Dave Gibbons begins the Monkey and the Fish: Liquid Leadership for a Third-Culture Church with an eastern parable.  A well-meaning monkey sees a fish struggling in the water after a typhoon.  Having a kind heart, the monkey with considerable risk to himself reaches down precariously from a limb of a tree to save the fish snatching him up from the water.  The monkey lies the fish on dry land.  For a few minutes the fish showed excitement but soon it settled into a peaceful sleep.

After almost 2000 years since Christ’s mandate to make disciples of all nations (ethnos, peoples), more than 40% of the world lives among people groups that are unreached or least reached.  

Did you catch that?   We have been at this for 2 millennia and 2/5 of the world is still beyond easy access to the gospel in their culture or language.  Almost 3 billion souls are considered unreached because there is no known indigenous community of believers with enough numbers or resources to take Jesus in word and deed to them.

And yet there is a great promise in Rev 7:9-11 that there will be a great multitude that no one will be able to count, from every nation, tribe, people and language.  this mosaic of people and ethnic groups will stand before the Lamb worshipping the One on the throne who with His own blood has purchased people from every ethnos on earth. (Rev. 5:9). 

This month, Robin and I share about two efforts to reach unreached peoples.  One is in Russia and the other is in a closed country in Southeast Asia.   In Russia we are sending a team to travel from city to city reaching students from various unreached people groups.  We also share some stories of changed lives among unreached peoples in Southeast Asia.

You can either download PDF copy or read on-line by going on-line to our box.net account.

Haven’t posted in a while because been working long hours…

Thanks to Perpetual Anticipation for this picture. Not sure how old it is.

One of my heart’s desires to look for places around the globe where the Christ is not known and help mobilize others to take the light of the glorious gospel to these dark places.  And the way God has wired me causes me to think of going to these places in new ways.  Perhaps it’s because of roadblocks to the traditional ways of sending missionaries that are preventing us from getting the gospel to every location. 

This month Robin and I share two “God” stories of the way He is working to make His name known and to send out laborers into new places for our region and also two “out-of-the-box” ways of getting there.  The locations of these places are secure so I can’t write all the details. 

Please click to read more either on-line or download a pdf version.  

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Yesterday we put into the mail or most recent newsletter.   It has pics of the boys as well as an update from our team in Serbia.

Well we are almost at the half-way point of the Global Briefing. Little change of plans with Robin and boys coming up. We have had rainy, cold weather here so they will come up tommorrow after church and stay Sun and Mon night. good call because there is also a Bluegrass festival here this weekend so our boys may not have slept with that a loud thunder.

Some highlights of the briefing thus far for me…
* Worship with Autumn Film
* Hearing from our bible teachers (and good friends/mentors to me) – Chip Scivicque and Jay Lorenzen
* Leading a seminar we titled “When the Soil is Hard”. About 1/3 of all the STINTers attended this seminar that was offered twice yesterday. I shared a little but mostly led a panel of people who have served in hard places. it was a very encouraging time of focusing on being faithful and full of faith.
* Our regional time last night. Special, special time as all of our STINTers shard how God brought them to this point.
* The coaching appointments I have had thus far. Of the 6 guys going to Africa that I am coaching, I met with 2 today. It was a great time with both!
* Team time with the South Africa team tonight. I had to share with them the reality that may be split into two teams. We are still thinking they should stay together but we have been asked to seek God about this because of the reality that their team represents more than all the current campus staff in all of RSA at present. I was so proud of each of these 8 STINTers as though they all preferred to stay together and gave great reasons why…. to a person they said that they will still go no matter what and if the Lord wants them to split up they will. I was humbled by their willingness to lay everything before Christ and be willing to serve no matter what.

Today we start the Global Briefing conference in Copper Mountain, CO. It is a briefing for 300+ STINTers (1 year missionaries) with Campus Crusade who will go all over the world. These 300+ are from all over the US. We also have a few interns who work to reach Int’l students on campuses in the US.

Our theme this week is “Christ Alone”. We will impart a lot of information on how to work as a team, how to minister and thrive overseas, etc. through main sessions and seminars. But foremost we want these young people to experience Christ this week and to know that this year is not about them. It’s not about their team or Campus Crusade’s name. It’s about Christ and Him alone.

Pray for me. I am actually leading this conference. I hate saying that because one I hope Christ is leading it and I have a team of folks who are leading. But it does make for a unique week of seeing the conference as a whole being on top of things. I also will be coaching the team from our region going to South Africa.

Robin and the boys are planning to come up late Friday afternoon and stay the weekend. Luke has his orientation for Kindergarten on Friday so they will come up after then.