Committed?

As another day in Jakarta comes to a close, I am struck by the differences in the Indonesian believers and American believers, a category in which I am included. While in Jakarta I am teaching two classes: one on the New Testament and one on the ministry of the local church. I am teaching a diverse group of students most of which are in their twenties and are poor. They come from a wide variety of religious backgrounds: some Catholic, some Protestant, some Muslim, and others. What is striking is their focus on the work of the Gospel! As someone who has been around students preparing for the ministry for the past several years, while I am no expert I certainly have some experience with students called to the Gospel ministry. However, I have yet to encounter students like these.

For the most part, they have nothing compared to us. Most of the students live in a cramped dormitory on the grounds of the seminary, which is very small. Their life consists of preparing for the ministry. They begin morning devotionals at 5:30 am, followed by chapel, followed by classes all day, followed by another chapel at night. Their day is filled not with distractions but with Jesus and preparation to serve Him. They have truly given up their lives, some in much more of a literal sense, for the sake of the Gospel.

One of the students is an older lady who shared how her husband converted to Christianity as a young man and was warned by his family not to come home. As she was communicating this story to the interpreter who in turn was communicating it to me, she explained the consequences of her husband's going home by placing her thumb to her neck and bringing it across her neck from one ear to the other in the motion of cutting one's throat. I told the interpreter that he need not translate that. I got the message. Her husband did not go home, and I'm not sure if he ever has or will. Another student explained--as we were talking about the need for new believers to remain in their social context so that they could influence those around them for Christ--how he was ostracized by his family and could not return under threat of extreme punishment. He was in his early twenties, and I don't know if he has or ever will return home.

These students have given their lives Jesus and are so eager to see God work through them and in their country. Nothing else seems to matter to them. This was illustrated so clearly to me by a young lady who came from a village opposed to Christianity. She was ostracized and not welcome home because of her faith. As I told them about how Hurricane Katrina and the work of Christians afterwards helped receptivity of the Gospel in New Orleans, she blurted out, "We need to pray that God would send a hurricane to my village." In the U.S. I would assume she was kidding. It is clear that I am not in the U.S.

While we certainly have our problems in the Western Church, I don't want to fall into the trap of bashing contemporary Western Christianity as this corrupt, quasi Medieval Catholic Church that doesn't care anything about following Jesus. I think it is always easy to perceive other cultures as the ideal setting for Christianity to flourish and the Church in that culture as the model New Testament example. The Church here is not perfect, and these students are not perfect (I plan on discussing that in a later blog). But, they are committed to Jesus and the message of the Gospel like not many I have seen. The majority of them plan on planting churches, and I am so excited about seeing what happens in this nation through a group of young people who have given up everything for the sake of the Gospel and truly made Jesus the everything of their life.

I can't conclude without expressing my sincere frustration at the lack of commitment in my own life while also acknowledging that I want to begin to live out the same commitment as these students in my ministry context. What would happen across my nation if a group of people would truly leverage everything for the sake of the message of Jesus Christ, making Jesus our everything of life?!

BN