The bus driver cursed the dead grandmother for denting his bus. 19 years later...

In 2010, missionary Curtis Sergeant was visiting a friend in an East Asian country.

A Christian woman came to their door, very excited. “I’ve got to tell you about this place I visited. It was amazing! Every village has churches. The worship is phenomenal. They’re sending out missionaries! The government formerly persecuted the Christians, and now they are encouraging churches because the crime rate is down.”

His friend asked, “Where is this place?” Sergeant smiled when she named the same province in which God had used him so many years back.......

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It was 1991. As the overcrowded and under–maintained bus slowed to pick up a passenger on the rural Asian road, an older woman stepped out of the bushes. The bus struck her and knocked her 20 feet, killing her instantly. A small boy and girl, probably her grandchildren, fell on her body weeping. Curtis Sergeant, a strategy coordinator for the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, witnessed this from the back of the bus. He was with a national friend and they were about five hours into their ten-hour journey across the province that was to be his new mission field.

Sergeant was pained, but having spent years in less developed countries, had seen such accidents before. But what happened in the next few minutes shook him and caused him to grieve in his heart.

It wasn’t even that the bus driver spat on the body and cursed the grandmother for denting his bus. Sergeant, too far back to be able to exit to off er assistance, said to his companion, “You have to tell the bus driver to stop.” “Why?” the friend puzzled. Sergent replied “Because those children there are all alone, and someone needs to do something to help them.” Then his companion spoke the truth about the people in this mission field that caused even this veteran missionary to question God’s wisdom in sending him there. “Everyone on this bus has enough troubles of their own.” So the bus rumbled down the road.

Th is incident took place in 1991. For the next five years, Sergeant worked strategically in this province, and saw his efforts wonderfully blessed by God as a great church planting movement began in this area. Sergent remained until 1996.

The churches tended to be small. Seldom did a house church grow much larger than 30 members before it spun off a sister church. This splitting accomplished two beneficial results: it avoided attracting government attention, and it caused faster growth. A good summary of the structure of these house churches is to look at the acronym Sergeant developed, POUCH churches:

"They can model POUCH Groups." Believers (sometimes joined by seekers) can take part in these groups at home, and then become comfortable with the concept and the accountability involved as they help in church-planting. Ideally, each believer is involved in two groups: the one in which he or she is a participant, and a new one that he or she is starting. In a church-planting movement, much the same thing happens.

Nineteen years later, the same province in which God had  used him so many years back—the province that less than one generation before had been, a place of “heartless, evil people” with no hope in their hearts—was now transformed to a place where many people follow Christ.

(extracted from William Smith, Can Short-Term Teams Foster Church-Planting Movements? Mission Frontiers, January-February 2012, U.S. Center for World Missions)

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Katya the Goth meets Jesus the Savior

"When Katya, a 15-year girl from Belarus, first showed up at youth camp two summers ago, she wore only black clothing and makeup; she identified herself with the Goth subculture. Her good friend had invited her and Katya felt accepted at New Hope Youth Camp; following camp she agreed to go to church with her friend from time to time.

"The next summer when Katya returned to camp she had embraced the Emo subculture; her favorite songs focused on death and one of her favorite pastimes was wandering around in the local cemetery at night. Again Katya had a good time at camp, as the New Hope team befriended her.

"Fast forward to the campfire on the final night of camp five months ago. "All that day," New Hope worker Uriy remembers, "we focused on the topic of having a pure heart. When the campfire was set all the kids started to come closer to it. One guy shared his testimony (he has HIV), and then we all sang worship songs together. And then I started to teach, using the parable of the prodigal son as an illustration. The kids listened attentively and quietly as the fire crackled.

"I compared the prodigal son's need for love and forgiveness to our need for love and forgiveness from the Father and explained that we can receive forgiveness only through faith in Jesus Christ and real repentance before Him. At the end I asked, 'Who of you, being aware of his or her guilt before God, wants to pray such a prayer?' It was very quiet as several came forward. One was a girl with tears in her eyes-Katya!"

"That night Katya asked God to take control of her life-and nothing has been the same since! Today Katya comes to teen club every week. Please join us in praying that the truth planted in Katya's heart-and hundreds more like her this past summer-will take root and blossom in them!

(from New Hope International newsletter, January 2012)

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The Commandant demanded, "What are you smiling about !?"

I was brought before the deputy camp commandant, a red-faced woman with heavy forearms and large, splendid teeth. "You've been preaching about God to the prisoners. It must stop!" she warned. I said that nothing could stop it. Furious, she raised her fist to strike me. Then stopped, and stared.

"What are you smiling about?" she demanded, her face blotchy with rage.

I said, "If I am smiling, it is because of what I see in your eyes." "And what's that?" "Myself. Anyone who comes close to another person can see themselves in her. I was impulsive, too. I used to rage and strike out, until I learned what it really means to love. That is to be one who can sacrifice self for truth. Since then, my hands do not clench into fists."

Her hand dropped.

"If you look into my eyes, you'll see yourself as God could make you!" She seemed to tum to stone. She said quietly, "Go away."

I have wondered often if Pilate did not look into Jesus' eyes and see the ruler he might have been in the "king of the Jews" whom his own wife represented to him as innocent and just.

Sabina Wurmbrand had a deep, abiding faith. It enabled her to persevere through many difficult years, including working with her pastor husband under the communists, caring for her son and the church while her husband was imprisoned for 14 years and, finally, enduring her own imprisonment.

The Pastor's Wife is Sabina's account of her life from the time the Soviet tanks rolled into Romania until her family escaped Romania for the West. The book portrays a woman who was incredibly strong and utterly dependent on God.

The Sabina documentary, produced more than 10 years after Sabina's death by her son, Michael Wurmbrand, tells the story of her earlier years. It shows how a beautiful young woman became the wife of a fiery war-time pastor. Sabina paints a picture of a woman who deeply loved her family, the underground church and, above all, Jesus Christ.

(from Voice of the Martyrs newsletter, January 2012)

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I Am Second

The I Am Second ministry has gone world-wide as both an outreach and a training resource. It was originally begun as an evangelistic effort in the Dallas/Ft. Worth Texas area in 2008.

"Being able to turn to Jesus
after the shark attack kept me alive."

The visible face of the ministry is a website http://www.iamsecond.com/, which has striking and unusual filmed testimonies by people, some well–known, others more like your next-door neighbor. Bethany Hamilton, subject of the film Soul Surfer, shares her faith. St. Louis Rams quarterback Sam Bradford is on it, as is Texas Ranger Josh Hamilton talking about his recovery from addiction. Others discuss how God has rescued them from a myriad of conditions, from abuse to war. The site offers opportunities for seekers or strugglers to call, chat or email for help. People are attracted by the testimonies, and invited to consider giving their lives to the Lord. It is a great tool to use to lead seekers to Christ in urban areas that have Internet connections.

(extracted from William Smith, Can Short-Term Teams Foster Church-Planting Movements? Mission Frontiers, January-February 2012, U.S. Center for World Missions)

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Jesus loved me so much - that he sent me to prison

"A house church leader in China who has been arrested seven times and spent years in jails, prisons and labor camps In his particular "house group," which is composed of over 6 million believers, they use New Testament scriptures to teach that persecution can be a normal part of the Christian experience. Today he teaches in caves, factories, fields and apartments, mostly leading seven-week courses broken up one week at a time to avoid detection. House churches, which do not permit censorship of their sermons, are growing three times faster than the state TSPM church.

"I asked this house church leader how his imprisonments have affected his teaching sessions, and, as he ate a piece of melon with his chopsticks, he replied, "Jesus loved me so much that he sent me to prison."

(from Voice of the Martyrs newsletter, January 2012)

In August of 2011 another leader, Shi Enhao, deputy leader of the Chinese House Church Alliance (CHCA), was sentenced to two years of “re-education through labor” – a sentence that requires no trial or conviction, according to the China Aid Association (CAA).

Shi was officially charged with holding “illegal meetings and illegal organizing of venues for religious meetings,” due to his leadership of a house church movement of several thousand people meeting in several venues around Beijing,

(from House Church Alliance Leader in China Sentenced to Labor Camp, Compass Direct News, July 29, 2011)

In the West the church often struggles with shrinking membership rolls; not so in China. The house church movement in China is experiencing exponential growth. According to the communist government, Christianity would endanger national security by destroying the “present balance between religions” in China, since house churches resist government control and persist in “illegal Christian evangelism.”

(from China House Church Alliance Leader Sentenced to Labor Camp, Open Doors, August 4, 2011)

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