I am neither an optimist nor a pessimist. Jesus Christ is risen from the dead! — Lesslie Newbigin

As we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ this Easter, we want to pause and thank God for His steady faithfulness to Chalmers and our partners.

If you’ve been on our mailing list for a while (in our 26th year of ministry, many of you have been on this journey with us for years!), you’ll know that this has been a season of transitions for the Chalmers Center—a new CEO and an office move. And this is not to mention external upheavals going on in the world and in our relief and development sector more generally.

Times like these can tend to slow down good ministry work. We all have limits as humans, and change takes time, both to make the shifts and to adjust to new rhythms. God has blessed Chalmers with a great staff team, a network of Lead Trainers and Ambassadors who help others get started in ministry programs, and partners from small churches to multinational NGOs implementing our framework and resources. By His grace, our work goes on all the time, all over the world, “in season and out of season,” and we rejoice in this!

Pacing Ourselves

A few weeks ago, a friend of Chalmers paid us a quick visit at the office on a trip to the U.S. from South Africa. Over coffee, he shared some updates from his ministry, but he also casually dropped several pearls of wisdom that our staff team keeps thinking about.

At one point, reflecting on the goal of spiritual warfare being to take our eyes off the prize, he said that “if Satan can’t slow you down, he’ll speed you up.” That is, our adversary desires good Kingdom work to fail, and will throw obstacles in the way to try to trip up or derail ministry that does justice, loves mercy, and walks humbly with God. If that doesn’t work—if God’s people continue to serve faithfully, overcoming opposition by the Spirit’s power—sometimes he attacks by speeding up our work, providing opportunities and tasks at such a pace that we burn out or miss the big picture that God is the one working in all our ministry endeavors to bring about change.

We’d never heard this put quite so succinctly, but there’s tremendous resonance here with our core values and the patient reminder of our friend Kelly Kapic that living within our limitations is a good gift from God. God may stretch us and call us to lean on His strength, but his yoke is easy and his burden is light. He is the author of rest.

Perhaps this note resonates with you, too. Perhaps, in some seasons, the right move isn’t to do more or to go faster, but to wait, to listen, to watch for where God is at work and begin to patiently follow Him there.

Resting in the Resurrection

This catches some of what British theologian and missiologist Lesslie Newbigin was getting at in the quote above (a response he gave to an interviewer who asked about his outlook on life as he neared the end of his earthly journey). We can be overwhelmed by the darkness of the world, and overcome by the overflowing grace of Christ in changing lives—sometimes all at once! Our work, to the extent we do it well, is always God’s work. And His work was accomplished on the cross by which He is reconciling all things to himself (Col. 1:20). His work is being completed in the new heavens and new earth as He makes all things new (Rev. 21:3). His work is ongoing here and now in and through each of His followers (Eph. 4:11-16).

Jesus’ resurrection isn’t merely a reminder of our hope that death is not the end. His resurrection empowers us for ministry because the Spirit that raised Christ from the dead is at work in us (Rom. 8:11). All our work is from Him, for Him, to Him, and through Him. In life and in death and in the constant interplay between them, we live and work in Christ.

Whatever the world, the flesh, and the devil (which lie at the roots of poverty) put in our way, we can take heart in the resurrection. We can take the long view, and heed our Savior’s call to follow Him—at His pace and in the ways He has shown us.

What are We Being Transformed into?

Ultimately we can rest in the resurrection because the risen Christ is the one into whose image and likeness we are being formed (2 Cor. 3:18). His resurrection secures our resurrection. We know from the Scriptures that we are always formed into the likeness of whoever or whatever we worship (Ps. 115:8). Obviously we want to be worshipping Christ and formed in Him, but how do we measure this? 

This is where one more gem from our South African friend rings in my ears. “We all talk about transformational ministry,” he said, “but what is transformation?” Ultimately, he concluded that “Transformation should be thought of as living a life worthy of imitation.” A transformed life is one that looks so much like Christ that we would be happy to have those we know “imitate [us] as [we] imitate Christ” (1 Cor. 1:11). This is what we want our ministry participants to see and to be, and so we must long for this and live into it ourselves. 

This resurrection Sunday, this is our prayer for our team and for each of you—that we would be so confident, so rooted in the life and work of our risen Lord, that we might live lives worthy of imitation.

A blessed Easter season from the team at Chalmers.