What To Do When Borders Close

In mid-March I came down with the typical symptoms of COVID-19—headache, fever, cough, and mental fog. As the illness progressed, losing my sense of smell seemed to be the mildest symptom, but six months later I still haven’t recovered it. Some of my favorite smells and tastes—coffee, grilled meat, and dark chocolate—are gone. Yet for other people, what the coronavirus stole is infinitely more tragic and difficult to swallow than my inability to enjoy a cup of coffee.

Even for those who have not gotten sick, a thousand things don’t look or feel the same. It can be disconcerting. As leaders we are often called to manage change and navigate setbacks, roadblocks, and transitions. However, this global pandemic has created challenges that seem to alter our lives relentlessly and stymie our plans.

For missionaries, government attempts across the globe to contain the virus have created a challenge to the travel fundamental to fulfilling our work and call. As airline and tourism industries are deeply affected, so are our lives as global workers.

Despite lockdowns, travel bans, and lab tests, we have witnessed how three elements in our lives have enabled us to persevere in seeing ministry continue in spite of what this global pandemic throws at us—technology, tenacity, and transformability.

Technology

By now it’s obvious how technology has enabled us to circumvent the inability to gather face-to-face. It has never been more apparent the Church is neither confined to nor defined by geographical restrictions.

When the pandemic began, we were itinerating in California, separated from our team and congregation in Grenoble, France. Like everyone else for the past six months, we have utilized the gift of technology to lead meetings, engage in prayer, counsel congregants, and mentor colleagues across continents.

During France’s stringent shelter-in-place period, our church was able to worship, pray, and hear the Word. This kept our people connected at a time when isolation and uncertainty left people starving for contact with their faith community.

Tenacity

Since Dalene and I became area director for Western Europe in November 2019, this season has been a crash course in crisis management. Whether helping missionary families trapped miles apart due to travel bans or monitoring multiple coworkers who were sick, hospitalized, or even intubated in a foreign healthcare system, it seemed the sheer scope of acute prayer needs would drive us to physical and emotional exhaustion.

What helped us with any lack of aptitude was latching on to an attitude. Instead of longing to get back to normal, we normalized the need to get back our longing for God. Suddenly the ministry of prayer became the one thing we could depend on as we called out to God for impossible needs and improbable chances. Time and time again our miracle-working, impossibility-defying God came through with amazing answers of healing, recovery, and breakthrough.

Reestablishing the priority of taking every burden and need to Him in intercession fueled another attitude that said, “Lord, however long this takes and wherever this leads us, we are in it for the long haul.” Our prayers changed from “God, bring this trial to a close” to “Father, bring us closer to You through this trial.” We are grateful for this lesson in the priority and power of prayer as we learn to dig in for as long as the virus drags on.

Transformability

Rather than resilience (the capacity to manage disruption and reorganize while retaining essentially the same structures and systems), we have embraced transformability. This is defined as the capacity to create an entirely new system when existing structures make what has been normal impossible.

In Romans 12 Paul admonishes us to let everything die on the alter so we can be transformed by new ways of thinking. We have taken the stance of trying to be as malleable as possible in the hands of the Potter and asking Him to transform—and even totally redefine, if necessary—the way we think about doing church and ministry.

To this end we have found ourselves moving from meeting together by Zoom to instituting house churches, where we release leaders in the Body to lead a small group of people in their homes while conforming to government requirements. Once a month we gather in our parking lot to have in-person moments of community. In addition, we are revamping the way we welcome and engage new students on the campus of our city university.

From the prayer ministry to outreach to refugees to our ministry to victims of human trafficking, every leader and team across our community is being encouraged to pray and seek the Lord for how He may use this pandemic as a restructure and not as a restriction. We are asking God to do new things, and the request is for Him to begin those new things in us.

We don’t know where this path is leading us, but we are armed with these attitudes, surrounded and guided by a God who always leads His people when they are willing to follow and obey into fulness of their destiny, no matter what borders seem closed or what giants stand in their way.

Mark and Dalene Good serve as area directors for Western Europe and coordinate mentor training and hubs for the Europe region. They also lead Le Refuge International Church in Grenoble, France.

Will You Marry Me?

"Hi, do you speak English? Yous are pretty. Will you marry me?"

My friend Rebecca and I were simply enjoying dinner on the sidewalk when a man in his late-30s walked up to us and asked us that question. We were "swept away" by this shocking question. Who was this guy to think that some random girl off the street would marry him?!

As we fumbled our way through first names and occupations, I felt the Holy Spirit nudge me to ask him a shocking question in return. "Alex, do you think many or few people will go to heaven/hell?" He stared at me as he gathered his thoughts in English. "I think that many people will go to hell if they don't confess their sins to Jesus Christ, the savior of the world. I know that I will see Jesus face to face" he said confidently. He continued to talk to Rebecca and I about God's plan of salvation and how we can be part of it. By the end of the conversation, I revealed that we knew of Jesus's sacrifice and forgiveness. We prayed with each other. As he prayed, I was convicted by the way he openly prayed in the street with pure conviction and boldness. He earnestly prayed for his family, forgiveness for his thoughts, and for the way the Lord encouraged him through our conversation. When we parted ways, I left with a new sense of awe and conviction about my walk with the Lord.

What if I placed all of my hope and trust in Jesus (just like Alex) during these turbulent times? What more can He use of me? My friend, I pray that you and I can thrive -- and not just survive -- through the era of coronavirus.

Picturing Missions

Ben and Jessi Bock serve as missionaries in Montenegro. They have three children, Oliver, Nora, and Lily.

Is it possible we sometimes idealize missions, painting a beautiful picture so people will answer the call and go? As a child, I remember dreaming of being a missionary and praying, “Please use me to change the world.” Missions was a beautiful picture to me. But then I became a missionary.

If I had known my husband, Ben and I would both lose our mothers during the first three-year term, would I still have gone? If I had known I would experience months of darkness battling fear and anxiety attacks and that our ventures into the community would result in tears 90 percent of the time, would I still have gone? If I had known our children would suffer with sickness and be attended by doctors who watched soccer while listening to their heartbeats, would I still have gone? If I had known God would strip us down to nothing and burn away every ounce of Ben and Jessi so He could recreate and rebuild us, would I have said yes to the pain?

I don’t know.

But I do know Ben and I see a beautiful picture of missions now—the picture of people being reconciled to God and allowing us to be part of their lives. That picture fades at times, but God continues to restore it. No longer a wide-lens snapshot of Montenegro knowing Jesus, we now see the familiar; up-close faces of people we know and care about who need Him. There’s Petar; who lives on the coast and has yet to surrender his life to Jesus. There’s Milan, who practices orthodox religion but doesn’t believe in God. There’s Milan’s son Luka, who claims to be agnostic but in reality worships himself. There’s our fruit lady at the market, our pastry lady, our butcher, the men at the tire shop by our house, and the servers at our favorite café. They are the reason we serve.

Montenegro is a hopeless place. Those who dare to dream of different lives want to leave, because how could they achieve their dreams here? Even people in our local church are discouraged. Any new person who walked into church would be persecuted by family and friends, so outreach and witnessing are not a priority for believers.

Ben’s photography allows us to meet people on the streets. He goes out every day, waiting for the Spirit to reveal who he should approach. When he takes people’s photos, Ben asks them to tell the world something they love about Montenegro. We hope to bring positivity into their lives, since many can’t change their situations. Somehow the conversations always turn spiritual, and Ben shares the good news about Jesus. We’ve also been able to pray with people. That may not sound like a big deal, but most have never heard that God listens and answers—it’s a huge deal! Every time we pray with someone, the Spirit moves powerfully and the person excitedly invites us back.

Our life looks like the Book of Acts. We travel from town to town and village to village, seeking out people with whom to pray and build relationships. For Montenegrins to encounter Jesus, we must completely rely on the power and leading of the Spirit. They won’t believe in Him because we are special, talented, or gifted or because we’ve seen multitudes saved or healed. They will find Jesus because we said yes. The One who sacrificed everything calls us to do the same. Through the pain, we will continue to say yes, and God will continue to paint a beautiful picture of missions as His kingdom comes to Montenegro.

Blind Spots

I was talking with a friend this week about blind spots. We all have them.

For example, we live in a day when we worship results and don’t always realize the consequences or collateral damage along the way.

Just look at what people post on social media… or better yet, look closely at what you’ve posted over the last year.

If we’re not careful, we can be driven by the image of what we want to be rather than who God has called us to be.

Don’t misunderstand me; we need to set goals, measure results and hold people accountable. Along the way, we have to constantly ask the Holy Spirit to examine our heart and make sure we’re seeing what we need to see.

The Bible warns us that “there is a way that seems right to man…” I’m the first to say I can be so focused on what I think is right or that there are just things I can miss.

Leaders ignore the warning signs and continue blindly forward.

Tim Elmore says, “It’s easy to become intoxicated with progress and ignore cautions from those closest to us. We want results so badly, we can turn a blind eye without knowing it. Even good people can be victims if we love winning more than integrity.”

Every leader needs accountability because leaders love growth and success.

In other words, our commitment to integrity can be easily eroded by our love of progress.

We’re all susceptible to weakness and blind spots. So, let’s make sure we have people in our life who are watching our blind spots and helping us stay accountable.