I have written about this theme before, here, and here, and in a small book, here and in numerous other places over the years. But I expect to spend the rest of my life exploring and discovering new pictures of faithful cross-shaped ministry. So it was encouraging to find the following story in my reading today (related below). A cross-shaped life or ministry is a life or ministry that features sacrifice on behalf of the people to whom we are ministering.
When the people to whom we give the gospel KNOW that we are willing to sacrifice our own comfort for their good, when they KNOW that our words are coupled with our time and our hands and our hearts, they are much more likely to give attention to the gospel we proclaim. It is an outworking of the Colossians 1:24 dynamic:
“Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I do my share on behalf of His body, which is the church, in filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions.”
What was lacking in the afflictions of Christ?! NOTHING!
So what does Paul mean?
Paul is saying that his own suffering for the gospel was a picture to those to whom he preached of the suffering of Christ on their behalf. When we are willing to suffer for people who need the gospel, we are acting like Christ. In every generation, those who are willing to suffer for the gospel have always been the most effective of His servants.
Enter the story of Titus Coan. You can look him up in Wikipedia and there you will find a brief but completely free of scandal bio of a missionary who brought the gospel to the Islands of Hawaii. Unknown, to most, forgotten by the even the masses of his brothers and sisters in Christ, he lived a life worth a movie. Here’s where Wayne Cordeiro’s book comes into play. You see, Wayne is Hawaiian and for him it is personal. Wayne’s ancestors first heard the gospel because of the laborers of Titus Coan. One day, burdened by his ministry and feeling like most pastors do at times, like he didn’t measure up, Wayne took a walk in his neighborhood and stumbled upon a historic church building that turned out to be one of the churches that Titus Coan had planted. Wayne started to hunt down everything he could about Titus which led him to the rare book room of the Lyman Museum in Hawaii where he was able to read the life story of Titus Coan.
“In 1837, God used a man named Titus Coan to bring a great revival to Hawaii. Coan loved these brown-skinned people so much that within three months of his landing he preached his first sermon—in Hawaiian!
When islanders were so impressed with his desire to reach them that they came in droves. The sleepy town of ten thousand swelled to more than twenty-five thousand in the ensuing years as natives moved from far-flung districts of the Big Island to hear Titus Coan preach in their own tongue.
The Divine Mentor: Growing Your Faith as You sit at the Feet of the Savior,
Wayne Cordeiro, (Bethany House, 2007) p. 24
Titus Coan learned an entire language well enough to preach in it in just three months! The people he sought to reach saw it as an incredible achievement and beyond that, they KNEW that he had worked hard to accomplish the feat because he loved THEM. They saw his love for them, demonstrated in his diligence and hard work and sacrifice and they determined that such a man must have something to say.
It’s a challenge isn’t it?
What are we doing with and for the neighbors around us that demonstrates to them that we love them? What are we sacrificing or working hard at to bless them, that makes it inescapable to them, that our love for them accompanies our proclamation of the love of Christ? What are our churches doing, corporately, that makes such a demonstration of love for our community, that they cannot deny that we are working hard to be a blessing to them?
And here’s a question that perhaps puts a finer point on the investigation:
ChosenRebel's Blog 