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Dear Friends, As many of you know, this was a challenging month for me (Rich) and for Lisa, in very different ways. We had agreed several months ago that we would release each other to do more missional travel, one at a time, in 2025. Lisa had a good week in Albania, which she reflects on in a paragraph below. I had a sweet week caring for Lisa’s mom, Nancy, with several meaningful conversations. The next day, I set out on a 3.5-week trip to India and Bangladesh. Yet the day after I left for India, the nurse said she thought Nancy was likely to be in her final week. Lisa managed that valiantly, with attentive help from our daughter and son-in-law and two church communities. Nancy died March 17, for the most part peacefully. I was very sorry not to be able to help Lisa with the many tasks and emotions involved in that season, but we both felt good about my continuing the trip, especially because she had such a great support group around her. I’m so proud of her and grateful for all that she handled in my absence. She’ll offer reflections on that below as well, but I would love to share here what I’m most grateful for about this trip.  Two weeks ago, I (Rich) returned from my 16 days in India and another six days in Bangladesh. In the map above, the straight segments are flights, and the squiggly segments are a crude approximation of the driving we did. The black segments indicate week 1, flying into Delhi and having a few days in North India and then a few days in Northern Orissa (segment 5). In Northern India I was in two places I’ve not been before, meeting up with pastors and lay leaders and connecting with two capable translators who are helping me to begin new Zoom classes with pastors in Himachal Pradesh and Punjab states. It was a very encouraging time with new networks of pastors. In Northern Orissa I was with the partner and translator with whom I have had the longest collaboration. We held a graduation ceremony for the 18 pastors who have gone through my Sketches of Leadership course, as they were awarded a “Certificate of Completion” from Church of the Rock Theological College. My translator is educated and has a MDiv from a theological seminary in India, but many of these pastors do not have any diploma beyond high school; for some of them this certificate may be the one they display on their wall indicating their Biblical training. I was deeply moved as they testified to how their own teaching has deepened and changed to become more inductive and interactive, and how that has strengthened the growth of their churches and their church members. The second week of my trip took me to Dhaka, Bangladesh (marked by the orange line on the map). There I taught 20 organizational leaders in a MA program about fundraising, emphasizing that it is Biblical and in fact is honorable ministry, to the people we are asking to join our team who make our ministry possible. Training developing world leaders in fundraising is very satisfying for me, as it is an important skill for them, especially as the focus is sustainable fund development, helping them to build up a culture of local giving for local ministry, not just relying on big granting institutions or generous churches from the West. These students lead organizations serving the poor, children and others rescued from trafficking, and other vulnerable populations throughout Bangladesh. The final 9 days of time in India was spent visiting 19 villages and medium-sized towns, teaching church members and training pastors in inductive teaching, mostly using the first five chapters of Mark. This was a tiring but rewarding and gratifying itinerant mission. We were several times in strikingly remote locations, including where every family had a big pile of wood in front of their house, collected from the surrounding scrub land and small trees and used in cooking their daily meals. At the same time, I noticed no small amount of cell phones, and several times when the electricity in the building shut off, cell phone flashlights popped on and we were able to continue the teaching with their light until the power resumed a few minutes later. An odd mix of premodern technologies (cooking meals over a wood fire) and ultramodern smartphones! During the first week, I taught on Elijah on Mt. Carmel, describing the showdown between Baal and Yahweh and Elijah’s boldness in defeating the vast number of prophets of Baal. One 16-year-old girl, “Ranjita” responded to this teaching by returning to the home village she had been chased out of a few months before. She is a new believer, and both her Hindu parents and occult-supporting people in her home village had expelled her. Upon returning to her village, she found a young man who was sick and being prayed for by his Hindu family. She told him that the Lord was God and more powerful than the Hindu gods to which his family were praying. She prayed to God in Jesus’ name, and he was healed. The man’s family was glad for the healing but not happy about her preaching about Jesus. Then a second person, whose family practiced occult rituals, was sick. She again spoke powerfully about Jesus and prayed for complete healing, and the boy was healed. The family and the occult leaders were so angry that they prayed to their demons to kill Ranjita. The demon’s response surprised them all! “We cannot touch Ranjita, because her God is the Most High God.” Now Ranjita leads a small group with seven families who have turned to her God! All this happened in the last month. Visiting relatively remote villages, I taught two or three times per day. Everywhere in India it is hard to miss the gender imbalance in the church. The pastors are (mostly) men, but the church members seem to be 75% women. The young women and teenage girls come to church with their notebooks, in which they write the words to new songs and take notes on the Bible teaching. It was much rarer to see teen boys with notebooks. So, it was encouraging to hear that, as a result of the teaching, 3 young men have come forward to receive a six-month training internship with my translator and partner in Southern Orissa. They will stay in his little guest room for a few months and will travel with him to remote villages. They will go through both the Sketches of Leadership classes I am teaching as well as additional training done by my partner. He was very encouraged by this development, and is well poised to see these young men grow up to be rural church-planting pastor-evangelists. Since getting back, 3 new zoom classes are starting, the early fruit of the trip, and the existing groups in the locations I visited have added new members. I get lots of feedback that people enjoy the training, but the feedback that is the most gratifying is when I hear stories of people who hear the word, accept it, and act on it in ways that produce a harvest, some thirtyfold, some sixtyfold, and some hundredfold. It is a privilege to be able to teach people who are so consistently good soil! I have been teaching Mark 15 for many of my Zoom classes this week, in light of Holy Week and Good Friday. If you would like to read my Good Friday reflection (about 5 minutes reading), visit my blog post here.  Lisa Reflects on the past month:
What a momentous five weeks it has been! On March 2, I flew to Albania, where I joined 160 theological educators from around the world, gathered to consider the challenges and the opportunities ahead for the church. Every meal was a chance to meet with faithful faculty, deans, and doctoral students from Egypt, Brazil, Ethiopia, and everywhere in between. The conference featured Impact Teams, like daily tracks, and mine, Women Thriving, considered the challenges of female students, faculty, and leaders and how they are courageously and creatively facing them. I was able to pull together a wonderful team of presenters from around the globe, and was so pleased with the conversations at each session. I'm so grateful to have been able to attend this gathering. I returned very late Saturday, sent Rich off to India Sunday, and on Monday, my mom's visiting nurse team declared her to be within a week of her death, due to her congestive heart failure. This began a whirlwind of details, getting her oxygen, a hospital bed, and palliative medicines. While I missed Rich immensely over the next three weeks, I can truly say that I experienced God's care, provision, and even a minor miracle or two! Both Becca and Avery's church and our church mobilized to bring me meals, and various friends and pastors came to pray and say final goodbyes. It was truly remarkable that a woman who moved here during a pandemic, at age 91, became so dear to many people here. She rallied to thank them, tell a joke or two, and receive their prayers for the first half of the week, but by Thursday she was too weak for that. One of her final conversations was with a dear friend here whose child was in need of an organ transplant. My mom told her that her first words to God upon entering heaven would be about that! On Sunday, March 16, she began to be in real pain, which we met with medication, and she died that night. The following day, these friends received news that a matching organ had become available, and she had a successful surgery the next day. Now, we don't know exactly how that all worked in the divine plan; we will simply say that we are so grateful! Lesser miracles in terms of provision included that a dear friend from CA had already planned to come for much of the next week, which was a huge help to me, and the kind friends I've made here who are nurses or doctors who were able to pop in with helpful advice and encouragement throughout the final week of my mom's life. Thanks as well to all of you who sent notes and messages of care as well. If you have interest in reading my sharing about my mother at the memorial service, visit my blog post here. We both very much appreciate your prayers as we continue to serve both in Durham and in Asia, and as we seek God’s guidance regarding our next steps in the coming months.
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As Jesus goes to the cross, he stops teaching, but Mark starts teaching us in parables. He introduces two characters who are the human face of the implications of the cross.
It is ironic that the Chief Priests, Scribes, and the crowd at Pilate’s audience clamor for him to release Barabbas. Barabbas is the kind of man they are portraying Jesus to be—one who has rejected the authority of Rome, a challenge to Caesar. But Pilate knows that if Jesus were such a man, they’d be clamoring for him to be released (because they hate the authority of Rome). Barabbas is one such man, and until a few hours ago, the third cross being prepared for the condemned men had his name on it. But in a moment of unexpected grace, Barabbas is set free, while Jesus goes to his cross. Lucky Barabbas! But Barabbas has a significance beyond his own story of freedom. Barabbas is the only untranslated Aramaic in Mark’s gospel, but Mark has given us the pieces of Barabbas’ name to be able to work it out ourselves. In Mark 10:46 we learn “bar” means “son of”, and in 14:36, in Jesus’ prayer, we learn that “abba” means “father”. Barabbas was a rebel, a “son of a father”, which is about as generic a boy’s name as you can get. We are all rebels, children of our parents. Barabbas is “Joe Everyman” and his cross was ours. Jesus took our place upon that cross. As he himself said, he came “as a ransom for many”. Then Mark introduces another new named character in his story, Simon of Cyrene. Usually, if you want to name someone, you might say, as Mark does, “Bartimaeus, son of Timaeus.” But it was rarely done to identify someone by their children, unless the children would be known to the people you are writing to. Indeed, I assume that Simon of Cyrene became a believer, and his (now adult) children are known to the people of Rome, where Mark is first putting his gospel on paper. And Paul mentions a Rufus living in Rome (Romans 16:13) when he writes his letter to that church, before he arrived in Rome shortly before his death. So the most logical explanation of this is that Simon of Cyrene, a random passerby at the time of Jesus’ death, became so taken up by the story that pressed itself upon him that he followed up with it, joined the believers in Jerusalem, and eventually his children were believers in Rome. Jesus, in Mark 8:34, said to his disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” Simon of Cyrene is the first person to take up the cross, literally Jesus’ cross when he no longer could carry it, and follow Jesus along the way to his death. This would have had a profound impact on Simon, and he is a model for us of one who follows Jesus, saying yes to suffering, to the cross we each must bear, and saying yes to Jesus’ call to follow him to our death, whatever death comes. Jesus’ death, not ours, is the ransom. Our suffering or death cannot save anyone. But Jesus does promise that, as we follow him, saying yes to suffering in his name, our death can be, like his, redemptive. Our suffering can be meaningful, purposeful, healing and redemptive in our own life and the lives of many others. By the power of Jesus’ cross, our suffering too has power. So Jesus’ death is a ransom. Jesus faced a grim and painful death on a cross marked out for us. He died for us. Yet also Jesus’ death is a model. We are called to follow him and embrace redemptive suffering in his name.  Nancy Washington February 10, 1929 -- March 17, 2025 “I choose purple and green!” I felt downright giddy as I announced this at the dinner table, at age 8 or so. “And I choose blue and gold!” my older sister Ruth chimed in, equally exuberantly. These sentences were in answer to my mom’s offer to paint our bedrooms in any two colors we chose. She may have had something more subtle in mind, but she stuck to her promise.
This feels emblematic of my mom—her eagerness to make everything a team sport, her willingness to relinquish control and trust people, and her enjoyment of the unconventional and the colorful. I didn’t know how unusual this was until later. I had never really thought about the fact that our backyard was the place all the kids naturally landed after school, until one kid pointed it out. He said it was because, “Your mom lets us have fun. Our parents are worried about us making a mess, but your mom likes mess! She listens to us like we’re real people. She bakes us cookies and teaches us games and turns on the sprinkler for us to run through.” That side of her was out in full force at the Halloween party where she stuffed herself inside a fold-out ladder and had my dad drape it with sheets, so she could turn on a flashlight and shout “Boo!” as each child came up the driveway. She loved to host parties for adults, too, even though she was not, truth be told, a great housekeeper or cook. It didn’t matter. I remember the handmade signs she and my dad made inviting international students at San Jose State to come over for Thanksgiving dinner, and the motley groups that gathered around our ping pong table. It wasn’t about the food; it was about friendship and the wide-open table. It was also about the laughter. I remember the fancy molded Jello salad that hadn’t set quite enough by the time everything else was ready at a dinner party. As she and two of her friends were trying to get it onto a platter, the operation went south, and somehow it slid right into the kitchen sink. Instead of this upsetting them, they threw back their heads and roared with laughter as it shimmied down the drain! I distinctly remember looking up at their faces with a mix of disbelief and fascinated attraction—I couldn’t understand why they weren’t devastated. But I longed for that kind of freedom to fail, to let go of what one had hoped for and to simply delight in what is. To find humor in any situation, and to do life with dear friends at one’s side. These were life skills that served my mom well as she weathered many challenges. My mom was quiet, but she was so brave. I remember her saying, as we faced the large waves of Santa Cruz, CA, “The ocean is your friend. You don’t need to fear it. If you get caught in a wave, just relax and think of it like a trip through the washing machine. You’ll come out alright in the end.” This had in some ways been her life experience. Her childhood had been really hard, with a father who was both physically and verbally abusive. But by the grace of God and sheer pluck, she came out more than alright in the end. I think that’s why the story of Emily the Cow resonated so deeply that she specifically requested it be told at her memorial service. Emily was a cow headed to slaughter in Massachusetts in 1995. The workers were on their lunch break, so Emily saw her moment to break free. She got a running start and leapt in all her bovine glory over a 5-foot-tall fence and ran deep into the forest, where she evaded capture for six weeks, until a farming family bought her from the slaughterhouse and let her live out a happy life in their meadow. I think my mom’s leap out of destructive mess of her childhood home came in stages and through surprising choices—the unlikely choice to spend a summer during college serving Mexican children in a migrant camp with her church young adults group. Or the bold choice to buy a used but sporty Studebaker Coupe convertible while she was a single woman working in San Francisco after college and go charging up and down the hills of the city in it with her friends. The choice to see a very quirky man, with epilepsy and mild autism and the odd name of George Washington, and say, “Now there’s a man with a heart of gold. He’s the one for me.” They leapt together out of the hardships of their childhoods by the grace of God, into adult lives that were brighter and more colorful. She and my dad followed Jesus together joyfully and wholeheartedly. The world of careers was frustrating and disappointing for her. She worked after college for the Methodist publishing house, work she genuinely enjoyed, and then later teaching English as a Second Language and as a popular substitute teacher in elementary schools. But her primary vocation as of 1960 was lavishing care upon a child with disabilities, my sister Ruth, advocating tirelessly for her full inclusion in schools well before that was common, and watching in amusement as Ruth introduced herself to literally every person in the grocery store, to the chagrin of her more introverted sister! My mom didn’t have a career, but she had a vocation, which she lived out faithfully and well. She was also an eager supporter of my vocation from a young age. I remember the time I was about ten or eleven and in wide-eyed wonder after having stayed in the adult service at church for the first time. The pastor had preached a rather mediocre sermon, though I was not discerning enough yet to know that. I asked, “Could I do that someday?” Her response: “Probably a lot better than he just did!” She marched me on up to him and had me ask him how one becomes a pastor. His rather uninspired reply was, “Uh, well, you go to seminary.” She fulminated to my dad all the way home that he’d missed a chance to talk with me about becoming a leader who loves people and cultivating my love of Scripture. I love this story because it shows her quick wit, something so many friends and relatives have commented on, which stayed with her even to her final week, and it shows that she took faith and ministry seriously, from her own work as an elder to her deep gratitude to those who pastored her well in her final years. Her willingness to risk and trust God took her life on a surprising twist near its end. Becca shared about that, but I want to add one more thing she said about it. When Rich and I began pondering a missional venture back in 2019, she said, “I don’t want you waiting around for me to die before you say yes to God’s calling. Make your plans to go and something will work out for me.” Little did she know how warmly the amazing church community of Emmaus Way would welcome her. But this past spring it became clear that the arrangement with her facility was no longer working, and we needed to make changes quickly. That was when a friend of ours and of Triangle Grace church raised the possibility of us living here, in a home that has been a forested haven of peace for my mom’s final months, and with kindness from many here as well. We are so grateful to both church communities. My mom had some strikingly vivid dreams toward the end of her life. Last year, she dreamed that my sister, who died in 2016 and had never driven a car, pulled up in a car and drove her around, with my dad in the backseat. They were excited to give her a tour of a stunning new place, with mountains like nothing she’d seen in their beauty and vastness and the intensity of their colors. Truly a foretaste of heaven. I like to think that the skies, trees, flowers, and mountain ranges she saw were filled with vivid colors…colors like purple and green, and blue and gold—like the colors she so generously gave to us.  Duke ThM Students and their Scholar Leaders Friends “Be patient, therefore, beloved, until the coming of the Lord. The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient until it receives the early and late rains. You also must be patient…. You have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful.” James 5:7-8, 11 I (Lisa) have never listed patience as a top strength. It does not come naturally to me. I do not willingly enter into slow processes like lengthy board games. But many of you can relate to the feeling that much has been stripped away that we used to count on for swift and unimpeded journeys to our chosen destinations, whether by fires or changing political landscapes, the loss of robust health or the loss of a loved one. We find ourselves only able to pray and wait. The book of James seems designed to form a people capable of receiving their lives rather than achieving them, a people who count life as a gift and look in hope to the giver of wisdom and of “precious crops,” the fruit born of patience. Patience is funded by deep confidence that the Lord is merciful and kind. My current circumstances (a primary caregiver, living in an unfamiliar city, and working within three new-to-me organizations) have caused me to ponder often the virtue of patience and the value of waiting. The farmer here is presumably not passive as he or she waits; animals need feeding, weeds and pests need removing, and soil can be improved. But for that key big-ticket item, rain, the farmer can only wait. It will come as gift--or not at all. James writes to people who are enduring suffering, in part as they work out how to live together as a socioeconomically diverse community sprinkled with folks who prefer boastful speech to humble listening. He encourages them that by choosing the path of patience, they will receive two incredible gifts from their generous God: wisdom and endurance. What is more, they will see the purposes of the Lord and experience his compassion and mercy. I don’t see all God’s purposes for this season yet, but I am getting early glimpses, and we have seen the Lord’s abundant mercy towards us in so many ways. One of the biggest challenges of this season for me has been navigating new territory and tools. I have had to learn many new pathways to access aid for my mom and have had to learn new acronyms and organizational cultures within Scholar Leaders, the International Council for Evangelical Theological Education (ICETE), and Duke Divinity School (where I’ll teach a course this spring). I had not anticipated being so stretched vocationally while being challenged physically and emotionally as a caregiver. But the work that I knew how to do, teaching preaching, has not been readily available to me, so I have tried to plow a new field, and am eager to see what this crop will look and taste like. Rain is beginning to come, and buds are appearing:
(Below) Lisa and I join our son Mark in London, our first in-person visit with our son for 1.5 years. It has been great to see him this week! (We arrive back in North Carolina on Sunday.)   Luke 1:5-23, The Angel appears to Zechariah Lk 1:18: Zechariah said to the angel, ‘How will I know that this is so? For I am an old man, and my wife is getting on in years.’ Luke 1:34: Mary said to the angel, ‘How can this be, since I am a virgin?’ (Lk 1:34) Luke 1:43: Elizabeth (said), “And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me?” Luke 1:66: All who heard them pondered them and said, ‘What then will this child become?’ Dear Friends, Once Luke’s gospel gets underway, it is focused like a laser beam on Jesus. Why then does it start with 50 or more verses telling the story, not of Jesus’ birth, but of John the Baptist’s birth, and how his parents experienced that? It seems odd to give so much air time to two characters who will exit stage right and never be heard from again. It feels like throat-clearing on the part of a speaker before he or she settles into the topic at hand—something I tell my preaching students to avoid! As I have pondered this, a few things strike me. First, by taking time to narrate the poignant lack and then joyful gift given to Zechariah and Elizabeth, Luke brings in a theme that will pervade his gospel—that it comes into our lives at our points of deepest need, where we are most discouragingly, sometimes desperately, aware of our emptiness and incapacity to bring about the futures we desire for ourselves. Second, the story is replete with Old Testament echoes, from Abraham and Sarah to Samson’s parents, to Elijah, the joyful promises of Isaiah, and to the exhortations of Malachi. This opening scene anchors Jesus’ story firmly in the stream of all of Scripture. But the story is also packed with drama, confusion, and joyful expectation, so it sets the stage so well for the birth of Jesus in the next chapter. I want tto consider the four questions we find here, but first, let’s look at Zechariah’s journey from doubt to joy. What a moment it was for him, even before the angel showed up! It’s estimated that there were around 20,000 priests in Zechariah’s time, and they served in the temple in twenty-four two-week stints. From those 830 or so, one was chosen by lot each day to offer incense. If your name was called, it was removed from contention, so this was truly a once-in-a-lifetime event, if even that. Imagine how excited, and perhaps frightened, Zechariah was. “Must. Not. Spill the incense!” Then, to have the angel Gabriel appear. He was terrified, so Gabriel spoke words of comfort to him. Then made wild promises, promises of joy and the fulfillment of his deepest longings. I love that it is in the course of serving others, interceding on their behalf, that God generously grants Zechariah’s prayer. In some ways, I would have liked Zechariah’s next words to be, “Blessed be God Most High!” But they aren’t. Instead, he gets a little demanding, a tad suspicious. “How will I know that this is so?” He wants proof, a sign, even though he has a sign—an angel right in front of him. But in other ways I’m glad he responded as he did; it’s just so human, so normal. It’s what we all might well have done. We can wish we’d bowed in wonder, but the reality is, we’d have doubted as well. I used to think that Gabriel punished Zechariah for this petulant outburst by hitting his mute button, but the text doesn’t say that. It simply states that muteness is a consequence of his disbelief. I believe there was a gift for Zechariah in this involuntary season of silence. He is invited to listen, to savor, and to hope, as he watches Elizabeth’s belly swell and perhaps overhears Mary sing. She sings a song that will inspire his own proclamation of God’s merciful salvation (Luke 1:68-79), when his voice is at last restored. Which questions are you asking in this Advent season? Are you in a bit of a cranky phase, like Zechariah? Perhaps the practice of silence, watching and waiting is the invitation for those of us who find ourselves there. Are you a bit overwhelmed and baffled as you ponder how your current situation will morph into a promised better one, like Mary was? Going to God with those honest “how on earth will this all work out?” questions served Mary well. Are you finding yourself in humble awe at the goodness of God toward you, like Elizabeth when she asked why she got to be in the presence of the mother of her future savior? Elizabeth was free with her blessing of Mary in that moment. Or are you more like the villagers, curious, expectant, hearing good news and now on the lookout for how it will take shape? These all seem to be postures of Advent that God desires, soft clay that God can work with. We find ourselves in all four of these stances in this Advent season. Like Elizabeth, we are so honored and grateful for God’s provision of a home, a church, and family nearby as we seek to care well for my mom. Like Zechariah, we get cranky and demanding at times, and like Mary, we’re not entirely clear how this will all work out, but we are also, like the villagers, happily expectant for the good work of God as it unfolds. What we’re up to these days:
Rich and Lisa Lamb   One of the Orissa leaders in my Sketches of Leadership training sessions who is teaching in a discussion format to an engaged crowd of young people. In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. Genesis 1:1-5 Dear Friends, (From Rich) I love the photo above sent from my friend and translator Pastor S, who has been helping over 100 pastors and church planters use the materials we have been teaching in Orissa and Andra Pradesh states of India. This young man has been entrusted with both teaching from scripture through our sessions together and a model for inductive teaching that people, especially young people, are very much responsive to, and you can see it on their faces in this photo. In my teaching ministry with pastors and lay leaders in Asia, I often teach the first eleven chapters of Genesis, since they are fundamental to shaping our identity as humans in relationship with God. And this week, here in Durham we began a series for the Young Adult Ministry at our church on “God at Work.” We began in Genesis, looking at the first workers, both divine and human. The Bible begins by telling us that God had a problem at the beginning; the “earth” was a formless void. “Earth” is in quotes because the “Earth” as we think of it wasn’t yet created. God began with a formless void: formless, because it lacked any structure whatsoever, and void, because it was empty. So, two steps were needed to solve this problem: 1) create the structures of life (day and night, the heavens and the seas, dry land), then 2) fill those structures with lights, birds and fish, animals and people. Days 1 through 3 God was creating the structures; days 4 through 6 God was filling them. I am now in full-time supported ministry but I have had several secular jobs. I have always been in ministry to people who work in some trade or profession. Most legitimate work can be described by either bringing structure where it is needed or filling emptiness. Legal and accounting work provides structure to facts and knowledge and contracts and numbers, and truck drivers fill their trucks with goods and then bring those goods to places that need them. Teaching at any level can be viewed as bringing structure to knowledge, to facilitate learning. In these professions and many more, when people perform their work with diligence they are acting in the image of God, providing structure and creatively filling. Last night, we identified several insights in Genesis 1-3 that help us think about the significance of our work: 1) the Bible describes God as a worker—he worked six days in creation and then rested on the seventh. God evaluates his work as good. And we can see God was trying to problem-solve, to leave “the world” better than he found it, moving from empty chaos to order to abundance. 2) Humanity is created in God’s image and hence work is an important part of human identity. Indeed, work was given to humanity before the fall: even in paradise, people were given creative work to do. 3) With the fall came toil and sweat: all work, no matter how elevating, can be frustrating and sometimes even futile. We shared honestly the ways our work feels like toil and also reflected on the ways that our work and all workers have dignity. These insights should shape our days and our discipleship. While work is not our ultimate source of fulfilment, Lisa and I are grateful to be given meaningful and purposeful work to do, as teachers and leaders, as servants and coaches to leaders in Asia, to young adults in our church, and to Lisa’s mom here in our home in Durham. We do not now know how long we will be in Durham, but we can see how God is blessing our choice to come here, and others through our coming. Two weeks ago, I preached at our church in Durham, and I invite you to watch it if you’d like. Please pray with us:
Rich and Lisa Lamb Rich preaching at Triangle Grace Church on Sunday, October 6   Some of the Burmese refugee students who are learning Greek with Lisa. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you, and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you. Isaiah 43:2 Dear Friends, As I (Lisa) write this letter from the deck of our home-for-now in a lovely forest within the city of Durham, NC, taking in the sunlight as it dapples the leaves of maples and pines, my heart is at peace. But the past month has had its share of storms, including the literal deluge of rain in the days following Hurricane Debby. Our daughter Becca was hospitalized for six days (she is doing fine now) and there have been painfully strained relational dynamics between other family members. Caring for my mom is overall a good gift, but her severe loss of hearing has added to the difficulty recently—it’s frustrating for all concerned. We’ve felt grief, concern, and confusion so often that I find myself surprised to come to the end of this challenging month with a solid amount of peace and gratitude. We are not out of the woods entirely—it is, after all, where we live—but we are past the storm, and we see so many ways in which God was with us, as God promised through Isaiah. In the midst of the challenges we’ve faced, the ministry in which I have been able to engage has been joyful and good. I’d like to share about two current courses I’m teaching and an exciting new opportunity that is emerging. It's all Greek to the Burmese! When I say at church here in Durham that I’m teaching Greek to Burmese refugees who are living in Kuala Lumpur, I can get stares of incomprehension. First, folks who’ve not known me for a long time think of me as a preaching professor. But my college major was Latin and Greek, which let me jump into several semesters of advanced work in the Greek New Testament while a seminary student. I’d let it slide, but I decided a few years ago to revive my knowledge base. For the past few years, I’ve tried to read a few verses of the Greek New Testament each day and to build back a strong vocabulary. Last year, I co-taught a Greek course as an elective at St. Paul’s, and loved it. It was fully online, which gave me a vision for how well that can work. The second reason I get some blank stares is that people in the US may be unaware of how very many refugees from Burma are in the relatively small nation of Malaysia—over 200,000, with some estimates of much higher numbers. They are not allowed to work in official jobs, nor are their children allowed to go to public schools. So, many Christians have begun simple schools for them. One such is Ruth Education Center, which you can learn more about here. Many of its alumni teach there during the days and attend Judson Bible College Malaysia in the evenings. I hope you’ll take a moment and learn Ben’s story here. Ben’s story is particularly moving to me as an adjunct faculty member at SPTC, since he was trained there and is now leading at both Ruth and Judson. Rich first taught a Biblical Leadership course with these students last year. He was so impressed with their dedication that he eagerly invited me to join him when he took them out to dinner at the end of the term. I was impressed and moved by their stories as well. So, when Ben reached out to ask if I could teach Greek, I was glad to say yes. I am happily overwhelming them in the first hour of each session with the grammatical complexities of this delightful and confounding language, then calming and encouraging them and treating them to a few verses from the gospel of John in the second hour—a little like sending them into a storm and then into a sunlit forest. 😊 Ethics in Asia: This live, online course has also been a joy. I introduced the students, from all over Asia, to the range of secular and Christian approaches to ethics, and they returned the favor by teaching me about how those play out in their contexts, from anti-natalism in Singapore to the changing face of elder care in Thailand. I’ll be reading their papers next week, as well as the final papers for the Fuller D.Min. course I’ve taught for the past nine months. A New Direction for Lisa! With this move has come losses and gains, and one reality I have faced is that the main school at which I invested my time in Kuala Lumpur is eager, for good reasons, to prioritize teaching done by faculty who can be in the room with students. I will teach for them some this year, but much less than in the past three years, and obviously I no longer attend staff meetings, preach in chapel, or join students for informal dinners between afternoon and evening classes. I have been praying and wondering how I might be able to continue to contribute to the enterprise of theological education in Asia, and an exciting opportunity has emerged. We have been fans of Scholar Leaders for many years. This organization funds and supports students from the developing world to study (in the West or anywhere in the world). Its priority is equipping Ph.D. students who can return to their home countries to teach in and lead seminaries there. I had met Christopher Hays, the president of Scholar Leaders, at a conference in San Diego several years ago when he was teaching the New Testament in Colombia; he now directs the ministry from nearby Raleigh, NC. We met recently to discern together whether there might be a part I could play in their work. He mentioned that they are eager to better support the women who come through their program. “Would I be interested in helping to move that forward?” “Why yes, I would be thrilled!” For now, this is an unpaid,10-15 hour per week role, funded by your generous giving to Paraclete, and we will see if more involvement emerges. I’m so grateful that your gifts make this work possible. One example of how I will jump in: They have begun funding small cohorts of women to do Th.M. degrees at Duke, readying them for Ph.D. level work. They meet monthly for fellowship and a book study; I’ll join that gathering next week. Here is what Christopher Hays had to say about this new opportunity:
I find myself in awe of God’s goodness in providing me this opportunity, and the other settings in which I can teach and contribute, including the work we’re doing to gather the young adults of our church here in Durham. Please pray for us:
  From the US, Zoom brings inductive teaching of the gospel of Mark to a church of new believers in rural India Dear Friends, Our lives have changed dramatically in the last six weeks—from the seventeenth floor of a high rise to a house surrounded by forest, from train trips to the dense city center of Kuala Lumpur for staff meetings to owning our first car in several years and walking to church staff meetings three minutes away, from daily phone calls on Lisa’s part with her mother expressing unhappiness with her life to daily expressions of joy and gratitude at the fresh food we serve her and the care we express as we assist her with life. This last change confirms that we have made the right move, even if it was hard to say goodbye (for now at least) to friends, students, and coworkers in Malaysia. In late April we sent out a letter about our need to move to Durham. We asked for prayers for guidance and provision for us, and we are thankful for your prayers! God indeed did pave the way for us when one friend who read our request connected us with Triangle Grace Church in Durham, which was in a leadership transition with their young adults ministry. Within 3 weeks of our arrival in Durham, we had moved into the home that the previous young adults ministry leaders had vacated, and the church members even built a ramp for Nancy. We are exchanging part-time work with this ministry and other aspects of life of the church for rent on the home. If we had moved to Durham without this arrangement, we’d obviously have looked for a church home, and likely would have chosen Triangle Grace as the church for us. But with this arrangement, we came into the church not only with housing, but with ministry partners and open doors for teaching and investment in the lives of young people. We have quickly come to appreciate the senior pastor and his wife, who welcomed us into their home and family life for a week while we were getting settled here. Let me give you a glimpse of how ministry in Asia is continuing in exciting ways. Yesterday (Saturday) morning, I taught a session on Jesus’ varying leadership styles with Odisha pastors and leaders, including several women. Later, pastors and lay leaders in Nepal gathered to look at Abigail’s wise handling of the conflict between (not-yet-king) David and her rude husband, Nabal. We both remain quite engaged in teaching in Asia, and as we were doing during the pandemic, that has all been mediated through Zoom in the last month. Here is a list of our current weekly commitments: Rich
Having been to India and Nepal already twice this year, I was hoping to be able to arrange another trip sometime in the later summer, say early August. But that will now no longer be possible. But what is possible is scheduling short conferences in India like the one I did this past week with my partner Pastor Subash in Southern Odisha state. Subash leads a network of over 100 mostly rural pastors and church planters. Some of these pastors, usually about 25, are on a zoom call with me every week. But many of them could not afford the cost of a smart phone or the monthly data costs to enable them to participate in the Zoom calls. So Pastor Subash scheduled a two-day conference in Karli, a small village about 70 minutes outside the Subash’s hometown. He brought several close-by pastors together with 30 members of the newly planted congregation in Karli to study with me the first few chapters of the gospel of Mark. We met 10-4PM (India time) each day for two days and I taught 3 90-minute sessions each day. (The sessions were 12:30AM to 6:30 AM for me, so they did alter my sleep schedule somewhat!) Subash had one device, with which he could hear and see my teaching, and from which he translated both directions the inductive study we did together. (This is pictured above.) I had taught in-person in many places like Karli, but it was a real pleasure and privilege to gather with relatively new believers and to hear their questions as we studied the gospel of Mark as if they were hearing it for the first time, because almost all of them were. Though they were rural people, without a lot of higher education, they asked great and sometimes surprising questions of the text. They were powerfully struck by the words and actions of Jesus as displayed in the pages of Mark. We appreciate your prayers.
Rich and Lisa Bruce, Bill and Doug, members of the facilities team at the church, built the ramp that makes Nancy’s entry into our forest-surrounded home possible. I dug post holes and fetched things.   We will miss gatherings like this with the Burmese refugees Rich has taught online for the past few months; it was so good to meet them in person and hear their stories. “Even though he struck the rock so that water gushed out and torrents overflowed, can he also give bread, or provide meat for his people?” Psalm 78:20 Dear Friends, I (Lisa) read this verse with a mixture of emotions today as I write to share difficult news. On one hand, the psalmist is revealing the truth that God is both able and glad to provide everything his people need, and that it makes sense to trust God for it all. Yet, I do empathize with the people in the moment in which they are asking the question. Their thirst has been quenched, but now hunger is gnawing at their stomachs, and they look around and don’t see a ready supply of food sources. I’m right there with them today. Psalm 78 calls us to “set our hope in God,” (v. 7), and we seek to do that as we face a new circumstance. Recently we asked for prayer for our visa situation. When we came back into Malaysia, we were given 90-day visas and the system seems to have settled back to that, a real answer to prayer. We also asked for prayer for new tenants, and as of a week ago, a family moved in that definitely feels like an answer to our prayers. However, soon after our arrival back in Malaysia we were faced with very difficult choices. We have come to the conclusion that our current family financial model is unsustainable. The costs of my mom’s care have risen dramatically just as her savings have run out. We have been supplementing her costs for the past few months at a level that comes near our monthly salary, and we simply cannot continue to do that. (If she loved her current facility, we might try harder to make it work financially, but she does not. At all.) As we have pondered our options, the most faithful one we can imagine is to move to Durham and move her in with us. We can provide the basic care she needs while still attending to our on-line teaching, prepping and grading. She will eat better food and enjoy a higher quality of life with us while her medical needs are manageable with occasional visits. We have given 30-days’ notice at her facility and will seek housing for the three of us beginning June 1. We will fly back to Durham a few days before that. As you can imagine, we are sad and disappointed to reach this conclusion and to be executing it so quickly. We enjoy most aspects of our life here, the students we serve, and the dedicated folks with whom we serve. Rich will miss the proximity of Malaysia to India and Nepal, where he has had fruitful trips and had hopes of several more in the coming year. Lisa is sorry to cancel a speaking engagement in Indonesia in late June. Kuala Lumpur is a bustling city, and our church is a vibrant community within it; we will hate to say goodbye to folks who have become dear to us here. We write today to ask your prayers for many needs: housing, a car, and furniture being the main ones that come to mind. Regarding housing, we have some specific needs: at least one bedroom on the first floor, a shower rather than a tub, and proximity to our daughter Becca and her husband Avery. Please pray for the right housing and car to emerge, and if you are in the region and have any leads, we would be most eager to hear about them. We want to be sure to communicate that this is not sudden and early retirement for us! At any time Rich and I are involved in preparing, teaching, and grading multiple courses and that schedule is set to continue, mostly teaching in the early morning hours (Eastern Time) instead of late into the evenings (Malaysia time). We fully intend to teach and in other ways contribute to the work of several schools in Asia for the next few years and are grateful for the technology that makes that possible. We believe that this is not a permanent move—we can foresee scenarios in which we could return either to live in Asia or to visit for extended mission trips, including in the coming year. But for now, we are convinced that the place we need to be is Durham, and we trust that God will lead us to one of our “100 homes,” the next stage on our journey. There is much to like about Durham, and we anticipate God has much good in store for us there. Thank you for all your prayers as we make this transition. Please reply to us with any encouragements, ideas, questions or other promptings of the Holy Spirit. Rich and Lisa What great students! They have all been in Malaysia for about 12 or 13 years. Their English is very good and their writing level is just excellent. It was a joy to teach them this past term. (A few of their colleagues are scattered around Malaysia, Australia, and elsewhere and could not be in the picture.)   Lisa preaching on Sunday, March 10, for our church in Kuala Lumpur, Holy Trinity Bukit Bintang, all three services with over 1200 in attendance. Dear Friends, This past Sunday, I (Lisa) had the chance to preach for our church here in Kuala Lumpur and, guided by the lectionary, I landed on this challenging passage from Numbers 21: “From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom, but the people became discouraged on the way. The people spoke against God and against Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food.” Then the Lord sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died. The people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord to take away the serpents from us.” So, Moses prayed for the people. And the Lord said to Moses, “Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.” So, Moses made a serpent of bronze and put it upon a pole, and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.” While at first I found it challenging to find good news here, I was struck by the severe grace that God brings, turning the people’s hearts back to trust in him, and delivering them from death even as they looked it squarely in the face. I was struck by the Hebrew expression, “their souls were shortened,” and noted that many of us can identify with the feeling of our souls having been put through the dryer and shrunk a bit by the challenges we currently face. I worked with the text in conversation with Jesus’ use of it in John 3:14. “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” I loved Jesus’ willingness to identify himself and his mission with one of the darkest stories in Israel’s history, letting it tell a new story as he embraced the cross. Here’s a link if you’d like to give it a listen! (The intro and her sermon starts at 13:20 and goes about 23 minutes.) In general, we don’t seek out opportunities to preach in Malaysia since we are here to equip emerging leaders and want to focus our energy on that. (We do preach when we go to Nepal and India because it is a way to model what we teach and bring a word of good news in situations of greater adversity.) But I was glad to do this, filling in for a pastor who was ill, and it was a chance to see up close the remarkable work of our church, which has services in four languages, hosts several conferences each year to equip ministers throughout Asia, and baptized 48 new Christians just two weeks ago. We remain grateful to be able to live in KL and do this work. Read on for three simple joys of life here, three challenges we’re currently facing, and how you can pray for us in the month ahead. Three Joys:
With much affection and gratitude, Lisa and Rich Below: HTBB Online Has Sermons. Click on the image to watch Lisa’s prerecorded sermon…  |
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