Vacation Bible School

Recently I had the privilege to share about our ministry with a Vacation Bible School at one of our partnering churches. I got to tell them about how God calls all of us to be a part of his mission, and that He wants people everywhere to know Him. It was fun and the kids had a bunch of questions about what it means to be a missionary and about France. My favorite question though was, “What’s the deal with mimes?” If you’re wondering that now, I don’t have an answer, but I do have some pictures from the time.

June 2012: What, when and where

As you may have noticed, we didn’t have any blog posts in June or so far in July. This wasn’t intentional, we have been so busy we’ve only had time to think or daydream about blog posts rather than actually bring them into reality. But, a lot of great things have happened that I thought I would share. 

• Memorial Day Weekend: We enjoyed a visit with our friends, the Wailes, who came to Marblehead.
• June 1st: We met with our World Team coach Becky, who gave us encouragement and direction for the month.
• June 2nd: Our dear friends hosted the first ever French Night for us in Marblehead, MA and it went great.
• June 4th: Our small group began studying the book of Matthew.
• June 7th: I attended our church’s bi-weekly Pastoral Search Committee meeting as we continue to seek the next leader God has for Grace Community Church in Marblehead, MA.
• June 14–25th: We went to Ohio and had the privilege of sharing our vision for France with 2 church pastors and 10 individual families.
• June 17th: We spent the weekend with my parents and had a fun Fathers day at the Cincinnati Zoo.
• June 18th: The second French Night was hosted in Springfield, OH!
• June 19–22nd: Ryan got a fever and lost his voice for 3 days (sad).
• June 23rd: We attended a Bennett family cookout and had a great visit with some of Ryan’s immediate and extended family.
• June 26th: I caught the cold Ryan had and fought it for a while.
• June 29th: We made the last payment EVER for our college debt, we are now completely debt free!
• July 4th: We spent the birthday of America with our great friends, the Albertsons, in East Boston. We had to dodge a few of God’s fireworks (lightning) but it was a great time. 

Our zoo fun! 

French Night in Springfield, Ohio

It has been such a great summer, filled with many visits with our families and dear dear friends. 

Misconception: We’re going to be living the high life

I really like the idea of having a Monthly Misconception spotlight because frequently a lot of people will express and have similar questions and concerns. It is important when people are honest and bring these questions and concerns to light. It’s a great opportunity to thoughtfully and prayerfully correct false assumptions, whether those false assumptions are other peoples or our own. I am confident that others have similar questions or concerns and either don’t want to ask or don’t have the chance to ask us personally, so my hope is that this monthly spotlight will answer some questions and encourage people to come to us with others. So let’s do this. 

Love that this photo is complicated AND similar to the layout of Paris

First Misconception: We’re going to be living the high life in France

A lot of people look through our finance post or the finance page in our ministry overview and they kind of gasp or sometimes laugh out loud. We need to raise close to $8,000 in ongoing monthly support in order to live in France and start new communities of believers there. Instantly, a lot of people multiply this figure by 12 and think… these kids are going to be living on $96,000 a year, that’s close to -or- more than what I make. We understand the shock, we experienced a similar reaction when first seeing these figures. But what we learned, and what you need to realize, is that it's not that simple. 

Out of the $8,000 we need to raise each month, Ryan and I will actually be living on around 3,250 euro per month (similar to what we live on in dollars now actually). And considering we are hoping to be living in Paris, probably in a modest two bedroom apartment, rent could realistically be around 1,500–2,000 euro per month. Some of you may be concerned about this now, how will we live on this in one of the most expensive cities in the world? The answer is simple, we will aim to live simply and responsibly. 

The other question you may be wondering now is, what happens to the rest of the money? Well, a lot actually. 

• First a small chunk is set aside for the currency conversion from dollars to euros (this is changing almost daily and a complicated matter in itself, we'll just leave it at that for now) 
• A substantial chunk goes to cover our health insurance (both in the U.S. and in France so we’re covered both places) 
• A small chunk is put into a separate account for our retirement someday (I'm very thankful World Team requires us to do this)  
• Another small chunk is set aside for ministry expenses above and beyond our basic living expenses (this helps us better serve the French whether we’re hosting them in our home, purchasing bibles or other resources for them, etc)
• And lastly another chunk (14.5%) goes back to World Team, our sending organization, so they can continue to support and train missionaries like us

So that is pretty much it. If you still have questions, both Ryan and I are happy to talk about it more. We want to be as open and humble as possible with you about our finances and continually express our thankfulness for the many financial partners we have. Ryan wrote a series a while ago about why we raise financial support and why we believe it's a biblical thing to do, I won’t re-hash that but you are welcome to check that out if you haven't yet.  

Why France? Why Paris?

We’ve written before about why we feel lead to do church-planting in Paris, France but we’re asked these questions often. Sometimes we’re asked in a sincere and interested way and sometimes we’re asked in a “do you really expect me to believe that France needs missionaries” sort of way. However we’re asked though, I want to try to sum up our answer as succinctly as possible. It comes down to four things:

“All nations” — Need — Strategy — Call

1. All Nations: Jesus said to make disciples of all nations. Frankly, that’s enough for me, but this means that every group of people is a field in which to sow the Gospel. Every single one. No nation is exempt, no matter how wealthy or poor or democratized or whatever. Jesus said all nations, and France is a nation. Therefore, France needs people going there and making disciples.

2. Need: There are different kinds of need. There are physical needs like poverty, malnutrition, lack of education, and the list goes on. These things are serious, and God’s people must address them. However, there is also spiritual need. God told Jonah that the enormous cosmopolitan city of Nineveh was full of people who didn’t know their right hand from their left, meaning they were spiritually blind. They needed someone to help them see the truth. Spiritual need can only be addressed by God’s people. In fact, I would argue that if you wanted to do something about the physical needs of the world, then there needs to be multiplying communities of people following Jesus to have a greater impact on addressing those needs. Don’t think that I’m saying that addressing the often staggering amount of physical suffering in the world is something that followers of Jesus can put off for the time being, but what I am saying is that we’ll have a much greater impact if we see physical need and spiritual need as two sides of the same coin. France has staggering spiritual need.

3. Strategy: I’ve been general thus far, but now more specifically let’s talk about Paris. Historically, economically, politically, any way you want to slice it, Paris is one of the most important cities in Western Europe and the world for that matter. Paris is to France what Washington D.C., New York, and L.A. are to America. It has the politicians, the business people, the thinkers, the creative people, and more. When Paul planted churches he went to all the major cities of the ancient world; Ephesus, Corinth, Rome, because he knew that if you can start a movement of people following Jesus in a major city, then it will have the greatest impact on the area around it. Influence often works from the top down. If Paris had thriving and multiplying churches, then the impact on France as a whole would be enormous. Paris is extremely strategic. 

4. Call: Interwoven through all of this is our personal call. God has worked in us in such a way that over the past six or more years He has given us a heart for the country of France and its people. We feel personally burdened by this people’s darkness, and we want to get involved. God has brought this about through varied and different ways, but we feel more convinced than ever that this is where he is calling us. Call can be hard to define, but you know it when you feel it. We’ve felt it for a while, and we are attempting to do our best to follow God’s call.

The blood of the martyrs

“The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church,” said church father Tertullian. He wrote this in the second century when Christians were often experiencing serious persecution for their faith. However, instead of stamping out the faith, persecution often multiplied it. This is the unfathomable, paradoxical plan of God at work. I’ve been reading a book about the history of Paris, and while I’ve never really thought about it in light of Tertullian’s quote, if his quote is true France is in for churches sprouting up all over the place. 

Let me explain. Systematic persecution of Protestant Christians began in the late 1500’s with estimates of up to 30,000 being killed for their faith in the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of 1572. But it wasn’t just Protestants that suffered. During the French Revolution all things Christian were targeted for extermination. Church lands were confiscated and Catholic priests were forced to leave the priesthood, flee the country or be put to death. It’s hard to know how many lost their lives for faith in Christ between these few centuries.  

So, if Tertullian’s statement is to hold true, we should one day see a flourishing of churches in France. But it hasn’t happened just yet. Maybe the seed was buried deep by the Revolution. Or maybe the stony ground produced by the Enlightenment hasn’t completely broken up yet. But whatever the reason the church has been slow in sprouting, God isn’t done with France. 

Please join with us in praying that God would honor the sacrifice of those French martyrs who would rather die than deny Christ, and that from their faithful witness churches would sprout. 

New friends and trail blazers

This past weekend our church had some missionaries that we partner with visiting with us. Joe and Karen have been in Chambéry, France for 27 years. Ryan and I are 28 years old, so they have been in France almost as long as we have been alive… pretty wild isn’t it. 

A map of France with Chambéry highlighted

In their time in France they have been a part of planting a church, doing University work (which is Joe’s main focus), volunteering at a Christian publishing organization to widely distribute vital resources and teaching tools throughout France and French-speaking African countries (Karen’s main focus), and for decades have been organizing and running summer camps for missionary kids. 

We had a great time picking their brains and listening to stories about their many adventures. I am beginning to see a trend, which is that people who are in full-time ministry often seem to stay young at heart (especially if they do work with youth) and they all have countless stories to share. It may be a road less traveled, but it seems to be anything but boring. Please pray for Joe and Karen as they visit with family and their [existing and potential] ministry partners for the next few weeks.

Their organization CrossWorld has some great videos and I wanted to share one with you today. From Where You Stand: The Odds Are from Crossworld on Vimeo.

Hold on to your hats

The financial support raising process is often like a rollercoaster. You experience dizzying highs followed by sharp unexpected lows. You get tossed side to side by quick turns and get thrown for more than a few loops where everything is upside down for a little while. For some people I’ve just described the ultimate thrill. For me it’s more about holding on as tight as I can and reminding myself that everything is going to be okay (I have a checkered history with rollercoasters in case you couldn’t tell). But I feel like my relationship with God throughout this process is pretty close to what I described: Highs, lows, twists, and turns, all of which come in rapid succession. 

It's at this point that I often take consolation in the story of Israel wandering in the desert between Egypt and the Promised Land. They experience God doing amazing, awe-inspiring things like parting the Red Sea and supernaturally providing them with food. But it often seems like almost instantly they look around themselves seeing the sand, mountains, and sparse vegetation of the desert, and they forget that God is leading them through. They would rather go back to the slavery that they knew in Egypt then face the uncertainty of God leading them in the desert.

I’m often like that. I wish that I wasn’t. But when I’m honest with myself I know that the present circumstances of my situation have far more influence on me than they should. A little bump here or a quick drop there and I can start to unravel; I hold on tighter and start to wish that I wasn’t on this ride. But like I said, this is where the story of Israel in the desert gives me comfort. When Moses is giving his final speech before the Israelites enter into the Promised Land, he reminds them of God’s presence with them throughout their entire journey as they are about to have to drive out the current inhabitants of Canaan. Moses says, 

“Do not be terrified; do not be afraid of them. The LORD your God, who is going before you, will fight for you, as he did for you in Egypt, before your very eyes, and in the wilderness. There you saw how the LORD your God carried you, as a father carries his son, all the way you went until you reached this place” — Deuteronomy 1:29-30 

Throughout the ups and downs God continues to carry me as a father carries his son. I need that.