It’s A Small World
While at the YWAM training center, I got to talking to one of the staff. She asked about my church. Of course I mentioned my desire for Trinity Hill to be a multiplying church… to make disciples who make disciples and plant churches that plant churches. “The Kingdom of God is better served by 30 churches with 200 people than one church of 6000” I said.
She said, “yeah… a river church, not a lake church.” <insert scratchy rewind noise here>
Haven’t I been hollering about this for years? Didn’t Val Highley paint me a picture from Ezekiel 47 about this very thing? She went on to say its something her pastor used to say. Turns out, I was in an exponential learning community with her pastor 10 years ago… that’s where we learn crazy stuff like this.
2. Mansfield Gets the Comeuppance We’ve All Been Waiting For… or DOES he?
A guy and I committed to pray for one another, specifically around being sure that we are being obedient to the heavenly vision, making sure we are not trying to do our own thing and slapping a veneer of Jesus on it. After some prayer, he mentioned he had an image of me washing dishes.
And you say “I knew it! You belong out of sight in the kitchen, you burly oaf!”
Ah, but I knew immediately what this was. I DO belong out of sight in the kitchen. But it’s for glory! I knew immediately it was confirmation… I knew immediately it was pointing to a key passage of discipleship multiplication: 2 Timothy 2:20-21. Joke’s on you: I am happy to wash dishes.
All We Need is Just A Little Patience
I am uncharacteristically patient lately. I’m more ok than I have ever been with a timeline that starts slow but will accelerate exponentially given time + some Holy Spirit
Because it turns out that God’s timeline is loooooong. 2000 years from Abraham to Jesus. 30 years from the first Christmas to Jesus’ first sermon.
Our Annual Conference has a “Global Partnership” with the Slovakia Annual Conference. The call to work together is one of those sweet things the Holy Spirit has put together. There is probably not another Conference we would fit with better. I will be doing some teaching, some encouraging over there. I am looking forward to mission trips back and forth.
34 years ago… hard to say that…I took Russian in college. Never really got to use it much. I wondered… why would you have me learn Russian, Lord? Especially when I have forgotten so much of it? When I did not use it as a preacher?
Maybe… maybe because it is helping me learn Slovak? Maybe God is doing something now that you have no idea how it will work out. Maybe for years you have not been able to see what He is up to. Then every once in a while you see a glimpse of the tapestry He is weaving… enough to convince you He is busy redeeming the time.
I took Russian because I wanted to read Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn. Never really could. Seems God had other plans.