Reaching a Culture through the Children

Recently, I received an e-mail from a friend who works in Africa. He posed an interesting thought to me. “Next time we’re together you’ll have to tell me what about Operation Christmas Child keeps you hooked.” I was traveling at the time in Central Asia, and somehow, this stuck with me—lingering in my mind as I went about the work of recruiting and selecting National Leadership Teams, encouraging strategic planning and listening to the stories of both the children and the volunteers in a number of Muslim majority countries in Central Asia, where the ministry of Operation Christmas Child through shoebox gifts is making a huge difference.

Whenever I travel, I try to take notes about the amazing things I see so I won’t forget what God is doing all over the world. I typed this into a note on my Blackberry on a past trip:

Well, LORD at the end of every day, I am beat like a rug, with almost no ounce of energy left, and still I love it! Serving You with a passion that crosses time-zones and nationalities is indescribable. At the end of a long multi-country trip, I feel zapped, but also by Your grace I can continue—pushing through to the other side, where lies the joy of serving and finding new friends in these National Leaders to build the kingdom of GOD with—praise Your Holy name!

Working for Operation Christmas Child is such a wonder-filled opportunity. The gifts entrusted to us by millions of faithful donors and volunteers for the needy children of the world never cease to amaze me. For the past few years I have served as the regional director for Russia, Europe, and Central Asia. This calling has provided a host of complex logistical, diplomatic, and ultimately, spiritual decisions. Working in 15 countries creates a necessity to travel over 100 days a year to make sure that we have regular times of training and planning for the climax of giving the shoebox gifts to the children, and time when the gospel is shared with grace and respect. Relationships are built and many of the kids begin the follow-up discipleship program, learn the truth of Scripture, and begin to follow Jesus. Everyone should know that each time you give a box, it impacts not only the child, but also their family, friends, and community. It has a kingdom-building multiplication effect.

I grew up in the cornfields of Dubuque, Iowa. When communism fell, my family moved to Moscow, Russia. My father was a pastor in Iowa and then became the regional director for a church planting movement in many of the same countries that I, now a decade later, serve in a similar role for Operation Christmas Child. Growing up in the fading shadow of the former Soviet Union, I saw the dramatic need for Christ in a culture. Having been brought up in a home-school, Focus on the Family-type listening environment, it was quite the culture shock to begin reading the papers that detailed the mafia wars in Moscow, the advent of democracy throughout Eastern Europe, and watching a spiritual revival in this conflicted country, as ministers like Billy Graham faithfully preached the gospel where it had been condemned for so long. Living through this time definitely hammered home for me the need children have to know the truth—the truth that can set them free.

During college I planned to become a human rights lawyer, but somehow the Lord got hold of my heart and redirected me to serve as part of a mission movement to penetrate the cultures of Eastern Europe and Central Asia for Christ. I served there as a missionary for a year, working while refreshing my Russian language knowledge, then came back to go to seminary. While I was writing my master’s thesis, there was a posting on the Samaritan’s Purse Web site and, after consulting with a few friends who had worked for Samaritan’s Purse in Africa, I decided to throw my name in the hat. Little did I know that this would lead to a chain reaction that has fundamentally shaped the direction of my life. I was initially incredibly conflicted when the Spirit started to tug my heart away from working in politics, D.C., and human rights. I had never thought of serving children as my aim, but during seminary I claimed as a personal mission statement: “transforming cultures for Christ”. Through these past years with Operation Christmas Child it has overtaken me. I have seen with my own eyes as the local church reaches out with the gifts entrusted to them, that we simply cannot transform a culture unless we reach the children. Children are the key to a culture. Their mobilization into the arms of Christ is the hope of a nation.

Deuteronomy, in The Message version, puts it this way, “Write these commandments that I’ve given you today on your hearts. Get them inside of you” (Deut. 6:6). But it doesn’t stop there. It provides the secret for the transformation of culture, “Then get them inside your children” (v. 7). I think that says it all. And that’s what we have the opportunity to share with each and every shoebox gift.