“Some people have thought that … the gospel is preached and that the truth has a kind of general moral effect upon people … But it is not that. It is an operation of the Spirit upon the men and women themselves, in the depths … It is the Spirit acting upon the soul from within and producing within us a new principle of spiritual action.”

D. Martin Lloyd-Jones

“Not everyone who says to me on that day, Lord, Lord will enter the Kingdom of heaven…”

Jesus

Not everyone who says they are Christian are in point of fact regenerate believers. Not in America. Not in Mongolia.

The last numbers that I saw from the Barna group say that 45% of the people in America would fall into the category of “born again”. In Mongolia there are supposedly 45,000 Christians (which is still less than 2% of the total population). There is a sense in which these numbers are sadly low. We want to see many more people than this who are radically changed by the power of the Holy Spirit and who know the efficacy of the Cross of Jesus. However, in reality these numbers are probability outlandishly high, in that there is not near enough visible evidence to cause me to believe that there are even close to this many true believers in America or in Mongolia. Here, reports that came out at the end of 2009 state that alcoholism rates are up, poverty rates are up, murder rates are up and theft/crime rates are up. This doesn’t really jive with supposed increased in Christian salt and light.

In Mongolia we are finding that many of the people who have claimed Christianity in the past are not living a life which would give evidence of any sort of regeneration or new birth. Some of these people, including several we know personally, have flat out rejected the claims of the Gospel and are no longer making any pretense to follow Christ whatsoever. Some statistics that I have read are saying that in Mongolia there are fewer believers today than there were ten years ago. My guess is that all of those who have ever made some sort of profession of faith, even if that profession has been recanted, are still counted in the grand tally.

I was an American pastor once. I know how the numbers game works. But the stakes are too high, and this is far too serious of an issue to play games with numbers so we can impress donors at home.

I’ve heard various proposals for solutions to the problem of the troubling rate of attrition. We need to offer more training. We need to have greater discipleship. We need to plant more churches. While I am not going to say that any of these solutions are bad or that they will not help with the problem, I’m convinced more than ever that this will not come close to resolving the problem. The issue as I see it has little to do with these things and has everything to do with the nature of true conversion and regeneration of the believer. Those of us in Christian ministry are satisfied to count the coercion of profession, rather than actually believe God for true conversion.

It’s not popular, nor is it pragmatic (at least from a human perspective) to expect people to turn from sin and turn to God without some measure of human arm-twisting. At the very least there needs to be some sort palatable presentation of why Jesus “makes sense”. After all, people are pragmatic to the core and in order to properly contextualize the message, we should teach it in a simple practical way that folks will understand.

Please don’t misunderstand, I am a strong believer in and practitioner of contextualization. This is why we took two years of full-time language and why we continue to study and learn from the language and the culture. It’s never ending. That said, my convictions are becoming stronger by the day as we live here, and as we view the results of so much that has taken place here in the past. There is one key and crucial ingredient lacking in the so-called church: regeneration. True conversion. There’s been intellectual ascent to Christian teaching. There’s been the formation of churches. There’s even been the formation of a sort of “Christian culture”. There’s Christian publishing, Christian books, Christian music. However, I’m finding that there’s a huge differential between what is professed and what is actually lived out in terms of character and holiness. Not meaning to be unnecessarily cynical, but I feel sometimes like Nashville has been imported to Ulaanbaatar, minus the Starbucks.

I’ll qualify this. I am not talking about perfectionism. I am not saying that there are not inconsistencies in my own life and in my own spirituality. No question about this. It’s true for all of us. But my concerns and the issues that I am seeing in Christianity here (and in other parts of the world as well) is that there are not just small differentials. There are huge gaping divergences. There are “Christians” who are consistently getting drunk, lying to clients, sleeping with folks other than their spouses, continuing to practice idolatry and spirit worship, acting unethically in business and society. Some write this off to “culture” or “context”. But Bible trumps culture. Every time. This is true in America, where we have a culture of materialistic consumerism and it is true in Mongolia where the culture is rife with alcohol, spiritism and pragmatism.

The need of the hour is Gospel proclamation in the power of the Holy Spirit. Not a message of “only believe” or “Jesus can improve your life” or “come to church” or “let’s work together and see how quickly we get the church planted so that we can leave”. But rather a call for sinners to repent and prayer that asks the Holy Spirit of God to open up hearts and eyes to His holy awesomeness and our absolute helplessness and hopelessness any other way. The dead come to life and the blind are made to see. That’s the message of Christianity. Any other message is counterproductive and will hurt, not help the Kingdom.

I personally am not willing settle for less than Jesus raising the dead.

We’re excited and grateful to God for His help, direction and wisdom. Pray for us as the real work of making disciples moves ahead. We’re so grateful for all of the support, prayers and gifts that we have received from our partners!

If you don’t have your shirt, it’s not too late. Click the link on the right to order yours today. Then get out, get your picture taken in all the places you travel, and we’ll post them in the YPATW gallery!

(note: we still need a shot from ‘down under’ – Australia and Antarctica – to say we’ve been on every continent. Also, now that we have a picture from the lowest point on earth, if any one ever takes on Everest … let us know. We’ll send you a free shirt.)

(As of this post, the remembermongolia.org photo album is not working. I am tracking this down and will hopefully have it fixed over the next few days. In the meantime, feel free to visit our Flickr photo stream to see all of our pictures!)

Update: Our Photo Gallery is fixed! You can view pictures directly from our site.

In our family devotions last week, Bernie referenced the verse where Jesus tells His disciples that if someone takes their coat, they are to give their shirt as well. “Give to everyone who asks of you…� (Luke 6:29, 30). Cori then raised the question that we wrestle with internally all the time. “If this is what Jesus said, why don’t we give money to the street children?�

Wanting to make sure my daughter is well informed and well trained, I looked at her and gave her my best answer.

“I don’t know.�

And I don’t. Oh, I know what I tell myself. They just have to give it to someone else who will use it to buy vodka (true almost all the time, though I have seen them use it to go buy food). I know that if I gave money every time I was asked, pretty soon we would have nothing left and would have to return to the US and work at McDonalds.

We’ve tried just giving them food, and do this sometimes. But this isn’t really a long term solution. Imagine sitting in one of the nicer restaurants with your husband on your anniversary, and one of the street children slips past the hostess and stands at your tables and looks at your food and says, “I’m hungry.� I wanted to get up and give him my chair. The waiter came and shooed him away, but my appetite was gone. Yet, what would happen to the restaurant’s clientele if everyone gave in to the street children who came in? Then you’d have a restaurant owner out of business.
Not long ago, the young guy that we have singled out caught me as I was going into the grocery store. He offered to wash my car, but I didn’t have time as I just planned to run in and run out. So he rubbed his stomach and said, “I’m hungry.� I nodded, and he knows us well enough to know that we usually try to buy him food. Then he looked at me, and placed his order. “Ham.� Well, that didn’t set so well. I wanted to buy him a package of spinach or a carrot or something.

How do you move from giving out bread to seeing them realize their need for the Bread of Life? How do we as “rich� Americans bridge the gap between our world and theirs? I leave the encounter and go to a warm home. They leave and go who knows where, some to homes, but others to sleep under the streets by the warm pipes. Especially when you know that is not the purpose God has sent you to this city to fulfill.

Jesus stated that the poor would always be here. But He didn’t leave us a detailed plan of how to deal with this. Oh how I wish He had. I ask myself, “What would Jesus do?� I DON�T KNOW. Obviously even He did not meet the need of every poor person.

This past summer I was sitting in church and had purchased a bottle of juice to drink because it was a hot day and there was no AC and little breeze. We were singing and a little street girl came to the doorway to listen. I turned around a saw her and smiled. She saw the juice in my hand and held out her hand for it. I was sitting toward the front and didn’t really want to take it back to her (and honestly didn’t want to give it up – I had already drank half of it). But every time I would look back she would hold out her hand. Needless to say I didn’t enjoy the service very much. On one hand it wasn’t a good precedent to set, but on the other, I felt guilty for not giving it to her. I shared this with Bernie later. He had given the message that day, and he told me that she had hung from the wrought iron bars and listened to the entire sermon. Perhaps had I given it to her she would have just left. Or maybe I just feel better if I tell myself that.

But back to our devotions. This is what we shared with Cori, after honestly sharing our own inner struggle. For us it has boiled down to this. Walk in the Spirit. The Spirit of God knows the will of the Father. There is a quote from one of our Christian forefathers that has meant much to us. “Learn to detect and obey the inward impulse of the Spirit of God.� It always comes back to this – a daily surrender of my life to God. When I am in the right place, walking in fellowship with Him, His Spirit will lead me, even in these little things.

That still doesn’t make it easy. It doesn’t mean we don’t still wrestle with it, but maybe that’s not a bad thing. I don’t think God wants us to boil our lives down to formulas and policies, even though those are sometimes necessary and helpful.

The big issue is for the church here. Please pray with us for a healthy, growing church that in love and compassion can do so much more than hand out a bag of peanuts. Pray for the church in Mongolia, that out of their love for God and compassion for people they would bridge the gap and share bread, thus paving the way for relationships where the Bread of Life is shared as well.

After our marriage (yes, we understand this is way back but bear with us) in 1989 — making next year the big 2 – 0 — we spent three years in Memphis in secular employment and lay ministry in an Alliance church there. We both felt called to missions and were taking time to adjust to life together and see exactly where we were to go.

Jonathan joined us in 1992 and just before his first birthday Bernie accepted a call to pastor a church in Franklin, Tennessee. Yes, we know. It was a surprise to us as well, but a very clear direction. God’s reasons for that were His own, but His wisdom in that was abundantly clear as we learned how to walk with Him in His work.

Cori was born our second year in Franklin. Faith Community Church was a great place for a young family and we got to walk through the parenting process with many good friends. It certainly had its ups and downs, but we loved our church family and totally enjoyed pastoral ministry.

As a matter of fact, it was our desire to stay there a very long time. But….

During our 13 years there we were able to take quite a few short term missions trips. This was something that had been an important part of our life as singles, and was a double blessing as a couple. There was still that spark deep down that had never died, however, so each time we would visit a field, we would be open to God. Was He calling us there? It seemed like no matter where we went, we always returned with a certainty that we were exactly in the place God would have us be. With that certainty came peace and joy.

That is until November 2003. As part of her ministry on a Missions Mobilization team through the C&MA national office, Renee’ took part in a conference in Thailand. Each of the eight team members were requested to lead an extension trip before or after that conference and of course as we are a team, Bernie was also able to participate (actually he did most of the work). We requested the China extension, but two other members who had been before were given those two trips. However, since you go through Beijing to get to Mongolia we were told that if we led that trip we could have a few days between to see China.

We had no idea that would be the life-changing trip. As a matter of fact, Mongolia was the first country we visited where Renee’ didn’t even want to go. We were barely here for a week. But that week we were able to spend with the Mongolian believers, became something we couldn’t forget. Just this week when asked her first impression of Mongolia as short termer replied, “I feel like I’ve come home.” Aaahh, we know the feeling.

When we returned home this time, we no longer had that sense that pastoral ministry in Franklin was what we were supposed to do. We had sat with little groups who were amazed that of our small team of seven, four of them were pastors. They just couldn’t believe there were four pastors in one room. There were very few pastors here, as a matter of fact few men believers.

God never wastes a situation. We would never say that God put us in pastoral ministry only to prepare us for Mongolia. God doesn’t do that. However, we see now that His purposes for us there were for more than ministry to that congregation. It was to prepare us for next assignment. As a matter of fact, most of our previous experiences have in some way been part of His training. We believe that is always the case for all of us.

So, to sum this up, we went home and after a few weeks we talked and realized we were both still not able to put Mongolia in the past. So we prayed. We had several reasons why we could not come to Mongolia. We’re grateful for those hurdles. We saw them come down, one by one, as God confirmed His call. In the fall of 2004 we made the phone call to the candidate office of the C&MA. We spent the next year in the applicant process. In December 2005 we were officially approved and in January 2006 dropped the bomb to our family and friends. We left the US for Ulaanbaatar July 24, 2006.

Now our newbie readers know The Rest of the Story.

So with that bit of explanation – here is day 1:

We left the State Department Store at 8:30 AM.  It was supposed to be a 9 hour bus ride.  It was a 15 hour bus ride.  There were reasons for that.  However, I get ahead of myself. 

I traveled to Tsetserleg,  Arhaingai, Mongolia today, by way of a Russian van. 

Some people that I know from language school (they are a part of the JCS organization here in Mongolia) were heading this way anyway – and I was able to hitch a ride with them.  They are going on to a place called Bayanhainger, which is south, toward the Gobi).  I am going north – to Tsagaan Nuur (translate: White Lake).  In any case, I rode with seven girls, two drivers (Mongolian guys) and a cat.  Yeah, a cat.  It wasn’t as bad as one would expect, however.  The cat was really pretty well-behaved.  The drivers did okay, as well – other than the fact that they somehow missed the road that we were supposed to be on, and drove about two hours out of the way.  Of course, I can see how this would happen.  Roads in Mongolia are not really roads at all, but more cow paths (I am talking literal cow paths….sheep paths… yak paths… you name it) that vehicles have decided to take in order to get from one province to another.  We took the road to Hustai, and after Hustai the tarmac disappeared and the road degenerated very quickly (not that it was great to start with) to a spaghetti bowl of winding, rutted dirt paths.  The scenery was beautiful, but the roads were atrocious – but that’s Mongolia.  There are plans for a good paved road all the way to Tsetserleg – and you can see where some attempt is being made for that road to be built.  However, when we asked the driver when he thought it would be finished, he simply said, “many years”. 

After the driver found his way back to where we were supposed to be, we hit tarmac again for a little while.  But it didn’t last long.  We were back in the fields heading west.  That was part of the reason the trip took 15 hours. 

On the other hand, I confess that we made several stops along the way, apart from the standard (and frequent) stops at local “guanz” (little hole in the wall restaurants that serve greasy Mongolian food and milk tea) or Tea Shop (not nearly as quaint as it sounds).  We stopped at the following:

1. A wide open place in the middle of nowhere  for lunch by the side of the van.  This was actually quite nice, as long as we stayed in the shade by the side of the van.  I had peanut butter sandwiches and a Snickers bar.  The girls brought a watermelon to share.  The Cat had Tuna.

2. A sand dune area in a little finger of the Gobi Desert.  We stopped long enough to stretch our legs and see camels.  Yeah, Camels.  It’s a desert.  There are camels. 

3. A stop a few hours later in Khar Khorin.  This was quite interesting, as it was the capital of Mongolia in the 13th Century.  We’re talking Chingess Khan’s hang out.  Chingess and the Mongol Hordes actually camped out in this place, and it didn’t take long for my imagination to rebuild the ruins, to hear the horses, to smell meat being cooked over open fires and to watch the place bustle with activity while in it’s former glory.  There had been talk at one point that this should be made the current capital of Mongolia.  Not sure this will happen any time soon. Methinks they will need to build a road …

4. We stopped to simply view the scenery (and find a semi-private place to use the restroom – which is really quite an ironic thing to say since there is no room, and it’s not all that restful – and it’s in particular times like this when I am glad that God made me a boy).  The Arhangai province (called an aimag in Mongolian) is absolutely beautiful.  I couldn’t believe the number of sheep and goats and horses and yaks and cows that this land contains.  The van would drop into long valleys dotted with gers and strewn with livestock.  It was really quite beautiful.

So we followed the sunset all the way to Tsetserleg and I stayed at a very nice guesthouse called the Fairfield* (NOT by Marriott) and am now writing from a comfortable bed, a cool breeze through the open window and looking forward to a nice breakfast in the morning.  We pulled in at about 11:30 PM.  It is now after midnight.  My next task will be to find a ride to to Tariot after breakfast in the morning.  Now I must sleep. 

*Note that this hyperlink goes to a website parking place at the writing of this blog.  The Fairfield Guesthouse may be redoing their website so check back.  I am choosing to leave the hotlink for now.