The youth of today are not the future of the church, our pastor often reminds us: they are the church of today. Our youth pastor feels likewise, adding that he believes they are the most fervent, on-fire Christ-followers in America.
Earlier this month, our student ministry team helped our middle and high school students participate in the Never the Same (NTS) Camp at Houghton University in southwestern New York. We all spent a week worshipping the Lord, growing in their faith and understanding, and enjoying some good-natured (but fervent) team competitions.
Last Sunday, I drove to Toronto, Canada to learn from and help Ethiopian brothers and sisters share their culture and ministries in their homeland.
I serve remotely from home, about 8,000 miles from my field colleagues in SIM South Africa and about 14 hours’ drive from my sending office colleagues at SIM USA in Charlotte, NC. However, I’ve long yearned to visit my SIM Canada’s Toronto office and to meet colleagues there—my “closest cousins,” so to speak—it was a blessing to finally make this trip.
As followers of Christ, we are called to be good stewards of everything we have, not owning it ourselves but taking care of it out of love, respect and appreciation for God entrusting it to us. We should make the most of what we have and also be willing to share it with others.
This applies doubly so with God’s word, the Bible.
“Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates, so that your days and the days of your children may be many in the land the Lord swore to give your ancestors, as many as the days that the heavens are above the earth.” — Deuteronomy 11:18-21 (NIV)
I have had a well-loved NIV Student Bible by Zondervan since early in our marriage. I remember Tracy and I going together to a local Christian book store and examining the different options. We compared such physical things as typesetting, margin width, and likely durability in addition to the readability of translations, the quality and extent of explanatory notes and study guides, and even our personal tastes about visual style. We each picked one that suited our preferences and goals, and we each still have them.
They have accompanied us to church services, Bible studies and theology classes, and across the ocean. Mine sits at my desk and (although often replaced by the quicker efficiency of an online search) remains my favorite for deeper, lingering study of God’s word. I love that it is filled with my thoughts, questions and notes from years of study, and that those windows into my faith are there for our son and daughter now and will be even after we pass on.
My friend helping me with morning devotions in Cape Town, South Africa, in 2016.
“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” — 2 Timothy 3:16-17 (NIV)
Sadly, though, my old friend sat for many months on a back corner of my study desk. Having traveled with me to a great many places over the years, its binding started cracking, and I couldn’t bear the thought of it breaking entirely and accelerating its decline. “I’ll look up how to fix it properly” wound up taking far longer than I’d anticipated. Even after the materials arrived, finding time to make the repair, getting (and keeping) a clear enough work surface, and working up the courage to risk making the damage worse all delayed me further.
I wanted to be a good steward and make the repair and get back to using it well, but I also wanted to be a good steward and not accidentally damage it further. Having access to a pocket Bible for travel and to dozens of electronic Bibles through my computer and phone made it less urgent.
I think that The Living Bible‘s paraphrase of Ecclesiastes 11:4best expresses the kick-in-the-pants that I have needed: “If you wait for perfect conditions, you will never get anything done.”
Today, I finally cleared off my study desk and set about being a faithful steward. I used a special glue for book binding (non-acidic, remains flexible after drying, etc.), some book binding cloth, and a sheet of tabloid printer paper to reinforce the remaining cloth binding and cover it with a seamless layer of paper. The repair isn’t perfect or particularly pretty, but it seems sufficient and sturdy, and it seems like it will enable this Bible to continue helping me grow in faith, in knowing God and in making Him known.
Like many tasks, this repair took less time than I’d thought it might, and it would’ve been better stewardship to just get this done months ago. But even that is like so much of faith: the actions or failures of our past should not inhibit or delay us in using well today what the Lord is entrusting to us, be that a Bible to study, His word to share, or the conversations and relationships in which we might share His love for all of us.
“Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” — Matthew 28:18-20 (NIV)
The online editions of SIM South Africa’s SIMnow Autumn (March) 2024 magazine are available.
This is the seventh issue I have compiled and edited, and we continue to get good feedback about it from readers.
A challenge, though, is that getting the magazine to the readers is increasingly difficult. South Africa’s postal system faces many challenges itself, and those sometimes delay or prevent delivery for our readers.
We have long posted the PDFs of our magazine online to help alleviate this, but we recognize that PDFs of two-page magazine spreads aren’t easy to read on a phone, which is where most reading happens nowadays. While we are working to develop a more suitable long-term solution, we have created a one-page-wide adaptation of the magazine for distribution by WhatsApp, which is a very popular app in and around South Africa.
“Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.”
Luke 1:1-4 (NIV)
Articles this time included:
a brief story about the founding of Young Legends, a youth soccer program in three cities of South Africa.
a story about two of our workers developing a farm into a community and youth ministry center.
a farewell message from SIM’s former international director and an article introducing our new one.
an article and photos from a conference helping African churches send missionaries
a “Why I Wrote” books feature by the founder of Sports Friends, a worldwide youth soccer program.
The Heffron Family 