Reese's Cups

I wonder why no one ever mentioned that they sell Reese's Cups at the cafe here at the Bible school. And they aren't the two packs, there are three cups in each package.



These little blessings keep reminding me that my Father loves me.

Four principles from 2 Cor 8

v. 5 Giving to God, then to each other
v. 8 Not as those who give orders, but those who serve
v. 9 Not as those who own, but as those who give
v.14 Mutual benefit and equal worth

David loaded us down with quite a bit there. I'm loving it.

Question to ruminate on:
Where have I been challenged today in my thinking?
hmm...I hope I can get it all into words in the next couple of days.

Thanks for being a part of my first live blogging experience. I hope it was as exciting to you as it was exhausting to me.

Looking at Structures

David is talking about the beginnings of COMIBAM and how it was organized. It was a cooperative structure in a country between Pastors & Churches, Missions Agencies, and Network of Training Centers which all came together in a network called the National Missionary Movement.

COMIBAM became a catalyst in that structure.

Research is required to figure out who all the players are so they can begin to network together.

After relationships and some level of trust is established 'action networks' can be established to accomplish tasks through voluntary cooperation. As tasks are undertaken together, trust grows and stronger, closer relationships are established .

Cooperation is the starting point for mission. Interesting...

Another finger break...

Causes of spiritual and missionary growth

A strong national leadership, committed to the mission of the church.

The church involved all its members in its mobilizing strategy.

Significant use of media contributed to the presence of the church in society.

A biblical and church-centered missiology is emerging in Latin America. (I think we need that in North America and Europe, too.)

A life time commitment of missionaries is natural. 74% of missionaires sent from Latin America are long term.

'From Field to Missions Force' - tag line from COMIBAM, we need to have that in Central Europe.

The Mission Force

Latin America, Africa and Asia are sending as many missionaries as Europe and North America. We are at the point where those three continents are passing the West in numbers of missionaries being sent out.

There has been a dramatic spike in missionaries sent out since 1990. Mongolia is the most effecient missionary sending church (222 believers to 1 missionary).

I should have tried this live blogging with a slow speaking German. This is a lot of work.

The local church is at the center of the mission process. However, many local churches don't have a biblical understanding of their role.

They were able to create National Mission Movements to help coordinate the recruitment, training and placement of missionaries from each Latin American country.

This helped coordinate the receiving of missionaries in various countries around the world as well.

It is necessary to define what we mean by the word 'resources.' Actually, a lot of terminology needs to be defined in these types of relationships.

National movements create opportunity for cooperation on training.

Giving my fingers a rest for a minute.

Where in the World is the Majority World?

A few quotes from David Ruiz:

The world is upside down.

The shoe sizes of the missionaries have shrunk.

The church is from everywhere and going everywhere.

By 2025 Africa and Latin America will vie for the title of the most Christian Continent.

We were looking at a map of the world where south was on top. A very interesting perspective. Helpful for getting out of the box you don't even know that you're in.

Live blogging from EEMA: Emerging Missions

David Ruiz, former Executive Director of COMIBAM is our speaker tonight at this EEMA (European Evangelical Missionary Association) consultation. David has come to us from Guatemala to share on the issue of Learning From The Majority World. I spoke with him earlier about his involvement in Europe. He has been involved in Albania and has been instrumental in helping churches there begin to send out workers to other countries. Wow. I'm excited about what David will have to say to us tonight. I know that not too many people are actually reading this, but I thought it would be wildly exciting to try live blogging from this event.

Actually, I have had to take time each day I've been here to debrief myself. The discussions I've been a part of have stirred so many ideas that I've had to empty my head a bit between sessions. I've met quite a few interesting people here who have also provoked my thinking on many issues related to missionaries being sent out from the countries of Central and Eastern Europe.

Right now, we're hearing about 'mission-net' which is an event aimed at inspiring a missional lifestyle among European Christian youth. Wow, more ideas...

How I spent Saturday

I spent quite a bit of time with the guys down at the 'gumiserviz' last Saturday. That's where they change your tires. All season tires are rare in Europe. Most people have a set of summer tires and winter tires. I don't own two sets of rims for each car, so I take the cars down to get the winter tires put on. I also had one tire that was pretty much destroyed by a curb which seemed to be unnecessarily close to the road. That meant that I was able to explore the jack and the spare tire as well as honing my tire changing skills. All is in good order. The VW (pictured) had to make a return trip to the gumiserviz after I was able to remove a nail from the roadway by lodging it in one of my tires.

The guys who work at the gumiserviz put up with my practically non-existent Hungarian, which is nice since I get to spend so much time with them.

Stakeholders in my life

Stakeholder (corporate) - a person, group, organization, or system who affects or can be affected by an organization's actions

I'm working through some material with a few other men called the Life Development Planner. This is a tool to help gain better perspective of God's purposes in the world and how we can be involved in His plans. We look at how everything in our individual background has been purposefully arranged by God to make us the people we are. We create a timeline of what God has done in our lives and look for developmental gaps in our knowledge, character and skills. Then we are to design plans to address those gaps. I'm loving it. I'm pretty sure that God made me for doing this kind of stuff with people.

This morning, as I was working on one of the exercises, I took off on a tangent. I started to make a list of all the 'stakeholders' in my life - the people who affect me or are directly affected by my actions. My decisions (or lack of action) impact their lives. Many of them did not ask for this, they were born into it or someone else made a decision which put me in this position. It was sobering for me to think about my influence in their lives. What message am I sending them?

The people on that list will be affected by my personal develpment. This is no trite exercise. Paul talks about it his letter to Timothy (1 Tim 4:16 Pay close attention to yourself...).

Here's what I learned:
1) You influence more people than you think, so consider the message you're sending.
2) You are here for the benefit of others, so do not neglect sharpening yourself into an effective tool for their blessing.

I cook on Thursdays

Last Thursday I decided to make chili. I was having my Day Alone With God, so I spent the morning relishing my relationship with Him and was looking forward to relishing great bowl of chili as Fall has arrived in Budapest. The first order was to run by the grocery store to pick up the ingredients for this heartwarming creation. As I was prowling the aisles of the local Interspar grocery store I was happy to discover several packages of cheddar cheese. Well, I'm thinking, "Cheddar cheese was made for shredding over a fine bowl of chili, chili like I'm about to make. I wonder why Kristi never buys cheddar? Hmm, I'm buying it."

Now, if you are an astute observer, you might notice a couple of holes in my thinking there which could point out why I should not do the shopping on a regular basis. I'm not saying those things should preclude me from doing the shopping, only give one pause in assigning me that honorable task.

Well, Kristi happened to notice these two golden briquettes of flavor in the refrigerator and was helpful enough to point out that they are roughly the equivalent of gold, financially speaking. I probably would have noticed this had I really looked at the price. This also served to illuminate that pesky little itch in the back of my mind, "Why doesn't Kristi buy cheddar?"

As it turns out, I bought two 0.175kg blocks (pictured with my grinning face, wasn't I happy?). So I'm dealing with (I later figured out) 3/4 of a pound of cheddar. Not bad, but I have to admit 0.175kg doesn't seem like a whole lot of cheese to me. Thus, two.

Now, we get to the idea of pricing. Sure, the fine print says, '5890 ft/kg,' but don't even think for a minute that I read the fine print. Besides, if I had, how much is some microscopic amount (0.175kg)? I mean, that reminds me of my grade point my freshman year at tOSU and people said that was bad. Ok, enough beating around the bush here. It turns out that I paid right at $15/lb for the cheese. Part of that is that the dollar has lost over 15% of it's value in the past 6 months. That hurts every month. Another part is that I just wasn't paying close enough attention to what was important (like Kristi's example). That can hurt every day.

I didn't have the heart to each the cheddar on my chili. It's still sitting in the refrigerator, looking at me every time I open the door. My golden bricks of flavor.

Humility

Gospel humility « Of First Importance:
“Humility agrees and is glad that everything we have is a free gift of God, and that this severs the root of boasting in our distinctives. Whatever talents, whatever intelligence, what ever skills, whatever gifts, whatever looks, whatever pedigree, whatever possessions, whatever wit, whatever influence you have, put away all pride because it is a gift, and put away all despair because it is a gift from God.”
- John Piper"

Poland and Sweden

Aside from a little altercation in the late 1600's there isn't much to connect Poland and Sweden other than the last couple weeks of my life. We had our ReachGlobal conference for our Europe staff in Wisla, Poland and then Kristi and I went to Stockholm to meet with some church leaders and planters to talk about how ReachGlobal might possibly further the progress of the Gospel there.

Wisla is a nice ski resort in the southern part of Poland, so it makes a great place for a bunch of missionaries to go in the summer for a conference. It was great to spend a day fasting and praying together as well as reconnect with friends from around the continent. Quite a few significant conversations took place over the five days we were together. One important event was saying farewell to our International Leader, Rick Burke. I've worked with Rick almost as long as I've been in Europe and I've profited from his influence in my life over the years. He has been a great boss and an even better friend. He's taking a role as missions pastor at First Free Church in St. Louis, MO so I'm planning on staying in contact with him in the future.

Kristi and I went to Stockholm with Gary (Associate Executive Director of ReachGlobal) and his wife, Karen. We had a great time together because we match up well. Gary and I enjoyed our lengthy meetings where we were learning about what God is doing in the free churches of Sweden. Karen is an educational consultant so the conversations with Kristi were frequent and practical. We all enjoyed learning about Stockholm and the Church in Sweden. One thing we came away with was a better understanding of the decline of the local churches over the past eighty years and the need for starting new churches for this generation.

My Role

I have a job that can be nebulous. When people ask me what I do I have to decide whether to give them an answer which satisfies them or the real one. The answer which satisfies is usually ‘leadership development for our staff and partners,’ which is kinda true. The real one is more complex and either doesn’t help or baffles them into silence. I’m thinking about this because these past couple of weeks I’ve been working on my annual evaluation. That’s where I sit down to evaluate the past year, look at the role I think God is calling me to, and make some plans for the coming year. There are forms to fill out and all that, but the most important outcome for me is a fairly clear picture of my direction (and the one short sentence answer to the ‘what do you do?’ question). I’ll be working it all out on the calendar over the next few weeks, but I wanted to share some of this with you so you can get a look at what I’m going to be busy with over the next 12 to 18 months.

I have two main areas of focus: developing a network for church-based training across Europe; and oversight of unstaffed locations and in Europe.

Church-based training network
Simply put, church-based training is the local church engaging in its responsibility to equip the believers, all to maturity in Christ and some to leadership. The predominant model sends individuals from their church to a school where they study for 4 years and then they search for a church which will pay them to serve. In many parts of Europe, that model doesn’t fit the context. Individuals can’t afford to uproot their family to attend school and the local church can’t afford to pay anyone to serve. The model I’m encouraging has the local church training up people from within to serve as its leaders. There are other benefits aside from the financial aspect. The local church provides the context for spiritual and character development and the individual is developed in the ethos of the local church.

My aim in this area is to develop a network across Europe of people who understand the principles of church-based training and are involved in putting them into practice in local churches.

Unstaffed locations
Right now we don’t have any staff in Slovakia or Albania or Moldova, but we have a relationship with a local church or denomination in each of those places. I get to develop those relationships. Sometimes it’s me meeting a pastor or a group of pastors. Other times it’s meeting with denominational leaders or US partner churches. I’m asking questions, offering resources, networking connections and sometimes giving my opinion.

This next year I’ll be exploring some new locations in hopes of developing the beginnings of relationship into more practical partnership.

So, if we’re riding in an elevator somewhere and you turn to me and ask me what I do, you’ll hear one of two things:

I work with pastors and local churches to help them be healthier
or...
Read my blog