Tag: service

Serving Well – a Book, a Resource, a Shared Life

I can’t remember when Jonathan and Elizabeth Trotter first entered my online writing life. Perhaps it was when the former ALOS site founder and I were discussing one of their posts, perhaps it was before – no matter, at some point I realized that our online friendship had become one that I looked to for wisdom, laughter, and venting. We who are a part of A Life Overseas know well the value of online friendships.

When I was approached to write the foreword for their now newly-released book I was both honored and humbled. I share it today with our community with a hearty endorsement for the book Serving Well. Within this volume is an invitation to live fully, love well, grieve loss, fight injustice, and embrace friendship.

When it comes to missions, missionaries, and the missions’ conversations, we live in a cynical and skeptical age. Those who are serving or want to serve overseas are assaulted with everything from failed missionary blogs and podcasts to heated debates on colonialism and white saviors.

Despite the cynicism, God is still moving people to places around the world where they are putting down roots in unfamiliar soil and seeking to write their names in the lands where God has directed them.  They seek to live out God’s story in a cross-cultural context.

Where do those who are intent on pressing forward in a life of cross-cultural service turn? How can they live well in places where they don’t belong?

Jonathan and Elizabeth’s book, Serving Well, emerges as a bright light and resource for those who are intent on pressing forward. Transcending place, this book is a wellspring of wisdom, perspective, truth, and encouragement for cross-cultural workers. Beginning with preparation, the book covers everything from preparation to returning, with sections on grieving, marriage, children, communicating and more. It can be read consecutively or, depending on the reader’s needs, by section.

I am a missionary kid, a failed missionary, and someone who continues to serve cross-culturally. I met Jonathan and Elizabeth as all those identities merged, and I read their words and heard their hearts with incredible gratitude. Here was the real deal. My cynical heart found solace and foundational wisdom and understanding through their writing. This couple is living out God’s big story, and they are living it out in a cross-cultural setting. Their writing reflects their lives – the good, the hard, the awful, and the fun. We are not only invited into their words, we are invited into their lives. In Elizabeth, readers will find a friend and wise confidante; in Jonathan, they will find a counselor and brother; and in both they will find a couple who exemplify cultural humility, godly leadership, and deep joy in the journey of serving.

In the New Testament, the Apostle Paul writes to people in Thessaloniki, Greece and says this: Because we loved you so much, we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well.”* In the library of mission’s literature you can find many things, but to be invited into a life through a book is something rare and precious. Serving Well is not just a book – it is a shared life.

This excerpt is from the forward of Serving Well: Help for the Wannabe, Newbie, or Weary Cross-cultural Christian Worker ©  Wipf and Stock February, 2019 by Jonathan and Elizabeth Trotter.

Other Endorsements:

“Serving Well is deep and rich, covering all aspects of an international life of service from multiple angles. It is full of comfort, challenge, and good advice for anyone who serves abroad, or has ever thought about it, no matter where they find themselves in their journeys. It is also really helpful reading for anyone who has loved ones, friends or family, serving abroad——or returning, to visit or repatriate. Jonathan and Elizabeth Trotter are both insightful and empathetic writers, full of humility and quick to extend grace——both to themselves and to others. Their writing covers sorrow and joy, hope and crisis, weariness and determination. Best of all, from my perspective as someone who has worked with TCKs for over 13 years, it contains an excellent collection of important advice on the topic of raising missionary kids. Choose particular topics, or slowly meander through the entire volume piece by piece, but whatever you do——read this book!”
——Tanya Crossman, cross cultural consultant and author of Misunderstood: The Impact of Growing Up Overseas in the 21st Century

“Serving Well is more than a book to sit down and read once. It is a tool box to return to over and over, a companion for dark and confusing days, and a guide for effective and long-lasting service. Elizabeth and Jonathan are the real deal and Serving Well, like the Trotters, is wise, compassionate, vulnerable, and honest. This needs to be on the shelves of everyone involved in international, faith-based ministry.”
——Rachel Pieh Jones, author of Finding Home: Third Culture Kids in the World, and Stronger Than Death: How Annalena Tonelli Defied Terror and Tuberculosis in the Horn of Africa

You can purchase Serving Well: Help for the Wannabe, Newbie, or Weary Cross-cultural Christian Worker on Amazon or directly from the publisher Wipf & Stock.

*Thessalonians 2:8

When Your Missionary Stories Aren’t Sexy

by Erin Duplechin

We stood in the lobby after the funeral. We’d spent the hour before hearing beautiful stories of simple faith lived by a simple woman. Besides the fact that she was intelligent, caring, and genuinely interested in other people, one theme seemed to resonate throughout the eulogy: she showed up. She showed up to church. She showed up to serve and to teach. She showed up to be with friends and family. She simply showed up and said yes to Jesus in her daily life.

There will be no biographies written about her. There won’t be sermons inspired by her. Because she merely showed up.

In the Western world, when even Christians go after celebrity and fame, we want stories that are big and flashy. We want the “likes” and the thumbs up and the wow stories. Because the Church doesn’t often celebrate the everyday yes. We don’t celebrate the stay-at-home mom, or the man serving faithfully in his 8-to-5.

And the truth is that sometimes, even as vocational missionaries, we feel forgotten. We feel looked over. We feel like our work isn’t good enough to be recognized. A fellow missionary friend said it best: our stories just aren’t sexy enough. They aren’t sexy enough to be printed in the church newsletter or included in the Sunday sermon. They don’t bring in the big bucks or inspire the masses.

In the missions world, I know I feel increasingly more pressure to share the stories that will inspire people the most. Especially when 50 other people pay your salary, you choose to share the stories that will pack a punch. Because we want numbers and statistics and performance reports and for donors to know that their dollar is getting its worth. 25 people got baptized? Share that one. 100 people received Christ? Gold mine. You planted another church? Christian celebrity status.

I know there’s another side, and that’s that we can’t always expect people to know the right questions to ask, especially if they’ve never lived cross culturally. Or, because they can’t be expected to know our context of living, they don’t understand the magnitude or significance of our stories. And in that, we missionaries must extend grace and ask God for humility. We don’t have a right to be heard or understood or asked to preach or exulted for our work. We must aim to please God alone.

But there’s still no denying that the missionary life is often lonely and unglamorous. And often we put the most pressure on ourselves. We read the missionary biographies and the stories of our heroes of the faith and we feel like a failure. We compare ourselves to Christian celebrities and try to mimic their actions in the hopes of finally being good enough.

As we stood there in the lobby after the funeral that day, feeling more forgotten than we realized, a wise woman looked us in the eye and told us how proud she was of us, how what we do matters, how much she prays for us, and how important our simple “yes” continues to be. A daily yes to Jesus- not big, sexy, missionary stories. Not multitudes of salvations and baptisms and churches planted.

And with tears in my eyes I remembered: God sees me.

So, to you, fellow missionary, when you feel forgotten, I’ve been there too. To the ones who feel their stories aren’t good enough, God sees you and get this: He’s proud. He delights in the fact that you showed up today. That you got out of bed, that you homeschooled your kids even though you didn’t have time or energy to talk to a single national, that you got through that really difficult cross-cultural interaction, that you killed the mouse in your cupboards and the cockroaches in your shoes, that you tried your best to communicate in your second language, that you survived another day in the blazing tropical heat, that you endured a night without power and no sleep, that you choose to stay in the midst of political instability and uncertainty, that even though you desperately miss your family overseas and feel lonely, you pursue those in front of you. That you said yes and that you keep saying yes.

Because God isn’t asking for stories with big, sexy numbers and print worthy inspiration. He’s not asking for you to become famous or known. He’s just asking for your every day yes.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Erin Duplechin is a missionary wife and mama of three living in Papua New Guinea. Before moving overseas, she served as a worship leader and continues singing and writing songs abroad. She writes regularly about God and jungle life at erinduplechin.com.

Come to the Margins

This is a repost, originally published at She Loves Magazine.

It is a poem, of sorts and during these days in which so many, many people seem to be and feel marginalized, I wanted to revisit it.

Come to the margins, to the railroad track where houses were burned down and women are rebuilding with planks of wood, flattened powdered milk cans, and used clothing.

Come to the clinic and listen to the stories of grandmothers, of when they were nomads, of before the city was a city. Hear the heritage of folk tales and history.

Come to the elementary school and tutor the kids who strain to keep up in a language they don’t quite know yet.

Come to the stadium and watch the athletes train, see how their bare feet skim the track, hear how their teammates cheer and congratulate one another. Raise your voice with theirs.

Come to the market and learn how the local woman plants a garden, find out what she knows about seasons and soil and watering and protecting from hungry goats.

Come to the prison and offer a cold cup of water, a smile, an acknowledgement of the dignity of each person, even those behind bars, made in the image of God.

Come to the bank and discover the entrepreneurial spirit of women’s savings groups and small business plans.

Come to the margins and ask those here to pray for you. You can pray for them too but don’t come with the assumption that you are the only one able to bless.

Come, but don’t come to save. Come to be alongside on a journey. Offer your hand and your own stories of your grandmother, the first college graduate in your family. Your experiences of sports training and team camaraderie, your illnesses and academic struggles. Bring your brokenness, your loneliness, your confusion and doubts.

Come to the margins with your songs and stories, painting and photographs, teaching plans, and financial portfolios. Come with all your creativity and labor and insights and experiences.

Come to the margins bringing your addiction to accumulating stuff, the idolizing of money and appearance. Bring your fear of not measuring up, your envy and greed.

Come to the margins and find joy there, creativity, hard work, companionship, forgiveness, and a great sense of humor. Come and join and see the unique strengths and gifts and, if necessary, with humble wisdom, offer a hand. Receive a hand.

Come to the margins, aware of your own poverty and of how it doesn’t define you and of how it drives you to your knees and makes you desperate for God. Come but don’t use the margins as a place to soothe your conscience.

Come without condescension or preconceived ideas. Come without expecting to see nobility in suffering, expect to see pain and healing and sin and victory. Come with a willingness to look beyond what is lacking. Come, not to find a representative story but a precious individual. Come, not to see a saint or a sinner but a complex, three-dimensional person with gifts and dreams and skills.

Come and hear, and then leave without bearing simple answers or soothing platitudes or generalizations. Come and see, and then go and tell, tell the world there is more to Haiti than rape and earthquakes and orphans, more to Somalia than hostage-taking and al-Shabaab and famine, more to Syria than refugees. Come and taste, and then go and speak in a way that doesn’t leave a flavor of pity but of common humanity.

Come with nothing, if nothing is what you have and when nothing is the best thing you have. Nothing in your hands so they are wide open to receive, and to hold. Or, sometimes, come with a piece of bread and a fish and see what Jesus does with it, for all of us, even for you, even for me, here in the margins.

Come, outside the city gates, where Jesus went. Jesus is here, in the margins. He is there, outside the margins too but sometimes it is easier to see him here. Meet him fresh here, take off your shoes here, find yourself swept up in the glorious and global adventure of hope. Here, in the margins.

What do you find in the margins?