The Story behind...
Silas West of Waypoint Church
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Silas West - The member care catalyst
Salt Magazine was blessed with an opportunity to interview Silas West from Waypoint Church. When we conducted the interview in 2011, he was transitioning from a leadership position in the ministry Word Made Flesh into an Associate Pastor role for Waypoint Church, so we are excited to share about BOTH ministries. Word Made Flesh is a mission organization that serves the poorest of the poor, striving to serve them and point them to Jesus while building community and reconciliation. Waypoint Church focuses on living life “Up, In, and Out.” “Up” means loving Father God with all of your heart, mind, and soul (see Deuteronomy 6:4), receiving God’s love into your heart, and trusting Jesus to heal you from all of your sin and hurts. “In” means loving the church as the body of Christ. “Out” means loving those who do not know God, as guided by the Holy Spirit. Tell us your story
My name is Silas West. I have a wife, Kimberly, and my four kids are ages 10, 9, 7, and 5. My wife and I met at Asbury College in Wilmer, Kentucky (a Christian liberal arts college), and both of us have a heart for missions. I grew up as a missionary kid in Kenya, Africa, and I thought I was going to go back and do community development work in Africa. I enjoyed the bush and the rural atmosphere. I always said I would NEVER work in a slum, NEVER work in a city among
the poor, among street children particularly, and another funny one was that I would NEVER work in Asia. God used a circumstance in my life where I was back visiting my parents who had been relocated to the outskirts of Nairobi—a place I really didn’t want them to be—to expose me to an associate pastor who spent his days living and working in a slum nearby. I started spending some time with him and met God in a way that I had not experienced Him before. God broke my heart for the poor around the world, but particularly, He used that time to lead me to Asia. That is how I got involved with Word Made Flesh, which was just getting started at the time and needed staff. I ended up fulfilling all those “Nevers” in the opposite way—I worked in Asia, worked among street children in a slum, and lived in a slum (not just worked in one!) from 1997 to 2008 in the inner city of Katmandu, Nepal.
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Chennai, India
Katmandu, Nepal
Calcutta, India
What is Word ade Flesh?
It comes directly from John 1:14 where the bible says, “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us”— the idea being that we are an incarnational ministry serving Jesus among the poor. Plus, when Jesus first spoke openly in public about who He was, He said, “I come to bring good news to the poor, bring sight to the blind, and make the lame walk.” We must recognize that His kingdom is one that brings freedom to those that are living in oppression, who are marginalized, and who are outcasts. He seeks to bring wholeness to His people by bringing those who are on the outskirts of society back into the
Chisinau, Moldova
Golatz, Romania
"I worked in Asia... and lived in a slum for 11 years from 1997 - 2008 in the inner city of Katmandu, Nepal."
Bangkok, Thailand
...Silas West center so that we can meet their needs, and that is part of what it means to be the kingdom of God.
Freetown, Sierra Leone
Lima, Peru
El Alto, Bolivia
Rio De Janeiro, Brazil
That is what Word Made Flesh is all about: building communities and nurturing those communities in these places of poverty, so that those who are poor become a vital, integral part of the life of the community. The poor are not just being served. The truth is that we are serving AMONG the poor, not just providing service TO the poor. As their needs are being met by the community, they are also invited into mutual relationships where they can also meet the needs of those who are serving beside them. Synopsis of WMF
The founder of Word Made Flesh, Shane Clark, spent a year traveling the world with the vice president of World Vision at the time, Dr. Samuel Kamaleson. Experts say Dr. Kamaleson had more face-to-face encounters with pastors than anyone else in the history of the church. God used that time to really break Shane’s heart for the poor. Shane went to Chennai, India and put together a board of directors and got Chris Heuertz, fresh out of college, to help him start the first children’s home for AIDS patients.
Buenos Aires, Argentina
This was the first care home that focused on the AIDS epidemic and how it was making orphans due to the many children who were born
from parents who had the disease. That children’s home was the flagship ministry of Word Made Flesh in 1991, and it continues to this day. Tell us about yourWMF
Journey
I came back to college from the trip to Africa where I was in the slum with a pastor. I was praying in my apartment by myself when I stumbled upon a passage in a book by Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest. It said, “We slander God by our eagerness to serve Him without knowing Him.” I felt like He was using that to speak to me. I was in college at the time, and I hadn’t yet had a lot of one-onone experiences where I heard God’s voice, but that was the first time I very clearly heard His voice saying “Go to India.” I asked Him, “What does that mean? I don’t know you? I grew up in a church, my grandfather was a pastor, and my dad was a missionary! I went to a Christian school, a Christian missionary boarding school in Africa, and a Christian college. I spend time praying and reading my bible every day. What else can I do to know you more?” My first reaction was revulsion; I did not want to go India. Asia was not on my to-do list, but I knew that I had to do it. I looked around campus for what mission organizations were sending people to India, and that is when I first came across Word Made Flesh. The director, Chris, was taking students to intern at the children’s home.
So, I went and spent 6 months in India, in that children’s home. They would send the interns up to one of Mother Theresa’s homes in Calcutta to experience working among the poor there, the destitute, and one of the homes for the dying. I had the experience of meeting with Mother Theresa the year before she passed away. I had a couple times to just sit and talk with her. It was pretty amazing—I felt like when I was with her, I was in the presence of Christ; you could sense her dependency on His spiritual leadership. She said, “You are here to serve the poor right? So what are you doing here talking to me? Get out there and find Jesus among the poor.” She was very humble that way, like “I really don’t have anything to say to you; just do what God called me to do—serve and encounter the face of Christ in that way.” That was how I really got shaped and mentored in my early involvement in Word Made Flesh. When I moved back to the United States, Word Made Flesh was not asking for people to join, but they took me anyway. I had done my internship with my best friend, Seth, from college. I didn’t know it, but God was doing the same thing in his heart as in mine. Seth went to the Word Made Flesh office the day before I did and said he wanted to go to Calcutta, and the director, Chris, agreed that it sounded great. The next day, I showed up and asked to go to Calcutta also (and at the time, Word Made Flesh had no concept of sending people in teams yet, like we would now). They did not want to put all their effort in one place, so they asked me to go somewhere else in South Asia. I did not even know where South Asia was, so I looked on a map and saw Calcutta, and really close to it was Katmandu, Nepal. I thought, “Oh, I like mountains!" so I
suggested Katmandu. Chris then asked me to pray about it for a week for a confirmation. After I finished praying for that week, I was feeling even stronger to go to Katmandu. I told Chris, and he responded that he had always prayed that Word Made Flesh would someday have a presence in Katmandu—he didn’t want to mention that earlier and influence my decision to go there. So, my love for mountains was my calling. I became the regional coordinator for all of South Asia.
I came on staff in 1997 with Word Made Flesh, and at the time it just had a children’s home in southern India, and it wasn’t a sending organization like it is now. The director who had started the children’s home, Chris Heuertz, and his wife, Phileena, had moved back to the United States. They felt God opening doors of Word Made Flesh to use the way God has transformed their lives to do service among the poor. They wanted to replicate that in the lives of other young people who were looking for a similar way to launch into the calling God had on their lives. Your role in WMF involves member care. What is member care?
In 2003, our Community Care (member care) Department first got started, and it has been growing ever since. Our department is key in the selection/candidacy stage of someone applying to join the mission, and then as they are accepted by the interview committee. It was a result of people burning out and large-scale attrition happening, and we did not want to see that happen anymore. Our department (me and one or two others) does the training, gets them ready to go, and makes sure they have their support in (part of that is the administrative department). We also equip them with tools they need to raise their funds and to get them into the field. We realized that some of our new staff were just sinking or swimming, so we really needed to accompany them well. We developed a new staff process for the first three years where they
are walked through the field with a veteran staff member and accompanied really well in areas of spiritual formation as well as personal development. Of course they are called to serve here, but what are their values and true calling? At the end of that threeyear period, they are asked to make a more long-term commitment to the community or go back to the States. It is sad but no surprise that the leading cause of missionary attrition is that missionaries cannot get along with one another. We look at marriages, and we see the same thing in our society. Marriages within the church as well as outside the church are falling apart. A lot of it comes down to a break down in communication. People join Word Made Flesh because they are drawn to our value of community. There can be disillusionment for awhile because people think that the community of Word Made Flesh will be great, but community is only as great as those who are a part of it; we all come to community with our own brokenness. Our own dysfunction can come from family dysfunction or not ever being taught how to relate to one another in a healthy, whole way. It’s not going to be a magic fix if I join a community —I am going to bring that same brokenness into it. Some things we do that are fairly new for us are mediation of conflict, when one of our areas/fields has a conflict that has escalated to a place where it is becoming dysfunctional. I’ve had to come into the field a couple times to work through conflict resolutions skills and basic communication skills— the same kind of thing I would do for marriage counseling, but on a team scale. After those times, I would develop ways to get the information used to bring resolution out to our entire staff and also tools and resources that can equip them to better deal with conflict. How did you transition into the staff at your church, Waypoint?
I had been with Word Made Flesh for 14 years; I loved it there and had no intention of leaving. In April of 2011, I did a one-month visit to the Asia fields. I was also invited to speak at a conference in Malaysia on member care. It was a really good time for me to reconnect with the communities I had been a part of
when I left Asia in 2008. I got back and met with Matthew and Josh, the Pastor and Associate Pastor of Waypoint, but I thought they just wanted to catch up on how my trip went. I caught them up on my travels, and then Matthew said, “Let’s get to what we really want to talk about.” I had a sense of immediate panic thinking, “Did one of my kids do something bad in Sunday school?” Everything happens when I am gone. They outlined how Josh was planning to leave the following year (in 2012) because he and his wife were called to plant a church in Sicily. He had been developing this new Waypoint drive for church planting on an international basis. They needed somebody to replace him, but also somebody who had experience in caring for, sending out, and training missionaries, and that is what I do with Word Made Flesh. They also knew it would be a long shot because of my commitment to Word Made Flesh. Originally I said, “I don’t think so… It sounds great, but I feel really committed to Word Made Flesh, but I am taking the offer seriously, so I’ll pray about it for a few weeks.” It was a rough month, but ultimately I heard from God that Word Made Flesh could go on without me, and I had this strong desire to step into this role at the church. What are your prayer points?
For Word Made Flesh: We have done very well over the years developing a network where we individually raise support, but when we leave the organization our supporters go with us, so people are not supporting Word Made Flesh, they are supporting the person. It is good, and I think we need to continue with that, but we need a base of people who are just giving to the mission. We are entering a phase of development as an organization, as a mission, as a movement, where we are seeking out a new model of fundraising that does not just rely on individuals raising money, but people are giving gifts for the mission itself. In the future, we would love to hire more minority staff, but their communities are not always able to help them raise the support they need to maintain salary. We are limited to bringing on people that have funds
or churches that can support them. That is hurtful for us, because we are missing out on a huge part of the body of Christ within our own country. We would love to see African-American or LatinAmerican missionaries sent into the world, but they both lack access to funding. If we could build a bigger support base within Word Made Flesh itself, where we have funds that are freed up, we could bring people into the mission who have a vision and a calling but do not have access to funds. How can a person give to Word Made Flesh? The simplest and preferred way is to visit our website: www.wordmadeflesh.com. There is a link to give to Word Made Flesh. You can also call the Word Made Flesh office at 1-800-CRY4KIDS. For Waypoint: As I transitioned in, we were beginning this new phase of sending people out. We have a team in Scotland under Pastor Tom Fraley. They have been really gracious with us as we try to figure out how to send people out and to support them well in both care and infrastructure. As we get ready to send out these next few teams to Afghanistan, Thailand, and Sicily, it is on me in this new phase to really develop the support structure that these teams and the future teams will depend on. A big prayer request for me is that I could quickly get my head around what is already in place and all the work that Josh has done, and that I would be able to honor what he has done and then also take it to the level that it needs to be. Overall, we are also praying into getting a piece of property so that we could have our own building and not be mobile anymore like we are now. As we look at becoming this hub of sending people out into the world, we really want a home base of operations where these missionaries and church planters that we are sending out could also have a sense of having a place to come home to. They will be nomadic in some ways and not have a sense of home. Many will be selling their homes and becoming “homeless” when they come back to the States. We want to be the support bases for all these people, but we don’t have a home base ourselves. We are just praying that the prayer strings of heaven are loosed, so please join us! Your Favorite Bible Verses?
John 17:21 – 23: When Jesus prayed over his disciples “that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in
me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me (NIV).” I love that one, because it speaks to the unity and community of being in the Trinity and that in that moment, Christ invites us all to participate in that same form of unity with Him and the Father. Through that, the world knows that we belong to Him and that He sent us. John 1:14: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth (NIV).” What do you wish you knew as a
new believer?
I think that it sounds contradictory to your question, but what I would like to tell myself is, “Take in all of this new, exciting faith that you have now as a child in God, and pay attention to it. When you get older and a little more cynical, you will need that child-like faith.” I love being a father and looking at the simple faith of my children, who know nothing else but a faithful God. They have seen His provision. They have been friends with children who have eaten out of the garbage, but they know that our home is one where needy kids and adults are welcome. They think that is what it means to be a Christian. Their faith is simple, and they know that if they have a need, they pray to God. He may or may not meet the need, but the first place you go is to pray—not to depend on yourself. I think that even as a 38-year-old Christian, who has been a believer for most of those years, I tend to depend on myself a lot because “I know how to do it.” Then I look at my kids and I remember, “I need to be SO dependent on God.”
Final vision for your life? I love the idea of accompanying people who are walking the path that I have walked, and maybe in some ways they are struggling.
To learn more about Word Made Flesh,
Silas West
please visit : www.wordmadeflesh.org
Whether it is in their marriage or ministering the gospel in a cross-cultural setting, they are burnt out. I love the idea of caring for them and being a counselor. I am earning my master’s degree in counseling right now because I am drawn to be a spiritual director or counselor to those people. I would love to see a ministry center here in Omaha developed, where—maybe it would be just a home with an apartment in it—where people can come and find restoration. That is something maybe 10 or 15 years down the road. At the end of my life, I would like to look back and see a life of one who took the experiences I have had, and then used them to walk with people and give them an opportunity to find restoration in the places where they are broken so that they can be restored and sent back out into the harvest field. I have seen a lot of fathers who are pastors or missionaries sacrifice their families, their children, or even their marriages for the sake of the ministry. I pray that my family always comes first, that whatever my kids see me doing, they see me first and foremost being a present father to them—one who is attentive, one who teaches sacrifice and that sometimes we make sacrifices for each other, for the sake of others, but never at their expense. I want them to always know a father who cares for them and points to the true Father.
To learn more about Waypoint Church, please visit :
www.waypointomaha.com.