Archive for the ‘Formation’ Category

Questions

Saturday, August 23rd, 2008

Along with pictures of friends, former students, grandchildren, and other bits of papers, the following words are taped to the wall over my desk.

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart …
try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms
and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue.
Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you
because you would not be able to live them.
And the point is, to live everything.
Live the questions now.
Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it,
live along some distant day into the answer.

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Stretching Every Nerve

Sunday, August 17th, 2008

In 1792 William Carey wrote a short pamphlet entitled An Enquiry into the Obligation of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens.  In just a few pages, he highlights the state of the world, reasons with his Baptist brethren about their obligation to obey Christ’s commission, and issues a call for them to take radical steps in order to “spread the knowledge of [the Lord's] name.”

During this past week I was in a workshop on the training of church members to give cross-cultural witness to Christ.  I noticed that the lady sitting next to me was reading Carey’s Enquiry.  After some time of reading, she turned to me and pointed out a passage toward the end of the pamphlet.  It reads …

We must not be contented however with praying, without exerting ourselves in the use of means for the obtaining of those things we pray for.  Were the children of light but as wise in their generation as the children of this world they would stretch every nerve to gain so glorious a prize, nor ever imagine that it was to be obtained in any other way.

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Like Hope for Chocolate

Tuesday, August 5th, 2008

There was a time I blissfully munched on Snickers and Almond Joys.  I thought these bars of sugar, nugget, coconut, and cocoa were quite a treat.  A good friend once referred to me as an ‘inhaler’ of common, run-of-the-mill chocolate sweets.  But, hey, this was all I knew.  Then one day I wandered into Wiseman House Chocolates, a place Texas Highways calls ‘Chocolate Heaven’, and now I am ruined.  I cannot go back to the other stuff.  Oh … I could, but I don’t want to.  The Gran Saman truffle is quite an experience, and once you have had this experience and are blessed with this knowledge, a brightly wrapped, convenience store chocolate bar holds little appeal.  I still occasionally go into the local gas station mini-mart, walk around looking for something sweet and chocolate, but walk out the door with nothing.  Why?  Because I know and recall the experience of something far better.

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Posted in Formation, Hope | 6 Comments »

Church-based mission formation

Saturday, August 2nd, 2008

For almost a year, Global Connection Partnership Network has been developing training that is church-based and deliverable online.  The training consists of forty lessons under the broad categories of Foundations, Character, Community, Competency, Church, Connection, and Covenant.  These lessons cover such topics as cross-cultural living, approaching people of other faiths, partnerships, and conflict resolution.  The launch of this new form of training will take place on August 14-15, 2008 in Arlington, TX.  Once a person is trained and certified to faciliate a learning group, he or she will be able to access the lessons and begin training people in the context of their local church.  To learn more about how to be part of this initial workshop, go to http://www.gcpn.org/missional_formation.html .

The church – what a great place to be formed for cross-cultural witness.

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