Hoşça kal ... or Görüşürüz?

The first word means "Goodbye"...the other means "See you later." Both seemed appropriate today, and I couldn’t quite tell which one I felt most comfortable saying…and I did say them both. As I write this I am packed and ready to go except for the few morning items that once used, will take their place in the suitcase with everything else.

We finished our time in Antalya worshiping with the Turkish church one last time, making one last trip to Paşa Bey for "lunch", and enjoying one last home visit before packing up and preparing to leave. We had an opportunity to say a few last words to the congregation when we were called up during the service to say goodbye. I could have talked for a half hour easily, but I simply said that we were profoundly grateful for the time we shared with them...and that though I came out to teach them, I was pretty sure that I learned much more from them than they learned from me...and that we would take them back to America in our hearts. Then I asked if we could send greetings from Antalya Evangelical church back to our churches, and they responded with a rousing "Yes!" Then I took a picture. After Hans preached on Jesus’ prediction about his death and the call to follow him, we sang "I Have Decided to Follow Jesus" – in Turkish, of course – but we knew exactly what we were saying…and meaning as we did. There was something extra-connecting in the singing of that song with brothers and sisters in Antalya, for we are all followers of Jesus. We are all in this battle for the kingdom of God together. That much was clear in the short time we spent with them.

The Congregation on the last Sunday we were there.

Faithfully…and joyfully anticipating our return home.

Charlie

From Water to Wine

In one of my earlier posts, I commented on the first sermon I preached here about the story of Jesus turning water into wine, in which I said it is our job to fill the jars with water - it's Jesus' job to make the wine. Well, after two weeks plus a couple of days, there is little doubt that Jesus has been in the wine business. Tonight we finished the Teen parenting class, which has been a delight from the start, and tonight was no different. Lots of learning, sharing, laughing, "confessing" - a real community of parents seeking to be better at what they do. Two parents brought their teenage daughters with them which made for a real interesting dynamic, as they were the subject of more than one example during the evening. But they seemed to be good sports about it all, even contributing their thoughts along the way. A testimony, I suppose, the the health of those families. Besides, what we are doing is no "secret strategy," but principles that our children eventually figure out eventually anyway...and respect us all the more for wanting to do our jobs better.

Friday PM Teen Parenting Class, with one couple missing

However, my greatest moment today was stumbling across a small group of folks from the Turkish church in St. Paul's courtyard when I stopped by to purchase a small item from the gift shop. The cafe was closed, but the group, which appeared to led by Hans (one of the pastors) invited me to come and join them for a time of prayer. I readily agreed, and found out that they had been meeting with a young man who had been attending the church for some time had reached the point where he wanted to receive Christ into his life. I had actually sat across from him at lunch after church the two previous Sundays. I knew he was not a believer, but had been told that he was "close." Well, today was the "day of salvation" for him, and by pure "chance" I was able to be present when a young man from a strict Muslim family made the truly life-altering decision to become a Jesus-follower. As we went around and prayed for him, I added, in English, my gratitude to God and intercession for strength, protection, encouragement and power from the Holy Spirit as he begins his new walk of faith in Christ. (I would love to post the picture I took after we prayed, but was asked not to post it on a website.)

A good time debriefing with Pam and a wonderfully delightful visit with a single mom and her family rounded out a truly blessed day of finishing our work here. Tomorrow we simply worship with our brothers and sisters and friends in Christ from both the International and Turkish Churches and then pack up and prepare to leave early Monday morning.

God is good.

Charlie

Beginning of the End

Today we finished the two sessions of Active Parenting Now in 3 - the class for parents of children ages 5-12. The classes finished smaller than they started, which, given the make-up of the classes in the first place, was not entirely surprising, though still a bit disappointing. Part of the challenge with this class was that we had a number of teachers from the community that did not have children, so there was this "tension" of making it applicable in the home and classroom at the same time, which was hard. In addition, none of the teachers were involved in the church. We had 4 teachers in our evening class, and none attended this final session. Both the morning and evening class had a small core of committed parents who were doing their best to understand and apply what they were learning.

We met with one woman after the morning session who had attended all three and was very interested in the church making this available to more people in the community. She is a trainer of teachers and brings in teachers from the United States all the time and puts on seminars for teachers in public education. She had ideas on how to improve the material to make it more applicable in Turkey. She may be a key resource for the future of this program as an outreach of the church into the community.

Tomorrow we will finish the last Teen class session and debrief our time here with Pam. It hardly feels like we've been here long enough to be almost done!

Charlie

AM Class from L to R:

Hans, Tan Şule, Ron, Burçak, Charlie, Nurcan, Pam

PM Class, from L to R:

Anne, Ron, Ruslana, Pam, Eda, Karen, Charlie

Pisidian Antioch

We spent 8 hours on the road in order to spend 2 hours on the ground in a place called Pisidian Antioch. Pisidian Antioch (or Antioch in Pisidia as it is referred to in the Bible) was the first place Paul went on his first missionary journty after he had saild from Cyprus and landed at Perga in Anatolia (present day Turkey). It was here that he preached is first sermon, or at least the first recorded sermon at the synagogue in Antioch (see Acts 13).

I would surmise that for one who lives in or near such historical and spiritually significant places, it feels less "special" than it does for one who will probably only spend two hours of his life there. Granted, I walk on dirt that is just as old as the dirt in Antioch, but the Apostle Paul never preached on the dirt where I live. Something rather sobering takes place when you walk on Antiochian dirt. Especially when (as it is believed by archaeologists) that I was standing on the exact location where Paul preached. Below are the remains of the "Central Church" (one of three in Pisidian Antioch) which is believed to have been built on the site of the synagogue where Paul went to first proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ resurrected from the dead. (Acts 13:1617) It also happens to be his longest recorded sermon.

Ron and I sat on the semi-circular stone structure in the center of the picture (called the apse) and took turns reading the story of Paul in Antioch, and his sermon in particular. It struck me that in the simple proclamation of the gospel, there was a response. People wanted to hear more. In this age of skepticism and cynicism and relativism and all the 'isms that accompany a post-modern world, it is easy to lose confidence in the inherent power of the gospel...and the power of the Holy Spirit to bring truth to bear in the hearts and minds of even those most hostile to the gospel. Not that we don't bring every tool we have available to the task of mission, whether at home or around the world, but in the end, it is NOT about our cleverness or our strategies but about "...the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation..." (Rom. 1.16) And it is THIS gospel about which Paul says he is NOT ASHAMED.

It was not lost on me that there were three churches in Antioch...and no mosques. Again, I could not help but come back to the hope and vision that God is about re-planting his Church in the land where it was first preached. It was also not lost on me that I live in a land that is losing its grip on a faith that once undergirded the very freedoms that define us. So I found myself in this intersection of time and space in which I was two thousand years removed and seven thousand miles away from home, and yet one in Christ with both Paul and the church built on the spot where he first proclaimed the gospel, and Hans (and Erkan and Metin and Pam and Eda, etc.) and the Antalya Evangelical Church. Their mission was and is my mission.

Charlie

The three of us on standing between the Temple of Augustus (behind the person taking our picture) and the Central Church of Antioch (in the far background).

Apostle to the Turks

The two on the left; not me. :) We had dinner and spent the evening with Hanspeter Tiefenbach and his wife Anne.Having met in a Bible School in Switzerland, it was in 1989 (give or take a year) that they felt called to plant a church in Turkey. So they packed up and moved to Antalya and began to have meetings in their apartment. For two years it was just the two of them - faithfully worshiping and praying. No Turks. For 104 Sundays the Turkish house church was just them. He bought, sold and repaired rugs and motorcycles to earn a living. Even shined shoes. In fact, there is a typical shoe-shine box one sees on the street every day sitting in their entry room that is still ready to be put to use in the event extra income is needed. Then, after two years - one or two or a few Turkish people began to show curiosity, interest, or simply have a need for the company of two caring people. A strange lot of folks comprised the 'church' at the beginning, not the kind of people two struggling missionaries would like to showcase to the Muslim as a "city on a hill," but they persevered, amidst all the fluctuating, ups and downs of attendance, commitment and visible transformation of lives.

We saw the scrapbook. It starts with just pictures of Hans and Anne, then has one or two Turks, then a handful, eventually it actually looks like a small group (you know, the size of a group we would expect to show up to a meeting for us to feel like it was successful on the first night of some program...only this was after YEARS of faithfulness and trust that they were, indeed, doing what God called them to do), eventually, near the end of the book, we saw a fully-worshiping congregation.

Seriously - I'm sitting there looking at this simple, unpretentious, godly couple and thinking, "This is what the book of Acts was like...except Paul and Barnabas and Mark and Silas and Philip and Peter and all the rest didn't have to wait for two years before a single seeker responded to the gospel." I was embarrassingly convicted of my ridiculously feeble faith in the power and trustworthiness of the gospel in comparison. I whine (silently to God, of course) when I don't see immediate fruit from my efforts, and am reluctantly faithful to living out the truth of my convictions in a culture that is only mildly offended by the gospel in comparison to Turkey. Just sitting in the living room with these people was a phenomenal lesson in what love for Jesus and loyalty to his mission looks like. And there are people like Hanspeter and Anne all over Turkey.

In addition to everything else Hans is doing, he stands next to me for three hours every time I teach the parenting class and interprets my every word, and every word in the video that is not sub-titled. Plus both my sermons. And English is the least fluent of the three languages he speaks, including German and Turkish.

İsa'nın Rab olduğunu. (Jesus is Lord.)

With dubious faithfulness,

Charlie

Hoş Geldiniz

That means "Welcome" in Turkish. We hear of lot of that, and it aptly describes how we feel: Welcomed. It feels very comfortable being here among the people - not a stranger or foreigner (though in some ways we definitely are), but included as part of the body of Christ in this particular expression of His body.

This morning Ron and I attended the Men's Bible Study for the International Church. I gave the devotional, which was fun to prepare for, as I used it as an opportunity to think out loud about some thoughts regarding our imitation of Christ and passionately pursuing the will of God. The rest of the day was spent preparing for the parenting class for children, with a long lunch break in which the three of us broke bread with Jim and Renata Bultima, founders and directors of St. Paul's Cultural Center. It was great to hear the story of how it came to be, the vision for its future, and how they are committed to supporting the Turkish Church that worships there.

In the evening we had a wonderful visit with a couple of the church who are taking the parenting class for teens, though their daughter is only 7. This was the couple that had a devastating miscarriage when the IMPACT team I was on was here in the summer of 2010. Now the wife is 5 1/2 months pregnant and things seem to be progressing well, though there is a chance the child will come early. So we spent time praying for a healthy baby, an uncomplicated delivery, and one that comes in God's good time. We were also treated to a mini-concert as the husband played a couple of instruments and sang for us.

As the couple shared their journeys to Christ, and to each other, it was interesting (an moving) to hear of the special ways God would speak and lead them into his will. It is as if, lacking the many support structures that we are used to in the churches and well-developed ministries in America, God involves himself in more "miraculous" ways. We've noticed this several times in which the timing of answered prayer, the nature of the prayer experience, and the circumstances surrounding their coming to Christ bear unmistakable signs of direct activity and intervention by God. It is as if the Holy Spirit functions in ways reminiscent of the book of Acts when the gospel was penetrating the pagan culture of Rome, remarkable things would happen. Anatolia was fertile ground for the founding and growth of churches - Antioch, Ephesus, Colossae, Galatia, the 7 churches of revelation, etc - it is tempting to hope for just such an inroad of the gospel in Turkey again.

Charlie

Yilmaz playing the Saz

Day of Rest

Today was a Sabbath of sorts for us. I slept in, for the first time since arriving in Turkey, which felt good. A relaxing breakfast, team time and then lunch at St. Paul's Cultural Center. The afternoon was "free", which I used to do some reading. Ron and Peggy returned to St. Paul's later in the afternoon and struck up a conversation with Turkish man who had been a radical Muslim, but had since embarked on a theological search for the truth - studying the Koran, the Bible and the Torah. He was looking for either Ramazan, Erkan or Hans, but none of them were around, so Ron and Peggy stepped in to fill the void, sharing, among other things, that one of the unique features of Christianity is that we are called to love our enemies...a definite contrast to the theology of an Islamic Radical.

Tomorrow Ron and I will attend the weekly Prayer Breakfast at the Cultural Center, and I was asked to give the teaching/devotional, which I readily agreed to do. We have lunch scheduled with the founders and directors of the center, Jim and Renata Bultima, and we're looking forward to that. Later in the week we plan to take a trip out to Pisidian Antioch and see the ruins there. Pisidian Antioch is one of towns Paul visited on his first missionary journey.

Below are a few random pictures to round out this post.

Charlie

Street on which St. Paul's Cultural Center is located.

The circular, green sign for St. Paul's can be seen above Ron's head.

The ladies of the St. Paul's kitchen - Belgin, Ayşeh, Ayah

View of our Pansiyon from the street.

Ron and Peggy's room is the top corner room and Charlie's is right below it.

View from the end of the street just around the corner from our hotel.

Atalya harbor is just out of view to the right.

Snow is still on the mountains in the distance.