Young alumnus wants to help others see
Too often, we get bogged down in the trappings of spirituality so that we can’t see the world that needs our involvement or the God who calls us to serve his people with him.
As the international executive director of Word Made Flesh (WMF), a ministry that exists to serve Jesus among the poorest of poor people worldwide, Chris Heuertz is not immune to such blindness, but he is able to share how God continues to restore his spiritual vision through his intense experiences in global mission and his personal life. In his new book, Simple Spirituality, Heuertz highlights five disciplines that can help us break through the barriers that keep us from seeing God and others clearly: humility, community, simplicity, submission and brokenness.
Since 1992, Chris and his wife, Phileena, have traveled through nearly 70 countries working with very impoverished people, including gypsies, children with AIDS, prostituted women and girls, recovering drug addicts, street children and refugees. While he was still a student at Asbury College, Heuertz spent a formative summer working with Mother Teresa in her House for the Dying. Heuertz has also studied archaeology and Hebrew in Jerusalem and spent six months in Peru with Phileena working with WMF.
In September of 1996, Heuertz was appointed international executive director of Word Made Flesh. Within six years, this struggling mission organization with a U.S. staff of three grew to a vibrant, spontaneously expanding community of more than one hundred staff members and a board of directors. Today WMF is comprised of nearly two hundred staff worldwide in countries such as India, Romania, Nepal, Bolivia, Argentina, Sierra Leone, Brazil and Peru. WMF staff live in “incarnational communities” among those whom they desire to serve, which often means urban slums, red-light districts and refugee camps. For additional information on WMF, please see www.wordmadeflesh.com.
Chris ’94 and Phileena Bacon ’95 Heuertz received the Young Alum Award in 2005 for their work with Word Made Flesh.
Story courtesy of InterVarsity Press.
Released: July 17, 2008
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