Monday, April 5, 2010

Indonesia Update...

I cant believe that in a month and some change I will be on my way to Indonesia. I am humbled by the work God is enabling me to do and by the generosity and support of everyone who has chipped in. As it stands (you can see at the right of the screen) the support that has been given far exceeds the minimum that was needed. This is great in that it will enable me to have some flexibility and allow me to do more with my time over there.

In the last couple of months Jason, McCarthy (people named Chris always refer to each other by last name), and I have been getting things in order and preparing. As it stands now this, the work I will be involved in is...

Youth Ministry Training: McCarthy and I will be doing and intensive course covering some of the theological and relational foundations of youth ministry. I still feel like a rookie at youth ministry, but my prayer is that God will use me to communicate effectively. My material will be focused on mentoring, teaching, and counseling youth.

Spiritual Disciplines Retreat: The three of us will be doing a retreat for local leaders teaching them and challenging in the area of spiritual discipline. I wonder if I am even qualified to teach any of this material, haha, but of course, as my experience is with teaching/preaching in general, you almost always teach yourself as much, if not more, than you teach your audience.

Youth Rally: We are planning a youth even for the area. McCarthy has a treasure chest of ideas in his brain, so all is well here. Think of it as maybe a small scale Impact. It won't be as long, and won't have the bells and whistles, but it will be an evening where we hope to engage teens in worship, have fun, and challenge them to honor God with their lives. We are building on a theme of "Paradox." The idea that Jesus tells us to live we must die, to gain we must lose, etc.

So that is what is going on. Jason will also be doing some preaching while we are there. We leave soon. I hope I can blog a time or two while we are over there, but I don't know what will be available to us.

Thank you so much for your prayers and support! You are a very real part of this ministry.