Vision

In a 2002 Dilbert cartoon, Wally hands a piece of paper to the "pointy-haired boss." The oblivious boss says, "Wally, your status report is just a bunch of buzzwords strung together." Wally responds in the next panel, "I've been giving you that same status report every week for eleven years." And in the third panel he adds, "Five years ago you adopted it as our mission statement."

That's the risk with a mission statement—that it would become a trite, trendy, and lifeless set of words that mean something at one time but die out after a few weeks of use.

This past Sunday a group of us met for what we called a "missions round table." The point of the meeting was to talk with others at SGC who are especially interested in the cause of foreign missions. We all agreed that the gathering was encouraging and exciting. God is accomplishing his purposes throughout the world, and it is a joy to hear about some of that. (Don't miss the end of this post where I explain who was there and what they contributed.)

THE BIBLE AND THE NATIONS

We began with a brief look at the Bible's promises regarding…

Hi! This winter, I will be taking a course called Perspectives that is about the role each believer plays in God's plan to reach the nations. It is put together by the US Center for World Mission, the publishers of Mission Frontiers magazine.

This afternoon I spent time with Benjamin Tangeman at the Cary office of Trans World Radio. Ben has been working for them for years and has been connected to them through his parents and grandparents for decades (he spent his first ten years on the island of Bonaire, while his parents worked for TWR). It was an inspiring look into a ministry I knew virtually nothing about.

Completing the Ugandan side of Josie’s adoption took just over five weeks. Eli and Esther returned to the U.S. after two weeks, and God taught me so much in the remaining three weeks about what it means for His strength to be made perfect in my weakness; His grace was completely sufficient for me - and for the rest of my family (2 Cor 12:9).

The rest of this story moves so much faster than the beginning, but now that I have the benefit of hindsight, I am clearly able to see God’s hand in the waiting. 

It was absolutely thrilling to have a baby in the house at last, but we knew that God was only just beginning the story of our family, and we were eager to see what else He had in store for us.

When Eli and I were married in 2003, we already knew that adoption would very likely be part of our story. We started out the same way so many other couples do, desiring a sweet, tiny baby (or several!) to call our own. However, my infertility had been diagnosed many years before, so we knew that God would be writing our story differently.

It's a big deal to join a church. It's a statement that we need others and that we are not alone as we live our Christian life. It's a commitment to partner with a group of Christians as we love God and love the fallen world around us.