World Outreach Week 2023

Welcome to Wow World Outreach Week. Who is excited about Wow this morning? Because I know I am. This is such a fun week in the church. My name is René. I'm one of the pastors here at Twin Lakes Church.

Quick preview next weekend. We all know what that is. It's a celebration the whole country is anticipating. It is often referred to as the cultural event of the year. And of course I'm clearly referring to my sermon, the DNA of TLC. What this church stands for. It's gonna be exciting. You may be surprised. Bob you may be scandalized. So come on out and hear it and we're gonna have a lot of Super Bowl goodies for you and some other prizes. So don't be lured away by people to tell you that you got to stay at home for a game that doesn't start till 3:30 p.m. I hope to see you all in church next weekend.

And then also in two weeks we're launching a special series for Lent leading up to Easter called Seven Days the Final Week of Jesus. I'm very excited about this because every week we're gonna be looking at a different day in the final week. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. Each a different day in the Gospel of Mark and then it's going to culminate on Easter Sunday morning. And I think studying what happened in the final week of Jesus Christ is just going to make Easter so much more emotional and so much more meaningful for us. Really excited about that.

Now today as you have seen in the lobby we launch Wow! which is a week of world focus. If you are a guest here today, maybe for the very first time, you picked a great weekend to learn about the heartbeat of this church. And if you're kind of a veteran, a tender, you chose a great week too because we are going to give you good news. We don't... who could use some good news today? Not some bad news. We're gonna give you good news about the good news and the good ways that the good news is having good effects all over the world.

And here is just one reason we all need to hear this. I saw a study that just recently came out from the American Psychological Association. No big surprise psychologists are seeing an increase in news related stress and they even have some words to describe it. Headline anxiety and headline stress disorder. So now there's a label for what you're feeling and the research shows that just absorbing the steady daily drumbeat of dismal news can make you feel depressed. And PTSD symptoms overwhelmed, helpless, and so if you've ever found yourself feeling like that, just sort of like, man, my joy is drained. I'm not finding happiness and pleasure in the things that used to give me pleasure. All I'm thinking about is how the whole world is falling apart. It's making me angry and negative. You will leave very encouraged today.

Now I want to guarantee you something. You will not hear about what you should do to help the world change. You will not hear about what you could do to help the world change. You're going to hear about ways you are already helping. Ways God is already working through you right now and has been working through you for the last year.

As you heard Adrian mention, pardon me, 10% of every dollar that comes into Twin Lakes Church goes to ministries we partner with all over the world and one week a year we highlight some of the work that those partners do. So if you've ever given a dime to Twin Lakes Church, you have a share in these amazing ministries like refugee assistance in Jordan, which you'll be hearing about soon, or Mercy Ships Mobile Hospital, Little Flock School and Clinic in India, pastor training in Africa, the Middle East, Italy, Bible translation all over the world, sponsoring new churches on four continents. You have had a part in all of that over the last year.

Now for most of the message today you're gonna see a video report. We actually went over to the Middle East and put together a short documentary film about all our partners over there that you're gonna see in a couple of minutes. Probably all you hear about in terms of news from the Middle East is bad, but there are people working for peace, people working for Jesus.

You may be sitting here going, oh this is all about the other countries. Why should we even do world outreach? Why can't I you know just sit on a mountaintop somewhere have my own personal spiritual experience and gaze at my navel and kind of find inner peace. Who cares about the world? Right? Well at the very start from day one our faith has been about outreach. Mark 16:15 Jesus told his first disciples and let's all read his words to those very first disciples together. Ready? Here we go. Go into all the world and preach the good news to everyone. So from day one our faith has been a missionary faith.

Now when I say that word missionary you might cringe because in our culture that has not always felt like good news. When most people think of missions these days who aren't perhaps churchgoers or maybe even some churchgoers they think of you know colonizers and pith helmets and abusive leaders like in Mosquito Coast or the Poisonwood Bible or Kekistadors lording it over indigenous people and all of that did actually happen. In the name of Christianity and in the name of missions and guess what that's why Jesus Christ warned against that kind of behavior from the very start.

Also in the Gospel of Mark chapter 10 starting in verse 42 so Jesus called them together and said you know that the rulers in this world lord it over their people and officials flaunt their authority over those under them but among you it must be different. Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant and whoever wants to be first among you must be the slave of everyone else for even the son of man referring to himself came not to be served but to serve to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many.

I mean Jesus Christ is our example he served himself by humbling himself even unto death on a cross for our salvation and out of joy for that salvation and modeling Jesus that's how we are to go into the world. Sadly too many Christians I mean our faith if you think about it our faith is probably the only institution on the planet that survives from antiquity from the days of the Roman Empire so that means we kind of had two models for our faith we had Jesus and we had Caesar. Jesus or Julius Caesar and sadly I think that so many people who've tried to advance the church have modeled themselves more after the Roman Empire and Julius Caesar than Jesus Christ.

But when we go into the world and serve others like Jesus did in a kind way through love in action that's when the word spreads and that's when our faith becomes contagious. You know if you have the headline anxiety that I talked about earlier and sometimes you feel like everything's falling apart I think a very under-reported story in the world today is that our faith is actually growing I mean by leaps and bounds there are now two and a half billion people who identify as followers of Jesus and the face of our faith is changing in some very positive ways.

Watch this in 1900 82% of the world's Christians lived in Europe and North America and most of those were Anglo-Saxons. Only 18% in South America Africa the Middle East Asia that's in 1900. 2020 33% of the world's Christians in Europe and North America 67% now in what's called the global South South America Africa Asia. In other words what's happening in our lifetimes is something historic and that's this Christianity is returning to the demographic makeup of our own first centuries. After all Jesus Christ himself was a Middle Easterner right not an Anglo-Saxon despite what you might see in some of the Jesus movies and so as a group we are starting to look more like our old family pictures again.

I want to show you something these are family pictures you could say from churches from before 1000 AD. For centuries Christian art showed its leaders looking like this what do you see here a white man and a black man together a brown man and a white woman a dark-skinned man again all these are from before 1080 this is how Christians saw ourselves as a group for a thousand years long before any kind of political correctness right that's just who we were and what I'm saying is that's again what we are looking like globally and that's why I want to assure believers in the States who sometimes get freaked out about the headlines you know that right now church attendance on the whole in the United States and Europe is declining okay but is the faith in decline our church is going to be healthy I look at these statistics and I want to say it's going to be okay it's okay first because this shows that God is at work right now in every corner of the world it's going to be hey okay but also because this means that our faith doesn't have you know all of its eggs in one demographic or racial or political or national basket which is very good.

It's also going to be okay because we're going to learn so much from people who live in places with greater religious diversity we're going to learn so much from Christians who live with and have lived for centuries with being a cultural minority and yet have not given up their faith we're going to be learning from Christians who don't see the Bible for the exact same cultural lens that we do and yet still are devoted to Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior this is why global outreach is so beautiful we want to serve them and encourage them and let them encourage us and teach us as together we share our faith to the world as Jesus told us to do.

So today for our little mini documentary as we do every year we want to zoom in on one part of that world and today on the Middle East because Christians there today are still a very small minority but I want to give you a peek into how the partners we support are serving the believers there.

My name is Mike Najar. I am in Egypt, in Cairo, with my wife, Leslie, and my son, Jeremy. We've been serving here in Egypt for about a year, but we've been in the Middle East in total for about four years. Before that, we were serving in Central America for about 18 years, so Leslie's from Guatemala. So we met, and we're married there. Jeremy was born there.

So my role, a lot of it is mentoring people to help them just understand some intricacies of the faith, as well as some basic training in disciple making, in church planting, as well as just familiarizing people with our organization. Right now, we are helping to send out local believers, Arabic-speaking believers, out into the harvest. We're really focusing on those unreached peoples. That's why we're here in Egypt, and we're here working with local Arabic speakers that can go into all these little nooks and crannies of the country, of communities, and be able to find those people that have no access to the gospel whatsoever.

During the pandemic, a lot of people suffering with physical need. And God lead us to help them to meet this need, food, money, medical. They asked us why you did that for us, why you are a Christian come to help us as we are Muslims. We said that God loves us in a practical way. He asked us to love our neighbor. It opened a great opportunity to show God's love for them in a practical way.

So Egypt is the most populous country in the Middle East. There's over 100 million people. It's mostly Muslim, but about 10% or so are Christian. But many of those are not believers. In Egypt, as in many Middle Eastern countries, when a child is born, they write down the religion of the child on their birth certificate, on all their legal documents, and that cannot be changed. So it depends on what religion the father is. So if he's Muslim, the child will be Muslim. So you don't have an opportunity to change religion throughout your life. If somebody converts from Islam to Christianity, they are still considered a Muslim throughout their whole life. And even when they have children, their children will have to be Muslim, even though there's no belief in Islam whatsoever.

One of the things that's on our hearts the most is just energizing the Egyptian church to mobilize itself to missions. So for hundreds and hundreds of years, ever since Islam came to Egypt, the local church has been oppressed, it's been kept down, it's been persecuted. And so the believers have a mentality that we won't or can't do anything outside of the four walls of our church.

We have a sports academy that helps bring together Christians and Muslims together, kids on the same field, learning to play sports together. I train the kids, I talk with them about gospel-centered principles, but I really train the coaches to do that. And that's what we're really all about. One of the biggest aspects of this is to train up and to just show love to the coaches that are here. It's really to open up those conversations, because when they start asking you questions about your faith, that's okay. And then you can go through and you can talk about the Word.

Also, we have an English school, and we are teaching English to locals in the Nile Delta, a couple hours north of Cairo. And this is a way that we can bring different groups of people together, both Muslims and Christians, and helping to build relationships. When you teach language, it opens up so many doors, or it facilitates conversations that you wouldn't normally have out in the street or in a cafe, because you try and learn of all aspects of the language. That includes faith, that includes religion, that includes really what your beliefs of, you know, why do we exist? So you can target these certain areas of conversations with people, and it really opens up opportunities to share what we believe as well.

So we have an opportunity to share about Jesus Christ, why we have hope, why we have meaning in our life. I think my English, the accent, the vocabulary, the fluency of my English, it became so much better, like after I came here. So I think it will be really useful for us as Christians and for those who are very eager to learn English.

When I visit the girls, I play games with them, I do piece of therapy with them. Many of the disabled children are very poor. Unfortunately, there are a lot of disabled children up here. It's very touching to see how these girls that are also disabled, they have so much love to help one another. I help a little bit, but I feel like I receive more than what I give it. I receive love and joy. It's very special for me.

Many Christians have never had a real or significant conversation with a Muslim. Many people want to learn about Christ. Many people are looking for hope, and they are just going through the routines in their Islamic faith without any meaning in it. So creating these opportunities, bringing people together, whether it be in language classes, whether it be on a sports field, it allows Christians to have a very low-key opportunity to just start up a conversation, start up a relationship, share some food, and then share a little bit about their own lives and why they believe what they do.

My name is Jamal Hashway and I'm Jordanian, living here in this wonderful country. There are people with many needs around us. Locals, many of them are very poor. Jordan is not a rich country. We have very little resources here in Jordan. But Jordan has been welcoming people, even from the Old Testament time. People that are in need to come and find refuge. Being from a refugee family, actually, my parents, who were serving the Lord in Palestine, and on those days, 1948, came to Jordan and I was born here. And we kind of experienced the life of a refugee.

When we have the refugees come here, we treat them as guests, because they are our beloved brothers and sisters. We want to show the love of God to them. We're serious about giving our lives for them to help them. Iraqi refugees, Syrian refugees, Yemeni refugees, and many others that are in need. We help them all. Many of these families, you know, have left everything behind. Actually, most of them, not all. They left their homes, so they need the security. Many of them had some kind of medical security in the past, and now they don't. So we try to help them medically by having medical clinics.

Some of them don't know even anything about the Lord. So we start from zero with them to tell them about the love of God. So the needs are, I would say, spiritual, emotional, psychological, and psycho-spiritual, and also physical. We try to do all of that. And in addition to this, try to provide some kind of training on vocational type where people can help themselves in the long run. And on top of that, we concentrate on discipleship to see people grow on their faith.

We're very glad to have with us Dr. Yousaf from Iraq. He's a refugee, has been with us for months with RCN. And Dr. Yousaf, how is it for you to be here helping people? You know, I'm very blessed that I can, after the things that we've been through, playing Iraq, being able to help my fellow refugees. It's a blessing and it's a huge responsibility for me that I can treat them. They can find a safe space for them to open up, to be able to express everything that they are feeling.

This number may be shocking, but I have more than 600 patients. Being a refugee myself, it's helping me to understand that the things that I have been through, it's not unique for me. Every patient has the same needs, the same concerns, the same fear that I have been through. We want to deliver a high-quality, free medical service. It's a safer place that everyone is welcome. When they come here at the beginning, it's like a strange country for them. They don't know anything about this country. So when we visit them, many of them I heard directly from them that you're the first visitor for us, as RCN. So this is like what makes them happy and makes them feel that they have some people there, they are taking care of them.

It's a small country. The population of Jordan is 6 million and a half. But actually the population of Jordan is 10 million and a half. We have 3 million that are not Jordanian living between us. These 3 million, we talk about like 2 million and a half, they are refugees. Between Syrian and Iraqi and Yemeni and some other small from Sudan and Somalia. So this amount of refugees between us is not easy. So we need to care about them. So the same thing, the refugees outside the safe area for them, they are outside conference zone. So they're looking for someone to stand beside them, they're looking for someone to help them. So for us, we stand beside them, showing the love for them to make them feel the love of the Christ and the aroma of the Christ. We want them to touch it and feel it and change the heart to make it for the Lord.

We want to and we try our best, whatever we do, as if we're doing it unto the Lord Himself. If He is in need, Jesus Christ as a baby was a refugee. And if I was there in Egypt, what would I offer Him? When we talk about refugees, they're people that need security, they're so injured, they're so hurt. And the world sometimes doesn't understand, you know, it's easy maybe sometimes to label a refugee with a name or something. I would just think of a refugee as somebody that really needs love, needs care, needs to be again, to know that he's human again, to regain dignity again, to feel, you know, he's just like everybody else. And we pray all the world will understand that they're people with need. They're not challenging anybody, but they really want the help, just as we would do it to Jesus Himself. Because He said, whatever you've done to the least of those, you've actually done it unto Me.

Hi, we're Bauman, Suzanne Robertson, and we are in Amman, Jordan, where we've been for 48 years. And our being ministry here is outreach to urban Arabs. And we just came with two duffel bags and our six-month-old daughter and landed in Amman, Jordan on February 3rd, 1974. And our ministry here has continued to be very much street level, heart by heart, mind by mind, and person by person, family by family.

The major part of my ministry would be to the majority community around us. So I'd have to know their background, their religion thoroughly, how to speak to them in ways that will impact them. When we came here in 1974, the Christian population, this would be mainly the Orthodox, the ancient church, and Roman Catholic, and different denominations like that, about 10%. And today, it's down to between 1 and 2%. But our main focus is on the local Arab population, which is made up of both Jordanians and Palestinians who are now citizens of Jordan, who came in 1948, 1967, and are about half of the population. Added into these are many Egyptian brothers and sisters who are working here, and then a large number of Iraqi and Syrian refugees who have been present in the country since about 2011 in waves coming to live in Jordan.

Usually, when we think of refugees, what we see are these poor people going across trying to get somewhere and they sink in a boat. We see these refugee camps and a lot of just poverty. People reduced to almost nothing. And we do have some of that here, especially the Syrians. The Syrian refugees are different than the Iraqi refugees. The Syrians, they don't really have refugee status with the United Nations, so they might be going back. And the general cultural level is different than the Iraqis that have come down here. They're not all the same, they're refugees. It depends on who we're talking about, when they came.

A lot of these people now, in our church, they came out of Mosul in 2014, and they left businesses, they left good jobs, they left professions, men and women. One of the things that I love about the culture is they've got a roaring sense of humor. We tease each other mercilessly. That's who they really are. So, yeah, it's a troublesome area, and the stuff that makes the news is usually negative, which is unfortunate. So people have this vision, this idea of the year as well. They're just a bunch of angry people, violent and totally fanatic and religious.

Especially having been here long for the long haul, the long obedience in this direction. What we have really loved and want to be a part of is sort of the life journey of a family or an individual, and walking with them, encouraging them by faith over the long term. And to know how an Arab family works, it takes a while, but then you can understand more some of the issues that come up with maybe taking new steps of faith that the family will not understand. And why that's so hard for them. Getting baptized is a really, really big deal. And it often means a lot of conflict in their original family.

So to know the Arab family and know how they operate, know what's important to them, is very helpful in placing people that you're working with and understanding their struggles. We like the, I think the general pace, the rhythm of life here. So we're used to the rhythm, I call it the music of the Middle East, the cadence of the street, the people. So for us, a lot has really converged from a very untrained beginning. We came without training, without language experience, and a lot of our wisdom has been a very hard one. But it has been a great way, I would certainly think, to invest our lives. We would have no regrets. Nothing.

Would you join me in thanking all of our partners in the Middle East and all the wonderful work they do. And we are going to welcome Jamal and Suzanne Hoshway to the stage right now. Welcome them. You saw their ministry and Jordan featured in the film. And we are just so grateful. Jamal and Suzanne, welcome. It is so great to have you here, first of all. And so come on up here. And secondly, you know, we are going to have different partners featured from the documentary in each service. This service is very blessed to have you here. But I would love to recognize all of our Middle Eastern partners who are here with us today, including the couple who, for security reasons, we couldn't feature on the video. But those of you who are here to stand up and let's just thank them for all of the work that they are doing in their ministry. Thank you all so much. Really appreciate it.

Well now, as I said in the sermon intro, we tend to hear so much bad news about the whole world. But really, we hear a lot of bad news about the Middle East. That, as Bob said, that's the stereotype. I know you see so many encouraging things as well as difficult things over there. Share with us some encouraging good news that you'd like for us to know.

Well, first of all, good evening to everybody. And in the name of Jesus, I just want to thank you all, this wonderful church, to continue to pray for us, encourage us, send teams, and stand with us so that we give God all the glory. The encouraging news is that God is at work. You know, the day of Pentecost where there were 16 languages spoken, one of these languages was Arabic. So it seems, you know, right from the very beginning, there is hope also for the nations of Arabs. About 500 million people now live in the world that many of them don't know about Jesus. But the good news is that Jesus today is showing himself in miracles in many ways. But most importantly, through love in action, people will understand and believe what we say when we prove it by hands and feet. It's not Christianity just by talking about Jesus, but by proving to them. So the good news, yes, God is at work and people are coming to Christ today. Amen. Thank you. That's exciting. Hallelujah. Amen. Praise God. And that, what you just said is totally true of ministry here too. You know, the best way to communicate the love of God is through our actions, through love in action, not just our words.

Suzanne, how can we commit to praying for you? Where do you need our prayers the most? Well, we feel already we are part of the big family here in the church. And we feel that we are lifting up. It's not easy to be among the minority, among minority in the Middle East. But when God is with us and he has a plan to each one of us, we feel strength to continue what we are doing it and just praying for us in the Middle East. It's really wonderful to see what is God doing there. Our ability is limited, but when he do something, he do it right. Amen. He do it his way. Amen. Amen. It's not just our own strength. It's the Lord's strength too.

Well, come on over here because I'd love to pray with you. If you feel comfortable doing so, would you just bow your head and close your eyes and just lift up a hand toward Jamal and Suzanne Hashway and let's pray for them and all of those that are in their ministries. Heavenly Father, thank you so much for Jamal and Suzanne and for all of the different ministries that we saw in the documentary. And we want to pray for them and all the nations and all the peoples that you would strengthen them and all of our global partners and the people that they serve. And especially, Lord, I pray that you would strengthen the Hashways and the others who are in situations where they are the minority. Whether they are Palestinians living in Jordan who are Christians or in other ways are minorities, Christians in Egypt, Iraqi believers, I pray that you would nourish them, that you would strengthen them, that you would enable them to see the fruit of their ministry in amazing ways. And Lord, may all of us take seriously your charge to go into all the world so that many may come to a personal knowledge of the grace of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen. Thank you both so very much. Let's thank the Hashways again so much for their ministry.