Wilderness Pioneering

Still room for one, THEN it's us 4 and no more...

One of the great things about taking over the pastorate of a church is, that there are usually at least some people, and often there's a building and even some sort of equipment. You jump right in there and preach that very same Sunday night! And once you convince the faithful ones that you personally didn't chase off the previous pastor  (St. Perfectus the Kind), it's Kingdom business as usual!

Now, if rather than taking over a work, you are pioneering, then you can often count on nearby (or relatively nearby) Fellowship churches to roll up their sleeves and till the soil with you. Garage-band disciples with their own bootleg CDs will rap, rasp, or rock-out until the first row (meaning you, your wife and your 4 kids) is deaf and covered with saliva.

And since breaking up that fallow ground can work up quite an appetite, the flockless pastor will at least count on one last supper with the impact team at Lydia Purpleseller's house (or Wendy's, as we call her). So there's NO dying of loneliness.

So now we come to Wilderness Pioneering. What do you do if there aren't any churches nearby to help? WHAT IF you are the only two people from our Fellowship in the whole country?!

Quick, put your head between your knees and breathe into a paper bag. It'll be OK. For every flag you see flying at conference, someone, at one time, was the first couple in that country. They did it, so it can be done.

Warning: "Danger, danger, danger Will Robinson..." - if you are one of those people who secretly dream of ditching your little SWAT-team church to invisibly attach yourself to a bigger, funner church, then Wilderness Pioneering is not for you. There's no one to hide behind when it's just you and your spouse.

So what DO you do? There are basically three stages at this point -

The Landing Stage: Get there, find a place to stay (sounds easy, doesn't it), learn to eat local food (optional, but highly recommended).

The Establishment Clause: Find a way to stay there. There is a definite goal of NOT getting deported (I cringe when I hear people back home yelling "send them there immigrants back where they came from!". I've spent over 15 years of my life being a "them there immigrant" in some country or other...).

Now, if there are wonderful Fellowship people nearby (or grumpy ones even), doesn't matter if they're across the border in another nation, CALL THEM! Hit that giant red button and say "HELP!"

But if you're someplace with severe political borders (or an ocean on all sides), then there's only one viable stratagem - beat feet.

The Beat Feet Stage consists of walking around a country where you know nobody, and nobody knows you, and talking to total strangers (in English... sigh.). Walk, walk, walk, and talk, talk, and talk. Sure, flyers help (so would handing out cookies, or money), but you gotta walk and talk (anyone remember that Keith Green & Barry McGuire song?). There are NO shortcuts (unless you own a blimp).

So yet again, we ask for your prayers: For vision, wisdom, grace, favor, and for our ankles and knees...

Note: Please comment.

Every comment is read over and over and over. It's pathetic, really, but as one old Chinese preacher said, referring to Isaiah 50, "Make us those who can sustain the weary with a word..."