Doug Erdmann National Director
Mutua Mahiaini was the keynote speaker at our Navigator National Conference last year. Those who attended came away impressed by his challenge to pay the cost of discipleship. We did not know at that time that we were hearing from the next International President of The Navigators! Mutua was born and raised in Kenya. His father was a pastor. When Mutua was 10 years old, he answered the call to make Jesus his Lord. He says about that day: “It was very clear to me that I had entered into a relationship that gave me rights that I did not enjoy before…Something happened inside me. It was an assurance of being loved by God, and that I belonged.” The following is an interview with Mutua by Worldwide, a newsletter of the International Office of The Navigators:
A new president for the Worldwide Partnership Worldwide: How do you think your international work, as well as your Kenyan upbringing, have affected your understanding of God? Mutua: I have, especially since we moved to the Ivory Coast as missionaries (in 1994), reflected a great deal on what we should share about Christ— regardless of our socio-economic status, regardless of our race and our culture. What is the bottom line that we should share? . . . There is the story of John the Baptist, when the Jews of Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him, “Who are you?” John replied by telling them who he was not. So they asked him if he was Elijah or the Prophet. Their questions show that they could only understand people in terms of a name; they needed to put people in categories. There was no category that John could give them. So he told them that he was the voice of one crying out in the wilderness (see John 1:19-26). This shows us that we all have to make a choice: Are we going to have a name, or be a voice?. . . The message in that passage is, for me, that I will never really have a voice that has spiritual authority, I will never be a voice, unless I give up my quest to have a name among men. Worldwide: Isn’t it true, however, that your Kenyan culture is a major part of your identity, your name? Mutua: My “Kenyanness” is a blessing that helps me to be able to identify with many people. I grew up with people whose lives were very, very basic.
Many times on dark nights people would ask my dad to drive pregnant women to the hospital. Sometimes a woman would have the baby in my father’s car. And sometimes the car would get stuck in the mud on the way to the hospital. I grew up seeing that people’s lives are pretty fragile. This has helped me to understand people. But, going back to the idea of having a name or a voice, we who are in Christ know that we have a name given to us by God and that it trumps any name or any identity that the world can offer. That is really the identity with which we should go to people who are in the “wilderness.” I don’t go to people as a Kenyan. I go to them in the identity that God has given me. Doing this allows us to have a voice that has God’s authority. Without that, we speak and it is hollow. There is no spiritual power behind it. Worldwide: Is there a passage of scripture that has meant a lot to you in your life? Mutua: Yes, one of them is Isaiah 30:23-24. It says, He will also send you rain for the seed you sow in the ground, and the food that comes from the land will be rich and plentiful. In that day your cattle will graze in the broad meadows. The oxen and donkeys that work the soil will eat fodder and mash, spread out with fork and shovel. This to me is about God’s promises. He promises to send rain. So by faith we sow the
seed in expectation that God will send the rain. . . . This is about the blessing of God in our lives and the extension of our impact. . . . There have been so many times in ministry when I was investing in people and I thought, “Is that the best you can do?” There are accusing voices that can discourage us. But many times God says, “Just sow the seed. I will do the watering.” . . . God is at work, so we are not to be preoccupied with the constant measurement of our impact. Worldwide: In what ways can we encourage one another to continue growing in our relationships with Jesus, throughout our lives? Mutua: Part of the answer has to do with the message that we bring to people. The basics are so crucial: We have to be reading the Bible and to be praying. But these things in themselves are not what we preach. Our core message is not “have a quiet time.” And yet we cannot do without a quiet time. So we can’t confuse the means of growing in Christ with the center of our message. In 1 Corinthians 2:2, Paul says, For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. That idea of us presenting Jesus as the Alpha and the Omega is such a compelling thing—to communicate Him according to His fullness. . . . We know that the god of this age has blinded many people. So it’s not like every time we talk about Christ people are going to respond. But it would be disappointing if we conveyed Christ in a way that makes Him less than He is. This is why we each must know Jesus so deeply, so that we can minister out of the overflow of who He is to us and what we know of Him. There is something about a deep walk with God that is so compelling that people want to come to Him.
Mutua (centre) and his wife Stephanie sharing a light moment with students from The NavTeens during the National Conference in Singapore last year.
“The Seed is perfect. But the ground is hard, like asphalt. What then must the workers do? We must break up the ground, work it, till it, again and again, until it becomes fertile for the Gospel.” - Bryan Gibbs,
Nav missionary and ministry leader at Utsunomiya
U T S U N O M I Y A japan
A team of six from the Nanyang Technologial University Navigators spent 2 weeks in Japan from 13 May to 26 May, serving in a Japan Navigators BEST Club. BEST stands for Bible, English, Sports and Travel. This ministry focuses on introducing the Bible to the students, helping them learn English and establishing a strong friendship with the students through sports and travel. Hewbert Chew shares his reflections on the trip:
ng the i s s u c is team d BEST Club s n o i s vs mis ents from a a N U d NT ith stu w e l b Bi
The first thing that struck me before I even set foot in Japan was that many Christians do not even
realise the need for missionaries in Japan. The reaction when I told some of my close friends about the trip was: “Japan needs missionaries?” I guess I had some doubts of my own before I went for the trip.
The style of ministry there is very different from what we are used to in Singapore. Firstly, the BEST Club comprises 90% non-believers, in stark contrast to what we have in Singapore. Every one of the believers in the BEST Club has to fully depend on the Lord’s providence and strength because they do not have a comfortable “Christian fellowship” to fall back on. The church fellowship among the BEST Club believers is only held once a month, which means that nourishment would have to come from their own day-to-day reading of the Word and Quiet Times with God. This is where we find QT, almost taken for granted among some here in Singapore, to be of utmost importance for sustenance and strength to carry on in the ministry, especially when it takes a long time for someone to come to Christ. The ministry is very focused on building relationships. In Japan, the culture of resisting Western influence is deeply rooted. The fact that Christianity is often seen as a Western religion distances them from the faith. The missionaries here spend a lot of time nurturing relationships before the students become more open to conversations that involve any discussion of spirituality. “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” -John 13:34-35 (NIV) The BEST Club is a ministry built on love. Christ’s love must overflow in the lives of the believers that the students can see something so different that they want to know why and how we love like that. I have learnt from this trip that in my intention to go out to make the Word known, I should be doing so from the overflowing love that comes from Christ. I recognise that I can get so focused thinking about answering the call that I forget about the love of Christ. Christ's love is central to what we are doing in ministry and is what moves us to action and overcomes the fear of rejection. v
Missions diary
We have two teams out on missions in June. Please pray for them as they share Jesus and encourage believers in other countries. 1. Singapore Poly Navs team (1-20 June, Kolkata) 2. Nav ITE team (13-20 June, city in an East Asian country)
REGISTER NOW > MESSAGES BY YAP KIM MENG > SELECT 1 OUT OF 4 WORKSHOPS > FORUM BY OUR WS SPEAKERS > LUNCH WILL BE PROVIDED Individual registration : $45 Group of 5 : $40 per person Closing date: 8 Aug 2015 Email registration to beeeng@navigators.org.sg
Visit www.navigators.org.sg for more information.
SALT FOR THis GENERATION “You are the salt of the earth.” Mathhew 5:13
DANIEL LIM
We welcome Daniel Lim and Grace Yeo on staff. They will reach out and disciple youths like themselves on local campuses. Both of them were discipled through our campus ministries.
Daniel Lim is a recent business graduate from Nanyang Technological University. He has been mentored by the Ngee Ann Polytechnic Navs since he was 18 and continues to serve passionately among polytechnic students today. He has seen how God’s vision for The Navigators – ‘spiritual multiplication through spiritual generations’ – really works in his life and is strongly convinced that this is crucial in reaching the world, starting “Therefore I want from Singapore today. you to know that God’s salvation has been sent to the Gentiles, and they will listen!” Acts 28:28
“For we live by faith, not by sight.” Grace Yeo is a Physics graduate from NTU and joined The Navigators at Nanyang Technological University as a freshman. It gradually dawned on her that the call to make disciples is not only for some, but all followers of Christ. She believes that God can use the life of any willing individual, regardless of their background, to significantly impact the lives of others for eternity. Therefore, she sincerely seeks to understand what it means to pour out her life for others.
GRACE YEO
2 Corinthians 5:7
www.navigators.org.sg The calling of The Navigators is to advance the gospel of Jesus and his kingdom into the nations through spiritual generations of labourers living and discipling among the lost. Views expressed in published articles are those of the individual writers and may not necessarily be the views of The Navigators Singapore. THE NAVIGATORS SINGAPORE • National Director: K. Douglas Erdmann • Editor/Design & Layout/Photography: Patricia Lian 117 Lorong K, Telok Kurau, Singapore 425758 • Tel: (65) 6344 4133 • Fax: (65) 6344 0975 • E-mail: admin@navigators.org.sg • www.facebook.com/singaporenavigators Printed by Seng Lee Press Pte Ltd