Reading: Video Transcript - The Opportunity

Hi. My name is John DeVries, and I've been a pastor in the United States. But I've also been involved in international missions most of my life. And I want to share a few thoughts with you about missional vision. Missional vision - just what is that?

Well, here's a simple definition. Missional vision is seeing God open opportunities to sow, to go, and to grow. Missional vision is seeing God open opportunities to sow, to go, and to grow.

In this particular section, I want to talk for a few moments about seeing the opportunities that God gives to you to be a spiritual farmer. And in order to do that, I have to talk a little bit about my own history. It was back in 1967, the time in the United States when there was the hippie revolution. The 60s in the United States were very, very turbulent times. And I was pastoring a substantial church, a rather large church with about 700 in attendance. I so wanted to build that church. I just wanted to do that, and finally, it just didn't work.

The Holy Spirit led me to see that I could not build an ear of corn. And since I couldn't build an ear of corn, I couldn't build a church. A church is a living organism. You can't build them. You can only grow them. And I wrestled with the Lord about that. I said, "How do I grow this church?"

And the answer came back. "How do you grow anything? You plant the seed."

I said, "Well, what's the seed?"

He said, "It's my Word."

"Oh. Your Word. The Bible."

"Yeah. That's right. It's the bible."

"What do you mean by planting it?"

"Teach it. Teach it in summary. A seed is a little part of it. Teach it to those who’ve never heard it or understand it. And I will do the rest. I'll germinate it."

"Oh. Well, Lord, you know the kind of people I have here. They probably aren't going to do it. You could create the world in six days, but I don't know that you could make these people witness."

And the Lord said, "There's a way."

So what I did was write a Bible correspondence course for people who weren't Christians, who had never known about the bible. And then, I made little postcards. On the postcard, it said, "We live in tense and troubled times, and the Bible brings a message of hope and comfort. Why don't you study the bible in your own home?" And I gave these little postcards with our church address on it to the people in the congregation and said, "Now, you can hand them out. You hand them out wherever go. If you don't want to talk to anybody, just leave them under a pile of clothes maybe in a department store and run like crazy so you don't have to talk to anybody. And they'll send it in in a couple of years when they discover it." That’s the typical American way, I guess, of doing something.

Well, we didn't have to wait two years. You know that in just six months, we had 500 people write to our church and ask to study the bible. And 40 years later, that's grown to over 150,000 people that have written and asked to study the bible.

That went international, and we gave it the name Project Philip. It spread very rapidly throughout the United States and Canada. But in the United States, there were two events in the 70s - a thing called Key 73 when denominations came together in a cooperative evangelism program. Then there was the Bicentennial of the United States. And that along with some other things just propelled this project out. And by 1978, we had sold a million courses to churches throughout the United States, and we had correspondence programs cooperatively that churches were working in 133 cities.

But that's just a very small part of this story, because Project Philip, the concept of seeing the opportunity to sow the seed of God's Word and doing it in a very simple culturally sensitive way spread rapidly to 50 other countries. We brought it into Latin America, Africa. We brought into Asia and Africa. A denomination that had been stagnant started to offer the bible studies and sent out 40,000 courses in just one year.

Well, in the course of that time, I also went to India. 1971 was my first trip to India. I prayed the prayer of Jonah. You know what the prayer of Jonah is. The prayer of Jonah is, "God, I'll go anywhere, but I'm not going to Nineveh."

I said, "God, I'll go anywhere again, but I'm never coming back to India. This is too much for me." And I think the angels in heaven laughed a little and said, "God, there's another recruit for India down there." So I was back the second year and things really, really started to move in India. And it has grown over the years. We call Project Philip for India, Mission India. And Mission India has grown now to the point where we have 500 Indian Christians employed. And these Indian Christians, each year, train about 1,000 to 1,200 Indian National Missions in churches in how to sow, to go, and to grow.

As a direct result of implementing that training during the first year, we are seeing two million new disciples, two million people coming to know the Lord, being incorporated either into an existing church or into a new church. And this has just grown, and grown, and grown.

Now, what makes that? That's what I want to talk about. What makes it take hold in India? What made it take hold during the 70s in the United States? What are these opportunities? And I want you to look with me at Acts 8:1-4. Let me read that passage for you.

"On that day, a great persecution broke out against the church at Jerusalem." Now, listen to this. Listen. "All except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria." All except the apostles. "Godly men buried Stephen and mourned deeply for him, but Saul began to destroy the church, going from house to house. He dragged off men and women and put them in prison. And those who had been scattered preached the Word wherever they went."

It's strange, isn't it? If you go back in Acts to the fourth chapter and the fourth verse, you'll find that Dr. Luke very carefully records the numbers of the growth of the church, that New Testament church that came out of Pentecost. And by chapter 4:4, he records that there were 5,000 men. Now that's a unique phrase - 5,000 men. Doesn't he count women?

You could really translate that by saying there were 5,000 families. And these families were extended families like so many others around the world know. They were composed of cousins, and they were composed of servants. Let's just say that 5,000 families-- the church was 5,000 families, and they each had at least 10 people in them. The church was 50,000 people. Now, read this again - 50,000 people. Even today, 50,000 people being persecuted and driven out of their house makes international news. I think of what happened in Orissa some few years back, Orissa state in India, of thousands, tens of thousands of people in 16 districts being pushed out. But this was much more major than this.

And that New Testament church was so quiet, so beautiful. You read in chapter two, the joy and how they were growing daily. What in the world was God doing allowing that persecution to come? Do you know what the answer is? Because he loved you, and he loves me.

You say, "Well, what do we have to do with that?" Listen, if the church had just simply sat there in Jerusalem, the Gospel would not have gone out. And so it happened that Satan allowed a persecution-- or Satan encouraged a persecution of the church. And you read Paul was one of the big guys. He was there giving approval to the death of Stephen, and he was going from house to house, dragging off men and women. And God allowed it. Why?

Because he knew that if that church was scattered abroad, you and I would have the opportunity to hear. This was the beginning of world missions people. This was the beginning when the Gospel started to spread. Dr. Luke says that wherever the people went, they preached the Word. They weren't all shook up about losing their house and their business and everything else. They had missional vision. They saw that this difficulty was God's opportunity to preach the Gospel.

And where did the Jews go first of all? They went to a place they never would go. As a matter of fact, they wouldn't even walk through Samaria. It was shorter to go that way, but they always went around. They would not touch Samaria any more than some of our people won't go into an inner city here in America, or somebody in India go across Caste. But because of persecution, they were driven out, and they went into Samaria first of all. And do you know what happened? There was great joy in the city. And an average, ordinary, layperson, Philip, was the key person, wasn’t one of the apostles. All the apostles who had been trained by Jesus stayed back in Jerusalem. It was this guy Philip, just a regular person like you and like me. No special training. But he was used by God to start a city-wide turning to Christ in a city in Samaria. There was a great joy.

And then you know what God did? He sent an angel and he pulled Philip out. Now, if God would've done that to me, I'd been hollering about it and objecting to it. "God, all these people are coming? Why must I go out to the desert?" But there was a very important person in the desert. And Philip was willing to be led by that angel out to that desert, deserted road where there was a high official from Ethiopia coming by, reading the scripture and not understanding it.

So Philip, listening to the guidance of the angel and the Spirit, went alongside and listened to the Ethiopian eunuch. And then, he asked a question. He said to the eunuch, "Do you understand what you're reading?"

And the eunuch replied, "How can I understand this? I don't have anybody to explain it to me."

What happened? Philip was invited to come into the chariot. And there, beginning with where the Ethiopian was reading, he explained the seed of eternal life, what was available of the bible at that time to the eunuch. And the eunuch was baptized. But that's not the end of the story. There's just one simple, little verse, and Dr. Luke doesn't comment about it. But Philip, after the eunuch was baptized, was found in Azotus. Azotus is one of the five capital cities of the Philistines, and it's the only city that the Jews never conquered. Israel never conquered it, and that's where Philip wound up, spending much of his continued ministry.

So you see, the persecution that came was that which opened the door - and when trouble is coming like it's coming here in the United States today. We're at a low point, one of the lowest points in the nation's history. When you look at TV, compare the old Andy Griffith shows to Two and a Half Men, and you'll be totally overwhelmed at the deterioration of this nation.

In 1962, prayer and Bible reading in schools was outlawed. And when you look at what's happening, then you can see a dramatic rise in crime. Right now, as I'm speaking, it's safer to be in Afghanistan than it is to be in Chicago, Illinois, where the murder rate is soaring.

Now, you can look at all of this and say, "It's terrible."

I look at all of it and say, "Hey, folks. It's a lot like the 60s when we started Project Philip." How did we get 500 responding in six months? Because people are afraid. They're shaken up. That same thing is happening in India today. Why do we get two million people coming to know the Lord? It's because people, through TV, through cell phones, through all of the modern means of communication, I'm beginning to realize how others are taking advantage of them. And the whole thing is opening up.

And what I want to leave with you as we go into this, is do we see our trouble as God's gift of opening fields through persecution, through difficulty, through the trouble? Do you have a missional vision? Do you see when God is leading? Let's pray.

Lord, Jesus, we ask for that kind of vision, that you would not let us be overwhelmed with pessimism about our nation, that you would fill us with excitement and joy at the fact that you have given us the opportunity. That in the disturbed hearts of our neighbors, there's an opening to plant the seed, the transforming seed of eternal life. In your name, we pray. Amen.