We Are Created for Community

I like to think about the Creation story in Genesis. It’s pretty crazy. I mean, when we read it through fresh lenses and just observe it as if we haven’t heard it a million times before, it rings true just like it always has; but there are some really cool things in the first two chapters of the Bible. The story of Creation goes a little something like this:

God is. The story begins with God and His eternal, infinite existence. So, there He is—just doing God things...because He’s God. The Triune God of the soon to be universe is just fellowshipping with Himself—just kicking it—in His triune nature. God is three in one and one in three—there is this Godhead community. Then the Godhead decides to start creating stuff from nothing. He creates and says, “It’s good.” He creates some more and says, “It’s good.” Then He does some more and says again, “It’s good.” He does this seven times: creates and declares His creation to be good.

But then He says something interesting. God says, “It is NOT good...” Well, what is He talking about? He finishes the sentence by declaring that it is not good for man to be alone. This is really cool. Adam is there in the garden surrounded by animals of all kinds—and yet God says man is alone. He designed us for community with Him and for community with others. He declares this at the very beginning of the story. He created man and it was good—but it wasn’t done yet. God’s plan was always community.

I think I’ve always understood this to be true—academically. But I think CCP has grown me in the depth of being really acquainted with this truth. I miss my CCP teammates. There is no debating it. Community and fellowship with them deeply blessed and enriched my life. But praise God because I have found sweet fellowship with Kiwi believers here in New Zealand. Even though university has the week off, and all the students have left for the holiday, there is a remnant that is still here in Dunedin. It brings me great joy to know that the Father ordained that this week in my life should be laden with the fellowship of believers.

There are men here that ferociously love Christ and I am so thankful to be around them. I think this stirs my heart to worship because they are living proof that God is making good on His promise to save and transform peoples from every tribe, tongue, and nation. Let our prayer be that God would bring more and more Kiwis into our community—that He would save men and women and bring them into sweet fellowship with Himself and also, us.

-Nate Xanders

“If you really believed in an omnipresent God, you would operate as if you were never alone and without community and fellowship.” –Dr. Del Tackett

And Then There Was One

On July 6th, twelve Americans arrived in New Zealand as the Cross Cultural Team. Seven weeks later, on August 20th at approximately 9:38am New Zealand Standard Time, eleven members of Cross Cultural Team got on a plane to begin the 30+ hour journey to Nashville, Tennessee, USA. But one team member was left behind. The twelfth and final member watched as the plane pulled away from the terminal at the Dunedin airport. There were 12...and then there was one.

Calm down, they left me here on purpose—nobody panic. Yes, the rumors are true. You read Zach’s blog entry correctly. I (Nate Xanders) am still here and it wasn’t a mistake. Well—I mean them leaving me here wasn’t accidental...only time will tell if it was a bad idea or not. I’m kidding. It’s not like being left on the other side of the planet all alone is a big deal or anything. And living all alone in this big, old, dark, cold house is a cake walk. Sure, I almost peed my pajamas last night because of how terrifyingly empty this house is at 2am, but it’s all for the sake of the gospel so...no big deal. I’m just joking; it’s really not that bad. But seriously, it’s hard to fill such a large humor void left by the departure of Sean Stallings and Megan Sparks. It’s like a laughter vacuum has been created here in Dunedin and now the whole town has no idea why they’re so sad.

On a happy note, I won’t have to do any grocery shopping during my extra month here. There’s enough food here to last me a good six weeks. If we had left the other Nate here, he’d have enough food for about 10 days. Thank you to all the girls for buying way more food that you could have ever eaten. I think I could eat Weet-Bix three times a day and never run out. Sam...that flounder you bought...what were you thinking?

Buying way to much at Pak n’ Save = CCP Fail
Leaving it all to Nate = CCP Win

Also, you guys have no idea how much work they did getting this house ready for us. It’s crazy—and now I’m helping put it all back the way it was before. It’s pretty encouraging to see the church’s vision for this house. I hope CCP 2011 will grasp the weight of Grace Bible Church’s dedication to this ministry. I think we all know how greatly they served us this summer (winter here in the southern hemisphere).

I’d like to give each of you my thoughts about you over the past 48 hours as I have missed you all very much.

Megan and Liz: your bunk bed refused to come down. It is rebelling against the fact that you’re no longer here in the house. I think you two should fly back so you can take it down yourselves.

Nate F.: All our apples still smell like your stinky tea. Thanks for nothing. But hey, I still love you brother and can’t wait to fellowship with you soon.

Fennell: I miss you snoring right above me in the top bunk. Something about it was soothing. Every time I hangout with Hugh I think about how encouraged I am by you.

Kyle: Kyyyyle! When stuff goes bad around the house, I have no one to blame. When stuff goes bad around the house, there’s no one to fix it. Also, I miss our conversations...and when I say conversations, I mean you talking to me in your sleep and me telling you, “Shut up, Kyle!”

Sam: Once again...the flounder...you’re killing me. The whole kitchen smells like fish now. You owe me (and Zach) one “Blood Brother” and/or a “Christ Receiveth Sinful Men.”

Kendall: Skew! Skew! “Grow up Kendall.”

Sean: Finances took Josh like a million years—and it was just me. Thanks for serving us this summer and being the goofiest dude on the planet. I dig you and everything about you.

Girls: Your shower is like a phone booth—for oompa-loompas. It is really that small—like, I’m amazed. But thanks for leaving me all the girly soaps and stuff. I smell great—like flowers, bubbles and the stuff that dreams are made of.

Megan: Since you left I figured someone would need to take your place at spilling food everywhere. I got tuna, egg yolk, apple juice, and milk all over the kitchen in 24 hours.

ZNR: I found some boxer briefs with your initials on them. Thanks for being a great CCP team-leader. I appreciate you and all you did for us as a team.

I love you all. Please pray for me and continue to contact via email and Facebook. I treasure your encouragement and prayerful intercessions on my behalf.

My friends have left me alone on the other side of the planet and yet I will praise God for He, and not my friends, is my rock and my salvation. He is my fortress and I will not be shaken.

-Nate Xanders

God Softens Concrete

The week started with a bang on Monday when Riz, James, and Duffy came over to play mafia (a card game). After the game was over, James and Duffy stuck rolled out, but Riz (the darker guy standing in the picture) stayed around. It wasn’t long before we were moving through the depths of the gospel. God was at work, as Riz knew himself to be a sinner, and unworthy of someone to die in his place. It was mind blowing for him. It ended with him taking a free Bible to read through the gospel of John, with the plan of us meeting up with him and the rest of “Team Duff” for pizza Wednesday night to discuss the gospel.


The next day we went and ate lunch with a guy named Nick, who Nate F. had shared the gospel with last week. He was having trouble believing in the validity of the scriptures and hadn’t thought much about the gospel since the last convo. We left him with some literature to address his issues. Nate meets up with him again thursday for the last time.

Wednesday night rolled around and we met up with Team Duff to eat at Filadelphio’s Pizza. Before we had been sitting there for 5 minutes, Kendall asks Riz if he has been reading John, and he had! The conversation quickly exploded into tons of questions about the gospel and Christianity. We ended up spending about 2.5 hours talking through the gospel with these 6 guys as most of them heard it truly for the first time. “I never thought Christianity was like this. I just thought the bible was a list of rules Christians kept” was one comment I remember. In the van ride back to their college, they asked, “Can we go back to your house and get those free bibles, like Riz got?” So we took them all back to our house and gave them Bibles and set them off to read the gospel of John. A couple days later Duffy told me there were things in John he “had been showing everybody”.
(Glenn in the Red Beanie and Tom in the blue/white/gray jacket)
We ended up spending the weekend with them at our evangelistic retreat, sharing stories of our conversions, and fielding random questions as they came up, but mostly just loving them. Right before bed, Duffy pops up from his sleeping bag and says, “Hey Xanders, how long you been Christian?” While to the right of him, Tom is questioning Nate frantz about 2 Peter and asking me if I go to church every Sunday. It was a wild time.

We will only see them a couple more times before we leave. Our prayer is that these six guys will join the Staff guy Josh Eyre or Nate Xanders (a team member we are leaving for 4 weeks) and study the gospel of John with them, and eventually to repent of their sin and follow Christ. We would ask that this would be your prayer also.
This picture is of our evangelistic Retreat.

- Zach, Nate F. and Kendall

Exciting Times

This past week has been a very exciting time for myself and the team because we are coming to the point of sharing the Gospel with our new friends. The stories are amazing of just how much people just don't know about Jesus and Christianity in general. It is really great to see the interest many people have taken from the ministry teams sharing the Gospel! We are all praying that God would grow these seeds!

Over the past month I have just tried to get connected with some of the students that attend Grace Bible Church, and it has been a great time to encourage the Christians in their walk with the Lord. Your life looks especially here in New Zealand as a Christian, and it is even harder if you don't have any other Christian friends. I also started playing with a soccer team (the Nova Girls). I only played 3 games with them, but it has been cool getting connected with some of the girls. I wish I had more time here to develop deeper relationships with them! I have also been hanging out with two girls, Holly and Kirsty (in the picture). They have become my good friends here in Dunedin! Holly is a Christian and we started reading 1 John together on Fridays and just talking through questions she has. These times have been really great! Kirsty doesn't really have any spiritual background, and I shared the Gospel with her this week so just pray I would encourage Kirsty to think about the things we talked about and to investigate Christ, but most of all pray that God would bring her to know Christ as Lord and Savior! God has also opened up some doors to friendships just within the last two weeks with the Muslim community in Dunedin, and it has been SO sweet so far. I have got to meet 4 girls (2 from Malaysia and 2 from Saudi Arabia). One has invited me to come to the mosque this week to break their fast seeing as though it is their month of fasting (Ramadan). Please pray for open doors to at least give them a Bible before the team comes back home. So, that just about sums things up!

I really don't want to leave, but I thank God so much for the 6 weeks we have had here so far. It has been a great time to enjoy and be challenged by living with everyone here in Grace House. It has been great to see a Gospel community being lived out before my eyes. It has been a great time of being sharpened by having people speak truth into my life and help to point out sins in my life that I never would have seen. It has been great seeing what full time ministry looks like, and so, so much more! I could go on and on!


In light of these things please pray:
-God would get the glory he deserves in NZ and Dunedin especially at Otago Universtiy
-God would change hearts as the Gospel goes out (at the retreat and the rest of our time here)
-God would give strength to Josh and the Kiwi students as they follow up on our contacts

Thanks (or as the Kiwis say 'Cheers!') for your prayers!

All Systems Go

This Saturday and Sunday we are inviting all our Kiwi (NZ) friends to a farm in Palmerston, which can be seen in the photos above with sheep farmer Paul. One of the main reasons for this trip is to connect some of our lost Kiwi friends with students here in Grace student ministry who can continue to share and live out Christ to them. We also hope to share the Gospel with any of our friends who we might not have had the chance to do so with yet.

As you can see it would be pretty key for them to be able to make it. Pray that God would remove obstacles allowing them to go.

Another huge deal going on tomorrow night - we are having our rugby mates from Studholme college over tomorrow night to eat pizza and play poker for a trophy. Pray that God would enable all the guys to come and that he would provide the opportunity for gospel conversations and that he would change their hearts Ez 36:26-27.

Our time is dwindling here in Dunedin, yet God is blessing us with last minute and meaningful relationships. Sam and Ben have enjoyed hanging with Hugh, a second year student studying religion. Hugh knows quite a bit about Christianity and understands its unique message, but has yet to take up the cross and follow Jesus. How awesome would it be to see a new birth here in NZ this summer?

Coming to a close!!

Meet Sasha, Alicia, and Rose! Please pray for these 3! We have had the opportunity to share the gospel with all of them. Sasha comes from a Catholic background and Rose and Alicia have had little previous spiritual influence! Megan and I have spend a significant amount of time with these girls and we pray that God changes there hearts! The gospel was very new for Rose and Alicia. They were very happy to hear the message of Christ, but are quite apathetic to the call of repentance. When I asked Rose if she had ever thought about spiritual things she said, "I hope that this life isn't all there is." And then at the end of our conversation there response was, "Wow, Sheffey, that is so cool that you can beleive something so strongly...we don't think we could ever be so sure of anything." We are not exactly sure where Sasha is, but we pray that God will change her heart through the gospel. Sasha has a hard time wrapping her mind around the grace of the gospel because of the her works-based Catholic background. She was able to say though that she, "wasn't living as she should". We had the conversation with her after she came to evening church with us.


I thought I would through up a couple of pictures of Josh and Kirsten! They will be carrying on the ministry after we leave which is not to far away! We really only have about 1 week left before we will start our debriefing and closing down of our trip! It has flown by!!
Here are some of our newest friends! From left to right Hannah, Marianna, Raywen, Lauren, Liz, Tess, Megan, Me. Hannah is one of the Kiwi students who has been hanging out with us so that she can meet the girls with whom we have connected. We are trying hard to connect our contacts to other christian students so that when we leave they will be able to carry on where we left off. Marriana is a sweet christian girl we met on campus who we hope contunues to get plugged into the ministry and the church! Raywen and Lauren are here flatmates (housemates).

Plowing Concrete with Rocker Haircuts

Some have said that ministry in New Zealand is like plowing concrete, and we have found this to be the case. But after many activities and events, our relationships have started paying dividends.

Starting early this week I heard a student named Mike Mufatta say, “I have never heard that part” as he pointed to a diagram that we drew for him to explain the gospel. Mike had heard that Jesus had died, but he had no idea what Jesus had died for. He spent anywhere from 30 secs to 1 minute after each question deliberating over the answer in complete silence, having never heard or thought about his sinfulness and God’s wrath.

Later that night we went to eat, get haircuts, and play basketball with what has come to be called “Team Duffy” which is just 6 guys from a college (dorm) called Unicol, one being named Ryan Duffman. We had planned to share the gospel at the Dinner table but we did not have the opportunity. We went from there to a session of hair cutting, where the Kiwis got to plan our Rocker Haircuts to make us fully Kiwi. Later while playing basketball, I asked Riz (a member of team Duffy) if he would be interested in getting together and talking more about Christianity. He said that him and Team Duffy had been talking about it ever since we shared some of the gospel with them the first time and then said, “We must not understand well, because we still can’t figure out why someone would just take all our messed up stuff.” My thought was, “I don’t either, but Jesus does.”

Earlier that same day, Nate Frantz met with a guy named Nick who has come out to do a few activities with us, but has mostly kept a small distance between us. Nate communicated the gospel clearly to him, only to find that he understood the gospel decently well already, having heard it from another ministry, but couldn’t believe the Bible was true. Nate began to blow his mind with facts about the scriptures and their reliability. Nick was surprised to say the least.

To the left (Riz, Zach, Nate, Kendall, Duffy, James, and Sam)

As you can tell, things have been livening up a little bit around here and we need your prayers. We want to trust God with our coming week that we will be able to have follow up conversations with Nick and Mike, while making the gospel completely clear to Team Duffy. Pray that they would be saved. (Team duffy = Duffy, James, Riz, Matt, Tom, Glenn). We are taking as many of them as possible to a retreat this coming Saturday. Pray for their attendance. Also, if you have a sec, blow up those pictures of our new Rocker haircuts that are COMPLETELY NORMAL HERE!

-Zach

Week 5

The weeks are flying by, It's crazy to think that we have less than three weeks left. I feel that the amount of things we have learned are incredible life lessons about ministry that could not be learned or taught by reading books, doing inductive studies, or being placed in any other environment. I feel that it is clearing up our visions for what God has in plan for our lives. One of the hard things to come to grips with is that relational ministry is slow and takes lots of time. It is really hard to come to grip with because for the first time alot of us have been able to focus solely on ministry without worrying about school and grades, and the students we are meeting aren't going the same pace as us because they do have those things to worry about.

Some things all you guys and gals can be praying for.

-The girls are having a girls movie night tonight, so pray that they would really bond with the girls and they would have ample opportunities to share the Gospel.

-Studholme College- pray that the relationships we have the in the college would grow past good acquaintances into real friends- last week we got put on hold because they left to go on a ski trip

-University college- Tonight Zach, Nat, and Kendall are eating dinner with Duffy, James, Ryan, and Tom and plan on sharing the Gospel with them.

- We are also playing basketball with a bunch of guys tonight at Unipol (The Gym) so pray for a good turn out and gospel conversations.

-Pray that we like Paul in 2 Corinthians 1 would really on God alone and not out own strength or knowledge

-Pray that god would change the hearts of the kiwi's who hear the Gospel

-Friday night we are having a game night and inviting all our lost kiwi friends pray for a big turn out and gospel conversations.

-we are also having a evangelistic retreat next week end, pray that tons of our lost kiwi friends would be pumped about coming and turn out and get to hear and see the gospel lived out.

Rightly Placed Hope Frees Us to Love Well

This summer during my quiet times I have been doing most of my reading in the letters of Paul. Because of my particular aptitude and personality, I really like the truly meaty theological selections from his writings. The truth is this: when I read through his letters, I usually just read all the other stuff as quickly as possible just so I can get to the passages that are my favorites. This is a really worthless way to read scripture. I already know what those favorite passages say and I know what they’re communicating doctrinally and theologically, but I don’t often stop to meditate on the other stuff that is just as important—if not, more important for me to read and implement into my life. I give you Colossians 1 as Exhibit A.

I think Colossians 1:13-23 is one of the greatest passages of scripture that Paul ever wrote (and for goodness sake, he wrote 16 unbelievable chapters in Romans). But as I began to read Paul’s letters this summer, I decided to really, really read all of the text and try as best I could to absorb it all. As I took this approach, I didn’t even make it past verse 4 in Colossians before something new really jumped off the page. Colossians 1:4-5 tells us that the Christians in Colossae have love for all the saints, because they have placed their hope in heaven. Paul seems to suggest in the next sentence that loving others is a basic part of the gospel. I believe it was Tim Keller who explained that love isn’t really love until it costs you something—love by definition requires sacrifice. For instance, to love well this summer, we’ve had to sacrifice. Because let’s face it: there are 12 of us and that’s a lot of sinners saved by grace to stuff into one house. But, I think it’s shown us all where our hope is. If that hasn’t shown us, then evangelizing and building relationships with the lost has for sure.

I think that’s the biggest lesson the Spirit shone on my soul as I read Colossians 1 the other day. I felt like Spirit was whispering, “Nate, they’ll never know the Supremacy of Christ from Colossians chapter one if someone doesn’t love them sacrificially.” It’s true. Relationships are a mess of sacrifice, but they’re a mess worth making—especially if my hope isn’t found in the relationships, but rather in Christ. Jesus didn’t make a great sacrifice so that we as believers could avoid sacrifice—his sacrifice enables our sacrifice for the kingdom and for people. The past couple weeks, it has been really hard to get lost students to call us back, text us back, or even come out to get free food. I’ve never encountered this much of this in the States and it’s been challenging. I have been encouraged by our team though. Our rightly placed hope frees us to love well. These guys (and girls) lay it out there day in and day out. They desire so much to love people well and to sacrifice comfort, sleep, feelings, emotions, pride, and even physical well-being to reach the lost. I count myself richly blessed to be with this team.

If you read this, please pray that we would look to make more and more sacrifices to love the lost in Dunedin. Please pray that God would move in us to be aggressive with our love and that He would move in them to respond. Thanks for reading and thanks for praying. Thanks for loving us.

-Nate X.