The Local Church

About a year ago, I was in western China as part of a summer missions team. Per the missionary's directive, we were encouraged to connect with locals and share the Gospel, something we never anticipated doing in a "closed-country." We traveled from village to village and city to city praying that people would come to accept this good news.

In one of the cities, a few of us stumbled across a Muslim woman (most of the people we met were Muslim) who was inside a school complex. Somehow we found ourselves talking with her, and soon, we even began to share the Gospel. Starting from Adam and Eve and the original sin to the birth and death and resurrection of Christ, we methodically went over the Bible to share about the redemptive work of Jesus and what it meant for her life. We kept asking if she understood concepts of sin and atonement, and she said she did. She seemed to agree with everything we were sharing, which was exciting considering all the people we shared the Gospel with before had rejected us. So eventually, we told her that Jesus wanted to save her and all she had to do was invite Jesus into her life and accept that she could not be saved except through faith in Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior. She paused for a long time to consider it, but ultimately said she couldn't. We asked her why she couldn't. She said the only reason was that all of her friends and family were Muslim and that Islam was part of their culture and heritage. She couldn't get over the fact that she didn't know any other person of her kind that followed Christ; there was no local church to be a viable witness. That was her stumbling block.

That experience confirmed one of the greatest lessons I've learned during my extended stay in Michigan. God knew what He was doing when I didn't understand why I kept getting the conviction to stay in Ann Arbor. I had only begun getting serious about following Christ by the time I graduated college; staying longer helped me to develop stronger convictions about the local church by serving HMCC.

By no means was my experience with HMCC perfect. But despite all of its flaws, I thank God for the church because it has taught me so much as I am preparing to move onto the next stage of life. The community is priceless, and I'll miss the people that have loved me, encouraged me, pushed me, inspired me, challenged me, rebuked me, and been there for me all these years.

My prayer is this: that HMCC would remain steadfast to its vision of transforming lost people into Christ disciples who will then transform the world. Whether in Ann Arbor, in Chicago, in Austin, in Indonesia, and wherever else God takes the church, I pray that the Gospel would take root and multiply.