Revelry

I first want to start by thanking you for all of your prayers. This past set of trips, both to Poland and Germany, were some of the most challenging. Even in these last couple of days as I’ve processed and rested from the trip, I’m still not sure what to make of all that I’ve seen and experienced. These trips have confirmed several suspicions in my mind, and challenged others.

Our experiences in Berlin, a culture that is fully immersed in post-modernism, were extremely challenging.  As we served the Family Center (our partnering church in East Berlin) the leaders of the church challenged us to try different ways of engaging the culture. Our team became a test unit for evangelism in a post-modern culture. We had our doubts, but we were up for anything. Our team tried something the Family Center called “The Hand Project,” where we asked people the question, “Who is God?” From there, we asked them to write their responses on their hands, which we took photos of for the Hand Project website. This experiment was met with mixed feelings, as some people gave us honest answers, some tried to impress their friends by saying something silly like “table tennis,” and others wanted to start an argument, telling us God was “Hitler.”

We also did something that I was both scared and unsure of.  It was something that the Family Center requested we do, and I was, to say the least, hesitant to move forward. In fact, most of the time I cringe when I see people do this. As a matter of effectiveness, I’m not convinced it works, but on our trip, this experience led to great spiritual growth in our students.

On Friday night, we went to Alexanderplatz and did soapbox preaching. You read that right. Street preaching. Four of our students sang a couple worship songs to gather a crowd, and intermingled with the songs were personal testimonies from several of our students.  We topped this off with the youth pastor, Carter, and I preaching the Gospel. On all accounts, this felt like the craziest thing I’d ever done. As our team played songs, people started stopping and checking out the commotion. When students started sharing their testimonies and mentioning God or Jesus, most people walked away. Surprisingly (or not so surprisingly), when it was my turn to preach, no one listened to me.  All the people standing around were engaged in conversations with people from our group. Despite our initial reservations, engaging conversations were started as a result of our street preaching. It was in this moment that students gained confidence in what they believed; they even begged us to cancel some of our remaining “touristy” trips in order to do it again.  From shaky hands and students hiding in order to not be picked to share their testimony, to requesting we evangelize in such a bold manner again, this was the turning point on our trip.

As a whole, we didn’t have very many opportunities to engage in meaningful dialogue about the Gospel in Berlin. In that frustration, it occurred to us as a team that we haven’t made the most of our opportunities here in the US.  Minimal opportunities to share in Berlin lead to an increased desire to share the Gospel with our friends at home.  Berlin opened our eyes to the fact that for most of us, home is often a place where opportunity is abundant, but our own boldness is lacking. The Gospel is not news to be shared just one week a year, but on a daily basis. Our desire to share our faith with friends back home continued to grow throughout the trip.

In closing, I ask that you would please be praying for the students as they make the transition back to school this week. Pray that the experiences and lessons learned in Berlin, don’t stay in Berlin.

For the Glory of God

While presenting XEE at the Catalyst Conference in Atlanta, Chuck Swindoll shared 10 ministry lessons from his 50 years of experience. He opened with this unshakable quote: “when God wants to do an impossible task, he takes an impossible person and crushes him.” Even as I write this, I’m not sure what to think. If this quote is right, coupled with his 10 lessons from ministry, then these serve as finger posts along the journey pointing us in the right direction. (check out the link on scottcarson.org to see all 10 lessons)

Looking back, I’d say the crushing started immediately and occurred often. When we first embarked on this adventure together, I thought that in six months I’d have all the support secured and shortly after be working out of the office in sunny Fort Lauderdale, FL. Like lesson 9 states: “God’s way is better than my way. God is going to have His way.”

Moving home after college was a humbling experience. To me, moving home after college meant failure. To add to that, I had no real desire to ever step foot back into the high school I graduated from. Needless to say, the two years I spent substitute teaching at that exact high school only added to the feelings of failure and brokenness. All part of Swindoll’s sixth lesson he shared with us.

After two years and what looked like more at home, I was invited to move up to the Chicago-land area to be discipled by Darrell Farney. The learning curve did not get any less steep, as I lived and worked out of a basement that was graciously loaned to me.  It’s been an unregrettable season of learning from a man who’s devoted his life to pursuing God’s call.

My season in the Chicago-land area is coming to a close as I prepare to move to Fort Lauderdale, FL shortly after Christmas. In the midst of still living here, the truth of Acts 17:24-28 continues to ring true. Just in getting involved with The Edge (youth group) we’ve seen four students come to Christ, one of which I’m discipling as he pursues missions.

Disillusionment, frustration, patience, perseverance, crushing, submission and joy all accurately describe my experience with my job so far. As hard as the time at home was personally, God gave me a gift in disguise. I had an extra two years to spend with family and close friends before we all dispersed.

When you boil it down, each day we take part in seeing lives transformed and it’s worth it. God has allowed us to walk people over the threshold of faith and meet some of the most incredible people in the world, you! Some days it’s tempting to believe that we haven’t made any progress over the last 4 years. Then I catch glimpses of how God has been transforming lives through our ministry and sit in awe of what God is allowing us to be a part of. Simply looking at our Fiji internship, there are three people overseas sharing the gospel as a result. One is working with Youth With a Mission and reaching Muslims, another is in Fiji training youth to share the gospel, and the third is an advanced placement art teacher in the Middle East.

Please continue to join me in praying for wisdom as we start a new season in our ministry in Fort Lauderdale, and pray that our ministry would continue to bear fruit that remains.

Grateful for your prayers, encouragement and support

A new day has dawned for our ministry with Evangelism Explosion. During the Summit in North Carolina, several pivotal conversations transpired. The condensed version is that I was presented with the opportunity to: “partner with the Director of XEE North America (Adam Bond) to develop XEE as the cultural and generational paradigm for faith-sharing training in North American Evangelical churches.” Some of my responsibilities would include: functioning as a primary XEE Launch Facilitator, develop Facilitator Training Materials, and discover and train Gen-X pastors as launch facilitators nation-wide.

One of the great benefits of this new position is that it will allow us national exposure to local church pastors. My role of directing short-term trips will not change. In fact, it will be enhanced! Functioning as one of the primary launch facilitators, I am able to meet pastors during the XEE training, and afforded the opportunity to share the vision of our short-term trips. From there we’ll be able to call upon them in the future to join us overseas.

This transition will include several key changes for me personally. The largest is that I’ll be relocating to Fort Lauderdale, FL to work out of EE’s headquarters. However, the move won’t be happening until after Christmas. This will afford Adam, Rick Bond (Director of Generations) and I the opportunity to work hand-in-hand to set the direction of this ministry

One of the hopes I have before moving is to be able to see all of you. I hope to be able to share this great news with you in person and share how God has been and will be using our ministry in “Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the earth.”

Thank you for your continued partnership and desire to see the world changed!