Why Arizona

The AZ trip is centered around two groups of people - the interns [and you know about them] and Ben Cloud. Three things that I appreciate about Ben.

He is an apostolic starter. Partnerships, expansion of the Gospel, momentum, empowering leaders, embracing the tension of chaos - he's got a great grasp of all of it. At the core, we need more starters and for them, Ben is great to learn from.

He has a holistic view about a local community and church. He loves the community that he lives in - just as much as his loves his church. In his mind, both exist integrated.

He loves his family and staff. One summer, he intentionally scheduled the summer off for all his youth volunteers, freeing them up for a summer of sabbath, serving in other ways or spending a good amount of quality time with their own families. Most churches would have fired someone for that.

It's easy to ask, why Arizona? Couldn't the energies and resources be spent on something else - say unreached or immigrants or orphans and widows? Yes, of course, absolutely. The reason this trip exists is to facilitate this team learning from Ben. We could do those things certainly. But I'm betting that this team expands the Gospel in those forms above and more, exponentially, from learning from Ben for a week.