World Outreach Week 2022

So you may wonder what this is all about. Well, my name's René, I'm one of the pastors here at Twin Lakes Church, and I am joined today by our pastor of outreach, Reverend Paul Spurlock. Would you welcome Paul? Thank you, René. And we are going to launch one of my favorite weeks of the year, World Outreach Week, here at Twin Lakes Church.

But before we do, I just wanna give you a sneak preview. Starting next weekend, our new series, Seven Signs starts. Seven Signs starts stupendously. Say that five times fast. It's gonna be a great series. This is on the seven sign miracles, the seven miracles of Jesus in the gospel of John. And this is gonna take us all the way up to Easter.

So if you feel like sometimes Easter just kinda hits you out of the blue and you wanna kinda prepare yourself emotionally and spiritually for the impact of Easter a little bit, join us for this series leading up until Easter, concluding with a bang on Easter Sunday. And John says in his gospel that he wrote these seven specific miracles, most of which don't occur in any of the other gospels because he chose them because he wants to encourage you to believe and have abundant life.

And so if you've been feeling down and lonely and weak, you could not choose a better series to come to. If you're just starting to attend church, I just wanna invite you to come to this sermon series for the next seven weeks leading up to Easter. It is gonna be a ball.

But first today, we're gonna do something completely different during the sermon time of our service. Paul and I are just gonna blast through some examples of what this church does in terms of supporting world outreach. You may not know, but we take 10% of every single dime that comes into Twin Lakes Church and we give it away, at least 10%, some years, much more than that.

And we give it away to global partners doing missions work all over the planet. And this includes church planters, pastors, educators, healthcare workers, pilots, and much more, all across trainers, all kinds of people all across the planet. It's gonna be very exciting for you to hear this. Why? Because so often, Paul, I feel like we get in a bubble, right, especially these days.

We get in our own social media bubble, our own news bubble, and our view of the world gets a little myopic and we don't really see what's happening outside of our own little bubble. And this'll broaden your horizons and it'll inspire you because so often when we read world news these days, it's only the bad news. That's the only stuff that they pass on to you.

Guess what? There is really good stuff going on all around the world, even during the pandemic, all around the planet. And so what you hear today is gonna lift you up and you're gonna wonder why you don't hear this stuff more. And it's gonna encourage you on another level because I think so often people feel like, am I really doing something that matters with my life? Is my life really making a difference?

Well, if you have given a dollar to Twin Lakes, you have supported every one of the ministries that we're about to relate to. This isn't about fundraising for these projects. The funds have been raised for these projects and spent and used in amazing ways, and they came from you. And so this is a chance for you to rejoice that you have been making a difference all around the planet.

And here is our theme verse, it's Acts 1:8. Let's read this out loud. Paul, would you read this for us and let's all read this together. Here we go, Jesus said.

Absolutely, you will be my witnesses telling people about me everywhere, in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. And World Outreach Week is when we talk about the ends of the earth part of our mission as Christians. But Paul, here's the problem. Frankly, what we're talking about this weekend are missionaries.

And in our culture, the word missionary, for some valid reasons, really has almost a toxic sheen to it because we associate missions with pith-helmeted Europeans going into developing countries that don't want them there and colonizing their culture in a kind of bulldozing indigenous culture aside. Obviously, that's not what we're talking about.

No, and we thank René especially for submitting this photograph that he used when he candidated here at Twin Lakes. So thank you, René, very thankful for that. You work great then.

Thank you so much. Still have the pants though, don't you? I do, I wear them on my day off. But, what do we mean by missions? Listen, it's just human nature to evangelize, isn't it? If we love something, we wanna spread the word. And we're living in a culture where that's easier than ever before.

I mean, TikTok videos go viral by the millions, right? Wurdle has gone from nothing to a global sensation. Grogu is now the most popular character in the Disney catalog. Why? Because people loved all this stuff and they evangelized. That's just human nature. But how can we do that when it comes to Jesus, when it comes to our faith in a way that's not toxic, right? Well guess what? As you'd expect, Jesus told us how.

In Matthew 20:25–26, he told his disciples, here's how to do it. He said, "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them." And their high officials exercise authority over them. They have people under their thumb, not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant. Say that word again with me, servant.

So how do we go out and evangelize, spread the word about someone we love who's transformed our lives, Jesus, in a way that doesn't lord it over, exercise authority over people, but instead serve people just as Jesus served us? That's the challenge, isn't it? And it's often counter-cultural.

But Paul and his global outreach team have come up with a five-word acronym, a five-letter acronym that spells G-R-A-C-E, GRACE. And each one of these letters stands for one of our five purposes that defines the way we, as a church, do missions. And what we're gonna do just for the next few minutes is I'm gonna tell you what these things stand for and then Paul's gonna give you one great example of each letter in terms of global partners that actually are doing these things, that you have supported and you're gonna leave so inspired.

For example, the G stands for go share the gospel and make disciples. Jesus told us in the Great Commission, therefore go and make disciples of all nations. This is the foundation, right, for what we do. All of our global partners do this, but one of the most effective over decades now has been in Naples, Italy, the ministry of Doug and Dee Valenzuela. Paul, tell us a little bit more about this.

Yeah, Doug and Dee arrived and settled in Naples, Italy in 1978 and through blood, sweat, tears, prayer, and outreach efforts, they formed a core of Neapolitan followers who then went on to invent Neapolitan ice cream. Thank you very much. I think it was a great, I'm kidding, that's just, no.

Tell us something that's actually true, Paul. That took one of the bigger last night. Tough crowd, tough crowd. All right, so they gathered together and they began to grow and they went from 12 to 100 to 200 to 300. And then in the 90s, they started doing these weekly, like for nine straight nights, festivals they call them, think Santa Cruz County Fair meets Italian style and pizzazz. That's what you've got in festival.

And through these festivals, they began to draw thousands to these things. And out of that birthed a second church. Well, collectively now, the two churches in an area that never had a church like that ever in the history of Italy, they now have over 600 followers of Jesus in those areas.

This is fantastic. It's incredible. And they go after it.

Yeah, give God glory for that because that's an amazing achievement. And René, they're very intentional about going after the most spiritually needy and heartbroken folks. If you know the area, it's just controlled by the mafia. And so there's a lot of drug culture and lack of purpose 'cause you just can't do anything without the mafia's approval. And so those are the neighborhoods they go into.

And so they haven't let the despair of their context stop the love and good news of the gospel. And so about a few days ago, I actually zoomed with Doug. I said, "Doug, you guys have had a great mission. You've changed lives." Give us a story that really exemplifies what your mission has done there in Naples. And here is what he had to say.

One of the most incredible stories that I still have on my heart is Tony Arruta who came to our house in '94. He was a holdup artist. He was a drug addict, heroin, cocaine, meth, anything you can get his hands on ended up in a coma. I had a chance to lead him to Christ in '94. His life was so radically changed. We had then a chance to lead his mother to Christ, his father to Jesus Christ, his aunt, his sister, Osela, her husband Dino, their children, his sister Titi, his other sister, Mariana, her husband, Mario, their children, his brother Ezio, his wife. And to this day, Tony is one of our leaders of Patreon. He's even made his presence known in around the city of Naples, helping so many other drug addicts.

I mean, you actually changed not just the life of one man or Christ three, you changed it, but the life trajectory of an entire family tree, a whole clan, that's amazing.

Yeah, and the best thing is many times these people then leave the city and they take that seed of hope and faith in other areas and those areas are changed even as they take that light and begin to spark in other areas of where they might be moving.

Yeah, that's what it's all about, right? I mean, they hear the word and then they go out and share the word. What's incredible, Paul, you and I have met Tony over there.

And he's a pastor, by the way, now. Tony's a pastor.

Right, right, and the most soft-spoken guy you can imagine. And when you hear this backstory, it's remarkable, but the gospel changes people. The gospel transforms lives. Anybody here show of hands, anybody here have been transformed by the gospel in your life or seen that happen in your family, right? And so that's why that is the very first item on the GRACE acronym.

Then the R stands for reconcile people to God and to one another. Now here's what this is all about. You know, our consciousness has been raised the last two years in terms of the need for racial reconciliation and the barriers that can exist, sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally, between different ethnic groups and races and languages and people from different countries. And those tensions existed in Bible times too.

And it was seen from day one as part of the purpose of missions work to bridge those gaps. You see that all through the New Testament, you see it in the ministry of Jesus Christ. Paul said things like God has given us the ministry of reconciliation. And then he said to the Colossians in Colossians 3 and he lists here the four biggest divisions that existed in his culture. So you can substitute the biggest racial, ethnic, linguistic divisions in our culture, religious divisions for the divisions he mentions here.

He says here in Christ, in the church, there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all and is in all. And one of the huge blessings of going out and visiting some of these global partners is seeing what the global church looks like to God.

You know, the Christian movement is without question on a historical global level, the most racially diverse, linguistically diverse, economically diverse movement ever in human history. And when you go out and see the global church, you get a peek at that and how people across every barrier can be reconciled as they are reconciled to God. Every one of our missions partners does this, but Paul, give us a fascinating example in an unexpected place.

Yeah, Jonathan and Karen Finley serve in a group called Sending In Mission or SIM. They have 4,000 missionaries in 75 countries and on six continents. And together, their main aim is to go to places on this planet, the farthest reaches where literally the name of Jesus has never been heard. Think about that. That's where they wanna go.

And then conversely, they also like to go from the ends to the inner cities of the biggest cities on the planet to also spread the gospel there because that's where things are happening. And then Jonathan and Karen do this specifically in the Paris region. Well, something crazy is happening. It's really a glimpse of the last book of the Bible. Revelation 7:9 has this verse.

I love this verse. Apostle John gets a vision of heaven and he says, "Oh my gosh," he says, "behold, I looked in there before me. Was a multitude no one could count from every nation, tribe, people, and language, all standing before the throne and before the Lamb." That's Jesus. And did you catch that? Every tribe, language, and people group, a multi-ethnic group all before the throne praising Jesus. And that's exactly what Jonathan tells me is happening in the Parisian churches this day.

So check this out as you see what we're talking about. France has a population of nearly 70 million people. Less than 1% would be considered Bible-believing Christians. Imagine that the entire global French-speaking church could fit into one room. Everybody who worships Jesus in the French language in one room, what would that church look like? 39 million French-speaking Christians live in sub-Saharan Africa. Less than 2 million are from European descent, which actually puts the missional frontier in the French-speaking world right in French-speaking Europe.

France colonized 24 nations in Africa. France was in Africa, and now Africa is in France. There's kind of a reverse flow of people from the south to the north, which means that the Paris region is incredibly diverse, ethnically, culturally. (speaking in foreign language)

So an important population in our churches are first, second, third generation immigrants from Africa. They're multicultural, multi-ethnic integrated churches. In fact, I really felt the need to have a better understanding of the African influences that I was facing in Paris. And so I had the opportunity to teach in Ivory Coast, and so initially it was just a one-time experience. But when I came back, then there were people from our churches who wanted to go back with me. We started sending short-term teams. We started sending long-term missionaries.

It's so exciting to see all this happen, and incidentally reconciling people to God and one another, overcoming those barriers. We wanna do a better job of that here locally as well. It's not just about right out there in the rest of the world. And that's one of the reasons, just a quick plug, that we hired a new director of Spanish ministries here at Twin Lakes Church, Julian Pizarro, as many of you know, is gonna be starting in April.

And the goal, it's gonna be, you know, take some patience to roll this out, but the goal is for us to be one church in two languages. Everything we offer, small groups, worship services, Stephen Ministry, everything is gonna be offered in Spanish as well or with a Spanish track. And I'm really excited about this because we wanna minister to the 30% of our county that identifies as Hispanics. So be praying about that. I'm super excited about that as we continue this ministry.

And then the A stands for, we wanna assist national leaders and local churches. We don't go in as the solution people, the authority people. We wanna go in to equip people who ask us to come in, in ways that they know that they want to be equipped. And there's a lot of ways that our global partners do this. One of the most profound ways is Johann and Christa Kombreich. What they do in Africa, specifically Southern Africa, is profound. Tell us a little bit about that, Paul.

Yeah, they're perhaps the finest example we have of assisting nationals and local churches. I don't know if you know this, but in sub-Saharan Africa, from the Sahara desert down to the Cape, the Church of Jesus is growing like never before. I mean, ever. It's historic, the proportions. The Christians just keep growing and their pastors and leaders do as well.

So they have plenty of leaders, plenty of Christians. So they say to us, "We don't need you to come here and be our pastors anymore, frankly. But what we do need is what you guys are good at. We need theological educational materials that we'll take to every bush and village and tribe, everywhere in the country." And that's exactly what the mission of Johann and Christa do. So watch how he explains it.

I've noticed a broad approach to training of leaders and training of pastors, focused mainly on the existing pastors across the continent. Spiritually, you find that people might lack proper feeding of the Word of God. And so that's why in partnership with AFNET, we have classes to teach the pastors that haven't been to colleges.

Well, there are some courses we started. We got trained with my wife in the year 2000. And thereafter, we relocated from Monza into beginning another church in Sanhia. It is easy to learn and offers ample time for people to start the material. After we were trained ourselves, we've trained a number of other pastors, more especially in the rural setting.

In training pastors in many of these countries, we are able to equip and send them back into their own communities, into their own societies. And these pastors become much more effective than any Western missionary can ever be.

We've been here just for nine months. And in these nine months, we've seen people that are thirsty to want to be trained and go into the ministry, equipped.

Number one, we are doing this to extend the compassion of the Lord. When the Lord saw people in need, there were times that he fed them. He gave them, he said, "You feed them." So we were doing this because we are defending the shoes of the Lord, to extend the compassion of the Lord, the mercy of the Lord, to help. And we are doing this not for ourselves, but for the benefit of somebody, and be helped not to come to the kingdom of God.

Our hopes are to raise the New Testament Church, build up leaders in this area, who shall also go out to minister to others.

I love that, building up leaders who then go out and minister to others. And it's exciting, Paul, because you and I have actually, we know personally every single pastor who spoke in that video, and we've been to many of their churches and attended worship there and been really blessed by that. But you called Johan up on Zoom a couple of days ago, and what was the question you posed him?

I wanted to know how the pandemic has affected the ministry, because think about it, they don't have the Zoom technology we have, especially in the rural area. So Johan said, along with the border shutting down, a lengthy communication shutdown, training shutdown, and that first generation of sort of the, you know, the pioneer leaders like Johan, they were stuck in South Africa where their base is, and they couldn't get up to the other regions.

And they thought, well, what's going on? What's the status? How are things progressing? And a surprising thing happened that only you could say God typically will do, and now Johan will explain what that surprising thing was.

COVID surprisingly has turned out to really be a positive factor in our ministry, because one of the things that we've seen that happened is, it in a way weaned so many of our top level leadership across Southern Africa to be able to take responsibility for themselves, where in the past they depended so much upon myself or our team from down South, they had to learn to initially wing it on their own and then to really run with the project.

What we've seen over the last two years that I have physically not even been able to cross our own borders, is that there's been such an incredible growth amongst the churches. Our Bible school graduates have almost doubled in these last two years, and we have around about 300 Bible school students ready to graduate now. And then also the number of church plants have increased.

How many hundreds or even thousands of pastors, church leaders and churches do you think have benefited from your training materials in Sub-Saharan Africa?

We actually lost count several years ago when we reached around 12,000 pastors who had graduated throughout two year Bible school program.

Isn't that amazing? 12,000, again, just give God glory. And you were a part of this. This is what, I want you to catch the vision for this. When you come to Twin Lakes Church and you're a part of this congregation, it's not just about what happens in this room or even on this campus. These are sort of like our adjunct staff members that are all across the planet doing the kind of ministry that you see here. It's so exciting.

And I hope you were inspired when you heard Yohan say, "You know, God's been really at work in some unusual and exciting ways during COVID. God's not stopped by that. God has not stopped by the pandemic. In fact, God turns that into something for good, Romans 8:28 style, like he does every single time."

Well, then the C in the grace acronym stands for caring for the poor and the ill and the victimized. That's always been a big part of Christian mission. For example, in James 1, it says, "Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress." And there's many ways that our global partners do this. And you do it through them, for example, refugee assistance in Jordan, the mercy ships floating hospital, usually off the coast of Africa. And Paul, tell us about a new partner that we're working with that cares for us.

Yes, very exciting. New TLC missionaries, Jacob and Audrey Miller, serve with a group called Mission Aviation Fellowship or MAF. Audrey helps primarily raise the three children and serve at the air base. Jacob is a pilot and he flies all over the dense jungles of the Amazon. Villages hear about this mission and they spend years constructing a rudimentary, viable airstrip out of grass or dirt. Why? Because they want what the planes can bring.

They want the healthcare, the medicine, the educational materials, tips on better animal husbandry or crop production, and even emergency medical extractions to get people to the hospital, which you could never have before. And the other thing that happens every time I've heard them talk about it is this. They know why they're coming. It's because of the love of Jesus. And when they embrace the gospel, the villagers actually wanna get on the plane and they do.

And they take them to relative villages to share the good news across the entire region. And you know what happens as a result as well, is the warring between tribes and villages ceases because now the love of Christ is taking over the area. And the other thing that's really special to my heart because I have three daughters is, in these cultures, when something bad happens, say a drought, before the gospel got there, the assumption was that a bad spirit has worked through someone in the village to make this happen.

They gotta figure out who that is. They need sort of a scapegoat. And just about every time that person chosen is a woman. And so what happens is that woman is taken and she is sacrificially killed with the hope that this will cure the drought. Now think for a moment if you were growing up in that culture and you're a little girl. Is your mommy next? Sister, when you grow up, you, or if you're a boy. What if I grew up and my wife is chosen, my daughter? So the spirit of fear is just a horrible plague upon these villages until the story of Jesus comes in and they say, "Wait a minute, he is the one supreme God over all other so-called gods." And he says that women are precious and they are not to be blamed for these things. And the killing stops. And the kids keep their moms. It's remarkable.

It's a beautiful thing. I've heard those stories again and again. So we wanna care for the poor and the ill and the victimized. And then finally, the E stands for educate the next generation. Again, this is all through scripture. The gospel, as they say, is always just one generation from extinction. So we wanna tell the next generation about the glorious deeds of the Lord. There's many ways we do this. Music Camp International in Ukraine and Romania Play Camps in South Africa, which also does a great job of racial reconciliation there. Little Flock in Chennai, India, this church, as part of our 2020 Vision Initiative that constructed our school building, our college ministry center and coffee house, also built the school building that these kids are in here.

And Paul, there's an exciting mission that educates the next generation that we also support. Tell us about it.

Yes, they're called Prakash Institute. Prakash means light. And they really bring it because imagine you grow up in a society where your parents are so poor, it can never even muster the money to purchase that non-negotiable thing you have to have to be granted access to school in these areas. And that non-negotiable thing is a uniform. Without the uniform, you're not allowed in school. And most kids never have the money to get a uniform.

So let's say you grow up with that, eight year, 18th birthday comes and goes, your chance for education, probably gone. But then you hear about this institute called Prakash. And you hear that they will take you in for free and they will house, feed, educate, teach you all kinds of things, including marketable trade skills and even high-end tech skills from welding, electrical engineering, air conditioning engineering, IT, tech, you name it, whatever skill can get you a job and a meaningful career to lift you out of the cycle of generational poverty, they're gonna provide it for you.

That's what Prakash is all about. And so in this next video, listen to how some of the leaders describe what they do. And note this, all these leaders, they're all alumni. And now they're even in ministry beyond the other things they train them. So check this out.

When the girls come here, we just, we strive hard to make them feel worthy. Mostly they come from the marginalized families, very poor backgrounds. They come from orphanages. They come from broken families, unimaginable conditions. They have their emotional needs. Most of them have physical needs. So once they feel safe and once they feel that they are accepted, they are not looked down on, that changes them. They are mostly rejected and they are not valued as much as their brothers or the male child in the family. The very first lesson we give them is you are special. So that touches their hearts. I see the difference in them in second year. And I cannot believe that this is the same girl that we had to work on when she entered our year.

I was an orphan kid. I was deserted. I was lost. But the light like a Prakash is a light that Prakash came in my life and everything it changed. It's a real joy to work here in Prakash now. I mean, helping students to understand their life purpose. Our mission is to bring those young people who do not have a hope and teach them, give them a basic skill so that they will stand on their own feet.

The vision of Prakash Institute is to see young generation or the marginalized young people of India getting transformed in their thinking and the training here in Prakash Institute not only will give them good skills, but help them to learn more about life, what life is and how to live this life.

So that is our five pronged global outreach strategy. And do you recognize this? This is really our strategy here locally as well because these are all biblical values. And that is kind of a peek under the hood here at Twin Lakes Church. We wanna go and be excited about what excites us when it comes to our love for Jesus and his love for everybody else, but doing it in a way that's not lording it over other people arrogantly, but that's going with a heart of service to where people are at themselves.

But Paul, I got one last question for you. So it's World Outreach Week. We've given people a lot of amazing stories and information, but how can this not be kind of an info dump? How can it be pastoral? What can people leave with that's inspiring to them today?

Yeah, realize there's been a big myth that's infected the church since the start. And that is there's this missionary super saint class and everybody else. Well, that's a myth. That's not biblical. It's not true. The Bible says you're all ambassadors. You're all believer priests, which means wherever you are, whether Timbuktu or Aptos over the fence of your backyard, serving in a skilled nursing center, working with kids, raising children in your own home, wherever you find yourself, a missionary is someone who says, how would Jesus talk and treat people here? If you do that, like you know he'd want you to, we call that person a missionary.

Yeah, that's right. In fact, you know what a missionary is? It's somebody who says to God, I will go. Wherever, whatever you want me to do, I'll do it. I will go. Whether it's here, across the street to my neighbor, or whether it's around the world, I will go. So I wanna ask you to do something. Just think about this for a second. And if, I really don't wanna push anybody, but if it reflects the sincere attitude of your heart that you just wanna be in God's will, you wanna go wherever God wants you to go, I invite you to say that simple three word sentence, I will go.

Does that reflect your heart? Can you say to God, I'll go where you want me to go? Whether it's here or anywhere, I'll go. And let God worry about the details. Are you willing? Say I will go out loud with me. Let's say it together. I will go. Say it again prayerfully. I will go. Let's stand together and close into word of prayer.

And before we do, I just wanna tell you, we've got some exciting stuff going on this week. Right now, our WOW! Fair. You can go out, meet our global partners, enjoy free Marianne's ice cream, check out the jewelry boutique, midweek events, we've got home groups where you can meet missionaries, outdoor groups here at TLC, sign up at TLC.org/WOW.

And then Youth GURPS Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, we're gonna give you free burritos, exciting missionary speakers. Thursday night, the hub is going to host a hub meeting for the whole church, 8 p.m. Thursday night in the new college ministry center with missionary speakers, free food. And then Wednesday night, 5.15, what's gonna happen there, Paul? Free dinner, correlated sausages, yogurt land. And so that starts at 5.15, it's free. You can't make it for that come at 6.30 when the program begins where we have two like super mini sessions, you get to choose two of our mission partners to hear from, rapid fire fashion, it'd be a great program, you don't wanna miss that.

So many exciting things. Hey, let's thank Paul Sperlock. He's kinda spearheads this whole thing for our church and he does an amazing job. And let's pray together. Would you bow your heads with me? Heavenly Father, thank you for the bracing, exciting, 2,000 year old mission that Jesus first gave to that first small group of Christians and that is to go into all the world and that includes Jerusalem, our neighborhood, Samaria and the uttermost parts of the earth.

So God, we say to you as sincerely as we can, I will go and I will share and be a witness to how much I love Jesus and how much he loves the world. Thank you God for activating that mission sense here at Twin Lakes Church over the years and even today. In Jesus name we pray, amen.