Brokenness & Transformation: A Lent Meditation

Our old bathroom had two rooms: one for vanities, the other a toilet and tub.
Dark and confining. Functional not inviting.
Cheap white tile and brown stick-on linoleum,
green walls, pickled cabinets, bisque porcelain.
Displeasing dissonance. All must go.
Potential: Could it be better? Brighter?

An afternoon with Jack, Travis and a reciprocating saw begins a radical transformation.
The right tools make the job much easier.
Demolition brings dust and splinters and draws some blood.
Ominous stains lurking behind the tub, the stubborn wall -
they fought hard but they’re gone now.
Brokenness: Things must get worse before they get better.

Virgin wall board, stylish tile, fresh paint, polished granite, new hardware.
Color. Space. Light. Life.
Restoration and Invitation: Come on in and stay awhile.

My heart has two personas: one for my vanities, one that longs to be clean.
Anger and love. Competition and compassion.
Functional but not always inviting.
Stubborn habits, selfish ambitions, proud defenses, carnal passions.
My talents, my dreams, my experiences, my strengths,
me, me, me, me.
Displeasing dissonance. All must go.
Potential: Could it be better? Brighter?

An afternoon with Jesus on the cross begins a radical transformation.
The Roman tool of punishment makes the job much easier.
Death brings dust and splinters and draws much blood.
Ominous stains of my sin, my stubborn will -
they fought hard but have been crucified.
Brokenness: Things must get worse before they get better.

True faith, fresh hope, pure love, new freedom.
Color. Space. Light. Life.
Restoration and Invitation: Come on in and stay awhile.

klc, 3/09

Becoming A Man of Prayer...Again

In January 2003 I became a man of prayer. It happened in this way....

A few days before Christmas I had received an urgent phone call. A last-minute cancellation provided an opportunity to teach a week-long class on the Pentateuch to a handful of national staff members living in a creative-access country. I had another fairly consuming day job and I would only have a week to prepare. We'd be going six mornings in a row, 8-noon in class, with afternoons open for assignments and evenings dedicated to fellowship and tutoring. Duty and my need for a fresh challenge called, so I accepted.

As is often the case in creative-access contexts, we met in a walled, secluded compound about an hour outside of the city. It was freezing cold - outside and inside. We needed to maintain a very low profile. Once inside the gate, there would be no coming or going for the week. No email. Splotchy cell phone use. Self-imposed isolation. Instant monk.

The first two days I felt antsy. After teaching in the morning and sharing lunch with the students, I had nothing to do while they studied in the long, bitterly cold afternoons. I napped. I read. I cranked through my email backlog. As God would have it, John Piper's excellent, practical sermon entitled "Be Devoted To Prayer" made it into my inbox before the communication blackout. God had also been working in my heart over the past few weeks in conversations and articles I'd read, creating a deep longing - a yearning - to bring far more of myself and my burdens before him in prayer.

So I began to pray. I discovered that the more I prayed the more I enjoyed it.

Free and Formed. Desperate and Delighted. Explosive and Extended. I had always carried a prayer list for my family, my team, key issues, etc, but something new occurred to me. At the time my team was responsible for overseeing ministry efforts in over 100 locations by teams from a dozen countries. I was learning distance leadership skills. I knew I could never personally visit each team. But I sensed the Lord saying: "Ken, I am an expert at leading over distance. And there is no reason that you cannot personally pray for every one of these people, name by name, on a regular basis. Bring them before me."

So my personal development plan for 2003 was forged. The plan was very simple. Every Thursday morning from 4 - 6 am I would rise, open the Bible, and read until the Spirit impressed me with a passage. I would open my laptop, load our database, and simply pray that passage into the life of every person and team across our ministry. Some days it felt a little like a chore. Most days I felt a sense of peace, relief, and increased confidence that God was at work and everything was going to be all right. What surprised me was the increased levels of energy and awareness - my sensitivities to all other areas of the ministry began to grow, as did my love for people. At the end of that year, I remember thinking "Why haven't I been doing this more often?"

Now I have a different job with a broader scope. God is beckoning me to become a man of prayer...again.

“There is no better way to learn about prayer than by praying… It is good to debate the mysteries of prayer, to ponder the profundities of prayer, to learn the methods of prayer. It is better to pray.” -- Richard Foster

Communication means Loving Well

One of my core convictions is that Leading well is Loving well. Leaders end up communicating a lot: 1-on-1 and large groups, written and spoken, blogs and Facebook, texts and phone calls, formal and informal, face-to-face and over distance, planned and spontaneous. Yep, if you've got a burning vision you're going to find an audience to communicate with.

Seth Godin explains the critical role loving your audience plays in this recent blogpost.

Great Commission: Some Uncomfortable Truths

The church has made great progress in missions in the past century. Consider the last 25 years. I vividly remember being challenged as a college student to pray for, give toward or go to the USSR, Albania, Romania and China. At the time these four countries represented some of the most difficult, thorny, rock-hard fields for the message of God's love in Christ. Yet today all four of these nations have been fundamentally changed. The USSR no longer exists. Albania has been saturated with the gospel and hosts a thriving church. Romania has student-led movements all over the country and has been sending out missionaries for years, even to China. On a typical Chinese campus one in every five students who hears the good news will begin following Jesus.

What happened? God worked. He worked through the prayers of the saints, the obedience of his church, and the life-on-life impact of faithful believers. Wow. Be amazed!

But...we're a long way from done. My friend Paul frequently updates me on how well the church is doing on "getting to where we're not." Here are a few stats to bring some hard - and uncomfortable - data into the equation. One day people from EVERY tribe, tongue, people and ethnic group will worship God together, but...

Did you know...

• 2,251 languages have no Scripture and no one working on them.
• 1,953 languages have someone that has begun work but, as yet, they do not have one book of the Bible available.
• Impact: 300 million people living in 4,204 groups have no access to Scripture in their own language.
• There are many ways of figuring the number of unreached groups in the world. Since 2000, about 6,000 of 12,000 have been "reached," meaning there are at least 2% evangelical believers. Of the remaining 6,000 groups, 3,400 have no known witness for the Lord. There are about 600 million people (twice the population of the USA) in these Unengaged Unreached People Groups (UUPGs in missions lingo).
• We need revolutionary approaches to rekindle intentional outreach to the 1.3 billion Muslims, 1 billion Hindus and 700 million Buddhists alive today.
  
• The easy and difficult places have been reached. The most challenging, difficult places remain before us.
  

In spite of this...

• 94% of active missionaries are working among the 14% of the most evangelized ethnic groups.
• Of every $1,000 given toward Christian missions, only 10 cents goes toward Muslim evangelism.
  

I invite you to download this 3 page summary from the Lausanne Committee on World Evangelism and join me in praying through the top 11 priorities of the global church. Let's do what we can to change the world.