Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Thinking Ahead



It was a week of meetings, and the next two weeks will be just as full. I’ll be seeing some good friends from Poland, meeting with the elders of our Hungarian church (KEGy), traveling to Albania to meet with church leaders there, and then coming back home for the big ICSB basketball tournament. Looking at my calendar, I realize how much I have to depend on my Father to take care of me.

Leszek and Ania Wakula will be coming down to Budapest from Lodz for an annual conference. For me, it is always bittersweet to see Leszek—refreshing to reunite and sad to see him go. We spent seven years in the same town, met for prayer at various times and shared from deep in our hearts. Now, we get a meal together once a year. We are pilgrims.

Thursday morning at 7:30 I’ll be meeting with the elders at KEGy to talk about doing church-based training for the next generation of elders and leaders. They have picked out 12 guys they think could be the next group of elders. I am offering to facilitate a course where the elders and these men would learn in community, mentoring each other as they study what it means to be spiritual leaders. Part of facilitating the course is teaching them to facilitate, which develops their own self-perpetuating mechanism for developing leaders in KEGy. Hopefully, they will be able to influence some of the other churches around Budapest with this approach to developing new leaders. They have also asked me to lead them in some strategic ministry planning over the coming months.

Thursday afternoon, I’ll fly to Albania with Rick B. (my director and friend) to meet with a group of pastors in the Evangelical Free Church of Albania. I’ll be trying to get a handle on the situation there to figure out how ReachGlobal can help these churches spread the fame of our Father in Albania.

After I get back from Albania, we will have guests and I’m talking about the best kind! Mike and Debbie will be coming down from Berlin. Their son, Jonathan, lives with us and he will be playing in the ICSB basketball tournament beginning February 29. It’s a great wrap-up to these weeks of meetings—good friends from start to finish! We certainly are pilgrims. It doesn’t really matter where we are, but who we are with on the journey.

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