December 6, 2024

The SEND U Blog

Reflections and Resources for Lifelong Learning for Missionaries

All Blog Posts

Spiritual Formation, Training

Practicing PRESENCE

Today’s blog post is an abbreviated version of a recent post authored by Dr. Evan Parks. What is behind our desire to develop, grow, and strive to be better? I believe our motivation for growth and change can either be righteous and God-honoring, or it can be based squarely on sin and rebellion against God. There is no end to the encouragement that we find in Scripture to grow. An excellent example is found in 2 Peter 1:5-8: For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. There is a clear emphasis in this passage… Read the whole post
Ken Guenther1 min read
Books, Growth Plans, Learning Attitude

How do I Choose Which Books to Read?

“Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.” Harry S. Truman. Reading has always been a hobby of mine.   One of my most memorable Christmases as a child was the one where my brother and I each were given 12 books by our parents.   I believe all of them were used books, but that made no difference at all to me.  The anticipation of being able to read as much as I wanted to read throughout the Christmas holidays overshadowed any other gifts that year.   For not only did I have 12 books to read; I had 24 for my brother’s books were fair game as well, once he had read them.… Read the whole post
Ken Guenther1 min read
Church Planting, Missionary Roles, Training

Missionary Roles in Church Planting

Last week, I attended Multiplying Churches Globally, a training workshop for church planters hosted by EQUIP, the training arm of ReachGlobal. SEND missionaries have participated in and helped to lead some of the sessions over the past few years, and we encourage all church planters to attend the training during their first home service. One of our workshop facilitators was Jay Pinney, a church planter with Reach Global in Quebec. I was intrigued by his presentation on missionary roles in church multiplication, and particularly by his description of himself as a “botherer”, someone who disturbs the status quo by asking good questions and prompting lively discussions among local church leaders. I found a more sophisticated (not necessarily better) explanation of these different roles in a 2009 blog post by Jay Pinney, and Jay was kind enough to send me an updated version of this article to use on this blog.… Read the whole post
Ken Guenther1 min read
Pre-field Training

The Other 76% of the Training Value

These days, we are preparing for another Member Orientation Program, SEND’s pre-field training for those who are within a few months of leaving for the mission field.   This summer’s group is one of the most diverse ones I have ever seen with 18 people coming from 7 different countries and going to 10 different SEND areas of ministry.   As we are preparing for this major training event, the temptation is to focus entirely on what we are going to do during the 2 weeks that we are together on the SEND Farmington campus.   We are arranging and re-arranging the schedule, contacting all the facilitators, updating our PowerPoint presentations, thinking through the logistics of our various “cultural experiences”, notifying those who will be leading chapel times, planning for shopping trips for the cook, and the list goes on and on.   I am very thankful for a superb administrative assistant who works… Read the whole post
Ken Guenther1 min read
Training, Coaching

A Coaching Culture in a Mission Organization?

At the beginning of April Bertha and I, together with Ted Szymczak, traveled to Spain and facilitated another Coaching Workshop. The workshop was full, with 24 participants from six different mission agencies, serving in six different countries.   A large percentage of the coaching workshop is devoted to giving the participants opportunities to practice coaching one another.   And they did so with enthusiasm!   With 12 separate coaching conversations happening at the same time in one room, the noise level regularly reached 90 decibels in our training room.  The aim of the workshop is naturally on practicing skills, not on completing conversations, and so I regularly had to interrupt our eager coaches and ask them to move on to the next learning activity.   At times, I found it very difficult to regain their attention when it was time to switch to another exercise.   At one point, we even tried using a drum… Read the whole post
Ken Guenther1 min read
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