Winter
5 God’s voice thunders in marvelous ways;
he does great things beyond our understanding.
6 He says to the snow, ‘Fall on the earth,’
and to the rain shower, ‘Be a mighty downpour.’
7 So that everyone he has made may know his work, he stops all people from their labor.
Some unusual intermittent weather has affected our stateside friends, with reports of flooding in parts of San Diego, a city we consider our second home. We’ve been shocked to see news footage of familiar streets submerged in raging waters strong enough to move cars around like toys. Locally, we’ve seen some plunging temperatures and snow appearing regularly on the forecast while freezing rain and storms like Isha hit various coastal areas in the UK. It’s the type of weather that makes you stop what you’re doing and marvel at His sovereignty.
As a family, we’re excited to settle into the rhythms of the new year as the winter season invites us to slow our pace down in reverence for the Lord and His activity. Many people rush into the busyness that comes with a fresh start, packing more and more into a limited window of daylight. That’s not to say that the demand for our time and the opportunities to use our God-given talents and leverage our treasure are not bountiful.
We keep our ears open toward Heaven and our eyes fixed on the Kingdom of God to determine our focus in any given week. Throughout our tenure in the UK, we’ve been asked a number of times what it’s like being missionaries. What sort of work does a minister do? What does a workday or workweek look like?
Answer: It depends on the day and the week.
For those who are unfamiliar with mission work abroad, check out our 4 part series “WHAT DO MISSIONARIES DO?” (Part I, II, III, and IV). It’ll give you a wealth of information about several lesser-known aspects of mission work that will help you understand what encompasses ministry abroad or if you’re personally thinking through and prayerfully considering all the factors involved in becoming a missionary.
One of our ministry partners, who has been running his own non-profit organization for nearly two decades, put it best, “Isn’t it hard, Gino? You have to wear so many different hats. You’re a missionary in a foreign country, an entrepreneur, a fundraiser—you do your own graphic design/marketing, bookkeeping, not to mention you’re a preacher, a worship leader, etc.” I laughed in relief, thinking that finally, someone understood how easy it is to put in 14-16 hour days or 60-70 hour work weeks. All the while, people make loads of assumptions that sometimes call into question the legitimacy of this line of work or critique this niche form of ungainful employment as being strange and unusual.
During my time with a missions organization, I learned a lot about how to be intentional with one’s settling process. They had a very methodical approach, which they found helpful in producing flourishing long-term missionaries. This process involved scaling hours over several months in four key categories:
Transition
Participation
Personal Administration
Leadership
As missionaries, we must be deliberate about our cultural learning and be willing to seek out adequate support to weather the continuous waves of culture shock. Our transition to this new ministry assignment in Birmingham—serving in South Aston and Walsall—has meant both restarting this process and maintaining a steady continuation and adherence to these categories with a revolving emphasis on certain areas depending on our involvement in service to the Lord. There is, of course, a quiet droning tendency deep within of “let’s get it going,” as dictated by our (American) culture of productivity, which inclines us toward a gung-ho hit-the-ground running approach with anything and everything in ministry. We’ve learned to be steady, steadfast, and methodical in leveraging our time and talents for the Lord’s Kingdom.
Settling Continued
We found that placing certain aspects of our work here in this category means it’s not necessarily related to ministry but more associated with our “getting on” as residents in the UK. For instance, we just had our son, Shilo, last summer and are now required by the US government to register his birth abroad at the US Embassy in London. Thankfully, we can handle much of this extensive application process online. Still, the amount of paperwork we needed to search for and provide was overtly granular, such as providing proof of address for both parents’ periods of residence in the US for their entire lifetime! Quite an absurd, time-consuming compulsory standard. We were digging into physical files and folders, looking for old paperwork we somehow kept all these years (before the age of cloud storage), and scouring various email accounts for other acceptable proof.
You may think this isn’t really “settling” in the UK but more like an unrelated requirement due to our US citizenship. Well, you may or may not know that the US is 1 of 2 countries in the world that can tax their citizens no matter where they live. To maintain our work, we need to abide by the tax codes of both countries and ensure that our son has his social security number correctly included in our tax reporting. Registering his birth is also related to Shilo’s obtaining a dependent’s visa under my current term—allowing him to travel with us if we leave the country and protect his entitlement to NHS by paying the large upfront fee known as the Immigration Health Surcharge (IHS).
Another part of the continued process of settling is the process of obtaining my full UK Driver’s License as an American expat. Transitioning from our previous ministry assignment in Oxford (during the pandemic) meant forfeiting our initial residency period, so I restarted everything in Birmingham once we returned to the UK. Birmingham is one of the most difficult cities to obtain a full Driver’s License, with a pass rate of 38%. The national average pass rate is 55%.
At present, I’m spending a considerable amount of hours per day/week in the following:
Studying the Highway Code
Taking mock Theory Tests
Driving Lessons & Mock Driving Tests
Practicing possible Test Routes (14 in total)
Ministry Components & Prayer Requests
Much of what we report in our articles and newsletters displays the “doing” part of our ministry, but what most people don’t see is the “being” part of our ministry. In other words, the public outworking of ministry proceeds from our private time of spiritual intimacy with the Lord through hours of prayer, meditation, study, and other spiritual disciplines and practices. Growing in our knowledge of Him is directly proportional to our making Him known to others.
When logging in hours in our day-to-day, it’s easy to get caught up on ourselves and our pursuits. Like our Lord, we aim to be “others-centered” rather than inward-focused. Join us in praying for others.
Sutton Coldfield Neighborhood
Pray for our neighbors, an elderly couple called Ray and Lorraine. After a month or so of not seeing them out and about in the front garden or porch, my family and I started to wonder if they were out of town on an extended holiday. It wouldn’t be particularly unusual because they’re both retired. As it happened, when I came home from work a few weeks ago, Ray walked over to me and, without much of a greeting, opened up and told me that his wife, Lorraine, had been recently diagnosed with cancer (a tumor in her brain)! I immediately offered to sit and pray with them, though much of my attempts to reach out after the news had been met with some reluctance. Lorraine has mostly stayed indoors and has kept to herself. We’re praying for them and thinking of creative ways to show the love of Christ to them. Steph is planning to bake cookies and write a card to express our support and solidarity with them as they prepare to go through difficult months of treatments ahead.
Redemption Hill
Pray for the launch of our weekly morning services in March! I was honored to preach from 2 Corinthians about “Newness in Christ” during the first-morning preview service in mid-January. I was encouraged by the great turnout and seeing Coral and Raquel’s son Zion help lead worship while their eldest, Joseph, handled A/V and setup.
Launching Soon
Many internationals and locals have taken notice of Redemption Hill’s presence in the Delves community. Coral has done an extraordinary job of linking up with families in the area—some have recently moved in, while others have been pillars and mainstays. Some have attended the bi-weekly prayer nights and free community dinners on Tuesday nights. We’re also aiming to establish a Place of Welcome once we have adequate volunteers to host and provide biblical hospitality to address people’s tendency toward isolation in post-COVID times.
Pray for a core team to emerge from the fold that the Lord has drawn to the church and for the birth of a Youth group in the community. Lack of proper youth work was one of the main issues our local Councillor described during our meeting in the Fall. Pray the Lord anoints and empowers Coral and me to preach the word faithfully in Truth and Grace.
Christ Church Birmingham
Preaching
Our lead pastor, Steve, recently tasked Steph to preach alongside me in late January (a joint sermon) during our opening series in the book of Ezra. We were grateful to come together for an extensive time of prayer, meditation, study, and research on Ezra 3 in the lead-up to Steph’s preaching debut.
Note: If you’re curious as to what CCB’s and Regions Beyond’s stance is on women in ministry, suffice it to say we have reformed leanings. Check out these three sessions (Part I, II, and III) instructed by Dave Devenish during our recent 2-day conference hosted by CCB. Dave thoroughly lays out a robust biblical backing and theological framework for Regions Beyond’s view. The sessions are laced with practical wisdom and nuance in application for our Western context and in cross-cultural settings.
Steph and I devoted intentional time to prayer and study individually and collectively. It was fun to act as a guide for her in looking at the foundations and principles of sound biblical exegesis and hermeneutics. Crafting the sermon together was quite the challenge. Having some quiet time and a clear headspace, much less energy, with the kids running around, was a minor miracle. Yet, despite what was difficult, our prayer was for the Lord to speak clearly and powerfully.
Worship Leading
It had been nearly a decade since I played, much less led, worship in a formal ministry context, but the Lord has rekindled a passion within for music and for creativity in developing arrangements for songs. When my name is on the rota for worship, I am asked to prepare six songs to fill a period of 40 minutes prior to the sermon. Hours are spent prayerfully aligning the song choices to the message while ensuring the songs themselves are theologically sound and easy to understand for our local context, consisting of low to no biblical literacy. We’re also encouraged to have one international song sung in a different language, which I’m still building a repertoire of, such as learning to sing the song in Tagalog, Igbo, or Spanish.
During the week, I plan out sessions of prayer and personal worship to make selections and learn songs that may be completely unfamiliar. I love throwing in some old hymns with popular contemporary worship in setlists, and now and then, you’ll hear a secular riff or chord progression that mixes in with the style or feel of a particular song. When I work on arrangements, I try to listen to each song for melodies and lead phrases that I can simultaneously play with the rhythm parts. As far as singing goes, it’s good to find the happy median between a key that pushes my vocals a bit and one that the congregation can sing along to comfortably. Being more guitarist-centric, I try to include varying techniques like finger picking or bossa nova style plucking segments to make the arrangements more interesting. In the coming sessions, I hope to bring in some reggae-style strumming or possibly convert a whole song to the genre.
Since worship has been a regular part of our day-to-day and week-to-week, my kids have learned the words to songs and often join in on rehearsal sessions. They’ll even bring out their ukelele guitars, tambourines, harmonicas, xylophones, etc, to make their joyful noise unto the Lord.
Hub Meetings
Once a month, I take a day trip with CCB staff to different cities in England to attend a hub meeting with other leaders from Regions Beyond churches. Steve oversees many of the churches involved so he often facilitates the gathering and provides prompts for each segment. There’s time devoted to checking in and sharing updates, engaging in worship, prayer, and time of encouragement. It helps us feel more connected to the larger network of churches, and it’s incredible to hear how other leaders have started or sustained key initiatives and carried on in their respective ministries.
Website Development
I’m not the savviest when it comes to web design and management—my only experience is on platforms like WordPress and Squarespace, which are very simple and user-friendly. Since being assigned the task of managing the site for Birmingham & Beyond, our church planting movement, I’ve had to start from the basics on a platform called hubb.church.
With little experience in graphic design, I spent hours creating a logo, troubleshooting formatting, and looking into HTML coding for certain areas of the site. Thankfully, one of our leaders at CCB offered assistance and referred me to Hubb.church’s tech support, which has been very helpful in providing examples, screen-sharing how-to guides, and feedback on specific design elements I want to integrate. It’s still a work in progress, but I’m grateful for the growth in competency.
Food Pantry
Updates on Stories & Interactions
Note: names have been changed to protect people’s identities.
Dana & Nancy
In my most recent conversation with Dana, she said their new flat should be ready to go in a few weeks. They’ve come out to CCB’s Sunday service several times, and Nancy has gotten increasingly familiar with Enzo and AJ through interactions at the church and the pantry.
Pray they get on well in their transition to a new home and that they get steadily more plugged into the life of the church.
Jemma & Doris
Sadly, Jemma’s younger brother, who resides in their native island of Barbados, has recently died of cancer. In the last few months, Jemma has checked in with me about his deteriorating health, and it has led to numerous fruitful conversations about life after death and the reality of Heaven as it relates to the Gospel message. She also informed me that Doris has recently suffered a stroke, and half her body is now paralyzed, leaving her unable to speak.
Pray that the Lord continues to reveal Himself to both in ways that they each need and for the Lord’s comfort, peace, and supernatural healing for Doris.
Martha
CCB has seen much more of Martha in the last few months. She’s been positively engaged in discipleship and has felt welcome into the community. Her partner, Raymond, has also come around to the pantry in recent weeks, and she’s been trying to get him to come out to a Sunday service.
Pray that Martha continues to grow in her faith and that Raymond will see a difference in her that can only be attributed to the transformative work of Christ.
Sendi
We have continued to grow in friendship, and he’s been opening up more about some difficult circumstances. His mother recently suffered cardiac arrest and is now on a path of recovery in Uganda. Sendi longs to reunite with his children and demonstrate a complete transformation since being released from incarceration. He has recently verbalized a first-time commitment to Christ and desires to walk with the Lord. He has also become interested in worship music and sang alongside me during a Sunday sound check.
Pray that the love of God continues to flow and that the good soil of Sendi’s heart receives what is sown. Many have been impacted by Sendi’s love and kindness in our community, and we pray for an unfolding testimony of redemption and transformation.
Ministry Partnership Development
“Raise enough to maximize the fruitfulness of your family and ministry.” –Scott Morton
During our initial period of support raising when we were still Stateside, I once had an individual portray the Westernized sentiment of “hustle and grind” as a form of query into the validity of mission work in general. Not only were they unaware of universities, hospitals, and political campaigns (to name a few) that also raise funds in similar ways, but they also failed to acknowledge the security they have in their gainful employment. The comparison becomes vastly different when considering the various aspects of mission work. The finances come from the Lord, whether by conventional employment or full vocational ministry.
Hours upon hours are spent day-to-day and week-to-week late into the evenings and wee hours of the morning:
Crafting communication via Substack
Drafting and sending emails, texts, and DMs
Scheduling and facilitating meetings via video and phone calls
It has been a faith-increasing experience to simultaneously raise and maintain support while devoting needed attention and focus on local ministry in honor of those supporting our mission. The two are inextricably connected, and the often unpredictable results are in the Lord’s hands. Nevertheless, “the laborer is worthy of his wages,” so we trust our Provider to finance whatever He intends to accomplish in and through our family.
Pray that we continue to trust the Lord to provide for our family through the losses, the upkeep, and the increases in financial support. Pray also that there is mutual honor and integrity among those who are part of our Sending Team and our family unit who serve as the tip of the spear.
“Some give by going, and some go by giving.”