SBS Mobile Core Course

I want to share with you a bit of what I will be doing in the near future...

We with the School of Biblical Studies here in Kona are passionate about bringing the Word of God to the nations of the earth. The school that I am leading now ends it's lecture phase in December, but that is not the end of the journey for me, and hopefully not the end for many of the students. In January I will meet up with a YWAM outreach team that will be on the mission field traveling for 15 months! I will join them in Egypt and teach a bible course over the next three months that they will be completing on the field. Their main project over this trip is to publish a photography / documentary project advocating for social injustice issues.

The three month course I will be directing is called Biblical Foundations for Photographic Communication, and will hopefully ground these students and their project in Biblical truth, as well as God's heart for the poor, the outcast and the destitute for whom they are advocating. I hope to bring an outreach team from SBS along for this time, to teach in the countries we travel as well as teach part of the course. Please pray that God would move in the hearts of SBS students to take all they have been studying to the nations!

The unseen vs. the Unknowable

Many post-modernists today accuse Christians, or more broadly “theists,” people who believe in some sort of God, of basing their life and their belief system and their values on “blind faith.” They would even go so far as to say that God demands blind faith from anyone attempting to follow him. The kind of faith the Bible calls for however, is by no stretch of the imagination blind faith.

Biblical faith is a logical progression of projecting past experiences and acquired knowledge into the present reality, and the future existence. What a Christian is asked to believe about the unseen is nothing more than anyone who claims to live in the real world is required to believe countless times each day, and certainly cant be categorized as irrational faith.

For example; my volleyball team has lost its first two games this season. The statement “I have faith that I will win a game” is not irrational for several reasons. If in fact, I did not play volleyball at all, did not have a team and there were no games to be won, this statement becomes unfulfillable and therefore irrational. The facts that (a) I do play volleyball, (b) there are more games to win (c) winning is a valid result to volleyball games, makes this statement something more than blind faith.

Take square roots. Can you describe what a square root looks like? How much it weighs; what color it is? When children are taught math they are taught the square root of four is two. Are they asked to believe it blindly? No. They are given examples, and the concept is explained and “mathematically proved” but no one in the history of the world has been shown an actual square root. The end result of mathematical training therefore, ends with faith; faith that the next time the answer to the square root of four is given; the answer will still be two.

The same could be said about gravity. Our faith that the next step we take will not send us rocketing off the face of the planet is based on our past experience of gravity, and our knowledge, however limited, of the invisible law. Gravity, which keeps our earth in motion around its sun, and its surface securely beneath our feet has never been seen, tasted, smelled or heard, but mankind’s’ accumulated experience with gravity as an unchangeable force touching one of our senses is enough for us to put our total faith in it’s reliability as a constant, unchangeable physical law.

Belief in a God who created unchangeable physical laws, mathematical absolutes and the universe they govern is not an irrational conclusion based on blind faith. It is the most logical conclusion then; that the unchanging laws that make the universe what it is are reflections of an unchanging creator who designed a universe in accordance with his character. What would be more irrational is to say that these “laws” unchanging as they are, are the result of the random occurrence of a spastic and unorganized universe which, by some miracle, managed to morph reality to conform to universal laws. Knowledge of, and faith in God, are the only logical results an examination of our acquired knowledge and experiences can bring us to: Faith.

Andrew Greenplate

picture taken on Mauna Kea, Hawaii

SBS in Kona and Budapest

Well I just got back from my time in Switzerland and Hungary, so blessed to be able to be a part of what God is doing in YWAM over there! All my travel went smoothly and teaching in the SBS in Budapest was an incredible week. I was able to spend time with students and YWAM staff from Lebanon, USA, Canada, Germany, Sweden, Macedonia, Singapore among others, teaching in the mornings and being part of the community there. God totally orchestrated my time, and the trip was a great blessing to the staff team who had been praying for a speaker for that week before I committed to go. While I was there I taught three books in their SBS: Lamentations, Nahum and Zephaniah. They have a team of two SBS staff pioneering a new school there, which is a huge amount of work, and it was great to be able to bless them this past week.

Divine appointments

I try to remember I Peter 3:15 as I travel which says: "But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect..." On my flights and train trips these past two weeks I've been able to have some great conversations that I believe God set up and I want to share one with you.

Last Sunday I took a train overnight from Switzerland to Hungary. The only other person who spoke english near me was a Hungarian girl who was going back home after vacation. We talked for a while and one of the things she shared with me was she had been a Jahova's witness for several year but recently had stopped believing in that religion. We had a long conversation about who Jesus is, and when I got my bible out to show her some scriptures another girl across from us got really excited and pulled out a Hungarian Bible from her bag. The two of them then started speaking Hungarian (effectively ending my part of the conversation) but when we were leaving the train my new friend shared with me that the other girl had told her about a church she could go to and they were going to stay in touch. So praise God! That's the power of His word!

Poetry from Jeremiah

I recently taught the books of Jeremiah and Lamentations, this is a poem I've written to try and capture the timeless message Jeremiah has for the children of God.

Daughter Zion

Awake! Fix your eyes on me, daughter, my love.
Set your path on the statutes that come from above.
For the rain has poured down, behold, everything’s new,
Heaven and earth I made special for you.
When I saw you rejected me by what you’ve done,
I gave you new hope by the birth of my Son.
Miracles can happen as you, daughter, can see,
And all of your blessings come straight from me.
How long will you waver before doing what’s right?
It’s not hard, look to me my love; I’ll be your light.
For behold, I’ve created this new thing on earth,
My own death in a man, your new life at his birth.
Could I stand idly by and watch all I love fall,
Or remember their pain, and in turn, give it all?
And that’s what I did; I fixed all that you broke,
I rent heaven and earth and I lifted your yoke.
Clap your hands, sing aloud or the stones will cry out,
Oh, my heart skips a beat at the sound of your shout.
For I’ve done all these things so you might have a clue,
All I want in this world is to spend time with you.

Back from China

Well, the outreach is over!
Sorry for the delayed update, for security reasons it is better not to send missionary updates from China (that's what I'm told anyway). Seriously though, I have seen God's faithfulness in the areas of protection and provision, healing and salvation in quantities that have blown my mind, and have opened my eyes more and more to how big our God really is. My team's time in China was an incredible blessing because we were able to see God's kingdom moving forward in that country, which has traditionally been one of the hardest places on earth for the gospel. In both Shanghai and Guangzhou (two of the biggest cities in China) we were able to meet with Christians and partner with them in the ministries going on there. Some of the things we were able to do were: work in an orphanage, mainly for kids with disabilities, attend "underground church," teach and share testimonies in home fellowship groups, do prayer and spiritual warfare around strategic religious and political places and work with a missionary family from my own church at home (Vineyard Christian Fellowship). In both Hong Kong and Taiwan our team was able to work with youth groups and school programs, and saw many teenagers come to know the Lord there, in China we were able to lead one young man to the Lord who we met at a fellowship group.
I want to thank you for your prayers, and for reading my updates, and I truly believe this DTS outreach was a success because you prayed, and committed to be a part of what God has been doing in Taiwan and China through this team. In just the area of transportation and logistics alone, we saw canceled plane reservations be reversed so we could fly to Asia, we saw visas to China (which everyone told us we could not get this summer) be approved in less than 24 hours, we saw typhoons turn around, and airlines create new flights so our team could fly from China to Hong Kong... I'm a firm believer in the power of prayer :-). I've attached some pictures from our time in China in this e-mail, the first is a picture with Pete and Katie Chen and their kids, I know pete from VCF and he's been living in China for about 8 years, it was great to see him and work with him in Guangzhou. The second picture is of a summer camp we taught in Taiwan. The school asked us to teach english, music, drama and sports, this is a picture of music class, where the students learned the song "Amazing Grace." The third picutre is of spending time with some of the kids from a youth group in Hong Kong we worked with. They wanted to show us where to get some "traditional food," which was quite the cross cultural experience. The next picture is of some of the team leading worship... we could sing in English, Korean, French and Chinese... a couple other languages, but those were the main ones :-). The final picture is taken at the orphanage in Guangzhou, China.
My time with DTS is finished now. This next year I will be teaching a bible school with YWAM, training missionaries to teach and preach the gospel, and possibly leading some of them on another outreach next spring. If you think of it could you pray for me in this transition time? I know God is leading me into being staff with this new school, pray that he is glorified through it!
Andrew

In Shanghai

Well, we have arrived!
just wanted to write and say we made it to China. I wont be able to give a lot of information until we are back in Hong Kong, but we got our visas, had our first long train ride and everything has fallen into place. He is faithful! Our time in Hong Kong was amazing. It was extremely busy for me at the end, having to get visas, train tickets, hotel reservations in china, picking up students from the airport who are joining our team for the rest of the trip... but I got some sleep on the train :-). I am so glad you are thinking of us over here, also if you reply to this e-mail or have anything to share with me remember I am in China, and that e-mail might not be the best way to share some things...
Blessings,
Andrew