• 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!

On The Way To Cape Town

Posted on October 14, 2010 by wtdavid

I leave tonight for Cape Town (23h20 Paris time), and would appreciate your prayers for traveling mercies as well as for what I shared in a previous post: that I would have a posture of “humble listening”; that I would listen well to others and discern what God is saying to me and to us as a mission community through these brothers and sisters in Christ from so many different nations and people groups. 

Thanks for the ongoing conversation.  I’ll talk to you from Cape Town.

Filed under: Community, Mission, Prayer | Leave a comment »

Ours Should Be “A Praying Life”

Posted on October 13, 2010 by wtdavid

Watching one of the 33 Chilean miners emerge from “rescue capsule” and fall to his knees in prayer to thank “el Señor”, reminded me of the unbelievable “rescue” achieved for us in Jesus.  It was a simple yet profound image of what our constant reflex should be, that is, to “fall to our knees” in prayer and thank our Father for His work in rescuing and adopting us.  Ours should be a praying life.

David Powlison introduces the book, A Praying Life, with this thought: “A praying life is an oddly normal way to live.  The best our world has to offer is to teach you how to talk to yourself.  Change what you tell yourself, and your feelings about yourself will change.  Change your self-talk, and how you feel about yourself with change.  Talk yourself out of getting upset about what you can’t change.  Do something constructive about what you can change.  Those are the world’s best efforts.  It’s a familiar but abnormal way to live.  But Jesus lives and teaches something different.  What he does – and helps you do – is unfamiliar but normal.  It’s human and it’s humane: how life’s meant to be.  He teaches you how to stop talking to yourself.  He shows how to stop making prayer into a production.  Jesus teaches you to start talking with your father – to “my Father and your Father”.”

It is that life of talking with our Father that we want to encourage one another in as we read this book together.  I have talked to many who have already begun to read the book and are finding benefit in it. 

Beginning November 1st, I and others will share questions, insights and thoughts about each chapter or section of the book that we hope will encourage dialogue between us.

Filed under: Gospel, Prayer | 2 Comments »

Humble Listening

Posted on October 11, 2010 by wtdavid

“For the Christian, dialogue is a fundamental aspect of bearing witness to the truth of Christ.  Where there is genuine longing for the other to come to ‘the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ’ (2 Cor. 4:6), there will always be a posture of humbling listening.  For it is the desire to communicate that motivates us also to listen well.  Listening to people involves taking their beliefs, fears and aspirations with utmost seriousness, even being prepared to be disturbed and challenged by them ourselves.  All witness, and thus all true dialogue, is a risky undertaking.  Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also (12:26). It is not the missionary who carries Jesus to others; on the contrary, it is the crucified and risen Jesus who leads us in our witness into places where we fear to venture.”

This quote comes from a book I’ve been working my way through: The Message of Mission, by Howard Peskett and Vinoth Ramachandra.  I recognize that it speaks of our own witness to others of the truth of God, and how in that process we as well can grow from that “dialogue”.

But these words also spoke to my heart as I consider my ongoing preparation for Cape Town 2010.  I think that they encapsulate what should be my main prayer, and the one I would ask you to pray for me: that I would have a posture of “humble listening”; that I would listen well to others and discern what God is saying to me and to us as a mission community through these brothers and sisters in Christ from so many different nations and people groups. 

Maybe this should be our prayer together over the coming days: that we would humbly listen to those around us where we serve, and learn what God would have to say to us through them.

Filed under: Communication, Humility, Sharing the Gospel story | 1 Comment »

Global Gospel, Global Era

Posted on October 9, 2010 by wtdavid

As you know from a previous post, I have the privilege of attending Cape Town 2010, a significant event which is part of the Lausanne Movement.  Over 4,000 Christian leaders from over 200 countries will gather to address issues of paramount importance to global evangelization and missions in the 21st century.

If you have not already had the opportunity to watch the short video on the history of the Lausanne movement.

In an effort to make you aware of and engage the World Team community in reflecting on some of the issues which will be addressed at the Cape Town 2010 conference, I have attached one of the Advance Papers which I feel is critical for us to consider.

The authors, Os Guinness and David Wells, write the following in introducing the topic of the impact of globalization on our work today:

“The first task is to discern, and so to make an accurate description of the realities of the world in which we find ourselves. The second task is to assess, and so to evaluate the pros and cons, the benefits and costs, of the world as a whole as well as of individual items and aspects of that world all assessed within the framework of the biblical worldview. The third task is to engage, and so to enter the world as disciples of Jesus called to be salt and light, gratefully using the best of the world as gifts of God and vigilantly avoiding the worst of the world. Or as the early church expressed it, we are to “plunder the Egyptian gold,” as the Lord told Israel to do, but we are never to set up “a golden calf,” as Israel was later judged for doing. Easy to say, these basic Christian tasks are harder than ever to do because of globalization. History is always more complex than we can understand, and it proceeds not by the simple influence of certain factors but by their complicated interplay and through the ironies of their unintended consequences. Globalization only compounds our difficulty in understanding, for by its very nature, globalization means that we who are finite now have to deal with the whole world; in other words, a world that is always far beyond our full comprehension. And we are dealing with the world when the world is communicating and changing at an unprecedented speed; in other words, when the world may have changed even before we have finished describing it.”

I would encourage you to share your thoughts and interact with this paper on the TATJ blog.

Filed under: Contextualization, Gospel, Mission | 3 Comments »

Gospel Conversation (2)

Posted on October 6, 2010 by wtdavid

I finished up a book today that talked about establishing churches through teams.  The author referred to 2 Timothy 2:15 as the “life verse for all pioneer church planters”.  The verse reads: “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth.”  In his comments on this verse, I saw another element arise to our ongoing discussion about Gospel conversation, namely that of a deep knowledge, familiarity and experience of the Word, the Gospel.

We can become so concerned with learning so many other good things, that we can neglect deep study of and interaction with the biblical text.  I’ve been spending a lot of time reading many of the Advance papers in preparation for the Cape Town 2010 conference, but then I realized that I was not giving an equal amount of time to the Ephesians study that all participants were asked to prepare.  It’s a question of time.

The author of the above work shares this story about a mission wide conference he attended: “To this day everyone remembers three words from his [the speaker’s] talk, even as he yelled them out to the conference hall audience of 1,000 plus: “Cut!  Cut!  Cut!”  He was speaking of the crucial need to prioritize our time and to drop lots of tertiary activities.  We must do whatever is necessary in our schedule and workload in order to major on the ministry of the Word.  The net result of this should be to lighten our load, not make it heavier.”

There are many good things that vie for our time, but we must not neglect our need to intellectually, emotionally and spiritually grasp what is and what moves the heart of our Father.  Then we will know how to “respond” to another.  And all that is certainly a question of time.

Filed under: Communication, Gospel | 2 Comments »

Gospel Conversation

Posted on October 5, 2010 by wtdavid

Last night I was invited to attend a meeting of leaders from our French church.  As I sat listening to their discussions, I couldn’t help but wonder how these leaders navigated the discussions they were having, given the multiple cultural backgrounds from which they came.  Some of the cultures represented were: Chadian, Vietnamese, French, Central African Republic and Congolese.  All these leaders were conversing in French, but obviously working from different cultural frameworks. 

Cross cultural living and working really does necessitate “that we have a deep understanding of what others believe, what is their worldview;” that we understand how others think, how they process so that we can better engage them in Gospel dialogue. 

Colossians 4:6 has been a help to me in thinking through what we mean by Gospel conversation with others.  Here Paul describes the nature or character of Christian discourse: “Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer each person.”   First of all, Gospel conversation is characterized by its graciousness, its kindness.  It is never harsh in order to make a point.  And second, it is “wisdom filled”, that is, it is conversation that brings depth and insight as well as challenges. It incites others, in a good way, to further dialogue.

What has struck me the most in this text is that the work of “preparing”, of understanding is all directed towards knowing first how to respond to another, not how to initiate conversation in order to get across what I want to say.

Filed under: Communication, Gospel | 2 Comments »

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