By Jeff Finley
(Editor’s note: Some names of people and countries are withheld from this article for the safety of Christians in regions where believers face persecution.)
After a dozen years of overseeing Free Methodist World Missions’ ministries in Asia, Eric hasn’t lost his love for the people of the world’s most populous continent.
“The Father has been at work in my life and in Asia, and it’s been much less about me and much more about His people on the field. I just feel like a conductor in some senses, or maybe a coach getting behind the Father’s people in all of these places in Asia, where thousands are coming to Jesus every year,” Asia Area Director Eric said during a conversation with Brett Heintzman on a recent episode of “The Light + Life Podcast.”
Eric added that it’s hard to count membership “when much of the church is under oppression or struggling to follow Jesus openly,” but he estimated “over 300,000 Free Methodists [in Asia]. It could be as many as a half a million. … Numbers are not the key. They just give us a general perspective.”
Many people in Asia have not yet heard the good news of Jesus Christ.
“Asia has something like 5 billion of the world’s 8 billion people, and so many of those 5 billion don’t have any access to the gospel — nobody to tell them about Jesus, no church, no Bible,” Eric said. “The fields are ripe for harvest, and it’s an overwhelming sense of: How can we make some kind of a splash?”
When he became the Asia Area director, Eric prayed, “What would You want us to try to do together, Father?”
“That’s where this idea came for influencing a million people toward Jesus,” Eric said. “I choose that word influence, because we know theologically it’s the Holy Spirit that does the work of salvation, of regeneration. I don’t save anybody, and so we’re going to influence people toward Jesus and allow Him to do His work in them, drawing them to Him.”
Eric compared the effort to President John F. Kennedy’s vision to land an American on the moon.
“When we think about the ‘moon shot vision’ of influencing a million people toward Jesus in Asia, it’s all about mobilizing people to work together to accomplish more than what we can maybe ask or imagine,” Eric said. “It would be great to see many more than a million when you think of the billions that are without Jesus in Asia.”
Eric revealed that early in his time as Asia Area director, “I was overwhelmed by the immensity of spiritual darkness in Asia and the physical/spiritual need that’s all around.”
He recalled praying one morning in Chiang Mai, Thailand, while “feeling like ‘I don’t know what to do about this. I don’t know if I can even bear it anymore. I don’t have what’s needed to answer all of the needs.’”
He came across the words of Peter in Acts 3:6, “Silver or gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.”
“I felt like the Holy Spirit spoke to me that morning and said, ‘Eric, I’m not asking you to give what you don’t have. I’m asking you to give what you do have,” he recalled. “It was watershed for me in terms of what’s going to be my contribution, and the Father has given [my wife] Virginia and me an incredible love for the people of Asia that I can’t explain apart from Him, through His Holy Spirit, pouring out love into our hearts for the people of Asia.”
The couple decided to base their work on that love and to pass it to other people.
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“He had no idea that, just by doing his job working, he was going to encounter believers living out their faith, and came to know Jesus.” – Eric
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Transformation Stories
In one Asian country where it’s difficult to follow Jesus, a young leader named Michael was “sitting in a cafe one day, and a young man comes in who Michael knows is a drug dealer, and Michael catches his eye and waves him over,” Eric said. “Michael shared Jesus with him, and in the end, instead of doing a drug deal, he did a deal with Jesus and gave his life to Jesus, abandoned his drugs, and is now a part of the local church.”
In another Asian nation, construction workers overheard the services at a neighboring house church.
“Not long ago, after a Sunday service, one of the builders came and approached this pastor and asked her about her religion, and she explained to him about her faith and how God changed her life, shared the Scriptures with him, and at that very moment, that construction worker decided to come to faith in Jesus,” Eric said. “He had no idea that, just by doing his job working, he was going to encounter believers living out their faith, and came to know Jesus.”
Elsewhere in Asia, a woman in her late teens opposed Christianity aggressively because she heard it “was a Western thing that was not any good, and so she was even, in a sense, opposing one of our local churches,” Eric said. “Her father became very ill with a stomach problem, and they tried all kinds of remedies to try to get him well, but nothing worked, so he went to this local Free Methodist church, and one of our pastors said, ‘Jesus can heal you.’”
The man gave his life to Jesus and was healed. The young woman “was shocked by what had happened and realized that all along she had been wrong about Christianity, and so as a result, she gave her life to Jesus too and was baptized,” Eric said.
In another Asian country, the wife and daughter of an abusive, alcoholic man joined the local Free Methodist church in praying for him. The man attended a three-night Bible study and stood up on the second night and said, “I want to be free from alcohol, but I can’t do it in my own strength.” The church members laid hands on him and prayed.
Eric said that man now “leads a weekly Bible study. He attends worship faithfully. He’s on his Board of Administration of his local church, and the town that once laughed at him now marvels at what God has done.”
Biblical Interdependence
Eric said he has a “deep dependence upon Jesus now for wisdom and guidance and help every day in the work that’s well beyond me, but one of the big issues when doing work on the mission field is the issue of dependence.”
While funding missions work, some people consider, “How do we avoid creating unhealthy dependence?”
Of course, “we are all dependent,” Eric noted. “I’m convinced that independence is a myth. We were all actually created to be dependent, first upon the Father and then upon one another. So the issue on the mission field — the issue missiologically — is unhealthy dependence, not dependence.”
Eric explained, “We need one another, and so we need to be bringing the gifts that the Father has entrusted to us to the table and sharing them in an appropriate way.”
He said that when we consider “mutuality between the church all around the world, I think we get to a more healthy perspective of what Scripture talks about when it comes to this idea of biblical interdependence.”
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Jeff Finley is this magazine’s executive editor. He joined the Light + Life team in 2011 after a dozen years of reporting and editing for Sun-Times Media. He is a member of John Wesley Free Methodist Church in Indianapolis. He and his wife, Wabash/New South Conference Superintendent Jen Finley, are the parents of a teen son. Jeff has a bachelor’s degree in English from Greenville University and a master’s degree in public affairs reporting from the University of Illinois with additional graduate studies in journalism at Southern Illinois University. He serves on the boards of the Greenville University Alumni Association, Friends of Immanuel and Gene R. Alston Memorial Foundation.
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