One of my priorities in my personal growth plan for 2012 was to better understand spiritual formation. I wanted to be able to define spiritual formation in other ways than just spiritual disciplines and I wanted to better understand what things should be taught in our pre-field training in the area of spiritual formation. One of the learning activities associated with that priority was to read a book by David Teague entitled Godly Servants: Discipleship and Spiritual Formation for Missionaries. The book has very short chapters, and the author has made a deep subject very accessible. To my surprise, Missio Nexus featured my review of the book in their recent “Book Look”, and so those of you who have created a profile on Missio Nexus will have recently received this review in your email. You can also find it on Amazon or here.
Year: 2012 Page 1 of 4
I recently took some time to write down the lessons that God has been teaching and re-teaching me through running and particularly through running marathons.
This post is a repost a blog of a friend of mine. He is also an avid photographer and his blog featured some beautiful pictures. He has kindly allowed me to share his thoughts (and one of his pictures) on the SEND U Training blog.
Today I wanted to draw your attention to a new page that I just added. Gospel Saturation is a page of resources to help you understand and move towards the process of preaching the Gospel daily – to yourself!
Yes, you read that right. Preaching the Gospel to yourself. You can read what I mean on the Gospel Saturation page. The resources that are there are to help us keep on track. You might think, “there’s too much, where do I start?” If you want to start, I suggest starting with the resources below (and no, they are not long or big reads)…
Over the past three months, this blog has been hibernating, and I am not happy about it. I could give you a number of excuses such as a busy fall travel schedule and several training and speaking engagements. But now that we are back in Kiev, I am hoping to encourage the blog to come out of hibernation, with possibly some help from fellow colleagues in our mission organization.
Let me begin by highlighting some recent additions to our SEND U wiki. The wiki continues to be the primary collection of the training resources that SEND U provides. But I continue to receive emails from various missionaries within our organization asking for some training resource that I have mentioned in the past. I am glad to direct my colleagues to the desired resource, but I have noticed that almost always, the training resource can be found relatively simply by typing what you are looking for into the search box in the top left menu box on every page. In fact, I often find myself going to the wiki and searching it rather than looking for the files on my own computer.
My journal entry from Luke 6:20-26
Looking at his disciples, he said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man. “Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their ancestors treated the prophets. “But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort. Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.
Observation: Jesus says that the marginalized are at the center of the kingdom of God, and those who are wealthy, and well established and powerful are the ones who need to be most concerned about their status in the kingdom.