HT: Jon Tyson

I am writing to you to let you know about a trip that I will be taking this coming September and to ask that you consider how you could be involved in supporting me as I go.

I have been asked by Frontline Missions to join a small team on a trip to Albania to produce a documentary film about the country and the work of David Hosaflook.

David has served as a missionary to the people of Albania since the early 1990’s, and has been instrumental in starting several churches in both urban and rural areas of the country. David and his wife Kristi, along with their children, have been called by God to live in a sometimes dangerous place in order to further the message of Christ’s kingdom and meet the needs of the people of their local community.

Frontline will be visiting the country to produce a feature length film to introduce Western Christians to the extreme physical and spiritual needs of this country. The film will be distributed on DVD sometime before Christmas of this year. We hope and pray that this film be more than merely ‘inspirational’, and will galvanize the Christian church into prayer, action, and evangelism in this part of the world.

Three of us will be leaving near September 9th and will return to the U.S. a few weeks later. During this time, we will spend time in some of the main cities of the country, as well as travel to several remote villages.

The first film in the Dispatches from the Front series was completed early this year. You can learn more about that episode at www.dispatchesfromthefront.org.

The hard expenses for the trip are $2200. This includes flight, food, and some lodging expenses. Additionally, I am looking to supplement this amount with funds to cover the purchase of a camera that will allow me to be a second shooter on the film. The cost of the camera is $1500.

Please consider how you could be involved in this work. Whether or not you can support the project financially, please pray for the spread of the Gospel, for our safety, and that the narrative we capture will display the needs of the region in an accurate and compelling way.

If you can support this trip, please send checks noting “Missions: Brannon Albania Trip” to:

Emmanuel Bible Church
269 Lakewood Dr.
Greenville, SC 29607

Thank you.

Sincerely yours,

Brannon McAllister
1 North Garden Ct.
Greenville, SC 29615
864) 346-2910
brannonmcallister at gmail.com

by Tim Keller

_________________

RELIGION: I obey-therefore I’m accepted.

THE GOSPEL: I’m accepted-therefore I obey.

RELIGION: Motivation is based on fear and insecurity.

THE GOSPEL: Motivation is based on grateful joy.

RELIGION: I obey God in order to get things from God.

THE GOSPEL: I obey God to get to God-to delight and resemble Him.

RELIGION: When circumstances in my life go wrong, I am angry at God or my self, since I believe, like Job’s friends that anyone who is good deserves a comfortable life.

THE GOSPEL: When circumstances in my life go wrong, I struggle but I know all my punishment fell on Jesus and that while he may allow this for my training, he will exercise his Fatherly love within my trial.

RELIGION: When I am criticized I am furious or devastated because it is critical that I think of myself as a ‘good person’. Threats to that self-image must be destroyed at all costs.

THE GOSPEL: When I am criticized I struggle, but it is not critical for me to think of myself as a ‘good person.’ My identity is not built on my record or my performance but on God’s love for me in Christ. I can take criticism.

RELIGION: My prayer life consists largely of petition and it only heats up when I am in a time of need. My main purpose in prayer is control of the environment.

THE GOSPEL: My prayer life consists of generous stretches of praise and adoration. My main purpose is fellowship with Him.

RELIGION: My self-view swings between two poles. If and when I am living up to my standards, I feel confident, but then I am prone to be proud and unsympathetic to failing people. If and when I am not living up to standards, I feel insecure and inadequate. I’m not confident. I feel like a failure.

THE GOSPEL: My self-view is not based on a view of my self as a moral achiever. In Christ I am “simul iustus et peccator”—simultaneously sinful and yet accepted in Christ. I am so bad he had to die for me and I am so loved he was glad to die for me. This leads me to deeper and deeper humility and confidence at the same time. Neither swaggering nor sniveling.

RELIGION: My identity and self-worth are based mainly on how hard I work. Or how moral I am, and so I must look down on those I perceive as lazy or immoral. I disdain and feel superior to ‘the other.’

THE GOSPEL: My identity and self-worth are centered on the one who died for His enemies, who was excluded from the city for me. I am saved by sheer grace. So I can’t look down on those who believe or practice something different from me. Only by grace I am what I am. I’ve no inner need to win arguments.

RELIGION: Since I look to my own pedigree or performance for my spiritual acceptability, my heart manufactures idols. It may be my talents, my moral record, my personal discipline, my social status, etc. I absolutely have to have them so they serve as my main hope, meaning, happiness, security, and significance, whatever I may say I believe about God.

THE GOSPEL: I have many good things in my life—family, work, spiritual disciplines, etc. But none of these good things are ultimate things to me. None of them are things I absolutely have to have, so there is a limit to how much anxiety, bitterness, and despondency they can inflict on me when they are threatened and lost.

She told me that when she was growing up in rural Virginia, she would be out working in the field, and she would feel and hear a poem coming at her from over the landscape. She said it was like a thunderous train of air, and it would come barreling down at her over the landscape.  When she felt it coming, because it would shake the earth under her feet, she knew that she had only one thing to do at that point, in her words, was to run like hell.  She would run like hell to the house, and she’d be getting chased by this poem, and the whole deal was that she had to get to a piece of paper and pencil fast enough so that when it thundered through her, she could collect it and grab it on the page.

Other times she wouldn’t be fast enough. So she’d be running and running and running, and she wouldn’t get to the house, and the poem would  barrel through her, and she said that she would miss it, and the poem would continue across the landscape looking, as she put it, for another poet.

Then there where the times where, this is the piece that I never forgot, there where moments where she would almost miss it, and she’s running into the house and she’s looking for the paper, and the poem passes through her, and she grabs a pencil just as it’s going through her.  Then she said she would reach out with her other hand and she would catch it, She would catch the poem by it’s tail and she would pull it backwards into her body as she was transcribing on the page, and in these instances the poem would come up on the page perfect and intact to the word, but backwards from the last word to the first”.

-Elizabeth Gilbert on US poet Ruth Stone

Paraphrase from the interview:

You might have a church where there’s not a lot of emphasis on the “Law”, there’s not a lot of emphasis on what we would consider “legalism”, which is: “We don’t smoke, we don’t chew, and we don’t go with girls that do.” Everyone is more dressed down, and there’s not a lot of talk about “no drinking, no smoking”. And yet the messages are “Here’s how to get your life in order. Here’s how to get your manage your money well. Here’s how to trust God. You really have to trust God and get your life in order, and serve him.” What is that? Its not what we would consider legalism, but it is what we’d consider moralism. Its saying, “You’ve got to get your life together and God will bless you.” But that will crush you. It was better to be an old-fashioned legalist, because at least its something that you can kind of “do”. At least its a model you can maintain. It makes you self-righteous, but at least its not going to destroy you. But when you say, “Study your Bible. Be a good person. Trust in the Lord. Really surrender. Attempt great things for God,”–that will crush you. Because you’ll never attain to that. The implicit message is, “…and that is how you will find God’s blessing.” Because there’s no emphasis on the finished work of Christ.