Teach All Nations — A Case Study
I guess we’ve all received them in the mail at one time or another — return address labels sent out by not-for-profit organizations as gifts to acknowledge your support of their work. I always appreciate getting them, even when they come from groups that I’m not associated with — and which do not really know me. Sometimes it is all too obvious that my name and address have been salvaged from some obscure database rather than from their file of active partners — the name is misspelled or the first and last names are reversed or they have simply taken the last name and added “Family” to create a generic name. Once I received one of those one-size-fits-all sort of return label packages where someone had taken the name of our ministry and run it through their computer to create our “personalized” gift. The resulting mailing labels read, “The Mission Family.” At first I laughed at how silly it was that in their attempt to produce a personalized product they had not even noticed that “Teach All Nations Mission” is an organization, not a family name. Then it struck me that these labels were actually quite appropriate for our family. Missions is who we are. We sleep, eat, and drink missions!
Those of you who know us may remember Peggy’s stories of how I first got her — kicking and screaming — on the mission field.
In fact, my zeal for mission work almost separated us before we were married. The major hurdle she had to cross before saying “I do” was being willing to live in a mud hut in some forgotten corner of the world if that was where my mission work might
eventually lead us. Her wedding vow to go wherever I went was the answer from her heart even though it took a lot of
prayer and some tightly clinched teeth to get her on the plane to India the first time. Now — after all the blood, sweat,
tears, food poisoning, dysentery, cock roaches, scorpions, and even cobras — she’s a first-class missionary, eager to go anywhere for God.
I will always remember that first missions trip when she accompanied me to India and Sri Lanka. She thought that her job
was to sit in the audience and prayerfully intercede while I did all the ministry. When the pastor of the largest
Protestant church in Sri Lanka asked her to minister in the evening service, her whole world turned around. From that
moment on, she has been a revival looking for a place to happen. The other thing I remember about that trip is
how hard it was to raise the money to go. When we only had half the budget and it was just a few weeks before the
departure date, I remember joking that we had a choice: one of us could go or both of us could go and not come back.
But, God mercifully provided so both of us could go — and come home, too!
A few years later, the Lord woke me in the middle of the night and told me that I needed to start taking my boys with us on the mission trips. At first, I wanted to resist, remembering how difficult it had been to buy one ticket for me, then how much more difficult it had been to believe for enough money to buy two tickets when Peggy started traveling with me. Now, I wasn’t sure
that I wanted to take the challenge of believing for five tickets! But the Lord reminded me that it was no problem for Him — and each time He has always provided.
Though we make our home on a mountainside overlooking Colorado Springs, we say that we feel that we belong just as much on the bustling streets of Calcutta. We have lost count of the number of times we have been in India and other countries around the world to hold training conferences for the national pastors. Both of us have had to have extra pages added to our passports to accommodate the visas and border-crossing stamps from such exotic places as the Maldive Islands, Kenya, Guatemala, Finland, Philippines, Japan, Bangladesh, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Zimbabwe, Myanmar, and Korea. I often chuckle about a time when I was re-entering the USA and the passport control officer commented, “It looks like you are trying to visit every country in the world.” My reply was, “Yes, that’s the plan.” In fact, our ministry’s name bears out that very idea: Teach All Nations. We came up with that name during a time of serious soul searching several years ago. At that time, we had already been tremendously active in trotting around the globe on short-term mission trips and were questioning the Lord about becoming career missionaries in a foreign land. As we continued to seek the Lord’s guidance about making the move, we felt directed to the Great Commission passage in the twenty-eighth chapter of Matthew where Jesus sent the disciples as missionaries to “teach all nations.” It wasn’t until I had read the passage several times that I was able to “stop looking at the trees and see the forest.” Just as Jesus told His disciples to go to all the world rather to just one place, His commission for us was also to have a global venue.
Our calling is to teach the pastors who can then impact their local communities. It’s always funny when we return home because people want to know how many people we won to the Lord on the trip. Our simple answer is that we were speaking in pastors’ conferences, and the pastors were already saved. Of course, there is always one-on-one evangelism with the locals we meet as we travel. One really interesting story comes from a pastors’ conference in the mountains of Nepal where we rented an entire hotel to accommodate the pastors who had come in for the meetings. With no other guests in the building, I told the staff to sit in on the meetings since they had nothing else to do while all the pastors were in the classes. At the end of the sessions, I called the hotel staff together for a special session and asked them what they thought of what they had heard. The
entire staff responded that they would like to convert from Hinduism to Christianity! In addition, almost the entire staff at the hotel they frequent in Kathmandu, Nepal, have also become believers though the distribution of Bibles and gospel tracts on our many visits.
Nepal has been a focus of our ministry since the nation was granted religious freedom in 1990. Prior to that time, the country
was under the rule of a strict Hindu monarchy and it was illegal to even own a Bible. In 1986 I started praying daily for things to change in the Himalayan kingdom. I was probably as excited as a Nepali when the new constitution opened the doors for Christianity. When we began our annual missions to the Hindu stronghold, we found an emerging church desperate for solid Bible teaching. In fact, on my first trip into the country, I was asked to explain what the word “hallelujah” means. Today Nepal is considered the fastest growing center of Christianity in the world.
In order to emphasize my points when I teach the pastors, I love to dramatize my messages. I really surprised the pastors
and cell group leaders who had gathered for the Christian leadership conference in Sri Lanka when I opened the session by throwing out packets of candy. You should have seen the frenzy of hands eagerly grabbing the sweets as they flew through the air over their heads. The room was a virtual landscape of commotion and delight as they tore open the plastic wrappers and began to indulge in the unexpected treats. Once they regained their composure and the room settled down, I went to work teaching them about the gifts of the Spirit. After the lesson, I asked for all those who were sick or in pain to form a line across
the front of the auditorium. About half the group came forward, expecting me and my team to minister to them. Then came another surprise — even bigger than the candy. I called the rest of the delegates to form another line facing those who wanted prayer. I told them that the Bible said nothing about having to be a white American who speaks English to be able to operate in the power of God; these promises are to all who will receive them. I then reminded them of the candy, telling them that it was more than just an unexpected blessing — it was an object lesson. Just as they didn’t have to pay for the candy, they would not have to earn the gifts of God. I encouraged them that they could receive the power of God in the same way that they got their candy — by reaching out and grabbing it! I asked how many still had their candy — and, of course, no one did. Then I encouraged them to immediately put the gifts of God into operation just like they eagerly put their treats to use. As the nationals began to pray for their fellow delegates, every one in the room received a miracle: the sick were instantly healed and the ministers began to operate in a new dimension of anointing. When I asked them how many of them had ever prayed for the sick, everyone responded that they had not! But from that day forward, they were launched into a new dimension of ministry.
Peggy has a real burden to raise up women into active roles in the ministry. She presents seminars entitled, “Women for
the Harvest,” in which she details what the Bible says about women and encourages women by showing them what history records about great women of faith throughout the ages. This is an especially novel teaching in the third world and has certainly “raised a lot of dust” in some places. When asked to deliver this message at a conference in Rwanda where pastors from at least six African nations had gathered, a number of the pastors strongly objected. She replied by telling the story of the
Nigerian pastor who had vehemently refused her message but later came back to her to confess that God had made him change his mind. When he realized that his church was not growing, he questioned God about the problem, and the Lord responded, “I made women to give birth, but you are keeping them barren!” The Rwandan pastors listened and responded
and have now allowed women into their Bible training programs!
All three of our sons have accompanied us to the mission field. In fact, we learned one mission strategy from one of our sons when he was only about ten years old. As we were traveling from one city to another, Christopher became disturbed about the many villages we were passing through without sharing the gospel with the people. When the van slowed down in each village, he opened the window of the van and started handing out scripture booklets.
Our ministry is not limited solely to teaching conferences. For example, we partnered with humanitarian organizations to bring much-needed food and supplies as well as biblical teaching to the devastated coastal villages of India and Sri Lanka after they
were struck by a massive tsunami in December of 2004. We have also helped raise funding for building a Bible college in Nepal and a Christian school in Zimbabwe and have established a scholarship fund to help promising students from developing
nations get a Christian education. We also provide an opportunity for those who want an introduction to missionary
work to go with us to assist in the ministry and experience living and working in a foreign setting. These extensive
travels and various projects are all funded by faith in God and the generosity of friends who support the vision. I
often joke that in addition to Jehovah-Jirah (biblical name of God which means the God who supplies), I am also convinced that God has another name, Jehovah-Nick (the God who comes through just in the nick of time).
Peggy says that one of the real highlights of her missionary ventures was getting to meet Mother Teresa in the convent in Calcutta. However, she is always quick to add that God has also given us the opportunity to join hands with scores of other ministers around the world whose names are unknown in this world but whose ministries are impacting their
nations for the kingdom of God. Concerning the revival that is occurring in many parts of our world today, someone once
very accurately observed that it is a mile wide but only an inch deep — the result of energetic evangelism by both missionaries and local Christians who are actively following the Great Commission. However, there is a marked shortage of teachers who are taking the next step in fulfilling our Lord’s directive to teach them how to observe all that He has commanded. TAN’s commitment is to deepen that revival by helping to establish a solid foundation in the pastors and leaders so that they can help enrich the people. Often we pay for the travel and lodging of hand-picked national leaders because we want to invest into their lives but know that these third world saints could never afford to come at their own expense. TAN also provides the meals for
all the guests during the conferences and tries to furnish solid Christian literature in their local language or in English for those who understand the language.
I began my international teaching ministry in the 1970s while still a college student through summer mission trips to India, Sri Lanka, and Japan. Peggy has brought a new emphasis to TAN’s ministry — an outreach to the women. In third world nations, the women are second class citizens; this really forces them into a very oppressed status. But to Jesus, every person is in first place; therefore, one unique area of TAN’s work has been to hold an annual women’s conference in which the Christian women are taught how to advance in the love and benefits of Christ. This special emphasis on a forgotten and neglected element of society has produced tremendous fruit in the individual lives of the women and in the strengthening of the church.
The zealousness that burns in our hearts for our mission can be reflected in the record of the intensity when we are on the mission field. On one particular trip — counting the day we landed and the day we flew out — we were actually on the ground twenty days; yet I personally taught thirty-one sessions. My traveling companion ministered in one session each day to give me a couple hours’ break before the evening rallies. Including his ministry, we had a total of forty-two preaching and
teaching sessions. Yes, it was a tiring schedule; but the hunger for the Word of God which these eager people demonstrated as they sat for hours on end made fatigue and exhaustion pale in comparison. In addition to our itinerary, Peggy held an additional eighteen women’s meetings — bringing the total number for our team to sixty meetings. This was an exhausting schedule when you remember that we traveled to nine different cities in three countries during these twenty days!
The eagerness of the people to learn can be indicated by the sacrifice they will pay to attend the training conferences.
Because there is no modern highway system in most of the counties where we minister, many times the delegates have to travel for days to get to the meetings. In Nepal, for example, individuals have been known to travel as much as eight days — six days of walking to get to the highway where they could catch a bus for the thirty-or-more-hour bus ride to Kathmandu. It is unbelievably humbling to minister to people who have made that much of a sacrifice to receive the Word of God! Once, a delegate who was not able to come to one of the national leadership conferences walked for three days to a village where he could get a phone to call and say that he was not able to attend; he spent almost a week of his life (three days coming and another three days going home) just to make a phone call and say that he wanted to come but would not be able to! This is real sign of the hunger that there is for the Word!
In addition to what we are able to do in person, we have been able to leave a lasting impact on the nations by publishing literature in English and in the local languages. We also teach God’s Word in cyberspace through the simple and inexpensive — yet fast and efficient — approach of a monthly email meditation. If you would like to receive these teachings and inspirational messages, you may sign up at our website, www.teachallnationsmission.com.
I hope that this introductory testimony has helped you get to know me and my heart enough to set the stage for the rest of this book. My prayer is that in the following articles which will appear as the monthly meditation over the next few months you
will find the heart of God — or rather that the heart of God will find a place inside you — concerning how you can become part of the end-time global harvest.