A Son of the House

Despite her Bethlehem-like, one-traffic-light, humble origins, Elim’s shadow looms large over many a landscape. It is not armies that slay Goliaths, but Davids. And it is in the producing of Davids that Elim has excelled. Oh yes, Deborah’s too. We get to walk in the trails blazed by these mountain movers. As my own journey has led me to many a byway and distant lands, I cannot begin to recount the times that the mere mention that I was from Elim brought broad smiles followed by tales of legacies and mantles our forebearers had left behind. It is simply stunning, and always inspiring.

I could point to our “values” as contributing to the magnification of our efforts. Like the widow those two mites were deemed “more than all”, the Kingdom consists not in how much you give, but how you give; not in how much you do, but how you do it. When God is pleased, He gives us the land (Num 14:8). When we have majored in restoring a leader rather than judging him for his failures, God noticed. When and where we conducted our leadership by the law of influence, not in order to control, we have witnessed God bring down fire upon our offerings time and time and time again. 

What stands out for me as most definitional is Elim’s unique and precious attribute of producing not just pastors and leaders, people who can teach or preach, but spiritual mothers and fathers. As Paul so astutely noted, you can have ten thousand instructors; but fathers are rare. And yet, Elim has had an nabundance of them! Where others are poor, in this we are rich. This, it seems to me, is our secret sauce. It is our pixie dust, our one ring that rules them all. Nothing has impacted me more than the identity and affirmation passed down by spiritual parents. When visited by an Elim elder, the question was never about what I was doing, but how I was doing. The concern was for me, and not the work. Because I often interfaced with others whose leaders came to inspect the fruit rather than notice whether the farmer was weary or sick, I came to realize what I had was special. I also discovered that healthy farmers naturally get a good crop—that in the end, caring for me was caring about the work in the best possible way. I’ll close with one illustration. Costa Deir often arrived at our home in

Hong Kong after speaking to crowds of leaders in some other Asian country. This was baffling to a young missionary. Why would he want to stay with us? He had eaten with Heads of State! Yet when he came, he loved to prepare food for us, and serve us. When we were back on furlough, Costa and Sister Ruth invited our sizable family to their home for a meal. They cooked. Papa Costa cut my hair. He had some neckties that he brought out of his closet to give to me. He scurried down to their basement, reappearing several minutes later with a pair of leather shoes Costa wanted me to have. He really wanted them to fit, and I really wanted my feet to shrink the two sizes necessary to make them fit! I wanted nothing more than to walk in Costa’s shoes (or Paul Johansson’s sneakers, even Sister Sylvia’s heels!). More than anything, this endears me to our Fellowship. And this is why I can’t help but boast that I am a son of the House of Elim.