Wind of God ~ Will of Man?

Continued...

As you might remember sometime about a year ago we began the process to have O.W.N. Ministries registered as a charity here in Canada. To better understand where we are today, however, let me take you back to how we started on this path.

Since returning home from the Ambassadors’ Alliance Academy at Living Waters Ministry in Bellflower, CA in May of 2009, empowered with the Spirit of God, and with the assistance of my wife, children, and other key people, I have been preaching the gospel on the streets of Southern Ontario. The geographical focal point of this ministry has largely been in the Kitchener-Waterloo area, with Speakers Corner in Kitchener more or less being the epicentre of our efforts.

Over the years there were times where we were able to focus on our ministry in a way which would allow me to have maximum time with the Lord in word and prayer, and with people on the streets, in addition to the open air preaching.  And there have been times, I think, where we’ve tried to do more than God had provided for us to do, as we’ve tried and failed to push through closing doors.

Perseverance and godly discernment can only come from God as He is the giver of wisdom; wisdom which comes from a fear of the Lord. This is an area where I think modern leadership in the church often times goes wrong (that is... the fear of the Lord over man and being led by God even if it means changing plans); and an area where I have gone wrong also on many occasions.

You see, I tried to bite off more than I could chew in this ministry. It was our goal that I would be more available to the people of the streets; the people who were hearing the preaching of the gospel. We wanted to preach and work the streets full-time, and still be a family, and still have time for part time work, and still have time for church activities. There were times where I was working in the evenings and able to get out 3-4 times per week and began investing significant time with people: having conversations, handing out water, distributing Bibles and tracts, handing out hot apple cider in the winter, etc.

But still we were going alone for the most part. Yes... by God’s grace many of you have helped along the way, and we are very grateful to you and Him for that. Thank you to those who have supported our ministry over the years, your prayer and individual support has been a crucial life source so many times. But there’s something important and different about being sent, and to this day we haven’t had a body of believers who have committed to officially stand beside us and send us out on the streets as missionaries. Jesus was unable to perform many miracles in His hometown because of their lack of faith in Him... what does that mean to the rest of us? How much more do we need the faith of believers to back us up? Much more!

Some of you might not see this place of North America as a mission field or our work as that of missionaries, but why is that? Aside from the fact that Jesus taught the importance of leaving an entire flock of 99 to go find 1 lost sheep, in many ways Canada and the United States (not to mention Mexico) is quickly becoming a very large, dry and hopeless atheistic spiritual wasteland, empty of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and in great spiritual peril. In addition, with immigration consisting largely of quantities of people from all sorts of nations which openly hate Jesus, we ought to see the writing on the wall of the spiritual condition and need in our countries.

But the purpose of this communication is not to debate the validity of bringing the gospel to the streets of Canada or the United States, as much as it is to let you know why we’ve chosen to change our plans regarding our application for charitable status in Canada.            

So let’s get to February of 2013. I was working in a sales role again, ever struggling, unable to reconcile my ministry on the streets with my worldly work. I couldn’t grasp the idea that I would live 5-6 days a week trying to create urgency in people by convincing them to buy material objects from me, make boat loads of money, then flip a switch and go tell people, many of whom are poor and suffering, on a Saturday afternoon how Jesus calls us to die to ourselves and follow Him instead. It seemed grossly hypocritical to me.

At the same time God was showing me the Biblical truth that orphans, widows, and neighbors are people who we need to serve in Jesus Christ. So Cathy and I began to attempt to apply this truth to our lives and also decided to have some t-shirts made so we could distribute them among the body of Christ. We thought it was a personal conviction we wanted to make known among our community. We had 25 male and 25 female t-shirts in different sizes made with an empty cross, a drop of blood, and an acrostic below which said, ‘Orphans, Widows, Neighbors, which spelled out OWN.  On the back of the t-shirts our catch phrase ‘What owns you?’ was born with reference to the scripture verse of Luke 16: 13.

It wasn’t too long after our t-shirt endeavor when I resigned from my job after the management there began directing me to get on Facebook. It was only in the calendar year before when I had opted out of Facebook completely, having been convicted about my time wasting on social media, so that event was the catalyst which led to my resignation from that job. 

At that time the vision of O.W.N. really began to take shape. We saw a ministry which was about declaring the good news of Jesus Christ, which also was about responding to the needs of individuals as they come. We saw a ministry which was about individual believers picking up their crosses and giving of themselves out of the provision we have received from Christ in our own lives. We saw a ministry which was demanding that of us, to be followers of Jesus every single day, and to live the gospel as much as preaching the gospel. We saw that it was the man in the mirror who needed to be changed, not someone else.

So we decided we would exhaust our resources and focus our entire efforts and use our gifts in the building of O.W.N. Ministries. We prayed, we talked, we listened, we sought counsel, and then we began the journey of trying to get the gospel out on to the streets, full-time. One of our first steps was to build the website, while at the same time I began going to preach and do various evangelistic activities in Kitchener, Waterloo, St. Jacobs, and Stratford 3-4 times per week.

With long hours on the computer it took nearly a month to launch the website and it was then when we realized we needed to address our biggest problem... that being, we still hadn’t been sent. So I made a ministry package which I could hand out, printed copies of it and began to go door to door to the local churches in the towns where we were working. Our thought was that the local church would want to have a saved sinner present on the streets to bring the gospel of Jesus Christ for God’s glory and the people of their communities. After dozens of doors and numerous towns, we soon found out that our thinking wasn’t in line with the current church reality in Southern Ontario, Canada, in 2013.

We faced all sorts of obstacles and surprises along the way: pastors who behaved like executives with doorkeepers to keep them from reach, lukewarm indifference to urgency regarding people hearing the gospel, and even had one pastor of a large Presbyterian Church who questioned the need for the gospel at all. I couldn’t help but wonder if there were other pastors along our travels who shared his same sentiment but were less courageous to voice their opinions.

After unsuccessfully having visited many churches, and after sifting through a number of voices giving different advice on how to proceed, there was one person whom I respect deeply who was advising me to have our ministry registered as a charitable organization. We still wanted to be sent by a church, but in need of money to keep going, and wanting to see the administration of our ministry vision move forward, and since we were told this was the best way to go about that, we were faced with a crucial decision. In other words, if we wanted to be supported as missionaries, we were told the best way was to join our ministry with a charitable organization or to apply to set ourselves up as a charitable organization. So about a year ago we chose to go ahead with the RCO application process.

One of our first steps in the process, after securing a trusted individual to guide us through the application (which we did), was to find 3 trustees who would eventually make up our board members. So in prayer and faith we set out to try to find 3 individuals who would be the people whom God would prepare to be in those roles, and by God’s grace, we believe we found them. We had our board members, we had our ever changing ministry vision, we had our name, we had our website, and we had Jesus, so it seemed like we were on our way!

As it turned out, however, the Lord’s plans for us would bring us to a point of discovery regarding the specific criteria (namely in the administration of funds) for gaining charitable organization status in Canada which would greatly conflict with the heart of the vision of O.W.N. Ministries, and that conflict would eventually force us to make a very difficult choice. In order to continue on to become an RCO in Canada, which might have greatly increased our ability to receive support and grow our ministry, we would have had to accept that, according to Canadian law as an RCO, we would be greatly limited in our ability to freely give money to specific individuals in need.  

When we learned of the regulations pertaining benevolent funds and their distribution in Canada for an RCO, we were somewhat surprised and upset. While we understand and fully agree that there needs to be transparency and accountability within any group of people who are handling money, we couldn’t agree with the idea that the government knows how I should give my money more than the Lord. And the government regulations in place make it so that an RCO cannot respond to the direct needs of an individual by calling on the community to give funds for that person, and then relinquish 100% of that money to the individual(s) in need; an RCO CAN NOT serve as a conduit to flow money in Canada. Well that is a direct contradiction to the benevolent portion of the vision of O.W.N. Ministries, which is to serve as a conduit to individuals in need.

God’s word tells us that all authorities on Earth come from God, and God’s word says that we are to submit to our authorities; we want to obey God. Having said all that we also know from God’s word that Paul was imprisoned on more than one occasion for preaching the gospel, so there’s a tension in Jesus Christ. In this world which hates Him, we have to submit to authority while we are crucified with Christ and serve even those who hate Him. We don’t want to try to remove that reality from our walk with Jesus. So, we decided that we wouldn’t unnecessarily put ourselves under the authority of the government if we didn’t have to in order to carry on the vision of O.W.N. Ministries.

In a nutshell, we determined that the government regulations in place for an RCO in Canada would not permit the vision we believe God gave us, for O.W.N. Ministries, to carry on our work. And since the idea of getting charitable organization status in Canada was to make us a more attractive ministry that the church institution would want to get behind and financially support, we realized that we were beginning to venture out on thin ice and we were flirting with jeopardizing the vision in order to try to get the money to make it work. Furthermore, even if we achieved RCO status, and even if we had great financial support as a result, we still would not have had a body of Christ followers who were standing behind us to send us in faith.

In such a scenario any local body sending us would only have a government of Canada credential as our validation and their reason to support us. I say again... Jesus, the Bible says, couldn’t perform many miracles in His hometown because of their lack of faith in Him. Jesus is God’s only Son and He is one with the Father and Spirit. Jesus comprises one third of the godhead. Without Jesus, God isn’t God. If God cannot perform many miracles without the faith of His people standing behind Him, where does that leave a guy like me, his wife and some of his friends, in terms of the power of God to be seen in a living way in our ministry? There might be a hundred thousand ‘successful’ ministries in Canada today who do things according to the world’s way. But we desire to go the Way of Jesus and trust Him to make or break our ministry. And in order to do so we know we need to be SENT.

We need a body of Christ lovers who won’t look at our worldly credentials, or lack thereof, to express faith in us, to trust us as ambassadors’ of the living God, much more than we need financial support. We have been given full access to the riches of God and through Jesus Christ we are heirs to the kingdom. We are every bit as forgiven of our sins as anyone else who takes His free gift of salvation. We need no further worldly association to validate our faith, because our faith comes from God. And as imperfect as we are, He made us, He saved us... and it’s for His glory, not ours or anyone else’s, so that no man can boast. A P.H.D. doesn’t make a man a man of God, or a witness of His grace, Jesus does. Jesus chooses His disciples. A government approved program doesn’t send people out in a ministry, God does.

So, at this time we accept that God isn’t sending us out the way that we had been going. We are witnesses of Jesus, with or without a sending body. So we have decided that it is our obligation to live our ministry through the work we do in this world. In others words, I have decided to commit to going back to sales, where I have had success,  and strive to use what God gives us through our work toward our ministry. We continue to go to the corner on Saturdays, and Klaus’ when he has kids over for house meetings, and various other activities, but the reality of this situation is that we will have much less time for writing and other activities. Praise God for His grace either way!

So many of you reading this communication are already well aware of this reality in your own walk with Jesus; not being able to do all the things you want to be able to do in Jesus Christ. Paul had times in his ministry when he worked day and night just so he could preach on the weekend. What a privilege it is that we can partake in the same life of walking with Jesus Christ here in 2014! What a privilege it is that we can know the liberty of Jesus and the freedom from being bound down to religious activities which would demand so much of our attention and time! Instead we can rest assured in our Lord’s love, and therefore love our brothers and sisters, as we trust they will understand that we may not have much more time than Sunday morning for communal worship, fellowship, and gathering.

And someday, maybe the Lord will raise us up for a different kind of ministry, one that will permit more time and resources so that we can carry out the dreams we have in the Lord with O.W.N. Ministries for people and the church.  But in the meantime, O.W.N. Ministries doesn’t hinge on that, it hinges on Jesus and lost people hearing the good news. So whatever it takes from us we will need Jesus every step of the Way. We cannot depart from the Vine or try to be the vine. We can only do our part and trust Him for the rest.

We dream of being able to interview lost and found people out on the streets. We dream of having the equipment and resources to make short movies which would give us and others in the church insight into the current spiritual reality and opinions of those around us in our communities in 2014. We dream of having a ministry which would bridge gaps and be able to freely distribute funds to those in need. We dream of taking the gospel all over Canada to fight the power of darkness that distorts the truth in the eyes of those broken and lost. We dream of having a group of trustees around us who would share our dreams and the burden of financial accountability without government regulations. We dream of seeing more and more people confess that Jesus Christ is the Lord! We dream of a community of people living the gospel by faith and loving each other, not striving to defeat one another! We pray that His kingdom come, His will be done, on earth as it is in heaven!

We are going to start to dream big and trust our infinite living God with those dreams! Yes we know what’s eventually coming to this world and the end of the story now... but we are those who are chosen to live it with all of our hearts for His glory... NOW!

Thanks for reading.

God bless you.