Robust Discussion and Big Rocks

Today we put in a few hours of heavy lifting. Ben led us in a discussion of David Hesselgrave's book Paradigms in Conflict in the morning and we discussed our ideas about the six 'big rocks' for Europe in the afternoon. We focused on four of the chapters in Hesselgrave's book and the discussion was lively. We didn't really find much variation in our team, but we did wish Hesselgrave had been here with us to answer a few questions and hear some of our ideas. (Ha! Like he needs our help.) The book did provoke some good thinking for us about the future of missions in Europe.
Back in October we had listed out the six most important issues for us in Europe. The plan was that someone would think on each area and come back to this meeting with a roughed out plan of action or at least the questions we need to resolve to see us move forward in each area. Don mentioned at the end of the afternoon that it was good to see that each one who had responsibility for an area was passionate about it and that we were still convinced that those were the most important areas for us to work in. We talked about a plan for Missionary Sustainability, Prayer, Multiplying Ministry, Recruiting, Financing Ministry, and Expansion. I got to lay out a plan for moving forward in expansion of our work in Europe. There is a lot of work to be done in each area we discussed, but with about 800,000,000 people in Europe, we need to give every effort if we want to see a significant number influenced by the Gospel.