100 People Network

Story by: Brian Lundin
Photography by: Tiffany Palmer

It’s almost as if Allan had been on the path to mission work since before he was born.

His grandparents were Christian missionaries in East Africa and his aunts, uncles and cousins have worked overseas in the name of Christ his entire life. He grew up keenly aware of what it meant to sacrifice a comfortable life in the United States in order to serve the unreached on the other side of the world. In a few weeks, he will take another big step in his journey by moving to North Africa.

In high school, Allan got a chance to travel to Rwanda. It began to break his heart, realizing that virtually every person he met there was lost. It was then that the desire to follow in his grandparents’ steps began to take shape inside of him. The next year he went to Kenya for three weeks. By the end of the trip, he was hooked and felt the Lord calling him to go to the lost.

When Allan began college at the University of Texas, he had planned to apply to medical school upon graduation. But in the back of his mind, he still dreamed of returning to Africa. Becoming a doctor was not Allan’s passion, but it was familiar and safe because so many members of his family had pursued that path.

As graduation neared and Allan prepared to take the admissions test for medical school, he started to seriously seek God’s plan for his future. Did God want him to become a doctor? Was he to serve in Africa? Was his desire to work overseas what the Lord wanted for him or was it what he wanted for himself? Allan went through a period of doubt and struggle, fearing that he might make a mistake.

Through time spent in prayer, study of the Word, and counsel from his family and friends, Allan reached a place of rest in the sovereignty of God. He was able trust that the Lord’s will would be done, that he had a role to play in it, and that all he had to do was keep his eyes on Jesus and trust him.

Allan realized that he was, indeed, called to serve overseas. And from that point on, he fully embraced it.

He decided against medical school and began a season of praying and waiting for God to bring the right opportunity before him. Around this time, the Austin Stone began the 100 People Network and Allan felt prompted to sign up.

Through the process of officially becoming a Goer, he met and spent time with teams headed overseas and prayerfully sought God’s path for him. For a year and a half, Allan worked, served in internationally-focused ministries, and prayed for a specific calling that would take him overseas.

The Lord walked with Allan through that season of waiting and wondering. Finally, he led Allan to a team bound for North Africa with hopes to engage a people group that has had almost no opportunity to hear the gospel. After a short period of prayer and reflection, he was convinced that this was the right time, the right team, and the right people group.

After nearly ten years of learning, dreaming, praying and preparing, Allan and his team are preparing to leave for North Africa in a few short weeks. As he looks forward to serving, building relationships, and growing the church in a dark part of the world, his excitement builds. He finds his inspiration and guidance from Paul’s letter to the Philippians:

“But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ.” (Philippians 3:7-8)

Leaning on Paul’s words, Allan looks to his future, down a path with a destination he can’t yet see … and he knows only that Jesus is walking right there alongside him. He’s eager to carry the gospel to the unreached for the rest of his journey.

Story by: Brian Lundin
Photography by: Scott Wade 

Noah Burns has deep roots in Austin. He grew up in the Texas capital and has strong connections all around. There is the high school he graduated from, the university he loves, and the church where he came to know the Lord. It’s where his family and friends are.

Recently, though, Noah has felt a tug to uproot from Austin and his tight network here to follow Jesus to his new home, in a nation thousands of miles away where he knows almost no one – except the Lord.

After being saved as a high school freshman, falling away for a time, and then graduating from college, Noah’s faith was refreshed and the Lord drew him near. “His faithfulness and steadfast love for me is very real in my day-to-day life,” Noah stated. In this renewed closeness with Christ, Noah felt a call to pursue a lifelong interest in acting that took him to Los Angeles.

It was a tough time professionally, but he found a home in a local church that welcomed him, where people were committed and the worship was powerful. God continued to grow Noah’s faith during that time in a very evident way. “It’s the coolest thing in the world when God is actually moving in your life,” he said. Noah’s acting career, however, didn’t take off and he felt God’s call to return to Austin – and, as it turns out, to a lofty calling to another faraway place: North Africa.

Noah had no concept of what it meant to serve internationally when he moved home to Austin and started attending The Austin Stone. “I never knew about missions, never thought about missions. I didn’t know what an unreached people group was,” Noah said.

Upon hearing a recommendation, he began reading Let the Nations Be Glad John Piper and the first paragraph hit him hard. It said:

Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn’t. Worship is ultimate, not missions, because God is ultimate, not man. When this age is over, and the countless millions of the redeemed fall on their faces before the throne of God, missions will be no more. It is a temporary necessity. But worship abides forever.

This thought, this concept of worship, compelled Noah to leave his hometown in order to serve his Lord. In addition to worshipping the Lord through his obedience, Noah also finds sustenance in the promises of God.

If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. (John 14:23)

And that’s exactly what Noah and his team are doing in North Africa. “We’re going there to gather God’s children. I have brothers and sisters there, and my job is to go over and find them,” Noah proclaimed. “I know God’s promises; He will bring them to Him.”

The freedom that Noah found in those promises has begun to put his personal idols to death. Before he answered the call to overseas missions, Noah struggled with seeking the approval of others. “I was the last person to look for an opportunity to share my faith with my friends,” he confessed. “I was just really cowardly.”

Once Noah committed to serving in North Africa, he found that God would sanctify him through his obedience, and he started to see victory over his idol of approval. “Now, by God’s grace, I am always talking about Jesus,” he said. “I look back just nine months ago and think about the person I was and how God has used this to bring me to where I am today.”

Noah’s calling has already produced fruit in an unexpected place: “Both my parents have just fallen head over heels in love with Jesus over the last few years,” he told me. “Two years ago if I had come home and said, ‘I really feel the Lord taking me overseas’ I think they would have not understood it, but now they are incredibly passionate about it.”

He laughingly relayed a small suspicion that that his parents are a bit envious of his calling. And who can blame them? “I worship him for calling our team,” he said. “I worship him for calling me. I mean, how humbling is that? God is calling me to gather his children!”

Story by: Lori Richter
Photography by: Kim Ellis

Ryan, Ann and baby Henri are pioneers on the mission work frontier. Where they are going, there are no churches, no gatherings of believers. “We have confidence that God is going to save them,” Ryan states. “We may not see the fruit in our lifetime, but Jesus purchased them.

Ryan admits that “Frontier mission work is easy.” His boldness comes from Revelation 5:9, “By your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.” This is the basis for Ryan and Ann’s confidence. God’s mission is to have worshipers from every people group around his throne. Therefore, Ryan declares, “We just have to go get them.” 

Scripture flows out of Ryan, “‘I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice’ (John 10:16 ESV). And so we go. As we talk about Jesus and share life together with them, he’s going to bring his sheep together and build his church.”

Two years ago, God began to reveal the plight of unreached people to Ryan and Ann. God tugged at their hearts as they learned that there are 2.5 billion people who have no access to the gospel. But for every 100 missionaries who go out, only one goes to an unreached people group.

Then about a year ago, Ryan’s heart once again stirred. He began to look into planting a church in the Austin area. However, he realized that anyone in the United States can drive to a good church. God once again brought his focus back to the 2.5 billion unreached of the world.

Through the process of an intense study of Abraham, God destroyed the comfort and security idols in Ryan’s heart showing him that when you follow his mission, there’s no such thing as a risk. Even if you lose everything, you still have everything in God. God freed him to consider planting a church overseas. Ryan came home to a sympathetic Ann and told her, “God is calling me to plant where there is no church.” 

Ryan wants to go where “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few” (Matthew 9:37). He and Ann hope to start a church planting movement in the midst of an unreached people group that will continue long after they’re gone.

When asked about the biggest change God has made in her heart through this process, Ann said, “God has increased my trust and reliance on him. It’s ok not to know what it’s going to look like a month or two from now. I’m just being able to let go of a sense of security with baby Henri. They can take our stuff, but not take our lives. But if we do lose our lives for Jesus, we can’t fail in the end. I know that my trust and reliance on God will continue to grow and flesh out more with time.”

With regard to Henri’s safety, Ryan says, “Here [in the States], there’s a sense that though you totally get God’s sovereignty, you still feel that you’re in control of your children. But over there, you know you’ve got nothing. It’s all God. He’s got to take care of our kids. In reality, the situation is exactly the same, but over there you’re forced to understand that it’s all in God’s control.

Ryan and Ann understand the anxiety that comes with leaving everything behind. They get that it will take time to adjust and that security and safety are a completely different experience in the Middle East. It won’t be easy. But the fact remains that Jesus is going to bring his sheep in. That brings comfort in the midst of knowing how hard it’s going to be.

By: Mike Cosper (The Gospel Coalition)

The world waits anxiously as the leadership transition unfolds in North Korea. It's premature to suppose that the death of Kim Jong-il guarantees improvement or hope for the oppressed people of that totalitarian nation. Uncertainty and regime change inside a violent leadership culture could result in tragic consequences for ordinary citizens.

In a recent column for The New York Times, Nicholas Kristof gave us a glimpse into the world of North Korea. He describes "The Loudspeaker," a radio mounted on the wall of every North Korean home that randomly vomits propaganda on North Koreans. "In his first golf outing," it shrieks, "Comrade Kim Jong-il shoots five holes-in-one!" The speaker recounts robotic answers to questions from two North Korean schoolgirls and the horrific story of a husband asking and receiving permission to execute his wife, who raised questions about Kim Jong-il's womanizing.

By now, we've probably all seen the video and photos of North Korean citizens weeping and tearing at their clothes and hair in agony at news of their infallible leader's death. We ask what could possess people who suffer under such harsh conditions, such deep poverty, such rank abuse to mourn the death of their oppressor. But this is nothing new.

There were similar levels of unimaginable cruelty in Germany during the Third Reich, as well as in China under Mao and the Soviet Union under Stalin. The 20th century learned the lessons of the industrial revolution and created vast government machines of oppression. Ordinary citizens terrorized their friends and neighbors, buying into propaganda that told them such cruelty served of the invincible demi-gods who led their state.

Unfortunately, the collapse of North Korea would not be the end of totalitarianism. Many other nations, such as Cuba, hover near the border of this description. As political philosopher Hannah Arendt has said, "It is in the very nature of things human that every act that has once made its appearance and has been recorded in the history of mankind stays with mankind as a potentiality long after its actuality has become a thing of the past." Dictators and despots will continue to learn from their predecessors and build bureaucratic machines of terror and oppression.

But only for a time.

Oppression Will Cease

The fact remains that a day is coming when in Jesus' name, "all oppression will cease." Even the oppression of totalitarians in North Korea.

North Korea is a glaring reminder of the brokenness of the world and the great evil that we are capable of carrying out. Machinized terror, systematic oppression, gulags, prison camps, and propaganda are all the product of a God-given imagination running horribly awry. Under the weight of that corrupted imagination the world groans in weariness. North Korea's rulers have drained the resources of a starving nation, pouring every dollar they could into the military, which stands as both a tool of oppression against their people and as bared fangs to the world that looks on in disgust. Yet that power is somehow cosmically undone by the birth of a child in a stable in Bethlehem.

As Placide de Cappeau de Roquemaure phrased it so brilliantly in his hymn "O Holy Night":

A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices,
As yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.

Sin's entrance sent the world careening towards destruction, creating a rift between heaven and earth that required sacrifices, temples, and veils to protect us from the furious heat of God's holiness. The Christ child's entrance into the world set the two on a collision course once again, with the promise that the babe in the straw would reconcile them all, destroying death and sin in the process.

Cannot Defeat the Gospel

I can't help but think of Herod as we imagine North Korea at Christmas. The isolation of their people and the brutal persecution of Christians is like the murderous response of that other king when he heard of the birth of the Messiah. Like the later attempts by Roman emperors---indeed, all those made by despots throughout history---every attempt to crush the gospel has and will continue to fail. Christians in North Korea need our prayers and whatever help we can provide.

Jesus taught us to pray "on earth as in heaven," inviting us to look at the world through the hope-filled promise of reconciliation. It's through those eyes that we should look to North Korea, or Iran, or any other populace suffering under the crushing thumb of dictators. There is nothing so liberating as the news that we have a better King and an eternal hope. In spite of their screeching protestations, every tyrant's days are numbered. A King was born in Bethlehem who will one day bring justice and peace.

Merry Christmas, North Korea. We love you and we're praying for you. May the wondrous announcement of the birth of the One True King take root in your people, spreading a fearless hope in your hearts as you face the uncertain days ahead.

To learn more about N. Korea & the gospel, watch Michael Oh's sermon at Desiring God's National Conference: "Finish the Mission" here

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By: Collin Hansen

We're tempted to view the so-called 10/40 window as entirely closed to Christian witness. But God has been working here in remarkable ways.

When Drs. Pat and Marian Kennedy first arrived at this Arabian desert oasis in 1960, they confronted a dire situation. Half the children died during childbirth. The maternal mortality rate wasn't much better: 35 percent. They had no electricity and no air conditioning in this region where temperatures approach 120 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer. Yet they persevered to build Oasis Hospital, nothing more than a simple cinder-block structure at first, and demonstrate the love of Jesus Christ for a needy people.

Today Al Ain boasts about 550,000 residents in the prosperous United Arab Emirates (UAE). The city is overshadowed by two world-class cities, Dubai and Abu Dhabi. But if not for the faithfulness of the Kennedys and many others who followed them to Oasis Hospital, there might be little Christian witness in these influential cities. Indeed, the story of this spiritual oasis highlights the providential wisdom of God, who works in us and through us to accomplish purposes we can scarcely fathom.

I recently visited Al Ain with a team organized by Training Leaders International to teach pastors from the nearly 30 churches that meet on the hospital campus. Our team, including TGC executive director Ben Peays, lectured and led discussion for a diverse group of pastors and laypeople committed to growing in their knowledge of God and his Word. Mindful of objections to Christianity in this part of the world, we talked about the formation of the biblical canon, doctrine of Scripture, Trinity, and the person and work of Jesus Christ.

The promise of jobs both skilled and unskilled in this wealthy nation attracts workers from all over the world, including the Philippines, India, and Pakistan. Many of these immigrants claim at least nominal Christian faith, but it's no small miracle that the UAE allows them to worship openly. Neighboring Saudi Arabia, officially closed to Christianity, looms large in the region, as does Iran, a short trip away across the gulf. Yet Christians left a good impression on Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, founding father of the UAE. Though deceased, he continues to hold sway over the nation with his likeness posted on everything from motorcycles to billboards. Sheikh Zayed appreciated the care of a pioneering missionary hospital in Bahrain, so he invited Christians to start a similar work in Al Ain...

To continue reading, click through to The Gospel Coalition Article - "Spiritual Oasis in the Middle East"

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