Posted by deangonzales on March 11, 2010
I am Trevor Johnson, a sinner saved by grace and for the service of the Lamb. I am a missionary sent by my home church of Bible Baptist Church of Maplewood Saint Louis (www.oldgospel.org), through the help of World Team Mission (www.worldteam.org). I was saved at age 18 after doubting even the existence of God. I believed myself to be a product of the primordial ooze, and I acted consistently with this belief for a time.
My wife, Teresa, a patient and durable woman, has blessed me in marriage now for 10 years and we have two children, Noah (5) and Alethea (2), who own the nicknames of “The Peanut” and “The Turkey” respectively. We want more children. At least 15 more.
I served 5 years as an active duty army officer and am also a pilot. I loved the army, was honored to serve, volunteered an extra year after 9/11, but I am also glad that I am out and that I am now free to serve a greater Commander. After military service, I finished a Masters through Reformed Theological Seminary, but don’t worry, I am still a Baptist (if Sinclair Ferguson can’t put together a convincing argument for the pedobaptist position, then nobody can). Teresa and I gained linguistic training through SIL and then we embarked for language school in Indonesia. Despite linguistic training, we still made many language gaffes, such as calling the “village head” the “village coconut.” Being a missionary means learning how to be humble.
Teresa and I are both registered nurses, but Teresa is my superior in this field and I bow to her medical decisions. She beats on a skillet every day at 4pm in the village to summon the sick and treat them from our front porch. Many people complain of evil spirits, but we tell them there is no medicine for that except for prayer. Malaria, fevers, malnutrition, infected wounds and even worms are common-place.
I sweat and labor among a remote tribal group tucked away into a dark interior corner of SE Asia. This tribal group inhabits fetid jungle, largely swamp, and exists in constant fear due to animistic superstitions, still offering pig fat to appease local spirits. Still being wholly ignorant of the germ theory of disease, these tribal peoples believe that diseases are caused by witchcraft, a belief leading to the murder of the accused witch. Most importantly, these unreached clans still do not know their Creator God or His Son Jesus Christ.
My area of ministry is 22 hours hike upriver from the nearest bush airstrip, so we have opened up a water strip nearer to us, wading the river and heaving logs from the bottom to clear a straight section of water so that a floatplane can safely land. The tribal clans lack nourishment, so we have experimented with fruits and vegetables. Tomatoes and watermelon all failed, but we are able to grow abundant corn and roast our own peanuts, in addition to long beans and kangkung (swamp grass). The people are wholly illiterate, so we are sending in teachers to assemble and teach the tribal children. In classrooms lacking a single nail, fashioned together totally by vines, this tribal group is struggling forward in its first steps towards reading the Word of God for themselves. I am struck that in Matthew 9, Jesus went teaching and healing the people in all the villages. I cannot separate my preaching from humanitarian works. Our Gospel results in aggressive social action and mercy ministries. I see no dichotomy between good words and good works and I have never been able to “just preach the Gospel” in this context. I believe all of us should be zealously seeking to bless this lost and dying world, by whatever means possible.
I try not to be a Lone Ranger in ministry. In the book of Acts, the Apostle Paul was not a loner either. He travelled with co-workers and ministered in the context of an apostolic team. I am taking highland tribal Christians, from regions where the Gospel has, in fact, penetrated, and I am equipping, mentoring, and melding these highland evangelists into an indigenous evangelistic church-planting team in order to reach the lowland unreached tribals with the Gospel. Through this evangelistic task force, we want to occupy and saturate these lowland swamp areas with a Gospel witness. Together we form a church-planting team of about 20 evangelists and teachers. Instead of pastoring an individual church, I split my time between evangelizing this unreached tribe, and in circulating and teaching this network of highland Christian evangelists. As I bless these evangelists and teach then, they bless and teach these unreached clans. That way the work becomes gradually less dependent upon me. If the Lord should take my life or my health, by this strategy the Gospel can continue to march forward without me.
If I ever became a pastor, I would be failing in my job. I invest myself in indigenous leaders who can minister and pastor on their own. Yes, I do directly evangelize my tribe, but I primarily pour my life into these national Christians so that the Gospel may become multiplicational and replicational, so that the truth may reproduce and spread long after I am gone. II Timothy 2:2 is my missions motto; “And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.” The discipleship model of Jesus towards His disciples is my methodological ideal, and I strive not merely to share academic lessons, but also my meals, my travels, my very life, with these indigenous evangelists so that I may strengthen them and become a “force-multiplier” for the Gospel in a dark land.
Finally, I am convinced that missionaries are not merely to focus on peoples “over there.” If God has called me as a missionary, I must also bless my partnering churches here in the West by stirring them up to greater missionary zeal and in making missions practicable and real to people, clearing the road so that others, too, may come and share in the joys and the trials that I have experienced. I am mindful that in the history of missions, God has raised up missionaries by the means of other missionaries. As fallible and average as I am, the Lord has used me. He has granted me ministry fruit. And if the Lord can use me, then I am proof that He can use many of you. We are ordinary people who serve an extraordinary God, who delights to use weak vessels to spread His glory to the uttermost ends of the earth. I am living proof of the mercy of God, and the Lord has been pleased to use me. He will be pleased to use you as well.
My final plea to you regarding missions is this:
If you can go, do not be content merely to support. If you can support missions, do not be content merely to pray for missions. If you can pray, do not be content merely to sit idly by and watch. Be as involved as you can be. Seek to place yourself the closest to the frontlines as possible. The Lord may eventually afflict me and break my health, and yet “Though he slay me, yet will I trust him.” While I am young and healthy, I am determined to serve in the hardest place that I can find, out of joy and utter thanksgiving for Him who Has given me so much. I am mindful that we are as a mist and a vapor on the earth and that we must work while it is day, for the night comes when no man can work. We must redeem the time because the days are evil. We must use our short and limited lives while we have them.
Let me also say a word about the missionary call. If you want to serve in missions, don’t wait for the audible voice of God or a dramatic emotional experience. If your desire to go to the nations is seconded by Scripture and the larger Body of Christ, starting with your local church, then seek to go. Let’s de-mystify the missionary call. Let’s create a climate of sending. In Acts 13 we see the deliberate strivings of a church seeking to please God, and I would plead to pastors and leaders to lead from the front. We who believe in the sovereignty of God know that victory is assured. Our cause cannot fail. We could be sending out 10 times our present numbers!
Email me at: oct31st1517@hotmail.com. I desire to bless and serve you and be a resource for anyone wanting to go into missions. You can also keep up with our missionary efforts by following our entries on our family blog.
Posted by deangonzales on March 6, 2010
According to the Westminster Confession of Faith 25.5 (see also LBCF 26.3), “The purest Churches under heaven are subject both to mixture and error.” There are at least two ramifications that flow from this doctrinal assertion. First, no church or ecclesiastical organization should assume the posture of having arrived at complete doctrinal and spiritual maturity–including Reformed churches and organizations! Hence, when we take too much pride in being “ReformED,” we run the risk of losing sight of the Reformation principle of semper reformanda (”always reforming”) and of assuming the rather haughty posture that we’ve got a “corner on the truth.” As a result, we can tend to spend too much time criticizing others and develop an unhealthy resistance to receiving criticism (whether from outside or inside our circles). Second, since we’re not immune to errors and imbalances and weaknesses, we should be just as ready to learn from others outside our ecclesiastical circles as we are eager to help them see their faults. In other words, we shouldn’t assume that we’re the only ones who have something profitable to bring to the table, that everyone else needs to keep quiet and learn from us. Rather, while we may have some insights and wisdom to offer our evangelical brothers, we can expect they probably have some things to teach us as well.
With the preceding remarks in view, I’d like to commend to you two recent blog entries by one of our seminary students, Bill Streger, Pastor of Kaleo Church in Houston, which is part of the Acts 29 Network, an association of pastors and churches focused on reaching the unchurched and planting churches. In the first entry, entitled, “Uncool People Need Jesus Too” (see link below), Bill directs a caution to pastors within his own ecclesiastical circles. Basically, he warns them against allowing a good thing (i.e., a burden and effort to reach the younger “hip” generation) to develop into an imbalance (i.e., a failure to be burdened for and reach people who may not be young and “hip”). In the second entry, entitled, “What I Actually Meant” (see link below), Bill provides some qualifying remarks to clarify the intent of his original post. He assures his colleagues (some of whom took offense at his first post) that he was offering the admonition not as a broad-brush critique of the whole movement but as a general caution regarding a potential pitfall into which some may unwittingly fall.
Personally, I didn’t need Bill’s qualification. I understood that his remarks were simply a generalization and that he wasn’t impugning the motives of those whom he was warning. Moreover, I understood the cautions as coming from one who was overall appreciative of the good in his ecclesiastical circles but who simply wanted to encourage biblical balance and maturity. Nevertheless, as one who has sometimes offered self-criticisms of my own “movement,” I know what it’s like to be misunderstood. Of course, this is not to say that I’m always above reproach in the way I communicate criticisms. Sometimes I fail to make necessary qualifications. This is why I appreciated Bill’s humble willingness to post a second entry in order to clarify his intentions and even concede that he could have said it better the first time. In the end, though, I think every church, denomination, or ecclesiastical “movement” ought to remain self-critical in the spirit of semper reformanda. If you read both of Bill’s posts, you’ll see that he highly esteems the Acts 29 Network, its leaders, and the brothers who are part of it. But he also recognizes the truth expressed in the Puritan confessions, namely, that no church or body of churches has “fully arrived.” Consequently, he’s willing to be self-critical in the interests of helping his church and his sister churches to become aware of pitfalls and to grow in “the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph 4:13, ESV).
I believe that we, as Reformed Baptists, can profit from Bill’s caution against the tendency to be trendy and to mimic other ministries in ways that are unwarranted or imbalanced. Perhaps more importantly, we can profit from Bill’s willingness to be self-critical. There’s always a danger of becoming so enamored with our strengths that we become blind to our weaknesses. May the Lord help us!
“Uncool People Need Jesus Too” by Pastor Bill Streger
“What I Actually Meant” by Pastor Bill Streger
Your servant,
Bob Gonzales, Dean
Reformed Baptist Seminary
Posted by deangonzales on February 27, 2010
Matthew 20:20-28 speaks of human ambition. Webster’s Dictionary defines “ambition” as “an ardent desire for rank, fame, or power.” Another dictionary provides a fuller definition. Ambition is “an earnest desire for some type of achievement or distinction, as power, honor, fame, or wealth, and the willingness to strive for its attainment.” The sons of Zebedee were obviously men of ambition. They aspired after greatness. They also had a mother who earnestly wanted to see her two sons achieve their aspirations. And lest we think they were the only disciples who entertained ambitions to greatness, we do well to interpret the indignation of the other ten disciples recorded in verse 24 not as an indication of true humility but as an expression of envy that John and James had beat them to the punch. They too aspired to greatness.
The question I’d like us to ask is, Is it wrong for true disciples of Christ to aspire after greatness? Most of us would probably answer that question affirmatively. Of course it’s wrong! Human ambition doesn’t seem to fit with Christian virtue. However, I want to suggest to you that human ambition in-and-of-itself is not necessarily sinful. Notice carefully that Jesus does not oppose the ambition of James and John per se. He’s not against their aspiration to “greatness,” and he doesn’t condemn their desire for achievement. Instead, Jesus redefines true greatness in the kingdom of God, and he contrasts the Christian approach to achieving greatness with the world’s approach. Look again at verses 25-28:
But Jesus called them to Himself and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those who are great exercise authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant. And whoever desires to be first among you, let him be your slave just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.”
Note two things about Jesus’s response to His disciples’ ambition:
1. Jesus doesn’t condemn human ambition but encourages it.
Mark Christ’s words in the first part of verses 26 and 27: “Whoever would be great among you must be …” (v. 26). “And whoever would be first among you must be …” (v. 27). Jesus isn’t mocking the disciples. He’s not being sarcastic. He’s offering them biblical counsel. He’s showing them the way to true greatness. “If you want to be great—if you want to achieve, then this is the method you must follow.” Therefore, we shouldn’t interpret Jesus’s teaching as a blanket condemnation of all human ambition. As a matter of fact, the Bible supports the notion that human ambition is a God-given impulse.
How many of you have met an ambitious oak tree? What about an ambitious fish or bird or cow? It’s true that some animals can be aggressive. And it’s true that some animals can be competitive. There’s always the dog in the pack that aspires to be the “alpha-male.” But whatever ambition animals may possess is only a faint semblance of human ambition. Animals don’t strive for fortune and fame. Animals aren’t preoccupied, like us, with accomplishment and achievement. But there’s a drive within you and me to do something that’s lasting: to leave our mark, to accomplish some great deed, to be successful and find fulfillment. Where did that drive come from?
I want to suggest that it came from the God who created humans in his own image and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Gen. 1:28). That “creation mandate” not only specified mankind’s God-given task. It also implies a goal toward which humans are to strive. Adam and Eve were to be fruitful and fill the earth with other images of God who would labor together to beautify the earth and harness its natural resources for the glory of God and good of man. And as a reward for their labors, God would grant them a “name,” and they would join him in eternal Sabbath-rest. And God endowed the human heart not only with a conscience that would urge man to imitate his heavenly father morally but God also endowed the human heart with an aspiration to complete his God-given task and to enjoy as a reward fullness of life—something he did not yet experience in the Garden of Eden. I believe this is what Solomon is alluding to in Ecclesiastes 3:11 where he says, “[God] has put eternity in their hearts.” One OT scholar explains it this way:
[The] blessing … promising a consummation of man’s original glory as image of God was … built into man’s very nature as image of God. This eschatological prospect was in-created. It was an aspiration implanted in man’s heart with his existence as God’s image…. The bare perpetuation of man’s original measure of blessedness would actually have been a curse, not a blessing, for it would have amounted to failure in his endeavor to fulfill God’s commission to be fruitful and to extend his dominion..
Brothers and sisters, you and I were made to have aspirations. To borrow from a good friend’s oft-repeated axiom: we were created with a drive and desire to pursue our maximum kingdom potential. This explains why people in the world strive to achieve and accomplish and find fulfillment. True, their ambition for greatness and achievement has been corrupted by sin as we’ll see. But it still testifies to the fact that they’re made in the image of God. My point is this: human ambition is not wrong provided that it’s properly defined and carried out with the right motives, which leads me to the second observation regarding Jesus’s response to his disciples’ ambition:
2. Jesus contrasts godly ambition with worldly ambition
In verse 25-28, Jesus summons his disciples and says to them:
You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those who are great exercise authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant. And whoever desires to be first among you, let him be your slave – just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.
It’s important that we interpret Jesus’s words correctly. Jesus is not saying that the Gentiles are wicked simply because they happen to be in power. Nor is He saying it’s wrong to aspire to occupy the role of a leader such as mayor or a governor or even a king. In other words, Jesus is not commending some kind of egalitarian society in which there are no structures of human authority. Instead, I think the right way to understand Jesus’s contrast is to see him contrasting one form of ruling and subduing the earth with another form of ruling and subduing the earth. Like Adam in the Garden, the nations seek to rule and subdue the earth independent of God’s rule and in violation of God’s law. Moreover, they’re ambition is not God’s glory and the good of mankind but their own glory and their own personal good, often at the expense of others. This was true of the Caesars of Jesus’s day. And this is true of many of the rulers in our day. They have no regard for the God of heaven. And they take advantage of their people in order that they might live in luxury and build their palaces and monuments and legacies.
But it’s not just the dictators or prime ministers or politicians in Washington who are guilty of this prideful ambition. Every human who rejects God and his law, who seeks to be his own master, and who attempts to carve out his own destiny with himself at the center falls under Jesus’s censure. Even Jesus’s disciples fell under his censure! It wasn’t wrong for James and John to be ambitious. It wasn’t wrong for them or the other disciples to aspire after greatness in God’s kingdom. Brothers, there’s something wrong with us if we don’t have that aspiration!
What was wrong was their conception of true greatness and the way in which it is attained. True greatness, according to Jesus, consists in adopting the posture of a servant: “Whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant. And whoever desires to be first among you, let him be your slave — just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many” (Matt. 20:26-28). What is the posture of a servant? I think it involves the following:
(1) Servants are not their own masters but they’re under the authority of another.
God created Adam to be His vice-regent, and He gave Adam dominion over the earth. But that dominion was never to be absolute. Adam had a master. And Adam’s Master expected Adam to carry out the creation mandate in accordance with His revealed will. But Adam failed to do this when he disobeyed God’s word and ate the fruit, saying in effect, “I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.” Certainly not the disposition of a humble servant!!!
(2) Servants do not live for themselves but seek the good of others.
By definition a “servant” is someone who has a master and someone whose function is not just to serve himself but to serve others. The first Adam was just a man, but he grasped after equality with God. He didn’t want “to serve.” He wanted “to be served.” The Second Adam, however, was the God-man. Yet, though he was equal with God, he didn’t grasp after equality with God but took the form of a servant and died on a cross in obedience to his Father’s will so that others might share in his glory. That’s what Jesus means when he says, “Even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.” “Son of Man” is a Messianic title. It refers to Jesus’s sovereignty and lordship. He is the Lord of lords and the King of kings. Nevertheless, the greatness of Jesus is unlike the greatness of human kings and governments.
- Jesus greatness is characterized by humility
- Jesus greatness is characterized by submission to the will of God
- Jesus greatness is characterized by seeking the good of others.
That, dear brothers and sisters, is the kind of ambition God wants us to have.
Closing Applications
(1) Behold the high calling of servanthood.
This is the privilege and calling of all believers from apostles all the way down to ordinary laypeople. This should be our great ambition. This is where we should find our greatest fulfillment. Not in selfishly making a name for ourselves. Not stepping on others in order to climb up the ladder of worldly success. Rather, our greatest joy and our deepest fulfillment ought to come from wholehearted devotion to God and self-sacrificing service to others.
For though I am free from all men, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win the more (1 Cor. 9:19).
For we do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your bondservants for Jesus’ sake (2 Cor. 4:5).
For you, brethren, have been called to liberty; only do not use liberty as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another (Gal. 5:1).
When people say, “What’s your church all about? What’s one of its primary distinctives?” The answer should be, “Servanthood. We are people who live not to be served but to serve.” That brings me to my second and final line of application:
(2) Behold what an example of servanthood we have in Jesus
Jesus did not merely define true greatness and proper ambition for his disciples. He demonstrated it! Indeed, it wasn’t long after the incident recorded in our passage that Jesus’s disciples would find themselves in an upper room celebrating the Passover while their own Lord and Master took a towel, assumed the role of a servant, and began washing their feet. And after he finished, he would say to them, “If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you” (John 13:14-15).
Brothers and sisters, do you want to be great in the kingdom of God? Do you want to offer a great and lasting service to the church? Then let the same attitude and posture that characterized Jesus Christ. Turn with me to Philippians 2 and note how Paul develops this theme:
Who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Phil. 2:6-11).
That’s “greatness.” Jesus wasn’t opposed to greatness. He, as a man in the image of God, aspired after greatness in the kingdom. And he holds out to you and me the prospect of ruling and reigning with him forever! Do you aspire after that? Then listen to Paul’s counsel:
Therefore if there is any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and mercy, fulfill my joy by being like-minded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind. Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself. Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others. Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus (Phil. 2:1-4).
Do you aspire to “rule and reign with Christ”? I hope you do. I certainly do. If that’s our ambition, then let us pursue that goal by “taking the form of a bondservant.” Let us reject selfish ambition and conceit. Let us rather esteem others better than ourselves and look out for their interests, not just our own. Then and only then will we fully appreciate the high calling of servanthood.
Your servant,
Bob Gonzales, Dean
Reformed Baptist Seminary
I am Trevor Johnson, a sinner saved by grace and for the service of the Lamb. I am a missionary sent by my home church of Bible Baptist Church of Maplewood Saint Louis (www.oldgospel.org), through the help of World Team Mission (www.worldteam.org). I was saved at age 18 after doubting even the existence of God. I believed myself to be a product of the primordial ooze, and I acted consistently with this belief for a time.
