from November 2, 2014 prayer update

Emporia is a community of 25,000 located on IH35 about halfway between Wichita and Kansas City. It is home to Emporia State University, the 2010 division 2 national champions in women’s basketball and the 2009 division 2 national runners up in men’s baseball. This past week I had the privilege of serving as the speaker at 12th Avenue Baptist Church's annual missions conference in Emporia.

The theme for the conference was “redeemed, equipped, light of the world”. I spoke four times as part of this important event in the life of TABC. I spoke twice on Sunday morning on the topic, “we are redeemed” (link to the message), on Sunday evening I spoke on “we are equipped”, and on Tuesday evening I spoke on “we are the light of the world”. Each message was drawn from the book of Ephesians. Al Areheart has served for 20 years as the senior pastor at TABC. He is a graduate of Columbia International University, where I am currently involved in a graduate program in intercultural studies.

On Wednesday I traveled from Emporia to Tulsa to speak at the 10th anniversary gathering of Tulsa Mission Movement on the topic “church missions strategy for unreached people engagement”. TMM is a local missions leader network that I had the privilege of helping launch back in 2004 in partnership with a long-time missions mobilizer, John McVay. A number of Tulsa area churches have recently covenanted through TMM to partner together around a vision of reaching 100 UPGs (unreached people groups) by the year 2040. WOW! What a compelling vision. TMM facilitators: Jerry Lout, Justin Schell, John McVay.

Following the time with TMM, I had the opportunity to meet with a pastor from one of my supporting churches in Tulsa. Nate Nauman, is the new discipleship pastor at Fellowship Bible Church. Neil Beasley, who I have known for a number of years through the global outreach efforts at FBC, joined with Nate and me as we interacted around issues related to future discipleship efforts at the church. We discussed how Navigator Church Ministry’s GIDC (growing intentional disciplemaking cultures) process might serve FBC in pursuing the discipleship related dreams and goals they have.

I am grateful that I am not on the road all the time. I always enjoy myself, but I miss my family when I am gone. The five days on the road this past week proved to be an enjoyable and fruitful time for kingdom service and advancement. It is exciting and humbling to play a small role with what God is doing with many great commission focused local churches across the U.S.