John White - Developing Church Leadership in the Russian Speaking World
c/o Eric Yodis, Postal Box 3644, Donetsk 83076, UKRAINE	         November 2003
011-38062-345-5342 | jwhite@alumni.princeton.edu | http://www.marucheck.net/jw

Less than Perfect

If you know me well, you know that I'm a perfectionist. There's no getting around it-I'm very hard on myself and am always looking for ways to improve what I do. There are, of course, advantages to this, but on the whole it makes missionary work very difficult because the number of mistakes I make daily is enough to overwhelm me. One language teacher said, "To learn a language, you need to make a million mistakes. So you might as well get started!"

This year, I've been getting more involved at Donetsk Christian University, teaching more (3 classes instead of 2), taking more active leadership of my weekly prayer group, and becoming the North American Director of Public Relations. I've also agreed to become the co-leader of the weekly Bible study I've been a part of these past three years, and this Bible study group is becoming a part of a new church plant called, "Living Water." So, I've been teaching the book of Romans in English with a translator, doing administration work in Russian, and leading (sometimes delegating) a prayer group and a Bible study in Russian each week. I am less than perfect in all these things.

I don't know if you might feel this way sometimes, but the number of mistakes really get to me, and it tends to lead me to try harder and burn out. I've been recently wondering why I was tired all of the time despite God seemingly blessing my less than perfect efforts. A question then came to me-where is your life? Is my life in these things?

Sometimes the difficulty and the importance of the task can lead me to focus only upon it, but I think God gives me such tasks so that I would look up, to my true life, instead. Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." I shared these words at Bible study just the other day, but it now seems to me that I need Jesus' words to be in my heart each and every day. It's easy to like feeling important because people depend upon me-but then I become the way. What I do becomes the life. But the truth is that I'm turning away from God when I do this, and I get caught up in myself.

Would you please pray for me, that with all of my new responsibilities, I would not focus on being perfect, but would focus on giving my life more and more to Jesus? It seems all the more appropriate in the season of Thanksgiving, that I would be thankful by giving more of myself. Would you please pray:

  1. For my role in public relations, that God would help me to seek Him to raise up new partnerships and sponsors to put DCU on more stable financial ground.
  2. For my role as a teacher, that I would spend more time as quiet time, and that my teaching could flow out of my relationship with God.
  3. That I would love God in the midst of the process of all He is doing (Romans 8:28), and not just focus on results, or my "less than perfect" abilities.

My Prayerful Request:

As the year comes to a close, my school Donetsk Christian University is going through some very difficult financial struggles. Since joining DCU's public relations team, I feel these struggles even more! Could I ask you to prayerfully consider giving a donation?

You can give by writing a check to CBI (at 1501 W. Mineral Ave., Littleton, CO 80120). Simply indicate that you'd like your gift to go to the DCU Special Project. Your gift will help us continue to train pastors and missionaries to spread the gospel throughout the former Soviet Union.

Thank you for your gifts and prayers, which go even further than you might imagine!

Thank you, and Happy Thanksgiving from Ukraine!


John


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