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Ordinary People, Uncommon Faith

Is the cost to GO just too great for my generation? The sacrifice too painful?

By Becky McCabe, serving in Mali with Compassion and Mercy Associates (CAMA), the relief and development arm of The Alliance

“Although we are leaving for the Congo in an hour when perils of the seas have reached a peak in world history, we have no fear, for He who spoke peace to stormy Galilee is Captain of our frail bark—these lives of ours.”

—Rev. Clarence I. Birkley, The Alliance Weekly, December 7, 1940

I have no idea who Rev. Birkley was. But as I read his farewell to the Alliance constituency, when he and his family were returning to “the whitened harvest fields of Congo,” I felt a sense of awe and yearning for that type of all-out obedience to God’s call.

Ordinary People, Uncommon Faith
Doug and Karen Conkle, the author’s parents, during their first term of service in Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso) in the late 1970s

When I found that yellowed Alliance Weekly and read his powerful testimony, we were six months out from returning to Mali for our third term. And I was pretty sure my husband, Shawn, was going to have to drag me onto the plane kicking and screaming.

I grew up hearing stories of Alliance missions work in Africa during the glory years. In the days when it took weeks by ship to arrive; when roads were so unnavigable you had to trudge to your mission station, carrying your trunk on your head.

Those were the years when news from home took months to arrive, children were sent to school hundreds of miles away, and tropical diseases were prevalent but cures weren’t.

All In!

Yet I find it goose-bump amazing to hear stories of how God takes ordinary people and empowers them to build His Church in the farthest corners of the world! This is the story of my parents, Doug and Karen Conkle.

A guy from Ohio and a gal from Iowa answered God’s call to reach lost people in Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso). Through His faithful empowering, they’ve reaped a harvest after 40 years.

In the late 1970s, they began living and testifying to the gospel among people groups without one believer. Today, dozens of pastors within those same groups are taking the gospel to those who have not yet heard!

Ordinary People, Uncommon Faith
“The combined years my missionary aunts and uncles [pictured] served is easily in the hundreds,” Becky says.

My parents’ story parallels many Alliance missionaries from that era (the combined years my missionary aunts and uncles served is easily in the hundreds). Heroes of the faith! They were all in, totally committed to do whatever it took to take the gospel to those who were without access.

What’s Changed?

I’m not so sure this generation can say the same—the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few in many of the unreached regions of the world. Our Alliance fields and teams lack critical mass; at this writing, there are 41 positions waiting to be filled.

What’s changed? Is the cost to GO just too great for my generation, the sacrifice too painful?

It certainly was for me this time around. I wasn’t the naïve first-termer without a clue about what signing on the dotted line meant. I knew to expect tears when we sent our eldest to boarding school, the seriously uncomfortable living conditions we faced (think thick dust storms and oppressive heat) and even silly concerns like terrorism.

Feed My Sheep

Nope, this time around I wasn’t signing my John Hancock so easily. God was going to have to show up in a powerful way to change my heart.

One Sunday morning He did, with three simple words: Feed my sheep.

Ordinary People, Uncommon Faith

You know the passage in John 21 where Jesus asks Peter three times if he loves Him? Each time Peter says, “You know I do, Lord!” And each time Jesus gives Peter the same reply, “Then feed my sheep.”

As I sat in the pew that morning, it was as if I heard the Father say, “Becky, how much do you really love me? Is it enough to obey my call to feed my wounded and wandering sheep in Mali?”

At a farewell service for my parents in the Burkinabé village of Seindou, my dad recounted to those gathered a story from when he and mom were serving in that community and my brother was gravely ill with malaria. He described how he held my brother in his arms as they raced for the capital to get treatment.

He Will Do It

During that horrific drive the question kept running through his mind, Is it worth it? Is it worth it? That day as he spoke, he looked over the faces of the hundreds who’d found hope in Jesus because he was obedient. His answer was a resounding, “YES!”

Ordinary People, Uncommon Faith

“As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”  This is God’s mandate to each of us who follow Him.

We are all called to demonstrate our love for the Father by feeding His sheep. He may call us to live next door to some of those sheep. But for others of us it will mean going to peoples who have not yet had the opportunity to encounter the love, power, and truth of Jesus!

There’s something to be said for past generations of Alliance workers who obediently lived out God’s call on their lives. But what I love about their stories is how faithful God was to sustain, protect, empower, and equip His ordinary servants to do extraordinary Kingdom work!

“The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it,” (1 Thessalonians 5:24).That’s the promise I’m banking on as I get on that plane in obedience to God’s call.

The author’s parents, Doug and Karen Conkle, left the comforts of home in the late 1970s to share the gospel with the lost in Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso). At that time, the national church was small and struggling. Today, they report, “Burkina’s national Body is growing in leaps and bounds and is a missionary-sending church!”

Pray

Use the weekly Alliance Prayer Requests to join the Alliance family in interceding on behalf of our global teams. They often serve in challenging environments requiring Holy Spirit–inspired wisdom, courage, and strength to press on in sharing God’s love with those who don’t yet know Him.

Learn More

Read “Where Everyone Learns Your Name,” an article about Hands of Honor, a ministry Becky and her colleagues have begun to assist marginalized domestic laborers in Mali.

Go

Check out opportunities to serve with The Alliance.

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