Ministry partners

One challenge to my blogging is having 3 young kids. They have a way of not coordinating their sleep schedules (or schedules in general). Thus, it's hard to get into a work rhythm without getting interrupted every 10-15 minutes with something. The arrival of #3 has made even the middle of the night not an obvious time to get away and blog.

But they are all sleeping well right now at 2:00 a.m. and I've been able to crank out a number of e-mails. These have reminded me of the importance of our ministry partners around the world in what we are able to be part of in Paris.

There are a plethora of ministries around the world. Ours is just one of millions. It's funny and sometimes perplexing to try to figure out why some churches, individuals, and families connect and partner with us, rather than some of these other millions of ministries. Of course, I know that God plays a part in this.

New Vision Baptist Church in Murfreesboro, Tennessee is our latest church ministry partner. My parents worshipped here during part of their time living in Tennessee 1992-2001. They got to know Phillip, who now is a pastor at NVBC. It is through Pastor Phillip that NVBC is partnering with us and sending a team to help with the Open Doors of Belleville outreach next month. They also sent a whole year's worth of financial support at the end of March.

I just e-mailed David, who is on the outreach committee of Calvary Evangelical Free Church in Essex Fells, NJ. It was at CEFC where I cut my eye teeth in youth ministry in the mid-1980s after finishing Bible college. I was ordained here in 2000. CEFC has been very good to me during the past 20 years, as well as to my family.

Before that I e-mailed Joy, who is creative arts pastor at Summit Church in Bonita Springs, Florida. I worked with Joy and his brother Love in Sunday school in New Jersey when they were in 4th and 5th grades in the early 1980s. Both are pastors now. Joy and his wife Kim led a team from Summit to Paris last May to help with last year's Open Doors of Belleville creative outreach. Joy saw that the Belleville Church could really use a videoprojector. He was our advocate in getting Summit to budget $2,300+ to buy a videoprojector for our church. It will arrive in Paris next month and be a huge help to the ministry.

Before that, I read an e-mail from Dan, a friend from Wheaton in the mid-1980s. He now is a businessman in Panama, where he grew up. He and his wife Marvi have sponsored us for years. We got to have dinner with him in February when he was in Paris on a brief business trip. His e-mail was about some friends of his currently in Wales who will eventually do arts ministry in the Middle East and want to connect with us in Paris later this month to learn more about La Fonderie. This is another example of our global network expanding.

Today we received a package from Karen and the children's Sunday school class that she teaches at supporting church Covenant Community Fellowship in Lansdale, Pennsylvania. Karen grew up in Peru where her parents worked with Wycliffe. She's relatively new to CCF and we have never met her, her husband Chris, or their 5 children face to face. Karen and her class sent a homemade card (complete with class photo), lemon & orange jello, cookie mix, a book, and some art stuff for the kids. Our kids (and us too) very much enjoyed opening the package and being blessed by their generosity.

We're trying to develop an itinerary for our upcoming summer U.S. Home Ministry Assignment. Because our kids are or will be in the French school system, we'lln eed to work around that, which only leaves 2 1/2 months for his HMA.

We're trying to discern whether we should discern how to do this trip. One way would be to "plow deeper" in areas like Michigan where we already have some links. Another way would be to look to create new links in areas where we have just a few contacts. With limited time and young children, we can't cover all the potential places or get to see all our friends and partners on this trip.

I've come to the conclusion that it's not about how well we do the "selling" of our ministry that brings in the resources (regular and one-time financial support, prayer, childcare help, interns, short-term teams, etc.) that we need. We've seen God close doors that seemed like logical ones, while open other doors that would seem preposterous except for God opening them. This is like the story of Joseph in Genesis.

However, God does seem to use our visits to specific places to develop contacts that provide these resources. This is why I feel it important to get some direction from God about which places to visit on this trip. We often use the principle of finding the man of peace and pursuing those doors. It is often one specific person like Phillip and Joy that have opened the doors of our ministry into their specific churches.