The other week week I was thrilled to find out that my classmate, friend, and sister in Christ Sarah McIntyre was interviewed and accepted for the Biology program of Kalu Yala, and will be spending the summer with me! This is certainly good news for the Good News as we travel to Panama looking to work with christians and spread word to those who are not. For those of you who haven't met Sarah, she is one of the most enthusiastic, outgoing, passionate people I have had the privilege to meet, and she will absolutely bring a great deal to the table. She's the kind of person who can't help but share to all who are in contact with her just how much her Savior means to her and how great a God is ours. So now my lone venture has evolved into a partnership, a tag team with the person I have already spent so much time in study and in the Word with. During our internship we will have a lot of free time and flexibility in our schedules between projects and setting up the infrastructure for the town we are creating, and we will be working with local churches (I am also conversationally fluent in Spanish) and an evangelist Phil has put us in contact with named Greg Roark.
This semester I spent my Monday nights in a leadership program called Joshua Team through an unaffiliated, inter-denominational campus bible study group. We focused on how to share the gospel, and specifically how Christ shared the gospel when He walked the earth, which is very different from current trends in the world today. Rather than focusing on numbers and getting people 'saved' as quickly as possible and moving on to the next person, the example Christ gives us is to truly invest in person, continuing to work and grow a person rather than calling it a day the moment they're dunked in some water. Our goal is to create a spiritual generation that will in turn create more spiritual generations, bringing the lost to Christ in an exponentially increasing chain. When our Lord began His ministry, he could have preached to the entire world and told His message to every soul on earth, but He didn't. Instead, we see Him spend the vast majority of His time with only twelve men. Why would He focus on just twelve, when He could have easily used His miraculous power to persuade entire nations that He is God? I think the answer to that question is in the frailty of the hearts of men. The Israelites saw the power of God time and time again, yet still fell away every time because of their lack of faith and the hardness of their hearts. If Christ would have given the gospel to every person on earth and saved every man and woman alive, but hadn't created followers with the devotion of the Twelve who would continue to proclaim God's grace and message in the face of death long after the Son had departed, the message would have simply died along with those it had been given firsthand, erased from earth as quickly as it arrived. God does not ask for lukewarm followers who tentatively make an attempt to follow His will most of the time, and when Christ said "Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you", it wasn't merely a suggestion. The focus here is on depth, not breadth, because breadth will have weak and limited results, while depth will multiply and continue to bear good fruit.
And by now I've gone off on a tangent, but what I want to say is that this is my goal. When I study with people and work to create a follower of Christ, my work isn't done until that person is not only able to stand on their own, but ready and willing to make disciples of their own, coming full circle. Sarah and I make a great team, and we're both very excited to get to work, starting with this summer as we work with christians and nonbelievers in San Miguel, Panama.
"Then He said to His disciples, 'The harvest is abundant, but the workers are few. Therefore, pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest.'" -Matthew 9:37-38
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