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.

Welcome Back Kenya Team

It was great to see Regina, Carolyn and Elise tonight. They arrived back from Kenya this afternoon. I loved hearing their stories and loved even more the excitement they brought back.

This trip actually had two missions. One was to provide training to local children's leaders and pastors. They had around 65 people show up for the training. It's amazing to think that around 65 churches are going to be better at children's ministry because of the three of them.

The second mission was to listen for God's voice as He continues to prepare our church for The PEACE Plan. God has been leading us to Kenya for several years now. This past year he began to impress on a couple of people that He was leading them to be involved in PEACE through working with orphans.

At the end of their trip, I believe our team experienced a divine appointment. I've copied their blog entry from that day. I can't wait to see what God does.

Sunday, April 19, 2009

This is our last contact from Kenya. We had an amazing experience on Saturday and we will ask you to pray about this after I share with you. We went with the pastor and some others from church to the slums.....I had asked to see a children's home. I had been to an orphanage in Jamaica and thought I knew what to expect. I was wrong. The orphanage in Jamaica was a palace compared to what we saw Saturday. If you saw Slum Dog Millionaire you MIGHT be able to picture what we saw. Raw sewage and house made from scraps. I was SURE that the orphanage would be better. WRONG AGAIN. In a building that we would not let our homeless guests sleep in, we found 70 orphans, street children. We would not let our children even step in a building like that. I though parts would tumble down around us. The building should have housed 20 and it had 70. That is very common. There was no plumbing so the people use bags and then throw them. That could explain the smell and the flies. The children are not allowed to go outside to play because they would be in danger, so they play in a TINY courtyard. The adults do their best to serve them. A building with no ventilation and dirt floors is better than a child being at risk is the theory. Some of the children have HIV, some do not, but they are not sure who does and who does not. It was AWFUL. Our dear Pastor Charles even shed a tear. He had not been in there before. Our driver is the pastor's wife. She looked at me and said, our ladies group has talked for years about helping orphans, and now I know we have to. I asked her how she would do that.. She then explained to me that she and some ladies took one year and saved enough money to buy a piece of land. They have been waiting for help to build something on it. I asked if we could see it. She called the other women and we went to the land. Three white women and 5 African women stood on top of a hill, the wind blowing our hair as we cried out to God together for this land to be used to get children out of such dark places. It was a powerful moment for everyone involved.

Great Songs in Kid's Movies

I think it's awesome how today's kid's movies are using songs from the 80's. My kids watched Bedtime Stories several times last week while we were making the 8 hour trek to North Carolina. They loved the songs so I went to Itunes and downloaded some of them.

Yesterday, as Andrew and I were driving, he and I were rocking to Journey's Don't Stop Believing. He also loves, thanks to Guitar Hero, the best song ever written - Band on the Run.