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February 12, 2009

Dear Christ Church Family,

I recently returned from a short mission to Kenya with Tony Jones and Gordon Davidson. As many of you know, fifteen years ago during a time of prayer and fasting, God impressed upon my heart the need for Christ Church to develop a mission presence on each continent. (I am not convinced He is calling me to Antarctica …yet.) For six years I didn’t act upon this call except to inform the Church Council and solicit their support. I tend to believe that God was preparing my heart and preparing our church for the challenges of such a task.

Fifteen years ago Christ Church was a much different church. We were only about one hundred people and did not have a building; meeting each Sunday at Silverbrook School. Our energy and efforts were narrowly focused on reaching those around us for Christ and trying to figure out how we could ever afford to build a facility of our own.

Once God opened the door for us to build, we grew steadily as God brought more and more people to know Him through the ministries of the church. By the year 2000, God had assembled a group of people who pressed me (twisted my arm) into going to Russia. I didn’t want to go, but once they got my wife involved I knew I was going whether I wanted to or not. It was on that mission that God grabbed hold of my heart, reminded me of His call for Christ Church to significantly increase our global mission presence, and began helping me to gain a clear focus of our dual calling to continue to build His church here in Northern Virginia and build His kingdom around the world.

Since the year 2000, the leadership of Christ Church has taken that dual calling seriously. We have methodically been expanding our global mission presence by adopting a church in Stavropol, Russia, and sending a team of people each summer for eight years to help make livable a boarding school for mentally challenged children. We also support a missionary in Indonesia, Peggy Lowry. Peggy is a member of Christ Church and doing great things for Christ in a very difficult place. Now we are in the process of adopting a Christian School – Hope Education Center – in western Kenya on the continent of Africa. While we were in Kenya recently, the rain water catchment system was installed to provide the 141 children already registered at the school, clean, safe water. Through your offerings, you provided these kids with water! That’s not all – you also provided them with a six-hole restroom which they proudly proclaim is the “best restroom in the entire village,” as well as desks, school supplies and an additional mud-hut classroom.

You – as the Christ Church family – are doing these things, while at the same time remembering our dual calling to build His church and kingdom right here. God opened the door for us to purchase twenty-five acres of land on Route 123 in order to meet the needs of our growing congregation now and in the future. All of you who attend worship at 10 or 11:15 know that our worship space is beyond capacity and will not allow for growth. Just last Sunday there were eight people in the atrium in front of the television because the worship center was so crowded.

[...] Back on the subject of Kenya and our Hope Education Center, we met with the Nyamira District Government Minister of Health. We were thrilled to see that he had invited his entire lead staff to meet with us – twelve doctors. They asked us to please consider conducting a medical camp in the village later this year. We listened respectfully as they described the need and serious lack of medical care in the area. The chief doctor told us that he would even send his team of physicians to the village to partner with our doctors –free of charge. One of our team members reminded the doctors that we are Christians and we needed to know if they were going to have any problems with us because we would want to pray with those who come to the medical camp and share the love of Jesus with them. The chief doctor looked around the room at his lead staff, and the lead staff looked at each other. The silence was broken when the chief doctor looked right at us and said, “Of course you can do that. In fact, I begin and end each of our staff meetings in prayer!”

We are just beginning to gauge interest from some of our medical personnel (doctors, dentists and nurses). If you are a medical doctor, dentist or nurse and you would like to be considered for the mission, please email me at pastorjohn@christchurchva.org. Although I plan to establish the dates of the mission by the end of this month, the tentative dates are November 1 – 9, 2009.

This mission will also require a limited number of folks to pray with those coming to the camp, and provide general Christian hospitality. If you are interested you may also email me at pastorjohn@christchurchva.org. I thank God for His dual calling in my life – to build His church and kingdom in Northern Virginia and to build His church and kingdom in far off places around the world. God is good all the time! Can I get a witness?