Kingdom Come!

Phyllis and I arrived home in Pensacola (I guess that’s home… sometimes… maybe!) last night at 11:30 almost exactly 24 hours since we got in a taxi outside Cambridge to head to Gatwick airport in London.  And I feel terrible.  Terrible!  Phyllis battled a cold most of the time in Germany and now I’ve got it!  With a vengeance!  I ache all over from flying and my head is stopped up along with my right ear.  The ear thing happened as we were descending to land in Philadelphia.  All of a sudden the pressure was excruciating and i felt fluid back up into my ear canal.  I know TMI - too much information.  But anyway I feel pretty bad and have a lot to do this week.  I speak Thursday night at New Hope Home, a men’s rehab associated with Waterfront Mission.  So I’m hoping I’ll fee better by then.  (I’m such a baby when I feel bad!)

“On politics I strive as much as possible to let my passions be for God and for the Church and for others (the Jesus Creed). I place no confidence in redemption by way of politics. The political hope ebbs and flows every 8 years now; I don’t get all riled up if a Republican or a Democrat wins; I don’t think it matters that much to what we are called to do on a daily basis.” —Scot McKnight (Jesus Creed)

Well it’s early Sunday morning and I’ve wandered downstairs to find a cup of Nescafe coffee.  

Phyllis and I arrived at our friends – Mick and Pat – near Cambridge, England on Friday morning.  Not Thursday evening as planned.

Thursday, we’d been in Germany and had travelled with the Globe Europe Mission School class to Haarlem, Holland and visited the Corrie ten Boom house.  The family ten Boom had been watchmakers and great Believers who assisted the persecuted Jews in Holland during the Nazi occupation.  Corrie had been in Nazi prison and concentration camps and although she was in her 50’s she survived and lived to witness of the love of Jesus after the war.  She has always been an inspiration for us after reading The Hiding Place in our early days of walking with the Lord.  It was very interesting to sit in this place with students from Brazil, Germany, Kenya and America.

Then our friend Armin had drove us to Schipol airport in Amsterdam.  We were to catch an EasyJet flight to London/Luton that night and Pat was supposed to pick us up.  All easy-squeezy.  NOT!  Armin dropped us off.  We hugged and said good bye, went to the EasyJet counter only to find that the flight had been cancelled.  Yikes.  So we went looking for a place to spend the night.  Cheap.  And close by, since we were able to book a flight for the next morning to London/Stanstead at 7:30. 

And I was pretty flustered.  Flustered and frustrated as only I can seem to get when things like this go wrong.  I felt pretty much abandoned and in a strange land with no way out.

After going to the airport hotel board and making unproductive calls, I said to Phyllis, “We need to sit and pray!”  So we did.  And after a time of silence and attempting to “still and quiet my soul,” Phyllis said, “Why don’t we go to the Novatel desk advertised between the terminals.”  And me – being a great man of hope and faith (not!) – said, “Well, no. They’re just as expensive as the others.  Maybe more…”  But after another few minutes, I said okay.  And of course, when we eventually found them, they were closed.  But next door was the Tourist Center, and again as a man of faith (not!) I thought expensive!  But Phyllis forged on…  and we got a great near-by room at an affordable (sorta) price.  

The moral of this story is listen to your wife – especially after you pray and she seems to hear and you don’t.

We arrived in Stanstead the next morning and have been enjoying a great time with Mick and Pat, their daughter and son-in-law Bex and John and their grandson Angus.  

This morning we’ll attend church here in Ely and tomorrow take the train with Mick to London and then to Gatwick and fly home to Pensacola.  One more time.

The fruit of the trip has been in the equipping of the students in Germany and getting to know and maybe impact the next generation of world-changers as well as the renewing of great friendships with the Thurstons, the Reipls, the Weissenfels, the Bishphams, and the Ketts.  Being with Charles, the student from Kenya made us homesick for Kenya and being with our friends in the UK and Germany, made us homesick for Europe and Cyprus and North Africa.

And this trip has stretched our faith again.  Yep, again.

Well it’s been fantastic here in Germany teaching, sharing, listening, learning and enjoying the hospitality of Brad and Jan Thurston and the great guys of Globe Europe!

I taught an intro to 21st Century Missions, a look at Imitation in following Jesus and mentoring leaders, an Intro to Stewardship, Faithfulness and Trust for missionaries over three days. The students came from East, South and Central Germany, Kenya, Brazil and (get this!) Alabama! Some days we had simultaneous translation over headphones… but not into Alabamian!

It has been great and these young people will do - and already are doing! - great things for God! Tomorrow we go as a group to Haarlem Netherlands to the home of super-saint Corrie TenBoom just foa a day out together, and that evening they’ll drop us at Schipol airport in Amsterdam and Phyllis and I will fly to London/Luton airport for a few days with our friends Mick and Pat near Cambridge. We are blest!

Recently, Phyllis and I dined with a young couple who completed Globe International’s Institute for Global Ministry (IGM) last May. They had just sold their house, quit their jobs and bought plane tickets to Japan where they would join another young Globe couple to begin making disciples and planting a church.

And as we enjoyed the great meal Phyllis had prepared, they shared their excitement about going to Japan with their hearts overflowing with vision and passion for Jesus, for the church and for the Japanese people. We were so pleased to hear them echo things we’d taught and emphasized in class as well as in private conversations. They had listened, they had heard and now they were doing.

A few days later we attended the church they are a part of here in Pensacola. Basically we traveled across town to say goodbye because they were leaving the following Tuesday. That morning, the pastor did a knock-down-drag-out sermon from Matthew 13:44-46 regarding the pearl merchant. He used a video that emphasized over and over the “selling everything” aspect of finding the Pearl of Great Price. When you find The Pearl, you give up houses, cars, investments and securities.

Following the service, we were chatting and hugging in the lobby. I put my hand on Nathan’s shoulder and said, “Well that’s what you did isn’t it: sold everything for the Kingdom?”

“Yeah. Kinda,” he gave me his sheepish little smile and answered me, “But I feel like I sold a hamburger to get a steak.”

Training new missionaries to successfully and whole-heartedly respond to the Call of God is one of the great challenges for the 21^st Century. When the basic message of our world seems to be stay, sit, observe, consume, be nice and live well, we keep telling our students to listen to God, prepare yourself and then go and do those things that you have learned! Being sent by God to hard and difficult places is better than having the best seats in the house just to watch.

Phyllis and I are very blessed that we can be a part of training a new generation to “do the stuff” in carrying out the Great Commission. And training the next generation is the passion of my heart. Really. It’s the thing that keeps me awake at night and often awakens me early in the morning. It’s the thing that drives me and molds me and refocuses me. Training others to make disciples captures my imagination and my creativity.

Our greatest desire is to impact and assist a generation who will do it better than we have, who will go father and do more and accomplish greater things. We want to empower a generation – both young and old – who will sacrifice to go to those who know the least about Jesus and live out the Good News in their neighborhood. We want to develop a whole generation of missionaries empowering others at expense to themselves; a generation who have humbly and intentionally laid aside ambition, dreams and advancement for the sake of the Kingdom.

Like Jesus.

It’s our joy to help train and mentor another generation who are passionate about the Gospel. Men and women, who believe this Gospel for themselves, have been infected with its passion for life and godliness and want to share it with others. Even in the far corners of the earth.

We could not do this without your prayers and faithful financial support. Our ministry is training leaders! I know times are a little shaky, but the call and the challenge remain – we are partners together with God in His Mission in the earth! Thanks for your faith in supporting us. 

I continue to read Phyllis Tickle’s The Great Emergence.  I’ve had a lot of airport/airplane time to read! And sleep-read… You ever done that?  (If you click on the link, read the interchange with Andrew Jones in the comments.) Although I’m only part way through - page 106 of 165 - I am intrigued and impacted by her insights into history and true Christian spirituality. And it causes me pause as I continue my quest for genuine New Testament Christianity in my life and in a 21st Century framework. The book has challenged my thinking and conceptual behavior concerning “church,” the Bible and just living misionally. And all this as the financial world as we know it and the false stability that it brings seems to be melting away. Her question, “Where is the authority?” is a big one even for a generation that prides itself on autonomy and self-actualization. The authority has gone from the Church of Constantinople to the Church of Rome, to the written Word in the reformation (sola scriptura) five hundred years ago to the “rummage sale” we have going on right now.

“The doctrine of justification by faith… has in our time fallen into evil company…  The whole transaction of religious conversion has been made mechanical and spiritless. Faith may now be exercised without a jar to the moral life and without embarrassment to the Adamic ego. Christ may be ‘received’ without creating any special love for Him in the soul of the receiver. The man is ’saved,’ but he is not hungry nor thirsty after God. In fact, he is specifically taught to be satisfied and is encouraged to be content with little.”
– A. W. Tozer

Well, Phyllis and I are off to
Germany until 29 September.  I’m teaching at the Globe Europe Missions school.  I’m excited about the trip but because we’re flying “standby” (because of economics!) and because we’re doing a circuitous route (Pensacola – Charlotte – London – Luton – Dortmund) involving airline changes and buses, I’m nervous as well.  This is the thing that makes missionary travel less than glamorous!   Actually much less!  We might actually have to “standby.”

 

But when I arrive!  Ahhhh yes!  Then I get to open the Word (the marvelous Word!) and present its truth and challenge to an awaiting people who are hungry to be world-changers!  And it makes it all worthwhile. 

 

And I shall have the beautiful Phyllis at my side!  

 

On the way back, we will stop for a few days outside Cambridge with our dear friends Mick and Pat and enjoy their hospitality and friendship.  We hate getting so close without a visit.

 

So, we’re off as soon as we finish packing!  Zach, who drove down Sunday to surprise Phyllis for her birthday, will drop us to the airport on his way back to Valdosta!  

I’ve begun Phyllis Tickle’s new book The Great Emergence  and will take it with me.  I like the book.  Some of the things, I’ve actually thought about in fleeting moments, but it is an intriguing look at what I have referred to as “tectonic shifts” and Ms. Tickle sees as rummage sales.  BTW, I love referring to her as Ms. Tickle.  It conjurs up images of happy giggling people.

I’ve been thinking, meditating and praying a lot about cultural expectations and contextualization.  These are missionary things.  And missional things.  And church-planting things.  These are the ideas that drive missionaries and people whoo want to really “grab” a people group and bring them into fellowship with an on-a-mission-Jesus. Then David Fitch (of The Great Givaway fame) nails all my concerns in this article in CT. How do we reach a generation of Consumers with a non-consumer driven Gospel?  How do we contextualize without reducing?  How do we take a life-altering (expectation-shattering) Gospel to suburbia who only actually have time for 5 minute Bible studies and prayer in the commute?  How do we build community in the midst of chaos?  How do we keep the Gospel pure (as if we can actually do that, given where we find ourselves in church history) as we present it in the cacophony of presentations? Read the article from the guy I respect and appreciate and let me know…

How Sermons Happen for N. T. Wright | PreachingToday.com