He gave what was probably one of the top-five best sermons I’ve ever heard.

Carve out an hour and check this out:

Events like ServeRDU are designed specifically to build intentionality into how we interact with the world and put Jesus on display.

This month, the Summit church is partnering with Pregnancy Support Services of Wake Forest through an event called 4,000 Steps.

Our small group has formed a team with the goal of raising $1,000 by the end of the month.

This is where you come in:

There’s already a slick little website setup where you can contribute to this goal. If every reader of this blog this month gave just 10 bucks, we would blow our goal out of the water!

AND if you sign up to give a repeating monthly gift, it will be doubled by an anonymous donor (and that isn’t code for me and Steph). That means that your $10 per month commitment would add up to $240 towards the goal this year!

So, please give it some thought, and when you’re ready, head on over to this link and click “support Zack”.

Thanks!

His podcasts and books – Crazy Love in particular – have been a huge blessing to me.

You may or may not know that a few months ago he walked away from his church. No scandal, no controversy or drama – he just abruptly announced that he would be moving on with no specific plans about where.

Now that the dust has settled a bit, he has transplanted his whole family to an ‘undisclosed’ city in Asia, where nobody cares that Crazy Love just hit the NY Times best-seller list, and CNN wrote a pretty interesting article about the whole thing.

The clencher for me:

Before selling his house and packing up his wife and three children, Chan was becoming “Christian famous” in Evangelical circles.

“Even in my own church I heard the words, ‘Francis Chan’ more than I heard the words, ‘Holy Spirit’,” he said.

That was a big part of the reason he walked away at the peak of his professional career.

“I think there has been too much emphasis on me. I want to be used by God, but I think we have this desire to make heroes out of people rather than following God and the Holy Spirit.”

He quotes the apostle Paul, who told his followers “I didn’t die for you.”

Wow.

He may or may not have gone a little overboard, but either way: I think he’s on to something.

Check it out.

It’s a track that some really talented hip-hop artists put together to help raise some money for aid to Sudan.

After you give it a listen, cruise over to iTunes and search for “Actions Speak Louder“, and download it for a buck. 100% of the proceeds (after apple takes a big ol’ chunk) will go towards helping those who are suffering for lack of basic human resources in southern Sudan.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=6u8oBEkOCFk

Oh, and if hip-hop isn’t really your thing, all the lyrics are below ;0)

Swoope
If I’m honest I’m tired, hungry, I’m frustrated, all of the above/
A little sore from civil war when all I seen was blood/
I shed tears, heartbroken, all I need is love/
Im Drowning fast in my sorrow, all of me is flood/
I’ve seen hurt, seen death, seen slaughter. Now I need some clean water, all I see is mud/
It’s like nobody out there cares ’cause all I see is shrugs/
It’s like nobody out there hears ’cause all their ears is plugged/
(Psalm 34)
Man I’m feeling like a lion whose hungry and weak/
So it’s the mighty God of Zion who humbly I seek/
I stumble and weep/ with the tears running from cheeks/
Each moment I wonder if he will ever so subtly speak/
And I’m confident He will so I’m confidently still/
Deliver me from sickness Lord conquer what is ill/
I still stand, and when I’m rescued is His choice/
I stand still and know my refuge is His voice//

Tedashii
God, today another home somebody owned is now a puddle/why the rain came I wonder while they wander through the rubble/
Why me, why now, should they think why not/
Is everything against me to take everything I got/
Someone got out the bed this morning some got of the floor/some went off to work this morning some went off to war/
Some ate half a plate and trashed it just to get some more/but trust me that’s not an option in places like Darfur/
Vision blurry as the skies cries like my eyes/
In despair I cast my cares as I cry to the sky/
I never hope in man, though some are willing they’re unable/
But I’m the kind who’ll be fine with crumbs from the Master’s table/
I know this situation hasn’t caught you by surprise/
In fact it’s with faith I choose to walk instead of sight/
I know that you love ‘em, since the womb you knew them/
You never forget/so may the grace that drew ‘em, renew ‘em/

Lecrae
I don’t have the words to articulate
the way you let me drown in your never ending grace
how my crimes are covered and washed away in blood
There is nothing in me conditioning you to make you love
I cant attract, impress or try to win your heart
but you give it all and you been involve
and your never change even when I’m wrong
your love still goes on to make an atonement
love infinite and unconditional
nothing can separate us cause now I live in you
there is no amount that can calculate your divine love
its so much that Christ was given to die for us
Its stronger than death, deeper than the ocean
bigger than the night sky the earth could never hold it
and its not impulsive, its holy and pure
its not a weakness or soft its sharp as a sword.

Lyrics From RapZilla

If you read this blog much, you know that I spent most of a year in Uzbekistan, and that the situation there is not a good one.

Islam Karimov is a murderous thug who rules through fear and intimidation, and millions of people suffer every day because of him.

Christians are routinely arrested and harassed, and prisoners are treated terribly.

This is an unexagerated reality for anyone who has spent any time there, yet the United States continues to maintain that they are our “partners in trade” and “partners in freedom”.

The recent wikileaks release of diplomatic cables shows that Karimov’s corruption is well-known among those who deal with him.

Check out this article where diplomats compare Karimov to a mafia thug.

Or this one, which includes a section from an actual cable:

Corruption is rampant in the GOU. Tenders and government positions can be fairly easily secured by paying the right amount of money to the appropriate individual, leading to a situation in which unqualified individuals have every incentive to engage in further corrupt activity to pay off the large debts they usually incur making down payments on the jobs.

Or this one, which begins:

The post-Soviet state of Uzbekistan is a nightmarish world of “rampant corruption”, organised crime, forced labour in the cotton fields, and torture, according to the leaked cables.

But the secret dispatches released by WikiLeaks reveal that the US tries to keep President Islam Karimov sweet because he allows a crucial US military supply line to run into Afghanistan, known as the northern distribution network (NDN).

Did you catch that? Basically, Uzbekistan is one step above North Korea, but our government says we need to be nice to them and ignore it all so that we can have a military supply line.

Sigh…

Please pray for this broken country, plagued by an evil ruler and hundreds of years of demonic oppression.

Pray for the thousands of believers who suffer daily for their courage to follow Christ.

Pray for 30,000,000 lost people with no good access to the Gospel of Christ’s saving work.

And pray for God to destroy the work of Karimov’s hands and open doors for a flood of missionaries and aid groups to come bring life to this dark place!

]]> http://www.therieslands.com/2010/12/13/wikileaks-reveals-uzbekistan-human-rights-abuse/feed/ 1 http://www.therieslands.com/2010/11/12/pray-for-persecuted-christians-in-uzbekistan/ http://www.therieslands.com/2010/11/12/pray-for-persecuted-christians-in-uzbekistan/#comments Fri, 12 Nov 2010 18:46:36 +0000 Zack http://www.therieslands.com/?p=5110

(Those reading from email or an rss feed will need to click through to see the 2-minute video above)

This is very personal to me.

There are somewhere around 30,000 believers in Uzbekistan, which is roughly 0.001% of the population.

I know a handful of them personally. They have been arrested, interrogated, spied on, sabotaged, and end up forced to live on the run, often to other countries.

This video is not an exaggeration or an isolated case.

Openly following Jesus in this context will cost you everything.

Please pray with me for our brothers and sisters in this part of the world.

Last year week.

Seriously.

Check it:

ServeRDU from The Summit Church on Vimeo.

(Have I ever mentioned that I LOVE our church?)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuohmD4Ajk8

Three weeks ago, Osh, Kyrgyzstan was a very large city with a very large population of Uzbeks, a people group very dear to my heart.

Today, a significant portion of the city lies in ruins. Hundreds are dead, and tens of thousands have fled the city.

Many Uzbeks have gone back to Uzbekistan, where it is much more difficult to reach them with the message of the Gospel.

My dear friends and former teammates were living in Osh. They are safely back in the states, but very uncertain of their future. It is possible that their whole neighborhood has been burnt to the ground.

Please pray with me that God will use this to advance the cause of the Gospel in Central Asia.

The article I just stumbled over begins:

WHEN her baby died soon after delivery, Gulbahor Zavidova, 28, a poor farmer’s wife, longed to be pregnant again. After months of trying she and her husband visited a doctor who told her she could never have another child because she had been sterilised.

The procedure had been performed immediately after she gave birth, by doctors who did not ask her consent. On learning she could not bear children, her husband left her.

“Not a day passes without me crying,” she said. “I was outraged when I found out what they had done. How could they do such a horrible thing without asking me?”

According to human rights groups, tens of thousands of young women like Zavidova have been sterilised without their consent in the authoritarian former Soviet state of Uzbekistan.

Uzbek sources say the measure was ordered by Islam Karimov, the president, who has ruled with an iron fist for 20 years. The policy is aimed at keeping down the country’s poor population — with 28m people, it is Central Asia’s most densely populated state.

I think something about our demoralized American sense of reality will tempt us to assume this is some kind of over-dramatization or over-simplification. But it isn’t. I saw the corruption of the Uzbek government for just shy of a year while I lived there, and I have no problem believing this.

It’s a dark, hopeless place with a dark, murderous, and thoroughly corrupt government.

Please pray for them with me.

The Summit Church has a vision to plant 1,000 churches in the next 40 years — most of them in un-reached countries around the world.

That’s right: one thousand churches

One vehicle for this effort is called SendRDU, which exists to help equip and connect people and families who are interested in investing their lives for the sake of the Gospel.

Last week, there was a SendRDU gathering where pastor JD attacked a great question: “What Does It Mean To Be Called?”

This is a rich question that I think all of us struggle with in different ways and at different seasons.

I think pastor J.D. did a fantastic job handling the question. Stephanie and I couldn’t make it to the event (no babysitter), but we downloaded the message and listened to it together this weekend. It was awesome to dream together and remember what God created us for.

I’m so excited to see what God is doing!

You can read his blog post on the topic here, and listen to the teaching here.

I’m curious: what does it mean, in your opinion, to be “called”?

]]> http://www.therieslands.com/2009/09/22/what-does-it-mean-to-be-called/feed/ 3 http://www.therieslands.com/2009/08/11/ever-heard-of-the-tatars/ http://www.therieslands.com/2009/08/11/ever-heard-of-the-tatars/#comments Tue, 11 Aug 2009 15:04:56 +0000 Zack http://www.therieslands.com/?p=3827 You may have never noticed it before, but on the right sidebar of this blog, there’s an “Un-reached People Group Of The Day” banner…

This functionality is provided by the fine folks at the Joshua Project. The Joshua Project is dedicated to finding all the people groups in the world, and getting a handle on their status in terms of how they have been influenced by the Gospel. In so doing, they help determine exactly how much work is left to be done in order to complete the Great Commission.

Today’s Un-reached People of the Day are the Tatars of Ukraine.

Based on the best info available, which is from 2002, about 0.01% of the Tatars are Christians. That means that if you woke up as a Tatar this morning — living in a Tatar community and engrossed in the Tatar culture — you would have to know 10,000 other Tatars in order to know one who is a follower of Jesus who could tell you about Him.

“But can’t they just turn on the TV to hear about Jesus?”

-What TV?

“But can’t they just go to the library and read a book about Jesus?”

-Seriously? If someone were literate and if there was a library anywhere near their home and if that library had Bibles translated into the local language and if there was a way to read one of those Bibles without totally freaking everybody out, then maybe…

The Tatar people are dear to my heart because I had the great privilege of spending a lot of time with a couple of them when I lived in Central Asia. I spent hours talking about Jesus and His great love and sacrifice, and I realized that sharing Christ with a cultural Muslim is a lot like trying to tear down a brick wall with a carpenter’s hammer… slow and painful work.

In the end, I had two friends who chose to follow Christ. I enjoyed their hunger to learn all they could about Jesus, while it lasted. My team had to leave abruptly and I wasn’t able to keep contact with them in all the craziness. It’s very possible that they spent some time being detained for even knowing me and my teammates.

I wonder if they think we abandoned them.

I pray for them whenever I think of them. I ask God that they would remain faithful, even in such a dead and hopeless place. I pray that their experience with Him was deeper than the connection it gave them to some Americans. I pray that we will have some great conversations in heaven. Some day.

Please pray with me for the Tatar people. I pray for the followers of Jesus among them to remain faithful and multiply. I pray for those who are lost among them to grow weary of the hopelessness of cultural Islam, and that God would open their eyes to see the beauty of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

And I pray that God would send people to bring the message of the Gospel to them.

Do you believe God has specifically called you to stay in America and live a typical American life?

If not, what are you doing about it?

And with all that in mind, I’m curious about your thoughts and experiences.

Whether you go to church or not, whether you’re a christian or not, I’d love to have your thoughts!

(I’m playing with Google forms, so I’ll see what kind of cool ways it gives me to share the results w/ everyone!)

If the embedded form doesn’t appear below (after the break), then please use this link

www.youtube.com/watch?v=LA_uwWPE6lQ

I heart Francis Chan.

Take 3 minutes and watch this.

(Courtesy of Mr. Vitamin Z)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=v32UvLWH1pg

Next weekend, I’ll be in Durham with some of my favorite Bible teachers in the world.

I can’t wait!

There’s still room to sign up if you want to join me: www.Advance09.com

Moves like this are common in Uzbekistan, as the government, composed of murderers and thieves moves closer and closer to the soviet dictatorship that supposedly fell apart after the Cold War.

Here’s the abstract:

In a move that appears designed to give the Uzbek government total control over the legal system, officials in Tashkent are requiring all defense lawyers in Uzbekistan to reapply for licenses to practice law.

Many defense lawyers believe that those who refuse to do the government’s bidding will end up having the license renewal applications rejected. Uzbek judges and prosecutors are already appointed by the executive branch.

Pray for Uzbekistan.

Pray for God to open the eyes of those who are lost.

Pray for God to tear down or reform the corrupt, broken leaderhship.

Pray for God to have mercy.

And thank Him that He allowed you to be born in a better place…