It's Really Good News

We had always heard that DTSs got really busy as they went on, but I don’t think I really believed it at first. I mean, we didn’t have to worry much about school work or most of the other activities that had always monopolized my time in college. We didn’t have much to do in the evenings but hang out, we could play ultimate frisbee most afternoons, and life was grand. Now, while life is still grand, it seems like there are a thousand things that I could be doing all the time, and all of them are good. There is scripture to read and walks to take and people to build relationships with and music to play and prayers to pray and books to read and so much more. And we have to get ready to go on outreach, which is coming up frighteningly fast (we’ll be in Cambodia in two weeks!!). So as you could imagine, writing blog posts can easily fall through the cracks every once in a while, especially if you’re Seth and you really can’t resist talking to people and playing guitar late into the night. As for me, for a week I was trying to shake a respiratory illness that just didn’t seem to want to go away. It turned out that I had gotten sick and then gotten shots a couple days later when my immune system was still recovering, so I had a bit of a reaction to the shots. Once I knew that was the problem, though, I made sure to get plenty of rest and eat well, and I quickly got better. Yay!

So now we have two weeks of busy DTS life to cover without taking a ridiculous amount of time. I’ll start off on the Monday before last, when we were beginning our week on Evangelism with Matt Dawson, a superb (and funny) teacher we had already heard from way back when we studied worship. Evangelism, at least YWAM-style street evangelism, is a topic that isn’t talked about too much in the church background I come from. Certainly, I’ve heard quite a bit about telling people about Jesus (because that is central to what Jesus told us to do), but we usually avoid talking to complete strangers, preferring to build relationships and establish loving intentions before bringing up the gospel. I still don’t think anything is wrong with that perspective (unless you hide behind it as a way to do no evangelism at all), but this week Matt used his wisdom, passion, and humor to give the perspective that evangelism – even to absolute strangers – should be a lifestyle. Indeed, if we have personally experienced Jesus’ love, mercy, and goodness as He gives them so freely, shouldn’t we want to make sure that just about everyone we come near at least gets an invitation to know who Jesus is? We don’t have to force the gospel down people’s throats, just invite them to listen to what we have experienced and what we know about Jesus. If they say no, we just won’t tell them. But mightn’t we just ask (as difficult as that is sometimes)?

Here are a few others of Matt’s main points during the week for you to think on:

• We have to be utterly convinced that the gospel is totally good news, or it will be nearly impossible to share. If we know it’s good, it will come much more naturally.
• Jesus is the model we look to in evangelism, as with anything. Note that Jesus did talk to complete strangers, even breaking all kinds of cultural norms to do so – read John 4, Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well. And don’t say, “Well, that was Jesus; I’m just a ‘normal person,’” because Jesus said "I tell you the truth, anyone who believes in me will do the same works I have done, and even greater works, because I am going to be with the Father” (John 14:12).
• In sharing the gospel, we are telling a story. Essentially, evangelism means showing people that they are not living in the reality they think they are and sharing the true (and much better) reality. [So, it’s pretty much like The Matrix…] Jesus is willing to save and restore everyone and give them a purpose in life; they just have to realize that and receive it.
• The Gospel is all around us; in fact, every great story in literature or film has bits of the gospel story in it. Realizing this will help us hear from God in different ways and tell people about the good news in ways they can easily understand.
• A few things that we don’t want to leave out when telling people the story of the gospel: 1) God’s original intention (the Garden), 2) Breakdown of that intention (Fall), 3) Redemption/Reestablishment of God’s intention, 4) The Choice (to repent and have faith in Jesus), 5) The Promise (Jesus coming back, heaven/hell).
• We need to share the things we are absolutely sure of and have a depth of conviction about. If asked about something you’re not sure of, it’s OK to admit you don’t know. We’re all on a journey, and you’re just sharing yours with people.
• The indwelling of the Spirit is an essential marker of salvation.
• All we want to share is love and truth. If that is all we offer and people still reject it, it’s totally in God’s hands to change their hearts. And how could we push people further from God if we are only conveying love and truth?

There were a few other notable things that happened last week. One was our justice class on Wednesday, where we continued the topic of sex trafficking, specifically in Cambodia, where we will be going on outreach. Sex trafficking is a huge issue in Southeast Asia, and hopefully we will find some ways to help out a little in the fight against it.

Last Thursday was a really great day. That morning, Matt had another commitment, so instead of lecture we went out into the city of Tauranga and did street evangelism. A lot of students came back with really cool stories about how they were able to love and connect with people and tell some of them about Jesus. It became obvious that followers of Jesus can certainly be the light in a city even to complete strangers. For me, it was about the second time I had ever gone street evangelizing, so it was a bit nerve racking, but nothing at all bad happened beyond a few moments of awkwardness. My partner Nate and I didn’t really come back with any good stories, but I’m convinced that God was still proud of our obedience in trying, and I learned a lot from the experience so I can be more effective in the future.

After lunch, all of the guys headed out to the beach at the Mount for our BSS (exercise) time, which consisted of a long and epic game of ultimate frisbee. At the same time, the girls had a separate BSS at the base then proceeded to prepare a ridiculously awesome surprise dinner for the guys. Most of us didn’t realize that a dinner was coming, and I’m pretty sure none of us had any idea just how great it would be. They really didn’t overlook a single detail. They reset the lecture room as a restaurant, provided appetizers, served each course (one of which included sausages wrapped in bacon), made a music playlist just for us, and gave each of us a card with notes on it from every one of them. Then, after we were ridiculously stuffed, they reset the lecture room again for a poker/game night for everyone (girls and guys). And after that we had a dance party. It definitely was heaps more than we did for them when we made breakfast a couple times… And I think they genuinely enjoyed doing all of it for us. We have a lot of wonderful ladies here!

Seth in a food coma following the wonderful food the ladies made.

Our Justice outreach team! We'll be in Cambodia in 2 weeks!

All the guys being our normal selves.

All the wonderful ladies looking fabulous.

Alright, just a couple more highlights from last week. On Saturday night, we got to participate in the international pastime of watching large men flatten one another in order to get a small, air-filled object across a line.  At home, that means watching football. In this part of the world, it’s rugby. Besides still not understanding a few of the rules, it turned out to be really fun to watch. Rugby is really fast-paced and quite exciting, but I think the best part is that there are no commercials during the game except at halftime. If for no other reason, that might make it nicer to watch than football.

On Sunday night we had a murder mystery party, set up by our good friend Hannah. If you’ve never been a part of something like this, essentially what happens is that everyone is assigned to be a certain character, so they dress up and act that part for the evening. Then it’s set up so that one character gets murdered, and in the subsequent investigation, evidence comes to light which should point to who the murderer was, and everyone has to try and figure it out. In our case, the setting was a 1920’s speakeasy. This meant most of the girls got to have a good time dressing up like flappers and other fashionable ‘20s ladies, while the guys got to play mobsters, politicians, or in my case, a private investigator. Over the course of the evening, the Northside Mob Boss (our Canadian friend Mitch) was shot while proposing to his girlfriend (our one kiwi student, Larissa). In the end, we found out that the corrupt chief of police (our British staffer Claire) was actually the culprit (though most of us didn't actually figure it our). Anyway, it made for quite a fun night dressing up and attempting (mostly ineptly) to impersonate ‘20s personalities.

Northside Mobsters

That's us.

And that was last week – full, but good.

Thanks for reading!

Dan’l