Dangerous Surrender

I'm loving the Dangerous Surrender series we're doing on Sundays and in small groups. Seems like God is really stirring some hearts to tackle some giants. I was really proud of Andrew and his friend Josh for standing up in front of the entire congregation and asking them to help the kids in our church help kids in Afghanistan.

Here are some stats that we used in worship today as we talked about Pushing Back the Darkness and what to do about evil:

• Human trafficking is estimated to be a 32 billion dollar business in our world today.
• Each year more than 2 million children are exploited in the global sex trade.
• There are twenty-seven million people who are slaves today. There are more slaves alive today than have ever been in the history of the world.
• It’s estimated that about 300-500 million people contract malaria each year.
• Approximately 2.5 million people die from malaria (a disease we have a cure for) every year.
• Every 24 seconds a child dies in the world from the lack of basic necessities.
• There are over 500 thousand children in foster care in the U.S. right now.
• In the U.S. there’s approximately 3.5 million people who are homeless. 39% of those are children.
• There about 2200 people who are homeless in Fairfax County alone. One of the most affluent counties in the nation. Half of those are children.
• 3% of the population of our nation’s capitol have HIV/AIDS. There are more people living with AIDS in Washington, DC than in West Africa.

“Anyone who knows the right thing to do but doesn’t do it is sinning.” James 4:17

G3 Summit

G3 is hosted by Highlands Fellowship Church in Abingdon, VA. G3 stands for "the Global Glory of God." The church brings in pastors from around the world to train them to reach their community for Christ. This time they had 35 pastors attend. There goal is train someone from every country in the world, and they are well on their way.

Highlands Fellowship Church is in a small, rural community. The church literally sits in a corn field. But they are doing amazing things to spread the Gospel through something called The PEACE Plan. Not only do they bring leaders to them but they send team into remote villages. Right now they are working in three areas and take three teams a year into each of those areas.

They've developed a great plan where they help a village drill a well, develop solar hot water and solar cooking. They have also designed a system for taking cow manure and turing it into two forms of gas that will power a cook stove and a gas powered generator.

The goal is to work with the villages in the spirit of love. When someone asks them "why do you do this?" that's their opportunity to share with them the love of Christ.

There Pastor had a vision for this when one day he says he realized that "esus actually mean the Great Commission. That we really are to 'go into to the world'."

Swimming Lessons

Andrew and Abbey started swimming lessons Saturday. Reminded me of my college days when I was a swimming instructor. I taught one summer. We ran seven, one hour classes a day and lifeguarded four hours a day, Mon-Fri. Did that for eight weeks. That was probably the best shape I've ever been in, in my life.

I remember one scrawny, red headed five year old. The first night he did not even want to put his feet in the water. When he did he completely tensed up with fear. All I could get him to do for two days was get in up to his waist and hold on to the side and just walk along the shallow end. Two weeks later, on the last night he jumped off of the diving board into my arms and then we swam to the side together.

Great memories.

I Love Staff Meetings

I know the title might strike a nerve with some. I've heard enough horror stories about staff meetings to know that not all of them are good experiences. And I know a lot of people who dread their companies weekly staff meetings.

But I do love our staff meetings. We meet every Wednesday at Noon and it never fails that all six of us come with different ideas, attitudes, situations going on in our lives, distractions, etc. But an hour and a half later, as we are wrapping up with prayer, it seems like we always end up on the same page and encouraged.

So staff meeting is definately a high point in my week.

PEACE Field Trip

Some of our staff are taking a quick field trip next Thursday and Friday down to Highlands Fellowship in Abingdon, VA. They are doing a one day seminar to teach some of their best practices for Local and Global PEACE.


Jimmy Davidson is a great speaker and a creative pastor. I've met him once and had the opportunity to hear him speak twice. I look forward to chatting with him a bit.