Our first term as missionaries was a case study in unmet expectations and seemingly surprise disasters. We were supposed to go to Peru to lead teams of young men into the ministry of planting churches in the villages and training them up in the skills they needed for that task. Here is a short list of our dashed hopes just for giggles:
Every morning starting at around 4:45, our city will come alive. Sleepy imams will turn on loudspeakers. The early morning skies are filled with the droning of the adhan or the call to prayer.
The repetitive Arabic rhythm and phraseology come from every direction in the city.
We all knew it was coming. Eventually, our friend Billy would die. He wasn’t perfect, but to some of us, he represented as close as it gets without having nail-scarred hands and a thorn-marked forehead. Still, even though we were expecting it, Billy’s death filled us with a mixture of sadness and joy when it happened. We are sad because our role model had left us but joyful because he had been made whole. But I found myself having another emotion, inspiration.
Suddenly I saw it, “David Platt to leave position as IMB president.” As I read the headline and the subsequent article, we were all shocked by the news of one more major stir-up in the IMB. But ultimately, before we went to bed, we collectively agreed that the core of what we do and who we are would not change. We are still called to take the Gospel to the nations.