At the end of my street, just a few yards beyond my apartment building, a wisp of tear gas curled around the corner of the road. Hundreds of protesters were fleeing in the other direction, doing their best to seek cover from the unseen clash just beyond my view.

Despite the desperation of the scene, it wasn’t the tear gas that surprised me. After three months of weekly clashes between protesters and police in my neighborhood, the acrid stinging in my eyes had become a familiar experience. What surprised me was a person.

My eyes were drawn to him immediately. He was not dressed like the other protesters, adorned with the masks and umbrellas of the city’s front-liners. He had nothing on him to protect himself from the chemical onslaught. He stood still, facing against the rushing tide of people. While everyone else fled in the other direction, he stood rooted in place.

At first I thought this was an act of defiance—a brave display of nonviolent resistance. But as I stood watching, I noticed his mouth was moving as his head shifted from side to side. The expression on his face was not fear or anger, but concern. He was speaking to the fleeing protesters, but he wasn’t trying to get them to stand their ground and fight back. Instead, he seemed concerned for their well-being and care. He stood against the tide, at the cost of his own safety, to offer some kind of calming presence. His posture was not provocative. It was pastoral. 

As I watched this all unfold, I felt an uncomfortable move of the Holy Spirit inside me. I have been a pastor in Hong Kong for 20 years, but this man embodied the power of the church more in that moment than I ever have. Like Caleb and Joshua standing before the majority opinion of the returning spies, this man carried with him a different spirit. I realized, soberly, that I did not. 

The church in Hong Kong is at an inflection point for the gospel. Alongside a global pandemic, our city has experienced a complete social and political upheaval in the past three years as a result of the protests and China’s response in its attempt to restore order. Many have welcomed the return of peace and calm to the streets, while many others have been left bruised and conflicted. And the church must now decide how to respond.

Will we become a bold and central voice of hope, faith, and identity in the years ahead, courageously rooting ourselves in the fertile soil of the gospel? Or will we feebly shrink into the shadows of our own self-concerns and self-preservation? Will the church reach out to a divided city, willing to plant our pastoral presence within the hardest of circumstances? Or will we settle for a comfortable gospel that keeps the lights on in our church buildings but extinguishes our prophetic light in the public square?

In my local community in Hong Kong, the kind of halfhearted cultural Christianity that seeks God’s favor—minus the sacrificial obedience needed to follow Jesus—is no longer an option. Perhaps it never was. If the church in our city has any future, it must shift from the pursuit of relevance to the pursuit of a fresh kind of gospel resilience that is forged in the fires of dramatic societal change. And we need pastors, like that man standing before the tear gas at the end of my street, who are able to offer brave pastoral hope in fearful political times. 

John Chan is one such pastor who has bent his knee to this call. Born and raised in Hong Kong in the ’80s, he studied Karl Barth in Germany before returning to Hong Kong to pursue a pastoral and academic career. Now in his early 40s, Chan is smart, engaging, deeply theological, and courageously able to connect Scripture and social change together in a way that invites people to process their traumatic experiences. He is willing to stand at the end of the proverbial street as the political tear gas creeps around the corner. He there offers a stable presence of hope.

“I grew up in a time of Hong Kong that was fabulous,” John says as we sit together over coffee. “A time when the culture was strong, when we all dreamed of a good future, when the youth of this city had hope and expectation. So much has now changed.”

Chan’s pastoral concerns for Hong Kong are centered around the young adults of the city, a generation caught between the affluent success of the over-40s and the relative innocence of the under-20s. “My generation grew up focused on making money and were mostly politically neutral. But the current generation is much more politically engaged and concerned. Which presents an important but challenging environment for the church.”

This was especially apparent in 2014, the year Occupy Central began. Signaling the first political student protest movement, the key leaders confessed publicly to their Christian faith. As an academic at the time, Chan noticed how his students were looking toward the Christian institutions in the city to offer guidance. “Our seminaries needed to quickly shift from teaching political theology to teaching political ethics. We suddenly needed a praxis more than a theory.”

This need for praxis in a time of rapid social change had to flow eventually from the halls of academia to the pulpits of the local churches, but such a shift was slow to come. Many pastors were not equipped to deal with the issues that the political upheaval was creating. As Chan observes, “Very few pastors felt able to address the major issues impacting their congregants, often from fear of being labeled too political. So at the time something significant happened, the pulpit slowly became disconnected from the people.” 

This sense of disconnection raised its head again in the summer of 2019, about the time that tear gas crept around the corner of my street. “With the second wave of student protests in 2019,” Chan says, “the church seemed to have learned little from last time, and many of the same mistakes were made. And this led to a lot of young people leaving the church. Not leaving Jesus, just leaving the church.”

This exodus led Chan to plant a new church that would be flexible enough to embrace a new generation of Christians who wanted Jesus and social justice to sit side by side, while continuing to deepen the gospel through sacrificial discipleship. He called it Flow Church, and within just a few years it has grown to more than 400 people, most of them young adults.

“Flow Church exists because Hong Kong Christians have a unique challenge different to the west,” he says. “Our issue is not one of the relationship between church and state. Our issue is how to live in a society with a disproportional imbalance of power.”

This imbalance of power is more than just a postcolonial hangover. As Chan puts it, “We have a unique situation because our empire is our motherland.” It is this unchangeable situation that has caused some to give up hope for their future, with a growing number choosing to emigrate from Hong Kong. But for Chan, he stands rooted to a particular passage that has become the foundation of his renewed pastoral ministry. “John 10:10 promises us that Jesus came so we can have abundant life. This is not conditional on a particular place or time, or a particular station in life. Despite how hard things appear for Hong Kong right now, I believe our people can know the fullness of life and joy.”

It is this vision of a full life that drives Chan’s ministry. He and his church are digging deeper roots in the soil of the city. His church desires to be a stable and sure presence of pastoral care in the wild rush of change around them. And this will require no small amount of courage, sacrifice, and strength. 

As a pastor alongside Chan in the ministry of this city, I find myself reinvigorated by his bravery. I don’t want to remain down the street, a distant observer to the spiritual courage of others. Like Chan, I want to be able to stand amongst those who are hurting with a resolve in my heart despite the stinging in my eyes.

This different spirit—as seen in Caleb and Joshua and my friend John—is defined by a wholeheartedness toward God. This sobers me, for I sense my own heart is divided, torn apart by fear, self-preservation, and institutional concerns. I need a new heart for this new calling. A new wineskin, if you will. And that is always a move of God’s spirit.

As a friend recently put it, “The hardest calling is our first one: death to self.” Like that man at the end of that street, staring down the tear gas and offering comfort to others, may we take the dying side so others can take the living side.

Kuruvilla was the name given to me. It means “one belonging to the Lord.” The name is common among the Christians of Kerala, in the south of India, who trace the origins of their community back to St Thomas Didymus, the “doubter” and the twin.

As I matured into adulthood, I chose “Kuru” as a nickname. It sounded dignified. But I had another nickname first, in my college years. I was called “Kuruvi.” It means sparrow in my native Malayalam language. 

I wish I had kept that name. 

My son’s middle name is Kuruvilla, and, in a curious turn of events, my son-in-law’s middle name is also Kuruvilla. At one time in our family’s life, all three of us and our wives experienced a series of crises. That was when I first thought about our family as a little flock of sparrows. Jesus said that our father in heaven cares for the sparrows. We needed his promise to ring true through the flesh, bones, bricks, and stones of our family.

In India, people do not build houses for birds to nest in. Rather, we set up screen doors and wire mesh shutters on windows to keep the birds and insects out. In earlier times, it was a familiar sight to see birds flittering in and out of church buildings, where they would find a place to nest in the high rafters. While we might chase the birds out, God does nothing of the sort. He made them. He wants them to inhabit his world. As David poetically proclaims, “Even the sparrows have built a nest, and the swallows have their own home; they keep their young near your altars” (Psalm 84:3). 

Earlier this year, I experienced a profound moment that once again reminded me that God takes care of his kuruvi. 

As birds find a place in God’s habitation, our heavenly Father is not one who stands by helplessly. As my family of sparrows nested in his presence, he nestled us, offering the peace of his presence and the fellowship of prayer surrounding us. 

Each month, I take a variety of blood tests and the reports go to my oncologist and diabetologist. On a Monday in March of 2021, after the blood extraction had been completed, I stopped at three shops to pick up supplies for our home, including a dozen eggs in a plastic bag. Having finished my errands, I steered my scooter through the bustling streets of Trivandrum on my route home at a speed of about 40 kilometers per hour. 

Suddenly and without warning, I lost consciousness and momentarily blacked out. When I regained my senses, I found myself about to collide with the back end of a large, stationary lorry. With a sickening thud, my left shoulder rammed into its sharp edge. I lost control and toppled off the scooter. I stood immediately, and promptly fainted again.

The next thing I knew, a group of men had picked me up and carried me to the side of the road. After the chaos of the situation settled, I inspected the results of the accident. My knees were bruised and swollen, and a long gash had opened on my shoulder. A passing van driver gave me a lift home and the lorry driver rode my scooter back. The two men helped me to my flat and stayed for about half an hour to ensure I would be all right. 

In my part of India, government hospitals are often crowded and medical attention delayed by lengthy administrative procedures. To avoid the congestion in the midst of my injuries, my wife took me to a hospital run by Catholic nuns who are famed all over India for their medical institutions and nursing homes. The doctor examined my shoulder and said there were no bones broken, but the swelling under my left knee had collected blood and would need to be drained surgically the next morning.

After the initial attention to my shoulder, my wife and I had to undergo COVID-19 testing and waited restlessly together in the hospital. While awaiting the test results, I received a lab report that sent a shock through our system: my platelet count was down to 15,000, far below the healthy minimum of 150,000.

Before I was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia, a hematological cancer, I had no idea what platelets were and what purpose they serve in the body. I quickly found out that they are required for blood to clot. If you don’t have enough platelets, you can easily bleed to death.

In that moment, we decided to relocate to the private hospital where my oncologist and his team work. There followed four days of treatment to raise the count of platelets, and then I was sent home to continue with oral medication.

As I arrived home, I went to check the consequences of my accident. I inspected the bag I had been holding on my scooter at the time of the crash. Shockingly, no eggs had broken during the carnage. It seemed one small miracle of many that day. First, slamming the metal edge of a lorry at 40 kilometers should have shattered my shoulder bone, but it didn’t. Next, with such a low count of platelets I should have bled severely and unstoppably, but that didn’t happen, either. Finally, the blood reports coming in while waiting for COVID-19 results saved me from undergoing a surgical procedure that might have killed me. That day, clearly, God had his eye on this one sparrow that had fallen.

In India, these creatures are often viewed as nuisances and people take every measure to drive them out of their homes. They are not worth much. They do not offer even a mouthful to eat. Yet God cares what happens to them. “Not even a sparrow, worth only half a penny, can fall to the ground without your Father knowing it. And the very hairs on your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are more valuable to Him than a whole flock of sparrows” (Matt. 10:29-31).

As I have come to a fuller understanding of the power of my name and the promise it holds, I know now that God cares for each sparrow. God knows and God allows what happens to my little flock—my sons and daughters and their families too. When he allows trial and troubles, he also gives us the grace to endure, and the wisdom and discernment to handle difficult situations. He gives us strength. He gives us hope.

I return time and again to the work of Ethel Waters, who often sang at Billy Graham’s Crusades. She famously sang the gospel song “His Eye is on the Sparrow.” 

Waters was born to a 12-year-old who had been raped by a white man. She chose the name of the song for the title of her autobiography because she felt that God had watched over the little sparrow she was. I echo her sentiments. I have lived my life as a sparrow that God cares for.

“Why should I feel discouraged,
Why should the shadows come,
Why should my heart be lonely,
And long for heaven and home,
When Jesus is my portion?
My constant friend is He,
His eye is on the sparrow,
And I know He watches me
I sing because I’m happy,
I sing because I’m free,
For His eye is on the sparrow,
And I know He watches me.”

What happens to us here is not the end. The individuals and institutions, principalities and powers that attempt to destroy us are ascendant in India today. They will not succeed. A new day comes. God watches over his sparrows. I know I belong to him. I know he watches me. And I know one day he will bring us home and we will nest among the rafters in his holy habitation.  

We’d been on the mission field only six months, and we were already experiencing every missionary’s dream story: a Muslim convert. We participated in his baptism, guided his discipleship, and supported him through persecution. We had so much to write home about.

It all started when Gil and I—both just 24 years old—moved to a large city in Tanzania in 2001. We lived in the heart of the Indian section of the city, serving a subgroup from Southeast Asia who had flourished there for generations. We lived in a tiny, 600-square-foot, concrete block house, and all day long we could hear ripe fruit from our giant mango tree slam onto our tin roof. 

Right outside the gate of our compound, a dusty road hosted small fruit stands, a butcher shop, and taxis that bumped through the potholes. Just down the street, a Muslim school educated hundreds of young Indian boys. Soon after we arrived, the school asked Gil to coach volleyball, and that’s how we first met the young man I’ll call Abbas. 

Abbas was 19—only a few years younger than we were. We joined an Indian church plant, and when Gil started inviting the boys on his volleyball team to the youth group, Abbas jumped right in. Gil and Abbas quickly became fast friends. It wasn’t long until Abbas spent nearly every afternoon at our little house—playing chess or volleyball and arguing with Gil over soccer teams.

Abbas got used to my American cooking and developed a special affinity for cheese. I can still remember him imploring me daily, “Hey, Amy, do you have any cheeeeese?” He’d also scold me for throwing away the chicken neck because “that was the best part.”

He had eyes that danced and an infectious smile. During the regular greeting time at church, he’d make us all laugh by personally greeting every person in the room. He was smart, he was a jokester, and he was hungry to know about Jesus.

Abbas began meeting with Gil twice a week to study the Bible. We didn’t want to pressure him, so we let him set the time and determine the length of study. “How many weeks do you want to meet?” Gil asked. “Until I understand,” was Abbas’s reply.

Not long after Gil and Abbas began meeting together, through tears Abbas said he desired to become a follower of Jesus. A few months later, he asked to be baptized. The Indian congregation gathered on the nearby beach, our toes curling under the warm sand while the breeze tousled our hair and rustled the palm fronds. After his baptism, Abbas leaped out of the water and ran ashore, radiating joy.

But Abbas’s Muslim community was furious when they found out about his newfound faith. He was excommunicated—forbidden to attend the mosque or other social events. One day, Abbas woke up to find that someone had poisoned the tropical fish he raised to sell to pet stores. 

Another morning, I got into our car at 6 a.m., ready to make the long commute to the school where I taught. Abbas gave me the fright of my life when he suddenly popped up in the backseat, still with his ready smile. His family had kicked him out the night before, he explained, and he had nowhere to sleep. It had been too late to wake us up, so he’d spent the night in our car. Despite all this, Abbas remained eager to grow in his faith. We were amazed at all he had learned and asked ourselves, “Who taught him that? It wasn’t us.”

Abbas told us that he was willing to die to see his family come to know Christ. We were awestruck . . . but maybe not all that awestruck. After all, wasn’t this how missions were supposed to go? Hadn’t we expected this? We’d read about miraculous missionary stories and now it seemed we were living one. So we filled our newsletters with reports about Abbas; he became the shining star of our ministry. This was why people were sacrificing to send us to Africa. This was why God had called us there.

So we were incredulous when another youth group member told us she suspected Abbas was stealing money from us. It wasn’t possible. No, there was no way! But she gave us enough details that we had to consider her accusations. 

Because we lived in a cash-based society, we always had cash in our house. We kept it locked up but had become careless about where we left the key. So we started paying closer attention and, after a few days went by, we could not deny it: Abbas was stealing from us. When he realized we were onto him, he made a partial confession. This revelation came only a few weeks before the end of our two-year term when we’d return to the United States so Gil could finish seminary. Our realization about what Abbas had been doing was too much for our young minds to process. The confusion, the disillusionment, the sense of betrayal was so overwhelming that we couldn’t even talk about it—with Abbas or anyone else. Our identity as missionaries had become wrapped up in Abbas. Shame and failure threatened to strangle us, and both of us fell into depression when we returned to the States.

After we left, we learned that Abbas stole from another youth leader. When he was confronted, he slunk away from church gatherings. The seed that had so fervently sprung up seemed to have withered under the hot sun. Eventually, Abbas immigrated to Europe and, from what we could tell, he hadn’t returned to Islam but wasn’t following Christ either. Over time, we lost contact.

We never told our supporters what had happened with Abbas. We never told our teammates. It took years before the two of us could even talk about it between ourselves.

We’d absorbed the unwritten rule in missions: Failure is unacceptable. I’d grown up immersed in missions culture, yet I couldn’t remember a single time that a missionary story, presentation, or newsletter ever included failure.

I know better now. But even today, missionaries are reluctant to share defeat, depression, or despair. Maybe there is too much at stake. Hundreds of people are donating thousands of dollars for you to do this work. Everyone craves numbers: numbers of converts, numbers of churches planted, and so on. 

The “successful” missionaries always have lots of numbers. They fill their newsletters with compelling stories and photographs of large groups of believers. But nobody gives presentations about evangelistic events where no one showed up, or posts a picture of the local pastor who abused his daughter, or writes a newsletter about the exciting convert who just slowly disappears.

Perhaps we grab onto the happy ending way too soon. After all, the church-planting movement that’s spreading like wildfire could quickly become syncretistic. The young pastor we’re investing in could leave his wife. The church that thrived for five years could dissolve under internal conflict. When we measure success, at what point do we measure it?

We could swing to the other side of the pendulum and throw our hands up in the air, saying, “Let’s not measure success. Let’s just measure faithfulness.” Of course, faithfulness is vital. But could this attitude be a cop out? God knows my heart, we say. We meant well, and that’s all that matters. But if that’s true, then we aren’t leaving room to learn from our mistakes. We don’t look for better methods or strive for greater effectiveness.

Could we have done anything different with Abbas to prevent his falling away from faith? At the time, we were so consumed by our own hurt that we never helped him explore the root cause of the theft. Maybe we could have taught him to lean more heavily on grace—and reminded ourselves to do the same. Maybe we could have remembered that missionary stories in a broken world rarely end with a “happily ever after.” Until that day when all things are made new, life is always going to be messy.

When Gil finished seminary, we returned to Tanzania for 14 more years. We saw many more victories in ministry and just as many tragedies. Time and maturity gave us a different perspective: The ways of God are mysterious. We don’t often see the beginning and the end of the story; we see only bits and pieces here and there. What we see as tragedy, God may be transforming into redemption. What we see as victory may be the impetus for destruction. 

“Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom 
     and knowledge of God! 
How unsearchable his judgments, 
    and his paths beyond tracing out! 
Who has known the mind of the Lord? 
    Or who has been his counselor?” (Rom. 11:33–34).

Perhaps this is why we missionaries must ground ourselves in the sovereignty of God. We must learn to be steadfast in faith no matter the circumstances. We must hold loosely to both the victories and the tragedies, knowing that it will only be in the end—in the very, very end—that all will be revealed for what it truly is. And when we know Christ, we can take joy in how the most important Story will end.

Out of the blue, Abbas contacted us a few years ago. He planned on visiting his former home and wanted to see us. Of course, we were happy to agree. We had long since let go of the pain and shame of the past. When he visited, we spent a few hours together, reminiscing about old times and catching up on each other’s lives. After all, we’d shared a lot of great memories. Just before we said goodbye, Abbas became quiet and emotional. Very simply, he apologized for what he had done to us 14 years previously. It was a sacred moment. We’re still not sure what God is doing in his life, but we are certain that God is not done with Abbas. We serve a God of grace and redemption; we cannot possibly imagine what is just around the corner. The story is still being written.

On April 14, 1521, the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan and his Spanish companions presided over the first Christian baptism in the Philippines. As Father Pedro de Valderrama performed the rite, 800 tribal inhabitants went down into the churning waters and arose as new Christian converts.

The local chieftain, Rajah Humabon, and his wife, Hara Humamay, were the first to receive new “Christian names.” After the ocean’s womb enveloped them, they were reborn as Carlos and Juana, bearers of Christ’s presence on the island. Their former identities were replaced. The names given by their tribe were rendered obsolete. They became the first of many in the Philippines whose conversion to Christianity would include the act of renaming. 

“But aren’t the names Carlos and Juana just Spanish names?” I asked my father as we discussed this historical event. He chuckled as we drove past enormous cathedrals under the scorching summer heat of Cagayan de Oro City in the Philippines. Parishioners bustled into the church sanctuaries, thirsting for communion with God.

My father replied, “That is very perceptive. They are Spanish names.”

I closed my eyes in confusion. “Then why are they called ‘Christian names’? What makes them Christian if they’re just Spanish?”

My father’s chuckle crumbled into a sigh. “Because they forgot where they were. ‘Spanish’ became synonymous with ‘Christian’ wherever they went. That’s how we got our last name.”

My family inherited our surname, Melo, from our ancestors. It means “one who hailed from Merlo, Portugal.” Ironically, I was neither from Merlo nor did I see myself as Portuguese. I grew up in the small city of Cagayan de Oro on the island of Mindanao where I was called Kagay-anon by my tribe and people group.

I knew where I grew up, and I knew the identity marker my land and culture gave me. But what did not make sense to me was my surname. It pointed to an ancestral origin thousands of miles away from the home I knew in the Philippines. My name claimed me as Portuguese, but my heart longed for my cultural heritage as a Kagay-anon and my sense of place in the city I loved.

I stared out the window of our car, watching Cagayan de Oro blur into the distance, as the music of church bells dissolved into the clang of steel and metal. Lamenting the Philippines’ history and the story of my people, I broke down in tears. The burden of my name weighed heavily upon my heart.

In 2016, my family migrated from Cagayan de Oro to Chicago, Illinois. Our surname traveled with us. Many Americans struggled to pronounce it correctly, asking, “Is it meh-low or mee-luh?” I remember visiting my first Starbucks in the United States where—in classic Starbucks fashion—they misspelled my last name: “Mellow.” It was as if my name had become an alien language. 

I thought I’d find relief among fellow Christians, but instead I encountered ridicule. In youth groups and summer camps, others jokingly rhymed my last name with the word melon. Eventually, the mockery became so unbearable that I removed my last name from my social media accounts. 

I soon decided to go by an entirely different name—one that might be more accessible to my American peers. So I began calling myself Ryan in an effort to be known, accepted, and loved by the people around me—in an effort to belong.

But in the process of renaming myself, I forgot where I came from. In my deep desire to be loved by the communities I sought to be a part of, I forgot who I was. I no longer even wanted to be called Filipino. 

It seemed to me that being Christian in the United States was synonymous with being American—and that Christian unity meant sameness. So I “rebaptized” myself with a new name to fit in. At the time, it felt like a necessary sacrifice that had to be made—a performance that seemed like the right thing to do.

Despite these efforts and all the pain they represent, over time I came to recognize a different divine reality. God became human and bore the name Jesus. He walked on the borders of society, the margins that separated people—rich and poor, sinner and saint, Jew and Gentile, women and men. Suddenly, those lines of separation were blurred as people found themselves eating and laughing around the same table with Jesus at the center. And amid the cultural tensions, in the liminal spaces that divided worlds, Jesus spoke a new way of life into existence. A new community formed around his voice.

As Jesus walked along the edge of the Jordan River and was himself baptized into the deep, he arose and began his ministry that continues today through God’s mission in the church. The proclamation of the gospel continues to stretch into the farthest reaches of the world. This great commission of Jesus says, “Go and make and disciples of all nations, baptizing them” (Matt. 28:19). 

Tragically, my personal experience and family history represents a “cultural baptism” that involved renaming and the erasure of local identity. This is an experience I share with many sisters and brothers of color around the world due to the effects of colonialism. Throughout history, there were times when Christian unity was confused and conflated with the efforts of European nations to expand their empires. Because of this, many people in the world have forgotten their own names—the names that come from their tongue and their tribe.

But what Christ did—and continues to do—is bridge the gaps. His name does not erase our names but instead gives them new meaning. The renaming of Abram to Abraham, for example, pointed toward God’s desire to see all peoples and nations reconciled, saying, “You will be the father of many nations” (Gen. 17:4). And in Christ, this covenant is being fulfilled. 

In Acts 2, we read about the Holy Spirit’s indwelling, which unifies diverse peoples around the name of Jesus. The Pentecost miracle manifested in the speaking of tongues, where Christ bridged the differences between languages. They spoke in their native tongues yet were able to understand one another through the work of the Spirit. Afterward, they migrated to the very edges of the world to proclaim the gospel and embody the promise once given to Abraham: “All nations on earth will be blessed” (Gen. 22:18).

Just like the early church, we’re called to reconcile the nations through the gospel. As Jehu Hanciles writes, “The mission of God starts on the margins.” Indeed, the gospel finds itself in the spaces where worlds collide. And in Christ, our names have become bridges. 

Sometimes I wonder what my indigenous name would have been. What if the Iberians had never arrived? What if Raja Humabon and Hara Humamay had never been renamed Carlos and Juana? Who knows what might have been? 

But I know there is no way to reverse the consequences of colonialism. My name remains my name, and it can never be erased. Unlike the disconnect and discomfort I once felt with my name, today I believe the irony of my name is precisely where Christ meets me. My name literally represents a bridge between the Filipino and the Portuguese. Though it signifies the consequences of colonialism, God is redeeming it. For my name reminds me that Christ is on a mission to reconcile the nations away from the pangs of division and into his loving embrace.

I still lament how my name has been a constant reminder of my displacement from the Philippines and colonialism’s legacy. But in Christ, my name has also become something to be celebrated. It symbolizes for me Christ’s restorative work that seeks to reconcile nations by creating new communities where the powerful are humbled and the lowly are exalted. Our names are more than just words. Every name is a story, bringing to life worlds, realities, and ancestors through their utterance. The problem is when we don’t see those stories—when we push them to the peripheries of our imaginations. The problem is when we sacrifice those stories on the altar of convenience and personal comfort.

But God sees our names. He knows the stories they carry. Our Creator became a person to know us, to hear us, and call us by name, saying, “I am the good shepherd. I know my own, and my own know me” (John 10:14, CSB). One day, he will once again descend from the heavens and will return to us the true meaning of our names—to reorient our lands, stories, and cultures around the healing and holy presence of the Messiah. We will be welcomed into God’s kingdom where all peoples and nations belong.

May we prepare ourselves for the coming of our king who bridges the gaps of racial and ethnic divisions. For Christ is calling us to meet each other in the in-between—in the thin spaces where the gospel brings us together, as different as we are, to share meals and commune with Jesus. 

As Christ reminded his early first-century followers in Revelation 2 and 3, he also reminds us today: “Let anyone who has ears to hear listen to what the Spirit says” (CSB). May we learn to listen once again. Indeed, may we learn to seek the glory of Christ’s hope, coming to heal and restore our names to beauty.

This story contains content that some may find disturbing

I remember the conversation like it was yesterday. Over the dinner table, my wife, Libby, explained to me what seemed incomprehensible: There were more than 40 million people living in slavery around the world, and each year millions of young girls were sold in the sex slave trade. My immediate response to the magnitude and depravity of this information was that there was no way a man would do something like that to a little girl. It just was not possible. How little I knew then of the dark world of human trafficking.

That day 15 years ago was the first step on a journey that radically changed my perspective. To help me begin to get a grasp on the dark realities of human trafficking, Libby encouraged me to read Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn as well as Good News About Injustice by Gary Haugen. These books cut me to my core and spurred me to learn more through reading, watching documentaries, examining Scripture through the lens of the poor, and studying the promises of God in Isaiah 58.

I’d spent ten years of my professional career playing outside linebacker for the Denver Broncos as a member of the legendary “Orange Crush” defense of the late ’70s and early ’80s. In the world of the NFL, accolades and honor are given for popularity, power, and fame. And in that era, locker room conversations about the experiences of racism, exploitation, and oppression seldom took place. We didn’t really know about the scale of violent oppression of the poor and the many forms that oppression takes. So years later, as I was confronted with these devastating realities, I had to determine what I would do with the power given to me to serve the vulnerable.

As I learned more, I became like a sponge, ready to absorb these stories. One that powerfully impacted me was my wife’s own experience of working in an orphanage in a developing country during a college summer. She recalled that, for the first time in her life, she was confronted with the brutal reality of harsh oppression of the poor. Libby witnessed how unjust systems robbed people of their dignity and life. 

Libby’s worldview completely changed through the life of one particular girl named Hazel. Hazel had been brought to the orphanage after having been abandoned at a train station. The orphanage workers were afraid of her because she had cerebral palsy. They thought her condition was contagious or that she had bad karma that might transmit to them. So they kept Hazel in a cold, damp, concrete room all by herself and made her sit on a small pot so she could go to the bathroom without having to be moved. Hazel couldn’t speak, was cross-eyed, and was bent over like an old woman. Once a day, someone would feed Hazel a single spoonful of rice. Though she was 15 years old, Hazel only weighed about 35 pounds. 

Libby began to visit Hazel covertly to feed her, bathe her, and help her try to walk. One day, while Libby was bathing Hazel, she tried to open Hazel’s clenched fist. When she was finally able to open Hazel’s hand, she found a swarm of maggots. In that moment, Libby broke down and cried out, “God, where are you? How can you let Hazel suffer like this?” 

Then Libby recalled the essence of Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 25: When you feed the hungry, you are feeding me. When you visit the sick, you are visiting me. When you do these things for the least of these, you are doing them for me. As the maggots fell from Hazel’s tiny hand, she looked up at Libby with her crossed eyes and frail body and, for the first time, Libby realized she was helping Jesus. 

Libby’s entire understanding of serving God was transformed that day. “I realized how arrogant I had been serving at the orphanage,” she said. “I had thought, ‘Aren’t these children so blessed to be ministered to by me? I have sacrificed my summer to do something good.’ I was shocked how truly far away I was from understanding the meaning of life in Christ.”

After Libby returned to college, the orphanage director put a lock on Hazel’s door. Some friends found a hole in her window and began sneaking food in for her. They asked the local church to help, but were told that Hazel was not “strategic for evangelism.” 

That fall, Hazel succumbed to starvation. News of Hazel’s death plunged Libby into depression, as she wrestled with difficult questions: Where is God in the suffering of the poorest in the world? Why doesn’t he show up? Why did Hazel die so brutally? 

One day, Libby came across a verse in Scripture that resounded deeply. Proverbs 13:23 says, “The fallow ground of the poor would yield much food, / but it is swept away through injustice” (ESV). Libby came to realize that Hazel lived in a country where there was plenty of food for her to eat—and it wasn’t God who kept it from her. It was people in positions of power—people who didn’t care about her or see her worth. Unfortunately, it was also local believers in Jesus who kept food from her, unwilling to help because they didn’t see her as an image-bearer of God who was worthy of life. 

Libby says that day she understood that “if people have the power to sweep away justice, then that means I have the power to give justice to people—and that’s how God shows up, through people. We are the hands and feet of Jesus, and that’s how he works.” 

Possessing a newfound understanding of justice, Libby join the staff of Cru, where she focused on the injustice of human trafficking and helped forge a partnership with International Justice Mission. For 12 years, the ministries collaborated to mobilize students in the fight against human trafficking—and that collaboration still grows today. Libby has since joined the staff of Love Justice International, to help develop their strategy of transit monitoring: intercepting and rescuing people as they are being trafficked before they reach their endpoint of potential exploitation.

My heart was pierced by the stories Libby told me, and the idea of 40 million modern-day slaves loomed large, permeating my daily pursuit of God. How could we do something meaningful and practical to address this great need? I felt led to respond, but our own resources seemed paltry in comparison to the scope of the need. I despaired over our inability to make a dent in this tragic reality. 

Then I came across Isaiah 58:6 and God changed my mind:

“Is not this the kind of fasting 
    I have chosen: 
to loose the chains of injustice 
     and untie the cords of the yoke, 
to set the oppressed free 
     and break every yoke?”

I realized God was calling me to take action—and I needed to trust him to lead me toward the next step he desired me to take. 

Soon after Isaiah 58 changed my perspective, Libby and I were enjoying a summer stroll through a local art show in Beaver Creek, Colorado. Amid dozens of exhibits, we came across an artist who was painting a portrait of a Rwandan woman. We stopped and introduced ourselves. We learned her name was Judy Dickenson; she and her husband, Jeff, a pastor, used their gifts to serve widows in Rwanda. Jeff provided pastoral care by listening to widows’ life stories, and Judy painted portraits of the women to capture those stories visually. 

A light went on in my head. I asked, “What if we created paintings of people who’d been intercepted and rescued from human trafficking as a way to tell their stories in a dignified way?” 

Without hesitation, Judy replied, “I’ll do your first painting.” In that moment, the vision for the Freedom 58 Project was born.

We shared our idea with Love Justice International and several other Christian organizations. Soon we received photos of people who’d been rescued from human trafficking. We began the process of creating, with consent, a painting of each individual. First Judy painted a beautiful portrait of a young girl who’d been rescued from a brothel. I shared her painting with artists around the country, asking if they would like to participate in this project. The response was immediate and enormous.

We received messages from artists all around the world asking to be a part of the project. Several artists told us they’d long desired for their work to make a global impact. We eventually received portraits of rescued individuals on a daily basis from artists as far away as Canada, Ireland, Mexico, and Thailand. Today we work in partnership with three anti-trafficking organizations and have collected more than 230 paintings. These make up our Faces of Freedom art exhibit—a traveling exhibition that raises awareness of human trafficking.

The artists replace injustice with dignity, beauty, and honor. They bring light to the true stories behind the scourge of slavery and violent oppression. The exhibit invites visitors to follow survivors’ real-life journeys from oppression to rescue, restoration, and ultimately freedom. The paintings—which are not sold—give viewers a chance to enter into a victim’s experience, reflect on personal stories of injustice, and be inspired to take action.

One of the featured paintings conveys the story of Claire. Many years ago, she was given the false impression that she was traveling to China for a reputable job. In reality, her traffickers were using her to smuggle drugs into Iran. Claire didn’t make it past the border, where the drugs her traffickers had hidden in her possession were discovered. Claire was promptly arrested and subsequently spent five years in an Iranian prison where she awaited execution.  

During her darkest hours, Claire says she trusted in God for her release and “shared the love and truth of Jesus Christ with the other inmates.” Although she was originally sentenced to death by hanging, through a series of strange and miraculous interventions she was released. Her journey eventually led her to Love Justice Uganda, where she works to ensure others are protected from experiencing the horror and injustice that she endured. 

California artist Johanna Spinks created Claire’s portrait in a classic iconographic style. In the image, a halo of gold surrounds Claire’s smiling face, bestowing honor, dignity, and a saintly image to represent Claire’s courage and faith.

In its own unique way, each work of art uplifts those who are closest to God’s heart in their suffering. As visitors proceed through the paintings, confronted by the beauty and tragedy of numerous stories like Claire’s, they are encouraged to consider a series of questions and invited to learn how to join the fight against violent oppression of the poor.

I’ve learned a lot since I first became aware of the shocking and dark reality of modern-day slavery. I’m still learning. If there is one thing God’s taught me on this journey, it’s that God is listening. This is true, even if the silence seems deafening or we are faced with years of waiting. When God decides to act, he does more than we can ask for or imagine.