Proclaim Liberty to the Captives

Sorry it’s been pretty much forever since I last posted. This is the basic summary of the developments for Utah in the last couple months:

1)            I had an interview with the C&MA for licensing for ministry. This is separate from Utah and I didn’t need to do it for this ministry. However, the board decided to not recommend me for licensing because they felt I was too spiritually vulnerable. This was difficult and brought a great deal of doubt and fear about Utah, but in the days and weeks following the interview God made it clear he is still sending me to Utah. What that means is that I need to ask for more prayer. I need to be more open and honest with people about where I am at and need to get prayer. Please ask for protection for me.

2)            ADI currently has no students for the winter session. I won’t be teaching but I will still be working with the Filers doing a lot of evangelism and hopefully discipleship. The goal is the same: to plant three new ministries with the goal of planting a church in Ogden. This involves building relationships with lost people. Pray for opportunities to get to know people. From the conversations I have had recently with some Mormon students in Ogden, the culture is very different. Whereas in Southern California it is typical to spend a lot of time throughout the week with friends, it seems that in Utah most of the “hang-out” time is done at regularly scheduled events at the Institute, which is basically the local LDS church building. I plan on going to those sorts of events, but I am not really sure how to bridge the gap and build into people’s lives outside of that context. Meeting at coffee shops isn’t an option, since the LDS Church forbids drinking coffee. My fear of the cold might also be an obstacle J What I would like to be able to do is invite people over to the Blue House where I will be living. There is a lot of room and it’s a good environment to hang out. It is a big step for Mormons to go into a building with a cross on it, so I’ll have to figure out other opportunities. Pray for ways to navigate the culture well without being offensive or inconspicuous. I want to be salt, not sand or pepper J

3)            Life at the Blue House is going to be a bit different than what I expected. There won’t be a team that lives there for the first three months (besides week-long teams that may be there with the ministry that owns the house). Andrew Pringle also will not be there, at least for the first few months. The Filers also moved out. God is good and provided a house for the family! I am excited for them. As far as I know, I will be living alone in the Blue House. I can’t say for sure what God’s plan is, but I foresee that being a fairly good thing for me. When I am lonely I am much more disciplined and in general less sinful. I think having alone time will motivate me to read the hundred or so works I just downloaded onto a Kindle and my Bible. I think it’ll also give me more time to keep in contact with the people that encourage me most and that I will miss a great deal. Facebook is great but I spend a ton of time on there and I want to make sure I don’t end up wasting time. If given the opportunity to have a good conversation I want to take it, but I don’t want to waste time. When I am unhappy I’m generally more loving and will put more effort into building new relationships, so I hope that makes me more proactive about meeting and loving lost people. This is not to say I won’t be busy. I have looked at the schedule and I will definitely be putting tons of time into ministry. I just know that laziness is a temptation I almost always submit to. So pray for that.

4)            This isn’t totally a Utah thing, but since I talked about one of the defining sins in my life, I should mention that God has been working on the second. I am a very prideful person. Specifically I’m arrogant (there is a more narrow connotation to that, right?). It’s something I’ve always been and always known it and always thought it was just who I was. However, I am being reminded that sin is the invader to the human nature and is not human nature itself. Human nature is the image of God. So we shouldn’t be okay with sin or accept it as our flaws. God has been humbling me in terrific and awful ways. I’m not a fan of what things he has done to humble me, but I am so thankful he is doing it. I won’t really go into all of that, but I am excited that God is doing such a great work in my life. He’s broken me down, cleaned me out, and I finally feel that he is building me back up. I was never dreading going to Utah but I was not looking forward to it, because I knew there was so much ickiness in me that I did not want to destroy me. But God is really preparing me to do his work, and now I am excited for what is next. I hope that as I put what I’ve been stuffing into my head into service, he does not continue to break me down, but if so, he is good!

5)            Last things that I can think of at 1:30am: I finally wrote my support letters! I included it underneath here. I have been really lazy so I am glad to get that out. The amount I need to raise changed a bit so I only need to raise $500/month. A couple people have already told me they plan on donating monthly, so with that, I am down to only about $250/month. God is good! He is providing. Money is not something that concerns me too much in general, but God has given me a lot of peace with raising this specifically. I really desire to have a lot of support in the form of prayer and encouragement, so thank you and please continue! This isn’t something I can do on my own. I put together my primary prayer team, but I would appreciate it if you would remember to lift me up when you think about it. And offer any encouragement/advice God gives you! Oh, also today I came up with a theme verse. The LDS Church is very oppressive and restrictive. It runs very contrary to the gospel. So I want this to be my goal. Jesus picked up a scroll and read this from Isaiah and claimed that he fulfilled it. I’m not claiming to fulfill it. But it shows what Jesus’ message is and what message we are to share. Luke 4:18: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed.”

Support Letter

Friends and Family:

In January, I will be moving to Ogden, Utah to be a missionary intern. This is not something I can do alone so I ask for your support in prayer, encouragement and finances. Please prayerfully consider partnering with me in bringing the gospel to Utah.

I will be working with Joe and Jennifer Filer, who are full-time missionaries in Utah. They have a passion for bringing the true gospel to Mormons. The goal is to plant three new ministries in the first three months and with those ministries plant a church. We will be laying the groundwork of building relationships with prayer and evangelism at Weber State University, the neighboring areas, local LDS wards and at Temple Square. I will be there for either three months or a year, but will not know for sure until after I have been there a couple months. I will need to raise about $500/month to live and serve in Ogden.

My college group went on a week-long missions trip to Ogden this past summer, which is where we met with the Filers. We were astonished to witness the power of the Church of Jesus Christ and Latter-day Saints and its emptiness. We visited Temple Square where we saw a great display of the glory of the church and especially of the man Joseph Smith. In the wards we saw dead worship, dead fellowship and dead followership of God. The LDS Church uses the same language as evangelicals and even quotes the Bible, but they are not the same faith. Mormonism is based on the beliefs that a group of Israelites moved to America 2500 years ago and left a historical record on golden plates. Joseph Smith found these plates and translated them from Reformed Egyptian into English and thus gave the world the Book of Mormon. There is a great deal of evidence against these beliefs, but they form the bases of LDS life and religion.

Mormonism is a works-based religion. There is no assurance in the cross of Christ, because they do not believe that anything happened on the cross aside from Jesus’ physical death. They believe that the atonement was completed in Gethsemane so the cross is a detestable symbol. Jesus Christ is our spirit brother as is Lucifer, because we all come from pre-existent souls that populate heaven. The way to acceptance by God and culture for Mormons is be a good Mormon and do all the right things that the LDS Church demands. There is no relationship with God because God only speaks to the Prophet.

Salt Lake City is the Mecca of Mormonism. The great majority of the state of Utah is made up of Mormons. The emptiness and darkness of LDS Church permeates the state. A CBS News article reported that Utah leads the nation in prescription anti-depressants. They cited Mormons’ inability to ever be good enough as the cause. Utah also leads the country in plastic surgeries and use of methamphetamines. Most of these meth-users are mothers. Mormonism puts a great deal of pressure on women to be good enough to be called into heaven by their husbands. This oppressive religion is not the gospel of Christ Jesus, who said of himself, “the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed” (Luke 4:18).

I know this is too great a task for me. I know I am weak and selfish and immature. But I also know that we are called to work together as one body to do Christ’s remaining work on earth. If this is a ministry you would like to be involved in, please fill out the included card to receive prayer requests and updates. I would greatly appreciate encouragement from my church body. If God calls you to give, fill out the same card and make checks payable to LBAC, but do not put anything in the Memo line (for tax purposes).

Thank you and God bless!

Kelly Douglas

It looks like I'm going to Utah.

And if you are reading this, you probably already knew that. I do not believe that missions is primarily the call of the individual; it is primarily the call of the church. (I do not believe it is the church's primary call, and I'll go into that later.) A missionary or evangelist is merely part of the body. If you read Romans 12 or 1 Corinthians 12, you will see that the spiritual gifts are given to individuals so that we can bring them together and work as one functional body, carrying out Christ's work on the earth. I am young, weak, sinful, proud, lazy and unprepared, as I think will come out in this blog if I am as honest as I plan to be. God has saved me, given me new life and gifted me to do the work he has prepared for me, but I need the church to send me in order to fulfill my ministry. I know that without encouragement, direction, correction, prayer, financial support and love I'll fail. The first aim of this blog is for myself: I would like to connect you to what I am doing so I can get the support I need from my brothers and sisters in Christ. The second is for you, my brothers and sisters: I would like to connect you to the work God is doing in Utah for your encouragement and for the glory of our powerful God.
In the beginning of January I plan to move to Ogden, Utah to be a missionary intern for Joe and Jennifer Filer, a C&MA missionary couple who have been called to minister to people of the LDS church. They would like to start an evangelical church and to help them, they are bringing missions-minded college students to Utah to study, live as community and serve various Christian ministries in Utah. They have asked me to teach some of these classes and be a part of this program, called Adventure Discipleship Intensive. I need to raise the finances to go out there, which is $2,000 for three months. It is originally a three-month commitment (January 3-March 31), but it may be extended to six months or a year if God seems to be directing that.
My heart is a bit divided in this trip. There is a large part of me that is very afraid to leave what I know and love. It will be difficult to leave Southern California, because there are a lot of people I love there. I will miss my family and my home church. I do not want to leave them/you all. It will be difficult. I have some other trepidations as well, namely that I do not know very much about the subjects I will teach, I am young and immature and unprepared, and I do not do well in the cold. But these things are eclipsed by desire to glorify God. I was having trouble when studying missions to  be able to teach it, because I have no real knowledge or experience. However, I turned to my buddy Pastor John Piper in his book on missions Let the Nations Be Glad! and pretty much immediately got excited for Utah. Piper reminds us that missions is not the primary function of the church, worship is. He considers worship to be the "white hot enjoyment of God's glory." Missions exists because this type of worship does not. I deeply desire to worship God by having such a passion for him. I want to enjoy him like that. I sometimes do but not often. I felt that passion for his glory when I was in Utah this summer, because it was so clear that the LDS church was not doing it. Missions exists because worship does not. Missions in Utah exists because worship in Utah does not. Now I am excited to be able to go to a dark place and be a light there. I look forward to being able to glorify the true God where he is not worshipped and to be the presence of the Holy Spirit where he is not manifested. This is a few months off, but writing about it is getting me really excited to be a part of God's work. I ask that you, my church family, be a part of this and connect with me to bring the gospel of the living Christ to Utah.