Summer of Missions

Hello, and welcome to the Salt Church Podcast. Thank you for tuning in to this week's message. Join us as we explore God's Word providing practical teaching for day-to-day living. The message you are about to hear was recorded live at our Sunday morning worship experience. If you would like to learn more about Salt Church, please visit us at saltchurch.

org. We hope that you are encouraged by today's message. Hi, good morning. It's great to be here. As he said, just to give you a little bit of background, my name is Jamie.

My wife, Jessica, she's in the back, but I can't see her, but I know she's back there because of the lights. And our kids, Sophie and Ethan, who are back in the kids zone. We have been living in Nairobi, Kenya for the last 11 years. Originally, we went over to teach at a private Christian school there. And about six years ago, we transitioned to the work that we're doing now.

Sophie and Ethan were both born over there, so they very much think they're Kenyan despite their fair skin. They tell everyone when we come home, we get the opportunity to come to the States for about three months every two years. And we'll say, we're coming home. And they're saying, no, we're not going home. We're going to see family because for them, Kenya is very much home and America is where our family lives.

So hopefully, maybe you'll get a chance to see them after church. But we are so excited to be here. I remember I remember I was talking with Pastor Leon last night. Around five years ago, it was right in the point where we were making the transition from teaching to the work we do now. And we came back to the States for a period of time to kind of speak at churches and build a support network and build some funds.

And we were both speaking at his father's church in Clinton, North Carolina. And we happened to be there on the same day. And on that day, he was sharing with the church this vision he had to plant a church called Salt in the Virginia Beach area. And I remember hearing him speak that day and praying as he was speaking, like, Lord, I hope that you'll just, you know, give him the giftings and the talents and the people and the resources and just help this to happen. And so as I stand here today, it's very exciting not only to be here to present with you the work that we do, but also to be here in your presence and see Salt in actuality and to see it thriving and growing and active work of the Lord.

And so it's good to be here. I'm happy to see you. Thank you for giving us the chance. If it's all right, I may. Is it OK if I use this?

I need to raise the height just to touch if that's OK. Is that is it going to be OK if I put this on the base? OK. Sorry about that. Yeah.

So this morning, I just want to take a bit of time to give you some background. I'm going to keep talking to give some background about the type of work we do, because as missionaries. If whenever you say the word missionary, most people get a certain idea in their head what a missionary is. A missionary is someone who goes to a foreign country to tell people about Jesus. And so most people, they say, oh, so do you plant churches?

Do you are you pastoring a church? And that is a very important part of missions work, because that's what a missionary is. It's someone who goes and shares the gospel. But by that definition, we're we're all missionaries because we're all called to share the love of Christ with everyone we meet. So we're missionaries, whether it's in our immediate community, whether it's in the nearby neighborhoods or whether it's somewhere on the other side of the world.

So what we want to share this morning is just a brief background in the type of missions work that we feel God has called us to, because it's a little outside of the box from what most of us think of whenever we hear the word missionary. And then after that, I just have a short sermonette, I guess you could say, just a short sermon thought that I would like to share with you that also kind of ties into why we do the work we do the way we do. So many of the pastors of churches in East Africa, they pour nearly everything they have into their ministries, and it leaves very little for their personal and family needs. In addition to this, many of the ministries of those churches, children's homes, schools, feeding programs, they walk by faith each day, trusting that God will provide to meet their tremendous needs. Jesus, Jesus's model of ministry was concerned with the whole person.

It was a holistic model that was dedicated to meeting the spiritual, physical and social needs of people. And we believe that he calls us to share his concern and to be dedicated to this holistic model of ministry. So the question we begin to ask ourselves in our work in East Africa is how can we partner together to better equip and empower our brothers and sisters to live full and healthy lives as they work towards the building of God's kingdom? We continually attempt to prayerfully discern how we can stand alongside them, invest in them, but do so in such a way that doesn't negate their agency, their desires, and their capabilities. Many times, and this is something we all have been guilty of, many times development organizations, development workers, missionaries, we go overseas and we arrive and we say, we're here now, we have the answers, listen to us, follow us.

But the truth is, the people that we are going to work with, they have the answers as well. They have the abilities. They have the ideas and the ingenuity and the creativity. And often our work, the things that we do to try to build them up, actually destroy some of what they already had. And so we felt God calling us to partner with them together as we appreciate what they bring to the table and we appreciate, they appreciate what we bring and we appreciate what they bring.

And together, we are working to build something. Now, typically the answer has been to offer charitable aid. Now, I don't have to tell you that in Kenya there is extreme poverty. There's a lot of wealth now, but there's a huge divide between the wealthy and the poor. And we also do work in Ethiopia and there's extreme poverty there.

So often the answer has been to provide support through charitable aid. And aid is critical. There are times when it is absolutely the appropriate response, as in cases of disaster, conflict, extreme needs, or other emergencies. And this is an important component of the work we do. We have a child sponsorship program that has nearly 200 children in our program.

The majority of these children are a part of community and orphanage feeding programs that we partner with. And some of them are the children of rural pastors that desperately need extra support to meet the needs of their families. These funds assist with meeting educational needs and nutritional needs. Another area we focus on is relief distributions. During times of extreme drought, extreme flooding, outbreaks of diseases, and other disasters, we're able to partner with local ministries to help alleviate some of the effects by providing supplemental food items, mosquito nets, and medication.

We're also able to assist in meeting immediate needs of organizations, such as building facilities, classrooms, dorms, providing proper toilets. However, charitable aid alone can be problematic. It can create dependency. But even worse, it can actually stifle the creativity, ingenuity, and capabilities of individuals. There are countless examples around the world of well-meaning charity actually devastating local economies, stifling local indigenous solutions to chronic and persistent issues.

Charity is necessary, and it's a part of our Christian duty. However, as Muhammad Yunus, the founder of the world's leading micro-lending bank, once stated, charity of the world's leading micro-lending bank, once stated, Loan is no solution to poverty because it can perpetuate poverty by taking the initiative away from those that are poor. So instead, we're attempting to build relationships that invest in raising up local capabilities to create opportunities for growth and development in a process that is guided by them. This is done through relationships and partnerships that honor the dreams, desires, independence, and dignity of the local people. The great Christian writer C.

S. Lewis once said, the proper aim of giving is to put the recipient in a state where they no longer need our gift. So we try to build these relationships on respect and mutuality, recognizing what each one has to bring to the table. So what does this look like in practice? In our work in East Africa, we've begun to explore ways to develop partnerships like the ones I've described.

And we've done this in a variety of ways. These include microfinance loans, grants or gifts for sustainable development, and educational opportunities. The primary way we've approached this is through microfinance loans. And these are small, interest-free loans. We're not a bank.

I couldn't run a bank if I wanted to. But we provide small, interest-free loans, startup capital that can be used to start small businesses. These loans have to be paid back within an allotted amount of time, but the payments that come back are then invested in providing loans for others. So this has the potential to create a network of individuals that are creating an income for themselves, and in repaying loans, creating an opportunity for others to receive funds to start a business of their own. Some examples I think you probably see, we have Pastor Ayasu in Dilla, Ethiopia, who started a shop.

We have Pastor Dasalin and his wife Lydia, who started a chicken project in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Pastor Bugali and his wife Melissa have a cattle-rearing business. And one example I'll tell you about a little more in detail is George. George is a friend of ours who lives in western Kenya. But he, is that up there?

George is a friend of ours who lives in western Kenya, but he moved to Nairobi, the big city, to work to try to generate income for his family. Now he, when we met him, he told us he's, as he was working, he was working as a gardener, and he shared his vision to start a sugarcane farm in his home area so that he could provide, he could generate income to help pay his children's school fees. As you can see, he has a pretty large family. They live in a very typical home in western Kenya that's kind of made of mud with thatched roof. There are farmers in that area, and so he said that they were really struggling to meet the needs of their family.

He wanted to start a sugarcane farm. So we were able to give him a one-time small investment to rent three pots of sugarcane and buy the seeds that he needed to plant. After the first cycle, he was able to sell all of his sugarcane. He set aside enough to replant, and what he generated from that first cycle was able to pay his children's school fees, and he was able to start construction on a new, bigger home for his family. After the next cycle, he was able to add the home as well as pay for his school fees.

Now, seven years later, George is at the point that his oldest son, Peter, has now graduated high school, and because he was able to finish high school and he performed so well, he got scholarships to go to university in Hong Kong, where he went and he studied, he graduated, and he's continuing to live and work and help support his family in that way. And all of that was possible, all of that was possible because of one small-time gift loan that we provided to George to help generate that initial capital. George now, I talked to him not long ago, and he's no longer doing the sugarcane. He was able to use that to kind of raise some money, to build his home, to pay school fees, and now he's kind of moved into other areas. But that initial gift is what kind of started that going.

Another example is we give grants for sustainable development programs, and these are programs that we work on together, providing oversight and vision and connecting resources, as well as capital. So this is where we provide ministries, our partner ministries in the communities, with initial capital to invest in income-generating activities for sustainable development. The local ministries of our churches, feeding programs, schools, shelters, children's homes, they introduce their communities to the love of Christ through the provision of basic needs, medical care, education, and the love of Christ. We don't start any programs in Kenya. We only partner with existing programs to help them grow.

However, many of these ministries struggle to fund and sustain their work. So our goal is to equip them to become more effective and efficient through sustainable solutions. A few examples of this is we helped one of our orphanages in Nakuru start a water kiosk. We have fresh water that we have through our borehole and through a filtration system, but the community surrounding the school is a very low income slum, and so they don't have access to fresh water. And so we're able to sell our water at a discounted rate to the community.

And then through doing that, generate an income for the orphanage. We have, as well, a chicken project at one of our schools that helps sustain the entire feeding program. Through the sale of eggs and broilers, six-week-old chicks, they're able to completely fund their feeding program. Another example that we're really excited about, this one we've just done within the last year and it's still kind of growing, is the Hosanna Dairy Project. Hosanna is a home for 65 children that we've been partnering with for nearly 10 years now.

And they started a dairy project that provides milk each day for the children to consume, as well as enough to sell. The money saved through milk production, as well as the profit from the sales, sustains of the project, as well as provides supplemental income to meet other needs. The cow, which the children named the sheriff, I'm not really sure why, but you're seeing a picture of the sheriff, she actually gave birth to a healthy female calf recently, which will start providing milk in the future. So this is a one-time investment that's going to continue providing for the needs of this orphanage. Another example that we're very excited about, and this is a little bit outside, is the Tana River Delta village agriculture projects.

And we're starting to get into some community development work. Tana River Delta is in the eastern part of Kenya, and it's a region that faces many challenges. Even within Kenya, it's a region that is considered to be extremely underdeveloped and poor. It's remote and isolated, it has very little infrastructure, and it suffers from perpetual drought. But it also faces the threat of flooding whenever heavy rains come to the highlands and the river swells.

These are people that one day it will be sunny and bright and dry, and the next morning they'll wake up to water this deep with no rain when it rains in the highlands because the river can swell very quickly. They face constant challenges in regard to health, nutrition, lack of employment, and this region is also predominantly Muslim. Through a partnership with one of our local missionaries, Bocha Hussein, doors have opened for us to begin working within these communities. Now, Bocha is from this region. He speaks the Orma language.

The tribe in this area are the Orma and the Poponi. So he speaks the Orma language, and he was raised as a Muslim. But when he was a teenager, he had an encounter with Christ, which forced him to have to leave home. But a few years later, he returned because he felt led to share his faith in Christ with his people. He still has an immense respect for his people and his culture, but he said it's lacking because it doesn't have Jesus.

And so now Bocha lives, he and his wife, Hadijah, they live and they serve among the villages. Building relationships and sharing their faith. So through our relationship with Bocha, we've been able to conduct emergency relief distributions in these villages. Food and medicine whenever there's times of extreme disaster. But we wanted to find a way to help them overcome this constant need for outside support.

So through conversations with the people and through Bocha's amazing relationship he's established with them, we began investing in community agriculture projects. By providing a well and an irrigation system, the community was able to start farming and producing their own food. So we started in one village called Poponi. The project had both expected and unexpected benefits. When we started the project, we were expecting that it would help meet the needs of the community, as well as open more doors for Bocha and his wife Hadija to share their faith.

They can share in a way that I would never be able to coming in as an outsider. And we've seen this. It's provided the community with food, meaningful work, and hope. Additionally, it's opened tremendous doors for Bocha and Hadija to share their faith with members of these predominantly Muslim communities. He has been told by people in the communities that it's obvious that he and his Christian friends care about them.

So they want to know more about Jesus. Now Bocha has had several people from each village become Christians, and he's able to have small prayer gatherings in the evenings with these small communities in each village. It's making a tremendous holistic impact. But one unexpected benefit was the impact that these projects are having on the women in the communities. Now, many of the women in this region do not have control or they don't have very much control over their own lives.

Their husbands, religious leaders, and village elders make most of the meaningful decisions for them. However, in one village called Gardini, which is where we did our third project of this type, the men in the community were not interested in the agricultural project, but the women were. So we partnered with a group of seven women who you see pictured. Bocha is in that photo as well as the woman in the middle. Her name is Fatuma.

Now, the women oversee the management of the entire project, and they collectively decided that at each harvest, what they harvested would be sold, and the profit would be distributed equally among every household in the community. They're right at 53 households. So every time they harvest, they sell everything, which at first I wasn't in favor of. I said, no, we don't want to sell it. We want to use it.

And they said, no, it'll be far better. We'll sell it. We'll take all the income and we'll distribute it equally so that everyone in our community, even those that aren't working the farm, every person in the community gets an equal cut. So through their leadership, the entire community is being blessed. On my last visit to this village, I was discussing the program with them.

And of course, I was focusing on the development side, the numbers side. I wanted to know what the harvest yields had been, what their gross and net profits were, how much each household was receiving, when the next planting cycle would begin, which is all important stuff. But I was surprised when they told me that all of these things are great, but it's not what they see as being the greatest benefit of the program. They said that the greatest benefit of this program has been the dignity that it has given them, because it is giving them something that they can invest themselves in, something that they can control, something that they can lead, and something that was theirs. It's empowered them.

And through that, the entire community is benefiting. We've now done four of these projects in four different villages, and we're currently upgrading each of these projects to a solar pump. As I said before, they get constant sun. And so we're transitioning to solar pumps to take advantage of that free resource and save them the cost of the petrol to run the pump. We're excited that more doors are opening in other communities.

Communities that Boche used to not be allowed in are now calling him and saying, can you guys come and visit us? Can you come and see us? And so when we do that, it's opening the door for these projects, but it's also opening that door for relationship. And so we're very excited to see not only what we've seen, but what we're going to continue to see in this region. Now, there's often a temptation to focus on the successful projects and overlook the times when things fail.

And I would be lying to you if I said nothing ever fails. However, failures are a critical and important step in growth. Failures allow us to reevaluate and they allow the Holy Spirit to direct us towards new possibilities. Now, some of the reasons projects fail, as you can imagine, sometimes it's uncontrollable. Sometimes it's weather patterns or unstable government or conflict.

However, other times it's rooted in human error. It can be negligence. It can be ignorance on our part and the part of our partners. In some cases, it can be because of poor choices. Because not everyone has the giftings to run these kind of projects.

Not everyone has the natural gifting to make an income-generating project successful. I would imagine that if all of us in this room were given the exact same amount of capital, we were placed in the same location with the same circumstances, there are some of you that would run thriving businesses, there are some of us that would just survive, and there are some of us that would probably be out of business before we open our doors. Because not everyone has that gifting. And that's something we started to realize among our partners, is that even if they have the ideas, even if we have the ideas, we need to make sure they're equipped to do that well. And so we've started working on educational opportunities to invest in creating a network that will support them in surviving, or support them in being successful.

Now, one of this is the development of micro-business trainings and seminars. These seminars teach a very basic background on how to develop a business plan, how to cast vision, how to create a budget, how to locate available resources, and most importantly for, well, I say for this area, I think for most areas, is how to save for the future, how to invest and save for the future. They offer basic instruction on an introductory level. However, they're providing individuals with a strong support, a base, to help them build for their future. These seminars, we've just kind of started them, we've done a few at this point, and it's something we're constantly seeking people who have more experience than us to help us to grow them and make them more, just help them be more effective and more successful.

But we're very excited about the doors that are opening and the excitement that the people have about these projects. Another solution we found is connecting our partners with other educational opportunities. One example of this is there's an organization called Care of Creation. It's a Christian organization in East Africa that teaches approaches for sustainable and conservative agriculture, conservation agriculture. We utilize this ministry because this is run by a guy who's been farming in East Africa for 40 years.

He knows the ins and outs. He knows how to do it. Now he's providing a service to farmers within the area to help them do it more effectively. So we're using him as a resource, and we connect our partners with him, and we take them to trainings to better equip them and give them the education they need. Other opportunities are sowing classes, farming resources, utilizing government services that are available, even university interns.

We had one university intern come to one of our villages and stay for three months and just pour himself into that community with the farming practices he knew. In these situations, we see ourselves as a bridge, a bridge that's connecting our partners with resources and individuals that can help us all thrive. Now these approaches, this approach to ministry, it's not always perfect. However, it's a holistic approach and invest in the lives of the people and their ministries through building their capacities and their capabilities. It's not always an easy approach.

At times it would be far easier to arrive, give some aid, and move along. However, it's an approach that is concerned with the total well-being and long-term development of individuals, ministries, and churches, so that they don't merely survive, but they thrive. This approach allows us to stand with our brothers and sisters in relationships of equality, mutuality, and respect, creating space and opportunities for the gospel, for the love of Christ, to impact lives and transform communities. And this is our heart and our model of ministry that we feel God has led us to over the years. So we wanted to take the opportunity just to give you an idea of what that looked like.

Now my wife, Jess, is going to come and share just a bit, and then I have a short, if you can time it, 10-minute sermon that I want to share at the end. Hey, everyone. It's great to be here with you today, and I didn't want to miss the opportunity to come and just greet you and let you know how much it means to us that you've allowed us to come and share our heart and vision for ministry in Kenya. I just wanted to make you aware of two things that I'm going to leave on one of these tall tables as you're going out today. If something Jamie has said and shared today has grabbed your heart and you would like to stay in touch with our ministry and touch with the work that we're doing, we do have some resources that you can take with you.

We have a small magnet that has our website, picture of our family. You can stick it on your fridge. Remember us in your prayers. That's the first way you can stand with us, and we'd be very grateful for that. A second way is the way that we are in Kenya, the way that we are able to be on the field doing this work is because of faithful people who partner with us financially.

If you're interested, and you don't have to commit to anything today, but if you're interested in learning more about that, we do have these cards that you can take with you that give you more information about how you can give. You can give online. You can give through check. There are multiple avenues, but if God lays that on your heart, then we would be most grateful for that. If you want to be on our newsletter, you could also fill out this card and just give us your email address.

Leave it on one of the tables, the welcome table. We'll give it to us personally. We'll add you to that and keep you posted on how things are going when we return. We are returning to Kenya late July, and we'll get back to work at that time. So thank you so much for allowing us to be here.

It's great to be with you. So thank you for allowing us to share that. In the remaining time I have left, I just want to share a few thoughts with you from the book of Luke. A few weeks ago, I guess at this point, a couple of months ago, just before we came home, I had the opportunity to speak to a large group of Kenyan pastors on what the call of the church is. What is the call of the church?

What is the purpose of the church? And the talk had to do with the church being a body of people that embrace and share kingdom values, the values of the kingdom of Jesus. Now, this is a topic that God has been dealing with me for some time now and challenging me with. And it has greatly influenced my life, continues to influence my life, as well as our approach to missions. So I just wanted to share a few of those thoughts with you today.

I'm going to be reading from the book of Luke chapter four, verses 14 through 22, and it'll be on the screen. All right, actually, it's through verse 21. It says, It says, As we read this passage, Jesus has just returned to Galilee. But before diving into this passage, we need a little bit of background. We read that he had just returned.

So where was he? I think it's important for us to properly understand where was he? Where was he returning from? What had happened? If we look back at the passages preceding this one, we read about Jesus's baptism in chapter three, verses 21 through 28.

John the Baptist was leading a movement of renewal and repentance and a recommitted Israel into existence through baptism, as you guys will celebrate soon. He was preparing for the arrival of the kingdom of God. Jesus appears on the riverbank, and he's recognized as the leader of this new movement. As Jesus is baptized in the River Jordan, Luke records that he is marked by the Spirit and the voice of God saying, You are my beloved son, in you I am well pleased. Luke records this moment so that there is no doubt for those of us reading this gospel who Jesus is.

He is not just another prophet. He is not just another teacher. He's not just another man in history. He's the son, the Messiah, and he's coming to establish the kingdom of God. Immediately after this, Luke records the genealogy of Jesus, which seems a bit out of place within our modern context of narrative.

I know when I've read this in the past, you read this huge moment where Jesus is baptized and a voice of heaven comes down. And then suddenly it's, and Jesus begat so-and-so who came from so-and-so, and it's giving this family tree. And it really, it seems out of place. But for Luke's purposes, this was very intentional. Because the genealogy traces Jesus' origins back through Hebrew history.

He traces Jesus' origins back to David, back to Abraham, back to Adam. Now in Luke, for us, sometimes those are just names. It's like, I remember stories about those names. But for the Hebrews, in doing this, Luke is reiterating that through the line of David, the celebrated and historic king of Israel, he's making that connection to show us Jesus is the messianic king of Israel. And connecting us through Abraham, he's reminding them that the blessing of God was promised through him.

And Jesus is going to bring that blessing. And then he's connecting all the way back to Adam. That through Adam, this blessing is not only for Israel, but it's for all the sons and daughters of humanity. Jesus is the king of all. Now after his baptism, Jesus is led into the wilderness, which we read about in Luke chapter 4, verses 1 through 13.

And he faces temptations. He's tempted to turn stones to bread, to throw himself from the top of the temple, to receive all the kingdoms of the world. One of my favorite Christian writers, Henry Nouwen, claims that these temptations of Jesus reveal the same types of temptations you and I have every day. The temptation to be relevant. The temptation to be spectacular.

The temptation to be powerful. But Jesus rejected those temptations. And he demonstrated that his kingdom does not operate in the way that earthly kingdoms do. This is a different kind of kingdom with a different kind of ruler. So when we read in chapter 4, verse 14, that Jesus has returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, this is where he is coming from.

This is what he has been through. With that background established. That he is the anointed Messiah. That he is... The Son of God bringing the kingdom of heaven to earth, and we look more closely at the passage we read earlier, we can see it a bit more clearly.

After returning to Galilee, filled with the power of the Spirit, he returns to Nazareth, he enters the synagogue, he stands and he reads from the scroll of Isaiah, and he reads a messianic prophecy which was written in the 8th century BC, 800 years before this moment, and he reads, and our Bible is this Isaiah 61, 1 and 2, but he's reading from a scroll, and he finds this verse, it's very intentional, he asked for the scroll, he finds this passage, and he says, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me to preach the good news to the poor, freedom for prisoners, new sight for the blind, freedom for the oppressed. This is his kingdom announcement, he's saying, I am here to establish God's kingdom, and this is what that kingdom is about. It's not about those temptations, it's not the same as earthly kingdoms, it is a unique countercultural kingdom, this is what I'm here to establish. Now all of the Gospels highlight Jesus as the messianic king, but Luke uniquely highlights the social aspects of Jesus' calling. It says he brings freedom.

Now this original passage was written in Greek, and the Greek word for freedom is a thesis or a phasis. It literally means release from bondage, sight to the blind, healing from the wounded. It's release from very specific types of bondage, and he announces that he is bringing the year of the Lord's favor. And then he says this good news is specifically for the poor. Now the scroll he's reading from would have been in Hebrew, and the word poor is A-N-I, ani, and it's much broader than just people that don't have money.

When we think of poor, we think of people that don't have a lot of resources. But ani was referring to poor in many different ways. It was people of low social status. It was people that are commonly rejected. It was people that are social outsiders, such as people of other ethnic groups.

These are the poor. These are the ani. There are people that have been outcasts. There are people that have been ostracized. There are people that aren't commonly lifted up.

And Jesus is claiming that the kingdom of God is especially good news for these people. Now immediately following this, we see in chapters four through eight a series of stories that illustrate exactly what Jesus's good news for the poor looks like. And I'm not going to take the time to walk through them, but I encourage you, if you're interested, spend some time this week reading through these chapters because we see numerous healings and examples of Jesus's grace for outcasts and those that are oppressed. He establishes himself. He gives his proclamation and he goes and he shows us what it looks like.

But in the middle of these chapters, in chapter six, Luke records a teaching of Jesus that some have called the Sermon on the Plain. Now it's very similar to the Sermon on the Mount, which is a more popular version, which Matthew records in chapter five through seven of Matthew. Some have referred to this sermon as Jesus's manifesto of the upside down kingdom. And I love this title, the upside down kingdom, because the kingdom of Christ does not operate in the same way that earthly kingdoms operate. It's upside down.

So in chapter six, verse 12 to 26, we read Luke's version of the Beatitudes when Jesus says, blessed are you who are poor for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who hunger now for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now because you're going to laugh. Blessed are you who, when people hate you, when they exclude you, when they insult you, when they reject your name as evil because of the Son of Man, rejoice in that day. Leap for joy because great is your reward in heaven.

For that is how their ancestors treated the prophets. These are upside down teachings, blessings and poverty, satisfaction and hunger, joy and sorrow. And Jesus follows that by giving a teaching on loving our enemies, a very countercultural idea, not only for them, but for us today. How well do we love our enemies? It's upside down.

Chapter six, verses 39 through 49, he then gives a teaching on how we should not judge others. This is to a culture of people who defined all of their religious laws by judging others. This is countercultural. This is upside down. And we're just as guilty these days.

This teaching illustrates that the kingdom of God is not like earthly kingdoms where the rich, the powerful, the privileged, the elite are preferred. It's a kingdom where the last shall be first and the first shall be last. And this is very good news, even for those that are rich and powerful and privileged. Because we get to be, all of us get to participate together in this society of joy and love and reciprocity. Jesus is calling us to be a new alternative people of God.

Very different from what the religious leaders in Israel had become. It's a kingdom of people that practice radical generosity. It's a kingdom of people that put the needs of others before their own, that practice servant leadership, using positions of powers to serve, not to exploit and oppress. It's a kingdom of people that are committed to peacemaking and forgiveness. A kingdom of people that are deeply spiritual and committed to their faith, but reject religious hypocrisy.

A kingdom of people that walk in humility, justice, and mercy, that are known by their love. Not to be too cheesy, but it's a kingdom of people that are salt of the earth. This radical kingdom that Jesus was teaching and his claim to divine authority created resistance and aggression among the Pharisees. As you can imagine, Israel's religious leaders, they saw his teaching as a threat to their religious traditions, to their sense of authority and power. Everything he was saying went against their established order.

They were committed to the status quo. So they resisted his claims because if his teachings were to be implemented, it would disrupt the religious and social order that was well established. So they revolted against this. They began to call Jesus a heretic and a blasphemer and a drunk and a sinner. They rejected his kingdom call.

They rejected him. They rejected his teaching. And ultimately this contributed to his death. Now God redeemed that death. God used that death.

But the kingdom of Christ has the last word. For in his resurrection, Christ conquered sin and death and affirmed that death and affirmed that this kingdom is eternal. The values of this kingdom is eternal. Therefore, we as members of this kingdom must be known as countercultural people that extend the grace and love of God to everyone we encounter. And this is my heart.

This is my heart for myself, for my family. This is my heart for the church, the church globally, the church in Kenya, the church in the U.S., and for this body of the church. This is the hope for me, for my family, for each of you to see social, physical, and spiritual transformation in our own lives and in our communities.

To see his kingdom come. That is what drives the work that we do. And that is our prayer for you and for this church, that's salt church. Whether you're continuing to meet here, or eventually you're in a permanent location, wherever God has you, that this church would be a place where people can experience and know the radical grace of God. That they can come to know the incredible love that Jesus has for each and every one of us.

And so that is our prayer for you. We ask that if you think of us, pray that over us, that we will be a kingdom people. And we commit to praying that over you. We have a list of churches that we've been fortunate to visit and go to that partner with us. And we will be praying for you and praying that God continues to guide you as a church and as a people.

Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your love and for your grace and for your mercy. We thank you that you have established a kingdom that is so much better than anything we could ever come up with. Because it's a kingdom built on love, grace, generosity. It's a kingdom where there's enough.

And so we pray, Lord, that we would be a people who walk in that. That we would be a people who take your love, who take the transformational love that you have for each of us, and we share that with everyone we come in contact with. Lord, we pray that we would have a heart and a burden for anyone we meet that are hurting, that are longing, that are desiring something. Father, we just pray that you would use us as your hands and feet to meet those needs. And Father, even in our lives, we have stuff, we have areas where we are poor, or we have areas where we are hurting or we are lacking.

We have areas of pain, Father, regardless of if that's physical or social, Father, you know our needs. And so we give them to you now. We just pray, Lord, that you would heal us, you would meet us, you would transform us, raise us up so that we can be better examples of who you are. Lord, we thank you and we praise you. In your name we pray.

Amen.