Meet Darrow Miller
BIO: Darrowis co-founder of the Disciple Nations Alliance and a featured author and teacher. For more than25 years, Darrow has been a popular conference speaker on topics that includeChristianity and culture, apologetics, worldview, poverty, and the dignity of women. From 1981 to 2007, Darrow served with Food for the Hungry (FH), serving from 1994 as vice president. Before joining FH, Darrow spent three years on staff at L’Abri Fellowship in Switzerland where he was discipled by Francis Schaeffer. He also served as a student pastor at Northern Arizona University and two years as a pastor of Sherman Street Fellowship in urban Denver, CO. In addition to earning his master’s degree in adult education from Arizona State University, Darrow pursued graduate studies in philosophy, theology, Christian apologetics, Biblical studies and missions in the United States, Israel and Switzerland. Darrow has written numerous studies, articles, Bible studies and books, includingDiscipling Nations: The Power of Truth to Transform Cultures,Nurturing the Nations: Reclaiming the Dignity of Women In Building Healthy Cultures, Servanthood: The Calling of Every Christian, LifeWork: A Biblical Theology for What You Do Every Day,Emancipating the World: A Christian Response to Radical Islam and Fundamentalist Atheism,andRecovering Our Mission: Making the Invisible Kingdom Visible.
Darrow’s Story
(video transcript)
Greetings, I'm Darrow Miller and want to take a few minutes and introduce myself to you. I'm the co-founder of The DNA. Probably the more important things that you need to know are I've been a follower of Christ since I was thirteen years old and I'm married to the bride of my youth. Her name is Marilyn. We've been married for forty-six years and we have four children and fourteen grandchildren and one more on the way. Aside from my coming to Christ and marrying my bride Marilyn, the two most important events that affected my life occurred in my late teens and early twenties.
When I was in college, there was a group of eleven university students from Southern California and Arizona that went to Mexico City and we spent six weeks working in an orphanage. I'd never seen poverty before and I remember as the train pulled into Mexico City, I saw people living in houses literally made out of trash. In my culture, young men are taught not to cry. Women cry, men don't cry. As I looked out the window of that train, I began to weep. It's like you had taken me to another planet. I'd never seen anything like this in my life and my heart was broken for the poor.
I remember at that moment a conviction inside of me and I said, I can't walk away from this. I want to see less poverty in the world when I die than there is today. I could not have told you what that meant, but that was one of those turning points in my life.
The second event occurred a number of years later, I'm married now, my wife and I are hitchhiking around Europe and we ended up in a Swiss farm village called Huemoz at a place called L'Abri Fellowship with Francis and Edith Schaeffer. I remember one night we were having dinner with Debbie and Udo Middleman. Udo is a German lawyer. It was the wintertime and we were sitting around with a group of ten people in this four-hundred year old Swiss chalet. There were candles on the table, dried cut flowers from the field, classical music playing in the background, and outside the window of this old chalet the snow was gently falling. It was a wonderful, wonderful evening. Udo turned to me and he said, "You know Darrow, Christianity is true even if you don't believe it." I thought for a moment and I said to myself, “I'd been taught all my life as a Christian that Christianity's true because I believe it and here is somebody telling me it's true even if I don't believe it.”
I said, "What did you say?" He said, "Christianity is true even if you don't believe it." This produced a crisis of faith for me. I didn't sleep for two nights. What is this man trying to say to me? I finally realized what he was saying. He was saying that Christianity is true even if no one in the world believes. It has nothing to do with my belief or your belief. Christianity istrue because God exists and it is true to what is real. I realized in that moment that I had a born-again heart but my mind was not born-again. I had grown up in the United States. I was taught to think like a secular materialist.
An atheist says there is no God. Therefore, there is no truth. Therefore, whatever you believe is what is true. If you believe in Muhammad, then that is what is true for you. If you believe in Buddha, that is what is true for you. If you believe in Jesus, that is what is true for you. I realized that I had a born-again heart and a pagan mind. I needed to have my mind born-again.
When I was in my early thirties, I had the opportunity to go to work for an international relief and development organization called Food for the Hungry. I'd been significantly influenced as a young Christian by Ron Sider's book, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger and this piggybacked on my broken heart for the poor. I thought that people were poor because they lacked resources and the way to solve the problems of hunger and poverty was to provide outside resources.
As I began traveling with Food for the Hungry, I began to be uncomfortable with this paradigm, this way of seeing poverty. I remember visiting Haiti on one of my first trips and at that point, there were a thousand relief and development organizations and mission organizations working in Haiti. They were pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into Haiti every year. Yet Haiti was destitute. I couldn't understand with all these organizations and all this money, why the country was as poor as it was.
Then I went over to the Dominican Republic to a community where Food for the Hungry was working, the community of Constanza. Constanza was located in a beautiful, what you would call if you were in Europe, a beautiful alpine valley. There was no snow but there were mountains of fertile valley with a river running through it and yet the people were poor. I noticed on the side of the hill overlooking the valley, there were some, what we would call middle-class homes and I began to ask people who lived in those homes. They said the Japanese. I said, "What do you mean the Japanese?" They explained how the Japanese had come to Constanza at the end of World War II impoverished, not knowing the language or the culture and they were looking to start life over again. In two generations, they had prospered. I began to ask the question, why are the Dominicans so poor, living in this paradise of a valley and why are these Japanese, who moved here two generations ago, prospering?
I began to ask and people said, "Well the Dominicans are fatalistic. They believe they were born poor and they would die poor." I said, "Well what about the Japanese?" They said, "The Japanese have a saying, Ganbatte!”I said, “Well what is Ganbatte!?” They said, "Never give up, always try harder." In that moment I remembered what I'd learned of L'Abri about the power and importance of worldview. I began to ask the question about the cause of poverty. Is it really lack of resources or is it lack of a biblical understanding of reality?
These two events, the event of my university days of seeing poverty for the first time and then what I learned at L'Abri from Francis Schaeffer came together at that moment of my life. They have shaped the rest of my life and what I teach. I'm looking forward to engaging with you and being part of this process in your lives. I hope you enjoy this time together.
Meet Bob Moffitt
BIO: Since 1968,Bob Moffitt has developed and directed Christian organizations that encourage Christians to demonstrate God's love, especially to broken people and their communities. His heart for the global Church and its role in transformation was shaped by twoyears with the Peace Corps in Africa, a two-year study of missions in Africa, Europe, the Middle East and Asia, a seminary major in missions, and 12 years of ministry among inner-city youth.
Bob founded theHarvestFoundationin 1981 and has served as its president since that time. He is co-founder of theDisciple Nations Alliance.
Bob has a Ph.D. in adult education from Union Institute in Ohio and also has done graduate studies in public administration, apologetics, missions, Biblical studies, and volunteer administration in the United States, Israeland Switzerland.As president of Harvest and co-founder of the Disciples Nations Alliance, Bob maintains a busy travel schedule, training church leaders around the world in Biblical, wholistic ministry. He developed the major portion of Harvest’s training materials and is author of the bookIf Jesus Were Mayor.
Bob and his wife, Judy, have three adult children and four grandsons.
Bob’s Story
(video transcript)
Hi, my name is Bob Moffit. I'd like to tell you a little bit about myself so that as you view and listen to the content of the videos you'll have an idea of where the things that I say are coming from. First of all, I'm a developing follower of Jesus. Secondly, I'm married to what I think is the most beautiful bride in all the world. And third, I'm a daddy and a grandfather of five wonderful grandsons and they are the delight of our lives. I'm also the founder and president of the Harvest Foundation and co-founder with Darrow of the Disciple Nations Alliance. I'm a preacher's kid, and that has really shaped who I am and what my mission is in life.
Since the mid-1960's I've been very concerned about the fulfillment of Jesus' commission to us, to see the nation's discipled. I've become convinced theologically as well as practically from observing thousands of churches all over the world that the local church is the primary instrumentality that God has ordained, not the only one, but the primary instrumentality that God has ordained for fulfilling has command and his commission to us.
I didn't always feel that way. As a matter of fact, when I was in seminary in the late 60's and early 70's, I became very disillusioned with the local church, more than disillusionment, it was a bitterness. A bitterness that rose out of seeing a church, which professed its commitment to obedience to Jesus, as a church that was really much more interested in preserving the status quo and not getting involved in the risky business of committing themselves voluntarily, sacrificially, to the command of Christ. I came to the point where I just really had no use for the Church, especially the local church. I went through a period of about five or six years of real anger toward the local church and during the end of this period, the Holy Spirit spoke to me and said, "Bob, the Church is my bride, I love her. I gave my life for her and until you love her with my love, I can't use you."
I felt like a dagger had pierced my soul. I said, "Father forgive me, I can't love the Church, but I'm willing if you would do a miracle, and you will heal me and give me your love for your bride." That's exactly what he did and since 1980 I have poured my life into the local church, into helping her see the great opportunity God has given her to be his chosen instrumentality for the demonstration of his great love into a dark world which so desperately needs to be touched by Jesus.