A Global Missions Primer

Every few months, a high school or college student wants to sit down and talk to me about their interest in going on a missions trip. Usually, I try to sit down with them in person to help them think through it a bit. This usually entails two things: First, talking with them about their desires, experiences, and talents. It's an effort to play to their strengths from the very beginning. Secondly, I try to give them the "Global Missions 101" talk. Drawing the world on a napkin [but not much bigger] always helps too.

So this post is about the essentials of global missions in 11 minutes. If I could distill it down to the essential concepts, here they are. These are concepts that should shape action as students contemplate contributing to global missions. In my experience, the average suburban, Christian high school student has no idea about most of these concepts. So, this is an attempt to give them some important information, so that they know the world is really big and that the world really needs them. Here we go.

::: Concept #1 - The Unreached
Quite simply, this concept refers to people who have a 0% chance for hearing about Jesus. Zero. No missionary, no evangelical church, no Bible radio. Most likely, they will have not even heard the name of Jesus. The rough approximation right now is that around 40% of the world is currently unreached.

Related concept - peoplegroup - breaking the population of the world into affinity groups by culture, language, worldview, etc. [versus geopolitical countries]

For more info:
http://www.joshuaproject.org
http://www.peoplegroups.org


::: Concept #2 - The 10/40 window
A geographic window of the world referencing those regions of the eastern hemisphere located between 10 and 40 degrees north of the equator. The reason that this window is important is because it contains both huge populations of those that are 'unreached' [see #1] and huge populations of the world's impoverished. This area of the world is also home to an overwhelming proportion of children and some of very harshest and most remote living conditions.

For more info:
http://home.snu.edu/~HCULBERT/1040.htm
References to the "10/40 window" on this blog


::: Concept #3 - The Current Missions Disparity
A tiny fraction of the global Church's resources are going to the unreached. The going estimate is .5% - right, half of one percent. So for every $100, fifty cents is going to support the unreached. Not just budget and spending, but human capital as well. The current disparity of both staff and spending is an important thing to keep in mind, even if you aren't necessarily going but just sending.

For more info:
Where Workers Serve


::: Concept #4 - Europe
From the European Spiritual Estimate:
- only 4.2% of Europeans follow Jesus and are actively concerned about the people around them following Jesus.
- this study estimates that there is only one Gospel Oriented church for every 27,749 people in Europe.
Although the 10/40 window is huge, Europe is quite strategic as well. People there are still interested in spirituality, just not the church, as evidenced by the recent fact that the name Muhammed is number 2 in baby boy names.

For more info:
European Christian Demographics
European Spiritual Estimate
YWAM Europe's statistics


::: Concepts #5 - Other Important Concepts
- Global, urban migration
More of the world lives in urban areas than in rural areas now, meaning that cities are more strategic than ever.

- International youth ministry
Ninety-seven percent of the world's trained youth workers live and work in the United States, ministering to less than 3% of the world's youth population.

- The African AIDS crisis.

- Don't underestimate your skill of knowing the English language.


In conclusion, we are living in unprecedented times. The problems facing humanity are large, complex and important. Hopefully, these concepts have given you a little dose of the world's realities. The first step is to understand the world. Then, gather all the creativity, resolve, innovation, risk and faith you can in order to create a future that is Jesus-centered. Humanity is counting on you.

The End of Poverty - Chapter 1

Some friends and I are going to be posting some notes and reflections from The End of Poverty. [If you are reading this via an RSS reader, this post will probably be updated quite a bit.] This is the book that the One campaign is based on and if you like reading this blog, you should read this book.

My rough notes:

- Malawi – The Perfect Storm for the Poverty Trap
Bangladesh – On the Ladder of Development
India – Center of an Export Services Revolution
China – The Rise of Affluence

- Percentage of people that live in rural areas - the relationship between economic development and population that lives in rural areas
Malawi – 84
Bangladesh – 76
India 72
China 61
US – 20

- What do these four widely divergent images of the globe show us? We see an almost unimaginable divide between the richest and poorest parts of the world, with all the gradations in between. We glimpse the pivotal roles that science and technology play in the development process.

- If economic development is a ladder with higher rungs representing steps up the path to economic well-being, there are roughly one billion people around the world, one sixth of humanity, who live as the Malawians do: too ill, hungry, or destitute even to get a food on the first run of the development ladder. These people are the 'poorest of the poor' or the 'extreme poor' of the planet. They all live in developing countries (poverty does exist in rich countries, but it is not extreme poverty). Of course, not all of these one billion people are dying today, but they are all fighting for survival each day. If they are the victims of serious drought or flood, or an episode of a serious illness, or a collapse of the world market price of their cash crop, the result is likely to be extreme suffering and perhaps even death.

- All told, the extreme poor (1 billion people) and the poor (another 1.5 billion) make up around 40 percent of humanity.

- The overwhelming share of the world's extreme poor live in three regions: East Asia, South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

- The greatest tragedy of our time is that one sixth of humanity is not even on the development ladder. A large number of the extreme poor are caught in a poverty trap, unable on their own to escape from extreme material deprivation. They are trapped by disease, physical isolation, climate stress, environmental degradation and by extreme poverty itself. Even though life-saving solutions exist to increase their chances for survival – whether in the form of new farming techniques, or essential medicines, or bed nets that can limit the transmission of malaria – these families and their governments simply lack the financial means to make these crucial investments. The world's poor know about the development ladder: they are tantalized by images of affluence from halfway around the world. But they are not able to get a first foothold on the ladder, and so cannot even begin the climb out of poverty.

My thoughts:
1. This relationship of what percentage of people live in urban vs. rural areas and the 'progression of development' reminds me that we are living in unprecedented times related to urban and global migration. There are good, logical reasons why people are moving to the cities - and some of the reasons are literally about life and death.

Related:
The BBC series on global migration.
Urban migration
So although this poverty issue is huge outside of the US, we don't necessarily need to go abroad to make an impact on someone who has lived with the realities of poverty first hand. We can probably engage in any major city in the US, for instance working with refugees, international students or connecting with English classes.

2. The extreme poor related to the 10/40 window.
Most of the extreme poor live in the 10/40 window, yet only about 8% of all Christian missionaries work there. Without getting too far ahead, the types of solutions offered in the book in the later chapters offer some phenomenal opportunities for the Church to take the lead in the fight against extreme poverty.

Perspectives - Summit Grove

Most readers know that I teach for Perspectives a few times a year, a semester long class about global cultures and missions. It's always fun. Last Friday I taught at one of their intensive classes, meaning all 16 weeks crammed into 5 days. Summit Grove Camp hosted the week and they've been hosting this intensive in early January for at least the past few years. If you enjoy reading some of the stuff I write about on this blog, you would love the Perspectives class - it is one of the most powerful venues for helping people get involved in crossing cultures.

Some observations from last week:
+ The Summit Grove class seems to grow more spiritually potent every year - there is this interesting feeling to it.
+ This year's attendees included people from Minnesota, Texas, North Carolina, Connecticut, a student from Hong Kong studying in DC for the year and a man from Congo, with his two boys.
+ Also an interesting mix of people: church planter, couple in second career doing missionary care, mobilization rep for Serving in Mission, a good number involved in missions strategies with their local churches.
+ The class coordinator showed a great video before my lesson on unreached people groups and the 10/40 window but that also included references to immigrants, refugees and international students. Perspectives was very 10/40 window heavy a few years ago and I'm glad to see the subtle shift to include current global realities.

Registration is open for the Spring - can't recommend this class highly enough.

Urbana as a Mobilization Tool

If you haven't heard already, this year is an Urbana year. Urbana is InterVarsity's triennial student missions conference. The first conference started in 1946 and since then, Urbana has seen over 220,00 students be a part of the conference. From the Urbana website: Urbana has sought to accomplish four objectives:

1. Declare God's character and mission as revealed in Scripture (missio Dei).
2. Inform participants about the current realities in global missions.
3. Call all participants to join God's mission.
4. Motivate participants to serve in global and crosscultural missions.

We have sent some college students from GCC to Urbana ever since I can remember. In 2003, I helped coordinate our group that went. Although I have never been to Urbana, I think it can be a great mobilization tool, given the right environment and context. If you are thinking of sending a group of students, or even going yourself, I offer the following ideas to think about:

1 - In order for there to be real, sustainable transformation, your students should have someone to guide them through the experience. This is a large scale event with this year's estimates being 20,000 students, 200 seminars and 300 mission agencies. If you love information about missions and the state of the world, I'm sure Urbana has the best, most recent statistics, trends and figures [something this blog loves by the way.] But information alone does not transform and big is not always better.

Ideally, each group would have a mentor-type of person go with them, that would organize a time for the group to come together every day or other day, simply to interact about the information that the group has gathered.

2 - Do they have a calling to vocational missions? Our last group included a group of 5 guys that knew they wanted to serve short term within the 10-40 window. They had essentially already assembled a team, had a fix on a locality and had some thought out goals. At the mission agency fair, or whatever you call it, they had recruiters chasing them down. That summer, the spent 3 weeks in Kazakhstan. If your students have a call to full time vocational cross cultural missions, this would be the context to make a great connection. If they don't, they may have to wade through a lot of options.

3 - Follow up with the group. Similar to a reentry or debrief, people that go to Urbana need to process what they have experienced. In 2003, we hosted a party for the students that went, which served to give them time with each other just to talk about the experience again.

To give you a feel for our experience, in 2003 we had about 22 people from GCC go. A small group of these students had gone before in 2000 and were going for the second time. Roughly, 12 of this 22 did some kind of cross cultural experience since then - 4 of them with SPACE including this coming summer. Not all of that was missions either, some of them studied abroad. Out of the older group that went to Urbana in 2000 and 2003, a few of them decided to go for a year or more in the 10-40 window and are there right now.

So far, I don't think anyone in this group has chosen to be career vocational missionaries, although some are very close. But most of them are definitely people that live on a mission, that know that God chooses to bless others through them. Urbana didn't do that exclusively for them - but it certainly gave them the means to live some wild experiences in another culture.

Technorati tags:: student+missions, InterVarsity, Urbana2006

Int'l Night

One of the goals SPACE has is that we are giving our students a correct vision of the world and trying to catalyze their hearts to care about it. One of my primary means of doing this, up until now, has been exposure. Exposure to cultures, ideas about the world in which we live, real facts about the world out there. This also includes making sure that our students know the certain current missions terms such as 'the 10/40 window', and 'unreached people group'. It also includes our students understanding global movements, such as information about the relatively recent migration of large masses of people moving to cities and the massive existence of poverty and slums throughout large urban areas. And on a more personal level, knowing our church's investment throughout the world, and hearing about the missionaries that GCC has sent out.

Friday night, our elementary school hosted it's first ever International Night. It was put on by the PTA and a bunch of parents, teachers and volunteers. Throughout the evening, there were cultural displays on stage in the cafeteria, while certain countries had tables set up in the gym with displays of culture, samples of food and all kinds of other stuff. Each student that came could get a 'passport' and by visiting each country, get their passport 'stamped' with a sticker. If they got all of them, they got a special 'customs prize.' What a great idea. It was pretty fun and our 7 year old had a great time. My favorite was visiting the Domnican Republic table. When I mentioned that I had spent a month there and got real sick, the couple there said, 'Yeah, you shouldn't have drunk the water.'

What I didn't realize was that there were 19 countries reprsented there, meaning that there are at least 19 different cultures that are intermixed at our local elementary school. And the majority of them were from the 10/40 window. Are the nations coming to our doorstep or what?

It made me think even more of what a vital task SPACE has, to ensure that kids realize that mix of cultures right in their neighborhoods. And that the environment that kids are in during church is so different from the environment that they actually live in, go to school in, work and play sports in.

One of the pivotal things we are doing with the Seniors for The Black Hole is an exercise in culture. International Night has given me even more motivation to try and make that exercise even more impactful.

Seven Realities About the 10/40 Window

A great summary of the seven realities of about the 10/40 window. I can't say that I have ever really seen this articulated so well.
1. Historical and Biblical Significance
2. Unevangelized Peoples
3. The Heart of Religions
4. The World's Poor
5. Megapeoples
6. Megacities
7. Stronghold of Satan
Read the whole article here.
The author will be giving the keynote at the ACMC Maryland conference next month.

2005 SPACE missions prep meeting

What an awesome day yesterday! We had about 35 students show up for a 10-3 training day for all summer teams. We had four teams - Brazil, Trinidad, Light Company (middle school) and DC. Great turnout, there were only a few people that couldn't make it.

The morning had four workshops, with the four teams rotating to each one, for about 20-25 minutes each. The workshops were:
1 - learning in a different culture
taught by a couple from GCC that had served in Tanzania for four years
2 - team personality
a combination of Myers Briggs and Love Languages discussion, led by one of our SPACE leaders who has been to China, Panama, Germany and various other places
3 - developing your story
how to communicate your story about Jesus, taught by three post college guys and gals who are on a team from GCC going to Turkey for a few years, leaving in September.
4 - the state of the world
taught by me, going over basic concepts including the 10-40 window, unreached people groups and the latest State of Christianity 2005

We had lunch after the workshops. My wife slaved away the night before cooking 15 pounds of ground beef for taco salad. She IS a gem. She gets dragged into all the details of SPACE.... haha

After lunch, another friend MAB, came and did some team building exercises for us. Another set of 3 exercises, rotation style.
1 - team relay including spinning your head on a golf club 10 times.
2 - walking as a team with the hand/foot ski things
3 - team communication while on a balance beam

After being outside, the same teams got a few bags of big and small marshmallows and a tub of toothpicks. The object was to build the largest structure that we could in a certain amount of time. I think the middle school team won. Theirs was massive. My teams, on the other hand, was an art deco piece. Ha.

The final piece of the day was a debrief. MAB and I go way, way back, so it was fun to have him come out and do the team building stuff for us. His favorite phrase is "For every physical lesson, there is a parallel spiritual truth." The discussion was very engaging, lots of kids were willing to talk and dive in to discussing that principle from the stuff they just did. Some ideas that came up included: its not easy being first, you have to learn to work together, chaos is not always bad, and it's hard to know when to lead.

Overall, I think the day was a really big success. My two main goals were [1] to give these kids some great perspective from people that have been involved in missional experiences and other cultures and [2] to have a great time of bonding with their teams.

Photos: The Brazil team, minus one female leader; our SPACE 05-06 intern, E, spinning her head on the golf club; the LC marshmallow structure; the Trinidad team on the beam; the Trinidad team minus three team members

SPACE summer 2007 update

Hi Dear friends of SPACE,

Thanks so very much for your investment in SPACE [Students Prepared to Act for Christ's Empire] - Grace Church's student ministry's mission and service facet. We are thankful for you and your support for us. Already we find ourselves in early August and we've had a very busy but exhilarating summer.

We are thankful for three trips have gone out and come home safely with stunning feedback. Even more exciting, we know that students have been marked by these experiences:
- A team to England working with YWAM Marine Reach in and out of Liverpool, where they had a chance to give boat tours, serve the crew with energy and encouragement and bless our extended network of Grace families around the world. [Right before the bomb scares too...]
- A team to downtown Baltimore serving with Chain Reaction, blessing and serving downtown neighborhoods via a partnership with a local church. Best story - our team helped clean up the grounds of a local police station and no one had ever done that for them before.
- A small group of middle schoolers who assisted locally with the Howard County food bank and prayer walked through a downtown Baltimore city block, the sight of an inner city Adopt A Block movement someone from GCC is assisting with.
- All three teams have come back with awesome feedback from their hosts. We seek to send the best prepared, most engaged student teams.

As you remember, please pray for the two remaining teams this summer:
- A team serving in NYC with Urban Impact [8/5 - 8/10] - ministry focused on immigrants from the 10/40 window living in the city. They will be helping teach free English classes and also visiting an Islamic mosque. The world is indeed coming to our doors.
- A team traveling to Austria and Hungary, [8/8 - 8/19] serving with at the Christian Associates staff conference, running pieces of children's ministry for the conference. And actually... the whole Sheng family is taking part in this trip, so pray for D and I - for leadership, discernment and sending these students and our own
kids in the right trajectory for the nations.

As always to you friends near and far, blessings to you as you live out the Kingdom.
- tony
:::
some links you might enjoy
The Blog - http://tonytsheng.blogspot.com
Join M, a missional online social network - http://myimn.com

The Tallskinnykiwi visit

Andrew and Debbie Jones and their family stayed with us for a few days last week. You probably already know how much I've loved his blog over the years - it's the least we could do to host them as payback for all the inspiration and information.

They are entering into a new season of ministry soon, specifically with global nomads who they see hold so much potential for mission. So they've spent a few months recently driving around Europe and North Africa in an overland truck and are now in the States for a few months. They will return to Europe early next year, pick up their truck and continue on to what's next.

Since they are at our house, we've been kind of holding them captive to meeting some of our friends and students in the Ember tribe. That's been so great and there have been so many fabulous conversations with so many great people. One of my favorite parts has been both Andrew and Debbie always asking, "What about your story?" They have a serious learning posture.

Here are a few snippets of some conversations we've had over the past few days. It's been simply awesome.

+ on the future of missions:
the global recession - money has dried up, it might come back again but don't count on it.
more missionaries coming from third world countries, the US is not the biggest sending country anymore.
sustainability is a huge issue for missionaries - full time supported missionaries might be a dying breed - instead go get a degree with some skills and maybe get a job that allows you to go someplace.
lots of value in social enterprises.
we should think about 'character based missions' - the idea of supporting someone because they have great character first versus a strategy or location first.

+ on preparing for the mission field:
ministry skills really aren't that hard to learn. it's harder to learn how to be a good person, to be a person of character, how to be a nice person.

+ on missionary strategies:
unreached people group and 10/40 window focus were/are very helpful paradigms. maybe moving forward, its more helpful to add a few other perspectives to it, rather than throw it all away and start with a new one.

+ on Luke 10, the person of peace and possessions:
the disciples were told to leave their bags at home. instead, when they find the person of peace, that person probably has everything needed. sometimes when we bring our own stuff, it negates really needing that person.

+ on identifying, nurturing emerging talent and leaders:
it might already be in people around you. you can nurture it by encouraging them, helping them see other options for their ideas, coach and mentor them. lots of these people struggle with the institutional church because it wants stability. when these people don’t fly, they die.
find the real needs of a community, the really bad stuff and see who comes out to help. those are the emerging leaders that you want - no budget, no heros, no ego. they are already influencers so it's only a matter of time before they bring other good leaders.

+ one of andrew's favorite sayings:
go start your own damn church.

Not only a ton of stuff in each one of those points, but their whole family made an impact on our whole family. Especially in the areas of living frugally, being flexible to the Spirit moving, and broadening our thinking regarding mission in the world. The fun we had buying a 1987 station wagon at a car auction might be the epitome of some of those ideas. Yeah, long fun story....

Thanks again Andrew and Debbie. Besides grilling a london broil, helping find a leak in my furnace and babystting our kids - and those world famous crepes are really good! - we are most incredibly grateful for the gift of your time sharing your wisdom with us.

Related: Andrew's guest post on mission trip advice from 2006.

Thursday Potpourri

[Not blogging the Shift conference today but will be back blogging it tomorrow.]


::: From an interview with John Eldredge at Infuze Mag:

In John 10, Jesus says, "My sheep hear my voice. They follow me." That's the whole deal right there. But I recognize that we weren't taught this. The Christianity in the West, for all kinds of reasons, has just become an exchange of information.

::: Two great reads on Europe

- At a growth of only 300,000 people per year, Northern Europe will likely increase from ninety-four million in AD 2000 to only 101 million in 2025. It is heavily urbanized and over eighty-three percent of the population lives in cities. Over 180 cities have a population of one million or more. Northern Europe has the third highest concentration of elderly in the world: twenty percent of the people are 65 or older.
- Western Europe is responsible for over half of Europe’s GNP, and sixteen percent of the global economy. It is not surprising that both France and Germany have been attracting tens of thousands of migrant workers.
- 234 least reached people groups still remain in Western Europe.

- An Overview of Western Europe
- Least Reached in Europe both via Lausanne World Pulse


::: Cafe 1040 - training for college students to work in the 10/40 window - also via Lausanne World Pulse

Wednesday Potpourri

** Foreign Service Institute Language Courses
Breathefire posts about original texts and audio files from the Foreign Service Institute language courses - used at one time to train government employees in foreign languages. The courses are now public domain information so it is okay that the courses are online.

Available Languages:
Cantonese
Mandarin
French
German
Greek
Portugese
Serbo-Croatian
Spanish
Turkish
http://fsi-language-courses.com/

** 10,000 new churches in the US?
Steve Addison posts about US church planting trends versus population growth.

Just to keep up with the current US population growth between 2000 and 2004, 10,000 more new churches were needed.

It's an interesting dynamic to keep these statistics in mind as well as compared around the world - like an estimated 1.25% of Christian mission giving is going to missions work in the 10/40 Window, and ninety-seven percent of the world's trained youth workers - mostly from the US I would suspect - live and work in the United States, ministering to less than 3% of the world’s youth population.

** Global Startup Ideas

1. Build cheap Wi-Fi networks for Brazilian resorts.
2. Become a biodiesel producer in Argentina.
3. Create an ad network for India's mobile content developers.
4. Launch an exclusive social network for Russian millionaires.
5. Open an American-style restaurant in one of China's fast-growing cities.
6. Remodel homes for China's burgeoning middle class.
7. Flip mining claims in Bolivia.
8. Export the planet's next great wines - from Greece.
9. Import fine wines to upscale restaurants - in India.
10. Export gourmet coffee from Rwanda.
11. Become a social entrepreneur in South Africa.
12. Be among the first to invest in the new Libya.

The cover story from the August issue of Business2.0. #2 and #5 sound awesome to me.

** Water Statistics

- $46 billion - Amount spent per year globally on bottled water
- $1.7 billion - Amount needed per year beyond current spending to provide clean drinking water to everyone on earth
- More than one billion - Number of people worldwide who lack reliable access to safe drinking water
- 80 - Percentage of world illnesses due to water-borne diseases

The full post from the Defeating Global Poverty blog

Humana 2.0 summary

It was a pretty amazing time. Not just the speakers, but the friends that I went with, the old and new friends I met face to face and the whole atmosphere of the event.

::: Some Rough Notes
Alex McManus - Humanity in the 21st Century: Where and When Are We?

Characters in Scripture acted on - dreams, visions, impregnated, intuition - instead we are now overly dependent on rationality
Instead of what you are saying, what are you doing that requires explanation?
People don't change simultaneously in sync - there are those that get it but are unwilling to go.
Innovation is always desynchronized with the perceived present

Gerardo Marti - Idols and Avatars: How Leaders Manifest Spiritual Movements

The future of evangelicalism is assured but do we want to base the future of Christianity on the megachurch - less than 1% of churches today?
bureaucratization of the sacred
weary of churches only concerned with Sundays
Idol - concrete expression of communal worship
Luke 10 - the 70 were dependent upon strangers inviting them into their houses - do strangers welcome you into their lives? Can you survive outside the Christian bubble?
Avatar - physical embodiment of the divine
The future of Christianity is dependent on each person moving out and being an avatar of social change

David Arcos - Creative Sweat

unchurched people don't understand what we are saying
fierce imagination
creativity is the essence of our soul
3 points to unleashing more creativity
- clarity
Adam innovated to name all the animals from nothing
- space
reactive to reflective - savoring the moments of life - crockpot: need space for ideas to cook
- audacity
challenge convention - dig inside yourself

passion - you may not love it enough to create
love is the greatest motivator for creativity - it must be done
Most people live an imitative life - we are supposed to live an original life
Art is a matter of life and death for our friends

Alex McManus - Humanity in the 21st Century: Who and What Are We?

aged of connectedness - Acts - book about motion - not the book of Deeds but the book of Acts - book of Immigrants

the Gospel is moving - overcoming hurdles - culture to culture - expansion
The Gospel comes to us on the way to someone else - it is not about us and for us

Thorsten #5
[I was totally disconnected during this one - long story...
But it was something about house churches.]

Erwin Mcmanus - Leadership in the Mosaic Future

We've stopped speaking to humans. We've trained ourselves to speak to Christians.
The question is not what kind of church - the question is what kind of future are you creating.
Not about a successful church that has no effect on history. It's about becoming that kind of transformation agent in culture.

The human imagination is the most powerful instrument God has given us.
We are so fragmented we can't even make friends.

Not a Revolution [reference to Barna] - this is a disullsion. It isn't a revolution until things change.
Intimacy - Meaning - Destiny - every great film or story has all three themes.

We have given so much credence to Bible knowledge, we give a pass on character.
["Step Up" - message on the stage floor - Alex's subversive message to 'not tank.']
The danger is that we reach a level of influence where we are afraid to risk everything.
We experience God most profoundly when taking risks that matter.
Creativity needs boundaries. Boundaries are the friends of creativity. People with limited resources are extraordinarily creative.
[Erwin refers to Mosaic as "She". That is cool.]

Story of Dave Auda - will fight tooth and nail if he doesn't agree but once Erwin decides, will work even harder to implement so that it will be successful and that you would never know he was against it - be your leader's best implementor

The key to leadership is not that you know what you are doing. The key to leadership is knowing that you will prevail.

ps - read that last line again a few more times.

::: New and Old Friends
Old friends first time face to face:
Sam and Rachel - planting a Mosaic church in England
Stephen and Elizabeth - youth pastors in Chattanooga
Dale Swinburne - the Strengthsfinder Swami

I also met what seemed to be a different species of human - church planters, missionaries, etc. In our first round of 'speed dating', I met:
- a lead pastor who planted a church in Iowa, after serving a ten year stint in Bangladesh
- a couple who had spent around four months in the heart of the 10/40 window, amazing story which I'm going to tell you more about
- a retired pastor/missionary who had been in Japan for a while before and after planting [just a few] churches
- some guys getting ready to plant a church in Seattle
- Ted Law, serving a community in Houston

And of course, going to the conference with my old friends BalancingKiwis and LeslitaB.

I'll be posting more thoughts in the next few days.

Photo: Alex McManus, via Ted Law

Hungary Brain Dump

absolutely no rhyme or reason to this deluge of information - except to motivate you...

:: For a global missions org like CAI, even the kids ministry team needs to be at the top of their game.
identification/selection and preparation in both ministry skills and the big picture of affecting humanity

:: Debriefing in Munich
should have listened to D
ended up at a hotel too far in the suburbs
too much travel time to get into the city and landed too late in the day
team [minus Shengri-Las] still went into downtown Munich but it was a long day
and I left my wallet on an unattended cafe table for 20 minutes in the Munich airport.

:: CAI
organic, experimental, low-hierarchy, almost solely church planting, lots of tattoos
cool, young, hip missionaries, emerging culture

:: CAI internships - Brussels
either for post high school or post college
post high school - spend 3 months in Bible college in Europe - good time to acclimate to European culture
focused on action, experimental, etc. very well thought out
team leaders were youth pastors in the US and then in Europe before CAI
about Brussels - mix of French and Flemish
150,000 people, a third are immigrants
hq of the EU

:: Worship
in the sessions brought tears to my eyes every time - i have no idea why

:: CAI process
If you are not already living intentionally, being on staff won't make a difference.
Process

:: Europe
.05% in France are evangelical
Most people that come from Perspectives are very focused on the 10/40 window and Europe gets lost.
You have made it through your first year on the field, describe it. "Brutal." - Megan

:: Leadership
Everyone can be a leader - everyone can have influence over at least one more person.
Fuller's MA in Global Leadership sounds great if you are in your twenties or thirties

:: Say What?
There was a missions org in the conference center ending their conference as ours was beginning. They were your parents missionaries... and their conference [nor any of their conferences] did not accommodate any children. Not everything that falls under the label of "Missions" is inherently good or right.

Photos: Pirate Sven and EllyK, some of the girls and TriciaB and RobynB's VBS group.

SPACE's evolution - The Real World (1 of 4)

In 2003, I realized for the first time what the world really looked like. And I had no idea. At the age of 33, I heard about concepts in global Christianity that I had never heard of before.

Some of these concepts included:
- What it means to be unreached.
- The 10/40 window.
- How there could be a ratio of around 800 churches in America for every one unreached people group in the world.
- How Europe was losing both population and faith in Jesus.
- The disparity of investment in those already reached versus the unreached.
- What it means to really engage culture.

Even more striking, I knew that most of the Christian high school students in America had no idea about many of these subjects. The majority of our youth workers had no idea either.

I was on a mission to change that. Certainly not every high school student in America. Probably not every student in our youth ministry. But one would be enough.

Next: SPACE's evolution - Culture
[Related: A Global Missions Primer.]

Latest Kindling

I'm tired of taking care of the dying. While we are navigating a new reality, it's going to be back to mobilizing the living very, very soon.

+ I connected a church in DC with a mission org's local on-the-ground team in an urban center in Europe. Honored to be a fly on the wall reading the content about connections and context there. Small world - two of the people realized that they had actually met before.
+ One of the intern's synthesis paper contained content about global migration, the 10-40 window, people groups and stuff from Alan Hirsch, Ralph Winter, and the Joshua Project - it's like an Ember Cast thesis. Wow, I might be out of a job.
+ Having conversations with a college aged guy who had his heart on Haiti even before the earthquake hit. I'm working with him on some support raising, cultural expectations and defining success for his mission trip. Some of you know RyanB, SPACE intern TriciaB's brother. Always fun to see family members catalyze each other.
+ Helping throw a list of ideas together for a student who is pursuing a gap year. Like anytime someone suggests skipping or delaying college, I can neither confirm nor deny the existence of this list.
+ Spring time = summer mission support letters. Two camps of people - the ones with envelopes and the ones with imagination.

Ember X Saturday pm

After our final work day...
+ Mission strategy session including people groups, unreached people groups, the 10/40 window, and global urban migration. You know I loved this.
+ Team dinner in the city - so so good. Walking through city center. Team picture at the Rotund.
+ Introducing the topic of third culture kids. [Lots of them here in Aix.]

I Wish I Knew

Evaluation. Lots of questions we are working through. Such as:

+ Is the only hope for the 10-40 window the Church in the West? What about the Church of the South [South America, Africa] or the Church of the East [China and East Asia]? And what do we do accordingly?
+ Who has compelling strategies for the intersection of the global urban migration and unreached people groups?
+ What is the balance between a local church's resources and the Church [big C] being an incubator and catalyzing agent of talent, passion and resolve?
+ Is it really fair to God [not that He needs it to be fair] that we even declare limits on resources?
+ Have I plateaued as a leader?
+ Will the leaders that we have invested the past five years in continue to rise to the next level?
+ Where is my camera?
+ How much experimentation will hurt my children? [Boy that sounds weird.]
+ If I'm not deliberately part of something organic and decentralized, am I part of an institution by default?
+ Where will I make the most impact?

Hungary 2008 Adult Lead Team

Here are some quick introductions to the adult leader team for this coming summer. We also have a huge group of student leaders - graduating seniors that we are bringing on to help us lead and empower - tell you more about them later. Like every summer, I'm thrilled to be working with this group of people. When we recruit leaders, we look for trustworthiness, character and cross cultural experience. And they have to be fun. You will hear plenty more about these guys and gals, and not just from me.

D - my bride. You know her.

ESunde - our first SPACE intern in 2005-2006 and she's stuck with us ever since, leading on Cameroon 2006 and Hungary 2007.

LB - she's currently right now traipsing across the world in Asia and Europe with a YWAM DTS. Leadership experience includes Cameroon 2006 and Hungary 2007.

ErinOB - also returning from Hungary 2007. She will be the sole leader that will continue from Hungary direct to Cameroon this summer and it will be an awesome experience. A little manic, but awesome nontheless.

New to SPACE this year, sort of... - KevGN and his wife KeelyN - KevGN was actually one of my Dteam boys, long before the idea of SPACE ever existed. In many ways, he and his peers were the first [or second] iteration of student mission experiments, since I dragged him and his friends through a variety of different mission experiences before the medium called SPACE. Those fun times included three days of giving money away to new friends on the boardwalk of Ocean City, Maryland; and 11 days in New York City. The trip to NY was one of my all time favorites, when we introduced suburban kids to Harlem and when Kev introduced me to Avril Lavigne. KevGN has also been to Kazakhstan and Turkey. KeelyN has several years of cross cultural experience too, including serving two summers in a row in France [see her 2005 blog]. Oh, and they are newlyweds and will be celebrating their one year anniversary with all their new friends and teammates in Hungary.

Finally, last but not least, RachelJ. RachelJ is good friends with ESunde and is joining us all the way from Seattle. She was with us for the NYC Expedition and showed us her heart for serving and students. Another key barometer was that she was thrilled at the idea of writing "Ask Me About the 10-40 window" on one of the SPACE interns car windows. This is her first SPACE team, but she's been to Mexico and Honduras serving before.

Yup, a great team. Envy me.

Friday Burn

::: What the Steamship and Landline Tell us About the Decline of Cars
Link


::: The Most Crowded Part of the World
Link


::: 21 of the World's Largest Unengaged-Unreached People Groups with Representatives in the US
Link
Note NYC, Detroit and .... Rockville, Merryland


::: "I believe the missional challenge of the twenty-first century is the city. It is the new '10/40' window of this generation" -Lillestrand @pauldz

Photo: bathroom, on the train, somewhere between Bielefeld, Germany and Brussels, Belgium. July 2012.

Sheng invest

Some of you might be wondering what areas and ministries we have personally invested in. So here is an inside peek at our personal connections, areas of interest, and investments we make as a family.

* Two families in two different locations in Asia

* Two families that hosted SPACE teams
in Brasil and Cameroon. These are both GCC families.

* A family serving here in Columbia specifically with open air evangelism
I ran one week of beach evangelism with the father at OC, MD in 1992. He is an open air evangelist through and through.

* A family serving in College Park with campus ministry
Before their two kids, they were Dteam leaders with us and then left to pioneer a campus ministry in Melbourne. Back home now with two kids, they work on campus at College Park, MD.

* J - just getting ready to leave for Melbourne

* A GCC family serving in Western Europe
Friends that we met from GCC serving with a missions organization that has a specific focus for Europe.

* A Compassion child in Indonesia

I've been purposely obscure about names, missions organizations and any other pertinent details here because that is important for confidentiality. As you can see our interests lie in a few streams: old friends of ours, families that GCC has invested in, Asian cultures [of course, and I'm being serious here - because I'm Chinese], the 10/40 window, and Europe [because Europe is very post-Christian now].

These are our monthly contributions and don't think they are huge, because they are not. But, they are investments nonetheless, and we have a lot of fun with these connections all over the world. Every once in a while, we will also give away some money - which is also a lot of fun - based on various needs of people we know.