Presence is the only promise

 Upheaval pictures our life and many others in 2025: it carries the image of quaking earth, of erupting lava, of crashing wave and upturned boat. Forces far beyond our control, on scales of impact beyond our neat boxes of explanation. Cancer, an internal rebellion of unruly cells risking fatal endings. But also the shock waves of cancer in loss of home and community, change in vocational approach, days so completely different, every week accumulating weary struggles. Our microcosm perhaps pictures on a single human scale the cosmic view that stuns us all this year. The most deadly wars in Africa's DRC and Sudan; the most geopolitically volatile conflicts in Palestine/Israel and Ukraine/Russia; the natural disasters in Myanmar and frankly widespread floods and even resurgent measles. And an underlying sense of the ascendency of might makes right, of self-justifying greed, of pride in flouting the boundaries of law and care for the future generations that had restrained our worst instincts.

2025 has shaken us all.

Upheaval can also clear new paths, and that is the story for our mission, Serge. Even before we received an unexpected 100x normal bad news test result in late January, we had planned to come back to America this past weekend for the Board Meeting that honored our outgoing Executive Director Bob Osborne, and commissioned our incoming Executive Director Matt Allison. Bob spent 20 years leading Serge by embodying service, a weight-bearing connection point between the resources of North America and the gritty messy global work. We more than doubled in number of teams and places, and probably tripled in impact and finance. Bob wisely intended this timing to hand over to the generation 20+ years behind us ... but even planned change after so many years of crafting a responsible Board and a resilient base, in the cultural milieu of 2025 feels like upheaval. 

Bob praying for Matt (Scott as his first team leader was one of those asked to commission him in prayer)

So it was truly holy ground to see this heaving up land so well. Highlights for us were:

• Matt's dad Brad, a former Board member and key pastor in the American Serge church base, preached from Psalm 46. God does not stop the mountains from moving, the sea from roaring, the nations from raging, but IN all that He does promise His presence. Be still, and know the present help. That is what we have been praying to hold onto, that the cloud of obscurity and risk is also the cloud of God's presence with us.

• We were the "field report", I guess a missionary comes to every board meeting but this was our first time ever (since we were interviewed by the board in a church basement to join Serge (then World Harvest Mission) as the process in 1991 that is now an entire coordinated week of assessment and orientation!). Talking about our Area, gratitude for the people and projects, and honest pleas for prayer, is always a privilege.

• Worship, conversations, prayers, meals, fact to face human interactions with the leaders of our Home Office as well as the Board who supervises the entire operation is just plain heartening. The work done all over the globe has dedicated and prayerful support evidenced here.

Brad and Matt, father and son

Board gathering around us to pray, and then a group photo below

Home Office leadership, current and former board, spouses and friends gathering Sunday morning for worship and commissioning

Bob's trademark Hawaiian shirt style spoofed by current and former board members. They testified to Bob's personal individual care in them as humans, which enhances their ability to work together to change the world.

In a year of upheaval, these friends are a rock we can lean on. We started together in college committed to serving an isolated  place with an unwritten language and significant medical and development needs. Bundibugyo for the first stretch together, then they handed off to us and filled gaps all over the world. So glad to still be in the fray together!

Praying for Bob as he takes an emeritus role (and a grandfather one with his 4 grandkids), and Matt as he steps into the target of suffering to love all of us, and his wife Rachel and kids too. In a world that has been heaved up by politics and injustice and pathogens and discouragement, let us pray for the only promise we need, the only promise we know to be true: God is with us.