What does First B Jackson teach about mission work?

At First B Jackson, the teaching on mission work starts not with strategy or programs but with stooping. When Mahendra Singh, who leads Crossroads Ministries in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, brought a message from John 13, he kept returning to the image of Jesus setting aside his position on the night he would be betrayed and washing his disciples' feet. For Mahendra, that act is the clearest picture of what real ministry is: love expressed through ordinary, humble service, not through impressive works or titles. He pressed the congregation to consider what their own bucket and towel might be, whether a phone call, a daily conversation, or whatever their ordinary work holds, because the title belongs to the service, not the other way around.

Mahendra also taught that mission cannot always be arranged in advance. He described praying alone in his truck through a new area when a man named Baba Johannes stepped in front of the vehicle and asked him to hold church in his house. Johannes died of cancer six months later, but because he heard God and obeyed, many people in that valley came to faith, and thirty-five women grew into a community that eventually pooled their own money and labor to make a thousand cinder blocks so eighteen flood-displaced families could have homes. Crossroads brought in builders, but the women did the stooping. Dave Hatfield, who serves with his wife Kim in Nakuru, Kenya, brought a similar conviction from seven years of work in a dumpsite community: the only thing he has ever seen make a real difference is the saving grace of Jesus Christ and people who become His disciples. Education matters, Dave said, but it is not what changes a life.

Running through both messages is the warning that it is possible to love ministry without loving God. Mahendra said preparation for ministry is not primarily about what you know but about time spent on your knees, because it takes God's power not only to do miracles but to produce a genuinely servant heart. Dave's story of baptizing two rival gang members in the same water after they asked each other for forgiveness, and then simply opening the book of John with them day after day, is the same point told from Kenya: mission grows out of relationship with God and with people, and it tends to look less spectacular and more faithful than we expect.

Taught from John 13:1-5, 12-17 · John 3:16 · John 3:17 · Romans 5:8 · Isaiah 53