Deans' weekly update

One day, a young missionary new to the country and eager to find wisdom from the veteran missionary asked, "How did you get to be so successful?" and eagerly awaited the answer.

"By making good decisions," the senior leader said.

The young man was somewhat disappointed at such an obvious answer and so followed up with this question, "Yes, but how do you learn to make good decisions?"

"By making bad ones," the old man replied.

I am reminded of this little anecdote as I consider the church's effort to reach out to our neighbors. As a missionary/pastor I desire to protect the church that God has entrusted to me from poor decisions and mistakes. But as they mature spiritually there comes a time for them to make more decisions. Let me tell you a little of the most recent decision that they made.

A few weeks ago a church member brought to the church's attention a project to give gifts to children in an effort to share the Gospel with them. A charity provides the gifts and a suggested program to share the Gospel. Local churches sign up children and plan a program.

"Free" and "gifts" are like a bright neon sign calling Mongolians to participate. Most of the parents with children in our church saw an opportunity to obtain a gift for their own children. Soon the church members were clamoring to join the program. They looked to me: surely you will lead in such a program.

I saw an opportunity for the church members who were personally excited about this project to grow in serving. So even though I declined, I did not forbid them from joining the program if they chose and told them that they could participate in the program if they found people to organize and run it.

They appointed a "chairmen" to lead them—the same lady who brought the program to their attention- and began to split up the responsibilities. A few of them went out to the neighbors surrounding the church building and invited them out. Along with the children of the church we soon had 55 children enrolled to receive gifts.

When they heard how many children had enrolled, they began to realize that it would take nearly every church member participating to handle so large a crowd along with the parents that were invited to come. The program required an enrollment process: we would need registration help. The program suggested teaching the children songs: a songleader was needed. There was a Bible story to tell. The church building needed some decorations. Some were needed for crowd control.

At nearly every opportunity to serve someone would say, "Surely Scott can do that" or "Surely Kristie is the best one for that." Need a songleader? Kristie leads the children's songs during Sunday school; of course, she will lead the songs for this program. Need a Bible story told? It's obvious, Scott should teach it. And at every suggestion, I politely declined to help. "This is your project," I reminded them and then with enthusiasm added, "I know you all can do it!" I also knew that if I allowed them to do so, they would gladly volunteer Kristie and me to run the whole program. And to me, I saw this as their opportunity to serve.

But with my polite but persistent refusals to do for them what they could do for themselves, soon nearly every member (and even a non-member) had a part to play in this program. They began to discuss when they would have the program and decided on the Saturday before the Mongolian Lunar New Year. After all, Mongolians customarily give gifts to each other at the Lunar New Year. That would be an appropriate time to give gifts to our children and the neighbors' children. I cringed because the weekend before the Lunar New Year is a very busy time of preparation for the Mongolians. But I determined that this was their program and that they needed to make the decisions.

This past Sunday was to be the last meeting before the Gift Giving Program. This coming Saturday the gifts will be given out. The following Wednesday the Lunar New Year begins. And because the Mongolian celebration was so close, I was not surprised that almost half of the people who had agreed to help were unable to come to the church service and the planning meeting that followed it. So now invitations have been given out for a program that has too few workers.

I am not worried or stressed or frustrated at the lack of commitment. But I am concerned that some young Christians may become frustrated at their brothers and sisters in Christ who were so eager to receive gifts for their children but not to participate in this outreach. So pray that God would give me wisdom as I allow the Mongolians to make decisions. And pray for the workers we need to make this a well-run program.

I'll let you know next week how it went.