Sneak Peak: February 2013 Newsletter

The following is an exerpt from our February newsletter:

In October we told you about a new outreach that was beginning in Versailles called the Gospel Café. For whatever reason, the French adore Gospel music, and each month the team crafts a program, recruit musicians, and invite as many people as possible to a Gospel concert. 

One of our teammates invited a friend of his, who is a musician, to play at the café. This man is not a Christian, but after playing at a few of the cafés he started improvising during one of the performances. As he was singing and playing on stage, he made a profession of faith! Please join with us in praising God and praying for continued fruit for the  Gospel Café. 

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Sixty percent of the way

We are so thankful and excited right now in the process of getting to France. By the first of the year, we had reached 50% of our monthly support need. That is ongoing monthly partnerships with a handful of churches and dozens of individuals. And for our close partners and friends, you know how big of a hurdle 50% was for us for several months. And now, just a little over a month later we are over 60%!

It is important for us to pause and reflect on how good the Lord continues to be and how in several ways, both small and large, He is confirming the call for us to be church planters in France. So now, with both humility and joy, we pause… reflect… and praise. 

We have set several milestone goals each month because we are trusting God to reach 100% by June 30th. The first big milestone is that we are hoping to reach 70% by the end of February. If you are one of our amazing Partners, or if you just want to, please pray that we would reach the 70% milestone this month and also that we would be a blessing and encouragement to every person and church we meet with along the way, whether they become a Partner in this ministry or not. Thank you.

God’s will vs. Our actions

I try not to share too many devotional thoughts that God is using to teach me on here, because I know that kind of thing can get old fast. But sometimes I can’t help it. 

Lately, the idea of predestination vs. free will keeps popping up in conversations and books I am reading. Please know that I am in no way an expert on this topic, but I do think about it and wrestle with it, like most followers of Jesus. I am not an intellectual, and compared to many am pretty simple-minded, but I am proud of how God uses that and still gives me insights into his ways. So hopefully, someone will be encouraged by my thoughts. Like a lot of controversies or debates, I usually fall somewhere in middle, and I do on this one. 

I don’t know if you know this about Ryan yet, but he loves analogies, and the analogies God gives him often encourage me. I think it comes from both his passion for intellectual pursuits but also his passion to communicate in ways that anyone can understand. This is important to me too, probably because it helps me understand! But he was given the analogy that God’s will is like a play in which he is the director. There is a master script that contains what is going to happen, but we are all individual actors in the play who bring our own individual ideas and improvisation to our roles. We each have a part to play and even though God knows what we are going to do, he also gives us the freedom to embrace or reject our roles. 

I don't think so

So, do I believe in predestination, yes. Do I believe in free will, yes. Am I allowed to believe in both, I don’t know? But for now I would like to have my cake and eat it too. And for those who know me, you know that I really love cake. I also wanted to share a small excerpt from a book I am reading that helped reinforce my thinking. 

    "We are not mere mortals, with a chance beginning and a chance ending and a flurry of pointless activity in between. We are meaningful players in a cosmic drama, intended to know that more is going on beyond what we can see. God has 'set eternity' in our hearts, and although we cannot fathom 'what God has done from the beginning to the end' (Eccles. 3:11), we sense that the events of life are heading somewhere and that we can either get on board or stay seated on the bench. 

    God has placed his Spirit in charge of directing the story and equipping the players for their parts. By his decision, writing a few books was included in my script. I am free to pursue other interests or to cooperate. If I cooperate, I am lifted up into the stream of his purposes, and my yearning to be a part of eternal things is satisfied. I become one with my destiny." — Connecting by Larry Crabb

So I am comforted. Both in the reality that God is in complete control of all things, and also in the reality that he is not a puppet master pulling our strings. I also know though, that I find my life’s greatest freedom and fulfillment only when I am embracing my role in his cosmic drama. Each day is another chance to do that more and more or less and less. A great privilege and responsibility… praise the Lord.

Finding Our Value

I feel so much better about myself when I feel useful, when I can point to tangible, concrete things in my day and say, “I accomplished that.” Whether its going into work, filling the car with gas, or changing a light bulb, I feel better about myself when I get things done. It’s good to get things done, but without immediate and definite results for my actions I start to feel miserable. I get this sort of “wasted day” feeling, and I feel like I have to go through my day and find the stuff I did to prove that I was somehow productive or useful that day. I’m not really sure who I’m trying to prove it to. Am I trying to prove it to myself, to other people, to God? I don’t want to feel like a useless human being, and I don’t want other people to see me that way, and I want to be able to justify my existence before God and say, “Here’s why I’m a good person. Look at all this stuff I’ve gotten done.” I want to be valuable.

Erin and I are having a hard time with this desire to feel valuable at the moment. We’ve left our jobs, our involvements, and many of the things that gave us value in order to raise support full-time until we get to France. At first leaving everything felt freeing, “won’t it be great to make our own schedules,” we said to each other. But it was amazing how quickly the freedom to make our own schedules became the guilt of not being able to tally up our accomplishments. Where’s our value when we can’t quantify and evaluate what we are doing? It’s a struggle, a daily struggle.

But this is where the Gospel becomes Good News to me. 1 Timothy 1:9 says, 

“God has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time….” 

I want to create my own value, but the Gospel says God gives me value. While I’m trying to defend my value before God, He is trying to show me my value to Him. The value I have is the value He gives, not the value I think I can earn. We are worth the infinite value of His Son, because that is the price He has chosen to pay for us. No matter how useful I feel or how many accomplishments I can tally, the final say on what I’m worth comes from God, and the Gospel says it’s more than I could ever fathom. 

What happened at Boot Camp

Last Monday night, after 7-hours cruising in the faithful Honda, we arrived at the Comfort Inn in Harrisburg, PA. What were we doing in Harrisburg you ask? Well, we had the privilege of going to an intense 2-day training called Boot Camp. It is for Christian workers from dozens of different organizations, denominations & associations, who, despite those smaller differences, share many awesome things in common, including the very practical need to raise their own financial support in order to do God’s work. And that is precisely what Boot Camp was all about, how to develop partners who will send all these workers into the harvest fields. 

Here is a photo to prove we were there.

Can you find us?

The best part for me about Boot Camp was really examining God’s Word in all the instances it talks about ministry and how God’s workers are to be provided for. 

I was so encouraged to spend so much time in God’s word, to really soak in it. It strengthened my understanding of why we develop Partners, because our Partners are going to hold the ropes for us, literally not figuratively. They are going to be our dearest friends, the people who invest in us and the people we invest in, here in the U.S. 

But also, and this was a newer concept for me, we are doing a great service to our Partners by providing an opportunity for them to give and grow in generosity and cheer. God loves generosity and somehow, I don’t fully understand it, but somehow by opening our wallets it also opens our hearts more fully to God’s purposes and also to God’s blessings. Jesus rewards our sacrifices. Like He explained in Matthew 19:29, after the rich man went away sad after Christ told him to sell all that he had and give to the poor, Jesus explained to the disciples that...

“everyone who has left houses, or brothers or sisters, or father or mother, or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life.” 

I am so joyful that our Partners are not just providing for and blessing us, but God is doing the same for them.

Another of the passages I really like is Proverbs 11:24–35 

“One man gives freely, yet gains even more; another withholds unduly, but comes to poverty. A generous man will prosper; he who refreshes others will himself be refreshed.”

We learned a lot more at Boot Camp, but today I just wanted to express how awesome God’s Word is. It really is the bread of life. Now, I think I will go make a sandwich for Ryan and I so we can be nourished by that as well. 

So busy, so blessed

The past few months have been a blur. Honestly, upon reflection, we have probably been way too busy at times. But it is hard not to be with so many good things going on, especially now, as we begin to pack up boxes and get ready for the first big move, this one back to Ohio (not that we’ve actually started that yet, ha). There is so much we are transitioning out of and so many people we are saying goodbye to. Not goodbye goodbye, but goodbye to seeing them everyday or on a weekly basis.

Our time here in Mass has truly been so busy and so blessed.

We have worked hard at growing as followers of Jesus and as a married couple. Ryan has received two graduate school degrees, we have worked hard at our jobs, and poured into our church, and learned so much from all three; school, jobs, and the body of Christ. 

We have learned how to love each other better. We have learned how to make friends, how to serve and how to be served. We went from having no friends here to being surrounded by great ones, many who now feel like family. Through the modeling of awesome people, we have learned how to ask better questions, and really care about the answers. We have learned how to cook better, somehow, and to open up our humble home. Lately, we have only been eating at home once or twice a week though, because amazing people have us over to feed us, and love us, often even when they know we are about to ask them for money. It’s truly awesome and humbling. 

We have seen God provide for us physically, spiritually, monetarily, and relationally time and time and time again. We have known times of plenty and times of want, but even when we had want, we actually still had plenty. We have walked through a church division and seen how God’s will for His church bursts forth from the ashes like a phoenix, sometimes slowly as He restores the brokenness, but His love and His plans prevail, but even in that, it is up to us to allow Him to use us for His purposes.

We have seen God’s confirmation that He is leading us to start new communities of believers in France. We saw it in Ryan’s first week at Seminary, when a famous African Pastor spoke with clarity and conviction that their vision matched our own, to plant new churches in every major city in Europe. We saw it when we raised over $10,000 in 3 months, to go to France for 7 weeks and see first hand what church planting in Paris looked like, and again when my job allowed me to take the full 8 weeks off to go. We saw more confirmation still when we applied and were accepted to join World Team (after a rigorous screening process called RACE) and then a couple months later when we were invited to join the team in France. We continue to see it, with each and every new Partner that joins our team along the way. 

So I guess what I am getting at is, dang, we are blessed. As we look forward to the next step of moving to Ohio there is excitement, and honestly some relief that we won’t be quite as busy, but the Lord has truly done so much and grown us so much during this season, so there is much sadness too. I hope that our friends in Mass know how thankful we are for them. They have made these 5 years some of the best of our lives so far. 

Pray for the first Gospel Café

As you know, Ryan and I are still in the U.S. and actually are quite busy with preparations because next month (literally 1 month from today) we are moving back to Ohio. We will be there until God provides all the financial and prayer partners we need before we can go to France. 

One of the encouraging blessings during this time, though, is when we get to connect with our leaders and teammates in France and hear about the work that is happening there, and lately there has been a lot going on. I wanted to share about one new ministry starting this week in Versailles and ask for your prayer as our friends and teammates begin this new work. 

It is called Gospel Café. The basic concept is quite simple, once a month there will be a Gospel concert, put on by a couple of our teammates with the help of some great musicians (side note: Gospel music is actually quite popular in France and brings many people together, Christians and non-Christians alike). These events will be a great way to meet new people and gather with existing friends. There have already been many answers to prayer in this new venture, the biggest one being just a couple weeks ago when the leaders found the perfect Café, literally across the street from the Palace of Versailles, that is excited about hosting the events and is doing so for free. This was after our teammates visited dozens of other Café's and were initially even rejected by this one, but God proved faithful and gave them favor in the eyes of the Café owners.

The first Gospel Café is this Thursday, October 18th. Please pray with us that it will be a great success and a great way to meet new people that can hear and learn more about Christ's love for them and to also meet existing Christians who are searching for a community to plug into.