Getting out of the way

I received an email from a missions organization in the United States that takes pastors in Africa and trains them stateside to be leaders, and then sends them back home.

One sentence in the email reads thus: "The leaders have little training, yet their church movement has spread the gospel to millions."

This is a very interesting statement. Quite apart from any help from America hitherto, these Christians in Ghana have seen the faith spread like wildfire. It reminds me of an occurrence in the earliest days of the Church (Acts 11:19-26).

Severe persecution arose in Jerusalem that dispersed the believers hither and yon. Those who were scattered went everywhere preaching the gospel (lay people, not church officers). Some of this Diaspora later turned up in Antioch, via Cyprus and Cyrene. Though up to this point the scattered Jewish believers had shared the faith only with other Jews, these folks from the island and from present day Libya, without any instruction or authorization, were preaching to non-Jews.

Luke's historical account puts it that "the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number who believed turned to the Lord" (v.21). All of this was going on without the knowledge of the Apostles back in Jerusalem, who finally got wind of it and sent Barnabas to check it out. Perhaps they were dubious, I don't know. But to his credit, when he got to Antioch and saw what was going on, and when it was evident that this highly irregular development was of God, Barnabas got out of the way of the Holy Spirit, and encouraged the believers to keep doing what they were doing.

My own local church has a team out in India right now. And they are also reporting what they are calling "exponential" spread of the gospel. This is how they found things when they arrived. Under the circumstances, since the gospel seems to be spreading faster in Africa and India then in America, I like to think that we Americans would be trying to learn and observe as much from them as we are trying to teach. I like to think our missionaries, when they hear the sound of the free-blowing Spirit in the treetops (John 3), are being as wise as Barnabas:

"When he came and saw the grace of God, he was glad and he exhorted them all to remain faithful to the Lord" (Acts 11:23).

He didn't have to do much more than that.

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