BySpecial Guest Blogger: Katherine Lorance

 Oneof my hopes for this website is that it will be a good resource to equip andmobilize followers of Jesus to share the good news with people of othernations.  I had started to write somethoughts about glocalization (isn’t that a clever word?), which made me thinkabout how people groups are ignored if no one cares about them, which made mereflect on when I started caring about the nations.  I grew up having many friends from diversecultural and religious backgrounds and had travelled to Europe and Asia by theend of high school, but I didn’t care about the nations.  Here is a verbal slideshow of the fourmemories that were turning points for me:

 The summer after my freshman year in college, in a bathroomstall at a church family retreat center, I cried my eyes out and committedmyself to following Jesus.  The decisionto live with Jesus as my Lord (Boss, Master, etc.) was probably the mostimportant one in my life

 Less than a year later, in a dorm room Bible study, I criedas I realized that trying to tell my friend about Jesus was more important thantrying to stay friends without rocking the boat.  The more I knew Jesus, the more I realizedhow much others needed to know Him. Although I was (and still am) selfish, frightened and insecure, I began tosee myself as an ambassador for Christ.

 Sometime later during college, a pastor offered a free copyof a book, Praying through the Window,if we committed to pray through the book -- I took one.  As I began to pray regularly for peoplegroups around the world, I began to care more about the nations.  I learned what people groups were and what“unreached” implied.  I learned thathaving my own copy of the Bible in my heart language was a precious gift not tobe taken for granted.  I learned aboutpersecution.

 In 2003, in our blue Lazy-Boy recliner, I started reading Anthropological Insights for Missionaries.  (I bought it on sale on total impulse intotal ignorance.)  Although I have navigatedcross-cultural relationships most of my life, this book gave me so many “wow”and “aha” moments.  I began to see how myculture has influenced my understanding and sharing of the good news and howother cultures capture the good news in ways mine does not.  I finally started to truly appreciatecultural differences and what it means for the “wealth of the nations” to bebrought before the Lord.

 How about you?  Whatare some of your defining moments in learning to care for the nations?