had a very fruitful ministry working with churches, victims of violence and rape, AIDS patients, and starting a radio ministry amongst a myriad of other things. However, recently the rebel activity has surged dramatically. I recieved this email today, and share it with you to inform and challenge you to be praying and supporting our brothers and sisters in the DRC.

Subject: Urgent from Camille FW: GOMA WARDEN MESSAGE
> Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2008 10:12:02 -0700
>
> Camille has sent this response saying that Goma is in trouble (see below).
> Sam and I just got off the phone with Esther and Camille (two calls).
> Apparently, they received word that Goma was safe to return to earlier today
> and Camille headed towards Goma to catch the boat. They thought that would
> be the best and safest way to get to Bukavu. However, he met a friend in
> Gisenyi that told him his information was incorrect and to turn around. He
> did. Within 30 minutes, they heard heavy gunshots and realized that Goma
> was taken.
>
> Camille is in an expensive motel but safe and he has shelter. He is no
> longer trying to get to Esther. With Goma falling, Camille says that Bukavu
> will most likely be next but not imminent. He has to get Esther out of
> there. Bukavu isn't safe. He has her passport. Please pray that God will
> help us find a way to get her passport to her and get Esther to Camille.
> Camille even stated that he may consider going back into Goma/Gisenyi area
> to use the boat option to get her out.
>
> The bus trip is no longer a safe option. People, rebels and looters are
> everywhere.
>
> They are undecided on how to spend their time before their planned
> departure. Camille says it is very confusing to say the least. He thinks
> UNICEF may have an obligation to help take care of the women in Bukavu that
> are there with Esther.
>
> PRAY! PRAY! PRAY!
> Cindy and Sam




HERE IS AN UPDATE I RECIEVED TODAY FROM AMY FROM LIGHT OF AFRICA

Thank you for prayiing! God has protected Esther in many ways already. Your prayers were heard yesterday as Esther was in danger. People thought she was a Tutsi. She had gone up to her room and was getting ready to take a shower. She heard the noise of voices, turned off the water, opened the bathroom window. People were talking about getting to her room from the balcony. Statements were made about wanting to see her passport. She made sure all doors were locked, curtains closed and lights off. Right then a group of us here in the states were meeting about congo and decided to call her. We were able to pray for her, be there with her. By the time we called her back the she was able to reach the UN police were able to pick her up and take her to safety..

Esther is now getting her passport through the US Embassy and will be taken by UN protection to Rwanda to meet up with Camille. She leaves Saturday morning. Please pray for her safety on Saturday morning.

Camille has spent the last several nights at a hotel just across the border. Today he walked back into Congo, went to his house, paid workers. They hadn't been able to leave the premises for several days. He is doing what he can in the city during the "cease fire."

Pray for Camille's safety on the road.

Please pray that every voice will be used to stop a blood bath from happening in Eastern Congo once again.

If you would like to read more I've included accounts from Goma, from Heal Africa who Esther is very involved with. They provide physical, emotional and spiritual healing for the women who have been raped.

Call+Response

Just wanted to do my part in letting you know about the film "Call+Response", a film about the modern sex slave trade. Looks to have some pretty sweet music as well. A few quick facts:
- there are more slaves today than ever in the history of the world
- the sex slave trade made more money last year than Google, Nike, and Starbucks combined

May this film be used to convict, expose, awaken, and mobilize a generation of slaves of Christ to give their lives in bringing freedom, both spiritual and physical to the millions of slaves in this world we are passing through.

Check out the trailer here:



To find showtimes near you go HERE
If you are in L.A., leave a comment and we can find a time to all go together.

Back from NY

First let me apologize for the lack of posts while in NYC. I really only had time to put up pictures. (which can be seen on facebook here)

We returned back safely to LA on Sunday evening. Without going into too much detail, I will say that the trip was an amazing success! God worked in tangible and amazing ways both through our official ministry to the Chinese children and through the other events of the week. Many if not all of our youth had potentially life-changing experiences and tasted the glory and power of God in new ways.

Please join me in
- praising God for His faithfulness!
- lifting up the church in Brooklyn (2nd EV Free) and the children we were able to share the love of Christ with
- praying for our team, that they make the transition to "normal" life in a way that incorporates what they learned and experienced on this trip.

thank you for all your support and care!

Quick Update

Got back from Bolivia...which was a very hard trip...but good.

Got sick so I had to postpone my Houston trip to August 5-7.

Am now hosting a group of about 30 highschoolers for a week.

Then will be taking 15 youth to NYC on a missions trip July 26-August 3.

Will try to post something more substantial in the not-too-distant future.

Going to Bolivia!

The Emmanuel Evangelical Free church in Burbank has graciously invited Carlos Pizarro (ass. Pastor for our Spanish Congregation), David Castro (a young adult that I have been mentoring, AKA Gong Boy), and myself to join their missions team to Bolivia. We will be working with Operation Harvest speaking at pastor’s conference, doing ESL in a local high school and running a VBS. I will also have the opportunity to preach in some of the local churches. We leave this Thursday, July 3 and return July 12.
Please pray for unity amongst the team as we three do not know the other 5 members very well and don't know what it is going to be like doing ministry together. Also please be praying for our finances as we are a few thousand dollars in the hole as a team for this trip. Please let me know if you are interested in supporting us financially. Lastly and most importantly be praying that this trip will have a lasting impact on the church in Bolivia for the glory of Jesus Christ!

New York Night

Last Friday Team New York, our church's first high school short term missions team, put on New York Night 08. The fundraiser included hot dogs, a short presentation about the trip, an art gallery full of student art, a raffle, and a stock exchange where patrons could invest in youth in exchange for having a postcard sent to them from NYC. The night was a smash success and we raised over $1000. Perhaps most exciting is seeing our church transition from being a church that recieves short term missions teams to one that sends them. We pray that this is the first of many.









The New York City trip will be from July 26-August 3. We will be working with the 2nd EV Free Church of Brooklyn. Our primary ministry will be running a VBS for the children of Chinese immigrants. Our group consists of 5 leaders (myself included) and 11 high schoolers. Please keep us in your prayers. If you would like to support us financially please let me know. The trip is $600 per person and so far we have raised about half of that.

by His grace
for His glory

persecution and the Olympics

The father of someone at our church has become passionately involved in fighting to expose the persecution in China, especially of Christians. He has put together a very informative website that you should check out here.

"Why I Would Die for South Africa"

Below is a link to an article written by Michelle Cantrell, wife of Tim Cantrell, missionaries through Bethlehem Baptist Church (John Piper's Church) to South Africa. It is one of the most Biblical and moving calls to missions I have read in a long time. I highly encourage you to read it and respond to it.

Why I Would Die for South Africa

Prayer Request - NYC Missions Trip Meeting

We would appreciate your prayers tonight. We are having an informational meeting about a missions trip for the high school youth group this summer. We will be serving at a church in Brooklyn working with children of Chinese immigrants. Please pray that God would move the hearts of the youth and their parents to see the importance and impact of this trip.