Saul’s conversion on the road to Damascus is one of the most dramatic in the Bible. Here was a man so hardened against the gospel he was dedicating his life to snuffing it out, all in God’s name. In a flash of light, everything changes. Jesus meets Him, speaks to him, challenges him and there is no turning back. Of course, the complete about face adds to the drama. The time of blindness adds to the sense of healing and restoration, but what sets it truly apart is the fact that this is the only instance after the ascension where Jesus appears to someone outside a dream at a point of salvation. We know it is God who changes the hearts of man, but normally (if any work of salvation can be normative) God works through human agents.
Consider the Ethiopian along the road. It was God who brought him to Jerusalem and softened his heart and put the scroll of Isaiah into his hands, but He used Philip to explain it in that crucial moment of spiritual clarity. There is also Cornelius the Centurion. God sends a dream that is the impetus for messengers going to collect Peter, and the vision to Peter as a clear welcome sign to Gentiles into the church, and yet He still uses Peter to elucidate the gospel to Cornelius and his family. Even when we return to Saul becoming Paul, God sends Ananias to pray and restore his sight. Did God need any of these human agents? Clearly not, He is more than capable on His own to effect salvation even in the hardest soil. And yet. And yet, He continues to use His people, His works in progress, to build His church.
In recent years the mission has more explicitly lived by its desire to decrease so that Christ through the local church will increase. We’ve said no, where before we did it solo. We’ve trained and nudged forward instead of forging ahead. We’ve walked beside and now more often we’re walking behind. Even godly submission is a needed example.
As someone who enjoys feeling useful it can be a humbling process. It takes self-control and patience to not do work we enjoy, but instead to find someone else to fill our shoes, to take the time to teach and to give them the space ready with grace to fail as well as succeed.
This momentum continued apace with the recent elementary and high school outreaches. Last year, I led the charge. I did my best to get input and involvement from as many interested church members as possible, but really I had the last say. This year, I took a step back. I still coordinated who led songs and prayed during the assemblies. I still followed up to try to make sure everyone had the supplies they needed and nudged a few in the way they should go. But I did my best to delegate as many tasks and responsibilities as possible, I stepped aside where Pastor Julius desired to lead and intentionally stirred up my brothers and sisters to good works giving them opportunities to exercise their gifts. And God moved in beautiful ways.
Last year as we walked to the schools, I was filled with thankfulness in how God had prepared this very people for this very work. What a joy it is to serve together! This year, I was thankful for the fact that despite my decreasing share of the work, God still deigned to give me a place to serve. It wasn’t necessarily the place I would have chosen, but it was the place I needed. Serving the Lord is a mutually beneficial arrangement. For his faith, Philip needed to witness to the Ethiopian as much as the Ethiopian needed to be witnessed to. Peter needed to be the one who brought the gospel to the Gentiles as much as Cornelius needed to hear it. Ananias needed to be the one who prayed for Paul’s sight to be restored as much as Paul needed that forgiving touch. It was grace that gave Philip the opportunity to witness, and grace that broke down the barriers in Peter’s heart through his eyewitness of Gentile believers, and it was grace that gave Ananias the strength to bring healing to a man who had come to bring him harm. And me, well I needed to step back to see how God is raising up a people for Himself. I needed to let go and see God’s faithfulness in action. I needed to stretch myself in ways that make me uncomfortable so that even my own child’s eagerness to serve was watered. There is no superiority of human agent over recipient. Both roles are fueled by God’s plan of salvation.
Church building is not a formulaic, predictable process. Christ meets us and changes us all in unique personalized ways, rarely in the timing that we have planned. There are still many steps to take before the church in Nakaale is self-sufficient. But we are growing and transforming together through the power of the Spirit to attain the unity of faith and knowledge of our savior, as Paul puts it in Ephesians. “Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head into Christ, from whom the whole body joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love” (Ephesians 4:15-16). Is that not our aim? The church in Karamoja building itself up in love through its union with Christ. What a privilege it is to see that coming to life more and more!