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Stewarding Power

Andy Crouch in his book Culture Making suggest that the way we use power is to do that in partnership with the weak in order to create cultural good that will enable them to utilize the power that is inherent in them. It is my conviction that missions provide a legitimate format to do this. But inspite our best effort, it is critical to discern where the Father is already at work so we can join him in doing his work of declaring His glory among the nations (Psalm 96:3). We continue exploring what God has already done and is most likely lead us to be involved as we continue our reading of the book: The Challenge of Missions. Our focus is on chapter 7 through 9. Beginning with these chapters, we want to explore the message by sharing our comments through this website. Recall that the summary discussion, the comments you make on the posts of others together form the basis of our prayer meeting at the last Sunday of the month. God bless you as you remain faithful to this. John Bako The Challenge of Missions _7_compressed (1) The Challenge of Missions _8_compressed The Challenge of Missions _9_compressed

The Quotes Challenge

Proverbs 25:2 says; It is God’s privilege to conceal things and the king’s privilege to discover them. I believe that great messages can be hidden in words that others have spoken that can help us in diverse ways. It is based on this believe that I’m motivated to invite you to join me in this journey to unravel hidden messages in quotes. Our quote for the week is by A. W. Tozer “God may allow His servant to succeed when He has disciplined him to a point where he does not need to succeed to be happy. The man who is elated by success and is cast down by failure is still a carnal man. At best his fruit will have a worm in it”. Feel free to share your thoughts on the comments section.

Uprooting Evil Root

Girdling is a technique that kills woody plants in place without cutting them down. It uses a sharp tool to cut through the bark of a woody plant in a strip all the way around the stem down to the wood. This severs the vascular cambium of the woody plant and cuts nutrient flow between the foliage and the roots. As a result, roots are starved of nutrients and the plant cannot grow more stems and foliage. Unless the plant can heal over the wound it will die unless it has reproductive capacity to send up resprouts. I came across the phrase ‘girdling root ‘ as we had our morning family devotion from the title roots by Matt Witmer in September 16 2024 version of Our Daily Journey. As our second daughter read through the scripture, It dawned on me that the Holy Spirit is revealing something to me. This is instructive in view of the fact that I have noticed the tendency for my family struggling with spiritual pursuit was becoming palpable. Of note was the fact that on Sunday, BL wanted to keep our second daughter from going to church due to a minor injury she sustained some few days back. While the wound has not completely healed, it was nothing to keep her from going to church. I sensed then in my spirit that something drastic must be done: I stood my ground and at the end we all went to church. Scripture says in Matthew 15:10 and Matthew 3:10; every plant that the father has not planted must be uprooted, and the axe is laid at the root of every plant that bears no fruit and thrown into the fire. In view of this, the decisive action is to uproot this root that is gradually choking the spiritual fervour in the lives of membrs of my family. One dangerous thing about this is that ones life would appear normal on the outside, but death is occuring on the inside. This is the technique that the devil is using. It can be a girdling of money, bitterness, anger, malice, sexual deviation. Another key thing to note here is Matthew 12:22-37 says a house divided against itself will eventually fall! It is noteworthy here that what cause a division is primarily the deviation of purpose. When one member of a family decides on another purpose other than the one ordained by God, a girdling root has set it, and a drastic action is required to reverse the gradual process of complete death. The decisive uprooting of this girdling root and reversal of gradual death is the instant focus.

This work must continue

“This work must continue until we are all joined together in the same faith and in the same knowledge about the Son of God. We must become like a mature person—we must grow until we become like Christ and have all his perfection”-Ephesians 4:13 (International Children’s Bible). This week we had a vision-casting visit by Nigeria Children Ministers Association (NCMA). We believe this visit underscores the necessity of being united in doing His work together. One of the ways that demonstrate our knowledge of the Son is to be willing to learn from others. We do believe that while others may genuinely want to be open to the grace that sister ministries have received of the Lord, it sometimes come with its own challenges. But these challenges can be overcome with the proper knowledge on how to do partnership in ministry. The subject on how we can partner with sister or other ministries will be treated extensively through our sister organization come January 2022. We trust God to equip the body of Christ through that ministry. The link to access the presentations will be posted here on this page. Stay alert to His goodness.

The reality of our work

I had the opportunity to minister directly to teenagers recently and from the material we were considering three words stood out for me. I believe they will help us in the desire to deliberately pursue unity or partnership in our calling to children and young people. These words are assumption, worldview and reality. Assumption (assume): to assume is to believe a concept or viewpoint without thinking critically about it. It is to take something for granted. Worldview: is the total set of assumptions that a person holds, either consciously or unconsciously, about the world and how it works. Reality: is simply what truly is and how it works. After the meeting I had to think deeply over these words and their definition and came to the conclusion that they have implications not only in the lives of young people today but to us as leaders in children and youth ministries, especially as it relates to how we must trust God to work according to his pattern. In our last post reference was made of the need for the body of Christ to pursue the matter of joining hands with one another through partnerships. Not just for the purpose of expanding our reach, though not less either, but it is the way God wants His work done. Having studied most of our approach to ministry, I have come to the conclusion that our pattern has not been very different from the example of a new business owner, who at the early stage of promoting a business and ensure it succeeds, often may have to work alone. We tend to run ministry as though we do not need help from others. Just like the definition of assumption as earlier mentioned, some adopt practices or methods without critically thinking about their relationship to Scriptures ( I agree that not everything we will do in ministry is clearly spelt out in scripture), but I am referring to the core of ministry. Sometimes we do so simply because it has worked in another ministry. We must not take for granted the need to partner with others if we hope to have the impact that heaven envisages. But we need to do so in an informed manner. Overtime such approach becomes our worldview and we hold tightly to it, even though it may no longer be helping us in anyway fulfill our assignment. The reality of our work should not be defined by men or methods (as important as they may be) but by what His word says and its specific application to the unique ministry he has apportioned for us. Efforts such as that by NCMA and other bodies to encourage partnership in the work of the kingdom among children and young people is commendable. At their thanksgiving the topic: “The Importance Of partnership in Children’s Ministry” was treated. It is my prayer that the steps so far taken will be vigorously pursued and may those ministries desirous of joining hands with sister ministries for greater impact do so in an informed manner. In conclusion, let us be reminded that God not only placed us in groups and ministry relationships to get the job done, but first that we all grow in our knowledge and intimacy with him and then we grow in our relationship with one another, thereby reflecting Christ in the work of ministry (Mark 3:13-15).

Make the Most of Volunteers

Then He said to His disciples, The harvest is indeed plentiful, but the laborers are few. So pray to the Lord of the harvest to [a]force out and thrust laborers into His harvest-Matthew 9:37-38. In terms of volunteers, I like to agree with the scripture that labourers for the harvest are few both in terms of numbers and depth of commitment. There is generally a decline in the level of commitment in service across churches, ministry and other christian organisations. While there are various factors that can be attributed to this, focus will however be on the social factor. Tom Horn in his article on strategy for missions asserts: In general, the world is becoming more secular and less religious. As countries modernise and industrslise, faith declines. As choice and change increases, commitment decreases. The challenge before us now is that while we are yet to complete our assignment of ministry, there is a ‘deficit’ of people that are willing to committ their service over the long haul. What then do we do? How can we best recruit the few that are willing? How do we make the most of the few that we have? I would like to suggest: 1. Prayer: what sort of prayers are we offering here? In the Matthew passage above, we are to pray for God to force out and thrust them to the service. In Romans 8:26,27, the prayer by the Holy Spirit is for the alignment of lives with the will of heaven (Voice Bible), not the will or agenda we have crafted for ourselves for our own glory instead of Christ. 2. Connect them with something bigger than themselves. Jason Young and Jonathan Malm in their book, volunteer effect, said that one way to recruit and retain volunteers is to invite them to a mission, not just a role. Offer them a calling, not just a post. A feeling, not just a function. In other words invite them to engage in a compelling mission. But what makes our vision compelling? It means that your story is not a stand-alone story, but a story that is rooted in the big story of God. Our story must fit into the overall redemptive plan of God, His master plan of salvation (Eph. 3:20-21) TLB. Blessings. John Bako

The Priority of the Hour

So above all, constantly chase after the realm of God’s kingdom and the righteousness that proceeds from him. Then all these less important things will be given to you abundantly-Matthew 6:33 The Passion Translation. Dr. Myles Munroe once said, God’s number-one priority for mankind is that we discover, understand and enter the kingdom of Heaven. I see that this is an imperative as we minister to young people. While it is important that we balance the word with age-appropriate activities that engage them, experience often proof that the opposite extreme takes precedent. What I mean is that we are engaged in so many activities in order to keep them engaged. While it is not at all bad, but we often fail to realize the implication it has on our need to sustain ministry over the long haul. It has been God’s desire that we approach our ministries in service to him from the position of rest. That is why he gave a warning that none of us should fail to enter his rest (Hebrews 4:1). We are called to enter this rest for ourselves then help others get in as well. For the purpose of our discussion, as youth leaders we are to enter and help them enter as well. It is when we enter into his rest that we cease from our own labours (Hebrews 4:10). But how do we enter? In order to do so as believers, we must make entering his rest, his kingdom a priority. Is that your priority? Is that my priority?

Make Them Ready

And he will [himself] go before Him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn back the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient and incredulous and u persuadable to the wisdom of the upright [which is the knowledge and holy love of the will of God]-in order to make ready for the Lord a people [perfectly] prepared [in spirit, adjusted and disposed and placed in the right moral state]. Luke 1:17 AMPC. My focus here is on 17c-in order to make ready for the Lord a people. How do we go about making our young people ready for the Lord? Let’s look at two examples in the lives of Moses and Samson. In Exodus 2:2, we see that his mother after his birth received the revelation and she saw that the child was beautiful, fair, godly, depending on the translation you are using. On the other hand, in Judges 13:1-12, we see that revelation for who the child would be was given prior to his conception and birth. In both cases, we see that each child has a direction and a purpose for their lives. Both parents had the opportunity of knowing this. Are you in the place of Moses’s mother or Samson’s? You and I are called to seek to know God’s mind for our children; whether they are already born or yet to be. That is the starting point of raising them as people prepared for the Lord. My prayer for you today is that God will open your eyes of understanding to see rule of life and the work they are to pursue (Judges 13:12). Blessings. John Tashi Bako