Our guest today, Colorado native Jen Oshman, grew up in a broken and chaotic home. During her college years she discovered God’s healing as he walked with her in a very dark season of life. Jen surrendered her heart completely to him, happily accepting his call to serve overseas.

The Lord led Jen and her husband first to Japan and then to the Czech Republic, raising four daughters along the way. Their long-term church planting dreams were undone, however, when they made the difficult decision to return to Colorado to care for Jen’s ailing father. 

There, in the suburbs of Denver– the last place Jen wanted to be– her family applied their overseas methods of relational church planting to their new stateside ministry: invite people to dinner and ask them if they’d like to study the bible. People said yes, and a church was planted!  

Jen’s ministry has expanded over the years through her writing and speaking gifts. She is the author of several books, including Welcome: Loving Your Church and Making Space for Everyone. She has also written about the good and necessary role that women have as co-laborers with their brothers on mission together. She encourages all to fully participate in his kingdom plans because all are welcome and needed.

jenoshman.com

Books by Jen Oshman

redemptionparker.org

Our guest for this episode is Nigerian missionary theologian Uchenna Anyanwu. His story is one of God being faithful as he followed the Spirit’s leading – a journey that took him to graduate studies in the US, and to the writing of his book arguing for a cross-centered approach to peace building.

We hear about Uchenna’s call from West Africa to North Africa, and then of the change that led to seminary studies in the States, and of his development of a theology of the cross as the basis for peacemaking amidst the Islamist violence in Nigeria. He challenges the global church to follow the example of Jesus’ response to suffering, evil, and violence as a model for Christians today. 

Uchenna shares how God has provided for himself and his family as he continues to die daily to himself, live by faith, and choose the way of the kingdom of heaven. 

Uchenna’s enthusiasm and joy in trusting God are an inspiration for us as we seek to reach the unreached.

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Growing up in a Muslim nation in SE Asia, with a nominal Catholic mother and a secular agnostic father, Paul had little meaning in life. As a college student in the UK he joined his fellow students taking drugs and living a wild life. After a visit to India while a university student, in which he got very sick as he visited Hindu ashrams, he began a drug-hazed search for truth, which he thought he could somehow find in the mountains. 

So, after college, he travelled to and in the mountains of South America, spent many months traveling, doing drugs with other young people from around the world, and seeking wisdom and truth high up in the Andes. 

After nearly dying from a genetic condition that he hadn’t known about, he eventually returned home to SE Asia a wreck. There, Jesus met him and delivered him from spiritual bondage, and his life of desperation when he was at a very low point. 

Following his dramatic rescue by Christ, God led him to YWAM, then Bible school, then into ministry and he has served more than 25 years in church planting in a neighboring SE Asian country. 

Don and Paul then discuss the ministry of deliverance, and discuss various approaches to church planting including Paul’s increasing experience-based disillusionment with church planting movement approaches. 

It’s quite a story of grace, and of faithfulness in ministry in some very tough places, both in life and in ministry.

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In this episode, Don and Jenn follow the challenging and painful journey of Ivan, an Iraqi refugee who escaped his country during the reign of Saddam Hussein. Along with physical challenges of transitions from the Middle East to Europe and long periods of separation from his family, Ivan also shares the cultural and religious issues that led him from communism, to atheism, to the ultimate joy of a heavenly citizenship with Christ.  

Listen with our hosts to Ivan’s fascinating and inspiring story that takes us through his stages of personal doubts and struggles with God, to the existential crisis that ultimately led to his deep faith in Jesus as his Savior. Ivan uses his skills in media and film coupled with his heart for discipleship of believers from a Muslim background in helping create programs that encourage Muslims in their search for a relationship with the Triune God.

Learn from Ivan how we can come alongside our former Muslim brothers and sisters in their walk of faith with Jesus.

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This episode of Reflexio features Sabine, a faithful German Christian whose physical movements since childhood have been limited by a wheelchair, but whose Kingdom influence knows no bounds!

Reflexio’s hosts Don Little and Jenn Chen talk with Sabine about the ways God has used her over the decades: first in France, and then in North Africa for 26 years - and counting. 

Listen in on their conversation and hear how God has used Sabine and discover what He has taught her over the decades. She lets us in on the highs as well as the lows of life as a disabled person serving in ministry. Along the way she imparts her wisdom about perseverance in cross-cultural ministry through loss, betrayal and unexpected changes in ministry assignments. Through it all she’s convinced that relationships – not programs and strategies – are the key to reaching the unreached.

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