I love the parable of the Talents in the Bible. It is found in Matthew 25:14-30, and you should look it up. Here is the gist of the story. A landowner or a businessman of some sort was going on a trip. So he called his servants together and entrusted to them his money. This was not unusual. He probably used his money as capital that he loaned to others at interest. He used his money to make money. While he was gone, he wanted the loan business to continue. Now, keep in mind that these were not servants in the way that we might think of servants or slaves. These “servants” were skilled accountants or businessmen who managed the affairs of this landowner. They had business abilities and they knew what they were doing.

He gave three servants three different sums of money: five talents, two talents, and one talent. This must have been an incredibly wealthy landowner, and he must have had great confidence in these servants, because he gave them each a huge amount of money. A talent was equal to 20 years’ wages for a laborer. At, say, $15/hour, this would have been equivalent to about 3 million, 1.2 million, and 600 thousand dollars. Continue reading →

Several years ago, I went to Tanzania on a mission trip. I went to teach African pastors how to study the Bible better. And I obviously experienced a lot of differences between that culture and my own. I was an alien, a stranger to that culture. Everyone spoke Swahili, the climate was different, the food was unusual, and I was usually the only white-skinned person (except for my teammates) for miles. And I experienced a lot of discomfort and difficulty. I was out of my routine and didn’t have my normal conveniences. I was away from my family. I couldn’t communicate. I never felt comfortable. But, you see, I was not supposed to. Continue reading →

A few weeks ago I wrote about how to live our life without making what we do the focus of our life. Right now my full-time job is to raise support. I have been called as Church Planter Recruitment Director for Mission to North America, but this is not a salaried position. I must raise my support for this position. So that’s what I’m doing. And it is a consuming task, especially considering that it is the source of my income. In other words, if I don’t work to raise my support, then I don’t pay my bills and provide for my family. But there is a real danger here. How do I do something of such necessity without making it the focus of my life? How do I raise support without letting the task of raising support drive me or control me? Continue reading →

Here are some more thoughts on the Chick-fil-a hullabaloo (“hullabaloo” is not as cool as “kerfuffle,” but it is still a fun word to use):

It is unfair, even wrong, that hate is equated with intolerance and intolerance is equated with a difference of opinion. Are not those who cry, “Intolerant!” of those who oppose homosexuality themselves intolerant? Besides it seems that tolerance is to be valued over all things. But is that correct? Is tolerance the highest value? Continue reading →

You’re hungry and it is lunch time and you’re looking for a place to grab a quick bite to eat. And as an evangelical Christian you know right where to go: Chick-fil-a. But now suddenly, your favorite fast-food entre has become a political ping-pong ball, a pawn in a match between conservatives and liberals. Personally, I’m not sure the cows ever intended this to happen. Now you can’t “Eat Mor Chikin” without being accused of hating homosexuals.

And I must admit; I’m torn. I don’t like having a business I respect be accused of hatred, which is, if you knew anything about the founder of Chick-fil-a and the many who work there, the last thing that they should be accused of. At the same time, I don’t like the “us vs. them” tone that this controversy has produced.

So here is a smattering of thoughts Continue reading →

Right now my job is to raise support. I have been called as Church Planter Recruitment Director for Mission to North America, but this is not a salaried position. I must raise my support for this position. So how do I do that without making it the focus of my life? And even beyond that, how do not let the ups and downs of support-raising dictate my life? How do I keep myself from feeling encouraged when money comes in and discouraged when it does not? How do I do what I am supposed to do without gaining my sense of joy and identity from it? In other words, how do I live my life without gaining my life from my life?

I believe it is like this. Continue reading →

In my last post, I wrote about Zechariah 2:8. Listen to these words again. “He who touches you touches the apple of His eye.” I focused then on the fact that we are the apple of God’s eye. (I hope you haven’t gotten over that statement. I hope it still arrests you with the power of that truth.) Let me focus now on the other part of that statement.

God makes a point to say, “If anybody touches you, they are touching the apple of my eye.” If you have ever stood up for someone else, you understand this feeling. When one of my children is treated unfairly, I want to go to bat for them. I want to defend them. I want to fight that battle for them—and I have. “If you touch one of my kids, then you are touching the apple of my eye. Beware; you are messing with something that is very precious to me.” Now, take those feelings and multiply them by a hundred, a thousand, a billion. This is how God feels about you. He says, “If anybody messes with you, they are messing with the apple of my eye.” In other words, nobody messes with the apple of God’s eye!

So here’s the obvious question. Continue reading →

I was reading sometime back in the Old Testament book of Zechariah and came across this phrase. “He who touches you, touches the apple of His eye” (2:8). To be quite honest, when I read that verse, I stopped in my tracks and didn’t go any further. I was so captured by those words.

Read it again. Do you get the impact of what is being said here? God says that you are the “apple of his eye.” You all know what this phrase means. I don’t have to give you detailed explanations describing this figure of speech. But I’ll give you one anyway. Continue reading →

Support-raising is really a wonderfully horrible, or maybe a horribly wonderful, place to be. It is a place to carry out Philippians 2:12-13. “Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, 13 for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” You can’t lean on your abilities (Prov. 3:5-6). You can’t believe that your insight or ingenuity or your hard work will make it happen. At the same time, you can’t sit on your hands. I’m not saying that “God helps those who help themselves.” That’s not the point either. God is going to work through my abilities, but he’s also going to work in spite of my abilities. In fact, his work in me and for me is not limited by my abilities. But he’s also going to work for me in spite of my failures and inabilities.
Continue reading →

I am finding more and more that support-raising is more about what God is doing in my soul than it is about money. But that seems to be true of all of life. In other words, the issues of life don’t seem to be the real issues at all. Certainly we have to earn a living, provide for a home and a family, cut the grass, things like that. But those things are not going to last into eternity, and I believe that God is most concerned with things that will last into eternity. Now I’m not trying to set up a sacred/secular dichotomy—spiritual things are important but other things are not. I guess what I am really saying is that everything is spiritual, so everything is important. You see, God has designed physical things to accomplish spiritual things. So for me, support-raising is the tool that God is using to bring about spiritual growth and change in my soul. You see, the money that results from support-raising will not last into eternity, but two things will: the extension of God’s Kingdom (people coming to faith in Christ, cups of cool water given in his name, God’s name lifted up in worship, God’s people gathered and matured into disciples, etc.) that will come from the planting of new churches, and greater faith in my soul that will come by trusting God to meet my needs. So as I ask God to bring in our needed support, I do so not so that I will have the money that I need (a lot of Christians around the globe do not have “the money they need”), but so that Jesus is glorified through the planting of new churches and so that I grow in my trust-relationship with God.

And I think that is true of everything in our lives. Continue reading →

Right now I am raising support. I left the church I planted 12 years ago and have joined the staff of Mission the North America (MNA) for the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). My new role is Church Planter Recruitment Director. Simply put my task is to find new church planters. The way to impact communities and culture is through the local church. The adage, “Think Globally, Act Locally,” applies here as well. The way to affect the world is one person at a time, one community at a time.

But first I must raise all of my support—my salary, benefits, and ministry expenses. And that is quite a task. It feels daunting. I have regular fears that roll over me, especially pertaining to media. You see, I feel fairly confident communicating my role and my need for financial support. But where I don’t feel confident is communicating with creativity. In other words, I can talk, but Facebook befuddles me. I can share passionately about my love for church planting, but I can’t Tweet. (I was going to say that I’m a twit at twittering, but that would be corny—however, it would probably prove my point.) I can write, but presenting my thoughts with pictures and graphics and eye-catching presentations are beyond me.

I went to a conference recently Continue reading →

There is no better way for God to show off His awesome power and strength than to do great and mighty things through ordinary people. You know, God could have chosen the nation of Egypt to bless and call His own. They were much stronger and their culture was much more civilized and refined. The Egyptians would have been a much better choice. They had much more going for them. The Israelites were smaller (Deuteronomy 7:7) and therefore weaker. They were stubborn (Deuteronomy 9:6-7) and sinful. There was nothing that would attract God to them. Yet God chose them. Why? The best answer that Scripture gives is that He chose them because He chose them. He loved them because He loved them (Deuteronomy 7:6-9).

“For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. 7 It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, 8 but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. 9 Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations . . .”

Notice in these verses Continue reading →