Before Antalya

I have always been happy to be part of a movement of churches with a reputation for doing missions and proud that a family from our church, the Marineaus, were serving overseas with The Christian and Missionary Alliance in Canada.

Missionary reports and stories have always been of interest to me, especially hearing how God was powerfully working in other places in the world. They would make me hopeful that we would see revival among our own people. But somehow these stories and reports always remained far from my own reality like the television images of parched lands where people suffer of  starvation. I would turn off the TV and find myself watering my grass, with a big glass of ice water in my hand. They were stories and images completely disconnected from my everyday life here in Montreal.

Until Assembly 2010, overseas missions work just didn't connect with  my experience or my calling. I was called to preach the good news to those of my own cultural heritage and this was already a stretch for me.

I didn't need to look far to find a lost people needing salvation; I just had to step out my front door here in Quebec. The Quebecois' response to the gospel is comparable to that of people in the Muslim world.

With this perspective, I have to confess that when the Marineaus told me of their desire to move to Niger as International Workers, my initial reaction was one of grief. How could we afford to lose trained workers in the spiritual climate of Quebec? However, I respected that their call was from the Lord, even if it was with a heavy heart that I watched them leave.

During the Assembly Road Trip

General Assembly in Turkey was a great time of listening to messages, reports, testimonies and moving stories from our workers around the globe. The passion and conviction they exuded were contagious, and it was wonderful to hear of God's work elsewhere in the world. I could even identify with some of their experiences in places that were spiritually dry like Quebec.

After Assembly, we left for a road trip to Niger. It was there that the reality of missions hit home! Finally, I really tasted and felt what it was like to live as an International Worker, exposed to heat and desert-like conditions, in the midst of chronic poverty and sickness, seeing those around me held captive in spiritual darkness.

This was no virtual world on TV or far-off stories on a Sunday morning. This suffering was right here in front of me. Having the privilege of clean water, and using it to water my grass? This was a crime against humanity—at least against the precious people I met in Niger.

I asked many of our workers in Niger what kept them there. Their answer was simple and to the point. "These people are spiritually lost. We don't always like living in Niger, but we love the Nigeriens!?

I could see the nationals loved them too. I was privileged to observe a number of sincere friendships between our workers and those around them, despite differences in language,  culture and social status. They work to do good because they sincerely love and are loved in return.

We can count on our fingers the number of Nigeriens who have come to the Lord after many years. It would be easy to lose hope in the face of the humanly impossible task of leading a Toureg person to the Lord. But our workers are consecrated, self-sacrificing, patient, faithful and persevering in the face of trials, giving their lives in love.

Moving Beyond Antalya

When I returned from Niger, a verse struck me in a way that it had never done before, ". . . and the poor have the Gospel preached to them . . . " (Matthew 11:5 NASB). This was how Jesus answered John the Baptist's question of whether he was the Messiah or not.

The poor now have a face and a name to me. Halima, the Marineau's Nigerien friend who is now corresponding with my wife Lise, has become an honorary member of our church in Dollard and is on our list of families in need. Preach the good news to the poor is how Jesus would still want his ministry, through the Église ACM de Dollard, described today.

To follow the Lord is to serve and to serve is to love, dying to oneself and giving one's life for others. It is true in Niger; it is true in my own life. International Workers for me are now those who love the world so much they give their own lives so those they love will believe in Christ and will not perish but have everlasting life.

I no longer think in terms of physical boundaries and geographical and cultural limits. It is no longer Quebec first, and the world after, if and when we can. Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the ends of the world are no longer a chronological or geographical agenda.

What Christ is trying to tell me is that there are no longer any limits, no longer any borders, no barriers to the gospel . . . that the church has no boundary to stop its growth, no limitations to its calling.