How I See It

By Lee Yarbrough

In the summer of 1973 in Anchor Point, Alaska, I found myself convicted to the core, kneeling over a bathtub in the downstairs bathroom of a rustic chapel confessing my sin and brokenness, and begging Jesus to forgive me. I was the youngest in a family of three, a long-haired drugged-out surfer from the big city of Los Angeles, California, and a hopeless case – my absentee father was a top engineer for an oil company and my mother was a serious alcoholic.

I happened to be visiting my brother, Bill, who was a pastor of a small community of believers in a remote Alaskan fishing village. God radically touched my life during that summer, and years down the road in 1985 I joined my brother once again, this time in Mexico with my wife Stacey and one-year-old son, to begin a life of service to the Mexican people.

What a wonderful privilege to be called friends of God, chosen by Him, and to make Him known among the nations. My passion and motivation in life now is mission in the context of Latin America. The church exists for mission! And, as John Piper says, mission exists because of all the places where worship doesn’t. There is no greater joy than making new friendships, sharing God’s love with people, and then seeing them radically transformed by the love of Jesus Christ.

The Lord has called us to plant grace-filled, gospel-centered, vibrantly worshiping churches throughout Latin America. This involves training others for the responsibility of leadership, desiring leaders who aren’t only well-informed but who represent the values of being approachable and genuine. The Bible teaches us, and experience has shown us, that church planting is the most effective way to bring the transforming truth of the gospel to a community and to a nation. The grace of God compels us to share whatever treasures of the kingdom he has blessed us with to bless others.

Currently we are serving twenty Newfrontiers churches in Mexico, a new church plant in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and a church in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. Oasis, a group home for street children in Guadalajara, is a Newfrontiers Mexico ministry greatly aided by the oversight of the El Camino church. All of our churches share the vision and burden to minister to the most marginalised members of our cities and villages, and therefore regularly organise Kid’s Clubs and medical outreaches, and help in some measure with the most basic needs people may have.

God has promised to be with us, to build His church and to finish the wonderful work He began in us when He called us to Himself. We truly are blessed people!!

Lee and his team are also increasingly aware of the vast number of Spanish-speakers in the USA, so that they have recently had fellowship with John Lanferman’s team in the USA to consider the possibilities of joint endeavour in the States.

Lee and Stacey are a wonderful couple who display not only joyful contentment in their Mexican calling but also constantly demonstrate great humility and willingness to serve. This was displayed magnificently when they were asked if they would abandon their beloved Mexico for three years in order to uproot, move and serve a church in Missoula, Montana. There they fulfilled a superb task in helping that church through a difficult transition following the death of the previous leader into a healthy future under the new leadership team led by Josh Yakos.

As their youngest son’s professional football career develops, Lee and Stacey’s future claim to fame might be that they are the parents of Mexico’s national goalkeeper! You will recognise him. There are not too many six feet tall, blond goalkeepers in Mexico!

Our original link into Mexico came from our church in Hastings, Sussex where Brian, a businessman, worshipped. He also frequently travelled to Guadalajara, resulting in his pastor, Don Smith, making the trip there, from which everything opened up.

Another Sussex-based guy’s obedience to God’s call led to huge ramifications. Simon Pettit, together with his wife Lindsey and children, Emily, Charlie and Alice, responded to an invitation to Cape Town where Simon became the pastor of what is now known as Jubilee Community Church. Simon, a huge man in so many ways, blazed a phenomenal trail which ultimately opened doors in a number of African nations. The ripples are still flowing from his and Lindsey’s obedience in uprooting and going.

At his unforeseen and sudden death, God spoke clearly to us as a movement not to rush into trying to replace him with another senior leader but to anticipate and facilitate the release of younger leaders who were emerging in his shadow, saplings formerly growing in his shade.

How I See It

By Lee Yarbrough

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