World Changers

The cool breeze is blowing in through the open window and as I write this I can look out across the sprawling metropolis of Hsinchu, Taiwan from the seventh floor apartment we are staying in at the seminary. The hum of cars and trucks going by on the freeway nearby is punctuated occasionally by the sharp blast from an air horn. Today is a beautiful day, sunny and cool, but the first days we were here were a bit colder and rainy. This evening we head back to Singapore, and back to the tropics, so we will enjoy these last few hours in a temperate climate. When one lives in a place where the temperature never varies much from 30 degrees Celsius, one does truly enjoy a change in the weather once in a while.

Our meetings here have gone exceptionally well. We have been able to build significant relationships with the team of partners here in Taiwan, and we are excited to see what God is doing – and will do – with these two dozen or so Mandarin language facilitators. As we shared together yesterday, we pointed out that one in six people in the world today speak Mandarin as their mother language. That means that this group has the very real potential of impacting the entire world as they continue to facilitate others toward living out Christ and being His witnesses in their own spheres of influence. Each of us present agreed that the reason that we are involved in training God’s people to live out His life through their interpersonal relationships is because God has called us and chosen us to do this. And we have all seen the impact of this intentional process in our own lives.

The SYIS workbook is for all intents and purposes completed in Mandarin and we also have the facilitator notes almost completed. There are a few other documents that still need translating, and there will likely be some further adaptations and revisions as we use the material, but with a solid group of facilitators trained now, and with the workbook and notes ready for use, we look forward to seeing how God will use this tool in His church. Already there are plans for workshops in other parts of the world, and we believe that there will be many more requests for workshops in days ahead.

Sometimes we may not see how a small group of one or two dozen people can really make that big a difference in this world. Certainly we struggle against the stream of current events and culture. Yet the fact that the world continues on a downward spiral is no reason for us to give up hope and not try. From the very beginning Jesus told His followers that the world would hate them. In fact the early church made choices many times that cost them their lives. We can look back at those early days just after Christ returned to heaven and say to ourselves that those people were different than we are today. Things were obviously different. There is no way that God’s people today could even think of selling all they have and sharing equally with each other, is there? Our world would not easily allow for that type of community. We live in a world where we need to prove our ethics by making our own way, and by standing on our own two feet. The early church had a lot of their leaders in jail – for good reasons, not bad! That would never be a good idea today, would it? It seems more efficient to try to impact the laws that would criminalize Christian behavior so that we can avoid wasting time in jail. But when the time comes – and it surely will – when it is a crime to live out our Christian beliefs, how long will it be before we end up paying the price?

The world has moved on several thousand years from that time when Jesus Christ stood on a hill and told His disciples to go into all the world and preach His Gospel; to be His ambassadors, His witnesses. But Jesus Christ is still the same, and His promise still stands that He will be with us to the end. Can a handful of people change the world? Probably not on their own. But when those people are filled with His Holy Spirit and allow Him to use them in whatever way He wants to, there can be significant change in the world around them. The world will acknowledge that they are His disciples; that they love one another. Some will hear and have faith and be saved. And their world will forever be changed.