Ten years. This month marks ten years that I have worked with TEN3. It's difficult to believe I've now dedicated about a third of my life so far to it.
I was more than prepared to. All I wanted to do with my early adulthood was missions, and/or raise a family. Any other option, whether grad school or a career, just seemed a waste – why spend time pouring into myself when I had a great education, great health, no debt, nothing to hold me back from investing full time in the Kingdom? And I loved TEN3's vision from the moment I discovered it. There was nothing better I could imagine doing with my skills than helping Africans grow in knowledge that meets their needs and leads them to build their whole lives on Christ.
I still love that vision and all its potential. It's a bittersweet feeling looking back, though, at all the work we've done over the last ten years. Many of the opportunities we were most excited about fizzled to nothing. We were praying ten years ago for 350 schools running the CTO, and I think today we only have two currently running the full program. A couple more do portions of it. My main job those first few years was working toward a full university degree using the principles that God had revealed work so well for disciple making and excellent education in Africa to build on the CTO, and that has completely fizzled out.
So compared to what we wanted to do, our ministry has floundered horribly. Yet, when you look at how mission projects to go, the degree of results some mission teams may get from ten years of work, we do have quite a lot to show. Thousands of families have been impacted by our Families and Media ministry, with tears of repentance and opened eyes to the spiritual warfare going on in their midst. Hundreds of students have taken our Bible curriculum and gained a fuller understanding of God's work in the world throughout history and what it means to their lives. Students have been blessed with various adaptations of our CTO material to different situations, and those who have taken the program said they've never had anything so helpful. Pastors have given positive feedback that our seminars have helped them learn to use technology wisely in their ministry and engage more effectively with their youth as they guide them to use discernment. And our national directors still see much more potential for what TEN3 can do in their communities.
The difference between those results and what we are about, though, is in our tagline, "Discipling to the third generation," that is, having people understand the discipleship material and process well enough to teach others and expand the ministry and make it their own. It is in making the ministry outlive us. That is really going to come down to training. Please join me in praying especially for Ray as he begins walking four young people, Aloyce, Joeley, Christpin, and Samuel through our online training. Pray that they, and those Collins is working on training, will really understand the material, catch the vision, and be the second generation that will disciple the third. Maybe we won't get the 350 CTO schools we envisioned. Maybe we won't get the tertiary degree with the curriculum we planned. But if we get people who know God's story of redemption and what their place is in it, who practice spiritual discipline out of love for the Lord and not a checklist, who can comprehend what they read and discern good information from the less-helpful, and who have a passion to bring that to others, then I will be at peace that we have done what the Lord asked of us.
