Monthly Archives: May 2023

Between you and me I’m a little nervous today. As I write five days remain until the live-at-home kids are out of school for the summer, until I’m their adult all day, every day! Thanks to the foresight of Apple Computer and a bad Christmas decision a couple years ago, they have screens that will entertain them. Just doesn’t seem optimal! 

You may face overwhelming situations of a more real nature. Me, too:

Following a pertinacious leader, a handful of intrepid friends and I are wrestling with a list of around 1600 people groups among whom no one is living, speaking a local language and working toward reproducing disciples to Jesus. We want to see all 1600 unengaged groups engaged by the end of 2025. 

Yep, it’s a little overwhelming! 

Sarah Bessey, in her winsome book,Out of Sorts, shares how it helps her sometimes to think not of the big thing, but one small expression of it. For instance, rather than Church, my local body of believers. Not Marriage, but my own spouse and our partnership. 

In that spirit, I want to introduce you to the Rath people. They number around 400,000 and herd sheep in the western reaches of Rajasthan, India. They come from Hindu stock way back, but got converted along the way and now follow Islam with a blend of folk practices. 

The best, current research says no one is living among the Rath, saying in their language, “God has come to you in Jesus to give you life.” Friends, that should not be. 

What can we do?

• Pray.
• Invite others to pray.
• Ask ourselves, “Who do I know who may know someone who’s near to (culturally or geographically) the Rath and might move into their neighborhood?” 
• Move to Rajasthan and learn the Rath’s language? (There are worse places to live!)

Until something changes, the Rath are one of 1600 groups in which tomorrow no one will talk to a friend who will share the hope of Jesus. Not one.

Check out the new World Christian Role video that asks whether senders are just goers that didn’t make it or maybe they’re something much more!

Do you remember what you wanted to be when you grew up? For me: Veterinarian, pastor, rock star. The ship has sailed on two of those and had I known as a kid what the middle one entailed, I may have dreamed in a different direction! 

Some kids, of course, want to be astronauts. It seems a more likely aspiration today than 50 years ago, certainly than 150 years ago! 

But almost unbelievably on May 21, Rayyanah Barnawi, a Saudi Arabian woman will launch with Axiom Space to the International Space Station. She’s a biomedical researcher who will focus “her attention on stem cell and breast cancer research” during her eight day stint aboard the ISS. 

In addition to two Americans, Barnawi will be joined by fellow Saudi, Ali Alqarni as part of the Kingdom’s fledgeling space program. Barnawi says, “I am so proud to take with me the dreams of Saudi and Arab women to space. . . .”

I love this for a few reasons:

1. It’s fun to see women boldly go where only men used to be allowed. 
2. Perhaps Barnawi’s experience will give hope to Muslim girls and women who struggle to dream beyond their circumstances. 
3. It’s refreshing to see Muslims in the news for doing good things, cool things. 
4. I’d like to think this may be a step toward civility, shining light on areas in which the Arab Kingdom struggles. 

Perhaps you’ve seen another Saudi women who’s in the news recently. Salma al-Shehab recently began a hunger strike in her prison cell. She’s serving a 34 year sentence for what she said and retweeted on Twitter. 

May al-Shehab find freedom. May Barnawi find success. And may they and women throughout the KSA and the Muslim world find their place in God’s good kingdom as it grows in Saudi and beyond.

Check out the new Muslim Connect video on the role of intercessor. It was shot in the Denver Airport! I’d be grateful for you to subscribe and help get this fledgling channel going. Thank you.

I was at a church conference recently where the main speaker, a brilliant, lettered, experienced man, shared the standard fare regarding contemporary gender wars. In a brief aside toward the end of his time, his words sliced through my malaise. Himself single, he challenged the room full of pastors, spouses and leaders, “You’ve got to do better caring for and reaching out to singles.” I thought of my church and agreed, “Dang, he’s right. We, more accurately I, have failed in this regard.”

Our culture, at least my particular bubble, treats singleness as a waypoint en route to normal married life. As a result, singleness that stretches beyond the reasonable timeframe can feel, both from the inside and out, different, abnormal, like some sort of failure. My church language and programing too often reinforces that idea. 

How much more so for single Muslims.

While this varies wildly depending on where and with whom one lives, singleness is even more “out of the norm” in many Muslim cultures. In fact, Islamic teaching says that since Muhammad married, so should Muslims, and there will be no singles in Paradise! Interesting as Jesus seems to indicate in Matthew 20 that there will be no marriage in Heaven!

While single women and men continue to carry much of the weight of world missions (see last week’s email), it’s almost always hard to counter one’s culture. I want to radically empathize with singles, particularly globally minded ones who feel the hundred stings of being “different” and work to find balance and direction amid the various callings of God, culture and their hearts. 

Toward that end if you’re single, I apologize for the things I’ve said or written that communicated that “normal life” doesn’t include you. May God give life to your deepest hopes and dreams.

Have you ever heard about something and thought, “I really want to share this with people!” only to then think, “Wait! What if everyone else has already heard of this and I’m just late to the party?!?” That’s me when it comes to Lilias Trotter, but she was so amazing I’m taking the risk. 

Born into a posh British family in 1853, Lilias developed a two-fold passion as a young woman: art and outreach. She’s remembered for cruising late night London inviting prostitutes to spend a night in a hostel and stay around to learn a different trade. 

Lilias also excelled at painting. So much so, the biggest art bigwig in Britain, John Ruskin, took her under his wing and believed, “she would be the greatest living painter and do things that would be Immortal.” Immortal, that is, if she would give herself up to art. 

Lilias had seen her faith come alive at a series of conferences and now faced a harrowing choice: Invest all she had in developing the artistic skill God had given her or honor the desire to be a missionary insistently developing in her soul.

North Africa won the day. When the agency she applied to turned her down for medical reasons, she and a couple friends set off for Algeria; self-funded, with neither Arabic nor local contacts! 

But Lilias stuck it out. . . for forty years! Painting and writing (eventually in Arabic) as she went, she established mission posts throughout Algeria and south into the Sahara. Ahead of her time in many ways of thinking and reaching out, she led her mission band, sometimes even from her sick bed to her death in 1928.

I’m grateful to Lilias for her example of making tough choices and working hard and to God for giving gifts and using all kinds of people. 

Learn more about Lilias from my friend, Marti Wade, this helpful website or this film.