The "M" Word

Team Work

Our Short-Cycle Church Planting team launched on a four week adventure a little over one week ago.  We finished an excellent team training and then headed in different directions only to converge with each other on the other side of the country. 

Mark and I headed to San Diego to present our teams ministry at a large church there (see my post "Short-Cycle is a powerful force").   Next we headed to Georgia to meet the rest of the team for a week of activity.  This weekend we were driving all over North East Georgia to raise funds for the team.  First we had a banquet.  It was an experiment for us.  We had a $40 a chair dinner (steak) with a program designed to share our heart and present our need.  Conrad Westbrook was a big help during this banquet, helping to put the whole thing together.  (See the link "Help the Fatherless" to find out about Conrad's ministry)  We praise the Lord for those who turned out, they were a generous bunch.  Through the banquet we raised around $4500.

On Sunday, our team visited two churches to share the vision and encourage the saints.  Both meetings were special and the Holy Spirit really showed up.  We know God is doing something in our midst.

Today, we are at Toccoa Falls College (TFC) attending the World Outreach Conference (WOC).  The speaker is Todd Adams a CMA missionary in Papua, Indonesia.  He did a great job in the morning session and is a lot like his dad, Virgil Adams, with great stories of life with the Dani tribe. 

So here we are, team Central Asia One, recruiting for Avant Ministries and raising support together.  It is exciting to see how God is bringing us together to reach our goal quickly.  The next three Sunday's we have various meetings at churches in which some or all of our team will be present.  Pray for us as we present our ministry to the Body of Christ looking for those stewards that God has elected to use to support this ministry.  Could you be one?  Just follow the link on the left and give. 

Big Decisions create Big Doubts

Well we finished team training.  The last two days of training were so intense, I didn't even have a chance to blog.  Saturday, I spent the day going from watching Matthew win his group in a wrestling tournament to Leah's basketball team dominating another group of girls.  Today, I took off to San Diego for a ministry presentation with a side trip to deliver some good news to a cousin I have never met.

So now I sit in a hotel room in Santa Maria, California dwelling on the last few weeks, looking forward to those coming.  As a team, we saw clearly that our task at hand is to raise our support and get to our destination.  Grappling with this reality drove home the magnitude of each of our decisions to go to the mission field.  Whenever one sees the magnitude of any decision, doubt is quick to follow.

Not the kind of doubt that questions the importance of our message.  Not the kind of doubt that questions the validity of our call.  It's the doubt of our ability to live up to the greatness of our cause, the evangelization of a people.  However, this is a doubt that only faith can dispel.  Faith that says a great God can do great things through the people that He made in His image and then called to be His own.  (Thought I was going to go for the worm cliche, did ya?) 

I ask you to pray for us.  Pray for Central Asia One (our team name) as we prepare and connect with those who want to partner with us in this ministry.  Pray for the Lord to send these workers in the harvest field.

Life Histories equal Emotional Drain

Yesterday we told each other our life histories.  A life history is not just a testimony, although that is a vital component of any Christian's story.  You see, on a high performance team trust is the key ingredient.  Without trust everything that is high performance unravels.  So how do you build trust?  One building block is getting to know each other, hence the life story. 

To tell our life stories, we spend a whole day listening to each others ups and downs from before Christ came into their lives and after.  We hear about their family and their work experience.  We specifically ask for lows and crisis moments as well as highs and successes.  The failures we have play a vital part in who we are in Christ.  We want to know about that.

Standing above all the ins and outs of each of our lives is one key fact.  God brought each of here at this moment for this task of planting churches in Central Asia.  No one could deny this.

We made great strides in trusting each other yesterday.  It was a blessed day that was topped off with enjoying each other bowling (too bad I lost each game).  Trust is only built by openness and transparency.

ENFP vs. ISTJ

Today, central.asia.one came together.  This is our team going to Central Asia to participate in what we call Short-Cycle Church Planting.  There are six of us, six men and women who are ready to lay their lives on the line to see the Gospel of Jesus shared with people who have never heard.

One thing we do in our team training is take a healthy look at our personalities and how that effects our team.  I am a ENFP according to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.  This means that I am an extrovert that uses intuition, feeling, and perception to formulate decisions and live my life and function on our team.  As a team leader I am also responsible to know and understand what the personality type of each team member is and how that effects what they do on the team.  Through this process we discover that each team has it's own personality because of the sum of each individual on the team.  Our team's personality is ISTJ.  This means our team is more introverted and uses sensing instead of intuition, thinking instead of feeling and judging instead of perceiving.  In other words, our team is the polar opposite of my personality.  WHAT A CHALLENGE!! I LOVE IT!!!

We are also exploring in detail what our roles are as team members.  What makes me feel strong?  This becomes a role.  As the days unfold, I will tell you more about our roles.  One team member has already expressed he is a researcher, a teacher, and an expert in a certain area.  This a role that is vital to the success of our team.  Thank you God for making us each unique.