In the Middle

I’m looking at my calendar. Eight weeks back, I’m sitting in my office getting ready for a week of meetings with the other RG leaders from around Europe. That was a powerful week for us. We met our new International Leader (David Ruiz) and I believe God showed us a little more light on the way forward. Since that week, I’ve had a trip to Albania/Macedonia which was amazing. I think that God is bringing some interesting/powerful things together there. Missions from everywhere to everywhere. I also spent about ten days in Amsterdam with two overlapping groups. The first group was our RG City Team Leaders. These men and women are the real backbone of our organization in Europe. They are player-coaches who are bearing the burden of the added responsibility for their teammates in our 23 locations around Europe. We spent some time working on ‘exegeting our cities,’ understanding what is there and how God wants our teams to engage. The second group was part of our Church Planting Institute, so missionaries and national partners from around the continent. I had 18 guys I was hosting which was fantastic. Their stories, their plans, they blessed me and I think they were given courage to continue on in the path our Father has laid out for them.

I’m looking at my calendar again. Eight weeks ahead, Lord willing, I’ll be sitting in my office again after returning from a long trip to the US without my wife, Kristi. Next week will be LeadTeam, the vision/training event RG has for people like me from all over the world. I’m really looking forward to this one. I can’t say that I’ve been overly impressed with every event like this in the past, but I’m excited about what I think God might do in this one. After LeadTeam I go to Ohio for almost three weeks. I’ll try to connect with as many of the churches and individuals who support us as I can. I want to tell them about what God is doing in Europe and ‘introduce’ them to some of the people I work with. I am also trying to expand the circle of people and churches who are involved in the work in Europe, so I’ll be trying to make new connections and seeing if I can explain what I do before they get distracted. Following Ohio is California for a wedding of a good friend, Robyn Smith, who has been working here in our office for the past three years. She’ll be missed by us, but welcomed by Brad. Bethany really wants to go to Biola, so I guess I might have to get used to this trip. The next leg is the Chicago area. I’ll be doing more of what I did in Ohio, but have less of a ‘base’ to work from. It should be interesting. The bonus at the end is that I’ll get to see Matt graduate from Wheaton College, another very happy event which brings life changes.

So, here I am in the middle, recovering, trying to capture all the good from what has happened, and anticipating, frantically preparing for what my Father is bringing my way.