In this new year, I wanted to call each of you to recall three priorities we trust make up the core of all we do.
In the audio attached here, these priorities come to us from Jesus’ example in Matthew 9-10.
Would you pause with your family, team, cluster and local church to consider these three priorities?
We must prioritize a Lord of the Harvest orientation.
As you reflect on 2021 and anticipate 2022 are your “disciplines of dependence” in line? Might your prayer life, scripture intake, meditation, or fasting need attention? No doubt as we look back to 2021, we each have opportunity to thank the Lord of the Harvest for the intimacy of his investment in our lives in response to our dependence upon him. Have you prioritized dependence in your 2022 plans and goals?
We must prioritize a Harvest Field orientation.
How did the Lord of the Harvest use you in 2021 to spread the ‘good news of the kingdom?’ Would you call your harvest field engagement disciplined? Fervent? Have you paused to thank God for the fruit of your seed sowing over the last year? Do your plans and goals for 2022 anticipate the Lord of the Harvest using you to gather the harvest?
We must steward the opportunity for Harvest Force Mobilization.
To be sure your disciplines are expected, at the same time your willingness to equip, model and mentor is our pathway to multiplication. How are you prioritizing a harvest force orientation in 2022? Uniquely as a generation we steward more potential for mobilizing South Asian laborers than any generation before. Could the Lord of the Harvest use your equipping to mobilize answers the prayer for laborers? No greater opportunity exists for saturating South Asia with the knowledge of the glory of God.
Annually, around the Affinity we utilize January to pause and pray. This season for re-focus and goal writing prompts me today to remind you of these three priorities. We can do no better than to depend upon the Lord of the Harvest, we must engage the harvest field, and be sure – answers to the prayers for laborers are emerging from the harvest field in the form of a multiplied harvest force all around you. How will you be involved in 2022?
Nathan
Extra: Human Needs
Jun 14, 2021
In this month’s “extra” post, I wanted to share an audio created by your co-workers. The voices you hear will be familiar, in fact they represent some of our most experienced in the use of crisis response and human need integration in the CMT. We are each in a strategic position to respond. More than this, I personally feel compelled by the circumstances around us to do all I can as a conduit for faith in action connecting resources to the needs surrounding the crisis of these past 18 months. As you will hear on the call, connecting God given motives of compassion with wisdom related to Gospel or CMT advance is worth prayer and careful planning. One of my favorite examples comes from Matt. 9:35-10:1. Having seen the crowds, compelled by compassion to help those who were “harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” (9:36) Jesus commanded prayer for laborers (37-38), and in the next verse organized laborers with authority to engage the harvest (10:1). We have a chance to obey this same command for prayer, and organize response among those the Lord would send.
As a means of accountability, I am happy to report that we (ASAP personnel) have proposed, facilitated and at this point completed nearly 150 human needs projects since March of 2020. At present, we have an additional 67 projects ongoing around South Asia. To date, not one of our project proposals has been denied. We are grateful for partnership with SR. We are thankful for donors responding sacrificially to the present crisis. Mostly, we are thankful to the Lord of the harvest, who continues to send laborers among the peoples of South Asia.
Go Deeper: What is a Missionary? What should a Missionary do? Learnings from the Life of Paul (2 Timothy 3:10-4:8)
May 14, 2021
You’re going to enjoy this podcast today as Will and David spend time with us in the Word discussing “What is a Missionary, what should a Missionary do, and how we can lean about the answers to these questions from the life of Paul“.
We’re thankful for these brothers as they guide us in interpreting the Letters of the New Testament for the work we do today; referencing this scriptural passage showing Paul intended for Timothy to imitate and follow his missionary model, and leading us in a missiological interpretation of 2 Timothy 3:10-4:8 and hermeneutics.
Get ready to dive in deep with us here – and join in the discussion: What are your thoughts on the term(s) “Apostolic Delegate” and/or “Missionary”? As they discuss “the idea of a pattern” – what do you see here; what are the various aspects of the pattern? How do the “commands” in chapter 4 relate to functions of missionaries and what we should do today? Are they evangelistic or disciple-making? From a hermeneutical stand point, how does this key passage show modern missionaries should look to follow Paul’s model? How do we hand forward the apostolic teaching, including authority? – And how does that impact us as teams and how we relate to the churches we partner with?
An offer for ASAP: For those of you laboring in South Asia, if you’d like to obtain copies of the books recommended in this podcast, and haven’t already taken advantage of an offer I made to you in previous posts, if you will email us at chasetheriverpodcast@gmail.com we will provide you with the information needed to submit the purchase price of the books mentioned here to your monthly expense report.
Looking forward to Will and David’s next installment podcast contribution on how this affects teaming, and the bigger picture of looking to Timothy for what we do today.
Thankful to be on this journey with you all.
Nathan – rom.15:23
#32 – ASAP Podcast May 2021
Apr 30, 2021
ASAP Update, May 2021.
Our hearts are with so many loved ones and partners around the South Asian sub-continent filling their days with funeral procession. I find myself in mourning and hungering for righteousness. I trust our good God to turn such posture, at work among so many believers in South Asia into the blessings promised in Matthew 5.
I am also struggling personally with the realities of such a great harvest and so few laborers. Now as much as ever, I find myself crying out to God to ‘thrust laborers’ into the harvest. As an admission of frustration on this front I offer you Amy Carmichael’s vision of the spiritual realities of India in her day as a picture of our ongoing reality across South Asia.
Amy Carmichael’s (1867-1951) Vision from India
The tom-toms thumped straight on all night and the darkness shuddered round me like a living, feeling thing. I could not go to sleep, so I lay awake and looked; and I saw, as it seemed, this: That I stood on a grassy sward, and at my feet a precipice broke sheer down into infinite space. I looked, but saw no bottom; only cloud shapes, black and furiously coiled, and great shadow-shrouded hollows, and unfathomable depths. Back I drew, dizzy at the depth.
Then I saw forms of people moving single file along the grass. They were making for the edge. There was a woman with a baby in her arms and another little child holding on to her dress. She was on the very verge. Then I saw that she was blind. She lifted her foot for the next step . . . it trod air. She was over, and the children over with her. Oh, the cry as they went over! Then I saw more streams of people flowing from all quarters. All were blind, stone blind; all made straight for the precipice edge. There were shrieks, as they suddenly knew themselves falling, and a tossing up of helpless arms, catching, clutching at empty air. But some went over quietly, and fell without a sound.
Then I wondered, with a wonder that was simply agony, why no one stopped them at the edge. I could not. I was glued to the ground, and I could only call; though I strained and tried, only whisper would come. Then I saw that along the edge there were sentries set at intervals. But the intervals were too great; there were wide, unguarded gaps between. And over these gaps the people fell in their blindness, quite unwarned; and the green grass seemed blood-red to me, and the gulf yawned like the mouth of hell.
Then I saw, like a little picture of peace, a group of people under some trees with their backs turned toward the gulf. They were making daisy chains. Sometimes when a piercing shriek cut the quiet air and reached them, it disturbed them and they thought it a rather vulgar noise. And if one of their number started up and wanted to go and do something to help, then all the others would pull that one down. “Why should you get so excited about it? You must wait for a definite call to go! You haven’t finished your daisy chain yet. It would be really selfish,” they said, “to leave us to finish the work alone.”
There was another group. It was made up of people whose great desire was to get more sentries out; but they found that very few wanted to go, and sometimes there were no sentries set for miles and miles of the edge. Once a girl stood alone in her place, waving the people back; but her mother and other relations called and reminded her that her furlough was due; she must not break the rules. And being tired and needing a change, she had to go and rest for awhile; but no one was sent to guard her gap, and over and over the people fell, like a waterfall of souls.
Once a child caught at a tuft of grass that grew at the very brink of the gulf; it clung convulsively, and it called-but nobody seemed to hear. Then the roots of the grass gave way, and with a cry the child went over, its two little hands still holding tight to the torn-off bunch of grass. And the girl who longed to be back in her gap thought she heard the little one cry, and she sprang up and wanted to go; at which they reproved her, reminding her that no one is necessary anywhere; the gap would be well taken care of, they knew. And then they sang a hymn.
Then through the hymn came another sound like the pain of a million broken hearts wrung out in one full drop, one sob. And a horror of great darkness was upon me, for I knew what it was-the Cry of the Blood. Then thundered a voice, the voice of the Lord. “And He said, ‘What hast thou done, The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground.’”
The tom-toms still beat heavily, the darkness still shuddered and shivered about me; I heard the yells of the devil-dancers and weird, wild shriek of the devil-possessed just outside the gate. What does it matter, after all? It has gone on for years; it will go on for years. Why make such a fuss about it? God forgive us! God arouse us! Shame us out of our callousness! Shame us out of our sin!
Finally, I wanted to post a link here to a resource that may be valuable to some. I was made aware of this resource by our friend at Lifeway International, Craig F. Please find the recent book released by John Piper translated into Hindi, Urdu, Telagu and Nepali available via a search of this site.
Proverbs 24:11 – “Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering toward slaughter.”
Extra: The Ongoing Role of Apostles in Missions with Dr. Don Dent – Week 4 of 4
Apr 11, 2021
For the past few of weeks we’ve been going through a series with Dr. Don Dent, posting the recordings from a Zoom meeting that a couple of our ASAP Cluster Leadership Teams participated in where Dr. Dent shared his wisdom, experience and led out in a Q&A format discussion of his book, The Ongoing Role of Apostles in Missions: The Forgotten Foundation. This is the fourth and final recording of that four-week series – as we conclude, the focus will be on Chapter Five; Missionary Apostles and Missions Today.
In this last of four recordings, Dr. Dent encourages readers and practitioners to consider Application in Everyday Church Life Now, as well as a Study on Matthew 25 . As you listen in to this podcast, you’ll hear an PowerPoint presentation mentioned: Matthew 25 – Rethinking. You can access, read and reference the article here by simply clicking the hyperlink.
So grab a cup of coffee, listen in, and then join in the conversation virtually – consider the following questions: How does Dent’s lecture challenge your thinking with regard to Leadership; advice to emerging leaders – the four things important for a servant leader: Listen, Learn, Love, and now Lead? How does Dent’s Matthew 25 Study challenge your thinking with regard to the…
accurate definition verses the modern interpretation of “the least of these brothers of mine”?
hermeneutical keys to show the modern day usage and interpretation is desperately wrong?
parallels to Matthew 10?
I hope you’ve enjoyed this series as much as I have; I hope it has challenged, encouraged, sharpened, and spurred you on. Let me hear from you: send your responses, thoughts and/or questions to chasetheriver@gmail.com.
Nathan – rom.15:23
#31 – ASAP Podcast March 2021
Mar 02, 2021
Affinity Update — March 2021, Let us Begin With Intercession
As we walk together toward our 2021-23 goals, it is right that we begin with our plans to mobilize a vast army of intercessors. Not only do we have frequent, repeated examples of intercessory prayer flowing from the ministry of Paul, we also have his frequent requests. Paul did not hesitate to solicit prayer from those to whom he wrote. ‘Pray also for me…’ is a consistent refrain in his letters. We are confident in our posture, and in the goals we have committed ourselves to primarily because we believe they honor God, are in line with his will for his people scattered among the nations, and because he hears our intercession and petition on their behalf.
God moves us to pray and is moved by our prayers… this is no ‘chicken or the egg’ economy, this is the synergy of life lived on mission. We believe our direction and goals are directed by the hand of God. Further, the goals we have committed to demand that we hear from the same Lord for their fulfillment. What a beautiful economy it is! Prayer is the demand of dependence upon an attentive, active and generous God. I am thankful to give my life (with you) toward goals that depend upon God to move.
ASAP 2021-23 — As an Affinity we will work together to mobilize 500,000 daily intercessors focused on the task in South Asia.
An audacious goal indeed. As much as any goal, this commitment represents the posture of our ‘old school’ Strategy Coordinator paradigm. Flowing from our own disciplines, we must think beyond ourselves. We must plan and sustain a campaign of intercession for the fields of South Asia. Such a campaign is simultaneously harvest field and harvest force stewardship. Campaigning prayer for South Asia serves both the targets of mission (harvest field) and the agents of mission (harvest force) as both benefit from mobilized intercession.
We must break our goal down. Our teams represent 350 cross-cultural workers (not to mention many hundreds of local partners). If each adult were to share one of our tools (below) with 100 people per month (think one church service) we would expose 35 thousand potential intercessors to South Asia needs monthly.
If each team member exposes 100 potential intercessors a month (one church) =’s 35,000 per month.
Below are simple tools we are asking you to campaign.
Could you attach them to your regular newsletter?
Who could you approach to platform the tools on their social media?
Is there a church contact who might announce and platform the tool for a specific congregation to consider?
To join the campaign one such attempt per month is the ask.
As we begin a new year, and in fact, begin a new three-year goal period, it is right that we remember and spend time reflecting on the great and glorious gift of our own salvation. May we never get over this incredible Truth – and therefore, might we be compelled to continue giving our lives interceding and laboring among the peoples of South Asia who are ‘without excuse’ (Romans 1:20). So, with great celebration, we recently looked back over the past three years and were moved to worship as we acknowledged the ways in which God has been mightily at work. Attached you will find our ASAP Affinity Goals for the period 2021-2023 and encourage you to re-commit and consecrate yourself to the Core Missionary Task with hearts bent toward exit and entrusting our national partners as we pray to see No Place Left. These Affinity goals cascade down to Clusters, Teams, and ultimately, individual units. We are asking you to prayerfully consider crafting your own, personal, three-year goals which determine your specific stewardship(s), nesting within your Team, Cluster and Affinity Goals.
Beginning with our August, 2020 update and continuing periodically through this fall I would ask you to watch for and celebrate the variety of ways we have seen the Lord move and work among us and our target fields over the last three years. As we begin this series here in August, I am including three attachments that give overview and background to our celebration. The first of these attachments is a copy of our ASAP 2018-20 goals (with five months remaining). As you know both our cluster and team goals have ‘nested’ within the goals listed here. We will revisit this 1 page document throughout the fall for progress reports and celebration through the fall.
The second attachment is an excel sheet detailing ASAP engagements over the past decade. As you open the file, you will notice quickly it has been edited for security (much more detail available on any PG listed upon request). What remains is a simple list of PG’s representing the reporting of our efforts since 2009.
A few points to celebrate:
In the last decade we have reported at least one baptism among 936 distinct peoples.
Many of these peoples are no longer classified as ‘un-reached’ (and yes, in many cases we continue in ministry and partnership).
These 936 PG’s represent just over 40% of the PG targets of South Asia.
Note: You will notice the year(s) in which these PG’s were reported on in column “c” of the spreadsheet. As you know, in many cases we do not have the man-power to report annually on each PG. For many of the groups reported on early in the decade, the past years have been filled with harvest. You will also notice many groups near the bottom of the spreadsheet with no years listed. These are groups reported on through the recent use of the Gen-Mapper App developed in partnership with Pathways Data, Pvt. Ltd. Finally, as a starting point for our ‘1000 cubits later’ series and celebration, I wanted to include a short time lapse video of the South Asia, GSEC maps between 2009 and the present.
Note – As you watch the video you will notice years in the last decade when ASAP added to the comprehensive PG list (2010 for example). This too is progress! Over the past decade we have researched and learned much on various language barriers of South Asia. I believe addition of PG’s to our summary over this last decade has informed the Great Commission Community of these barriers and provided us a clearer picture of our targets than ever before.
I trust that God is glorified in your heart as we celebrate his work around and among us!
Nathan – Rom.15:23
#27 – ASAP Podcast June 2020
Jun 07, 2020
As we come to the beginning of June 2020, we face unprecedented times in South Asia and around the globe. A global pandemic, protests and riots, and problems of all sorts can so easily lead to anxiety. In Philippians 4, Paul encourages us to always be full of joy. Yet too easily disappointment and discouragement steal that joy away. Join us in setting our minds on those things which are true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, and worthy of praise. Even in the past two months of sheltering-in-place/lockdown, you, your colleagues and partners have found hope in the Gospel and as a result, have expressed that hope in countless ways among the lost and hurting. Grateful for your faithfulness and obedience in these days. May the God of Peace that transcends all understanding guard your hearts. Nathan – rom.15:23
#26 – ASAP Podcast March 2020
Mar 20, 2020
ASAP,
Interesting days! I could not be more proud of how our Affinity has responded over the last week. You will notice that this month’s podcast is a bit late (usually we post the first of the month). With the unfolding circumstances we find ourselves ‘rolling with the punches’ as various countries introduce and amend waves of social and travel restriction. We add to these circumstances the directions and advisory emails we receive from our home office intended for global support. In the midst of these sources of intel, we continue in our commitment to ‘tailor plans’ for each family and single around the affinity through coordinated support services. Our Logistics support is doing an incredible job! I want to express appreciation for their hard work and tireless work ethic as we daily adjust to uncontrollable circumstances and the dynamic needs of each unit. Thank you all.
I will remind each of you who listen in today to communicate early and often with your supervision and support; both Logistics and our RMC (Risk Management Consultant – Brian B), as well as Jonathan and Kelley stand ready to hear from you and respond to any concerns or inquiries you have.
Do you know that you are loved? Even as loving you well is our ambition, be sure it is a promise from our Lord and Savior in keeping with his character.
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