Matt and Terri Fisher

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Prayer Letter/Ministry Update

December 2011

I wasn’t slowing down the car to talk to him, in fact I wasn’t thinking much about him at all. It was the TV. This big Middle-Eastern looking dude was wrestling with a MASSIVE TV (no, not flat screen) overflowing his breaking-down wheelbarrow, and I thought he was trying to offload it into the dumpster standing there beside him. So when I stopped the car, I had eyes only for that big momma of a television. I pulled off to the side, asked him if I could “help” and, off-handedly, if it still worked. He said he wasn’t sure, but he hoped so . . . and then it dawned on me . . . this guy got to the dumpster before I did and he’s trying to haul this thing away for himself! Thankfully at that point the grace of God stepped in and I told him I’d be happy to haul it home for him. Since we were already in our neighborhood, I thought it would be great to make a new acquaintance. It turns out that he oversees security at the new apartments going up just a block from our house. So after we hoisted it into our minivan, I drove up the road, pulled into the complex and a couple of his buddies came out to meet us and unload the behemoth. I invited them to our English club and went back today to bring my new friend some Christian literature and talk with him about life and about Jesus – and we did just that. (He knows no English but as he is from a former Soviet Central Asian republic, he knows Russian . . . ahhh, the providence of God). As I returned home, however, it dawned on me how “easy” the Great Commission is at the personal level. What did I have to do? Take a moment to meet someone in my neighborhood and begin talking about the most important person in my life – the Center around which the primary thoughts and activities of my life revolve. So, how difficult is that supposed to be?

Of course, the Fishers have “real ministries” going on that really do involve intensive effort. Since the Christian university moved to exclusively extension programs this summer, our primary “ministry” here this fall has been our weekly neighborhood English clubs; Terri’s weekly Bible study with the ladies at the church, (pictured at right) her running the house and the homeschool; my monthly preaching, weekly meetings with the local church leadership team, and daily work on a Greek-based Bible commentary on Colossians for Russian pastors and students (they don’t have that sort of thing here). That stuff is work – “Christian” maybe,
but grinding at times – just like anyone else’s daily labors at the job or in the home. But,
as I said, walking around our community, getting to know our neighbors, showing a little bit of care for them, and sharing Jesus with them as the opportunity arises – that’s not work, that’s just engaging as normally-functioning members of the neighborhood. In fact, it’s what they do everyday – minus the Jesus part – as they stroll their babies together up and down our dirt roads and sip lip-scorching tea around their kitchen tables . . . and they don’t consider it work or “ministry”.

Then a couple of disparate thoughts I’d been wrestling with began to come together in my mind. How was it that Jesus could expect a lightly-educated, semi-literate provincial minority from Palestine, working dawn-to-dusk at their largely low-level jobs – how could he expect them to carry his stories and teaching to all levels of a complex Roman social structure and beyond? In other words, how could he expect them to spread the Word when they were working all the time? They had none of the “advantages” of the evangelicals in today’s Western contexts – no media outlets, no Facebook, no Christian social ministries to unbelievers, and, I almost forgot, no voting blocks – they just had themselves, consumed with Spirit-engendered holiness and love for Him and for one another, going about their business talking, always talking, about this “Lord Jesus” who daily intersected and impinged upon their existences.

Work was work for them, whether it was mending fishing nets, selling wares in the marketplace, or keeping up dusty huts and preparing daily meals on little better than subsistence incomes. Talking about Jesus with their families, neighbors and coworkers was not work. For all of us too, work is work – whether it’s wringing cloth diapers or writing computer programs, preparing a ladies’ Bible study in Russian or writing a commentary. But reaching across the fence and talking with our neighbors about Jesus – nope, that’s not work. Whatever jargon we care to use, be it “witnessing”, “sharing Christ” or whatever – it is simply talking about Jesus and his reign in our lives. Let’s not make it out to be something it is not. That just adds all kinds of internal pressures that Jesus never intended. Loving Christ and talking about him is not work. It’s life. It’s our life.

Your partners in ministry, Matt, Terri and kids

You enable us to live and serve here in Russia by your generous gifts to the Great Commission Fund of the Christian and Missionary Alliance. God is moving in the hearts of the students and our Russian friends and neighbors. Thank you for being a part of this movement by giving and praying.

Support for the Great Commission Fund may be sent to the Christian and Missionary Alliance,
PO Box 35000, Colorado Springs, CO 80935.
Be sure to write in the memo line: "Great Commission Fund" or call toll free: (866) 443-8262.
this time.

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