A question we must all ask ourselves is “How do I personally keep a missional edge as an individual follower of Christ and at the same time lead a church to be on mission?”  When starting Grace Point Church ten years ago, my wife and I had an unrelenting commitment to lead our church to be on mission as we led our family to be on mission.  Here are three words that helped me to stay on the edge of lostness: LOOK, THINK, DO.

1. LOOK: Look at the Bible through a missional lens. 

What if we re-read, re-interpreted, re-examined the Bible and saw it as a missional handbook or a story of God’s mission in creation?  What if we read the Bible through a lens of a continuous God-story advancing His glory to the ends of the earth?  If we knew as believers we were ushering in the Kingdom of God as we proclaim His name among the unreached (Matt 24:14), would it make a difference in how we lived our lives?  We ought not read the Bible in chunks of abstract disconnected events located in another time and place that we try to merely systematize and educate ourselves with.  The Bible should be read as the unfolding story of God’s glory being revealed to the nations. We, in this millennium, are able to bring God’s glory to places it has never been fully unveiled.  We do this in anticipation of heaven’s epic worship experience of Revelation 7:9 when worshippers from every nation, tribe, peoples and languages are standing before God in worship. As John Piper so succinctly states: “Missions exists because worship doesn’t.”¹  Reading the Bible through a missional lens can keep you on the edge pushing back darkness and not chasing cats.

2. THINK: Continually train your brain to think globally with God

What I think and how I think is largely an intentional discipline I must engage in.  I intentionally choose my worldview.  I want to be a world-class Christian with a global worldview.  I want to see God as a neither local or exclusively global but rather as ‘glo-cal.’ Sociologist Roland Robertson coined the term ‘glocal’ to speak of the globalization of our world.² On a practical level, how do I train my brain?  I start many mornings watching the BBC for my primary news source.  I catch up on what was happening in the world while I was sleeping.  They do a far better job covering the world than most American news stations that seem to chase ratings more than events shaping humanity.  Secondly, Perspectives on the World Christian Movement (www.Perspectives.org), is college level course that we have offered at our church multiple times; enrolling over 50 of our members and all our pastoral team.  This course and being informed helps me to think about God’s work in the world and how I get to be apart of it.  From this course, we have four families that have sensed God’s call to the nations (…instead of chasing cats).

3. DO: Do personally live on mission in your day to day

It may be sad to say, but I actually enjoy hanging out with the 10 people that I know intimately and who are far from God, as much as I do hanging out with fellow believers.  A few of my 10 friends are notional believers at best, but most of them are irreligious all together.  There is a rawness and authenticity about the relationships that keep me sharp in conversations and in deeper heart level issues. My prayer life is stronger because I have these friends. Another way I make sure I am missional is I go.  Two to three times a year, I travel to the under resourced, under reached, and unreached peoples to be involved in cross-cultural, spiritual, and life development work.  In 2012, I will be in the 10/40 window from West Africa to East Asia.  I will also be in Southern Africa working in an orphanage our church has been partnering with to build.  I will be taking my whole family, because I want a missional family for many generations. That is a better legacy than being known as the cat chaser.

In case you were wondering, I kindly refused to watch the cat.

1. John Piper, “Let the Nations Be Glad,” pg 11
2. Bob Roberts, “Glocalization,” 14

1. Be a wiseman when it comes to eating… Did you know that the Calorie Control Council has calculated that the average American will consume 4,500 calories on Thanksgiving alone!¹ I think i have heard that an adult should be around 2,000 calories a day.  Here is a  link to a sight that will give you some alternatives to your T-giving meal.

As a rule: if I eat everyday, I should exercise everyday.  So if you eat two days worth of food in a day you probably need to exercise three-four times as hard as the average athlete each day after  for a week.  I don’t know about you, but I have learned “it” goes on faster and easier than “it” comes off.

2. Be angelic with your consumerism.  They don’t call it “black Friday” for nothing.  It’s when sanity and serenity are thrown out the door as we trample people to spend money we don’t have, on items we don’t need, to impress people we don’t like (some of them anyway).  AW Tozer said it well: “Christ came to bring peace, but we make peace impossible for six weeks each year.”

3. Be a good Inn keeper with space.  If the Inn Keeper that had no room for Mary, Joseph, and the soon to be King of Kings only knew then what we know, now don’t you think he would have even given up his own bed to make room for THE baby to be born (Luke 2)?  Life is really crazy over these months and weeks of holiday celebrations, office parties, gift exchanging, vacation taking, family visiting, and the list goes on.  Decide now and make time  to be a good keeper of your resources (time, talents, and treasures) and make sure the Savior of the World is noticeably INN your space.

1. accessed 11/23/11  http://eatthis.menshealth.com/slideshow/top-swaps-thanksgiving?cm_mmc=ETNTNL-_-736160-_-11232011-_-dek

Let me relay three accounts to you of how real and how daily persecution is for some in this land steeped in biblical history.  I became aware of the issue of persecution the first day I was here.  My translator, a 26 year old newly wed man, lost three of his closest friends who were believers.  The were brutally tortured and killed for their faith.  If you can stomach it, you really ought to read the article.  They were simply reading the Bible with a “potential believer” who turned out to be an Islamic spy.  He shared as much as he could with me about his friends, but then would become silent, staring into space, still grieving their loss.   Later I was on a train with a young couple.  He had been an atheist, until he became a believer a few years ago.  Not long after he became a believer, he led his girlfriend to faith in Christ.  She was from a strict Islamic home.  I watched the two lovers embrace and say good-bye as he sent his  girlfriend back home to her parents for the holiday in Istanbul.  He told me her parents don’t know that she is a believer.  They are a fundamentalist family and if they knew their daughter was dating a Christ follower, and that she herself was a Christ follower, the worst could only be expected.  The young man had already been disowned by his mother and father when he became a believer. He didn’t want to loose the love of his life also.   The latest conversation I had with a persecuted believer that I will relate to you (there are others) happened last night.  We sat on the bay of the Aegean sea, sipping traditional chia.  A local pastor who has been interrogated, charged, beaten, and threatened since the 1980′s shared his story with us . He had more stories to tell than I can relate to you personally and even corporately. He at one point discovered a bomb outside their church.  All were kept safe and the police were able to deal with it.  For decades now, he, his wife, and children live under the watchful eye of various groups who consider him a person of “interest” as a pastor of a Protestant church, one of 15 Protestant churches in a city of 4 million people and 10,000 mosque.

Today, I am heading to a town where there are only four known believers in a town of 100,000 people.  The believers live in such fear of their surroundings and environment, they won’t even meet together.  They  fear exile, losing their jobs, or worse…  My fellow pilgrims, this stuff is real.  How should we respond?  This is the question I am asking myself.

1. Stop my complaining and whining when I don’t get my faith served to me hot and fresh the way I like it.  Start appreciating my freedoms and faith.  Take ownership of my own faith journey.  Pray hard, read more, seek God, give of myself more and stand firm.

2. Intercede for the persecuted church.  I am typing this blog from my bed in the hotel room and using the internet allowed in the  country.  Some of the main sights on the persecuted church that I wanted to give you links to, are blocked by this country’s internet. So, if you want to take this prayer challenge further, you will have to Google the “persecuted church” from a country that allows for freedom of information.  Then get on your knees, so our brothers and sisters in Christ don’t have to stand alone.

3. Cross the line… I have a new resolve, with grace and tact, to cross the line and share my faith more often.  This faith gig is more than a convenient fashionable sweater you put on to keep you warm.  It is hard and the armor is heavy and noisy for sure (Eph 6).   It may slow you down; however, you need it, if you plan to contend for your faith in the workplace, school house, and neighborhoods.  This world, starting where you are, needs you to put peace on and take the “Prince of Peace” to them.

4. Strangely enough, value your church.  I was able to see in the lives of many 1st generation believers, that to follow Christ meant being abandoned by your family and losing your inheritance.  For some it means even worse.   For many, all they had for community was their church.  Again, let’s not take the bride of Christ for granted.  Do a study on the “one anothers” at biblos.com and let’s be the body and members of it (Rom 12:5).

We continued past the money-making-talk in about 15 minutes.  It was a great time of getting to know each other as we shared with each other about our countries before the students asked me if I was religious.  Can you say: “open door” (Colo 4:3).  We began to converse about Christianity and Islam.  All of the students were professing Islamists, but none actually practiced their faith on a regular basis.  The more we talked about the faith, the more the man at the next table wanted to hear what we were saying.  His desire finally got the best of him and he asked if he could join us and be a part of the conversation.  About 10 minutes later, the original six excused themselves to attend class, but “Randy” didn’t leave.  It was now a virtual 1 on 1 conversation (I did have a translator to help when needed).  “Randy” wanted to know more, though he told me point blank he was a Muslim and had no intentions of changing.  I shared from the Quran (Shurah 3:45-47), how even the Quran points people to Jesus as the perfect virgin born Son of God (Mohammad didn’t have such claims).  Our conversation continued for another 15-20 minutes. I gave him some “verses” to read from the Quran that point people to Jesus.  We exchanged email addresses and then went on our way.  It was an orchestrated God encounter.

Pray for “Randy,” the translator said we made good headway with him.  This was good after talking to many other students with cluttered minds…

1. Pray Jesus will show up in his life miraculously (vision, prayers, etc).
2. Pray that he will find fellow believers to journey with him in the faith.  There few in a country of .01% evangelical professing followers of Jesus.
3. Pray that we can continue a relationship via email
4. Pray that Randy will know Jesus as his savior.

As I finish this blog, I will be writing Randy to start our on line conversation.  Be praying!

You’ll have to ask the others about their conversations…especially Huff and Oliphants new dues:)

I read a blog this week from Seth Godin (www.http://sethgodin.com) that I thought had some great questions to help test yourself and see if you are advancing or slipping; paving a way or waiting for a way to be paved for you.  Whether it’s your church, business, education, non-profit, or you own personal growth; say no to the status quo.  Here is a test from Godin to see if you are slipping into the status quo…

When confronted with a new idea, do you:

• Consider the cost of switching before you consider the benefits?
• Highlight the pain to a few instead of the benefits for the many?
• Exaggerate how good things are now in order to reduce your fear of change?
• Undercut the credibility, authority or experience of people behind the change?
• Grab onto the rare thing that could go wrong instead of amplifying the likely thing that will go right?
• Focus on short-term costs instead of long-term benefits, because the short-term is more vivid for you?
• Fight to retain benefits and status earned only through tenure and longevity?
• Embrace an instinct to accept consistent ongoing costs instead of swallowing a one-time expense?
• Slow implementation and decision making down instead of speeding it up?
• Embrace sunk costs?
• Imagine that your competition is going to be as afraid of change as you are? Even the competition that hasn’t entered the market yet and has nothing to lose…
• Emphasize emergency preparation and the expense of a chronic and degenerative condition?
• Calling it out when you see it might give your team the strength to make a leap.

Started by driving everyone on today’s team to “ground-zero” so that they could go ahead and take in the shock factor.  Our first stop was at Mathew Shear’s house.  I have been mentioning Mathew and his family the past few days.  Their house is ok, we cleaned absolutely every bit of debris out of their yard, but as I mentioned previously, they’ve suffered the loss of very close friends.  For some reason I feel a connection to Matt.  I have been praying with him each day I’ve been there.  I have been offering anything and everything to help them in any way.  We always get the response, however, that they’re fine, but just struggling with the emotions of death of friends.  So we drove to Empire Street where Matt is located.  -Very close to St. Johns, but Matt’s house was somehow spared complete destruction.  When we arrived, Matt was in his car making a phone call.  I waved to him and waited until he was finished.  Once again, I shook his hand, asked how he was holding up, if he had everything they needed, etc.  Matt began to tell us a story and this is when I got fairly emotional myself…

Matt Shear and his wife have been fairly reluctant to accept handouts of basic necessities.  They’ve been turning down bottled water and food that many volunteers are glady handing out.  Matt said they just feel like they’re one of the lucky ones since their house is in tact and they don’t feel like they need free handouts.  He said that his neighbor gave them a reality check when they told him he better begin accepting help because help won’t be around like this in another month or two.  Matt said at one point yesterday evening he opened up his door and found that someone had left a box of sandwiches.  -This is normal right now as volunteers are stepping up to give anything and everything to the victims.  Matt took the sandwiches in and decided he’d try one.  After biting into the most basic ham and cheese sandwich with absolutely nothing else on it, he almost started laughing.  Matt said, “I can’t believe two pieces of white bread and a slice of ham and cheese can make me feel like this, and I feel like I can taste some sort of love or even Jesus”.  (These were his words!)  Matt said, “I started calling them Jesus sandwiches.  They were the most basic made sandwich you could imagine, but it was like I could tell they were Jesus sandwiches.  I told my wife, you’ve got to try one of these and so she did and she said the same thing.”  Matt was trying to express that there was nothing fancy to these things and he didn’t even want the handout, but after biting into the most basic, dry tasting sandwich, it was like it gave them an overwhelming feeling of hope, love, and encouragement, knowing these sandwiches were made by people who love Jesus and other people.  Matt and his wife are emotionally deeply wounded, but God is revealing himself to their family in more ways than I’ve ever seen, even through a dry ham and cheese sandwich made with love. I have Matt’s email, and he knows all of our contact info.

The remainder of the day was spent across town clearing a massive oak tree off of a home and salvaging pictures for Trish and Stan.  Trish is the daughter of Jim Glass, the 82 yr old man we met yesterday.  By the end of our day we were left with a 12 foot long oak tree trunk that was probably over 150 yrs old.  This thing was massive.  I had begun to cut it up, and completely ruined another chain as I happened to find steel that was embedded deeply into the tree.  At this point, our saws were useless and we had no way to move this trunk to allow their car to be backed out.  As our hopes of providing transportation back to this family began to fade, a man from Carthage drove up pulling a tractor and asked if we could use some help.  Needless to say, God provided our needs to meet others’ needs throughout the day.  We did some extremely difficult physical work, but we were able to clear a path for their car and a motorcycle to make it out of their garage.  -That is a huge accomplishment as they were able to gain access to transportation, which most people are without.

GPC leaves again Saturday morning at 6:00am.  We encourage you to consider joining a team.  Tomorrow we are going up with Metro Church.  A local church plant in NWA.  I love it when the Kingdom of God and His churches work together.

Learn how you can Pray, Give and Go… Here

All team members met on a street called Empire Street.  We worked like mad cutting trees off of a house, cutting down trees that were nothing but bare trunks, and raked debris from the yards.  Half of the team members spent most the day on Empire street focusing on about 4 homes.  Kenny’s house was worked on a lot.  All the remaining siding was torn off his house and we had several guys go to Lowes to purchase plywood so we could board up windows that were broken.  Kenny has been getting cold at night since his house is somewhat exposed to the elements.  He should find out from FEMA, within a week, what type of financial aid they will be able to provide him.

The other half of our team, including myself, went to the opposite end of town to work with a man named Chuck.  Chuck is the father of Collette, a friend of Jessica’s at GPC.  Chuck was in great spirits, and was happy to share his tornado survival experience with us, and soon got very emotional.  He allowed me to pray over him and we briefly talked about the fact that his closet being literally the ONLY thing left on his structure wasn’t luck or chance.  Chuck said that he and his wife don’t pray, but his wife began praying when they heard the sound of a freight train coming at their house.  I can honestly say I feel like God has clearly revealed his power and himself to Chuck, and Chuck is searching and thinking through some things.  But there is a lot more to it.  Chuck said he’s moving to Bentonville and because of God’s protection and our willingness to come help him, he may even come to our church.  We spent at least 4 hours salvaging their things.  Digging through piles upon piles of just chaos to find tools, pictures, etc.  We also spent a long time burning all their paperwork and documents since Chuck has been fearfully guarding his house with worries of looting and people stealing important documents and such…which sadly has been happening.

We walked throughout the remains of a huge neighborhood and met a husband and wife, Mike and Joan.  We spent a lot of time salvaging their things and praying with them.  They are extremely emotional and greatly acknowledge God as the only reason they’re alive.  Mike shared their experience and it brought me to tears.  They thought the tornado was over, but the reality is that they were in the eye of the tornado and Joan began to get out of the tub when Mike grabbed her and jerked her back down as he held on to her with every bit of strength he had while the rear of the tornado finished the destruction that the front of the tornado had already started.  Their bathtub they were in, was all that remained of the home.

We all finished the day clearing trees off of a mans house.  His name was Jim Glass, he was 82.  When I walked up to find someone home, he was on the porch around back.  I introduced myself, as well as Stephen and he asked us to pull up a chair.  Jim desperately wanted to just talk and honestly I could hear him tell stories all day long.  He’s a really really neat man.  We will follow up with him tomorrow as well.  Turns out he personally knew my great uncle from Sarcoxie, MO who was a congressman.  We talked a lot, and he was so grateful that we came from Bentonville to help him.

I can’t begin to explain how happy these people are that we are there.  But these days of work look different than one might expect.  Its very emotional rummaging through absolute piles of crap in front of the person those piles of crap belong to while we look for memorable pictures and anything of value.  Its a very sensitive job and process that requires a person that is willing to LISTEN to stories and emotions.  God is working up there, and he’s doing it through people who are relational more than the folks who are jumping from one tree trimming job to the next.  The value of spending time with these people is very much appreciated, and I believe more so than the physical part.

We are praying over people with their permission, we are offering ourselves and our resources, and we are showing the Love of God.

It is clear that the work each team is doing is more than manual labor, it is also heart labor.  Stephen F, worship pastor from our Rogers campus spent most of the day praying and counseling with grieving and hurting families.

Please consider…GOING, GIVING and PRAYING.  Recovery and Compassion trips are leaving daily at 6:30 from GPC.  Please sign up in advance so we can have the necessary supplies.  To GO, GIVE and PRAY, visit our site by clicking here

6. Learn a foreign language.  I don’t have this mastered.  In fact, I am not close to considering myself bilingual; however, there is tremendous value in working on learning another language.  The reason is worldviews are manifested in languages.  As I learn multiple languages, I am gaining an understanding of the diversity of worldviews.  If it does nothing but help me see that my way of thinking isn’t the only way to think and see the world, it will accomplish much.  For example, when I learned the Bambara word for bike, I learned it actually translates “iron horse.”

7. Find a local community care outreach and serve your community. Just like learning a language gives you different perspectives on life, so does serving in a different socioeconomic environment give you a greater perspective on people.  Sit in their home (if they even have a home), eat a meal in their context.  We had some college students that traveled the States on a month long journey; stopping, staying,a and eating in soup kitchens. Obviously, this wasn’t a typical college vacation to Cancun.

8. Host an exchange student. I have seen families open their homes to high school students from Turkey, Germany, China, and others.  Amazing cultural exchanges take place that will broaden your global understanding, enlarge your heart for the nation of your student at lea, connect you with people around the world, and the list goes on.   In two of the three scenario’s the students went back to their home country followers of JC.

9. Adopt an international student into your home and family life. I love seeing what God has done in a family in our church that has taken on connecting and periodically hosting about 10-15 college African college students from the UofA.  They love on them, serve them, share life together over the holiday’s and throughout the year.  One of the Nigerian students is working on his PhD and has the vision to go back to Nigeria and become the President.  Can you imagine if his vision becomes true. To  think that along this young man’s spiritual pilgrimage he points back to his faith growing through this family and his time spent in their lives.

10. Walk through a different neighborhood or apartment complex. Whether the neighborhood is socio-economically different than your “normal” or it’s an area a different ethnic group tends to congregate and live, walk through those sidewalks or streets.  Relocate your exercise routine there.  Drive through there.  But, on your journey, open your eyes.  Instead of seeing them or “not” seeing them at all, ask God to open your heart to see them how He sees them.  Pray as you walk, run, drive, and GO!

I am privileged to pastor the most amazing church in the world (at least from my perspective:).  This has been a 10 year journey for all of us.  The church launched in 2001.  It has been a journey to raise up believers that are world-class Christians.  World-class Christians are what we are striving to raise up at GPC.   How does a church raise up World-class Christians? How can I be a world-class Christian? Here are a few of the things that has helped me in my journey.

1. Read your Bible looking at for the “nations”- Here is a good exercise for you.  Read your Bible and start circling every time it speaks of the nations worshiping Him, going to the nations, that God wanted to bless the nations and then compare it to the amount of time you focus on one nation, the USA.  I am currently circling every time I see the “nations,”  “peoples of the earth,” or like phrases in the Scriptures.  I want the scope of my life to be measured by the scope of God’s heart.

2. Watch the BBC news- I don’t know how to say this, but frankly,  America is absorbed with itself.  American media, either by cause or effect, is absorbed with American life more than any other.  You watch any of the news channels (CNN or Fox) or any of the nightly news and 90% of what they cover is about what happens in our 50 states.  If I want to know what is happening in the world, I watch the BBC.  I watched  BBC World News this morning before having my quiet time to get a thorough overview of what was happening in the Arab world since there is so much turmoil right now.  I use what I learn to guide my prayers.  I wouldn’t have gotten 1/2 the coverage of the world in the same amount of time had I watched an American news outlet.

3. Keep an up-to-date Passport- I heard Henry Blackby speak to a congregation once and he asked for a show of hands of those who had a passport versus those who didn’t have a valid passport.  He in very convicting and passionate with what he said next.  He called out those who didn’t have a passport as not being ready to go to the nations and that they must not believe in the Great Commission.  With a passport you stand ready to go, where ever, and whenever.  There have been times that I have had opportunities to go to the nations quickly and had I not had a valid passport, I couldn’t have gone.

4. Pray through the global news- As I mentioned in the before regarding the BBC.  I use the media outlets of newspapers, websites, to keep me fresh in my prayer life.  We must all pray for the Arab nations currently.  The changes that are taking place internally in these nations could be huge for the spread of the gospel or devastating.

5. Don’t have a “missions department” Move from missions to mission.  Missions is something we do and a department we staff.  Mission is who we are.  We are on God’s mission. Mission is what we are throughout the church in every single department, in every single staff, and single dollar spent is about mission. That means that we don’t have compartmentalized missions departments.   We expect our Preschool departments to  mobilize and educate even our 4 and 5 year olds.  Our student pastor has forgone taking our students to a camp, and instead the students will feed  orphans of Peru.  Every department, person, and dollar are to be on mission.

When someone wants to leave and go for 2 weeks to 2 years, we don’t simply send the people to an agency to do our preparing, sending, supporting, and doing our missions for us.  We go with every member, supporting them in every way possible.

To be continued…

1. The team:  Wow.  I can’t say enough about the chemistry of a team, but we had it goin’!  I could name them off and say that Sherry, Christy and Jason were the rock stars in the medical gig.  Sherry pulling 50 or so teeth (I pulled around 6 and felt like I got a work out).  Her little ole’ arms…well she’s got it.  Jason and Christy were like the dynamic duo checking babies for malnourishment, treating wounds from elephantiasis, and even self-inflicted wounds (thanks Jason for the opening act:)).  We took over $800 worth of medicines  with us to the village and brought nothing back to town (thanks for drinking coffee at the Beyond Borders Cafe.  Your donations paid for the clinic).  Another duo act was Stephen and Russell. They were storying-mad-men.  Sharing stories with over 100 people.  Scott reconnected with old brothers in Christ and told stories from years past that they still recalled.  His greatest contribution may be how he captured the village in photo-story form.  You can almost smell the Sahara sands in the photos. Check’em out on Facebook.  Susan is a new hero of mine.  She is the only woman that I have seen that can manage the chaos of a bush clinic registration, teach a hygiene class, story Scriptures, cook lunch for 20 people, and do it all with a smile on her face!  A team is only a team when all the members are finding their nitch and doing it with excellence.

2. Trip Prep: My favorite person on the planet is my dear wife.  As we story through the gospel of Luke in the village this year, Lori took hours preparing the stories and the team.  I identified the stories, she wrote them and then spent several Sundays training our team in the storying methodology for oral cultures.  Everyone had 1 story they could share anytime anywhere.  We then had T4T stories ready to train nationals to share.  We had master teachers ready to share at night under the star lit skies.  Thanks babe.  You made my job a lot easier.

3. Prayer team: As great as all these elements made for the outstanding trip, I actually think the greatest contributing factor to an amazing trip where we saw a “cousin”  family choose the Jesus road, along with another village lady that Susan was a part of leading to Christ. (ask me off line to explain what a “cousin” family is)  I had never asked a team to be so intentional with their prayer support before.  This time, I asked all the team members to identify 10 people that they knew and trusted  to be vigilante and faithful prayer partners for them and us everyday we were gone. What should have been 70 prayer warriors, turned into 98.

I largely credit the answered prayers of our faithful pray warriors for the GREAT success of our trip.  Thielicke writes, “The globe itself lives and is upheld as by Atlas arms through the prayers of those whose love has not grown cold.” Thank you prayer warriors for having hot hearts and bold prayers while we were in West Africa.