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Faith-Support

What Do You Mean When You Say You Live By “Faith-Support”? Over the years one of the issues that keeps on reoccurring with most of our family, friends, and even our supporting churches is the question of what it means to live by “faith support”. My father-in-law has never been able to figure this out. Recently, he asked me again when I would get a “real job”? Of course he means a job that pays a set hourly wage and is much more predictable in terms of income. It doesn’t communicate at all for me to say I do work on the average 50 hours a week on Youth With A Mission related issues. And when I explain that YWAM doesn’t pay me to do this, but in effect I pay myself to do it, my very real job with very real challenges seems all the more incomprehensible. So, how did this system come about? And is it working for us? The faith-support mission system is a product from the era of missions called the modern missions movement (less than 200 ...
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Thoughts on the Grace of God, Re-mixed

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A number of years ago someone mentioned to me that I had a grace-based approach to ministry. I took that as a sincere compliment only to find out later that the intent was more a criticism than praise. My critic's perception was that I was “too soft on sin” and consequently, the sinner had no fear of the Lord and lived out their own-way-ness (pride) in an unchecked manner. I understand the problem. Recently, I had someone very close to me apologize for some very ungodly actions and attitudes. What would I do? Would I forgive unreservedly as Christ has done for me, or would I let the person squirm a bit as I “contemplated” my response. I ended up forgiving and pronouncing blessing, but I did walk away with the sense that justice had not been done. (At least from my perspective). Especially, since the sin-in-question was willful and repeated over a long period of time. How would my forgiveness affect any real change? Or is it my for...
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Leadership Letter #5

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This past summer I have been reading a book called Theory U-Leading from the Future as it Emerges by Otto Scharmer. On the one hand this has been a fascinating probe into the realities of spiritual perceptions. I have taken some of his insights and used them to good advantage in teaching. I will use one of his diagrams in a Christianized version later in this blog to highlight the process of changing one's thinking. However, the other part of this book has been extremely frustrating. The source of this frustration is that I believe Scharmer has "insight extraordinaire" for what we would call "walking in the spirit wisdom". The reason this is frustrating is that there is no claim on Scharmer's part to having received much input from Christian sources, rather his spirituality is decidedly post-modern, a blend of reflective and meditative practices from a wide variety of sources, none overtly Christian (and none explicitly anti-Christian). So, the end...
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