Republica Domincana - Hopes

When I did Mission Year, my mind became completely focused on living a 'missional' lifestyle. I became obsessed with practicing social justice in the name of Christ. I was angry at rich Christians. I was angry at rich churches. I didn't understand the ignorance of some belivers (even though I was 'one of them' just a year prior). I didn't understand churches that didn't 'do' outreach, or didn't focus on poverty, AIDS and other justice issues.


After meeting and marrying my husband, I think I have become more aware and angry about other issues in Christianity that deserve my attention as well. Marc knows more about the Bible and theology than I think I ever will, and he has continually brought me back to the Scriptures and has challenged me in ways I'm not sure he realizes.

I Timothy 4:11"Command and teach these things. 12Don't let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity. 13Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to preaching and to teaching."


What happens when we start practicing social justice as the church but loose sight of the main objective of the church - to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now, some would say doing these good acts is preaching the gospel ('Preach the gospel, and if necessary use words' - St. Francis of Assisi.). I would agree to some extent, but still believe wholeheartedly that it's possible to do these good deeds without truly understanding why we are doing them. We cannot neglect preaching the word and knowing the word.

Michael Horton wrote a book called 'Christless Christianity' (read an excerpt here: http://www.christlesschristianity.org/images/CC-Book-Excerpt.pdf) in which he talks about the incredible problem in American Christiainty of preaching good morals and being a good person without the preaching the good news of the life, death and resurrection of our Savior. I believe this can be a result of becoming so focused on other causes - even good causes, and then we make the assumption people already know the redemptive story of the gospel. Some highly influencial Christian leaders are calling for 'Deeds, Not Creeds'. I'm sure these leaders to not intend to completely neglect the Creeds, but how about some balance, huh? Don't we need both? Did not Jesus himself do miraculous wonders AND preach the gospel? Matthew 4:23 "Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people."



I was focused on 'deeds' when I came home from Mission year. Marc has helped me to see the significance and importance of 'creeds', and I am so grateful to him for that. I think I am finally at a point in my faith that I'm seeing how these can work together, without becoming grossly imbalanced. This is extremely important to me, especially as our church is striving to become more 'mission minded' in our community.

My hope for this trip is that this core group of church members will have our minds and hearts challeneged to not only BE the hands and feet of our Savior, but to truly KNOW our Savior and his word. I hope we can come back to GR with more understanding of what that might look like as we support our brothers and sisters in the DR, and also as we engage in our community.

Our Bible study this past week (Beth Moore's study on Daniel) had a lesson which touched on the sufficiency of Scripture and how God has given us His Word which contains all we "absolutely must know and must have". It was a challenge to me and I had to ask myself how much I really know of the Bible. It's easy to be deceived into thinking you know a lot after years in the Christians schools & working in a church, but I know it's not true. I was challenged to start memorizing scripture again. I spent almost every lunch break when I lived in California looking over note cards of scripture. My goal was to memorize Philippians. That is still on my list of 73 things to do before I die (coming up with 100 is hard!). I've decided that I'm going to start working on this goal again. Feel free to ask me how it's going when you see me!

We leave in 22 hours from Grand Rapids, please pray for us as we journey to and from the DR!