Missions Festival

It is missions festival week this week at Grace Church! This morning's service kicked it all off and I must say, it was great!
I walked in a few minutes late (so what else is new) and when I did they were in the middle of a few updates from missionaries who weren't able to be at the festival. OF COURSE, the first one on when i was in was the Gebel family! only one of my favorites ever! small world that one of my girls' families is being supported by my church. i love it.
The worship this morning was filled with "send me" and "I'm willing to go" type of songs which got me choked up. THEN they paraded in flags from a ton of countries, many of which I've been to or Royal Servants does ministry in. Again... eyes got pretty darn misty. and i won't even lie to you, i cried when the final flag that came in was the Christian flag followed by 28 of the Grace Church's 85 missionary families! it was awesome to see them take the stage, what they represent is beautiful. So then many missionaries and sister churches presented how God was working and the importance of what we are doing here on this side of the pond to make what they are doing happen. i basically had a smile on my face and tears in my eyes through the whole service and kind of felt like a nerd. I feel soooo blessed to be a part of a church that is so on mission that it is built within the very dna of the place.
Praise God for what he is doing around the world, and praise God that he is using Grace Church in the process!

In the Name of Jesus

So I'm re-reading this book by Henri Nouwen which was hugely impactful in my understanding of Christian Leadership back when I was taking my first steps into the role.
I recently found a study guide by a man named Troy Cady (I have no clue who that is, but he writes killer study guides!) and I'm thinking about how I can use this book along with this study guide as I disciple and mentor the next generation of Christian leaders. But of course I need to go through the study guide myself in order to see if its something worth using (so far so good) and wouldn't it beat all, I'm once again being challenged by this book as if I'm reading it for the first time (although my copy is quite marred).
In one of the first chapters of the book, Nouwen talks about the temptation to be relevant. He went from a big time professor, author and priest, to work for a home for disabled people. All of his skills and acclaim he had amassed meant little if anything to the people he was called to minister to. He was so used to being able to ride on his accomplishments that he was "suddenly faced with my naked self, open for affirmations and rejections, hugs and punches, smiles and tears, all dependent simply on how i was perceived in the moment." He goes on to explain, "I am deeply convinced that the Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self."
I am so challenged by this. How often do I find my identity in what I can do or have done or in what God has done in and through me in the past. Its easy to hide that way. In Christian leadership, the external may not change much we have mastered the art of making our facade of relevance look an awful lot like authenticity. But when we're riding on that, we cannot last long. My thoughts the other day were this, "Relevance is a facade. When we hide behind it we don't have to show people that we too are human and have struggles and temptations and hurts and vulnerabilities. if we avoid being relevant, we are honest about who we are because there's no cultural stigma of perfection that weighs down on us. We don't need to hide behind our past successes or accomplishments, I want my love of Christ to be what shows first!"
I don't want to worry about LOOKING like God is doing something in and through me and flaunting all the ways he has in the past, I want to worry about if he actually is..... right now.

My Church

i love my church.
www.atgrace.com.
it's pretty great.

SKYPE!

I have decided once again that I love Skype. I used to use it from time to time and now I'm back using it regularly. Its fun to not only get to talk to my friends and my girls, but I get to see them!! It does get kind of funny when I have my headphones in and other people are around, it looks like I'm talking to my laptop haha. No. I'm not crazy. I'm social.... and I like to talk to my laptop.

Clifford

 

Martin Short is genius. look up the movie, you won't regret it, it has nothing to do with the big red dog.

Todd MacDonell

A great man of God went to worship at the feet of Christ on streets of gold yesterday.

Praise God that all of Todd's earthly pain is gone.

Please be in prayer for the beautiful ladies in his life and his new son-in-law.


http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/toddmacdonell

Too cute to be Two.

These little ones are some of the cutest kids in the world. They live at Jonathan's House Orphanage in Bo, Sierra Leone and are only TWO YEARS OLD!!!  How do two year old babies know how to pose this perfectly?!

Break My Heart... a dangerous prayer

When you ask God to break your heart for the things that break his, be prepared for pain.
And be ready to take it all back to his feet, where it belongs.
(don't be suprised if you don't get much sleep in this process)