Receiving the Light
A quiet, unplanned beginning
Looking back, it is hard to say exactly when The Lantern began.
Like many things God does, it seemed to arrive quietly. Only afterwards did we realise He had been preparing it for many years, through prayer, through Scripture and through decades spent walking alongside people affected by leprosy.
There was no meeting that marked its beginning. No strategy paper announced its arrival. No one set out to build a movement.
We thought we were beginning something new. Looking back, we realise we had simply been invited into something much older.
Over many years, a simple conviction began to grow. Every generation needs fresh opportunities to encounter Jesus afresh, not because Christ changes, but because we do. The greatest surprise in the Christian life is not that Christ becomes someone different. It is that, the longer we walk with Him, the greater He becomes. We believe we never outgrow our need to look again.
The more clearly we see Christ, the more clearly we begin to see everything else. We notice people differently. We recognise suffering more readily. Hope becomes easier to see. We become more attentive to where Christ is already at work in the world around us.
One discovery kept returning. People who stay close to Christ begin to resemble Him. Almost without noticing, they begin to love what He loves, notice what He notices and walk towards people they might once have passed by. It is remarkably difficult to stay close to Christ without becoming more compassionate.
That discovery became the seed from which The Lantern has grown.
The Light We Inherited
The story of The Lantern did not begin with us. None of us arrives first. Christ is already at work before we recognise Him, and others have often carried the light before it reaches us.
Long before there was The Lantern, there were ordinary men, women and children who became known as the Order of the Lamplighters. Established by The Leprosy Mission during the 1940s, they committed themselves to faithful prayer and faithful giving for people affected by leprosy. In homes across many countries, paper mâché lanterns served as collecting tins and as quiet reminders that someone, somewhere, was praying for people they would probably never meet. Each lantern carried a simple invitation: "Light the Lamp of Love for Those with Leprosy."
Many years later, one of those lanterns came into the care of Ken Gibson.
Looking back, he would struggle to say when it became more than a collecting tin. It happened slowly. For years it sat nearby while he prayed. Sometimes he found himself wondering about the people who had held it before him. He would never know their names. Yet they had prayed faithfully for people on the other side of the world whom they would never meet.
Gradually another thought began to grow. This lantern had outlived everyone who had ever held it.
Then came the deeper realisation. No one had ever owned it. Every generation had simply cared for it until it was time to place it into someone else's hands. He realised that he had never become the owner of the lantern. He had simply become its custodian.
That discovery reached far beyond an old paper mâché lantern. It became a way of understanding leadership, ministry and the Christian life itself.
We inherit a faith we did not create, a gospel we did not discover and a Christ who has always gone before us. Our calling is not to possess these gifts. It is to receive them with gratitude, tend them with faithfulness and pass them on with generosity.
That is how we understand The Lantern. Not as something we invented. As something we inherited.
A movement of companions
The Lantern was born through more than twenty-five years of walking alongside people affected by leprosy in villages, hospitals and communities across the world. Those years became an apprenticeship in seeing Christ. Again and again, people who had experienced profound suffering revealed something of His gentleness, His courage and His hope.
For that reason, The Lantern will always remain deeply connected to The Mission to End Leprosy, from whose life and experience it emerged. The two are distinct. Each has its own calling. Yet they remain part of the same story.
The Mission to End Leprosy works towards a world where no one suffers from leprosy or its consequences. The Lantern works towards a world in which more people see Christ more clearly, stay close to Him and carry His light into the dark places of ordinary life. These callings are different. They are not separate. One continually reminds the other that Christ is found both in worship and in service. One helps form disciples. The other serves people in whom Christ is already waiting to be recognised.
After The Lantern has met the costs of sustaining its own ministry, any surplus may be invested in helping The Mission to End Leprosy continue its work. That is not a fundraising strategy. It is an expression of family.
It is difficult to stay close to Christ without becoming more compassionate.
The Lantern does not exist to gather people around itself. It exists to help people gather around Christ. As people draw closer to Him, they find themselves drawing closer to the people He loves. That has always been His way.
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