By no means did I have everything figured out by then – far from it. But the leadership lessons the Spirit gave through Scripture have remained true for the last decade. I’m thankful for the Spirit’s guidance in some of these foundational insights that have helped define my philosophy of leadership and ministry. Here are some of the leadership lessons that I discovered from the life of David.

One of my favorite books is Through Gates of Splendor. Everyone knows the big story of their deaths on that beach and the after effects of the Auca Indians coming to know Jesus. But for me, the real value in that book is reading the private journal entries from each of those men, and seeing the depth of their conviction and passion for Jesus and for the lost.

On the 3rd page of the book, Jim Elliot writes in his diary,

“He makes His ministers a flame of fire. Am I ignitable? God deliver me from the dread asbestos of ‘other things.’ Saturate me with the oil of the Spirit that I may be aflame. But flame is transient, often short lived. Canst thou bear this, my soul-short life? Make me thy fuel, Flame of God.“

That last phrase, “Make me thy fuel, Flame of God,” is a poem from Amy Carmichael which talks about dying to self, and God’s grace in our weakness. Jenn got it framed for me this Christmas.

So this sort of conviction, this kind of passion is deep in our hearts as we’re on the plane taking off from Austin last year, holding each other’s hands and sobbing our guts out, because there’s a unique sort of dying to self that happens when you stop calling America, “home.” We are ready to die for the glory of Christ among the unreached. That’s the kind of conviction and vision we have upon leaving, and I’m sure that is what you guys feel as well.

I wish I could tell you that after one year, we’ve had nothing but passionate worship for Jesus and boat loads of people coming to know Christ. That hasn’t been true.

Before you go, everything is theory: you have a massive end goal to see movements among the unreached. And so you build this perception before going, maybe unintentionally, that everything overseas will be these big wins and dramatic moments.

The reality is very different. There is a lot of plodding. A lot of confusion, a lot of sin coming to the top that you didn’t even know you had, a lot of “I don’t know.” All the while you’re learning everything from new like a baby, especially language, and your whole team is also thrashing like they’ve just been thrown in the deep end. They’re looking at you to tell them what to do, like you actually know! There is a lot of guessing, because you really just don’t have enough information or experience to make a decision on your own wisdom.

And that is actually a grace of God.

As I’ve been trying to learn how to be a good leader, I’ve been studying David and Saul in 1 and 2nd Samuel. So I want to give you three comparisons between David and Saul as a framework for some of my own experiences in Thailand.

Listening to the Holy Spirit vs. Depending on your own Wisdom

To me, this is the most obvious difference between David and Saul. Saul seems to be insecure about his authority, his role as King. So he makes decisions based on what will benefit him, or appease his followers.

Saul disobeys God, and God takes His Spirit from him. Everything that Saul does after that point is based on his own wisdom instead of the Spirit’s, and Saul’s jealousy and sin has David fleeing for his life.

1 Samuel 22 is where we can see Saul has completely unraveled. He’s an insecure, jealous, power-drunk leader. Ahimelech the priest has just aided David with bread and by inquiring of the Lord for him, and Saul finds out. He’s basically foaming at the mouth when he confronts Ahimelech.

And Saul said to him, “Why have you conspired against me, you and the son of Jesse, in that you have given him bread and a sword and have inquired of God for him, so that he has risen against me, to lie in wait, as at this day?” Then Ahimelech answered the king, “And who among all your servants is so faithful as David, who is the king’s son-in-law, and captain over your bodyguard, and honored in your house? Is today the first time that I have inquired of God for him? No! Let not the king impute anything to his servant or to all the house of my father, for your servant has known nothing of all this, much or little.” And the king said, “You shall surely die, Ahimelech, you and all your father’s house.” And the king said to the guard who stood about him, “Turn and kill the priests of the LORD, because their hand also is with David, and they knew that he fled and did not disclose it to me.” …And Nob, the city of the priests, he put to the sword; both man and woman, child and infant, ox, donkey and sheep, he put to the sword.

-1 Samuel 22:13-19

Saul’s insecurity, his jealousy, lead him to kill a whole city of innocent people, the servants of God. It all starts from his lack of obedience to God, and his failure to submit to the Spirit.

I used to be super insecure about my role as a leader. I’m on a team with a lot of my closest friends – I grew up with them, and they know how big of an idiot I am. I don’t have way more experience, and for a long time, I didn’t understand that being a leader is a role that God gives to serve the body; it’s NOT some kind of improved value. If you know your identity is in Christ and you are a servant of his, then you won’t be worried about the approval of your teammates. You won’t be concerned with whether they like what you’ve said or not because you’ll be focused on obeying God, who put you in that position.

Being a leader is a role, not a value.

David, in comparison to Saul, often does what seems contrary to the obvious, and also contrary to what his people want him to do. Before making a decision, he inquires of the Lord. This is the key idea.

9 times in 1st and 2nd Samuel it says that David inquires of the LORD. When David inquires, he is specific, and he is obedient. He asks specifically of God, “What do you want me to do? Should we go here? Will we have victory?”

And he is obedient. Every time he inquires, he does exactly what God tells him. He doesn’t do what his men tell him, and he doesn’t do what he might think is best. He does what God tells him to do.

I think the best example of this is in 1st Samuel 30. David and his men have gone to battle but are sent back. While David and his army are gone, the Amalekites raid Ziklag, the city where David’s army left their women and children, and they kidnap everyone.

And when David and his men came to the city, they found it burned with fire, and their wives and sons and daughters taken captive. Then David and the people who were with him raised their voices and wept until they had no more strength to weep. David’s two wives also had been taken captive, Ahinoam of Jezreel and Abigail the widow of Nabal of Carmel. And David was greatly distressed, for the people spoke of stoning him, because all the people were bitter in soul, each for his sons and daughters. But David strengthened himself in the LORD his God.

And David said to Abiathar the priest, the son of Ahimelech, “Bring me the ephod.” So Abiathar brought the ephod to David. And David inquired of the LORD, “Shall I pursue after this band? Shall I overtake them?” He answered him, “Pursue, for you shall surely overtake and shall surely rescue.”

–1 Samuel 30:3-8

This is probably one of the hardest points of David’s leadership. He comes home from battle to see his city ransacked, and all the women and children kidnapped. They are weeping until they have no strength to weep! And his followers want to stone him – they are bitter and desperate.

I don’t know if you’ve experienced this kind of desperation yet in your leadership. I don’t think I have. Everything has failed, and everyone is against you. David is chased from his homeland, the King who he has served wants him dead, he’s lost his family, and his own followers want to kill him. I’m praying I have the response of David when this moment hits – he strengthened himself in the Lord.

Here is where it gets crazy. He inquires of the Lord. Should I pursue? Will I overtake them? And he waits for God’s response.

Think about it — WHAT ELSE IS HE GOING TO DO HERE? Not pursue them?! The people would most definitely stone him at this point. But he doesn’t do what is obvious, he doesn’t do what he feels would be right, he doesn’t do what his people want him to do. In the lowest point of leadership, he looks to the Lord. That is the defining mark of a godly leader. And God gives them victory – they reclaim everything and more.

In every one of the 9 inquiries that David makes of the Lord, he is trying to make a strategic decision. He asks, what should I do? Where do I go? When should I do it? Will I have victory? He takes the specific effort to pause, consult a priest with the ephod, and listen to the Lord. Most of these are urgent battle decisions that need to be made quickly, but David consults the Spirit.

So for you leaders — When you make a decision (What people groups should I go to, and when? Who should I recruit? What is our approach?), you need to ask, have I covered it in prayer first? Do you know what the Spirit’s voice sounds like? Do you have the intimacy of coming into his presence daily?

For us, we came in with a vision to mobilize Thai believers to start movements. We also came in with a strategy, timeline, and plan that was our best shot based on what we knew before we arrived in Thailand. But there’s so much that you won’t know until you arrive. We have learned so much in this last year, and our strategy has been changing and adjusting. We learn, we consult with the Lord, we discuss, and we tweak our strategy. But our vision is always the same – for that, we prayed and fasted and sought the Lord, and the vision is from him. So our strategy and timeline we hold loosely, but our vision we hold tightly.

Whenever there is a strategic decision to make, I need to fight to cover it in prayer before I make a decision. Because chances are, what I think is the best is not right.

So the first mark of a godly leader – listening to and obeying the Holy Spirit. Starting now – learn what the Spirit’s voice sounds like, and get in the habit of submitting every decision to him first.

Humility in Service vs. Pride in Position

We’ve already seen how Saul is insecure about his leadership role. He’s worried about what the people think about him and about David. He’s consumed by jealousy for his position when people start to sing David’s praises.

The women sang to one another as they celebrated,

“Saul has struck down his thousands,
and David his ten thousands.”

And Saul was very angry, and this saying displeased him. He said, “They have ascribed to David ten thousands, and to me they have ascribed thousands, and what more can he have but the kingdom?” And Saul eyed David from that day on.

-1 Samuel 18:7-9; 12-13

Saul was afraid of David because the LORD was with him but had departed from Saul. So Saul removed him from his presence and made him a commander of a thousand.

Saul goes on to make unnecessary decrees and orders that are all based on preserving his own position, as opposed to serving the purposes of God who put him in that position! God wants to use David, but Saul, instead of empowering his best commander, becomes jealous and limits him. It’s about his glory, not God’s.

As a leader, you are there to empower your people to succeed. If one of my guys starts to see 2nd and 3rd generation fruit and the beginnings of a movement, I’m not going to demote him because I want to be the one who gets credit! I’m going to give him all the help I can. Your team members aren’t there as servants to fulfill your vision – you are there as a servant to help them fulfill God’s vision.

A leader exists to be a servant and help others fulfill God’s vision for them.

David knows that He is a primarily servant of God, and his heart is after God’s glory, not his own. He hears from the Lord, and leads his people in obedience to God by serving them.

As a leader, you have to do the gritty stuff that most people don’t like to do. And you have to make hard decisions – and take responsibility for those decisions – which most people don’t like to do either. Making difficult decisions is a large part of how leaders can serve.

Going back to 1st Samuel 30, after the Amalekites have raided Ziklag and kidnapped the families, when God tells David to pursue he takes 600 men in full on pursuit. Remember, they’ve just prepared for war and have traveled 3 days back to Ziklag. They’re really tired.

As they reach a river, 200 of them are too exhausted to continue, but David goes with 400 and overtakes the Amalekites and gain everything back. When he goes back to the two hundred exhausted men, a conflict arises. Let’s see how David deals with this.

Then David came to the two hundred men who had been too exhausted to follow David, and who had been left at the brook Besor. And they went out to meet David and to meet the people who were with him. And when David came near to the people he greeted them. Then all the wicked and worthless fellows among the men who had gone with David said, “Because they did not go with us, we will not give them any of the spoil that we have recovered, except that each man may lead away his wife and children, and depart.” But David said, “You shall not do so, my brothers, with what the LORD has given us. He has preserved us and given into our hand the band that came against us. Who would listen to you in this matter? For as his share is who goes down into the battle, so shall his share be who stays by the baggage. They shall share alike.” And he made it a statute and a rule for Israel from that day forward to this day.

-1 Samuel 30:21-25

With authority and reason, David resolves the conflict swiftly and decisively. And he makes it a statute so that his people know: this is the clear expectation moving forward. And they don’t run into this problem again.

Throughout 1st and 2nd Samuel, we see that David is a servant of God, and he directs his people to obey God. He gives them clear guidance so that they can thrive, and in conflict he’s at the forefront mediating and taking responsibility for his people, shielding them, and protecting them.

Jenn and I are responsible for our people. When there’s hard stuff to do, we need to be first in line. We had to go recently to figure out visa extensions. Which is one of the utmost joys of living in another country. Jenn and I actually didn’t need to go because we were coming back here to renew our visas, but we went anyway so we could figure it out for everyone else. So we have to do the wake up early, dress up, get all the documents, travel out to the immigration office, wait in line for 3 hours, figure out the mess, all that. And of course, we get rejected because we have the wrong paperwork.

I’d much rather be meeting with Thais and sharing than going to the visa office, but I need to do it for my team. I’ve asked them to be here in Thailand, so I’ve got to make a way for them to be here, even if it is tedious and unexciting.

We went to Thailand about 3 months before the team, and I’d recommend that every team leader go 3-6 months early to figure stuff out for your team. There’s a lot of transition, and a lot of logistics. You serve by being the first ones through the wall for your people.

If there’s a conflict in your team, you’re there to mediate. I hate conflict, and I generally avoid it if I can help it. Thai people take it to the next level – if there’s a conversation that they don’t want to have, they just won’t have it. Literally, they will just disappear off the face of the planet and you won’t see them again.

But as a team leader, I can’t do that. I had to learn to embrace the role of shepherd, and do the things that I wasn’t comfortable with doing. I need to mediate conflict and I need to hear people’s stresses and anxieties and problems, and try to shepherd them with the gospel. You serve by entering into difficult conflicts.

You also need to set the boundaries and expectations for your people. Be clear about what you want them to do, how they can thrive. Everything is new and tenuous overseas, but they need a semblance of structure and guidance from you. If something goes wrong — even and especially if it’s not your fault — you take ultimate responsibility for the decisions you make for your people.

So how are you empowering your people to succeed? Are you giving them tracks to run on? Is this vision about your success, your cool stories in your newsletter, or about God receiving glory and your people obeying him well? How are you humbling yourself to serve those that you lead?

Repentant in Sin vs. Hardened Heart

It goes without saying that Saul had a hardened heart. When he confronted Ahimelech about helping David, Ahimelech offered his defense – how was he wrong in helping David when he had done it so many times before? Saul is shown how hypocritical and arbitrary he is being. But instead of admitting his wrong, Saul reacts violently, and “solves” the problem by just killing Ahimelech and all the priests. He had a hardened heart.

As King, David was far from perfect. There’s several times throughout his life when David is about to commit some sin, but God gives him grace and saves him from guilt. But we know of David’s huge moral failure with Bathsheba, resulting in a fractured family and kingdom.

As I was reading 1st and 2nd Samuel, I knew this part was coming. I dreaded coming to this part in 2nd Samuel and reading about David’s sin. Because all throughout his life it’s about God’s favor in his life, and how he is a man after God’s heart! He was chosen by God to bring glory to himself and lead Israel. Why would God allow there to be this huge moral failure in his life?

We all want to be good leaders. We want to be above reproach, with a good reputation. We want our people to trust us and depend on us. We hear those stories of goers who had huge moral failures overseas and are sent back in shame. This is a real fear of mine, that my leadership will be disqualified because of some kind of sinfulness.

The truth is that we are all far from perfect. During our time in Thailand this year, the stresses and frustrations forced sins to the top that I didn’t even know I had.

And I can’t help but think, Jim Elliot’s life didn’t look like this.

One of the hardest points of the last year was actually Christmas Eve. We’re missing our friends and family, we have culture shock. We had just gotten there, no idea what we’re doing, no idea how to communicate, and it’s stupid hot. I’ve gotten sick 3 times in two months, and I was sick on Christmas Eve.

We were in this crowded mall, trying to buy presents for each other, and I hate malls because I’m an introvert. And I’m sick and just so frustrated and stressed, so of course that leads into my frustration turning against the only person it can, which is Jenn.

And we had a bad fight. Like worse than basically any we’ve had in the States. Of course, I don’t even remember what it was about.

And I just want to be done.

I don’t want to engage with Jenn, with Christmas, with Thailand, with myself. I just want to disappear, go find a hotel somewhere, let her do Christmas by herself – that’ll show her. (If you can’t tell, I’m the flight response in conflict.) And I was so close to just bailing, when the Spirit just softly said, “What are you doing? You’re not this kind of man.”

And so I stayed. We talked and apologized and repented and forgave each other. It was God’s grace that He gave us a great Christmas Day. But Christmas Eve was an ugly day, and showed the ugliness of my heart. It was a low point for me.

I’ve had to apologize to my wife so many times this year. But more than that, I’ve had to repent before God. It took David a big shock from Nathan after he committed adultery and murder, but when he realized what he’d done, his response was repentance. “I have sinned against the Lord.”

He pleads with God in Psalm 51, “Have mercy on me, wash away my iniquity, cleanse me from my sin!”

As a leader, as a goer, as a broken person: you will mess up. You will sin. You will lash out. The stress of going overseas is multiplied by the responsibility of leadership. I’ve heard it said that, “cross-cultural ministry is a crucible. It will either chew you up and spit you out, or you will be refined like gold.” Get ready for it!

The stress of going overseas is multiplied by the responsibility of leadership.

Your only response in the face of sin is to have a heart of repentance. Praise be to God that our pleading for mercy has been answered – Jesus has done it for us on the Cross.

My bold prayer after reading 1st and 2nd Samuel – make me a better man and better leader than David. Which is really an outrageous prayer. But it’s possible because of Christ in me. The stress of going overseas is multiplied by the responsibility of leadership. But Jesus gives us grace in the midst of our weakness.

It’s been a hard year, with a lot of forgiveness and a lot of prayer and communication, but one of the things we’re most thankful for is how God has strengthened our marriage.

We know God is making us more like Jesus through sanctification. He’s getting us ready so He can use us more. Being a leader isn’t about being perfect or never being wrong. It’s about owning your mistakes, learning from them, and pushing forward. Being a leader is about constantly growing.

When I began studying the leadership of David and Saul, I thought I’d be finding attributes or character about David that differentiated him from Saul. And that’s partly true: David is humble and after God’s heart. But really, the difference is the grace of God in his life. David also messes up several times, but God delivers him out of grace, and doesn’t remove His Spirit. All of David’s victories and successes are solely because of God’s grace.

It’s been the same for us. As much as this year has been about us being sanctified from our sin, we’ve also enjoyed seeing God work in ways that we had very little to do with.

We have a healthy, thriving team of 9 people (soon to be 13), fluent in Thai, partnerships with local networks, and we’re on track to start our first training groups next Fall. We have a clear strategy moving forward, and God is doing more than we could have hoped.

We’re meeting Thais who want to give their lives to reach their country. Several Thais we know have said, “I want to move to the South to reach Muslims,” one of the most unreached groups in Thailand. Or, I want to share the gospel with those who don’t know, please train me!

We’re seeing God work in ways that we’ve only read about. For several years, we’ve been praying that God would appear to Thai Muslims in dreams and visions. Just a few months ago, Jenn and a teammate were invited to southern Thailand to a Muslim wedding.

At the wedding, Jenn and our teammate are sitting at a table when a lady named Feyda approaches them and just starts chatting up a storm. They talk about hijabs and Thai language and weddings and such. As they start to broach the topic of Islam, Jenn asks – “Have you ever had a dream from God?”

Feyda lights up and says, “Yes, I’ve had 2. In one of them, I’m at a big worship festival, and everyone is dressed in white and worshipping. In the second one, there is a huge snake on top of my chest, oppressing me; I can’t breathe. Then, a shining man in white with a beard comes and takes it away.”

Jenn and our teammate asked, “how does that make you feel?” She motions up and down her arms, like goosebumps. It’s the first story we’ve heard about a dream of Jesus among Thai Muslims, and we know without a doubt that God is at work. We are praying that God would reveal himself through dreams and visions to more and more Muslims.

Even though this year has been messing up and making mistakes, this conviction and vision we have for reaching the lost in Thailand is now ingrained in us deeper than ever. We know God is working. We know all the people groups in Thailand will be around the throne. We continue to be weak people used by God.

I want to end with the Amy Carmichael poem that I talked about at the beginning. This is my prayer for all of you current and future leaders – that God would be our sufficient grace in the midst of our weakness. That you would be leaders that inquire of the Lord and obey, be humble in service, and be repentant when challenges arise.

From prayer that asks that I may be
Sheltered from winds that beat on Thee,
From fearing when I should aspire,
From faltering when I should climb higher
From silken self, O Captain, free
Thy soldier who would follow Thee.

From subtle love of softening things,
From easy choices, weakenings,
(Not thus are spirits fortified,
Not this way went the Crucified)
From all that dims Thy Calvary
O Lamb of God, deliver me.

Give me the love that leads the way,
The faith that nothing can dismay
The hope no disappointments tire,
The passion that will burn like fire;
Let me not sink to be a clod;
Make me Thy fuel, Flame of God

Union with Christ and Resurrection Life

As we’ve mentioned in several other posts, the most significant lesson we’ve received from the Lord during our time on the field has been union with Christ. It has made such a radical difference in our practical experience of walking in the Spirit that it is the message that we most want to share with other leaders, goers, and believers.

The critical explanation of oneness with Jesus comes best from Hudson Taylor:

The Spirit of God revealed to me the truth of our oneness with Jesus as I had never known it before.

How great seemed my mistake in wishing to get the sap, the fullness out of Him! I saw not only that Jesus will never leave me, but that I am a member of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones. The vine is not the root merely, but all – root, stem, branches, twigs, leaves, flowers, fruit.

Think what it involves. Can Christ be rich and I poor? Can your right hand be rich and your left poor? Or your head be well fed while your body starves?

The sweetest part… is the rest which full identification with Christ brings. I am no longer anxious about anything, as I realize this; for He, I know, is able to carry out His will, and His will is mine. It makes no matter where He places me, or how. That is rather for Him to consider than for me; for in the easiest position He must give me His grace, and in the most difficult His grace is sufficient. No fear that His resources will prove unequal to the emergency! And His resources are mine, for He is mine, and is with me and dwells in me.

Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret

To us, learning about union with Christ unlocked the practical application of the promises of God in our lives. Those biblical promises for provision, joy, wisdom, power went from a distant and vague hope that they would happen to a daily, rich, and real experience in our lives and ministry. Without the secret of oneness with Jesus, we most likely would not have made it past our first term in Thailand.

And although we had been surrendering our control and receiving His promises throughout team leadership and growing ministry in Thailand, the shock and trial of cancer and burnout brought us deeper into the lessons of union. There was more surrender, more death to self that the Lord was bringing in order to receive the true goal of union with Christ: resurrection life and power.

We are continually learning and desiring to experience more intimacy, more of Jesus’ presence, more of our very lives, will, thoughts, words aligning with his. He continues to respond by giving more. 10 years into our time on the field, anxiety has gone from a near constant reality with no reprieve before learning about union, to something we had to actively surrender to receive peace from Jesus, and now to a rare occurrence that is honestly surprising when it pops up.

The circumstances of life and ministry on the field have not gotten much easier. But for thoughts of anxiety and the corresponding tension headaches, panic, desperation, escapism, and inevitable conflicts to go from 10 times a day to 10 times a year is a testimony of God’s power to transform our lives. 

This is not to even speak of —

• supernatural empowerment of strength and energy when my gas tank is completely empty,
• wisdom for decisions that I would never be able to make from my own knowledge, 
• joy in the midst of the lowest points in my life,
• favor and blessing in ministry with people that we did not earn,

and so many other miraculous and practical ways that Jesus has shown himself to be faithful.

His promises in Scripture are true. And they are available to us right now.

And there is so much more that he desires to give us than we can even imagine.

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Galatians 2:20

More posts on Union with Christ and Resurrection Life:

1. Union with Christ Part 1
2. Union with Christ Part 2
3. Resurrection Life Part 1
4. Resurrection Life Part 2
5. Resurrection Life Part 3

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God’s Faithfulness, Provision, Protection, and Presence

It feels a bit cliche to say that God’s faithfulness has been a theme of the past 10 years, but there’s a reason why Scripture so often speaks to this aspect of His character. Samuel Saldivar examines 1 New Testament and 4 Old Testament terms that highlight God’s faithfulness and counts up to 733 times these terms are used in the Bible.

In spite of whether I realized it or looked to Him for it, God has been faithful. He has been provider, protector, and Friend.

When our marriage struggled and we fought nearly every day for our first year on the field, He brought healing and unity between me and Jenn to turn a weakness into a joyful point of strength.

When we didn’t know what to do as leaders or how to make decisions for our team, His Spirit gave wisdom and discernment generously and protected our team from catastrophe.

When our team had conflict and disagreement and unhealth, He created unity and camaraderie for us as one body in Christ.

When we were physically exhausted, sick, and out of gas, He provided supernatural strength, energy, and healing.

When trying to pursue a vision for multiplication among 70 million people without the gospel and being told from numerous experienced workers that it couldn’t be done, He blessed us with cherished Thai partners that are bearing fruit beyond what we could dream.

When my wife was in the ICU after a seizure and I didn’t know if she would live or die, in the waiting room of the hospital at 2AM, I experienced His faithfulness and presence beyond any other moment I had before that.

Before you launch to the field, you hear testimonies from workers and read the words from missionary biographies like Adoniram Judson in the prison, Jim Elliot the night before they go to encounter the Huaorani and are martyred for their witness, and John Paton in the tree running for his life from savages. In those testimonies, they all talk about experiencing His promises for peace, joy, and trust, and about how Jesus had never been more present or nearer than in those moments of crisis.

John Paton writes, 

Yet I sat there among the branches, as safe as in the arms of Jesus. Never, in all my sorrows, did my Lord draw nearer to me, and speak more soothingly in my soul, than when the moonlight flickered among those chestnut leaves, and the night air played on my throbbing brow, as I told all my heart to Jesus. Alone, yet not alone! If it be to glorify my God, I will not grudge to spend many nights alone in such a tree, to feel again my Savior’s spiritual presence, to enjoy His consoling fellowship. If thus thrown back upon your own soul, alone, all alone, in the midnight, in the bush, in the very embrace of death itself, have you a Friend that will not fail you then?

You read the word, you pray and plead, you hope within hope that when those moments of trial come, that He will give you faith to believe the promises. That your faith won’t fail. That He will be and do everything that He said he would.

Sitting in that waiting room, distressed and scared, I prayed the simplest prayer that I could muster: “God, I trust you. I believe that you are with me and that you are sovereign and that this will be for your glory and my good.”

The moment that I realized that I not only prayed but I believed those words, I was overwhelmed with gratitude and joy that He gave me faith to believe the promises. That He had not abandoned me but had drawn nearer than ever before. It felt like I had passed the test of faith, only because He allowed me to. I didn’t know what tomorrow would hold, but I knew that I was held by Him. My Friend that would not fail me in the very embrace of death itself.

God is faithful, even to give the faith to believe His promises.

_______

Joy in Fulfilling Calling

At one missions conference we went to, we heard a speaker say, “Many goers do not persevere long enough to see the vision that God has given them be fulfilled.” Obviously there are many uncontrollable reasons that people leave the field, but his exhortation to us was to continue persevering in the work even if it is slow or difficult or plodding.

Timelining out the significant events of the last 10 years was emotionally heavy. It took me 1-2 hours per year to look back, remember, and note the significant moments, and inevitably to feel and experience those things as well. Even with as many good moments as there were, much of what we experienced still feels weary, sad, and melancholic. In some seasons, even if there wasn’t a distinct negative event, it just felt like we were constantly plodding uphill in the mud and rain, two steps forward and three steps back. It’s hard to count how many moments we wanted to give up, to escape, to just pick an easier life. Difficult conversations, hospital visits, sin issues, burnout, and self-dependence tinged the timeline like stains on the page of a book. And this didn’t even count all the smaller burdens like missing home, lingering sicknesses, feeling strange and misunderstood in a foreign culture, and a continual underlying stress, anxiety, and loss of control.

I decided to mark the events with a green color for positive and a red color for negative. After tallying them up, there were 211 positive, joyful events and 56 negative, difficult events. For every difficult thing, there were nearly 4 joyful things.

Life on the field is low lows and high highs. There were 267 significant events in 10 years, about 2-3 per month. I doubt if I would’ve even had 1/10th of that had I stayed in the States. And it’s true, life would’ve probably been easier, safer, more stable. And I would’ve, for the most part, avoided most of these very difficult, heavy moments.

But I would’ve missed out on joy.

He had good works for us to walk in. And even in the difficulties and suffering, he was teaching us lessons of how to receive joy and peace and rest in Jesus.

Jenn shares that when we returned back to Thailand after cancer, it felt like her soul clicked back into place. There is a joy and a contentment in your inner being to be exactly where God wants you to be.

And there’s joy in seeing a vision begin to come to fruition. 

We came in response to a calling and a Commission towards a spiritual need for the gospel in Thailand. At first, though I might not have admitted it, I was seeking validation. I wanted to be validated that I wasn’t crazy for leaving a good job in the States to essentially start over in a foreign country. To be validated that I was a good leader. To be validated that we could see ministry fruit happen where others said it couldn’t happen.

When the first trials and challenges came, most of those inane desires went out the window as we were just trying to survive. Being humbled by the Lord quickly checked our motivations, and learning union with Christ made us realize that Jesus’ words in John 15 were painfully and wonderfully true – “apart from me you can do nothing.” We started to focus on abiding not so we could get what we needed to bear fruit, but simply so we could experience more of Jesus.

When the ministry started seeing fruit, no one was more surprised than we were because we knew how incompetent, stupid, and weak we were. It was clearly because of what God was doing through our Thai partners, not because of us.

But still we experienced joy. Not validation of ourselves, not affirmation of our strength, but that we had a front row seat in seeing God’s goodness in bringing the first new believers, the first new churches. We celebrated when reports of new believers and baptisms came in. We worshipped when the sick were healed or demons were cast out. We wept with gratitude when we saw obedience and transformation in people’s lives and families. We were in awe when we realized that God was doing a work much bigger than we had anticipated.

If we had given up when things felt impossible, or perhaps never even took the first steps of obedience towards this wildly insane calling, we would have missed out on all of the joy that God wanted us to experience.

“Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit… These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.”

_______

Conformed to the Image of Christ

Lastly, what stuck out to me in looking back on the timeline was how much I have been changed. In the timeline above, the red events were negative and the green were positive, and I marked the blue events and lessons as significant moments of change, growth, and development for me personally.

This can perhaps be said of any 25 year old, but the word that comes to mind in describing myself at 25 is “naive”. My reality for the first few years in Thailand was something in between “I don’t know” and “What the heck is going on?!” In regards to life overseas, marriage, team leadership, and suffering, I had no idea what I signed up for.

I have failed as a follower of Jesus, as a husband, as a friend, as a ministry worker, and as a leader miserably, spectacularly, and repeatedly over the past 10 years to the detriment of myself, my wife, our team, and our ministry. Those failures were painful and have left scars that we have had to surrender to Jesus for healing. The fact that we are still here 10 years later with several physical and emotional scars is a testimony to the Lord’s kindness in sustaining us.

Reading through Robert Clinton’s The Making of a Leader helped me to understand that every experience, every opportunity, and particularly every failure has been how God has been shaping me. Those scars are literal and figurative marks of the ways that He has developed us more into who He has intended for us to be.

What excites me for the next 10 years is not only how much more impact we will have armed with the valuable lessons He has given us from the past 10, but how much more the Spirit will change me, how much more He will help me to know and love and become more like Jesus.

With 10 years behind us and the next horizon in front of us, we can simply say – If God has been faithful through all of this, how much more faithful will He be going forward?

Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.”

Hebrews 10:23

10 years on the field – in ministry leadership and through a pandemic, cancer, and role transitions – has felt like the equivalent of 20 years in comparison to what life was like back in the States before we launched. As many have said, life overseas consists of high-highs and low-lows. Those events and the ways we’ve been impacted by them have changed us significantly.

We had the privilege to take our first sabbatical this past year to reflect on the past 10 years and look forward to the next season. I ended up timelining personal, team, and ministry events over the past 10 years and drawing key themes and lessons from each year and each term.

In the last 10 years, we have…

Personal

• Moved to 8 different apartments
• Taken over 400 flights, traveling for 50%+ of the year for 4 of the 10 years
• Fought each other every day for our first year in Thailand
• Missed 20 weddings our first year in Thailand, including 3 weddings of our teammates
• Missed the births of nephews and nieces, and the funerals of grandparents
• Lived through a pandemic lockdown overseas (with Animal Crossing)
• Were repatriated for a medical emergency
• Endured 18 months of cancer treatment including surgery, radiation, and chemo
• Burned out and were ready to quit ministry
• Fostered 2 sassy bunnies
• Served for 6 years on our organization’s executive leadership team
• Transitioned out of our original sending organization to start our own new ministry
• Took 6 years to finish a 2 year seminary degree

Team

• Onboarded or helped our team leaders onboard 22 teammates (and counting!)
• Seen 8 teammates leave the field
• Expanded our original team to 3 new teams

Ministry

• Seen our teams train over 1000 Thai believers in disciple-making and church-planting
• Helped train and oversee 30+ Thai church planting teams throughout Thailand
• Seen God begin to multiply our Thai partners’ ministry in disciples and churches, including 1000+ professions of faith
• Developed, with teammates and Thai partners, a training handbook for planting multiplying churches in Thai

The category of items that were uncountable:

• Hours sitting in traffic
• Roaches and vermin killed or chased away (or that we ran away from)
• Hours waiting at immigration
• Intolerably spicy Thai meals, and related trips to the bathroom
• Misspelled and mispronounced Thai words
• Exhaustion naps
• Video calls around the world
• Team meetings, corporate prayer times, and worship sessions
• Times crying out to God in weakness and desperation
• Discernment, peace, blessing, and power given by the Holy Spirit in response
• Difficult conversations
• Hours spent walking with teammates through major health, sin, and life issues
• Minor and major health issues endured by us, our team, and our partners
• Stories of answered prayer, healings, deliverance, and salvation
• People around the world, especially and including teammates and Thai friends, who prayed for us, encouraged us, and supported us

I’ve looked over this list a few times, and even in bullet form, it is difficult not to feel the flood of emotions, the weightiness, the intensity of what this list represents. It has been a story of our weakness, self-dependence, and shortcomings coming to the surface in the midst of difficulties, challenges, and conflict, and the Lord meeting us in faithfulness, intimacy, and power. The last 10 years have been so much fuller, more joyful, and more rewarding than I could’ve ever thought possible. And it has been so much more difficult, painful, and crushing than I could’ve imagined before we launched.

For the sake of posterity, I’ll write down a favorite ministry memory and a favorite team memory. In another post, I’ll share a few of the lessons and themes that came out of my sabbatical reflection.

I thought about writing out some of the most difficult memories, including the day of Jenn’s seizure or finding out about a teammate’s moral failure, but it is heavy enough looking at that list above without going deep into the really tough stuff. And I’ll also save the numerous funny and outrageous ‘life in Thailand’ memories for another time, including the pregnant rat mother or the cheez-it dust story.

Favorite Ministry Memory

There’s probably two dozen that could go in this spot, including:

• Our very first training in Mint’s province where their family made Khao Laam for us afterwards, one of my favorite Thai foods – a coconut milk and sticky rice with red beans dessert stuffed into a piece of bamboo and roasted over an open fire. Or whenever Mint’s mom made us dinner!
• The first house church training we did with Mint’s new believers when we asked, what can we use for communion, and an old grandpa in the back said, ‘I brought ginger juice and sticky rice for my snack – can we use this?’ It felt like a 5 loaves and 2 fishes moment for our very first communion with a new house church that had come out of our ministry.
• One of the first house church gatherings we went to, when we sat in a circle with a room of mostly brand new believers and cried out in worship, “God heal our land that your name would endure forever!”

But the very favored one that comes to mind is at the end of 2020. After Covid lockdowns for 3 months, Thailand mostly reopened and our partners continued to push forward and see new believers and churches nearly every week. After 2 years of a crazy whiplash of travel and trainings and an explosion of new fruit, our partners coordinated a big celebration camp for all the church planters in the network, over 100 people from 30 teams in 20+ provinces in Thailand. We were big enough as a network to get shirts made! They chose สุดปลายแผนดิน to put on the shirt – “to the ends of the earth” from Acts 1:8.

After hearing countless stories of answered prayers, miraculous healing, deliverance, new believers, new churches, changed lives, sacrifice and suffering, trials and obstacles, and faithful obedience, our team prepared an activity to help each team receive vision from the Lord about where He was leading them to pioneer new churches. We grouped each of the 30 teams in 5 regions: North, Northeast, East, Central, And North-Central. We asked each team to listen to the Lord about 3 places they felt He was leading them to focus on in the next year. We told them that after 10 minutes of prayer and listening, to put a sticker dot on their province map on the wall of where they felt led to pioneer.

As these faithful church planters began putting stickers on maps, they looked like bright points of light against the background of the maps. Spiritual points of light in a land covered in darkness.

It was at that moment that I thought, “This work will continue through these people with or without us.” This was a prayer we had been asking for before we even launched, before we had even met these friends, before many of these people had ever started following Jesus.

And through this group, there was a legitimate chance that the promise of Habakkuk 2:14 could be fulfilled in Thailand – “that the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”

Overwhelmed and with tears flowing down my face, I had to go to a corner to sit down. After wiping my eyes, I looked over and saw my teammates similarly teary-eyed. And next to them were some of the regional leaders, those that we had trained the earliest like Mint and Talia, also crying. It was God showing all of us that the vision He had promised was beginning to be fulfilled.

Less than 6 months later, Jenn and I would be on a plane being repatriated back to the States for cancer treatment. We wouldn’t return for over 18 months, and the church planting network would encounter its most intense season of opposition, with Covid restrictions shutting down the country, Talia also being diagnosed with cancer, our network leadership team falling apart, and teammates coming off the field.

While we were gone, we weren’t sure how the ministry would go and had to release it to the Lord. Much of the work contracted during that time, but the thought I had during that 2020 celebration camp remained true – the work continued on even without us there. The past 2 years since coming back, we have had a season of ‘starting anew’ to help the network restart their momentum.

But just a week from now, we’ll have our first celebration camp with the whole network of church planters since 2020. Many of the people are different, and the people who remain like us, Mint, and Talia have been significantly changed.

Through trial and suffering and loss, the Lord has brought new life and new leaders and new believers and new churches in new areas that have never had the gospel. We continue to believe that this promise of Joshua 1 will be true for our Thai partners: “every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given to you,” until the gospel has gone to every people and place in Thailand.

Favorite Team Memory

There’s also way too many to count here, but I’ll bullet point a few favorites:

• Our pre-field team retreat where we tried to go through a desert survival scenario to figure out team dynamics and communication but we ended up all dying of thirst. Whoops.
• Our first team fellowship ever, where I told everyone to buy something on the street that looked interesting so we could potluck – 5 out of 7 people brought roast chicken because everything else looked weird!
• Late night McDonald’s as second dinner while watching Friends after 6 hours of meetings with our leadership team. This was a regular occurrence but some of my favorite times together with our leaders.
• Our sub-team getting together for a meeting during a heavy travel and training season where we all decided to put our heads down on the table for a power nap before starting our meeting because we’re all beyond exhausted.
• Thanksgivings and Christmases, including the Thanksgiving where I was super confused about why the turkey was so cold inside and burnt outside only to cut it open and find some mutant turkey breast that had a 3 inch layer of fat that wasn’t cooking – blegh.
• A family gathering in the States where we brought together all the parents on our original team to spend time together, celebrate, and honor our parents for their sacrifice and support in sending their children.
• A prayer activity with interactive stations at our team retreat in 2017 that Jenn and I frantically created 2 hours beforehand, but the Lord met us with intimacy and power. The last station was from Revelation 5:8, which references the “golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints” before the angels and elders proclaim Jesus’ worthiness among the nations. We had teammates write down prayers towards that final vision and put them in the bowls as an offering to the Lord.

The most impactful team memory however, is our last team celebration in 2019 as an original team before expanding into three teams in 2020. We deeply love and appreciate every teammate that has ever come through our teams in Thailand, but there was something special about our original team of 13. We were all so fresh faced, naive, earnest, and so-so-so not ready for what was about to happen. But we were together and we had each other in the midst of all that confusion and newness.

We had the vision to expand into multiple teams even before we launched, because of the uniqueness of the different contexts within Thailand (Buddhist/Muslim/Tribal) and because the Lord had blessed our team with multiple leaders. After 2 years of prayer, planning, and preparing the new team leaders, we had a final celebration as a team before we officially expanded.

We split into guys/gals time and the guys got to watch Muay Thai together. And we reflected on good and difficult times as a team. We worshipped and prayed together. And we celebrated all that God had done in and through us. Jenn and I prepared small gifts for each teammate as well.

We led a reflection exercise where we asked each teammate to think of 3 words that described them and described the team at the beginning and 3 words for themselves and the team now. Blue text is for personal words and black text is for team words.

Perhaps even more than the ministry fruit we got to celebrate together, this list of transformed lives and a transformed community is maybe one of my most cherished things from our time in Thailand.

From selfish, proud, naive, insecure, broken, superficial strangers to joyful, rooted in Christ, safe, abiding, thriving, tested, humbled, fruitful, impactful family. It’s such an unbelievable thing that God did in a short few years to knit us together.

At the end of the time, while crying the hardest I ever have in front of other people, I commissioned our teammates out to their new teams and fields of ministry in Thailand, and commended them to God as Paul does with the elders in Acts 20.

That time together marked a significant transition for us, as soon after we would be in different places, with different teammates added to the new teams, and Covid happening simultaneously with our team expansion. But wherever God will take us – to different cities, different organizations, or different countries – no matter what, that team will forever be family for us. And when those golden bowls of the prayers of the saints – including our prayers from that team retreat – get poured out at Jesus’ return, I’m sure that this family, clothed in white robes and together with those from Thailand we had the opportunity to impact, will save each other seats around the throne. Maybe afterwards we’ll have some McDonald’s.

Up to this point, this blog has largely covered some tools and paradigms around team leadership on the field. Our next series of posts will switch gears a bit to focus more on a strategic component of pursuing movements that we think is critically important.

We’re excited to start the ‘Be Barnabas’ series. Along with union with Christ, it’s one of the key ‘pillars’ that has shaped our ministry and leadership philosophy, and one of the reasons we started this blog.

‘Be Barnabas’ is what we call the role of the outsider in finding, equipping, and empowering a national apostolic visionary who is a cultural insider to catalyze movements. It’s a pattern modeled after Barnabas, who found, vouched for, teamed with, empowered, and encouraged Paul – the apostle who catalyzed much of the movement of the early church in Acts.

Why is Be Barnabas important? There’s a lot that can be said around missiology and missions history for the changing role of the outsider or Westerner in pursuing the Great Commission among the unreached. But for us, there’s two main reasons:

1. The vast majority of movements around the world are not started by a cultural outsider directly multiplying among the unreached, but through helping a national apostolic visionary (NAV) leader to catalyze a movement.
2. The biggest untapped potential missions force in the world is the church in the Global South, where two-thirds of the world’s Christians now reside. Those that are cultural insiders or proximate to the unreached will have much fewer barriers to multiplying churches than cultural outsiders will have.

In this series, we plan to tell some stories of what Be Barnabas looks like, give some of the Scriptural and movement principles behind Being Barnabas, and lay out a clear pathway for what it looks like to find, equip, and empower a NAV once you’ve reached the field.

For this post, we wanted to introduce Mint’s story. Mint is our first national partner that we’ve been walking with now for 5 years. The following story is what I wrote for our church’s missions newsletter about 2 years back in 2021. We hope this story is encouraging and gets you excited to learn more about Being Barnabas!

“What is your vision, Mint?”

She whispered back to us, almost embarrassed at the audacity of such a goal: “I think God is saying that we need to pursue planting 100 multiplying churches.”

“I never thought that God could use me for something like this—I used to be the church secretary! I am just a little seed in God’s plans.”

My wife and I have been goers in Southeast Asia for the past seven years; Mint is one of our main national partners that we coach, serve, and encourage in the work of church planting multiplication. Through serving and empowering our national brothers and sisters in Great Commission work, we have had the privilege of seeing God moving in mighty ways among some of the spiritually darkest contexts in the world.

Before we launched, we had the traditional missions mindset: move overseas, learn the language, share the gospel, gather some believers, plant a church, and hand it off to the local believers. But on our vision trip to this country, we heard a shocking statistic: it takes two full-time goers evangelizing for one year to lead one person to Christ in our country, because of the language, cultural, and identity barriers of foreign messengers bringing a foreign message.

Of the 70 million people in our country, only 0.7% are Christian. If we wanted to see this country “filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (Habakkuk 2:14), the traditional missions approach would be like trying to transform the Sahara desert into a body of water, one drop at a time. Meanwhile,1,500 people a day are dying in our country and entering into an eternity separated from Christ without even a chance to hear of the hope of the gospel.

These realities drove our team to two questions:

1. How many people would have a chance to hear the gospel?
2. What is our role in seeing as many people hear the gospel as possible?

In our prayer and seeking, we learned about Church Planting Movements. These movements of God were happening throughout the unreached world, where simple churches and obedient disciples were multiplying exponentially. We learned that of the hundreds of movements started around the world, less than 1% of them were started directly through foreigners that shared the gospel and led someone to faith that multiplied. The vast majority of the movements happened through those foreigners finding, training, and coaching a national believer from that context towards multiplication. We call this role of the outsider, ‘Being Barnabas’ to a national ‘Paul’-type leader.

So when we arrived in Thailand seven years ago, our team pursued partnerships with local churches. We were looking for national leaders to come behind, like Barnabas was looking for Paul to encourage and empower towards multiplication. That’s how we met Mint.

Mint is a church planter in a rural area of our country. She is strong-willed, sassy, and she never gives up. She used to be the church secretary before she received a calling from God to plant churches. With almost no church-planting training and very little support, Mint was sent to a new province to plant a church. In her first year, Mint didn’t have a car, so she biked 20 kilometers a day trying to sell second hand clothes so that she would have enough food to eat. She said she cried almost every day at the beginning because of the many personal, financial, and ministry-related difficulties. But after 2 years of faithfully persevering and sharing the gospel hundreds of times, she finally planted her first church of about 15 people.

When we first met Mint, we asked her, “What do you hope to see happen in your ministry?” She said, “I want to see my church multiply, so that people throughout my country and the surrounding areas could hear the gospel. But I can’t get my people to obey God, much less make more disciples!” She was exhausted all the time from trying to lead the ministry by herself, and her phone was constantly ringing, with her members bringing their problems to her.

So after getting to know her and casting vision for multiplication from the Bible, we, together with Mint, started to train a small group from her church in simple tools for how to share their faith and how to disciple new believers.

In the first month, Mint and her team led seven people to faith. The next month, another eight. After three months, there were 20 new believers. They saw miracles every week—people healed through prayer, evil spirits cast out, families restored, and so many answered prayers. Keep in mind, it took Mint two years of sharing to reach 15 people. In those early months, Mint was more surprised than anyone at all that God was doing. 

Fast forward several months later, and 20 new believers multiplied into 80 new believers, and Mint planted five more house churches. At one house church training, a new believer gave us his lunch of sticky rice and ginger juice to use as the communion elements!

Soon after this, the church planting pastor from Mint’s network said, “Mint and her team have had more fruit in the last several months than all the other church planters combined. We want to train all of them in the things you’re doing with Mint!” Our team started training about 15 church planting teams in early 2019; in just one year they had led over 200 people to faith and started over 30 house churches. It would have taken my wife and me 200 years of sharing to get to the number of new believers that our national partners saw in just one year.

For us, serving and empowering Mint isn’t just about training or methodology. That’s honestly just a small part of our interaction. It’s being part of her life, being a listening ear, caring about her thriving. It is hours and hours in the car together on our way to visit new believers and train others, discussing and ranting about every possible topic together. Our favorite food to eat together on the road is KFC—which is way better in our country than in the US! When we go to visit Mint, her mom always cooks for us and calls us her own children. Mint has a deep abiding relationship with God, and she is an easy crier when she shares what she’s learning from Him.

Being Barnabas to Mint is getting to celebrate with her when there is success and fruitfulness, but also sharing in her burdens and sufferings. We walked together with Mint and mourned with her when she told us her dad decided to leave her and her mom to go live with another woman. We wept with her when she told us that two new believers decided to leave the church because of a conflict. They just left their Bibles on her doorstep and disappeared without a word. She said the hardest part was not that they rejected her, but that they were rejecting Jesus.

We can’t do what Mint does. But we can serve her, we can encourage her, and we can equip her with tools for how to multiply. We cannot directly start a movement in our country. But we can help her to do it. We were at a prayer retreat with Mint when she received this vision from God to plant 100 churches. We continue to believe that 100 churches is just the first step for what God has in store for her. Mint is currently overseeing seven church planting teams as a regional leader, and her teams are planting multiplying churches throughout the country, on their way to 100.

I have never baptized a single person in Mint’s province. Mint and her team have seen over 120 people come to faith and baptized them in the river. I have never planted a church among the people in our country, but Mint has at least 10 healthy churches who each have a goal to pioneer in new areas. When I originally thought about missions, I always imagined that I would be the one leading people to faith. But there is something so much richer and better in seeing Mint succeed—because she is a national leader, called by God, and multiplying among her own people.

In 1 Thessalonians 2, Paul writes to one of his churches, and his words perfectly reflect what we feel towards Mint. Paul tells them, “What is our hope or joy or crown of boasting before the Lord Jesus at the time of his coming? Is it not you? For you are our glory and our joy.” We love Mint so much, as a friend, a co-laborer, and a sister in Christ. Knowing and helping her is our joy and if no one ever knows our names, it doesn’t matter, because God is using Mint to multiply the gospel in our country.

From time to time, we’ll update some about our personal lives and ministry here in Thailand. This past weekend, we had the opportunity to travel through the mountains to meet up with one of our closest Thai partners, Talia (name changed for security purposes).

We’re planning to post about our past season of cancer treatment, how we experienced Jesus in that, and the difficult lessons God was giving throughout all of it. Just 12 months ago, while Jenn was in the middle of cancer treatment, I wasn’t sure if we’d be able to continue in the ministry, return to Thailand, or what in the world God had in store for us. We were burnt out, battered, discouraged, lost at sea with no port to return to.

As we were taking the 3-hour drive through the mountains, it hit me that the last time I was taking this kind of drive was the day of Jenn’s seizures that revealed her brain tumor – March 19, 2021.

625 days.

625 days after the scariest day of our lives, He allowed us another opportunity to continue in what He has called us to.

625 days might not seem like a long time for some people, as it’s about 3 months shy of 2 years. And I’m sure it has been a long 2 years for many others. But it was the longest and most difficult 625 days that we’ve ever experienced, and we’re immensely grateful and humbled to be able to continue serving in the ministry we love, in the country we love, with the people we love.

We had such a great two days catching up with Talia! After 1.5 years apart, we got to share in beautiful mountain views, good coffee, and delicious Thai food. But more importantly, we shared with each other similar lessons that God had been teaching all of us through the past season of sickness and suffering.

Talia has an amazing story: after coming to faith, she was passionate about serving God and immediately participated in a church plant. After she got married to her husband John, they moved and eventually joined a church that ended up being a Christian cult. The pastor told them that they could not teach from the Bible, serve in the church, or generally do anything other than show up on Sundays if they were not ‘anointed,’ and the only people who were anointed were those that he picked who had given enough money to the ‘church’ (meaning: to him directly). After a few years trying to endure and acquiesce with the leader’s demands, Talia and her husband realized that what the pastor was saying didn’t line up with what the Bible was saying, and decided to leave that church. They left discouraged and worn out after struggling in that church for 3-4 years.

As they looked around online for another church, they got connected with one of the church planting leaders from the church network that we partner with, who invited Talia and John to one of our quarterly CPM trainings.

When Jenn and I met them, we didn’t know their backstory at all. They actually seemed quite skeptical, asking a lot of questions about obedience to the Word and who has authority in the church. Eventually, they invited me and Jenn to train them and a few other believers in their province, so we went to visit and train them about a month later.

Their demeanor towards us was totally different than the first time – and Talia especially seemed filled with passion and excitement. Our very first vision casting and training is from the Great Commission – that there are 4 commands (go, make disciples, baptize, teach them to obey), and 2 promises (Jesus has all authority, and he will be with us always). For me, I tend to receive the promise that Jesus will be with me as an encouragement. But with our Thai church planters, the promise they cling to is that Jesus has all authority. For Talia, hearing that Jesus has all authority and gives her the command to make disciples was like releasing a river that had been stopped up by a dam for 4 years. She was ready to GO.

Reports began coming in from their area of healings, demons being cast out, new believers coming to faith, new groups of believers formed. Talia was texting us with ministry reports from different areas all around her province and beyond. The next quarterly training we had, she brought along a team of 6 other people to join along.

At one point, Talia and John and their disciples were baptizing several new believers, and some of the members from the previous cult came to harass them. They said, ‘You’re not anointed! You’re not a pastor! Who says that you have the authority to baptize? This isn’t a real baptism.’

And Talia, who I imagine and believe was filled by the Holy Spirit with boldness, replied: ‘The Bible says that Jesus has all authority and that he has given us authority to make disciples and to baptize them in his name!’ And they continued with the baptism.

All seemed to be going well, but we weren’t able to visit Talia’s province for several months as it was one of the hardest hit by Covid restrictions in Thailand. When we reconnected with her at the end of 2020, we heard about multiple areas and multiple generations of churches being planted! But we also heard why we weren’t able to get in touch with her.

5 months before, she was diagnosed with cancer. She was given months to live by the doctor. She said she couldn’t even look at her two young children without breaking down, overwhelmed by the thought of leaving them without a mother and her husband without a wife. At one point, she told us that she had thought, “It’d be better for everyone if I just died. Then my family will get the life insurance money and I won’t have to deal with the suffering.” She said the only thing that kept her going during this time was that there were new believers coming to faith every week through her disciples.

As she hit her breaking point, she asked John to take care of the kids for a few days and locked herself in her office. And she described the experience of that 3 days as ‘the closest to heaven that I’ve ever been.’ She simply worshipped, read the Word, and prayed with Jesus – and surrendered the outcome of her health, life, family, and ministry to him.

3 weeks later, Talia’s sister, who is a nurse in Bangkok, asked her to come get checked up at one of the best hospitals in the country. And when they did the scans – the cancer was gone.

God had healed her.

As we listened to her story in that coffee shop, we rejoiced with her over the new brothers and sisters that had come to faith, cried together over the suffering she had been through, and planned together towards how to help the new streams of churches continue in health and fruitfulness.

But we didn’t get to follow through with any of those plans. A few months later in April 2021, we were being repatriated on a plane back to the States for surgery, radiation, and chemo. And Talia continued to struggle with debilitating health issues over the next year as the hardest spike of Covid closed down any ability to do ministry in person in Thailand for over a year. But as Talia and Jenn went through over a year of medical treatments, they were both texting and praying for each other and mutually encouraging through the lessons God was teaching them about surrendering in suffering.

None of us can guess at the timing of significant health problems hitting at the same time as Covid lockdown, effectively stunting an emerging work of multiplication. To be honest, the person I was 625 days ago might have worried about that. But experiencing a new freedom, a new humility, a newness of resurrection life from the breaking down of this past season has just given me gratitude that we get to be back in Thailand, serving God and pursuing the Great Commission with our Thai friends. And seeing Talia renewed with passion, faith, vision makes me confident that a powerful work of God is around the corner for Thailand.

When we saw Talia this past weekend, she said this: ‘Jenn – I believe that we were sick together, to encourage each other and understand each other, and now to be healed together. But now is a time for us to เริ่มต้นใหม่ – a time to start anew.’

625 days is just shy of two years for most people. But for Talia, Jenn, and myself, it’s a new start; God giving back to us our lives and the opportunity to do ministry.

Please continue to pray for Talia as she has lingering effects from the medical issues of the past season and will need to get a corrective surgery in about 3 months. Pray also for her disciples and churches in 5 different areas as they continue to move forward in a vision for multiplication!

For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account. Convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with you all, for your progress and joy in the faith, so that in me you may have ample cause to glory in Christ Jesus, because of my coming to you again.

Philippians 1:21-26