An Occasional Word, November 6, 2009
11/06/2009Dear Friends:
Did you know that the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department indicates that there are 16,353 miles of state and federal highways in Arkansas? Recently I drove 325 miles (round trip) over some of those paved roads to attend a dinner in Texarkana honoring the work of United Methodist Men and our church in sponsoring Boy Scout troops. (The United Methodist Church is one of the largest sponsors of Boy Scout troops in America.) I left for Texarkana in mid-afternoon, made a stop along the way, and arrived in plenty of time for the dinner. I drove home after the program was finished. It was an easy trip. The roads were good with access to rest stops with plenty of gasoline if needed.
We are a state of 53,179 square miles with 16,353 miles of paved road. Interesting.
By contrast, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is a nation of 905,351 square miles. It has only 300 miles of paved roads. The DRC is about one-quarter the size of the United States. Amazing.
This is simply to illustrate the lack of infrastructure and to acknowledge the challenges that face the laity and clergy of our church in some areas of the world. It is daunting to think of a city of 300,000 people with no landline telephones, no citywide water system, no city sewage system, only two paved streets, no cable television, intermittent and unreliable electricity, two gas stations and a single dirt-strip airport. The city of Kamina, DRC, is such a place. It is Bishop Ntambo’s episcopal headquarters.
One of the clergy leaders of the North Katanga Conference told me, when asked, that they fully expected to triple the size of the membership of the conference between 2008 and 2012. Let us remember, this is not growth by transfer from Baptist or Presbyterian or Roman Catholic churches. These are new Christians. These are people coming into the church by profession of faith in Jesus Christ.
It seems to me that we have all the advantages in infrastructure and communications and resources, but they “fully expect” to grow the Kingdom of God.
We have a significant number of churches in the Arkansas Annual Conference that are doing wonderful work in making disciples of Jesus Christ.
We also have a number of churches that have not received a single person by profession of faith in a very long time. If you remove professions of faith coming from confirmation classes of youth, the number grows significantly.
Are we afraid? Do we fear sharing with others that our faith is important to us? Do we fear rejection from our friends if we tell what Jesus has done for us? Do we fear placing faith in Christ at the top of our priorities for fear faith will demand we somehow change? Do we fear the growing pains that will occur if “new” Christians come into our midst? I don’t like the idea of living with fear.
I prefer to live with expectation.
Faithfully,
Charles Crutchfield
