Not for my sake

When I first joined TEN3 nine years ago, we were a bustling team of six missionaries, one missionary-in-training, about a dozen heavily involved volunteers and many more lightly involved volunteers. We were preparing to continue growing our central team as we branched into Africa nad the Carribean, looking to have 350 affiliate schools and to be the largest publishing house for Africa. By the end of this year, we will be down to three part-time missionaries and our church networker, and a handful of volunteers who help with specific duties. Anthony asked us how we feel about that. Ken, who will retire this year and has been with TEN3 since near the beginning, reflected wistfully that he didn't know. Our team started strong, and stayed strong for a long time, but somehow in recent years, we've steadily lost people faster than we can add them.

My thought was, maybe this is, after all, exactly what was supposed to happen. TEN3 was always supposed to be an African organization, with a handful of missionaries supplying key areas of labor, resources, and perspective until the African members are ready to take full ownership. Well, Nigeria, Zambia, and Tanzania are forming and training their teams to do this ministry, and it's really now or never. If they persevere in their training and get others involved in learning and implementing the TEN3 model, then Anthony and I will continue consulting in a supporting role for them. I may yet end up asked to live in Africa for a while to work with teachers on our 5-area degree that we've planned for years, or on a primary school curriculum based on transformational principles. We will rejoice to see them take off with their knowledge and disciplines, and grow this ministry in ways we could not even have envisioned.

And if not?

Anthony admitted that he would have a hard time if he reaches the end of his life having seen no results of his decades of hard work. But he acknowledged that has been the lot of countless missionaries--fruit may well have come of their work, but often it's happened decades after their death.

Me? Well, I'm still only 31 and have plenty of other things I want to do with my life. So I'd have little cause to grieve for myself, though I certainly would regret to see all the potential that I still believe is in God's people in Africa wasted.

But Christie ... oh, Christie. She wasn't in that part of this meeting, which I'm thankful for. It's for her sake that I can't bear the idea of failure. In the last twenty years she has invested thousands of hours in passionate prayer, in meetings, in logistics and speaking and record-keeping, hours away from her family, several times ill, rarely rested. She's pressed on running a computer school on an electric grid that is sometimes off for ten days at a time, through skyrocketing fuel prices, through regulatory hoops that multiply like hydra heads. She persevered when terrorist attacks were making everyone afraid to leave their homes in her city, and traveled through even more dangerous parts of the country. She's put untold amounts of her own family's low income toward her ministry expenses. She's kept on through betrayal of people she's discipled, who not only left the ministry but falsely accused her and stole from her, and through times when we her partners have been insensitive to her struggles.

She does all this because she believes that this is what God has for Africa, that through Christ-centered education, her people can overcome the rampant systemic problems in their country, build systems with integrity that make a better world for her children, and send the Gospel forth powerfully to those still in darkness.

Lord, I think I can bear seeing no fruit from nine years' service. But please let Christie see it and know she has not labored and sacrificed in vain. Do it not for me, but for her. Do it not for her, but for the people You are calling to Yourself in Africa. Do it not for Your people, but for the sake of Your name.

A separate endeavor we pray will supply needs in TEN3

Back when I worked for the education professor at a community college, she would show her students The Freedom Writers' Diary. The scene in which Erin Gruwell's husband bemoans her choice to "get another job to pay for your job" has always stuck with me because that's just the sort of thing I'm prone to do. I blogged about doing that back in 2012. I was very thankful to be able to simplify when I became fully supported in late 2013. But times changed again this past year, such that about the time my son was born, I was reduced to about half of what I was making before (which was already substantially less than someone with my position and experience would expect). I sent out several appeals for more support, and some extra came in, but not near what I needed. I began looking seriously into getting a technical writing job on the side to help make ends meet at home.

Instead, I find myself helping with a start-up LLC. This is ironic, because I've never considered myself much of a risk-taker. In any game involving risk choices, I consistently go for the middle of the road. I do, however, take risks when I consider it part of a picture bigger than the possible failure. So how did this come about?

Anthony's brother Mike is involved in a start-up company that has something to do with using smart phones to do MRIs. He asked Anthony if he could do the DevOps, because he wanted someone he could trust. Well, Anthony admitted he doesn't have the skill set for that, but, given how good the pay is for work like that, he wondered if he could get together a team with the requisite skill set. He especially wanted me and Kenneth on the team because he knew we needed a boost. And surprisingly, just the right team came together of people technically skilled in different areas, who all love the Lord and trust Anthony. We had some meetings, prayed together, got advice, and decided, "Sure, let's start a technology consulting company." (The name is still under extensive, sometimes silly, discussion!)

Well, in a strange twist, we got out-bid of the job at Mike's company (not his choice). But we had already put together some ideas of products and services that we can see being in high demand, and sensed, well, the Lord had led us together wanting to do this for a reason, so we might as well keep at it and see what happens.

There are a few other lines of reasoning as well. For one thing, Ken, TEN3's technology officer, is retiring this year. If we don't find a replacement, we will need this company to keep TEN3's online office running. For another, as I mentioned above, several of us are struggling personally with finances, and TEN3 as an organization seldom has money to speak of. Our many years of efforts at fundraising almost always fall short of what would be considered a proper operating budget. So maybe, if we can't raise enough money, it's time to try making it. For another, one of the programs we've been recently requested to do is godly entrepreneurial education, which we could speak to much better if we had successfully done it ourselves. And finally, we would love to be a witness for Christ by developing creative solutions, offering them with integrity, and using the profits to advance His Kingdom. Our desire comes down to a quote from John Wesley: "Earn all you can, save all you can, give all you can."

Are we crazy to be putting our extra time and mental effort into a for-profit company? Shouldn't we do something "safe" if we're going to do a side endeavor? Maybe. But this does seem to be what the Lord led us to, and our best chance to meet TEN3's needs and stay afloat. Please pray for the company's success and for the Lord to provide all that TEN3 needs.