I was at Camp Galilee for a few days last week, dreaming about what God might do with this facility. It was so much fun to be with people who can think out of the box, who can think differently and see dreams and get excited about what God might do.

Then I had lunch on Monday with Jeff Mould and Byron Low. They’re the people who are helping to shape the national staff meeting taking place next month in California. These guys are dreamers! They want to see God work in new and different ways, and they have a healthy and strong respect for the way God has worked at AMF.

I hope we never quit dreaming. I hope we never stop looking for new ways and different ways to present the Gospel in our country.

It was fun to be with two different groups of people from different sides of the country and from different age groups, but the one thing they share in common is they believe God has given them a dream, and they are going to pursue it. I hope that is the way we operate in our mission – that God would give us dreams and we would do everything we can, by His Spirit, to accomplish them.

There was nothing fancy. The story was told with flannelgraph. There were no guitars and no special music. It was just Brenda up front singing and leading Bible club, as many of our missionaries do.

The students were from relatively poor homes. My mind goes to a particular young girl who had a terrible overbite. I think she was small for her age, and she obviously had some challenges, but I watched how the Bible club equalized everyone. Whether they were first graders or sixth graders, they all sat and listened to the story. They all sang the songs.

What amazed me about this morning was how simple it was. Sometimes we get too complex. Sometimes we get too hung up on all the stuff we need for ministry. But Bill and Brenda Bennett – like many of our missionaries – just quietly go about doing their job. I’m so proud of what God is doing and continues to do through people like Bill and Brenda.

Earl told the story calmly, but there were several other interviews I watched on the same incident, of people who were very peripherally involved but seemed to have more knowledge than Earl and the rest of us who were actually part of the incident. One girl told reporters how proud she was of her boyfriend because he sat on the man, but that never happened. There was another interview of a guy who had not gotten involved at all but seemed to have intimate knowledge of how the pilots (who, by the way, never came out of the cockpit) responded to the situation.

It just reminded me that each of us has two choices when we see something happen – either tell the truth as accurately as possible, or sensationalize it and try to make yourself look good. I watched Earl respond well on the plane and in interviews, and then I watched other people jockey for publicity and attempt to make themselves look like heroes. And then I heard those same people wondering out loud what United would do to reward them for this heroic action.

You know what? Those of us in AMF are to be more like Earl than the publicity hounds. We are to do what is right. We must do it accurately, do it quietly, and do it in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. We don’t look for glory, and we don’t look for people to pat us on the back. Our reward is with our Father in heaven.

Our plane was diverted to Denver. The FBI came on the plane, and it made several news reports. What was amazing to me was how everyone disregarded the danger. We all just jumped up. The man had two bags and a fanny pack, and after we rethought the moment, we realized we had no idea what was in those bags. The community of good Samaritans who gathered around to keep the plane safe was untrained. None of us had ever had this happen before. But we all acted rightly.  It didn’t matter what color we were, what age we were, what kind of shape we were in – everyone in the first-class cabin worked together to bring the situation under control.

When the young man was subdued in seat 2B (I was in 1A), we began to talk to him to find out what his issues were. He was very, very scattered and almost incoherent.  I got down on my knee in front of the man and helped him calm down, asking him his name, talking to him, finding out a little about his life. He would be perfectly normal and then kind of flip out for a while.

It was an experience I will never forget. The plane landed and the FBI came on to take the man off the airplane. We were all screened and had to go to a different airplane. About five hours later, we were back on the airplane. The eight of us who were in first class were in our usual seats on a similar airplane, but something had happened to us. We had had an experience that brought us together, a community of crisis that was amazing. We began to share our lives together during the new flight. Even the flight attendants sat down and were more interested in who we were because of our shared experience.

I’m not trying to draw too much out of this experience, but it did cross my mind that one of the things that brings our mission together is our common focus on sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ. Those kinds of common work moments focus us in on what we are attempting to do. Our clear focus – our clearly articulated, laser-pointed focus – brings unity. It’s when we take our eyes off our focus and turn from Christ, Whom we serve, that we get disunity.

May we keep our focus and be a community of believers acting rightly for the glory of God.

My understanding is that it takes about forty-five minutes for United Airlines to make that transition. That time includes unloading and loading the baggage, fueling, draining the airplane’s lavatories, the pilots’ post- and pre-flight checks, the flight attendants’ preparations, the security checks, the safety checks – a good number of people work on those details in order to turn around the plane as quickly as possible. In fact, they turn it around faster than the plane gets up in the air. Their efficiency determines how profitable the airline is.

That’s one reason Southwest Airlines is so profitable. Their time to turn around an airplane is only twenty-two minutes. My understanding is that Southwest Airlines looked at how many people it takes to turn around an airplane and are doing it with 25% fewer people, not because those people weren’t important, but because they realized they could be more efficient. They took those jobs and turned them into customer service positions so that the customers – the end users – would feel more comfortable with the airlines, and Southwest Airlines is enormously profitable.

Southwest Airlines is also profitable because it doesn’t have hubs. If I fly United from the West Coast to the East Coast, I normally have to stop in Chicago or Denver and change planes. You don’t do that with Southwest; you fly point to point – no hubs. It allows for more efficient use of the airplane and the personnel.

As you read this post, you may be thinking it is a lot of business babble, but I think there is a lesson for us to learn – that sometimes old patterns get in the way of new ideas. Someone thought differently about travel. Someone thought differently about a plane being prepared for a new fight. As we adjust to our changing culture and our changing economic situation, we have to think in new and different patterns to accomplish the same thing. With United and Southwest, it’s getting planes in the air and moving people from one city to another. With us, it’s advancing the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ in new, relevant, and powerful ways while continuing to do what we’ve always done – reaching out to those who desperately need to know our Savior.

Because He is my Shepherd, the second phrase seems to fit: “I shall not want.” Shepherds take care of their sheep. They don’t abandon them, they don’t let them starve, and they don’t let them be hurt.

We don’t want if God truly is our Shepherd. We don’t desire to have more and more things, and we rest with confidence that God will take care of us if we can honestly and authentically say, “The Lord is my Shepherd.”

In this economy, in this time when we are stretched and are having to make some changes, we as a mission – we as a nation, as a nation of Christ-followers – need to say, “The Lord is my Shepherd, and therefore I will rest in Him. I will not want.”

An example would be when the Children of Israel were thirsty and found some water in the desert, but it was bad water – it was polluted or brackish. God’s solution was to throw a block of wood in it, and when Moses did, the water became pure.

And when they were stuck between Pharaoh’s army and the Red Sea, when God stood guard over them with the pillar of fire and all night long and with the cloud by day, I don’t think any of them thought of the solution of stretching out a hand and walking on dry ground through the Red Sea. God again surprises us with different and new ways that we would never think about to solve our problems.

How about manna? When the manna finally came, the Israelites asked, “What is it?” They thought they were getting bread, something they were more familiar with, but God had an entirely different menu for them.
It reminds me that we need to be open to what God wants to do in new and fresh ways. God uses different ideas and different people. I was in a meeting this week where some very creative people were brainstorming on an idea, and I was amazed at how differently people think, but how – when you put them all together – they come up with solutions that I believe are Spirit-led.

I would encourage us to remember that God is God and we’re not. He creates streams in the deserts and makes flat the mountainous places so that we can walk with Him. His ways are not our ways, and His ways will oftentimes surprise us.

One of the things that happens each month is I get a one-hour executive coaching session with Jeff Abbott. He is one smart cookie. I don’t know why, but every time I meet with Jeff, I come away with something written on a napkin – a diagram, a Bible verse, or a concept that allows me to be a better leader.

What I love about Convene is it’s a group of businessmen – they run insurance companies and manufacturing companies and building companies – but they want to use their businesses for the Lord. My role in this group is to help them understand what kingdom-building is all about. So not only do I get ministered to by these people, but I get to minister to them. More importantly, I get to spend an hour with Jeff Abbott.

I wish that every one of the people in our mission – every one of the missionaries, every one of the leaders – could have a Jeff Abbott in their life. I wish they could have someone who speaks into their lives, someone who is smarter than they are. With having different life experiences, people like Jeff Abbott allow us to be better tools for God to use to build up His kingdom.

They sang about how they were born again; they sang about amazing grace. I thought to myself, This is what the body of Christ should look like: people who are redeemed by the King, people who are redeemed by the person and work of Jesus Christ.

One young woman, named Anna, gave her testimony. It was really easy to remember, maybe a dozen words. She simply said, “I did a lot of bad things, and Jesus has made me whole.” I thought, What a great testimony! What an opportunity we have to share the body of Christ!

It was amazing, because as I preached to a mostly white, “together,” economically solid congregation, on both sides of the room were these young people whose lives have been redeemed as a result of going through Teen Challenge. It was quite a contrast, and I wish we could bring more people into our world who have had the obvious, life-changing experience with Christ that these people have had.

I spoke about Moses and about how the presence of God – the pillar of fire and the cloud – moved between the children of Israel and Pharaoh when they were at the Red Sea. I talked about how the presence of God is powerful. The presence of God is an amazing experience that reduces us all to sinners in need of a Savior.

When Anna spoke, I could sense the presence of our God. Hats off to Teen Challenge! Hats off to what I saw this weekend when I preached!

First, we need to be open to God’s Spirit. As I read through the New Testament, particularly the book of Acts, where God was forming the church and establishing a new work through the Holy Spirit, it just seems that there was a freshness and an openness to what God was doing, a response that sometimes I think is missing from my relationship with Christ. As missions and organizations get older, they institutionalize. They forget that the pioneers of the mission were responsive to the Holy Spirit, were almost renegades as they felt the Spirit leading and directing them to new and different towns to plant Sunday schools (in our case). I pray that we will have an openness to God’s Spirit.

Second, we need to have an openness to communication. We need to be open to communicating honestly and authentically with each other. We need to be open to having conversations that may be difficult and that may create some dissonance. My prayer is that we don’t run away from those conversations, but that we run to them, that we work through them, and that we provide places of conversation so that communication is open.

Third, we need to have an openness to time-tested traditions within our mission. We will have to endure a significant amount of change this year. All of these changes were initiated by our financial condition, which we now, I believe, have under control, but which led to some philosophical and sociological changes. Yet, there are some time-tested things that cannot change. We can change our methodology, but not our statement of faith, our stand on God’s Word, our commitment to our country, and our commitment to relevant and practical ways of taking the Gospel to our country. We cannot change our commitment as staff in Villanova to listen carefully to those who are on the field so that the decisions we have to make will produce the least amount of disruption to the missionaries, nor can the people on the field change their commitment to trust that we in Villanova are doing our very best to make sure that we are sensitive in the way we provide the services and support necessary for the missionaries to do their work. We need to be open to time-tested traditions, our statement of faith, and our commitment to God’s Word.

Fourth, we need to be open to change. We need to understand that if we continue to do things the way we’ve always done them, the culture will pass us by. While we need to be open to time-tested traditions, we also need to be open to methodologies that are different and relevant today. The generation that will form our mission in the future thinks differently, speaks differently, and has a different vocabulary from what we’re used to. Meanwhile, the older missionaries who are on the verge of retirement have much to teach us, as they have a lifetime of seeing the mission morph and change. They have been through change before and can give us wisdom, guidance, direction, and security. We need to be open to change. If we don’t change voluntarily, we will be forced to change in the future.

Fifth, we need to be open with each other. More than just having open communication, we need to share our lives together. That’s why we go to area fellowships, have time in God’s Word as a Home Office staff, and have conversations in small groups. It’s my prayer that we get beyond the superficial level and are willing to say to each other, “This is what’s going on in my life.”

I’m reminded of a person who was frustrated with writing a God Story because his ministry is not going very well. He’s in the desert; it’s dry. He can’t see immediate results and therefore feels like he’s a failure. But the opposite is true – God brings us all through deserts. What’s wrong is that we don’t believe we have permission to say we’re in the desert, and so we pretend, or we make up the kinds of things we think are important for others to hear, but deep down we know we’re not being authentic in the kinds of things we’re saying. Being open with each other means being willing to allow people to fail and willing to allow people to be in the desert – and then to encourage them and help them by bringing them water in their dry times.

I’m looking forward to 2010, the year of openness.

We start out Christmas Eve by going to church. We don’t get dressed up – we wear blue jeans and sweaters. After church I drive the family around looking at Christmas lights, trying to find the lamest lights in the area. (They are usually on the same house each year.) We do this until our children, R.W., 24, and Barrett, 19, rebel. Then we go home, make a fire in our fireplace, roast hot dogs, and have chili dogs, potato chips, and Vernors Ginger Ale.

At the end of our meal, we have a birthday cake for Jesus. We sing “Happy Birthday” and decide who we should give a gift to in His name. This year after that party, we watched a movie (Home Alone) before bed. We have a tradition that we all sleep in the same room. So our adult-aged kids get their sleeping bags and get ready to sleep on the floor. For the next hour, I ask them questions like, “What are the five best things that happened to you this year?” and “What’s the best family vacation we’ve ever been on?” We talk about those questions usually until I fall asleep, and then we wake up the next morning and open our gifts.

There’s nothing special about any of those events – chili dogs, birthday cakes, and ridiculous questions when we’re all about to sleep in the same room – but, you know, it’s family. There’s something very important about family. Maybe that’s why the fifth commandment is about honoring your father and mother. It reminds us that the core of our society, the thread that holds the fabric together, is the family.

I want to encourage the people in our mission to make their families the first priority – to spend time with them, to love them, and to listen to them. The older R.W. gets, the more I realize he wants to have significant conversations with me. He wants to talk about his life plan. He even wants me to give him some advice. Barrett, on the other hand, we need to listen to. She’s full of ideas and full creativity, enjoying her first year at Westmont College so much.

Nurturing family relationships takes time and work, and I pray that our ministries will not get in the way of our families this year.

The common theme through all these discussions is passion. People are passionate about things, and when they are passionate about things they have strong opinions, and those strong opinions are valuable because they are driven by a person’s passion – not bias, but a passion from their hearts about what they believe God has called us to do.

I am so glad our mission is filled with people with passion. E.V. Hill used to say, “You can’t make a racehorse out of a mule,” and people with passion are racehorses. They’re driven. They have strong convictions, and they desire that AMF represent what they feel God has called them to do.

My job is to harness that passion – not to be an obstacle, and not to be a person who confronts them because of their questioning. Contrary to that, my job is to stir up more questions, to allow people to express their passions so that we’re able to see what God will do with this great mission called American Missionary Fellowship.

I want to tell you, my time with Jeff was amazing. We had several common experiences, but I was overwhelmed with his sensitivity to the Holy Spirit. We talked a lot about listening to the Holy Spirit and the role of the Holy Spirit and how many of our churches are afraid of the Holy Spirit because of some misconceptions. While it is true that when the Holy Spirit takes control, we lose control, it is also true that the Holy Spirit brings us into the presence of God in a way that we cannot experience on our own.

Jeff understands that. He understands that as a trustee, he must experience the work, filling, and direction of the Holy Spirit. He understands that it’s the Spirit who brings unity, and it’s the Spirit who illuminates truth according to the Scriptures.

I was really impressed with Jeff. I look forward to watching God use him to help us shape the mission in the future. The more I meet with our board, the more I understand these are people who desperately want to understand who God is and want the best – God’s good and perfect will – for AMF.

I remember we were driving in our little pickup truck back in the bush, on a dirt road where no goes by accident. This road is not on the way to anything. And as we pulled up to this little home with a grass-thatched roof where a pastor and his family were living, there were Christmas lights. Liberia had no electrical service, so it was run by a generator.  Where no one could see, where no one would drive by, this one Christian family wanted to celebrate the birth of Christ by lighting up their little hut.

Our street is full of lights. People who don’t know Jesus will still celebrate Christmas by putting lights all over their houses. In Germany last week, I went to the Christmas market in Frankfurt. Hundreds or thousands of people were milling around, celebrating Christmas.

This little baby, born in Bethlehem, still lights up the world. Oh, I recognize that not everyone who puts lights on their houses and celebrates Christmas has a personal relationship with Jesus, and I also recognize that the culture has dumbed down the meaning of Christmas into a consumer holiday. I recognize all that. But the fact still remains that the world comes to a stop on the birthday of our Lord and Savior, and those of us who are Christ-followers have a great opportunity to say to the world, “Joy to the world, the Lord has come! Let earth receive her King!”

Christmas is an amazing time, celebrated universally around the world. I pray that we will take this opportunity to share our faith.