Unity – Surprised by the Body of Christ

Author: Travis Kleppen

Written by Travis Kleppen

If you go on to YWAM Montana’s website and look at The Surge, you will see a phrase written in all capital letters front and center: “ONE TARGET NATION. ONE STRATEGY. TOGETHER.” This is what The Surge is about, God’s people working together with one another and with God to reach his people where his name has not yet been fully proclaimed. Why then should it have come as a surprise to us when God chose to mold our bases together, not solely for the sake of reaching the dead souls of a lost nation, but for the building up of his own body?

When The Surge began, there was a vision in Montana to come alongside another YWAM  base for three to five years to reach goals only God could accomplish. It just so happens that this is where our worlds collide.

Before we even knew what The Surge was, YWAM Taipei had felt God leading them to expand God’s kingdom within the nation of Taiwan by pioneering more YWAM works here. But our future goals didn’t become entirely clear until YWAM Montana came to us and told us they wanted to partner with us in The Surge and that we needed to seek the Lord and ask him what he would have us do to further his kingdom. As our leaders prayed, they came up with four primary goals of The Surge.

Over the course of the next three and a half years, we wanted to see five hundred new disciples of Jesus raised up. This wasn’t meant to be five hundred people who pray a prayer, rather it was to be five hundred people who not only confessed Jesus with their mouth, but people who received ongoing discipleship after choosing to follow Jesus. Second, we wanted to see fifty staff go out from our base and be sent into frontier missions, which is an incredibly high number considering our base only has about seventy-five staff. The third goal was to strengthen our partnership with the local church by creating fifty active partnerships with churches in Taiwan. These first three goals are called the 500/50/50 portion of The Surge. The final goal was to pioneer three new YWAM works in three different counties in Taiwan.

In many of our minds here in Taiwan, God was sending us YWAM Montana. They were going to equip, send, and train, while YWAM Taipei was to receive, but God decided to surprise us. The reality is, when God does something, he has a way of doing things a bit differently than we anticipate.

I first heard about the Surge while I was living in North Dakota working in a boomtown trying to make enough money to pay off my student loans from university so I could return to Taiwan to join staff. I watched a video online published by YWAM Montana describing what the Surge was all about. Scott Contival, the base leader here in Taiwan, was explaining how our two bases were going to partner together to see God-sized goals reached. He shared about why there was such great need for the gospel to go out in Taiwan and expressed his thanks to the Lakeside base for their willingness to join us in what God was doing here.

By the time I showed up in Taiwan, The Surge was already in full swing. People had been commissioned into frontier missions, outreach teams were already arriving to preach the gospel alongside us, and people in both Taiwan and Montana were persistent in prayer to see God win this nation for Christ. The seed that was once an idea of our two bases working together to see Taiwan reached for Christ was happening. YWAM Montana was sending people left and right, and we were beginning to see the work God was doing.

In the first Hobbit film, there is a scene in which Gandalf, the great wizard of his time, is speaking alone with another character, Galadriel. They are speaking of the affairs of the world and then as Gandalf walks out she asks him a simple question, “Why the halfling?” What she is really asking is, “Why would you bring this small and seemingly insignificant creature with you on a journey of such great importance?” Here is his response: “Saruman believes it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. I found it is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love. Why Bilbo Baggins? I don’t know. Perhaps because I am afraid, and he gives me courage.(Jackson, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey)”

Now this isn’t a perfect analogy, but I do think it gives us a glimpse of what has happened during The Surge. It wasn’t that Bilbo, had nothing to offer, it just wasn’t as evident to the eye that he could be of use in seeing their impossible goal reached of reclaiming their homeland. Gandalf may have been the leader of the company, but Bilbo had things to offer that he himself didn’t even know, and if it wasn’t for Bilbo’s presence in the company, their goal would have never been reached. Yes YWAM Taipei, the Bilbo of the company, needed Gandalf, YWAM Lakeside to come alongside us and lead us. But the truth is, what we found was we had even more to offer than knew, and people have stepped up here in so many ways to see these goals met.

In the Surge, many of us had primarily asked the question of how can YWAM Montana come alongside us and help reach these goals God has given us at YWAM Taipei. And we have seen God use the Lakeside base in so many ways to build us up and to bless us. We have received from them so much more than we could ever give back to them. They have sent people to teach in our schools. We have welcomed leaders who have trained our staff. They have helped us better structure our base to run more efficiently. We’ve received DTS and Titus outreach teams, evangelists, Bible teachers, counselors, and to top it all off, they have a team working tirelessly half way across the globe to see God’s goals met for The Surge in Taiwan.

We have received so much from the Lakeside base, yet at the same time, one of the great surprises of The Surge has been how God has used our bases to mutually edify one another. Teams have been faithfully sent from Montana while our outreach department has worked steadfastly to give these teams opportunities to bring the gospel into a lost nation. Teachers have been sent to us from Montana to equip our staff and our students in so many ways while we have sent out teachers to Montana to equip them in areas we are strong. And we have people on both sides of the Pacific working together day in and day out to see these goals reached. The beauty of all of this is that this was God’s design all along. He desires the church to work as one body, together, and to mutually build one another up.

One story sticks out in particular. A few weeks ago, our base was contacted with an urgent prayer request from Montana. As soon as our staff heard, I saw twenty people all drop what they were doing to meet together and intercede for the needs of the Lakeside base. Not only did people pray as soon as the request was made, later, more prayer for Montana followed, and in our designated Surge prayer times, Montana’s request was met by intercession for them and their needs. Our two bases coming together in this time is just a small picture of the body of Christ working together and of what God has done between these two bodies of believers.

As Paul said in 1 Corinthians 12, “Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body.” (NIV)

We are the body of Christ, and we are the best version of the body of Christ when we function in the way God designed us to function, and rely on the other parts of the body to do their job. The body relies on each member to fulfill it’s function.

When I was studying in university, I had been following Jesus for a couple years when I met a new believer named Pat. Pat had recently decided to follow Jesus at a fall retreat put on by a Christian organization on our campus. I remember loving Pat and his passion and zeal for Jesus instantly. We began to meet together when we both had time to do discipleship or to simply just hang out as fellow believers.

I was new to discipling others at the time, but there is one thing I won’t forget about my time discipling Pat. As much as I was able to invest in Pat, I often found myself noticing as I discipled him, he was discipling me. He constantly encouraged me as he shared about his fight for the faith, his struggle against sin, and his chasing after Christ and Christ’s call on his life.

This is what I believe is happening as our two bases walk through The Surge together. I believe God is doing a work of bonding between our two bases. YWAM Montana is not so much the boss who is training his employees and telling them what to do and how to do it. Rather, what God seems to be doing in this time is bonding our bases together as siblings. It seems more accurate to look at YWAM Montana as an elder brother giving guidance as we walk this journey of reaching the nations together. A boss/employee relationship is almost always a relationship where there is one teacher and one student, but the bond of brothers and sisters is so much stronger, and mutually beneficial. This is what God is doing between our two bases.

As I look at The Surge, I see an incredible picture of the church, Christ’s body working together for the sake of the gospel. As YWAM Montana has extended out their arm of help to equip YWAM Taipei to see five hundred disciples made, fifty missionaries sent into frontier missions, and fifty active partnerships with churches, God has given us on the other side of the Pacific Ocean opportunity to build into our brothers and sisters six thousand miles away, and he has used them to equip us to be the feet of Christ going to the lost in this nation. In the course of the last year and a half, we have really seen The Surge slogan come to fruition. ONE TARGET NATION, ONE STRATEGY, TOGETHER.