Thank you once again so much for all of your prayers! Below are the links to our latest prayer update.

Spring 2012 Update

Thank you once again so much for all of your prayers! Below are the links to our latest prayer update.

Winter 2012 Update

Announcing the birth of our dude-man #2!
Jathan Lee Black was born today, January 26, 2012 at 4:14pm.
He measured 8 lbs. 6.9 oz. and 21.25 inches in length.

Laura is doing pretty good and on her way to recovery.

Thank you all so much for your prayers!

In His Grace,
Derek, Laura, Elias, & Jathan

I’m super amped (really, really excited) to launch a new study this Sunday in the Koinonia group! My attention is drawn to a book by John Piper, entitled, Let the Nations Be Glad. Piper’s subtitle is “The Supremacy of God in Missions,” but don’t let the title and subtitle automatically shuffle this book into strictly a missions category. The Biblical truths in this book reveal God’s desire and plan as central to the entire Biblical storyline and as central as the very reason we exist on planet earth. Therefore, the message of Let the Nations Be Glad extols our God’s majesty and His supreme desire and plan to redeem His own from the nations to authentically redeemed worship of His Name. To be missional is the very reason we draw each breath and therefore encapsulates every aspect of our daily lives.

Consider this quote that packs the punch of God’s plan for the ages and our involvement in it:

“The New Testament does not present a come-see religion, but a go-tell religion… (Matt. 18:18-20)… The implications of this are huge for the way we live and the way we think about money and lifestyle. One of the main implications is that we are ‘sojourners and exiles’ (1 Peter 2:11) on the earth. We do not use this world as though it were our primary home. ‘Our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ’ (Phil. 3:20). This leads to a wartime lifestyle. That means we don’t amass a wealth to show the world how rich our God can make us. We work hard and seek a wartime austerity for the cause of spreading the gospel to the ends of the earth. We maximize giving to the war effort, not comforts at home. We raise our children with a view to helping them embrace the suffering that it will cost to finish the mission.” (Let the Nations Be Glad, John Piper, p. 29)

Piper later writes, “Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn’t. When this age is over, and the countless millions of the redeemed fall on their faces before the throne of God, missions will be no more. It is a temporary necessity. But worship abides forever. Worship, therefore, is the fuel and goal of missions. It’s the goal of missions because in missions we simply aim to bring the nations into white-hot enjoyment of God’s glory.” (Let the Nations Be Glad, John Piper, p. 35)

The entire storyline of God’s Revealed Word calls His followers to this God-glorifying among the nations purpose… from Exodus where God rescued His people to display His glory to the nations, to the countless Psalms where God’s glory among the nations is extolled, to Isaiah where God created His people for His glory among the nations, to the Gospels in the New Testament where Jesus submitted to the Father’s will to bring His glory to the nations, to Paul’s epistles where the very plan of redemption serves to give God glory throughout the nations, to John’s Revelation where we see the culmination of God’s redeemed gathered from all nations for His glory.

As we peer into Scripture’s story, we see our great, majestic, Redeemer God full of truth and grace sovereignly reigning over the nations. We see this, our great God unfolding HIs plan for the nations. We see this, our great God redeeming a people from every tribe and tongue to Himself through Jesus. We see this, our great God actively setting things back to His original plan before sin. As we see this is fundamentally God’s activity and plan in His Word, we begin to clearly deduce that our existence is fundamentally connected to it as well.

Do you see it? This is so fundamental to our very existence! Think about it for a moment. Why to you exist on this earth? If it is true that we indeed exist for the sole purpose of worshiping our great God and spreading His fame and plan of redemption, how are living up to it? Are we passionate about or worship of God? Are we passionate about missions. I’m not talking about the missions that subdivides a certain aspect of the church to “missions.” While we as the church are to have a missions program, we more deeply drastically need to see our calling to be missional as fundamental to our very existence! This goes far deeper and carries drastically wider implications than just for full-time ministry workers and missionaries. Whatever our calling in life, we are inseparably called to redeemed worship of our great God and the spreading of this through living missionally in this world.

If you’re like me and tracking with all this up to this point, you’d respond with a resounding, “gulp” or “wow!” This is quite the calling! It is something that continues to deeply uproot previous missiological assumptions and those ever present seasons of apathy in my own life. How are we doing living up to our fundamental purpose on this earth?

How are you engaging the nations as part of this calling?

This is the study that I am extremely amped to launch this Sunday in the Koinonia Sunday school. If you’re interested in getting a copy of Piper’s book for yourself, check it out!

Note, I will probably occasionally blog and/or share related resources about it as we go through the study in the coming weeks. Look for more content on the blog and the church app!

For the Spread of His Fame,
Derek

Well, in the Koinonia young adult group we just wrapped up our 6 month study in 1 Corinthians. Wow, what a great book! If you haven’t lately checked out Paul’s letters to the church at Corinth, maybe you should. We found this first canonical letter to the Corinthians to be extremely relevant for us the church today! In a world racked with moral depravity, God redeemed a people to Himself. Think about the most morally deprave city in our modern world, and equate that to Biblical Corinth. Is it possible for God to redeem a people to Himself out of a place like Amsterdam, Las Vegas, or some city in Thailand where moral depravity is extremely prevalent? Yes, absolutely! Just like God did in Corinth, God is quite capable of redeeming a people to Himself out of deprave contexts. Furthermore, living out the Gospel’s implications as a follower of Jesus amidst an outright morally deprave culture presents itself with some intense challenges. Such was the case for the early Christians in Corinth. Much of Paul’s letter to them in 1 Corinthians revolves around pointing them to their identity in Jesus amidst a sin-enslaved and obsessed world.

1 Corinthians… an awesome letter highly applicable in our modern church context!

Check out the basic chapter content of 1 Corinthians in this summary handout!

Grace,
Derek

So I’m pretty amped to speak at church this weekend with our friends at Dimond in Anchorage. Alaska big city here we come

Topics for the weekend include… the imago Dei (image of God) in relation to culture and a missiological focus, Acts 1:8 Confidence of the church, our ministry vision to the villages, and Acts 18 regarding God’s sovereignty in redeeming a people to himself (the backstory of Paul’s involvement in Corinth).

Whew… should be a busy, but awesome weekend! Appreciate the prayers!

Laura too is awaiting baby day sometime soon We are still debating whether she will join Elias and me on this trip.
Either way, prayers for a smooth delivery would be appreciated. Her due date is January 25.

Grace,
Derek

Thank you once again so much for all of your prayers! Below are the links to our latest prayer update.

Christmas 2011 Update

Thank you once again so much for all of your prayers! Below are the links to our latest prayer update.

Fall 2011 Update

Our trip to Bethel is underway. Actually, by the time this is posted, we will have returned. But for now I type these words on my iPhone while flying in a seat through the sky somewhere over the Alaskan wilderness.

My thoughts are directed toward the book we are going over in the Koinonia Sunday school class that we teach at our church – 1 Corinthians. Paul’s involvement there and God’s powerful work there truly is astounding! It is encouraging to peer into Paul’s struggle with the Corinthian work as we read the backstory of his involvement there. Paul didn’t just go to Corinth with wide and open reception. The Corinthian church plant didn’t just spring up overnight. Rather, the work in Corinth evidently progressed quite slowly, at least initially. As our eyes glance over the Acts 18 text, we begin to see a man (Paul) with building frustration over the relative slowness of the people’s faith and the apparent stubbornness of his own people, the Jews.

Eventually, God does begin saving people out of Corinth. What is really cool is the encouragement God gave Paul amidst the struggle and slowness of the Corinthian project. God sends a vision to Paul encouraging him to persevere. Why we may wonder was he to persevere? Answer: because God had an incredible plan for the Corinthians. Paul hears from God in this vision that there are many of God’s own in Corinth. There were some who had already embraced the Gospel and there were many more that God promised would embrace the Gospel. What an encouragement! He was to persevere! So, why had Paul been led to Corinth? The answer is quite clear from Acts 18 and the history of God’s work of redeeming a people to Himself in Corinth.

What is particularly encouraging from the Corinthian story is the direct correlation of God’s leading and powerful working to ministry today!

How does God lead in new ministry endeavors today? How does God build His church today? How does God redeem a people to Himself today? How does God use our own area of influence to build His Kingdom? I would suggest that He works in much the same way that we see in Corinth. Now that may seem like an obvious deduction, but I believe the obvious nature of this fact is not only tremendously encouraging, but also an extremely important reminder.

Think for a moment about your own involvement with ministry or outreach. Does the lack of tangible results ever get frustrating?

I sometimes ponder over the relative slowness of Alaska village ministry. Sometimes even the seeming slowness of God’s leading us to our full-time involvement in the villages can be frustrating.

So, as our Dash 8-100 Era Alaska plane begins to descend, my mind brings all these thoughts to bear on Bethel and the surrounding Yukon-Kuskokwim region. What is God currently doing here?

———

Well, I now resume my thoughts as our Era flight back to Anchorage cuts through the clouds at 23,000 feet.

Our several day stay in Bethel afforded us the opportunity to learn more of what God is currently doing in Bethel. First, it is exciting to see how God is using the technology medium of radio for ministry in and around Bethel. There are only 3 or 4 FM radio stations in Bethel; one public radio and the other main two being Christian stations. This particular trip for us was centered around exploring one of these Christian stations: KYKD Bethel 100.1FM VFCM (Voice for Christ Ministries). The ministry has a clear passion of providing solid Biblical teaching and music for Bethel and the surrounding region comprised of several other villages and countless summer fish camps. We heard good reports from Bethel locals and other villages about the VFCM radio broadcast. I was also able to learn about the behind-the-scenes processes to the station and even record some weather and station advertising liners. What a privilege to actually begin broadcasting with my voice in this area! I have also agreed to help VFCM maintain and possibly enhance their website, something which I am excited about regarding that potential. It would be great to expand this site, tailoring it for more use for the actual Bethel-listening area (possibly one day even including a web-based stream to more of the YK Delta region and many other villages)! To say the least, the radio ministry seems to be a very exciting opportunity for us to begin as simply one piece in the overall visionary puzzle of fostering indigenous church planting activity.

Secondly, we were privileged to attend a fully Yupi’k service on Sunday night (boy did we ever feel like outsiders). It was great though! Before and after the service we met several local Yupi’k men. One of these local village elders told us an interesting secret, one which was told us in story form. He chronicled the past success of Moravian missionaries to their in-depth time and effort spent in learning their Yupi’k language (something we have previously considered). It was quite interesting how he shared this “secret” with us. He said we should have coffee sometime, then paused, and simply told us this brief story about learning their language. When he walked off, Laura and I looked at each other and realized the point of his story. Thus, we are still seriously looking into learning their language. This morning before we left, I connected with the University of Fairbanks Bethel campus for upcoming culture and language course offerings. Although we can communicate normally in English and there are ministries here who operate in English, there does seem to be something significant about a ministry’s effectiveness through identifying with their indigenous language.

Thirdly, we spent some time with another local area pastor and newly-arrived youth pastor in Bethel. Hearing of their heart (one of them being a part native man himself) for the Bethel community and specifically the local indigenous community is encouraging. It was great to participate in brainstorming ways in which they are seeking to expand their outreach in Bethel. In this regard we are prayerfully seeking ways we can plug into these types of outreach under the tutorship of this part-native leadership.

Fourthly and finally, we are continually learning about a local area Bible seminary. While this ministry has existed for quite some time, they seem to be refining their purpose, focus, and affiliations. The opportunity to learn more of this ministry and even possibly participate in it is quite exciting. It in fact is seeking to do just what our central passion is: training indigenous leadership to reach their own people with the Gospel. Therefore, we are also seeking God’s direction regarding the capacity that we may be able to be involved in this training outreach.

In addition to all of these ministry opportunities, Laura also researched the hospital and their current job options. As it providentially turns out, the HR department basically offered her a job for our current transition date in a few months. They evidently need nurses here and were quite excited to have a willing body already with plans of moving to Bethel with several years of ER experience.

In summary our thoughts are quite positive and encouraged at God’s current work in Bethel. We’re not saying that all is well or that it will be easy, but we clearly see God leading us to our current version of “Corinth” in a Acts 18 kind of way. God clearly continues opening opportunities and leading us toward beginning efforts in Bethel and we excitedly look forward to watching Him redeem a people to Himself!

Wow, that was a long update, actually all typed on my phone in the sky, but I trust you will be encouraged how to better pray for us! Well, we are descending into Anchorage soon, so Lord bless!

Grace,
Derek

Thank you once again so much for all of your prayers! Below are the links to our latest prayer update. You’ll notice that this update only comes in one version, since we have some items we are sharing more in-depth with you.

Summer 2011 Update