30 Days to 30% Starting October 1
Category: What’s Up
A Broken Day #WindowsUpdate #UpdateHell
My day was unrecoverable. An entire day of the big anniversary layout of Microsoft Windows Ten that took over 8 hours on a Dell laptop and still wasn’t done. I prematurely ended it and went back to my original version of Windows 10.
Meanwhile, I engaged in some entertaining photos, some housecleaning, grocery shopping, and a run while waiting for windows to update.
It’s 5:10 pm and I am exhausted. Who knew this update would cause so much stress!
FAQS: My Husband’s Role
WorldVenture appointed me, not my husband, Tony, as a missionary. Yet, he plays a role in what I do every day.
- I introduced him to Facebook. He now posts #LunchroomViews when he hikes, influencing both secular and believer in his online life.
- Helped him merge to Twitter. He’s learning the ins and outs of that, too.
- He’s political, but through WorldVenture’s missional influence, his belief in God is lived out in redeeming ways online politically and personally. It’s more about the relationship with others now.
He has become an avid prayer warrior and helps me manage ministry, job, and appointments with prospective financial partners by picking up most of the house work on his days off. This weighs on me. I love him for his generosity.
Before I hit the button that rocketed me into this new world, we talked alot about what this will mean for our marriage and for each other. What if I have to travel without him to a different country? What if it’s a dangerous country? What if I was jailed for my efforts online or persecuted legally and we lost everything? Would he still love me even if the world was against me? Inevitably, what I do will impact him, too.
We share an open marriage where we talk about things before they become an issue. Our relationship is honest; it’s been honest from the beginning. He tells me things I don’t want to hear, and I hold up my end of the bargain by listening. His role as friend, partner in my online ministries, and husband is important to me as a person and missionary.
I wouldn’t be a missionary today if God hadn’t brought him into my life. I would still be wandering.
Want to hear more? Let’s talk.
A Response: What Makes a Good Missionary?
When I read this article, I drank it down like cold water on a parched day. I wanted to know the answer the same as this author to the question, “What makes a good missionary?”
The article goes into the differences of persecution between Islam and other countries and governments. As I read this, I, too, felt kicked in the gut. The missionary needed the people he served. I would never have thought of that as love, but the persecuted believers saw the western man as loving because he borrowed from them instead of his western friends. Re-translate this to evangelism in your local communities: “What makes a good evangelist?”
“Rarely did the apostle Paul create dependency upon himself. Often in his letters, Paul expressed how desperately he needed his brothers and sisters in Christ. He called those friends by name years later. He never forgot them. When possible, he returned to be with them. When he could not go, he sent them someone else. And he faithfully wrote to them, expressing his love, encouragement, and correction. In a word, he needed them,” the author says.
Social media is about creating community, expressing that need, being the church online, and challenging us to need and be needed. The people you speak to on the field also have a purpose and are not lesser people as sometimes we may come off as looking. As a missionary wet-behind-the-ears, I want to,
“…bury my pride and unpack some humility…become a brother (sister), a friend, and a peer. I would care more about the names of my brothers and sisters on the “mission field” and less about the numbers of baptisms, people discipled, churches planted, and orphanages built. I would take to heart the lesson of John the Baptist, saying about a local believer what John said about Jesus: I must decrease so that he can increase (John 3:30). I would invite local believers to lead in the light while I served in the shadows. I would have pressed into what it meant to really need them.”
I am too independent. Raising support is teaching me to depend on people, to love better, to put God first above my politics, and daily it stretches and humbles me. I am learning to disciple people and wish for their success over mine. In the past two years, I have learned more, been stretched often, and know that God is taking the “ugly” out of me. His Word (the Bible) is challenging me. I am also learning that I don’t know as much as I think I know, and this attitude is important to maintain all of my life no matter how old I grow.
Please read this article from whatever perspective you serve from right now. It won’t take long.
Ministry Sabbatical This Weekend!
Will be online again on Monday.
Refugees: A Deadline Approaches
Did you know that tea is big in the Middle East? Deals are brokered around tea. Community is formed around tea. On Wednesday, I nearly emptied my china cabinet into three boxes and sent two sets of dishes and tea sets down to Phoenix for my friend’s ministry of helping refugees get acclimated in the United States through Desert Springs Community Church.
And they need YOUR help! Two families are coming in this month. Below is the link for what they still need. I will continue to include in my newsletters and social media future needs for missionary friends serving with refugees. With the United States being the third largest country in the world of unreached people groups, isn’t it time we started paying attention to what’s in our back yard? CNN stated that the United States will have 110,000 refugees by 2017.
I kept a couple tea things for future ministry opportunities. One never knows when helping refugees or ministering to international students may come my way. These days, I take my tea in mugs and drink mostly coffee. In America, our deals are brokered at Starbucks and conversations and community happen around coffee houses. This gives us some common ground, doesn’t it?
God gives generously inspiring us to give. Most of us probably have things we don’t really use anymore that would bring a family joy who have come from nothing and have lost everything. This verse during my devotions felt appropriate:
Pursue the goal of peace along with everyone—and holiness as well, because no one will see the Lord without it. – Hebrews 12:14 CEB
Please pray for this family and this missionary’s refugee ministry. You can read more about it here. Attached is a PDF of all the refugee agencies around the United States. Pray about how you can reach a people group in your area.
3 Ways to Hinder Jihad
A Review of My Son, The Jihad, a Netflix Movie
Lessons we can learn from this movie:
- When Thomas couldn’t keep a job, the extreme group gave him economic security.
- When Thomas wanted to belong, but felt on the outside, the extreme group gave him a sense of belonging.
- When Thomas’ girlfriend broke up with him, the extreme group gave him comfort.
His father and mother divorced, leaving Thomas broken on the inside. He got into trouble, couldn’t keep a job, and his mom, Sally, tried to reach him, and was kept at a distance. The movie described the home of Sally and Thomas as “non-religious.”
Sally mentioned God once in a while, but was she a believer? The movie was helpful in understanding why and how someone becomes radicalized. Then, a tweet on one of my other sites made me sad.
Seemingly focused only on the political angle of the refugee issue, someone’s tweet stripped the humanity away from the situation. While not related to the movie, it made me think of those three things that attracted Thomas to the terrorist group in the United Kingdom:
- Economic Security.
- A Sense of Belonging.
- Comfort.
How we can fill those needs as a compassionate people? What would it look like to love a difficult person? Granted, we can only help so much, but what would radical prayer look like? What if we put our faith wholly in God and pray fervently for the lost? What if we grieved for the lost like a mother her son; even if that lost person was different than us?
So let’s go over these points again:
- Economic Security.
- Help them discover job skills.
Help them with job applications. - Mentor them to keep a job.
- Suggest volunteering to acquire job skills.
- Teach them English so they can keep a job.
- Help them discover job skills.
- A Sense of Belonging.
- Thomas’ father left him at a crucial time. A father figure is very important and does affect a child’s development.
- The father figure in a person’s family affects their outlook on who God is.
- Be understanding of someone’s background.
- Learn to listen.
- Be a mentor or someone else will.
- Let that person into your inner circle.
- Learn about their culture.
- Learn how to build cultural bridges.
- Comfort
- Very simply, the gift of giving of your time.
- Saying nothing and listening.
- Withholding judgment sometimes.
- Being gentle.
The refugee situation and radical Islam are complex situations, and like you, I am learning, too, what it means to minister to the unreached, the unloved, the peoples on the move, and the unchurched. We must really examine why someone like Thomas could become a terrorist and how refugees are a target for terror; sometimes, even a scapegoat.
Pray as I:
- Learn more about “Peoples on the Move.” According to CNN, there will be 110,000 refugees by 2017.
- Stay on top of the latest news on this.
- Raise support so I can do this full time and reach people like Thomas who needs a friend.
- Develop as a missionary.
- Grow in the Word.
A Project Done
The process of taking on designing an online ministry for a church or nonprofit is this:
- Vision: Vision cast with the church. What is it they wish to accomplish? Write it down. Talk about it. Finalize it as this is the basis for training.
- Assess their technology know-how and set up a training schedule and time of release.
- Implement training schedule and time.
- Release.
I am never the front wheel of the ministry, but always the back wheel. Ideally, the ministry should be taking initiative to take on more and more responsibility, always communicating with me if their ministry changes direction or vision. The training schedule is always based upon the initial vision. If that changes, so does the training.
Number four might be confusing. What does it mean to release a project?
It means, I am never part of the ministry. I am a third party coming in from the outside to help the church succeed in their vision. When training is done, I release the training wheels and close the project from any further involvement from me as a missionary. This is what I did recently.
A project has been released.
Won’t you pray for it today?
Committing to One Thing
If you are having trouble connecting with your church family, are you trying to connect with them?
What I am finding is how often people say they can’t seem to connect with others, but are uncommitted to opportunities that come up.
Maybe is easier than yes or no.
Risk is better avoided. Uncertainty can be dealt with, but knowing someone doesn’t want to hang out with you is hurtful.
Or we’re just over-committed.
A friend was relieved when I stopped creating more websites. He doesn’t understand how I work, but the websites each have their own brand and purpose which satisfies my creative nature. I can work contentedly within these sites. That’s the key. Knowing when to stop and be able to work within the dimensions you have created to make meaningful connections and serve your community.
Being slightly under over-committed might make room for those connections that you desire. Do you know what you could do with that free time?
- Risk saying yes or no, and be known as someone people can depend on to show up for things.
- Build a thick skin for rejections that will come.
- Don’t take a no personally.
- Be available.
That last is one of my rules.
Be available means being slightly under over-committed so I can serve others through listening and loving by spending time with others either online or in person. My to-do list is not more important than the people I come to know in person or online. And that means, I show up to serve every day, and I encourage you to do the same. More than this, I encourage you to risk that emotional connection with others.