God’s invitation to move beyond our comfort zone

As a young, zealous missionary couple, we moved to Peru determined to use our gifts diligently to support the church-planting effort there. Derek stepped into music ministry and helped disciple young men in the faith. I helped develop a children’s church program and contributed to the health of our missionary team by tutoring and teaching classes for the homeschooled children on our team.

We were both excited to use our gifts to support the church-planting effort. Our roles were not front and center, but they fit our skill sets, and we were glad to be able to create margin for our teammates to devote more time to their areas of ministry expertise—things like church leadership, orphan care, medical missions, neighborhood evangelism, and campus ministry.

This approach was a wonderful introduction to missions for us. It felt exciting to be part of a team where we supported one another toward the common goal of reaching our city for Christ. In time, however, God would push both of us past our comfort zones and into areas of ministry we hadn’t anticipated.

Accepting a daunting task in a season of sink-or-swim

Fast forward a few years in our missionary story, and ministry was beginning to look quite different. The missionary pastor of our church plant was back in the States for a year on home assignment, so Derek was needed to step up and help keep many aspects of church ministry going. In addition to leading church membership courses, providing pastoral counseling, responding to congregational financial needs, and overseeing building maintenance, he was also called upon to preach once a month.

Derek had never preached before and had never anticipated doing so. But with our pastor out of town, he would need to fill the pulpit when a guest preacher was not available.

This felt like a daunting task because, on top of all the other reasons preaching felt intimidating, Derek would need to do so in Spanish—a language he had only been practicing for a few years.

During that season of sink-or-swim ministry, Derek reflected in a prayer letter: “I think the only thing I could compare this to is when I showed up at soccer camp my freshman year of college. I found myself running line drills in unbearable heat and telling myself over and over again, ‘If I can just make it one more rep, then Coach will blow the whistle and I can catch a break.’”

The Lord helped Derek grow as a preacher and provided people who offered support and encouragement. In time, several Peruvian men from our congregation gradually began preaching as well, and they formed a small group that met weekly to support and pray for one another.

In this way, not only did Derek learn to preach in Spanish and receive constructive feedback from Peruvian brothers in the faith, but our congregation also learned to rally around and support men who were growing into leadership.

Stepping into a place of need despite discomfort

My own challenge that year was not as great as Derek’s, but God also challenged me to step outside my comfort zone. I had never fancied myself a leader of anything beyond children’s ministry, but while Derek was overseeing the church’s ministries that year, we began to recognize both a great desire and a significant need for someone to come alongside couples struggling in their relationships.

Derek and I had received wonderful premarital counseling ourselves years before, but we had never provided counseling to anyone. Yet couple after couple came to the church looking for help. We sensed an invitation from the Lord to respond to this need and trust Him to help us along the way.

So I went to work planning and praying through what we could do to help these couples who desired to grow in their relationships. I knew that God had woven beautiful elements of the gospel into His design for male-female relationships and that teaching on this topic could not only address areas of relational tension but also proclaim good news about God’s heart for humanity.

So, drawing on my educational background, I crafted a Spanish-language course for both singles and couples on God’s design for romantic relationships. After a couple of months of planning, translating, building PowerPoint presentations, and promoting the course, Derek and I launched a 12-week course on Friday evenings that we would co-teach at our church.

I was very nervous about this upfront role. Standing at the front of a room full of adults, speaking into a microphone in Spanish about topics like sex, divorce, and relational conflict, felt like an out-of-body experience to me.

I no longer recognized myself in this role, but I found that God carried me through it. He kindly affirmed my timid effort through frequent expressions of appreciation from those who attended the course. We were amazed at how many people participated, and person after person commented that they had never heard teaching like this before.

Some probably came out of curiosity, but many truly seemed to grapple with the content and wrestle with its implications for their own understanding of God’s good plan for humanity.

During that year in Peru, Derek and I learned important lessons about opening ourselves to walk with God into new and scary endeavors. We trusted Him to work through us because we had very little confidence in our own abilities. We felt quite weak and needy in the roles He invited us into, yet He showed us His power to inhabit our efforts and work through them to build up His church.  Perhaps the places beyond our comfort zones are often the very places where we discover most clearly that God’s power, rather than our own ability, is what carries His work forward.

“But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me” (2 Corinthians 12:9).

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