Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Jesus spent years with his 12 disciples. When he found them they were a rag tag group of fisherman, crooked IRS employees and generally not cool dudes (I’m looking at you, James the son of Alphaeus). But by the time Jesus ascends to heaven we find these men have been prepared for something more, and once the Holy Spirit gets ahold of them the whole world was rocked by their witness. Jesus didn’t just tell these guys what to do to get to heaven, and then split. No, he hung around - apparently even he couldn’t condense his witness to a single speech.

Have you ever noticed that most of the Epistles are written to Christians? Paul apparently didn’t consider his job completed once people became Christians. In fact it would seem based on the Epistles that “getting saved” was really just the beginning, sometimes Paul even spent years living with and cultivating the growth of Christians.

The first missionaries arrived in Uganda in 1877. By 1906 EVERY tribe within a seventy mile radius of then Mengo, now Kampala, was considered Christian. Today the Buganda people, who live in the central and southern parts of Uganda where Heather and I are located, are more than 98% Christian. The Uganda census reflects a lower population of Christians because the northern tribes have a larger Muslim percentage, but the point I’m trying to make is Heather and I have been sent by many of you as missionaries to a place that already knows about Jesus. So what are we doing here?

Imagine you’re Ugandan and that you attend a big crusade event, there is loud music blasting over a fancy sound system and inspiring speakers get up and preach about this guy Jesus. Then you pray a prayer that a white preacher shouts out across the venue for you to repeat. Finally he tells you to raise your hand if you prayed that prayer, so you do. He tells you you’re now a Christian. The next day the sound system is packed up, the white pastor hops on a plane back to his home and there you are, a newborn Christian. You save up for months and buy a Bible for some answers to all the lingering questions you now have. You try reading the Bible but it’s confusing and you need help so you go to a church. At the church you find lots of people like you, all confused and just doing the best they can with what they learned at big crusade events. You keep going to that church and keep giving money because the pastor says if you do, God will bless you, and if you don’t, you’ll go to hell - and surely, if anyone knows, it’s the pastor.

Years pass and you have children. You tell them they are Christians as well. You send them to a Christian school where the teachers got saved at a crusade just like you and have found at least one book of the Bible that makes sense, so they teach your kids all the wisdom they have found in the book of Proverbs. You still go to that same church and sometimes the pastor will even start the sermon by reading a single verse, and so you have learned and thus taught your children that the Bible is basically a book of wise quotations.

Those children one day have children, and they tell them that they are Christians, and on it goes.

Welcome to Uganda, where the sins of one culture are magnified into another. Tommy Nelson said the West has had had doctrinal revivals, prayer revivals, Biblical revivals, but we have never really had a revival of discipleship. Discipleship just never really took, especially in American Christianity. One thing that did take in America was numerical results, and while discipleship is a hard thing to measure, number of people saved is a concrete figure. Have them raise their hands, count the number of hands you see raised, report this number to the churches you visit when you return home to America, add a slide show of some foreigners with raised hands while praying the sinners prayer, and soon you have more money to go do it all over again.

The problem is while by 1906 most of south-central Uganda was already Christians, many Westerners were convinced that “it’s an African country, therefore IT MUST need saving.” While we were raising support and sharing our story for why we were going to Uganda, even I was certain I would meet non-Christians here. Truth be told I have, but they are few and they are Muslim. Meanwhile crusades continue on to this day - and remember the loud sound system and ranting preaching I described in an old blog post about the local church? Well guess where they got the idea a Church needed these things? In fact many pastors I talk to don’t want to be shepherds or teachers of the Bible, they want a stage and a crowd and a sound system.

Heather and I may not lead a single person to Jesus while we are here in Uganda. It just may not happen – sure, there are some Muslim friends who we do earnestly share our faith and the Gospel with, and there are some here who call themselves Christian who maybe don’t really know what that means and by our witness and teaching may have the Holy Spirit awaken in their soul, but as far as a non-believer never knowing or hearing of Jesus and suddenly becoming saved, likely not going to happen.

But here is my question. When did bringing someone to Christ become more valuable than discipling someone in Christ? Jesus didn’t live that way. Paul didn’t live that way. John didn’t live that way. When did we make crossing the threshold more important than what happens after you have crossed?

Here is what Heather and I ARE doing. We ARE studying the Bible together with the students and staff of AHI. I wish you could witness how exciting and fun this has been. How their eyes light up when they start to get it. This idea of God always doing what is right and good and perfect. The idea that all men have worth because they were created in the image of God. Why Israel painted lamb’s blood on their door during Passover and how that foreshadows Christ. Even the timeline of things, that Noah had never heard of the Ten Commandments and that Isaiah was written 500+ years before Jesus showed up. This basic Bible literacy is something we take for granted in the States yet is completely absent and absolutely craved here in Uganda.

There is more too, I often get to teach at CLA where I make the boys read the Bible and figure out what words like “Stewardship” or “Integrity” mean from the source rather than lecturing to them like I am some white guy in the know. Maybe the biggest impact of all is just living real life with our Ugandan brothers and sisters and finding examples in that everyday life of cool biblical principles (Imago Dei has become a real favorite around here). I have even had the pleasure of teaching a few classes to local pastors and answering their questions on topics like Satan and the purpose of the Church, but really I don’t teach much of anything, I just hide behind Scripture and watch them discover the truth it holds.

My friend David said it best, Christianity is a mile wide and an inch deep in Uganda. Sadly that “crusade knowledge only” Christian that I gave as an example is not an outlier here but generally the rule. Uganda needs Bible teachers, Uganda needs Pastor trainers, Uganda needs Disciple makers. That need is beyond overwhelming; in fact it often feels impossible, like Heather and I are just too small to have any lasting impact. All I can do is trust in my omnipotent God and pray that he would send more people – after all, he spread the Gospel to the world with just 12 men, surely he could disciple all of Uganda with even less. --PHD

Sunday, August 28, 2011

Location of the ranch, updated!

Check out where the Days are living! A while ago a rough guess of the location of Ekitangala Ranch was posted. Now you can check out the exact spot!

Hopefully this map will expand to include favorites such as the local churches, and the Internet Tree!

View Uganda in a larger map

Friday, August 26, 2011

All Around Us

Caroline (AHI student) carting two benches on the bike!

Ant highways. All that black is masses of ants piled on top of

each other. They form edges to the roadways, and then other ants go

back and forth between them.

Caroline and chocolate!

Close-up of the ant highway

Inaugural dinner on the new porch.

Inside the guesthouse (our home for June and July).

View from our room, looking out to the new porch, and a beautiful ancient tree.

It's like Gulliver and the Lilliputians!

Local passion fruit

Maggie and Patrick, at the Daniel's house.

Mirembe Grace

Sunday brunch in the Daniel's house.

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Editor's Note: this was delayed for a while, but the story behind it can be found on Maggie's blog. Apologies to all for the late posting.

One of the great joys of being a parent is seeing the gospel played out on a miniature level as your children encounter the world around them. I don’t know this on a personal level but I know enough parents and get to hear enough of their stories to know it’s true. I look forward to those moments when God reveals himself in divine clarity through my own children. The last couple of weeks at AHI have been very tough but God has used these events to reveal himself in a great many ways to a great many people with similar divine clarity. For me he has revealed the very core of the Gospel in a new way through Maggie Josiah.

In running a store I have always held a basic precept in dealing with employees. If an employee worked hard and bought in to our vision for what that store was doing, then that was an employee I would do everything in my power to help succeed. However, if I had an employee who was resistant to hard work, resistant to the shared vision of the store - who basically didn’t want to work and in some cases would even try to undermine the direction of that store - then that employee needed to go. The basic reasoning in my mind was that for every spot filled by someone who doesn't want to be there, someone else is out on the street without a job, who if given this opportunity would seize it.

When applied this paradigm to Africa it became all the more extreme because of the massive and desperate need for opportunities. So as Maggie weighed the very tough decisions of what to do with some of the employees at AHI after they had done wrong, I found myself arguing on the side of justice rather than mercy. There are employees at AHI who have seized the opportunity that Maggie has given them and have quite literally flown with it, but there are others who are less enthusiastic and at times seek to even undermine the unity of the organization. All I could think about was the many men and women sitting in villages around us with no hope, no future, and if given the chance to work at AHI would absolutely squeeze it for every drop of knowledge, growth and future opportunity they could get from it. In my mind those spots were being filled by others who were wasting it.

However, Maggie insisted that we keep the staff who were struggling and not happy about being at AHI, out of mercy and grace. In frustration, yesterday I spent much of my day away from AHI and just out in the villages. Not Ntuuti, which is somewhat built up, but in some of the more remote villages where the poverty and sense of hopelessness is even more acute. As walked down those trails with mud huts and peanut gardens I just mourned; I mourned over their loss, I mourned that I could not help, I mourned that their lives would be so desolate without even the education to read a Bible if they owned one. You see, AHI specifically seeks out students who have low levels of education and no future ahead of them. While Cornerstone Leadership Academy on the ranch reaches out to the 100 most promising students of Uganda (and does a great job with those students) AHI seeks out a dozen or so students who are NOT promising, who have NO hope, have NO future. So I hung out in the villages looking into the eyes of those that AHI did not choose, and could not help, and I mourned.

I spent most of the rest of the day yesterday praying, reading my Bible, and listening to sermons. What I was really doing was pleading to God and looking for answers. In the evening Heather went to a ladies movie night so I began playing a video game, of all things (Sorry Pastor Mark). While I was zoning on my game and checking out of reality, God decided it was time to speak to me and showed me the gospel in a new way with divine horrifying clarity.

The ugly truth is many people are going to hell; God has only selected a few elect, who he out of grace and mercy, though they are underserving, even ill-deserving, chooses to save from eternal punishment for their sins. Yet even as Christians we continue to rebel, to act thankless towards our Savior and at times, yes, even undermine the work of his church and of Christ. What’s more, for every man and woman he chooses to save there is another man or woman who if he had chosen to save them would have seized their salvation and done untold amazing things for the Glory of God. But he doesn't, in his mercy and mystery, just save the Martin Luthers and John Pipers, he also saves normal ill-deserving thankless sinners like you and me.

Divine clarity. Suddenly it all made sense: If AHI is to be a Gospel-centered MINISTRY, not a business, then it has to take those who will seize the opportunity AND those who would seek to undermine it. Most importantly we can’t fire those staff members who betray us to hire others who might do more with it, because God didn’t remove my seal of faith all those years that I openly betrayed him and give my “spot” in heaven to another.

Now to be fair, Maggie did fire a couple of employees who had clearly broken AHI policy and in one case had even broke Ugandan laws. Maggie also did place a couple of employees on a one week paid suspension while she sorted things out. Still, the overwhelming response by Maggie has been one of grace, even pleading for mercy in court on behalf of the employee who had broken the law.

My brain began exploding as this new revelation started sinking in, because when I say I mourned for those in the villages who would never have such an opportunity, I mean my heart was absolutely broken for them, and now suddenly I found this new connection and my heart was becoming newly broken for the world as well. Sure, I have always wanted my friends and family to know Christ in his fullness and grace, but to be honest I’ve never been very good with caring much about the stranger. The stranger who I know nothing about and have no relationship with, his eternal life has never mattered much to me if I was honest, but now I saw it, I felt it, and I understood. So again I mourned.

Maggie was right, and she is turning AHI into a parable of the Gospel.

--PHD