Editor’s Note: This story was written by Abram Vos, who is 18 years old and the son of Michael Vos. Abram shares his perspective of this past summer’s Latin America gathering in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Abram is in the emerging third-generation of church leaders (recognized as those born between 1990 and 2015) in the Ames-Des Moines CityChurch network.
I was given the opportunity to go on an apostolic journey with my Dad, Micheal Vos, and James Riley. I deeply enjoyed the trip and learned a couple key principles about the way of Christ and His Apostles (TWCA, which is the New Testament model of planting and establishing churches).
The first principle that I learned about TWCA was the depth and complexity of this paradigm. There is a true beauty in TWCA, and that is the simplicity of gathering in a household, around a meal, and interpreting our lives through the lens of the gospel. It is emulating exactly what Jesus did with his disciples. There is also a complexity that comes with TWCA. When we interpret our lives to each other, we open up all of our struggles, and painful situations to one another. Those struggles are complex and deep. Meaning they need stable and mature people in the faith around them, to wisely help them process and handle the suffering through the lens of the gospel. There is a strong urgency to be deeply rooted in TWCA because complex problems can only be overcome with mature and stable people surrounding you.
I believe Christ built us for community and to build those meaningful relationships in that community. For being a community of people and gathering around a meal, like Jesus did with his disciples, means being part of a family of families in his household, which is the Church.
Another principle I learned throughout my trip was the importance of understanding the influence of a culture's paradigm. We might believe we have control over our thoughts and actions (which some parts we do), but I believe people underestimate (or don’t realize) the power that our culture has on the way we see things. We all live in cultures that can be described as a macro culture, and there are smaller micro cultures inside that macro culture that influence our behavior and the way we see things. For example, I love basketball! But I don’t think I would love it as much if it wasn’t so prominent in my childhood and in the people I surrounded myself with. Because after going to the Dominican… basketball is not near as important there as it is in the states. We can put so much value in some things in life and try to seek fulfillment through it. But one day we’ll look back on it and realize there were days, months, seasons, and even years wasted, focused on something that seemed so important to us. That’s where the value of having a complex state of mind and understanding the impact that our culture's paradigm has on us. When we have a complex state of mind, we can think critically and gradually learn how to navigate through this world, living by the principles that Christ laid out for us: ultimately living a simple, quiet, and hard working life in the way of Christ and His Apostles.
The last thing I took away from this trip was how powerful the way of Christ and His Apostles is if we root our lives in it as a family in unity. God has called us to a stewardship and we participate in that stewardship through the Church. We are family through the blood of Christ. And through the way of Christ and His Apostles, it physically pulls people together to participate in the gathering and live lives through the gospel lens.