TV Program

Current Episode

Church in the Wilderness

2009-06-28

PRODUCTION #: 1146

SPEAKER: Shawn Boonstra

GUEST: Dan Serb

Shawn Boonstra: Watch the news on any given night in America and it would be easy to get discouraged. Another hurricane hits the coast of America. Another child goes missing, and the police actually suspect the parents. The polar caps appear to be melting, and there’s more aggression between warlords in South America. The Middle East is a tinderbox threatening to explode at any moment, and nobody’s really sure if we’re going to have enough energy to push forward into the future. Watch the news and it’s not hard to get discouraged. But today, you’re going to see some rays of hope. Not all of the news is bad news. In fact, some of it is pretty amazing—confirmation that you and I have a lot to look forward to.

In the current state of world affairs, it would be easy to become a little despondent. The evening news is hardly something to feel good about. It’s gotten bad enough over the last few decades that if you made the rounds of professional philosophers and academics, you’d discover some of them have simply given up. They don’t see any meaning to life, not anymore. But while all the bad news keeps pouring into our living rooms day after day, some of the most amazing stories on earth simply are not being told.

The Bible predicted that a time would come when the Gospel would literally go to every tribe on the face of the earth. Let me read that to you from Revelation (Revelation 14:6):

“Then I saw another angel flying in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting Gospel to preach to those who dwell on the earth—to every nation, tribe, tongue and people.”

Of all the generations to live on the planet Earth, we’re the generation that’s actually watching this happen. Over the last few years, It Is Written has been working closely with the Pilgrim Relief Society to carry the Gospel and much needed humanitarian support to some of the remotest places on earth. Some of you have helped provide the San people of the Kalahari Desert with fresh water to drink and you’ve put the word of God in their hands. You’ve been a part of carrying the Gospel to the frozen wasteland of the Canadian Arctic. You’ve helped start a school in the depths of the Congo, and every day as the bad news pours in, some people are making a mass of difference for God.

My guest today is Dan Serb, vice president of the Pilgrim Relief Society. Over the past few years, It Is Written has partnered with this organization to support a work that is literally taking the Gospel to the last remaining people groups on earth. Dan, I’m thrilled you’re with us today. I would say you traveled quite a way to be with us here on the program.

Dan Serb: Yes, home is Cape Town.

SB: Cape Town, South Africa, and of course you live there with your wife and children. Your wife’s name?

DS: Leah.

SB: Leah, and two kids, right?

DS: That’s right. Emily and Emilio.

SB: Emily and Emilio. I’ve got two kids, too, and I understand. That’s quite a handful with all the traveling you do.

DS: Yes. They’re with their mom at the moment.

SB: Well, having children is not easy in the work that you’re doing and working with Pilgrim Relief Society, reaching some of these remote people groups. I know that many of our viewers have met Sebastian, who founded the society. How did you get involved in this, Dan?

DS: Well, in 1992 I met Sebastian at the university back in Romania, where we come from. Then in 1995 we decided to leave for South Africa. We went to South Africa to continue our studies. In 1996 we went together to the Kalahari for the first time. This was our first mission to the Kalahari, and to the San people, and my heart kind of remained there. I got married in South Africa in ‘97, and I continued working as a pastor for about 10 years.

In 2005, Sebastian and I met again after about seven years. And then he said, “Look, Dan, what about continuing this work that we started together?” So in 2006, in July, I re-joined him.

SB: So, let me ask you a question. Years ago, you were with Sebastian as some of the work among the San people began. Some people refer to them as the “Bushmen” in the Kalahari Desert.

DS: Yes.

SB: Tell me a little bit about what’s happened. I know that many of the people watching the program have been involved in making the water wells happen, making those “Godpods” happen, and helping us deliver them out there into the desert. But what’s been happening to the people since? They’ve been accepting Christ. You’ve actually been forming a church.

DS: That’s right. We had the privilege this year to actually organize a church in a part of the Kalahari. It’s quite interesting. We have so many villages in the area. They have received Christ and they need a place to worship. We haven’t managed to build churches in all the villages, but we have just finished another one. It’s quite amazing. But what is probably the highlight as far as I’m concerned, this year, was having a Lord’s Supper and Communion service with the Bushman community.

SB: This would have been a first. You had a Communion service?

DS: That’s right.

SB: So they have their own church. Now, let’s get to that Communion service in just half a second because I’m dying to know, as a minister myself, and having pastored in a number of churches, what’s it like for the Bushmen, the San people, as they’re organizing a church. I mean, everyone who goes in to live among them experiences culture shock. Was the concept of organizing a church a bit of culture shock for them?

DS: Yes and no. Trying to explain the procedure was probably the more difficult part. However, we had to simplify. But then at the same time, their community is structured in such way whereby they have a chief and they have the elders. So they do understand that there needs to be some kind of structure in any kind of community, be it tribal or be it a church. So it wasn’t as difficult as we expected it to be. A sense of accountability, a sense of brotherhood, was a very easy concept for them when it came to organizing the church. The Communion service wasn't as difficult to explain because Africa is about symbols.

SB: Right.

DS: But explaining what Christ’s death and His resurrection means to us and how that is seen in the symbols of the grape juice—the wine—and the bread, was quite easy to explain to them.

SB: Now if I remember the story right, they understood that this is the body of Christ and blood of Christ, and they see the symbolism and what this is teaching about what Jesus did for them.

DS: That’s right.

SB: But, you know, as you go into John chapter 13 and look at the original Communion service that Jesus led out in shortly before His crucifixion, he described it, “This is My body; this is My blood.” But there’s something else that happens in John 13, in that original communion service, that you carried out right there in the desert. Tell us a little bit about that.

DS: It was actually so amazing because one of the volunteers came to me and he said, “Look, what about us going back to the Bible and having a foot-washing ceremony, as Jesus had with His disciples?”

SB: A foot-washing ceremony.

DS: That’s right.

SB: As we find in John 13, they get there and everybody’s sitting around waiting for a servant to come wash their feet, typical in their day, and nobody will do it. And so the King of Kings does it, and washes the disciples feet. That’s in John 13, and this is what you did.

DS: Yes, so all the volunteers, all the volunteers, that we had this year, were all Caucasian, and they said, “Look, we would like to wash the feet of the Bushmen.” The moment this idea came to us through this volunteer, I felt so excited about it, because I kind of foresaw that this was going to be a very powerful sermon, just the act itself of having a white person kneeling in front of a Bushman and washing his feet.

SB: Now, of course, in the history of Africa, Europeans represent colonialists.

DS: That’s the reason why.

SB: Okay.

DS: So I thought it was going to be so amazing. And that’s exactly what happened. At one stage while this was happening, I observed one of the young men approaching the Bushman chief. The young man knelt and he said, “Look, I would like to wash your feet as part of the ceremony.” To which the chief almost jumped to his feet, and he said, “There’s no way he can do that. There is no way he can do that.”

SB: In his mind it was inappropriate because it was too much humility.

DS: That’s right. And I observed the whole thing, so I called to them and we read the passage where Peter had the same reaction to Jesus. We tried to explain.

SB: Right. Jesus tried to wash his feet, and Peter said, “No way. You’re not washing my feet.”

DS: We tried to explain this idea of servitude, and that before Christ we’re all equal. We are all brothers and sisters, and Christ’s sacrifice is the same to all of us, and He accepts and loves all of us. This was something. And that’s why I say I think this was one of the most powerful sermons ever preached in the Kalahari.

SB: Well, you know, I have participated in Communion services in churches where they do observe the practice of washing one another’s feet before they go to their Communion service. But I can only begin to imagine what it’s like when these two worlds meet—when these two cultures meet, given that history that’s been there over the last several centuries or colonialism and different strata in society—how powerful that moment must have been.

DS: And just before we had the foot-washing ceremony, each person had a prayer with the person who was going to wash their feet, and this older man who was a part of our group prayed and said, “God, in the name of all the other people sent before us, I would like to say we are sorry for what’s happened.” And I think it was a beautiful idea of reconciliation that came through.

SB: In a world full of bad news, here’s this spot where some of the bad news is being undone through the love of Jesus, and we’re watching the Gospel being preached in these last places. That’s great news!

DS: And another very good thing that happened is that you now have a church filled with people from tribes that used to be in conflict. They now worship in the same building together—and having two or three people translating the message into their languages is, again, something amazing.

BS: I want to look at another region of the globe right now, the Arctic, and something occurred to me the other day that I think is incredible. In 1992, the Canadian Bible Society printed Bibles in the Inuktitut language and they put them in a warehouse. They had no means of delivering them in 1992.

That’s the very year that Sebastian gave his heart to Christ. So you meet Sebastian, you head to the Kalahari, and all of a sudden while those Bibles are being warehoused, the mechanism to deliver them is being formed in another region of the planet—a remarkable story! Last year we were able to deliver, how many was it, again, 5,000?

DS: Five thousand.

SB: Five thousand copies of the Bible. I know some of you watched that program, where we literally got on dog sleds and delivered those to North Country, up to the Inuit people. Now that’s the last that many of you heard—was that the Bibles had been delivered up to the Arctic, but many good things have happened since.

Dan, what has happened since those Bibles arrived up there; it’s a long way to go to deliver Bibles. What has happened up there since those Bibles arrived?

DS: Well, having the Bible distributed was a miracle. I think it’s amazing that every family has a Bible in their home. But if I’m not mistaken, even when we all went there and distributed those Bibles, most of the people were very excited, but then they said, “But who is going to teach us from these Bibles, from these books?” The provision was made for someone to go, that was the idea last year, for someone to go and actually help those people understand what the Bible talks about—a relationship with God.

Two missionaries, two young men, have been at the North Pole for about a year.

SB: Let me back up just a moment in case somebody is tuning in for the first time and hearing some of these stories. Those two young men come from…

DS: A mission school in Romania.

SB: A mission school in Romania, and it exists in a little place called Vama, about seven hours north of Bucharest in Romania. It Is Written has had the privilege of participating in that school, and I get over there about once a year to help prepare missionaries. These are young people, correct?

DS: That’s right.

SB: These young people have decided to dedicate a minimum of one year of their life to work in a remote place, so that’s where these two came from.

DS: Exactly. And their names are Mario and Werner. They reached the North Pole and their mission was actually to help these people make use of those books, their Bibles. And it wasn’t easy, because people are quite suspicious of strangers, of foreigners, there.

SB: And there’s a history behind that.

DS: Of course.

SB: I come from that country originally, and colonialism, again, is one of the issues. A lot of people came with motives to take what they could and never brought anything to give.

DS: Yes, and coming from Africa, I feel this is understandable when it comes to missionaries, because the idea in Africa is that first came the missionaries, then came the colonial army.

But the people realized that these were two young men who were missionaries who didn’t have any other hidden agendas, but just to be there and try to help, and that’s exactly what they did. Mario and Werner told me, “Our first mission was to just go onto the street and walk around so that people would see us.”

SB: Now let me interrupt for just a minute and explain for those of you who may have not traveled to the Arctic that walking around in the street, particularly in the wintertime, is not like walking around in your neighborhood in Tennessee or Chicago or Los Angeles. It is -40, -50 and -60 degrees, even colder at times. There are temperatures where your flesh freezes in under a minute. I’m a Canadian. I’ve been in some of these climates, and was, of course, up there delivering Bibles. You don’t just walk around. You’ve got to put on layers of clothing in order to survive and walk around.

DS: That’s right. Anyhow, they wanted to show that they didn’t just come, you know, to sit into the house and wait for the people to come to them. They wanted to go out and visit with the people. They began knocking on doors and saying, “Look, while I’m here, if you need anything and if we can help with anything at the same time, just let us know.” They introduced themselves as missionaries and also said that if they wanted to study the Bible, they’d also be able to help with that.

Another challenge Mario and Werner faced was that it’s quite difficult to find accommodations there.

SB: There aren’t a lot of hotels or motels around.

DS: And if there is a place you can stay, it’s quite expensive. Mario told us the story of how they came to stay with a family. What happened is that one evening, there was a misunderstanding, a fight between a husband and a wife. The husband got very upset. He was drunk it seems. He took the shotgun and he wanted to actually shoot his wife.

SB: Oh, you’re kidding.

DS: Yes, it was very serious. However, the gun didn’t go off.

SB: It failed to fire.

DS: Yes, and the man was very surprised, so he turned toward himself and then pushed the trigger. And then, it fired.

SB: So he managed to kill.

DS: That’s right.

SB: Now, I can’t imagine suddenly being a widow.

DS: Yes, with four children.

SB: With four children. That would be hard anywhere, but in that environment, I can’t imagine…

DS: That woman became very desperate, and then she remembered the Bible she received.

SB: One of these Bibles made its way into her life. That’s remarkable, really.

DS: That’s right. So she opened the Bible and she began to read. Of course she couldn’t understand anything, but she came to a passage in Revelation, chapter 11, and in that particular chapter, it speaks about two witnesses. Now, of course, theologically, the interpretation is totally different, but in her desperation, she just prayed to God. She said, “God, please send me these two witnesses to speak to me; reveal Yourself to me through these two witnesses. I need someone to come and help me out.”

It just so happened that the next day, Mario and Werner knocked on her door. And then they said they were missionaries and would like to speak to her about God.

SB: So the two witnesses—and again, theologically we know the two witnesses don’t quite fit with what she thought—but in her understanding, she reached out to God and said “This is it; if You’re there, send these two.” And they show up.

DS: That’s it. It is amazing.

SB: It remarkable how God works.

DS: And then she just welcomed them into the house, and not just for an hour or two, but she said, “Look, you can come and stay with me.”

SB: What I think is remarkable about this is that she has her prayer answered. Plus these two missionaries who really need a place to stay—I mean, sleeping outside is not an option up there unless you’re really desperate—they now have a place to stay.

DS: Yes, yes. And then, bit by bit, they began to actually make more friends. Another way in which Mario and Werner got very close to these people is that they are very different, they have two very different personalities. Werner is very quiet, and that went very well with the elders of the community. They don’t speak too much. They would go on trips for 10 days and they would exchange like about 10 or 12 words in those 10 days. But that was okay with Werner, and he befriended—he became very good friends with those people, with the elderly people.

Mario is very bombastic, he has a very bombastic personality, and he got very close to the young people, to the children, and one day he decided he wanted to go to another village and distribute some more Bibles.

SB: Right.

DS: So, he asked for a sleigh and he said, “Look, I’m just going to walk. I’m going to go this way and I’m just going to put the Bibles in there and I’m going to walk to this village.” Eighty kilometers, 50 miles.

SB: A 50-mile walk pulling a sled.

DS: Yes, in that environment.

SB: Yeah.

DS: So the people said, “Man you’re crazy, but we understand. We can’t stop you, but at least please take this dog with you to protect you from polar bears, just to help you on the way and be a companion with you.” He managed to get to the village. He distributed the Bibles. On his way back, and this is very interesting…I have this picture that’s really interesting.

We have this picture where Mario is pulling the sleigh, but the dog was so tired, that Mario put him on top of the sleigh and pulled him.

SB: So the dog is being pulled by the man.

DS: By the missionary. Usually it’s the other way around, that’s quite interesting. However, they managed, as I said, to befriend the people. The people are extremely excited about having them there. Originally, we were planning to pull them out after one year and send them somewhere else.

SB: I understand they have suffered physically. There have been some physical afflictions as a result of being in the extreme cold, some frostbite, even some dental problems.

DS: That’s right. Werner has had problems. And now they’ve come back in Europe and they’re trying to recover from this, and because the Inuits have requested for them to go back, they will be leaving soon.

SB: So the Inuit people love them enough in less than a year that they’re begging for these two to come back and live among them.

DS: Actually, just before coming to the States, I read one of the e-mails that Mario received from one of these people, and the lady was saying, “We could truly see that you are God’s people, that you are very close to Him. That’s the reason we would like you to come back and teach us how to have a relationship like yours with this God you are talking about.”

SB: Bibles to the most remote places on earth. In the Arctic Circle, young people willing to commit their lives to live in these difficult, difficult places, and people are being changed—hearts are being won to Jesus.

Now Dan, you shared a story with me about how some people have been really participating in this work. I know my own kids have started raising funds among their friends. You know, they don’t raise thousands, but they raise what they can to help out. What are some of the things that have happened with regard to that?

DS: Well, Sebastian and I, when we speak about finances for these projects, we don’t really look at the money as dollars or Euros. The moment we receive a donation, we look at it in terms of blankets, food assistance and Godpods.

This year we were in the Kalahari, and someone from Spain came to me and said, “Look, I have 500 Euros for you.” And I was very thankful. He said, “Well this is not for me, but for the mission.” Then he said, “I need to tell you this story. This money comes from children.”

I thought it a bit strange. I said, “What do you mean?” And he said, “Look, a seven-year-old child from Spain encouraged his friends to save their pocket money instead of going and buying an ice cream or going to a movie, they just put the money aside.” They saved for about a year and raised 500 Euros!

SB: That’s amazing.

DS: It also makes you very aware of how many people sacrifice a lot to be able to give so that this mission can carry on. This made me think, and about two years ago I started a new project, a club for kids—for little missionaries. I mail them notes from all the countries I travel to. They collect all these bank notes, but the understanding is that once they receive, for example, a bank note from Congo, that they will begin, together with their friends, to pray for the mission in Congo and for the people in the Congo. I believe that encouraging them to pray for these projects, being updated and also sending them updates on what’s happening, will encourage them to one day not just pray for these places, but when they grow up, that they will go and do something more.

SB: Amazing. Dan, what God is doing through you is absolutely amazing. Thank you for taking a moment to come and spend some time with us.

DS: Thank you.

SB: So what about you? What is it that God is calling you to do with your life? You only get once chance at this thing called life, and it’s up to you right now to figure out how you’re going to spend your one and only lifetime. Is everybody called to go to a foreign country to witness for God? Well, of course not. But you can still be involved.

We really need your help. Right now there are dedicated young people willing to head out to the worst environments on earth. Your gift will help sponsor a young person to literally fulfill the prophecies of the Bible. It’ll provide fresh drinking water or much needed mosquito nets, or schools or churches, many things that we take for granted every day. Listen, you know we don’t do much asking on this program, but this is really important. You can make a massive difference and it doesn’t take much. You may make a gift online, or by calling us at 1-800-253-3000.

Scriptures Used in “Church in the Wilderness”

“Then I saw another angel flying in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach to those who dwell on the earth—to every nation, tribe, tongue and people."
—Revelation 14:6