The Circle Maker - A Book Review

I recently finished a book titled The Circle Maker by Mark Batterson.  As I often do when I read a book I’ve decided to write a review to help me remember what I learned from reading it.  As a side note, our CEO talked about the importance of reading at our last staff meeting which was really encouraging to me.  He reads 3-5 books a week!  I’m not anywhere close to that but it encourages me that our CEO reads a lot and encourages us to do the same.  It’s amazing to me how many people don’t read anything after college.  It just boggles my mind to be honest.  My momma taught me to read and I haven’t stopped since  :)

Okay, back to the book I just finished this past week, The Circle Maker.  The book focuses on one’s prayer life and how it can lead to some amazing results.  At first it sounds like a health and wealth type of teaching but the further I got into it the less it sounded like that.  As you read the last few chapters he makes it clear that you don’t always get a yes to your prayers and often times praying is like digging ditches in the difficulty of coming to God again and again when it feels like nothing is moving in your life as a result.

His main point and encouragement throughout the book was summed up in the statement “Dream big.  Pray hard.  Think long.”  The first two are self-explanatory so allow me to expound on the third.  Thinking long basically meant to realize your prayers won’t always be answered in your lifetime.  Even if they are answered in your lifetime it may take decades.  As I said before, it starts off sounding health and wealth but ends almost the opposing view of prayer is really hard work and sometimes the answer is no or not yet.

I found the book to be a great source of encouragement and challenge to my current prayer life.  Am I praying circles around my biggest obstacles in my life?  Probably not as much as I should be?  This book was an encouragement to get back on my knees both figuratively and literally.  I highly recommend this book to anyone looking to reignite their prayer life.

My Missionary Life, Part 5

Admittedly, I don’t have a lot of business experience.  I did start a small business in Myanmar teaching young professionals English.  It was a side business of course but it felt great to be doing what I was teaching.  I’m not sure if I’ll be able to in Spain on a religious visa and with a lot more regulations than Myanmar, but I’m hoping to be able to do something along those lines.  We’ll probably both be offering English classes to immigrants but I don’t know if I’ll be making a proper business out of it yet or if I’d even be able to on a religious visa.

I also hope to pursue my MBA, either in Spain or online from a university in the states.  It would be kind of ironic if I pursued one in Spain as my brother pursued a master’s in architecture in Germany of all places.  He studied in German by the way, I’m not sure if Spain has the equivalent of an MBA and if it would be in Spanish or English since English is the business language of the world.

Things are really moving and I can’t wait to get over there.  We’re currently waiting on a visa; it is a longer process than I had anticipated.  We’re also still fundraising; currently at 87% which is awesome but our organization wisely wants us at 100% before we depart.  It would be nearly impossible to raise money remotely; face to face is much more effective in the case of fundraising.  That’s not to say you can’t raise money over the phone as we have a little here, but being over a thousand miles away would certainly present some extra challenges.

I’m really excited about this opportunity God has presented before us.  We’re going to continue down this path and open door after a closed door in Cuba.  We’re excited to see how God moves in our lives and the lives of the people we’ll be ministering to.  It has also been awesome to see Him at work in the lives of our supporters.  As missionaries living on full time support, we get a unique glance into people’s lives.  For some reason, I feel like people share things with us that they don’t share with many other people besides maybe their pastors or preachers.  It has been an honor and a privilege to walk alongside our supporters in the ups and downs of life, and for most of them it’s only been a year!  I can’t wait to keep walking with people even when we’re overseas.  We’re only a Skype call or email away.

My Missionary Life, Part 4

To me, it’s a great answer to prayer.  You see, I was praying and trying to figure out how to get start up cash without providing loans.  One of my ideas was to provide the startup capital and then have people pay back the program 5% of their profits for 10 years or something like that.  I’m not sure it would’ve been a workable model but now thankfully I don’t have to worry about it.  On top of that I don’t have to do a second round of fundraising like I was planning on having to do.  We’re currently fundraising for living costs and ministry costs and I really didn’t want to have to do yet more fundraising for small business loans.  I may yet have to do more fundraising for other projects but for now not for small business loans.

Have you ever heard of such a thing?  I mean, free money to start a business?  Say what?  Pretty awesome I know.  The two year thing is an obvious goal for any small business, most want to be open even after they owner has passed away.  It’s hard to change the world with your business if you’re only open for less than 2 years.

However, there is a high failure rate among small business startups, even in America the land of the entrepreneur.  That’s where the entrepreneurship school comes into play.  I’m hoping to provide business savvy among young business owners to help them succeed in the long run.  The hard part isn’t opening a business, it’s keeping one running in my opinion.

My Missionary Life, Part 3

First off, half of the population in Talayuela, where we plan on ending up, is Moroccan Muslims.  You read that right, nearly 5,000 of the 10,000 people living in the town are from a Muslim background.  These aren’t refugees but they are seeking better opportunities than Morocco has to offer.  The couple we spent a week with work primarily with these Muslim background believers in various capacities.  They have a little church plant and the man teaches Spanish to Muslim women in the local cultural school that focuses on helping immigrants resettle.  The woman also teaches English to both Spanish and Moroccan children which is where we both have backgrounds in.

Now, for the part I’m most excited about.  I’ve loved the idea of an entrepreneurship school for as long as I’ve known about Opportunities Now in Myanmar.  That’s why I went there for 3 months in 2013 and again for 7 months in 2014.  The first time I went I learned what they were doing and the second time I went I learned the nuts and bolts of how it operated.

What I wasn’t excited about was the loans that many small business development projects provide.  Personally I hate debt and didn’t want to create debt for others.  While it is certainly useful in business at times in my opinion I’d rather avoid it at all costs and help other people avoid it.  Spain has a program for young people under 30 where they just give out money for people to start businesses.  There are a couple strings attached.  One is that you have to stay open for at least two years and another is that you have to keep the same number of employees the whole time you’re open.  In the case where you’re not able to stay open for 2 years, you have to pay back the money.  Otherwise, it’s free money.  They have a Spanish name for it that I can’t remember but they basically call it ‘lost money’ as they know they won’t be getting it back.  It’s a program to try and help the economy build back up and especially help young people get jobs.

My Missionary Life, Part 2

I have been a missionary before on short term projects, the longest of which was 7 months in Myanmar.  There’s a different feeling though when you know you’re not going to see home for a 3 year term as our mission agency requires.  There is wisdom in the three year obligation and I’m not doubting that it takes that long to enculturate.  Nevertheless it will be another difficulty we need to fight through.  Thank God for the internet so we can at least touch base with people on occasion.

In my former career I was an elementary teacher and took mission trips in the summers overseas.  When I first started pursuing full time mission work I told people you can only go on so many short term trips before you feel called full time.  The process for me has been a more gradual one.  Some people start fresh out of college and that’s fantastic.  My route just looked a little different.  I took a baby step at a time and now am hopefully very close to going full time.

I originally had planned on doing work in Cuba with my beautiful wife.  After a year of working towards that I was broken hearted that it didn’t work out.  I’ve blogged about that before so won’t belabor the point here, but I was rather crushed by it.

Spain seems like it will be a much better fit for both of us; Steffani was never as wild about Cuba as I was but she really likes Spain so that’s encouraging.  As of now it seems like such a good fit for us.  Steffani has a heart for women’s ministry and has been cultivating a heart for working with Muslims the last couple of years.  I fell in love with small business development during my time in Myanmar.  How does that play out in Spain you ask?  Well, let me tell you in the next post  :)

My Missionary Life

Fairly recently in the grand scheme of things I made the decision to pursue mission work full time.  Now depending on who you ask I was already in full time missions when I was an educator in the public school system.  For the sake of simplicity here I’m going to refer to a missionary as someone who goes overseas or has the intent to go overseas in the near future.  That is the historic understanding in American Christianity so hopefully most of my readers can excuse this narrow definition of the word for this entry or two.

I’m on a flight currently back from Scotland and Spain.  We went to Scotland to house and dog sit for a missionary family who are dear friends of ours.  Probably more than that, Ryan was my mentor for 10 years when I lived in Sarasota and someone whom I still seek counsel for major life decisions.  We also went to Spain to scope out possible ministry opportunities there.

Both places were great, but I’m going to focus on Spain for this post.  What I’ve learned so far about missionary life is that it will be incredibly difficult but also incredibly rewarding.  It is not a life for the faint of heart.  While the scenery in our chosen location is absolutely gorgeous, I have no doubt it will be an incredibly hard life for several reasons.

First, we have to learn a new language.  Spanish should be a relatively easy language to pick up, but as my Regional Director told us, learning a new language is akin to ditch digging, it’s not something you just ‘pick up’ even though that’s how we speak of it in American vernacular.  

Secondly, we will be living far away from our families and friends.  That alone constitutes a huge difficulty.  I’m a very social person and thrive around people I know.  That will be suddenly be taken away when we move to Spain.  As a result I’m finally starting to see the wisdom of full time language learning for the first 6 months.  How else am I supposed to make friends and deep relationships in the culture over there?

A Full Life, Part 2

The talk I mentioned in my previous post really got me thinking along the lines of my career choice.  My wife and I have decided to pursue full time overseas mission work, specifically in Spain.  The interesting part about this is how difficult it will surely be.  We won’t have deep connections for a while most likely.  Relationships take time to build.  We’re planning on spending our first 6 months in Spain in language school outside of where we’ll eventually end up living full time.  Yet again we will find ourselves in a state of transition.

For us to thrive, and especially me being the extroverted one in our relationship, we’re going to have to find community wherever we are.  It will take a focused intentionality.  This is another reason it’s so important to become fluent in Spanish.  How can we form deep friendships if we don’t know the native tongue of a place?  The onus is placed squarely on our shoulders to develop relationships in a town of about 10,000 in western Spain.  We have to take the initiative to begin and deepen relationships with locals.  It certainly won’t be easy but is certainly necessary to us living a full life while we’re in Spain.  Neither of us wants to just survive over there, we want to thrive.

It struck me during our time over there just how hard this missionary life is going to be once we’re living overseas.  There will be more difficulties in daily life than is normal for someone living in their own culture.  In order to thrive and be successful in our careers, we’ll need to have strong relationships.  Prayers appreciated in this new endeavor in Steffani and I’s life.

A Full Life

I just watched a TED talk on YouTube about happiness.  It was a review of the longest study on people’s well being in history, going on 75 years at this point.  They followed the same 724 men from teenage years till death.  Obviously, they had different directors of the study over the years in order to keep the study going.  There are now only a few left alive in the study.

They asked these men the same questions every couple of years over the course of the study and came to some interesting findings.  The men who were the healthiest and happiest octogenarians were those that had quality, deep relationships with others.  The speaker introduced the talk by saying how a recent survey had asked millennials what was important to them.  The top three answers they gave were money, fame and success in their careers.

This is nothing new of course.  We see the importance of community talked about all through the New Testament in particular.  Sometimes it takes modern science a while to catch up with timeless Biblical truths.

Loneliness pervades Western culture.  I can only speak from an American perspective but I know depression rates soar in other Western countries as well like New Zealand and Japan.  We are more connected than ever before digitally but simultaneously are more disconnected to actual human beings.

How can we start treating our relationships as important as this study shows?  How can we purposely carve out time for the relationships that are most important to us?  I believe a simple place to start would be to cut out some of our media diet.  I am as guilty as the next guy of being on my smart phone way too much in any given day.  There’s got to be a balance in our lives.  There’s nothing inherently wrong with whatever social network you prefer.  Like anything else we deal with on a daily basis though, it can easily become an idol.

May God help us all lay down our idols of social networks and media in general and spend more time with those we love in person.

Thoughts on Church, Part 3

Church is a place to love God and love people.  If you can’t love the people God’s placed in front of you on a daily basis or a weekly basis you are probably going to struggle with loving God Himself.  He’s not some deity that just tells you nice things all the time to make you feel warm and fuzzy.  He’s a God that disciplines in love and discipline simply isn’t fun at the time. He encourages us and loves us of course, but He also disciplines us, just like any good earthly father would.

I’ve been blessed enough to almost always have gone to a church that had a good preacher.  To be honest, half the time I could do away with the singing but there’s just something about a good sermon that challenges me to take the next step in my faith walk.  A good sermon will resonate on a soul level and challenge me to love God and others better than I currently am.

Many people think missing church on a regular basis is no big deal but I certainly don’t agree with that sentiment.  Missing church is a big deal not necessarily because you need it but because others need you.  Whether it’s in a small group (which is church as far as I’m concerned) or a large congregation, people need you to get involved in their lives.

People’s lives are messy and they need you to come alongside them and help them carry the load.  If you constantly miss church in whatever myriad of people gathering together it is, you are robbing other people of the opportunity to encourage them in their walks with Jesus or perhaps encourage them to take a step closer to faith in Christ itself.

Church has looked differently throughout many centuries, but I think one thing remains the same.  Church is a place where the people of Christ meet together and encourage one another in faith.  It is necessary to a strong faith in Christ.  Without church, your walk with Christ will be stunted and others will miss out on your valued input and encouragement.  Go to church people!  :)

Thoughts on Church, Part 2

Some people think of church as only a building on Sunday morning but to me it’s so much more than that.  Church is the people within it, not the building you go to.  Church is the fellowship you experience with other believers as you share life together, all of life that is.  You carry one another’s burdens as you go through life.

Life was never meant to be lived alone, perhaps that’s another reason I find church so rewarding of an experience for me.  Life is meant to be lived in community.  An irony that pretty much everyone is well aware of is that as we become more and more digitally connected in real life we are becoming more and more disconnected.  Church and fellowship fly in the face of us wanting to hide behind our devices all day every day and that’s a beautiful thing.

Church isn’t easy of course; but then again the greatest things in life are never easy.  We long to be challenged in our lives in every area.  Part of being challenged necessarily means it’s going to be difficult.  The same goes with church.  People will get in your face about your own sin and that isn’t fun.  It’s much better than the alternative as we’re reminded of again and again in Scripture.

We are told to admonish one another in love.  Our preacher in Sarasota did a sermon on that recently and I think he stepped on quite a few toes with that sermon which is very welcomed.  If you go to a church that doesn’t step on your toes on a fairly regular basis, you’re probably not growing as much as you could be.  The church is full of people who need to love each other enough to get in each other’s face on an as needed basis.  This isn’t a fun process and with technology these days can be made to be a lot worse than a face to face confrontation.  Biblically speaking though, confrontation needs to be done one on one, face to face.  Not over an email and certainly not over a Facebook chat, I’m guilty on that one rest assured.

Thoughts on Church

First off, I realize this has a very similar title to my post last time so I apologize for that; I simply couldn’t come up with anything better to be frank.  As many of you know, my beautiful wife and I are currently house and dog sitting for dear friends of our’s in Edinburgh, Scotland.  It is Sunday night and I’m about to let the dogs out one last time and then put them and myself to bed.

It’s Sunday and I didn’t go to church today.  It struck me as odd as I usually love to go to church and could have gone to the same one today that I went to last week with Ryan but didn’t plan ahead for it.  Not everyone loves church like I do of course, but I’ve always found a safe haven there.

I’ve seen churches split from the outside but personally I’m grateful that I’ve been a part of some really healthy churches over the years.  Being a fairly social person, I love seeing people on a weekly basis and ideally even more than that in a weekly small group.  Campus ministry back in my college days was what really set me on fire for Jesus, and ever since then I’ve found a home in the church.

Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for everyone.  Some people go to church only to be rejected.  This should cause us to pause and perhaps even mourn.  If people are rejected at church, where then are they supposed to go?  Church needs to be a place of love and warmth; where we realize it’s okay to not have all our stuff together.

Thoughts on Worry, Part 2

I don’t know what it’s like to have children but I do know a lot of parents worry about their kids, even after they’re grown and gone.  There’s a difference by the way between being concerned and being worried.  Being concerned shows that you love while being worried implies you wish you could control the situation that your kids are in.

Some parents worry too much about their kids.  They naively think they can keep them safe their whole lives.  This is incomprehensible to me as safety is solely an illusion.  People in the states in particular think ‘out there’ it is unsafe.  This is simply because they don’t feel in control when they’re not in their home environment.  Nowhere is safe though.  My friend and I were laughing that you’re not even safe in your own bed if you’re the guy in Florida who was swallowed by a giant sink hole.

Worrying about tomorrow empties today’s strength.  What a great quote to ponder.  It reminds me of Jesus’ words that each day has enough trouble of its own so do not worry about tomorrow.  As it relates to the Christian walk, we’re only given a little part of God’s plan for our lives.  If we get too far ahead of ourselves we stumble and fall even more than usual.

Unfortunately, I tend towards obsessive thinking.  When I get on a subject, it can be all consuming if I’m not careful.  That is probably what it’s like to worry.  Something becomes all consuming and a person gets into obsessive thinking about something that they have no control over.  I don’t know what the answer to worry is outside of cheesy cliches like just trust God.  I do know that what helps me personally is looking back at how God has provided all my needs in the past.  When I do that I can rest assured He will continue to provide all my needs in the future and therefore I needn’t worry.

Thoughts on Worry

The other night I accompanied my good friend Ryan to a local church service here in Scotland on the outskirts of Edinburgh where his family is now residing as missionaries.  We came here to house and dog sit for them as well as just to offer some encouragement as life can be tough whilst living overseas away from all your family and friends.  We are heading to Spain next week to make sure that’s where God wants us to be long term before we sign on for a 3 year term.  We’re fairly confident it’s where we’re supposed to be but obviously want to see the place before we commit to 3 years there, ya know?

Anyway, a lady spoke at the church the other night and shared how she used to struggle with worry but had allowed God to change her thinking on the subject through Scripture study but also using other authors to help her.  One of those authors was Corrie Ten Boom who had much to say about worry.  “Worrying is carrying tomorrow’s load with today’s strength - carrying two days at once.  It is moving into tomorrow ahead of time.  Worrying doesn’t empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength.”

For me, my worries are usually about money and if we’ll have enough.  It’s a silly thing to worry about at this point in my life; I’ve seen God provide for all my needs every day I’ve been alive.  For some reason though, I still worry about if we’re going to have enough to make it or not.  Part of that is living on a tight missionary budget.  We’re hoping to move to Spain and that will certainly add some expense to our budget in certain areas I’m sure.