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By Anonymous on Jul 19, 2014 11:10 pm
Before I (Greg) pick up where I last left off just a few prayer requests and updates.
-Nikki and I had a great moving sale this week. We were able to sell almost all the things we wanted to sell and with the help of several friends (Eric, Emily, Mike, Sue and more) create quite a bit of support dollars from it. To be sure some of the funds raised will be used in travel or other living expenses in the next few months. A huge thanks to everyone who helped AND who came out (even in the rain!)
-Tomorrow Nikki and I will be at two different churches. We’ll briefly present at New Venture Christian Church in Cumberland, MD and then help out with VBS at Laughlintown Christian Church in Laughlintown, PA. Pray for safe travel and stamina! It is a blessing to be able to share the vision of France for Christ at these two venues.
-We are still on target for a lengthy trip to North Carolina in August. Are in you in the area? Are you interested in hearing more about what Church Planting looks like in France? Let us know!
-We received another monthly commitment on Saturday. What a blessing!
-Be in prayer for all of our supporters as we are. Each individual and church has issues that they must face everyday. We are honored and blessed to be able to share this vision for France with so many!
Now back to regularly scheduled programming…
Vive la Whatever (Part 2)–People Do Care
It’s really hard sometimes to understand motivations. I really like basketball, particularly the NBA. In the NBA a bad team can basically not try for the entire season and be guaranteed to be able to pick the best player available for the next year.
Conspiracy theories will always be popular. Whether it is a government or secret organization there is a lot of effort and skill put in to blaming some organization for any instance of suffering and woe.
It is easy to think people don’t care. There is motivation (in some peoples opinions) for people to even not care about themselves. The theory goes the less people work and care the more ‘the government’ (there it is again) will take care of them. Usually that means it comes back to ‘me’ paying for ‘you’ to exist.
It’s en vogue for people to think no one cares but I believe that people do care. Since 2010 a website called ‘gofundme.com’ has raised $360,000,000. Their webpage says that everyday about 1 million dollars are raised. Most of these are weddings, surgeries, missions trips and many other humanitarian purposes. It might just be money but people give money because they do very much care.
I really don’t even want to look and see what political organizations have raised since 2010. The amount has to be a totally insane number. People do care. They very much do.
So why do we think they don’t? Number one (not in any order) is ‘You Don’t Agree with Me.’ The thought basically goes like this: an enraged person who is passionate about a subject encounters someone who is equally passionate about the opposing viewpoint of the subject. The conversation usually goes like this:
Person 1: Hi, don’t you think that chocolate ice cream is better than vanilla?
Person 2: No, I actually believe that vanilla is better.
Person 1: IF YOU HAD ANY TASTEBUDS WORTH A PENNY YOU’D ACTUALLY KNOW HOW TO TASTE SOMETHING.
Person 2: What? DID YOU INSULT MY TASTEBUDS! YOU WOULDN’T KNOW GOOD ICE CREAM IF IT SCOOPED YOU OUT OF BED AND PUT A BIB ON YOU.
And this continues on and on. We just simply don’t believe that people who disagree really can fathom what being smart really is. I believe that there are so many people who have a disconnect in the ability to disagree with grace. To be sure almost every topic in the world that we would seriously plug in here would be a bigger deal that ice cream but in no way does it change. How does this change or interact with missions work?
Every mission has value. I’m not (at this point in my life) compelled to move to Australia and plant churches. At some point in my life I might be but that isn’t a bit of what I feel now. Why? I can’t explain it. That doesn’t mean that Australian church planting or Estonian Christian Church Camps aren’t important because they are but that’s not where I am. That doesn’t devalue missions. We can all work together in our own fields. My dream is a world where missionaries don’t have to compete with each other but can complete a global call to Christ.
Speaking of a call to Christ our faith cannot be hijacked by our need to be correct or our need to save face (pride) when we mess up everything. When we get worked up it’s best to remember some basic Bible instructions, ‘Be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger.’
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