Posted by Joel Potter on Thursday, February 21st, 2013
Composing their own songs of praise
Are your songs loud? “Dynamic.” Bright? Contemplative perhaps? Reverent? Energetic?
In some churches, if you get the balance wrong, people are getting out of their chairs and walking out the back door.
Why?
Because it’s too easy for many of us who have grown up saturated in the common expressions of worshiping God to quickly focus on whether an expression or style of worship is serving our “needs.”
Those words above are all descriptions of how a Sunday morning worship service might be like. They’re usually good adjectives too. But are they necessary?
I’ve had the privilege of being a musical worship leader for the last 15 years and I’ve agonized many a time about how a worship service should go. What’s the right balance between reverence and energy? Between dynamic and peaceful? How loud is too loud? Are we missing great new songs from obscure Christian song writers? Are we incorporating enough of the staid hymn expressions?
It’s hard worthwhile work to be sure, but it doesn’t have to be as complicated as most of us worship leaders make it…
Could it be like this:
Imagine abruptly standing up in church this Sunday and announcing, “I would like to share a song!” You would then walk to the front and sing a song of your own creation—straight from your heart.
That’s a true description of how the new believers in the Kuman church in Papua New Guinea are incorporating music into their times of worship.
And to think that we make a big deal about whether the drums are too loud, or whether or not we should have stage lights on during a song. Our brothers and sisters in Christ across the globe know what is most important and it has nothing to do with the music.
Posted by Jack and Lael Crabtree on Thursday, February 14th, 2013
On Monday I made the two-hour drive down to Branson to share at a Perspectives class with Doug Schaible–an awesome friend and NTM representative who has had a huge impact on my family’s journey to Papua New Guinea. This Perspectives class was especially encouraging, because the pastor of the church served with NTM in Papua New Guinea for more than a decade and reached a tribe with the Gospel. Also, the class coordinators had served in in the Asia Pacific region (of what used to be called Irian Jaya) with Wycliffe for twenty-plus years doing tribal Bible translation as well! I was surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses!
I spoke about a topic that has become more important to me each and every day:
Pre-Field Training
Seven years ago, Lael and I went through Perspectives and were “ruined for the ordinary!” For the first time we heard about unreached people groups and the biblical basis for missions. We were determined to leverage our short time on earth for nothing less than this great commission to see every tribe, tongue and nation reached with the gospel. We were fired up and couldn’t wait to get out there and do “something!”
And that’s the problem. Our “something” was completely undefined. We had no idea what ministry among an unreached people group would look like. We knew we needed a plan. As George Walker, one of my favorite instructors saw, “We genuinely felt the weight of own not-enough-ness!”
The Needs You Don’t Know You Need To Know About…
That’s where New Tribes Mission came into the picture. We toured the Missionary Training Center and were blown away by how thorough the training was. Now we’ve gone through all four years of their training (two years of Bible school and two years of missionary training) and I can’t imagine what our overseas ministry would have looked like had we left straight for the field after college. There were so many issues we didn’t even know we needed to be thinking through.
Now we have a game plan for things like: acquiring a new culture and language, pushing through culture shock, creating an alphabet, developing a literacy program, setting up a medical clinic, running a house completely off of solar, implementing Bible translation techniques, creating chronological Bible lessons that aim at worldview level issues, understanding an animistic worldview, maintaining a healthy marriage in a stressful situation, protecting our children, taking a newborn church on toward maturity in Christ through strategic teaching, discipleship and outreach, preventing and addressing team conflict, tailoring a unique homeschool curriculum for our girls, avoiding syncretism, modeling discipleship from day one, preparing for emergency situations, leveraging various translation and linguistic software, adjusting to an event-oriented culture while maximizing time management, and counting the cost now. That’s just from the classroom side of things.
I can’t begin to describe all the valuable lessons I’ve learned from daily rubbing shoulders with staff and instructors who have been there and done it. God has used the discipleship process here in at the MTC to not only strengthen my walk with Himself, but I’ve also learned some incredibly important leadership principles.
If you’re planning to go long-term, get extensive pre-field training this side of the ocean.
One more thing. NTM has an incredible language, culture, and translation consultant program. When we’re out in the tribe trying to learn a difficult language and a strange culture, these consultants will come out regularly to help us get unstuck and reach the next level of proficiency. Doug Schaible likes to say that NTM’s consultants are like the wench on a Jeep. When you get stuck, they pull you out so you can get back on the road. I’m so glad that NTM has people in place who will be able to continue equipping us at each new leg of this long journey toward seeing a mature tribal church who is glorifying God.
Posted by Jack and Lael Crabtree on Tuesday, January 8th, 2013
Suduwama preaching on an outreach.
One of my favorite teachers, George Walker, served for many years among the Bisorio people of Papua New Guinea. Today the Bisorio church is thriving and has its own tribal Bible teachers and elders. One of the church leaders, Suduwama, asked George to pass this stirring message on to those of us in training at the Missionary Training Center.
“Don’t turn back form the work which you are learning about and being strengthened in. Do not turn back from that work which God has given you to do. Be strong. If you give up and turn back and do not go to tell those who have never heard, then who will go and tell them? Those people will continue living with their total sin debt. But so that they can be forgiven and free from their sin debt, they must be told God’s Word. Be strong in continuing to do the work of God.”
Thanks for helping me keep the real vision in the forefront of my heart, Suduwama.
Posted by Joel Potter on Thursday, January 3rd, 2013
[SinglePic not found]You heardour call for help, and acted! Your prayers on our behalf and sacrificial giving when we made our needs known this past October was so effective that God blessed us so far beyond the scope of what we were asking for! THANK YOU. As you prayed and gave, we not only were able to pay off medical debt and the needed school curriculum but our needs were met far beyond those things as well. We have an awesome Ebenezer, an incredible monument of His provision to look back on and even point our kids too, as they grow in understanding how we live by faith!
Six Monthshave passed since we moved here. In those short months, while we adjusted to life here, brandnew Churches were planted and sprouted like the Biem in Papua New Guinea, tribal believers receivedGod’s Word in their own languagefor the first time, like the Bahinemo and tribal men in Papua New Guinea took God’s word seriously when it told them to do the counter-cultural hard things… like love their wives!
God has been busy in our lives and around the world and we’re grateful for the opportunity to serve in the stream of His goodness!
Posted by Macon and Katy Hare on Friday, December 28th, 2012
What Happens Tommorrow? by Ian Fallis
I never expected where a request I received yesterday would lead me.
I was asked to do a little research for NTM’s CEO, Larry M. Brown, having to do with the mission’s history. That led me to an account from Bruce Porterfield, one of NTM’s pioneering missionaries who passed on to glory in summer 2012. Bruce went to Bolivia in 1950 – arriving with his wife, Edith, in the midst of a revolution.
In February 1951, Bruce, Dave Yarwood and Jim Ostweig set out to try to make contact with a people group living in the jungles of Bolivia. After several months of searching with no success, they literally ran into some of them while hunting turtle eggs. They gave them gifts, and the people disappeared back into the jungle.
The next month, September, they met more of them, and soon were making more regular contact. These encounters included bear hugs, painful horseplay and, once, one of the missionaries was choked until he almost passed out.
Yet sometimes they shared a meal with them. The missionaries learned some of their words, and discovered they were excellent mimics. The encounters seemed to be going so well that when the men needed more supplies, Dave did not want to leave.
“I’ll hang around here and keep up the contact,” he told Bruce. When Bruce told him they should all go, Dave insisted on staying. (more…)
Posted by Jack and Lael Crabtree on Sunday, December 9th, 2012
The last 3 1/2 years have been interesting to say the least, due in large part to the fact that God has stretched me in more ways that I could have imagined. Honestly, it’s been a journey of unexpected joys.
Sure, there have been stressors, but I’ve seen enough of those turn out for the best far too often not to notice a pattern: God is faithful. At New Tribes Bible Institute, many of my questions about Scripture were answered, but those answers prompted more questions. I realized the necessity of embracing my role as a lifelong learner (especially in our cross-cultural line of work).
Coming into the Missionary Training Center, I had so many questions about life on the field. I knew all the generic answers to those questions, but when it came to specifics like, “How am I actually going to break down an unwritten language? How am I going to run completely off of solar? How do you actually write/plan/run a literacy program? What does translation and curriculum development look like? What happens after the church is born?
I was clueless.
Well, those questions and many others have been answered during our time here, but I have once again realized that I still don’t have all the answers…and I never will. There has to be some element of trust in God. Signing up for this transient life demands both flexibility and spiritual dependence. My relationship with God has to be paramount.
I’ve come to understand that many of my questions are simply opportunities for God to continue to improve upon His perfect record of faithfulness. To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, God takes the simple evils of Satan and Man and weaves them into a complex good.
Posted by Jack and Lael Crabtree on Monday, November 19th, 2012
We just finished up our practical skills class and had quite a good time. Not only did we learn about essential skills like chainsaw maintenance, knot-tying, compass/map/GPS skills, and measuring and building rafters, stairs and other construction things, but we also had a three night camping trip where we put many of those skills into practice.
I love camping, but since Lael literally had our newest addition, Rynn, a few days before the trip, we decided that I’d be the only one roughing it.
Lael brought Rynn out to the camp for a quick visit!
We built our shelters out of tarps, logs and rope, and they had to be waterproof and well-insulated. The temp dropped to 28 degrees one night, but it only rained the first day we were out there.
I cut down my first tree of any real size with a chainsaw and also got to butcher a chicken!
yup...bare hands...
We also had a great time of community as a class and took the initiative to whittle a chess set from some branches (I carved a white bishop).
Don and Luke engaged in a rustic battle of wits
One day we were told that the meat for dinner that night was hidden out in the woods. We were then given GPS coordinates and told to find the food with a map and compass. After hiking through the woods for a few miles, we came to our first target. The only problem was that our next coordinates were written on aluminum plates…frozen inside two large blocks of ice. We quickly built two fires, melted the ice and read our next coordinates. It was a great team building exercise…and the meat for our dinner tasted even better after the long hike.
One night after learning to navigate with the stars, we started a huge bonfire!
On the techie side of things we rigged up a solar panel to a water pump and ran water up to the holding tanks at our main camp…that way we always had plenty of fresh water. Overall, the trip solidified many theoretical ideas.
Posted by Joel Potter on Friday, October 26th, 2012
Can I switch gears from our family to the amazing work with New Tribes that we get to be a part of? It is why we endure hardship and it is also what motivates us to keep going.
Let me ask you this: How many Bibles do you have? Print editions, study Bibles, apps on your mobile device? I’ve got as many as most and probably more. It makes me wonder though about how a person feels and thinks when they receive God’s word in their own language for the first time. God’s Word will radically change lives. The process of translating it for a people group is a painstaking labor of love.New Tribes missionaries around the world are in each of the various phases of translating God’s word for the first time in a number of tribal languages right now! Our Communications Team has a really unique and privileged role to play in this work. This past month, one of my team-mates from the Communications Team had the privilege of doing the final layout work on a Tribal Bible and I had the chance to see the printed copy before even the missionary who translated saw it! Talk about a buzz! For a little more detail check out the recent told the story of one of these translations in the video below!
Missionary Blogs The latest Christian mission news from around the world 
New Tribes missionaries around the world are in each of the various phases of translating God’s word for the first time in a number of tribal languages right now! Our Communications Team has a really unique and privileged role to play in this work. This past month, one of my team-mates from the Communications Team had the privilege of doing the final layout work on a Tribal Bible and I had the chance to see the printed copy before even the missionary who translated saw it! Talk about a buzz! For a little more detail check out the recent told the story of one of these translations in the video below!