Can you give God a tithe of your life?
@jabocobo1984 posted this comment on twitter tonight. ”are you willing to give a tenth of your life to be a missionary to another nation? if your answer is YES! let’s have a cup of coffee, on me”
(Pastor Jonathan Bocobo is our short term missions director for our Asian churches)
This tweet really got my wife and I thinking and talking as we enjoyed our date night. Although we have no plans of leaving Hawaii anytime soon, I love this idea.
Can we give God a tithe of our lives?
If He gave us on average 80 years of life, can we give Him just 8. Can we give God 8 years? What would happen if we said ok Lord I give you 8 years of my life? Send me anywhere you need me and I will do whatever you ask me to do.
In the midst of our busy lives this is a radical thought.
Would you be willing to pray this prayer????
EN2010
Every Nation Ministries is a movement of churches that exist to honor God by planting Christ-centered, spirit-empowered, socially-responsible churches and campus ministries in every nation.
Every few years we gather from all over the world to honor God. Here is a promo video of what is going down in 2010.
stm and love
I started a series on this blog discussing 5 principles we should be aware of in regards to STM (short term missions). Tempted to abandon the series I decided to finish it.
Here is a recap of the principles:
1. Faith
2. Humility
3. Awareness
4. Love
5. Wisdom
Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 1John 4:7-8
By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” John 13:35
The best illustration of this comes from the story of a young man who was raised in a radically Muslim nation. A nation where professing the name of Jesus could have you killed.
A Filipino missionary befriended this young man and began to introduce him to other Christians.
As this young man observed how the missionary interacted with his family and with other Christians the young Muslim man began to realize that there is something unique about Christianity.
In the face of extreme risk this young man committed his life to Christ, and today continues to walk with the Lord.
This Muslim man gave his heart to Jesus not because of a missionaries great apologetics, but because this missionary knew how to love others.
missions download
I posted my final thoughts from the congregation that we have been a part of for the last year.
Here are some thoughts from my experience with our missions team:
-I had an incredible opportunity with some great men and women of God
-Getting to know Jonas, hearing his story and working w/ him for a short season was a blessing
-I can’t believe I had a job that allowed me to visit the majority of the churches throughout the Philippines
-Michael P. once was described as the “Rambo of the east”
-I learned so much from this guy
-I am seriously challenged by his humility.
-Watching him interact with his family was even more unreal
-Jonathan B. has an endless amount of energy
-Jonathan’s ability to gather people is seriously ridiculous.
-gonna miss my provincial trips with Jonathan
-Mimi is definitely in my opinion a world class administrator.
-I would not have been able to accomplish anything that I did without her help
-Loved working with Rommel S.
-Super excited for how God will use him an
d Maan in the future
-definitely gonna miss the missions ladies. Arlene, Norah, Emma, and Ana.
-I definitely met some cool people doing some unreal stuff in some very dangerous places
-To be able to serve our missionaries throughout Asia has been an enormous privilege.
-my perspective towards short term missions will never be the same.
-STM needs to be ALL about what we can do for the mission field church
-I personally believe not engaging mission limits our understanding of God’s heart.
-I truly believe that anyone no matter how rich or poor can be a part of world missions.
-I definitely learned the importance of and challenges of communicating to large groups of people
-I truly believe that if used strategically STM can be a tool that will help us bring the gospel to every nation.
-I wonder if we could ever see thousands of small group leaders take their small group to make disciples in other nations.
I am totally amazed that God would allow me to have the opportunity to work with our missions team. It definitely has been a privilege and a blessing to be apart of our mission efforts in Asia.
3 thoughts
Reading a pretty good book right now. Trying to figure out how I can apply some of this stuff.
Here are 3 great leadership thoughts all leaders should remember:
1.spiritual renewal
-Our planning and effort is nothing compared to what God does. Growth comes from drawing near to Jesus.
2.restructuring
-The word of God never changes, but how we present the word of God does. Truth is useless if people do not listen to it.
3.vision
-People need to know what the next step is. If we fail to clearly communicate our vision people will fail to follow.
EN missions team
For the past year I have had a very unique opportunity to work with a team of people who oversee our mission efforts throughout Asia.
We currently have around 50 missionaries in cities that stretch all across Asia. Some of these missionaries serve God in very dangerous places.
Here is a recap of the last few days:
Thursday-Friday
-staff retreat discussing our School of World Missions. Our school is currently lead by Pastor Jonathan Bocobo as we equip and train missionaries
-we tackled topics such as school focus, classroom management, curriculum, scheduling, admission policies, and other logistical items
-I am super excited for our school next year.
Saturday
-attended a vision dinner for a missionary family who leads our church in a radically communist nation.
-Guys like this are my heros. It is an honor to even know them. I thank God for their lives.
I love my job. I am both sad and happy that we will be moving back to Hawaii.
macau
This coming summer we will be sending around 60 volunteers to Macau to help plant a church.
I had the privilege of meeting with the team leaders this morning to discuss how we can maximize our impact on the city of Macau.
Here are some of my notes from the meeting:
-Teams will be going in waves or around 12-15 people.
-There will be an overlap time of around 5-7 days where the incoming team will be able to continue the work that the previous team started.
-The goal is to provide consistant support that will lead to established disciples in the church.
-We will be launching a 1 life to live campaign in Macau in the month of April in an effort to draw students.
-our Ubelt, Malate, Angeles, and Olongapo churches will be collaborating to make this happen.
Here are some goals that we came up with for our STM teams:
Contacts established: 12-15
Salvations: 20
Disciples: 12-15 (Contacts who have gone through 1 to 1 and Victory weekend)
Big thank you to Pastor Gio and the team leaders who got up on a Saturday to talk about reaching the city of Macau.
