Pakistan

Now I know what a terrorist bomb blast feels like in real life; what detonating 800 Kilos of explosives can stir in the imagination: a bunch of innocent people in the throes of death along with the looser who pushed the button, and dozens more trying to find their bearings and crawl away from a nightmare that just became theirs.

16 dead and 64 injured in this blast that shook us out of bed on Monday morning. A couple days later, Kris and I flew out of Lahore, and two more suicide bombers killed another 44 and injured 115, followed by an unmanned bomb that injured another 4 people, followed by…

It’s all about terror, terror can make your knees weak and your palms sweat but it won’t give you any sensible advice on how to stay alive. Bombs are real but terror isn’t! So you may as well ignore it. We had an awesome time in Pakistan, we preached in five churches and a leadership conference, prayed for a thousand people, and on top of that, we received copious amounts of love and encouragement for our part in the vision of planting churches and training leaders across Asia.

The air has changed in Pakistan. On our first few trips we traveled freely, shooting video and interacting with people. Then in 2006, we happened to land in Lahore the day that Islamic rage broke out over the Danish cartoons of Muhammad. Our conference was interrupted when riots broke out in the streets against anything western. We lovingly refer to this trip as the ‘lock down’ - we were stuck in our room most of the time. In the following year, terrorists began to pillage Christian homes and churches in Pakistan, oppressing the believers into a feeling of helplessness.

But this time, something different began to surface. We preached in a new church that meets in a half finished building, no doors yet, just guards with shotguns and security wands. A couple months earlier they had held an initial open-air crusade in a vacant lot a few doors down. That vacant lot could be seen from the roofs of 12 surrounding buildings and by positioning 12 gunmen on those roofs, there was no fear of snipers that evening. Then we preached at a new church plant in another area, also in an empty lot. Terrorists know this area for its gun-packing Christians and in four attempts the terrorists have not been able to break through. Now days we find ourselves surrounded by Christians packing guns everywhere we go, and I noticed that in many churches the ministry of gun-packing has become a responsibility of the youth group.

The Pakistani police now require churches to have armed guards during services. An AK 47 is nearly a thousand dollars so I think I’ll just buy a shotgun. But should this be a “go buy a sword” or a “turn the other cheek” issue?