Outreach Stories

by Jeff Ritchie

When I served as a missionary in South Korea in the 1980s, my last assignment was in the office of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Korea. We opened each day with staff devotions. I still remember one of those devotional times which took place at the beginning of a new year.

The Bible passage read that day was Psalm 90, especially focusing on verses 12-15: “Teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom…. Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us….” As the worship leader spoke, I thought it was a rather somber way to begin a new year. “Life is short and full of trouble,” says the Psalmist. “Bad things are going to happen, so Lord, give us wisdom to know how to navigate the struggles, and please give us some reasons each day to rejoice and be glad.” Not very sanguine is it? But it is both realistic and hopeful.

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by Jeff Ritchie

A few weeks ago I watched my 6 year-old grandson, Alex, work on a machine he had made with his new science kit. He connected different-sized metal pieces to each other on a board, hooked them to a battery, and the result was sound and light. The “thing” worked! Not content with simply following the instructions to assemble his machine correctly, Alex then proceeded to experiment on his contraption. He moved pieces around to see if the sounds and lights still came on. He attached wires to different terminals to see if the connection was still there. Sometimes his changes worked; sometimes they didn’t. I could tell his mind was racing by the rapidity with which his fingers worked.

As I looked at my grandson and his venturous spirit, I thought, how creative our children and young people can be in God’s mission if we give them a chance. They need a little education through exposure to the needs of the world – in our own country and globally. They need to be inspired through our teaching and our personal participation in God’s mission. But then we need to let them dream and give them opportunities to turn those dreams into realities.

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A wall of children awaited us on the steps of the church! Sunday School had finished that Friday morning and the pastor, Rev. Isaac Estanfanous, had asked them to stay and greet us. I have no idea how long they had been waiting, but we were re-energized by their enthusiasm – and truth be told, we needed that, because this was the 12th church we had visited in the past seven days. As we made the 75 minute drive from dense and chaotic Cairo and were approaching this spacious and well-planned “new city” called Tenth of Ramadan, I had wondered if there could be anything here that could move us after having already seen so many of the vibrant ministry sites of the Synod of the Nile. I need not have worried because, as had been the case for each church and every one of the 20+ Presbyterian pastors with whom we had met, there was no shortage of vision and energy here to see Christ made known in this particular 3,000 square meters in this most ancient of lands.

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by Rob Weingartner

The most respected man in Eta, an outcaste village that I visited a decade ago in the Uttar Pradesh state of India, was the village elder. For years he let people worship, but he refused to allow the 500 people of the village to be baptized. Everyone respected his order. The Presbyterian pastors faithfully visited and held services each week. One night, the elder dreamed that he was responsible for preventing the salvation of his people. His heart had been hardened against the Christian faith. In his dream he heard Jesus say, “Why are you keeping your people from me?”  

Now, as an elderly man near the end of his life, the dream helped Sadhu Maharaj to realize the wrong that he had done. In a panic upon awakening from his dream, he traveled quickly to where church leaders were to request that a pastor come immediately to baptize all his people.  

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by Jeff Ritchie

By the time I met Harold Kurtz, a central figure in my mission formation for 20 years, he had had two completely different ministries. For twenty-two years Harold Kurtz was a missionary to Ethiopia doing pioneer evangelism. In 1974 the Emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selasie, was overthrown and most of the missionaries, including the Kurtz family, had to leave the country within a few years. From the late 1970s until his retirement in 1989, Kurtz served as pastor of an urban parish in Portland, Oregon, a very different kind of missionary challenge from Ethiopia. 

 

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by Rob Weingartner

As Presbyterians who trace our theological heritage back to John Calvin and the Reformation, we are part of a tradition that has asked the question, “How do you recognize a real church?” Drawing upon the work of Calvin and his followers, Presbyterians down through the centuries have affirmed that real churches are characterized by certain marks: the Word of God purely preached and heard, the sacraments administered according to Christ’s institution, and church discipline uprightly ministered, as God’s Word prescribes.

 

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by Jeff Ritchie

In the fall of 1973 I was a brand-new student at Fuller Theological Seminary. I was interested in mission service, and I had an opportunity to take an elective mission course, “Historical Development of the Christian Movement,” taught by Dr. Ralph Winter, engineer, anthropologist, and former Presbyterian missionary to Guatemala. In the orientation prior to the beginning of the school year we first-year students had already been told by other faculty that “Dr. Winter has 100 new ideas every day, and 99 of them are crazy. But pay attention to that one good idea.” So I was ready for some “out of the box” thinking on a subject in which I had great interest. I was not disappointed.

 

 

 

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by Rob Weingartner

In a few hours I will be arriving in Rwanda, a place that I have not visited before. It is a country where the church has done some hard learning about God’s grace and forgiveness, and I expect that it will be a challenging trip. I’ll let you know how it goes. I always look forward to visiting with followers of Christ in other cultures and contexts. They help me to understand what it means for me to live faithfully as Jesus’ disciple. 

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by Jeff Ritchie

Mention the name of Jonathan Edwards, 18th century pastor and theologian, and many people think of his sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” a sermon preached during the First Great Awakening, a revival movement in the American Colonies and Great Britain in the 1730s and 1740s. Scholars of American religion view him as a profound philosopher and thinker and refer to such works as Freedom of the Will and the Dissertation Concerning the End for Which God Created the World as they speak and write about him. 

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by Jeff Ritchie

The Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Egypt has been in existence since 1854 when the first Presbyterian missionaries came to Egypt. Their aim was to renew the 1,800 year-old Coptic Orthodox Church for mission to the Muslim majority. Their efforts did not accomplish that purpose. Instead, an evangelistically oriented Egyptian Presbyterian Church came into being. 

Until the 1950s the Egyptian Presbyterians evangelized their own people, including colonies of Egyptians in what is now the Republic of Sudan. However in the 1950s the Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Egypt appointed a couple to work cross-culturally among people groups in what is now South Sudan. The couple chosen, the Rev. Swailem Sidhom Hennein and his wife, Mrs. Sameera Rizk Hennein, were fully funded by the Egyptian Church and spent seventeen years in Sudan and Kenya.

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by Rob Weingartner

A number of years ago when I was visiting partners in Ethiopia, we visited a synod office that had been built as an income generating project. The church used the office space on one floor of the building and rented out the rest of the space to various businesses and shops. It was a great idea.

When we were up on the top floor of the building looking out over the center of town, Mizan Teferi, I saw something that confused me. It looked like an old man walking along the way holding out his arm – as if he was reaching for something. Because of the press of people I couldn’t see clearly what was going on. Then, the crowd parted for a moment.

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by Rob Weingartner

This story was related to me by Alexei Borisovich Teleus, the pastor of the Evangelical Christian Baptist Church in Noyabrsk, Siberia. He was also senior presbyter of the Yamal District of the Evangelical Christian Baptist Union in Russia. I preached at the church in Noyabrsk on January 22, 2006. It was 35 degrees below zero!

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by Rob Weingartner

I used to think that missionaries were people who wore pith helmets and funny clothes, ate exotic foods and served in places with names that are hard to pronounce. And there are still some missionaries who fit that description. But now when I think of missionaries, I also think of a group of men who live at the Lois M. DeBerry Special Needs Facility; that’s a fancy name for a very plain looking Tennessee state prison just outside of Nashville.

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by Jeff Ritchie

 

Without support and encouragement from others, dedicated servants of God can become fatigued, discouraged, and depressed. Their cry goes up, “Who cares for those who care for others?” This is a universal challenge for the church of Jesus Christ. I am currently in Brazil where I am seeing the beginning of a movement to address this need. The movement is a relational and grass-roots movement, and it is beginning to impact four denominations. At the center of the movement is the Rev. Dr. José Carlos Pezini, The Outreach Foundation’s staff for Portuguese-language ministries. 

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by Rob Weingartner

At last week’s Fellowship Community gathering in San Diego, I had the opportunity to lead a workshop examining the language that we use to talk about mission and our participation in it. One of the things that I observed is that many of the false dichotomies that have weakened our understanding of God’s mission may be overcome simply by paying attention to the life and teaching of Jesus, to his ministry and to his model of what it means to be on mission with God.

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by Jeff Ritchie

I have just been to Turkey for a family wedding. My brother, whose son was the one getting married, suggested that we go early and visit some of the biblical sites. Our itinerary included Ephesus and Miletus, featured prominently in Acts 18-20. Our guide was well-versed in both the general history and in the biblical history. He made Paul and his missionary band come alive for us on a sweltering August day. 

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The Rev. Dr. Kwame Bediako was a giant among missiologists. I began to read his writings in the mid-1990s and looked forward to meeting him some day. That opportunity came in 2005 when he spoke at a mission conference sponsored by The Outreach Foundation and Presbyterian Frontier Fellowship. 

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by Rob Weingartner

As I travel across the United States and share stories about the breathtaking growth of the church around the world, I am often asked the same question: “Why is the church growing in so many other places but not here?”

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by Rob Weingartner

From Start to Finish

When I was in seminary over three decades ago, mission was taught and experienced as one program among many that made up the life and work of the church. There was worship, education, fellowship, a few other things – and mission. It was twenty years ago that an encounter with the church in Africa and exposure to the writings of Leslie Newbigin and others helped me to understand that mission is the purpose of the church, not a program.

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