Missions Update

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Glad to be here. Thank you for having us. I just want to use this time.
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It's just a few minutes, really. You can talk about missions hours and hours, just to share what God is doing.
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But I wanted to ask you up front a question. How should we think about missions? How should you think about missions?
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What's the goal when you think about missions? Where do we go to what scripture and why?
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Everybody, I mean, I just had words in the Bible study on Friday. And the main point
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I wanted to focus on was at that time just the foundation is still the
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Great Commission, Matthew 28, 18 to 20. And if you have your Bibles, you can open that because it's kind of helpful for us to just look ourselves to that passage.
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How should we think about missions? What is the focus of it? And I read it while you open your
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Bible. And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth.
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Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.
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And, Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. To make disciples is a goal of missions.
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And in Acts 1 .8, Jesus talks about kind of a little bit about the philosophy, how he will implement it.
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And I say how he will implement the philosophy of ministry. He starts out with a central place, which was at that time
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Jerusalem. And in Jerusalem, he started out and he said,
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You will receive the Holy Spirit, and that will come up on you. And you shall be my witnesses, both in Jerusalem and all
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Judea and Samaria, and even to the end of the remotest parts of the earth.
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So he will start with Jerusalem and then he will move it out to every place in the world.
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But he also says who will do it and what they are supposed to do. You will be whose witnesses?
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Christ's witnesses. So missions is centrally focused around Christ.
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That's why we are in Germany. We are supposed to teach, preach, live
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Christ. There's nothing else to it. That's what everybody else is supposed to do. But how should we think about missions?
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It's not just so simple because when you send out the missionaries, why do you want to send out the missionaries? Who is the person who you want to send out who represents
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Christ? How should and will he live like when he's in the other country?
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And I don't know how it is with you, but when I was thinking about mission, when I first became a missionary,
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I mean I was, in some ways, I never really experienced in a way where I never had a right perspective on missions because what happened,
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I came to know the Lord, and the first things I was doing was getting involved in missions. I studied the
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Great Commission and realized what has to be done and what we should focus on.
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But very often I come to churches all over the world, and the main focus is they want to support missionaries because for whatever reason, of course, for the
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Great Commissions, but I don't hear people ask, is that person representing Christ in the other country?
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Is his life, would I let him be in my church, a leader leading my congregation?
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What are the criteria? What are the qualifications? I mean, we can say, of course, a qualification of an elder, but how does it look like?
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And so I would really challenge you to always think about when you have people you want to think that's a good person to support or to be behind them, is he representing
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Christ and how is he representing Christ? What should be his goal of that ministry he's doing?
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Is it just that he lives a Christian life in another country? I think it's a lot more than that, and I will tell you a little bit more when we see a few
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PowerPoint and a little video clip. But it goes much beyond that.
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It's not like you can be Christian also here in the United States. You don't really need to go to Germany or to any other country if you don't reproduce yourself.
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And that's what Paul talks about in 2 Timothy 2 .2 where he says you need to train multipliers.
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And in order to do that, you have to yourself know how to do that. And it comes down back to discipleship.
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Now, you want to send somebody out who is not only discipling somebody else, but who was discipled and who has done discipleship in the church where he's from and has some experience with that.
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And there is fruit in the ministry. And so that's very broad when it comes down to it.
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You want to have somebody who represents Christ. You want to have somebody who is a discipler who disciples others, who reproduces disciples so that they can spread the ministry.
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That's the goal. It's a duplication ministry. It's not that somebody goes there to reach one person.
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Well, maybe it is just one person and he's killed or sent back and that person is reproducing itself.
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We know that about some of the missionary stories where people didn't have a lot of impact. At least it didn't look like.
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But years later, after maybe they were killed, maybe they had to leave the country, the ministry, people come back into that country or into that tribe or whatever, and it has just exploded.
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China is an example. Everybody thought after the revolution, after Mao Zedong took over, that the
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Christian would die in that country. Today they don't even know how many Christians are there. 60, 600 million.
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Well, 600 million is probably a little bit more too much, but they think about in the 60, 70 millions or something like this,
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Christians are in China alone. It just has duplicated. So somebody did something right.
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But who do you support because missions, and I have been involved in missions for, I don't know, 25 years.
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Is that right? Yeah, it's right. Twenty -five years. And I have seen so many models, and I was also part of a missions committee at Grace Community Church where we had about 15 years ago, we had to go through every missionaries and ask what are they doing and are they really doing that what they say?
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Are they really representing Grace Church or the ministry of Grace Church or the ministry of at least teach the word of God how we understand it?
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So we didn't know. We had to check. I mean, of course, everybody thinks, yeah, you should know what a missionary does, but how often do the missionaries come back from the field?
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I'm here the second time. It's not very often. We have been the first time since 13 years back for a longer time in the
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United States. So sometimes people don't meet. We know about each other. We write. Today you can, by Skype, maybe talk to them.
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You could every week, every month. So there are great opportunities today which we didn't have before.
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When I started to be involved in missions, a phone call was still $20 a minute, not a minute, 10 minutes, about $20, so you didn't do that.
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You would waste all your money then. So you would write or you would go back or do other things, and then email started and so on.
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But what do you look at when you look for a missionary? It's not really as complicated as we think, but you should ask yourself this following question.
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What does a missionary believe in? Very basic. Do you check every missionary or every man you would send out or family you would send out that they could sign your mission statement or your doctrinal statement?
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What are the things that you believe? What you probably as a member of this church would have to do, is that person believing in that and not only believing it, also practicing that in his life when he's on the mission field, or does he change?
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I don't know if you understand that most of the philosophies of ministry and new ideas in church ministry has come from the mission field back.
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People who were on the mission field said, oh, it works a different way. I have a new idea. They start something new, bring it back to the
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United States or to other countries, and suddenly you have a very seeker -friendly church or you have all kinds of different philosophies, which are not biblical necessarily, but they work from their perspective.
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So you want to check that the missionaries really can underline and sign the doctrinal statement you have from the church, and we actually do it for our training center every year with every person who's working with us because it could change.
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I could change my mind or have an experience and say, well, we should change it, which is not right, but that can happen.
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And so we ask them to sign it every year to make sure, are they really behind that? Are they really committed to what we as a church have sent them out to and believe in?
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The next thing I would ask and would find out, what is his philosophy of ministry? Only that you believe that the
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Bible is true. How do you put that into practice? How do you put that really into the discipleship ministry?
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How do you practice it? What are you preaching? What's your focus on preaching?
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Do you preach topically? Well, here I know you preach expositorily. You preach through a book, verse by verse, and probably with a goal to teach the whole truth, so the
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Old and New Testament included. But that's not necessarily true with every missionary, and it's not true that everybody does it, and sometimes it's not even possible right in the beginning.
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But is that his goal, and is he aiming for it? So how is he preaching?
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How is this planned for discipleship? Does he plan that in?
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Is he meeting with other men to train them up, or is he doing a kind of help ministry, providing just help in a country like,
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I don't know, Afghanistan and Germany? For instance, it's not necessary that you need humanitarian aid or help, but that could be another country.
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Is that his focus of the ministry, and is that what you as a church wanted to support? I don't say that it's wrong to do it, but is that the focus of it?
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And we had, for instance, a missionary who was in Japan, and when we investigated a little bit how the ministry was going, we heard all the great stories, and missionary letters can be great.
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They always look nice, and they try to be positive. Even so, there are challenging things on the mission field, actually a lot, but we know for what reason we are there.
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And this man came back and reported, and we found out then just through talking with the ministry that they have a lot of visitors coming to Japan, and he shows them the country, and in between he does maybe a
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Bible study. But mainly he never really learned Japanese because he was very often involved with Americans and spoke most of the time
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English. And in his 10 or 15 years on the mission field, he was not really the pastor who we sought or the disciple.
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He never discipled really any person. He was involved in ministry in Japan, but then the elders said, hmm, that's interesting, so how much do we support this man?
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And Japan is very expensive, so you can imagine, and you're probably now going to say, well, I wish
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I would be a missionary. It's probably $10 ,000 more a month. So to be more qualified host for people visiting
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Japan to pay that kind of money, is that the goal of the church? And so only because you're a missionary, what are you doing?
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How do you spend your time? What is your discipleship strategy? How do you want to do evangelism?
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I come to the field. A lot of people do huge events and plan conferences and everything.
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We do also conferences. But what is the outcome of it? Do the people end up in the church and grow our disciples?
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Do they duplicate? Or is it something where we just share the gospel and that's it, a lot of investment, but yet the fruit is not there because there's not really a follow -up ministry.
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So what is the plan? And I would always investigate what is the view of the youth ministry or family ministry.
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I mean, if we talk about a family ministry, I had a lot of people, and also men working with me, who had a totally different idea, and I didn't know that before they came to the mission field, how they want to do ministry.
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And that can be really challenging because you go one way and they go another way, and they need to be a unified way.
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So how do we do youth ministry? There are people, and I know a lot, they are totally against anything like this.
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They want only the family as a whole to be ministered to and minister together. They view any kind of children ministry basically as a ministry to keep the children out of the service so that a parent can listen, but it's not really a training ministry.
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We, on the other hand, believe that every ministry which is done is from the beginning to the end, a discipleship training ministry to bring to maturity or to share the gospel with them if they are not believers yet, children and so on.
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So there's all kinds of those questions, but I would want to know what that man or that family is planning to do when they are going to the mission field.
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So I don't want to get reports back and say, well, the church is just not happening because they just live contrary to the culture and they are not willing to adjust to it.
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Well, there's a lot of personal questions which I never thought we need to ask, but if you are supporting ministry or church, you can ask those things to the missionary in a nice and pleasant way.
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How do you spend your time on the field? How do you spend the day on the field? What do you have?
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I mean, I know in America they are a very industrious country, and it's normal that you work at least 40 hours a week.
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A lot of people work a lot more. Now, how many hours does a missionary really work? Is anybody asking?
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I mean, he does work. That's not the question, but how much? What does he have in plan?
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Does he want to study 40 hours a week for a sermon and that's it? And then preach on Sunday?
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It's all those questions which some people would not ask, but we found out that it's very important.
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How many hours will he work? And it's typical where you work. My philosophy and our philosophy is you work until the job is done.
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And that sometimes is more than 70, sometimes 80 hours a week. It can be.
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It doesn't mean that you work, that happens all the time, but you just put that time in in order to accomplish what needs to be done.
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How is the money spent? Interesting. Does anybody ask you how your money is spent?
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Well, it's a lot. It doesn't belong to him. Of course, he has to have a private life. He has children he needs to provide for them, for his family.
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But you can buy a Volkswagen or you can buy a Mercedes as a car.
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You can buy – well, there are lots of different things. There might be a reason to buy a good
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Mercedes in a certain country. For instance, Albania, which is interesting, it's a sick country, third -world country where you think, well, they don't need really
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Mercedes. They say they need a Mercedes because it's much more reliable and everybody can fix it in that country.
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So they do buy it, and I understand it. But in Germany, you don't need to buy a Mercedes, even so everybody drives a
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Mercedes, but it's a luxury model. So we'd rather buy another car. And even so, some of them might be as expensive as Mercedes, but that's just the point.
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How do you spend your money? And also, a very interesting thing is if you have your free time, how do you spend your free time?
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Do you, when you're on the field, go to German restaurants or do you go to American restaurants?
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Nothing against American restaurants, but do you want to integrate into the culture or do you not want to integrate into the culture?
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How do you dress? Do you buy all your clothes in America or do you dress on purpose, buy clothes in Germany so you are more like them and adjust to them?
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Very often, missionaries don't think about that before they go out, but you can. How do they do?
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Do they want to integrate in the country? And that's a tough issue here, homeschooling or not homeschooling.
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But it's a point. Here's an opportunity to integrate into the country and get your children involved with other children, with other families and reach them like that.
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Or you say, no, I'm teaching them homeschooling and you have to do it in English because in Germany it's not allowed to do homeschooling really and there's no
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German homeschooling material. So you would immediately, the learning process of learning the language would take a lot longer.
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So the goal of reaching the people and implementing the philosophy of ministry and reaching the people would just immediately be much longer.
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So there are all things to think about it, but I know when it comes to those personal things, missionaries very often are very, and I'm talking about myself, they're very selfish.
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They say, I wanted to do it as I want to do it. And that's a very important question.
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Why do you send out a missionary? Is it because he can, and here's the thing, he cannot serve in your church because you wouldn't want him to serve in your church because he has a little quirks, he's very independent.
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This guy shouldn't go. He shouldn't go. He should be a leader. He should be working, able to be independent, but he should not be so independent that he can't work together and submit under.
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And that's very often I meet missionaries. We have over 100 missionaries in Berlin alone.
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I think most of them are from America, but not only. And a lot of them leave within the two first years.
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Why? They are very independent. They were never prepared for the field really. And it's devastating to see them go back.
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It's a bad testimony to Germany and Berlin. It's a bad testimony to whoever sent them.
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How much have they invested? And now they say, well, the call was not correct. It happens.
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And it happens too often. And very often I don't think the church is really prepared.
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They want to give them money. They want to send them out. They quieten their conscience. But reality, the responsibility is not the money.
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The responsibility is the shepherding aspect of the church. I would come over to Berlin, see what we are doing, visit us.
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Not all together, please, but please do it and visit us. And we would love to show you the ministry.
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We would love to even have you involved to some parts when it's possible in the local ministry.
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I made it a goal that everyone who supports us from the churches that they are involved in our ministry to some degree.
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Because I said, you need to stand behind us because it's not the money which counts. It's your prayer and your commitment that counts.
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Because it is a frontline ministry. Germany is a nice place.
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That's the Brandenburg Gate there. It's a nice place, but you have still the struggles and confrontations with people who think differently.
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So how do the people spend their money? How will they learn the language?
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That's very, very important. Are they really, really willing to put everything into learning the language?
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Are they really willing to do that? Because sometimes some people come with this idea, yes,
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I'm going until my kids need to go to college. I'm going back.
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So I don't really need to learn the language to that degree that I become a kind of a
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German. But the commitment I ask for our guys to come is, are you willing to die in Germany?
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Or are you going back for every wedding, every funeral, every friend who has anything important in their life, are you going back for those events?
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Today it's possible. You can go back for everything. You can buy a flight and you can go back.
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But what is a testimony to the other people? Everybody understands when you go back when somebody, when their family struggles and so on.
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But I have also seen missionaries who went for every wedding of their best friends. And then at the same time, that's the side we hear in the missionary letter.
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But at the same time there were needs in the local church where they were ministering on the ministry, and they said, well, this is secondary.
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I'm rather going there. And for Christmas, we don't spend Christmas, would not spend
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Christmas on the field. I'd rather spend it with my family in America. Nothing wrong with that really, but the priorities they show on the mission field.
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And how do the people respond to that? What do you want to accomplish? What is your plan for your family in the ministry?
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Very, very, very crucial. How do you want to involve your children? How do you involve your wife?
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Is that a plan? I'm meeting right now with four young guys who are seminary students, and I said, okay, you all want to go to the mission field.
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Two of them are married. The other ones are not. But I asked them, okay, what they want to go with in the next couple of years.
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And they said, so how is your wife prepared for the mission field? Did she go through Bible school?
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Does she like at least a one -year Bible institute or something like this? Well, yeah, we thought about this.
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We said, well, you cannot come to Germany if you don't do it. The reason is they expect that the wife is able to give guidance as a
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Titus II woman at least and knows the Bible. And very often we see that the men are totally involved in the ministry.
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The wife is at home with the children, has not the opportunity to learn the language so fast.
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And suddenly there is a drift in the marriage. There's tension. And the next thing we see, the husband thinks, oh,
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I did something wrong. We might have to leave the field. And that happens, that they leave the field because of the tension in the marriage.
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And so there needs to be good plan integration. And sometimes the husband has to stay at home with the children so his wife can learn the language.
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And also while they are here, they might want to extend the stay in order that the wife is able to go through Bible institute, maybe by extension or maybe at the church they might be training.
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So there's all those things that need to be considered. How do we spend our free time? Where do we eat when we go out?
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I mentioned that already. How will we educate our children is a very important thing. Are we coming back when they need to go to college?
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Or are we willing to let them go to another mission field? And that's not for Germany. Do we send them to boarding school?
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I know that today everybody would say, no, never. I would never let my children go. But when the
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Bible doesn't say that, it doesn't really say that. And we think children until 18, 20.
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Well, is that really true? And I was sent, my parents moved to Portugal, Island Madeira, and I lived basically on my own when
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I was 15 years old on. And, yes, of course my parents checked with me.
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I had worked, stayed even in an apartment with my brother who was just a year older. And we managed well.
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We grew up very fast, took new responsibilities. We were not missionaries.
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We were not Christians at that time, so that focus was a different one. But I know a lot of missionary kids who are going to boarding school.
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The parents can be maybe on an island somewhere in New Guinea or in whatever country and train men or translate the
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Bible and so on. But if you would really start to come to the mission field with young children and then you're 10 years there and then the college time starts and you go back to the country, to America, you basically leave at the height of your effectiveness and you go back.
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And all the investment which was done can be really, I mean, I don't say that there's no fruit left.
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There will be fruit left, but the fruit really starts in long -term perspective.
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So some of you might say who thought, I want to be a missionary, and you say, well, I'm thinking about this.
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Why? You're going to hear the sermon next hour and then you will think maybe differently about this.
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I just wanted to give you a perspective. You asked the ministry. That's why we are a discipleship ministry basically or multiplication ministry in Berlin, Germany.
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And I just want to show you a few PowerPoints. Maybe I can do that for me. Or just tap the one down.
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And this is we do some conferences. This is like a counseling conference we did in Gomezbach.
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We are not only in Berlin. We work all over Germany and Switzerland. Okay. And here this is a little video clip giving you a little impression what we are doing and where we are involved in.
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Some of our teachers. This is Tim Kelly. He's an American missionary who learned perfect German and has now planted a church, which is very, very, very unique.
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This was some of the students. Three of them are church planting. He was just here. He will be also probably get further training to a church plant.
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He is a church plant already. Oh, no. Actually, he's graduating this summer. It's another man.
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He's one of the leaders in a church of 800 people, very young man. While we're grading them on their preaching abilities.
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We have also women in the first year, which is a Bible survey class. And that's a
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Russian -German. We have a Russian group and a German group from 20s, 35 Russians about, and then the same about Germans in Berlin.
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That's a Russian teacher from Ukraine. And that's graduation last year where we give them a baton just to tell them, you know, the ministry is going on.
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You're just a carrier of the word of God to take the ministry one step further. We can go one step further.
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Yeah, okay. That was the very highlight.
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We were in Wittenberg, and that's actually one of the original first prints of Luther's Bible, the 1521 edition.
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Worse, I don't know, I think in the 10 million euros, which is 13, 14 million dollars.
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But it doesn't really matter. It's just unique that we were able to see it. Usually, it's behind a vault, and you can't touch it, but we were allowed to go in there.
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And this man is a Liberian, an interesting man. He speaks I don't know how many languages. He was able to Russian and everything.
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I mean, it's just incredible. Okay, we can go on. This is actually a picture in front of the cathedral church where the 95
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Caesars were pinned on during Luther's time. Well, that's our pastor,
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Julian Friesen, of the Russian German church where the EBTC is located. That's his son.
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He's working with me. He's for IT, responsible for IT. That's our master's group.
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That's the group Pastor Mike will teach this year. And these are all guys involved in major ministries.
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To the right is my right -hand guy right now. He's actually leading the whole Berlin team to the right side.
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Yeah, that's right. Then next to him, he will be Matthias. He's going to be Switzerland, helping us assisting the whole
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Switzerland extension. The other man is overseeing all the Bible survey classes, which we have probably 70 students in that one alone in three different groups.
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And he's also an elder of a church. Then in front of him to the left is a guy who is a pastor in the
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Czech Republic. And then to the very left is Bill. He is a pastor in Dresden in an international church.
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And so they have all major ministries. In the back, he was teaching the club, Greg Stover from Sacramento.
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Yes, next. Well, that's just Matthias Fröhlich who will be involved in Switzerland very soon.
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That's one of our Russian pastors or teachers who is flying in from Ukraine every month to teach the
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Russian group. Very, very gifted guy, and that's some of our teachers.
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You can go on. Well, we have here, we have also banquets.
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We try to do a lot with fellowship. I mean, usually most of the men are coming, obviously, to the training center, but we want to invite also twice a year where the wives are coming with them and where we can just fellowship, and they can be for a whole day involved in what we are doing.
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One of our teachers, he's also on the board at Wolfgang Schor. He's a strategic man for us, really.
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He's a Christian businessman but very gifted in teaching, and he deals with just attitudes and ethics of our students and really tries to build on the character.
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Well, that's, again, he's church planting Alex. We had a deaf ministry this year.
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We don't have it. We taught two to three people and a very interesting group, actually, and we filmed the whole thing where they went through the whole
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Bible survey class, and what we wanted to do is to produce a DVD with the notes and everything, with sign language, and then hand it over to the deaf people in Germany so they can teach the whole
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Bible, the Bible survey class for the deaf people. And we are not there yet. We needed some more material.
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At that time we didn't have enough cameras. You have to have two to three cameras to do that, and so it didn't work out as well as I hoped, so we will do it again.
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Some of our graduates last year. That's a whole group picture again.
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We saw that already. That's something what we do. TMI stands for all the training centers worldwide, but these are the
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European ones. We had it in Zurich last November, and representing,
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I don't even know, I think seven or eight countries are at least represented in that room, and we really try to also, with our training ministry in Berlin and in Switzerland, to help others to develop.
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We are working on Czech Republic. We're working on France. There's something happening in England.
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There was somebody here from a Muslim country, and then there's some other groups, and, of course,
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Russia, Ukraine, and so on is involved. Why Russia? Because Russia, we have a lot of Russian -speaking people in Western Europe, so we need to even train people for the
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Russian ministries in Western Europe. Okay. Well, that's just from Switzerland, just the flag.
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It's one of, good, we can go on. That's Martin Manten. Some of you might know him.
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He's overseeing the ministry in Switzerland now and just started the pastorate in Bern, the capital of Switzerland.
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One of our teachers in Switzerland, and he's actually German, but he's a very, very gifted teacher and preacher, and we are very thankful to have him part of our team.
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Also, the graduation there, and you can just go on in Switzerland. Well, we have a conference, video conference with John for our
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Shepherds Conference once a year. We have John usually for one session there. Yeah, that was the last
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Shepherds Conference. I don't even know. I think that was where Mark Dever was here. That's Alexei Kolomitsov, an interesting ministry.
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It was an all -Russian Shepherds Conference in Berlin. And why did we do that?
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Well, the reason is we had about 200 pastors there, and the next picture shows that, who some of the women wanted to come to, but mainly it's pastors.
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The goal was to really help the still -existing
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Russian churches in training them up, and we had also people come from Ukraine and even from Russia.
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And Alexei Kolomitsov has been also trained at the Master's Seminary, and we are very close. He has also a training center in Washington State, but also he's in Ukraine and Russia.
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There are some things developing. And so we really tried to reach the people, their hearts through their own language because sometimes we tried it for years, and it seems like they do hear what we say in German, but how to apply it.
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We didn't grasp their heart, and we don't think like they do, and Alexei Kolomitsov, who is
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Russian, can do it. And that's just to remind you to pray for the ministry in Berlin, and I think that's the last picture.
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No, there might be one more or two more. That's my father -in -law who helps us in the ministry. He is from California, but he helps us in Germany, and that's just one of the books where actually
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Luther did his comments in the site of that book.
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And, well, good. I wanted to also remind you, do you have any questions about the ministry in Germany, what we are doing?
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Yes. Correct.
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Correct. Well, we should understand that dialect because if they don't want that we understand, they speak in the dialect.
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So it's kind of funny, but when they are among each other, the Swiss people, they do speak the dialect, but they have to learn
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German. All schooling in Switzerland is done in German, not in Swiss German. So they do understand it.
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It's not a problem really for communication, but for really understanding when some different groups come together and they talk in their language.
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It's like, I don't know if I should say that, but it's like when you go to Texas and try to understand them.
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For me, I didn't know what they were talking about first. If you go to Wales in England, the same thing.
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I mean, you think, what is this? I thought I'm in England. If you had learned
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German and go to Switzerland, it would be very difficult. Yes. Yes, in the back. Yeah, I mean, it's a good question.
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We had 500 years ago, Luther, the gospel was preached and testified there and there was an increase.
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But no, it has become liberal the last hundred and more years.
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Liberal theology in Germany destroyed everything. I mean, and the state church system, which is very often you misunderstand it.
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Maybe the state church doesn't mean that the state controls the church. It's more the other way around.
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The state church has so much influence on the government because it's such a big group that the government will do what the state church requests.
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Since they are the biggest employer and have a lot of money. But because of that, the state church function, the church has become a normal, not spiritual driven, but rather political driven or ideological driven.
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And so, no, we have, I just mentioned it yesterday, I think, that we have probably one and a half, maybe two percent
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Christians in Germany, Bible believing Christians, or born again believers.
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Maybe, that's probably even high. Really what it does is because people think
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I'm baptized, I'm in the church, I'm married in the church, I'm a Christian.
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And so they really, from the beginning, said, I don't need it. And, I mean, I met with 15, 20 men who were in the last year of theological training in the public university by scholars trained.
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I mean, they all know Hebrew, Greek, but they don't know where the books of the Bible were. When we gave them an argument out of James or something, they said, well, at first they looked for the book.
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I mean, those guys in the mid -20s have had four or five years of theological training at highest universities.
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I mean, they know everything about the Bible, but not the Bible. And so you will find that.
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Not everybody is that way, but you will find that. And then they said, well, I don't need to evangelize.
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I don't need to church. They are part of my parish. They're baptized. I have them on my list. So you can pray for that.
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I mean, in some ways God opens their eyes, but, of course, people are saved out of that environment.
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One pastor I met right in the beginning, his father died during his studies, and then he questioned, what am
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I doing here? And then he came to know the Lord actually when he visited America. It was really interesting.
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And then it changed the whole ministry. But that is not the typical thing.
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So the ministry which we are right now really able to do is very – it's because people are – we work with Russian Germans who are not treated well by the
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Germans, really. They are not Germans – the Germans think they are not Germans, and they are not really
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Russians. So they're in between everything. But they are the first ones who left Russia because they were
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Christians. Finally, they had the freedom. They could live their beliefs in Germany, and that's about – there are about 500 to 1 ,000 churches since in the last 25 years have grown up out of that group, and over 100 ,000 people.
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They are the ones who we see a huge increase in believers percentage -wise.
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The Germans themselves, overall, it's not very – there's not much happening.
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We see a more desire under believing Christians now to go towards –
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I mean to really study the word of God. That's what we see. So we are shifting.
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Other questions? We have a couple more, five more minutes. Yes? You mentioned that –
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Yes. You don't want to know what I do, right? Okay.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can. Well, what a typical day is
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I'm getting up very early in the morning. I'm early, right? That has nothing to do with other missionaries, but I'm typical up early in the morning, 5 o 'clock or something like this, and I need a cup of coffee in the morning.
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And then I prepare. I have breakfast with my children. They go out of the house. I have my quiet time a little bit before that.
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They go out of the house about 6 .20. I take them to the public train station. They go to school.
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They have a drive for an hour and a half to get through a public system. Then I go usually to the office in there quarter to seven, spend most of the day until 4 o 'clock in the office, do a lot of study administration, planning, meet with my team.
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I have about four or five people working together with me in the office and are teaching, and I'm traveling a lot.
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I'm visiting other churches, other ministries nationally, internationally too, where I teach or help develop new things.
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We have a lot of – we have a publishing ministry. We have a radio ministry. We work with four churches in Berlin together, and others we advise in Germany.
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So my ministry or my involvement is very diverse.
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Sometimes I'm gone a lot. I don't know. Last year I visited so many different countries because we help people and students, former students or others.
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So that is exciting, but that is after 13 years of ministry in the country.
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Before it was not that way. So I spend a lot of time, and I made it a goal to not study at home.
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The reason for that is, of course, I do study at home too, but not for the purpose of the ministry primarily.
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Why? Because I want that the people in my neighborhood see that I'm working like everybody else,
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I'm leaving the home, and I'm coming back. People talk about that. They watch you. And so I have an office.
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And I also want to ask my guys to be there on time. And all the basic principles,
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I want to do them myself, live them myself. We have lunch together, and I need to deal with simple issues.
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People, their friends call them at work, and I say, well, this is not the time where you take the calls at work.
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It's working time. And the same thing for me. I'm not spending hours and hours on the phone with private calls.
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It's ministry, even so that they are, I mean, sometimes it's mixed. I mean, you have to be careful with that.
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But so my days look like this, and then we usually, on Saturday, the weekends,
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Friday, Saturday, we have usually EBTC. I was once a month in Switzerland, and the other one is in Berlin.
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And then we had maybe conferences, other things, or I preach at the church. And then I study usually the whole week.
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But on Friday, Saturday, I have my time where I finish it off. And then we have a whole
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Sunday. We have usually normal, I don't know, at 9 o 'clock we have church, from 9 usually to 1 o 'clock, because we just do the
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German part. The Russian part starts at 12 o 'clock to 3 o 'clock. And then we have usually visitors on Sunday, and we have a lot of visitors.
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I think 100 days a year we have people staying with us in our home at least, at least. And not only one, usually families and other people.
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So it gets busy. We have a lot of ministry also at home, but I try to really spend five days a week at the office.
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And whatever I need to do, I do it there. Go ahead.
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Well, sometimes I think a bad example is if he has a lot of interference with his being at home and he can't put the time aside from his family, and there's always interference, and he can do whatever he wants when the family has a need.
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No one else can do it. They all go to work, work 40, 50 hours a week. They can't just come home and take care of the family, but a missionary does it.
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And so he has just a luxury nobody else has. Also, he can, you know, we talk about the priority of the family as a minister because he's an elder, his family, he should be a good shepherd of his family at home.
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That's true, but does it mean that the family is always first?
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And some missionaries treat it that way. They call off other needs in the church, and they treat it that way, and suddenly the priorities, the family becomes an idol.
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That becomes the focus of everything. So there are some dangers there, and also how you spend your money.
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I mean, people watch you, and sometimes American missionaries have a little bit more money than other people around, and so they need to be very cautious what kind of example they give.
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Is that the model that people follow? You are the disciple that they're supposed to follow you. So if you do that, if you homeschool, can the congregation all homeschool?
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It's forbidden. It's against the law. They can't. So there are a lot of things you have to think through, just a few.
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Okay, I think it's time. I just wanted to mention another thing here, sir. We have some cards.
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I don't know where they're at. They're probably outside in the foyer. Cards from our ministry where you can visit our website.
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That's in English, German, and Russian, so you can choose whatever language you want. And then from our family, if you want to pray for us, think about the ministry in Germany.