• Our hope-filled future is bound up in sharing the story of Jesus, in discipling others, in bringing those disciples together into communities of believers, and in developing and releasing those believers to create other communities... till Jesus the King comes again!

No time to think

Posted on August 5, 2014 by wtdavid

One of the things I enjoy about spending time away from work is being able to physically ‘take a break’ from all the technology that characterizes our lives in one way or another: responding to the constant e-mail traffic, writing another blog post, or just keeping up with what’s happening on the pages of my Facebook friends.

time to thinkGoing ‘off the grid’ allows one the time to step back to think, to read, and to reflect.  Times like this remind me of the need to regularly make space to think and not be so taken up with all the information traffic going on around me.

In a recent article in the New York Times, Kate Murphy notes: “You can’t solve or let go of problems if you don’t allow yourself time to think about them. It’s an imperative ignored by our culture, which values doing more than thinking and believes answers are in the palm of your hand rather than in your own head.”

Let’s not make the mistake of saying that one (thinking or doing) is more important than the other.  Let’s not get caught up in setting one against the other because thinking and doing are interconnected; they each support and nourish the other.

Rather than telling ourselves to spend more time in introspection or to spend less time thinking and just do something, we ought to seek balance in our lives.

How often have I used the phrase: “I’m just super busy”?  How often have you used a similar phrase?  That should be a signal to us that we are ‘out of balance’ and in need of readjusting, realigning our lives so that thinking and doing work together to allow us to live our lives well for the Lord.

 

Filed under: Communication, Reflection, Thinking | 2 Comments »

A Different Stance

Posted on February 28, 2013 by wtdavid

Real trust is not something that we quickly give to another.  Trust needs to be built.  It takes time and experience for me to observe that you are worthy of my trust.  Yet, one small misstep and trust can be broken; all that has been built can dissipate in the space of a couple of minutes or seconds.DifferentApproachToSuccess

At that moment, we enter into “mistrust”; a holding back of our hearts from others because we are just not sure that they will come through for us. Our natural stance towards others is often one of mistrust because we have been let down so many times.  We now insist that others prove their trust before we will extend our trust to them.

Our relationships as workers are meant to be living demonstrations of God’s awesome Gospel power at work in us.  I’m not calling for a naïve trust in everyone, but I am pleading for a different stance, a different approach towards trust.

  • What if we changed our stance to one of trust, that is, of trusting the best of another and believing they have our best interest in mind until the contrary is proven or demonstrated?
  • What if we extended forgiveness to those who have broken our trust?  What if we chose not to bring that experience of mistrust up again as a means of accusation?
  • What if we measured others’ broken trust in light of the many times we have failed to trust our heavenly Father?  What if we allowed that thought to drive our hearts to repentance and faith?
  • What if we decided to write out what real trust looks like in practice and then shared that with another for their help and insights.

It’s easy to say we trust someone.  It’s another thing to actually live from a different stance, one of real trust.

 

Filed under: Communication, Community, Trust | 2 Comments »

Should I really care about the WTGA?

Posted on October 19, 2012 by wtdavid

The impact of the WT Global Alliance may not be seen or felt in the day-to-day life and ministry of many WT workers.  So, should you as a worker really care about the WTGA?

By all means, yes, and for two primary reasons.

First, because the Alliance will open the door for many more voices to enter the life and ministry of the mission.  One avenue will certainly be by global members from outside of the WT community joining the WT Global Alliance.  These members will bring different perspectives on issues and challenge our default way of pursuing ministry.  Another avenue will be the growing number of non North American workers who will join our teams and potentially lead our teams.  Each of us will need to be trained in greater cross cultural or multicultural communication and collaboration.

Second, because the Alliance will empower leaders and workers to expand ministries much more quickly.  With key resource players around the same table, the Alliance will have the ability to determine World Team’s response to ministry initiatives without having to poll individual resource centres or hubs.  The collaborative spirit of the Alliance will allow faster engagement and capacity to empower teams to move on new ministries and projects.

Certainly, all this is not for tomorrow.  The Alliance is in a building stage, but that is the future clearly before us, and we should care about it.

 

You are invited to share your comments and questions by posting them here on the Thoughts Along the Journey blog.  We are calling on the entire WT community to uphold this newly formed global alliance in prayer.  Pray especially for the invitation of new global members from outside the WT community.  We are praying for the laying of firm foundations that will serve future generations of workers well.

 

 

Filed under: Collaboration, Communication, Global structure, WTGA | 6 Comments »

We are global

Posted on November 9, 2011 by wtdavid

Traveling around to our various regions, I regularly hear comments like the following: “We need to make sure the home office is aware of this information,” or “who is the person in the home office that I need to talk to about this issue?”  I will inevitably respond by asking: Which home office do you mean?  Now I know what office the person is referring to.  He/she is talking about the US Ministry Support Center, or to put it more simply, the US office.   However, World Team has ‘home offices’ in Australia, Canada and the US.

We are global.

I realize that we could chalk this up to a simple oversight on our part, given that a large portion of our workers come from the United States.  However, the reality is that we are now mobilizing workers from a variety of different locations.  Should other Sending Countries be established, which is a live option in the coming year, the pool from which workers could be mobilized would further increase.

We are global.

Several of our Team Leaders, Field Leaders and Area Staff are non North American.

We are global.

The World Team International board is discussing a proposal to create a global alliance where selected members of each Sending Country would participate together in the oversight of global ministries.  In this scenario, a global alliance would be made up of an equal number of Australian, Canadian and US representatives plus a number of other international representatives.

We are global.

It’s a small change, but it would signal a step forward towards becoming more international, towards becoming WT Global.  Instead of saying ‘home office’ with the understanding that ‘home office’ equals ‘US office’, let’s specify which office we are referring to: the Australian office, the Canadian office or the US office.  Try it out!  Encourage others in this ‘name change.’

We are global.

Filed under: Communication, Global realities | 4 Comments »

Ministry practice 1.8

Posted on October 13, 2011 by wtdavid

What is that we actually do as cross cultural workers?  The CPM Roadmap (like the WT Continuum) makes an attempt at ‘painting a picture’ to describe the ministry in which we are engaged.  It is a good model, a good framework from which to work.

Could we look at cross cultural ministry from another perspective or outlook in order to help better grasp the task or the journey that we are on?

The first step is to engage others in spiritual conversations.  The second step we take in cross cultural life and ministry is to encourage others to read God’s story contained in the Bible. In order to point people to God, we need to bring them in contact with this living God.  So we need to invite people to hear or to read His story.

There are many ways this can be done.  This can be done individually by giving a person a copy of God’s story.  Or, we can ask if they would like us to read the story with them (see the example of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch in this regard).  Or we can give them a media version of God’s story which would allow them to listen multiple times to the same stories. The key is to invite people to interact with and discover for themselves the God of the biblical story.

We recently had dinner with a couple who have moved here from another part of the world.  They were sharing their spiritual journeys and their ongoing concern for other family members who did not have a relationship with God.  Their daughter recently moved to where some extended family members live.  Each week, after her university studies, she would swing by to visit.  At one point, the conversation was drawn to the Bible.  She asked if her grandmother had read the Bible, to which the response was: “no”.  She immediately offered to read the Bible with her.  The invitation was accepted, and a number of weeks later, her grandmother walked into the arms of her new found Savior.

We engage people in spiritual conversation.  We invite them to discover for themselves God’s story.

What else do we do?   We pray because we need God to open the conversation.  We depend on the Spirit for the courage to offer, to invite others to read His story.  We trust that God’s Spirit will open blind eyes to see and to hear the words of redemption in that great, great story.

 

Filed under: Church planting, Communication, Listening, Sharing the Gospel story | 2 Comments »

Ministry practice 1.2

Posted on October 11, 2011 by wtdavid

What is that we actually do as cross cultural workers?  The CPM Roadmap (like the WT Continuum) makes an attempt at ‘painting a picture’ to describe the ministry in which we are engaged.  It is a good model, a good
framework from which to work.

Could we look at cross cultural ministry from another perspective or outlook in order to help better grasp the task or the journey that we are on?

The first step we take in cross cultural life and ministry is to engage others in spiritual conversations. Spiritual conversations are not an attempt to contort everything that we are talking about around to some Scripture verse or biblical principle.  Spiritual conversations are engaging others in talking about what forms the framework for the way they see the world and live.  It is a dialogue between people where we seek, as the opportunities arise, to share the gospel framework in such a way that it arouses interest and reflection.

The Bible describes our role in one way as that of being an “ambassador”.

It is not an easy task.  John Wesley describes his struggles in a journal entry in 1738: “went several times the following days, with a design to speak to the sailors, but could not. I mean, I was quite averse [willing, wanting to] to speaking; I could not see how to make an occasion, and it seemed quite absurd to speak without. Is not this what men commonly mean by, “I could not speak”? And is this a sufficient cause of silence, or no? Is it a prohibition from the Good Spirit? or a temptation from nature, or the evil one?”

So, what do we do?  Pray.  We need to ask Him to open up opportunities for spiritual conversations.  Depend on the Spirit.  The Spirit must prepare and open a person’s heart for them to be responsive to any conversation. We must ask Him to move in people’s lives.  Timing.  We cannot force a conversation.  Divine opportunities are just that, divine opportunities.  We seek for open doors, and wait for God to open those doors up to us.

 

 

Filed under: Communication, Crossing cultures, Listening, Prayer, Sharing the Gospel story | 6 Comments »

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