International Stories of Mission

This is the last in a series of stories on new ministry approaches emerging out of the recent Glocal Mission Summit, which met April 1-3 at Ttkomsa Mission Church in Los Angeles, Calif.

Josué was tired of having to dodge the gangs causing havoc in his neighborhood in El Salvador. He simply wanted to get out, go to college, get a good job, and leave behind the messy life he’d been dealing with.

Although he grew up serving in his local church, Josué had no desire to go into ministry as a career.

“Josué was in a course I was teaching on sex abuse in El Salvador in 2015. He looked bored the whole time,” said Rachel Beveridge, a Resonate Global Mission missionary, who shared Josué’s story during the international storytelling part of the Glocal Mission Summit 2019 held in early April in Los Angeles, Calif.

While he seemed bored in her course, it turned out that something sparked inside of Josué and he told Beveridge he was interested in “becoming part of our Cohort of Missioners,” she said.

An effort of Resonate Global Mission, the Cohort of Missioners offers a year-long experience in which young people are immersed in a new culture by serving with local mission organizations at the grassroots level. Each participant is linked to other young people with whom they will communally participate in service, intensive learning, reflection, and spiritual formation.

Josué, however, had a practical reason, other than spiritual formation, to join the cohort. Having completed his education degree, he thought that being part of the cohort would help polish up his resume and give him a chance to travel and make connections throughout Central America.

As the cohort began to meet in Guatemala, Beveridge, its coordinator, came to see that Josué’s boredom and indifference — and his disinterest in the church — hid deep wounds.

“He was running away from the church and the insecurity and violence in his neighborhood,” said Beveridge at the summit, which drew a wide range of CRC leaders, including Korean, Hispanic, Chinese, Southeast Asian, black and Native American pastors and other ministry leaders, to reflect on their work and to discuss how they — and Resonate — can engage in future ministry.

“Josué had become immune to the violence. He didn’t feel anything when he saw another body on the street,” said Beveridge. “I didn’t have a lot of hope for him when he joined the cohort.”

Featuring the theme “New Wineskins for Mission Everywhere,” the three-day Glocal Mission Summit, held at Ttokamsa Mission Church, included worship, plenary speakers, and lots of storytelling about God at work in hard and challenging places — all of it offering a glimpse of the fresh spirit Resonate is bringing to the mission of the CRC.

When he joined the cohort, Josué was withdrawn and had a hard time letting his guard down. But living and working with others in the cohort, said Beveridge, helped him overcome his shyness and changed his perspective on the lives of the people around him—as well as his career path.

“As part of the cohort, he was able to connect with Christians all over Central America, and he came to see how you could be faithful to a calling outside the church,” said Beveridge.

“He met people who surprised, inspired, and encouraged him. He met a man who had once been in a gang and was now working for God’s purposes. The man became a mentor.”

Today, Josué is serving with a ministry that focuses on childhood and adolescent sexual violence prevention.

In the cohort he finally recognized that working with young people who have grown up in harsh and abusive circumstances is what God wants him to do.

“The cohort helped Josué recover a sense of compassion and sensitivity both for those who end up committing violence and those who suffer pain from it. I believe being part of a cohort can change the direction of a young person’s life,” said Beveridge.

Touched by the Arab Spring

At the summit, Dena Nicolai told her own “wineskin” story of how living in Egypt during the Arab Spring uprisings in 2010-11 helped to set her on a course toward becoming a refugee chaplain and a community mobilizer in Vancouver, B.C.

Nicolai spent four years in the Middle East serving in Cairo as a coordinator for students in a study-abroad program through a coalition of Christian colleges.

She was living in a comfortable neighborhood among many Muslim families when the uprising in Egypt broke out. Being there at the time gave her insight into the struggles many people in the Middle East face.

“Late in 2010, a fruit seller in Tunisia set himself on fire, and that act helped spark the Arab Spring,” which spread to Egypt early in 2011, she said.

“People had been harassed and beaten down by the entrenched government treating them as less than human, and protests broke out with a force no one expected in Cairo.”

During that time, she stayed mostly in her home, protected by her neighbors who stood at the gates of the neighborhood to make sure the chaos that erupted as police and the military began cracking down on protesters didn’t spread into the area where they were living.

“There was a lot of fear, so my neighbors set up barricades into and out of the neighborhood, and night after night they sat there.” A time or two she brought tea and gave it to the neighbors keeping watch at the barricades.

But as things got worse in Egypt, Nicolai had to leave. “My neighbors, who had shown us such hospitality, sent us off in peace, and I realized the advantages I have as a North American. I could easily fly home. I used power and privilege that many people never get to use in a lifetime.”

Back in Vancouver, B.C., she earned a master of theology degree at Regent College. She is a member of First CRC in Vancouver and now serves as a chaplain for refugees coming into Vancouver from the Middle East and around the world. Her experiences in Egypt both prepared her for and gave her a deep desire to do this work, she said.

Nicolai has thought often of how her neighbors in Cairo banded together to protect her and others, she said; “I began to wonder what it would mean for the church to act sacrificially on behalf of its neighbors — and when we saw Syria explode, the church in Canada knew what to do.”

Canada has opened its arms to thousands of refugees, said Nicolai, who is based at the Refugee Welcome Centre in Vancouver, run by the Immigrant Services Society of B.C.

“Canada and its churches began to welcome refugees who had been completely torn away from their neighborhoods, and we are together working for their flourishing.”

Teaching Theology in a Border Town

Not long after becoming a church more than 20 years ago, the pastor and members of All Nations CRC of Lake View Terrace, Calif., began driving every weekend to Tijuana, Mexico, to share the gospel message with people.

As part of this effort, the church purchased space in a prison, where they held regular worship and baptism services.

As this long-time initiative in Tijuana illustrates, All Nations has been a church that lives up to its name, said Tae Kim, one of the church’s pastors.

“Our congregation is 99 percent Korean, but our heart is where God is — for the nations,” said Kim. “By the grace of God, even from the start of our church, we have given more than half of our resources for missions,” said Kim.

“We see ourselves as doers, but we want to do healthy mission. We don’t want to do it with paternalism.”

Jinso Yoo, one of All Nations’ founding pastors, first organized the weekly visits to Tijuana. In addition, even before the church had its own building, the members bought seven acres of land in Juarez, Mexico, to build All Nations Seminary.

More than 600 miles east of Tijuana, Juarez is on the Mexican border near El Paso, Tex., and has been known for drug-related violence. Even so, All Nations and those with whom it has partnered have stayed there and maintained a setting where people can train for ministry.

“We have graduated more than 500 students, and they have gone on to start many churches,” said Kim.

Now, All Nations is in the process of handing over the seminary to a group of Latino church leaders. This is a challenging process, especially given how much All Nations has invested in resources and energy over the past 20 years, but it is time to make the transition, Kim explained

“This is unknown territory for us. Yet, we see ourselves as remaining partners with the Latino church and and helping them participate in doing missions,” said Kim. “We would like to help them to actually become missionaries to the nations.”