The Kingdom Is Like

This time 10 years ago, I was coming up on my fifth year of helping coordinate student missions at our home church. This included responsibilities for setting up partnerships, building teams, recruiting and training leaders and overseeing budgets. Our budget for that last year was $150K spread over 6 teams of 98 people in total, 3 teams of which were international with one team being gone for 4 weeks. I personally lead a team of 26 to Hungary and managed to meet another team of 18 in Paris and hang together for 2 days. [Logistical suicide - I loved it] And this was all on top of having a day job and a young family. It was a ridiculous, gargantuan amount of work, easily a part time job that took 15-20 hours a week sustained over months. The picture on the left gives you a little insight.

Over that season of five years, there was probably $500K of support, probably close to 400 students and leaders going on over 20 short term experiences. I had spent about a month away from home over the course of one of those years. Don't get me wrong - it was a fantastic, flourishing, lets-go-all-in season of ministry. Our family was uniquely marked for eternity by that season - we would not be who we are without it. I'm overwhelmingly grateful for it.

Contrast this to the last five years: 5 teams of 12 or less, about $135K in total, 10 or so interns over the past 5 years so far, a core list of about 20 Ember Guides.

The Kingdom is like a mustard seed, it is like yeast in flour, it is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls. Bigger is not always better.