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Raising Children To Have Hearts For Missions: Preview

October 12, 2010 by Mark Woodward

Sherrylee and I are going to California today to be with our daughter Emily and her wonderful family. We had to get up at 5am to catch an early flight, so I woke up even earlier, thinking about—and giving thanks to God—for the family that He has blessed us with.  Our family members—starting with the Mom and Dad—each have their own battles, but there is much, much more that keeps us thanking God for His undeserved graciousness in our lives.

One of the characteristics of our children—and their families now– that I personally take great delight in is that our grown children, now in their 30s, all love missions!  Of course, that they are all involved in various ways in Let’s Start Talking is one of the great joys of our life, but even more importantly, they each have what today is called missional hearts.  I think what that means is that they are both sensitive to and burdened by the needs of others to know Jesus and they actively do something about it.

I’d like for you to have this measure of joy when your children are grown, but I don’t have any formulas. Sherrylee and I certainly had a desire to see our children like this, but we did not have a plan to ensure it. I feel a bit like Peter: “Silver and gold I don’t have, but what I have, I will give to you!”

Over the next few days, I’d like to share with you some ideas that we have discovered in retrospect. These are lessons that God has taught us, and so we share them with you.  Don’t hold me to this outline–I often discover that some of the topics are really two or three and others are just bits and pieces–but here are some of the big ideas I want to explore with you.

  1. Do you really even want your kids to be missionaries?
  2. Teaching kids to be flexible.
  3. Teaching kids to love foreign things, not be afraid of them.
  4. Teaching kids by example and by participation.
  5. Teaching kids instead of just letting them happen.
  6. Making missions fun and meaningful for kids
  7. Teaching kids that they are not the center of God’s creation
  8. Teaching kids to love people, not just to be loved.
  9. When to let your kids do what they want to do, not what you want them to do.
  10. Giving your kids to God!

OK, that’s way too much, but maybe you get a hint of where I want to explore in the next few days.  I hope you will go with me.

P.S.      Did you know that you can subscribe to this blog and that by doing so, a link to it will come to your email whenever there is a new post. I usually create a new file for blogs that I subscribe to and have those go right into the file rather than cluttering my inbox, so that I can stop and read it when I have time to.  Click on the Subscribe button on the home page of this blog and you can do the same—if you think it will simplify your life a little

Posted in Raising Children To Have A Heart For Missions | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Traveling Tips #4 – Purchasing Travel on the Web

October 11, 2010 by Mark Woodward

I’m going to spend most of today booking international travel on the web.  I have the basic itinerary set—though not confirmed because you never know for sure until you have finished booking the travel.  I’ve done some preliminary checking on trains versus air for some portions of our trip.  I know when I need to rent the car and where we will return it.

So today is the day to commit! And since our trip is less than a month away, I’m quite aware that I may run into availability issues and I may not get the absolutely lowest price—but I might!  It’s a treasure hunt! Or a scavenger hunt!  It’s a challenge!

There are no magic websites! If what you are looking for is the magic web travel agency that will give you exactly what you want with the lowest fares and throw in business class upgrades, well, you won’t find it here—and please send it to me when you do. I’ve never found such a site.  But I can give you a few tips about using the web to book your travel that could be very helpful to you.

  1. Use more than one website to search—until you either find exactly what you want or you find out that everybody is offering you something less. I will probably start with Expedia (www.expedia.com) . I know that it is one of the oldest travel sites and one you have used many times, but I keep coming back to it as very reliable and just a good place to start for comparisons.  Other sites like this are Travelocity (www.travelocity.com) and Orbitz (www.orbitz.com) .
  2. There are some websites that let you search multiple sites at once. Kayak (www.kayak.com) is one of the more popular. I also like www.airfarewatch.com, www.shermanstravel.com ,  and www.yapta.com .
  3. I always check the website of the airline that appears to offer the lowest price. Sometimes you will find lower prices. Sometimes you will find other flights that are better. Sometimes you will find only higher prices! If you find only higher prices, it may mean that you may not get the lower price from another website.  Read on!
  4. Your tickets are not really booked until they are confirmed. Yes, you gave them your credit card number and everything else—and it feels like it is for sure, but it is not! Virtually all the websites first sell you the ticket, then confirm it with the airlines. Occasionally, they come back and say, sorry, the price has changed. Do you still want the ticket?  That’s very irritating because you have already booked more travel based on that itinerary, so you are often stuck with a higher price.
  5. If you have flexibility, don’t hesitate to use Priceline to get cheaper tickets. I have bought international and domestic tickets on Priceline, but you have to be very flexible. You can choose the date, but you can’t choose the airline or the time of day that you fly. I have never had a bad experience with Priceline.  Rental cars and airport hotels are what I book most often on Priceline.
  6. Rental cars and hotels are often cheaper to book at the last minute. This is another reason to book your air travel first. Again, I go to Priceline—sometimes even on the day I’m traveling. If I book a hotel, then I usually go to www.hotwire.com or look at Priceline’s own site to check on which hotels are located where. If there are only one or two 3-star hotels in a certain part of town, then I can be pretty sure which hotel I’m bidding for in the “Name Your Own Price” section of Priceline.  We have stayed in many top hotels for $40/night when booked this way. And I rarely pay over $25/day for a full-size rental car.
  7. Check out the customer reviews on hotels when it makes a difference to you! Sometimes you just need a place to sleep near the airport, so price is the main thing. Other times, when you are taking a couple of days off from traveling, you want a good bed, cleanliness, and good service.  I almost always look at www.tripadvisor.com and see what other people think of the hotel. This site has saved me several times from booking a hotel that looked great on the internet, but that real people had had terrible experiences with.
  8. Try using foreign travel websites. I’m not sure how the big U.S. websites choose which airlines to search, but I do know that if I am having trouble getting either the flight I want or the schedule, then I always go to a foreign website.   For years, I used www.opondo.de – a German website because we speak and read German.  A couple of years ago, I typed in “German discount airfares” and found a wonderful German travel agency ( www.sky-tours.com ) that gave me many more flight options and much better prices  that year.  These sites may include the discount airlines that won’t pay to be included in the American website searches.  By the way, when planning driving in Europe, I always use www.viamichelin.com navigation site rather than mapquest or google maps. I find it more accurate and more helpful with restaurants and hotels.
  9. If you are planning a tour, don’t forget the travel guide sites for hints on best airlines, best ways to get around, etc. We have personally found the Rick Steves European guides to be excellent (www.ricksteves.com) . Other helpful sites are www.lonelyplanet.com , www.fodors.com and www.michelin.com .
  10. There is no end to the information you can gather and the options you have for purchasing your travel needs, so do the basic research, get an idea of what you want to pay, and when you find it, BOOK IT! If you hold out, trying to find something a few dollars cheaper, I can almost guarantee you that the good price you found will disappear before you get back to it. It’s somebody’s law—but it always happens to me!
  11. Keep good records of what you buy. I print out hard copies of all reservations and line them up in order of use in a file that I carry with me on the trip—not very tech savvy, but helpful when you need it in some foreign airport.

Well, I’m off to the office to start my treasure hunt!  I’ll let you know if I learn anything new today! I’d like to hear your favorite websites for travel as well!

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Traveling Tips #3 – What To Do About Travel Warnings?

October 9, 2010 by Mark Woodward

The recent State Department travel warnings for Americans going to Europe raise good questions for those of us who are planning imminent trips to Europe—or really to anywhere in the world where these BIG warnings about terrorist threats occur.

In our own personal travel and in planning the travel for Let’s Start Talking teams, we have dealt with these kinds of warnings, threats, and sometimes actual occurrences of public violence in many different countries. We had workers in Russia when tanks rolled down the streets of Moscow in 1991, in Yugoslavia in 1989 when civil war broke out, and in Thailand during at least two major episodes of violent uprisings.

Sherrylee and I flew in and out of the Vienna airport where terrorists threw hand grenades and opened fire in 1985. The same year on June 19, another bomb exploded in a trash container in the Frankfurt Airport, the very one we were flying in and out of that year with our three kids and our LST workers.

Let me repeat though very clearly: at no time have we or any of our LST teams ever been in imminent personal danger that we were aware of. So the question is, how do we try to keep ourselves safe in a world where terrorists hijack planes, shoot up tourist hotels, and blow themselves and others up in public market places?  First, get your thinking straight!

  • If we are afraid and stay home, the terrorists have won. If we are afraid and stay home, the Devil has won (just that battle, not the war!)
  • Staying home is not safe either. Sherrylee and I were in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. One hundred sixty-eight people were at home—and died in a terrorist attack. We can’t be afraid!

Then there are also very specific things you can do when traveling—but you can do these things without being afraid. For instance,

  • I am always aware when traveling that I am safer AFTER going through security than before. So we don’t dawdle any longer than necessary in the pre-security area.
  • We listen to the news when we travel—the international news—and try to anticipate hot spots politically.
  • If we find ourselves or a team unexpectedly caught in a threatened area, we listen to what the local people are saying about how to respond. Sometimes, running to the nearest airport and trying to flee the country is the most dangerous thing that you can do.
  • Avoid large political gatherings. Actually large crowds of any kind are bigger targets.
  • Keep your eyes open for anything unusual.  This means being aware of what is usual in a foreign place, so it just means looking around a little more purposefully.
  • Register your trip with the U.S. Embassy. You can do this online at https://travelregistration.state.gov/ibrs/ui/.  The State Department has a special travel site at travel.state.gov with lots of good information and tips.
  • Give your loved ones your itinerary and overseas contact information before you leave.

That’s probably enough.  Some people’s risk tolerance is much greater than others, so people make different choices about where to go and when.  Occasionally we have had to rein in some college student that thought he was invincible and was doing things that even made the local people nervous!

The best advice I can give you is to walk close to God and to live in a way that if Jesus comes today, you will be delighted.  To live without fear of the Second Coming makes the uncertainty of traveling through this world much less frightening.

 

 

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Traveling Tips #2 – Where Will You Be Robbed?

October 6, 2010 by Mark Woodward

Before we go any further, there are three things I want you to take to heart:

First, only a small handful of people experience personal danger while traveling! Of course, you hear about every single one of them in the news, so it seems like everybody has been victimized! That is just not true.

Second, almost nothing violent is more likely to happen to you abroad than could happen to you at home in the USA. If you don’t believe me, go turn on the local evening news or look at the police blotter in your hometown newspaper.

Lastly, much of what is really dangerous cannot really be avoided regardless of where you are. Earthquakes are dangerous, bombs on street corners are dangerous, hidden snipers looking for random victims are dangerous, violent people high on hard drugs are dangerous—and there is very little you can do to protect yourself against random danger.  By the way, all of the above are events that have happened in the U.S. in 2010, not in some foreign capital. See Point #2 above!

Having set the parameters for our conversation now, let’s look at the things we can do to travel more safely—wherever we are going!

The most common crime that travelers experience is petty theft, so what can you do to protect yourself from petty thieves?

  • Don’t bring anything, don’t wear anything that you can’t afford to lose! And I do mean anything. Let’s assume that you know better than to wear big diamonds or expensive watches, but don’t forget your camera, or your laptop, or your locket that your grandmother gave you, or your new Kindle. Many things you might regret losing, or it might be an inconvenience to lose, but the less you have that is truly valuable to you, the less you have that is valuable to a petty thief.
  • If you must bring something that is valuable to anyone else, keep it out of sight as much as possible. Your new Ipad may not have anything on it and be insured, so you are not worried about the possibility of it being stolen, but just carrying it on the shopping streets or using it in a café or while on public transportation could be more temptation than a watchful thief could stand.  Same for any kind of jewelry. Same for expensive clothes. Same for your passport!
  • There is absolutely no totally secure place to hide your valuables. I know of LST workers who have had money stolen from the bedroom of the home of their host by adult children of the host. I know people who have had the pouches cut that hang from their necks but under their shirt while they were asleep on trains. Backpacks and fanny packs are about the worst places to carry anything of any value; they are easily slit without your ever being aware. Checked luggage is easily opened and searched for goodies (This just happened at a US airport!). If I have a large amount of money or electronics, I will use either the hotel safe or the hotel room safe to store them for the duration of my stay—and even then I’m not 100% confident that it will be there when I get back.
  • Carry on your person only what you must have for that day. The last thing you ever want to do is to pull out a wallet full of your travel money in front of anyone!  This means you have to anticipate what you might spend and only carry that much with you or just a little more. (This is also a good budgeting technique!) Only carry your one emergency credit card—and have the emergency number somewhere else so that you can call immediately if it is stolen.
  • The safest place to carry extra cash, extra credit cards, and your passport is a safety pouch that you wear as a belt under your clothes. Now don’t do this going through security at the airport or you will have to virtually undress. Don’t carry ALL your money there or you’ll have to reveal all just to buy a coke!  Anticipate!! 
  • If someone attempts to rob you, resistance is almost always futile–and often dangerous. Imagine the danger of grabbing them or chasing them or beating them with your umbrella!! Besides, half the time the criminals are little kids or old ladies—and they always work in groups! It is almost never just one person you would have to go up against.  Resisting increases the chances that you might get hurt.
  • Know where the thieves like to hang out and look for victims. If you are staying at a tourist hotel, you can count on there being thieves in the vicinity, also, outside all those places where tourists go, on public transportation that goes to where tourists go, near train stations, and for you missionary types, anywhere that is identified as a place where Americans show up—like churches—is watched for an opportunity!   Now I didn’t say to avoid those places; rather, just be more aware and take less stuff there!

Sherrylee and I have traveled literally hundreds of thousands of miles to many parts of the globe for over forty years and we have never experienced any physical danger from assailants, and we have lost almost nothing to petty thieves—not because we are such vigilant travelers, but just by God’s grace!  It can happen to anyone, any place, any time even those who make the best preparations.  Naiveté, ignorance, or stupidity, however, will not contribute to your safety, so perhaps these pointers will be of help as you travel.

    What else do you do to avoid petty theft when you travel?

    Next: More Traveling Safety Tips

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    Tips For Planning Travel Abroad

    October 4, 2010 by Mark Woodward

    Sherrylee and I are planning LST travel to Europe soon, so I am buried in airline, train, hotel, and rental car websites!  I’ve done this a lot—especially in Europe, so I thought I might share some tips with you.

    Know what your priorities are for your trip! I usually am juggling two or three different elements:  number of travel days, places that we need to visit, and costs are the big ones. In the last few years, Sherrylee has made me also include rest—probably pretty smart on longer trips.

    Here are some questions to help you rank your priorities.

    • Are your travel dates fixed or are you flexible? If fixed, rank this high; if flexible, you can move it down your list.
    • Where do you have to be? For us, this means surveying potentially new LST work sites or maintaining relationships with established LST sites.  For this next trip, our dates are fixed, so we are limited to how many places we can go to. For that reason, I have already had to make hard choices between established sites and new sites.
    • How much money do you have to spend? If you have more money than time, your answer will be different from those people on smaller budgets or shorter agendas. For LST trips, the answer is always small budget and long agenda—which is why it takes lots of time and research to make it work.  Yesterday I was looking at the cost of trains versus flights between Zagreb and Budapest—which is also a question of how much time we have as well.
    • What are the non-negotiables? We must be in Frankfurt on Wednesday the 17th because we must pickup someone at the airport who is joining us there!  We must be in Rothenburg on the 21st for the start of the American-European Retreat!  Almost everything else is subject to change.
    • What pace can you sustain? We have actually begun allowing ourselves at least a day of rest after the transatlantic flight if at all possible. In addition, rather than trying to be in another place every day—which is how we used to plan these trips—we now allow an extra day in some places, mostly just to pace ourselves.  People who don’t pace themselves often either exhaust themselves to the point they can’t complete their agenda, or they arrive home so exhausted that they lose a week or two recovering from their trip. Your trip will be more enjoyable, if you will pace yourself.

    I then work in concentric circles, from the BIG details to the smaller details. For me, this means buying tickets to Europe and back first!  That sets the boundaries with exact dates of travel.  The only tickets I have bought to date are the flights over the Atlantic.

    Next, I try to book the non-negotiables. For instance, I have made hotel reservations only in Rothenburg so far.  Today, I intend to nail down whether we will spend the night in Frankfurt on the 16th before our guest arrives early the next morning. We probably will, so we will need a hotel not too far from the airport!

    Then, I try to plan an affordable route. Usually it is least expensive to travel in the same direction as opposed to crisscrossing . If you are scheduling meetings with people in lots of different places, this can be challenging, so you have to work on it early, before you start purchasing any of your other travel. I like to fly to the furthest point, then work my way back to the place we will return from.  For this trip, that means flying from DFW to Frankfurt, but going to Turkey first, working our way back through eastern Europe and finishing in western Europe.

    After all of the transportation is set and purchased, then I go back and book hotels and rental cars, where necessary. These seem to be easier to cancel than flights, if something changes—and  something always changes!!

    Next, I’ll talk about useful websites and travel information that might help you, as well as strategies for using them.

    Posted in Christian Missions, Other, Uncategorized | Tagged , | 3 Comments »

    I Love Fall!

    October 2, 2010 by Mark Woodward

    I love Fall season!  No, we don’t have the breathtakingly beautiful colors of Vermont—but we also don’t have the cold snaps that create those colors!  But we do have fall in Texas—usually.  Today the high is 82 degrees with an overnight low in the lower 50s—such a relief from the very, very hot summer that we had this year.

    As I was reveling about fall this morning, I had a few thoughts to share with you today about the fall season of life—where I find myself now in the birthday month of my 63rd year!

    • Cooler days are a relief from hot days! With the absolute and firm exception of God and His Kingdom, I’m relieved not to care so much about the Dallas Cowboys, about the governor’s race, and about reaching Mars first before the Chinese!  If you are still young and passionate about all of these things, you may not understand my perspective here—and I understand why! But all I can tell you is that life is easier if there is less concern with winning and losing every battle. Maybe it allows you to focus more passion on the big ones better!
    • Changes in color can be beautiful! I love the youthful blooms of spring, but I also love the bright reds, yellows, and orange of fall!  My sister who does genealogy told me the other day that this very old person—as compared to just slightly old persons—told her that Woodward men were always very white-haired or bald as they got older. I’m glad that I’m the former—although Sherrylee does like bald men!
    • Some leaves fall early and some fall late. This depends on the tree mostly, but also the fall wind.  We have a pool under several trees. In November it is full of early leaves; in early March, we start cleaning the late leaves.  Sooner or later, all the fall leaves fall—and God is in control of that from beginning to end.  So hurray for the fall leaves that drop in full color—and hurray for the fall leaves that hang on to the very end of winter!
    • Fall is messy! And we love it, don’t we!  All the leaves cluttering the yard, filling the pool, covering the cars.  Our grandkids love to pile the leaves and waller (is that a word??) in the leaves!  The mess is a big part of the beauty of fall.  By the fall of life, there is no doubt that life is messy.  Virtually everyone will have been touched by the messiness of life.  You may have the blessing of living long enough to even come through the other side—and to see joy on the other side of the mess, like the kids in the leaves.  I have.

    Fall is a beautiful time of year!  All the seasons declare His glory. Let’s delight in this beautiful fall day that God has given us!

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    For Those Who Have Fire In Your Bones, Part 2: Expanding Your Circle

    October 1, 2010 by Mark Woodward

    The pre-start and the start-up phases of any new ministry are hard, but exhilarating. Typically, you have the most passionate and the most committed people involved, so these Starters are willing to do whatever it takes.  Starters are heart, soul, and mind committed!

    As the start-up continues, the Friends of the Starters observe the commitment and enthusiasm—as well as the results that follow the  do-whatever-it-takes efforts of the Starters, so they join up and become a part of the ministry—with equal enthusiasm, but not necessarily with equal commitment as the Starters.  But the ministry has grown because both Starters and First Volunteers are part of the ministry, and it appears to have a great future.

    A small cloud looms on the horizon, however. First Volunteers do enjoy the work of the ministry; however, they did not come into the ministry to recruit, but to serve. The reluctance to recruit in this second phase means there are fewer Second Volunteers than First Volunteers.

    The Second Volunteers are the friends typically of the First Volunteers. They really enjoy working together, so now the First and Second Volunteers merge into a pretty wonderful, but fairly self-contained group—so they recruit no one else and there are almost no Third Volunteers for the ministry.

    This promising ministry is completely unaware that it is in a crisis it may not survive! With no new volunteers, no one takes the place of the Second and Third Volunteers that have to drop out for quite normal reasons.  Attrition is predictable.  Typically, Starters and First Volunteers just step into the gaps because they still are doing whatever it takes.

    Then more Second Volunteers and some First Volunteers step out—and Starters start pushing everyone to recruit more Volunteers—but especially the Second and Third Volunteers did not commit to the ministry to be recruiters—so they talk to a friend or two, but that is it.

    For many ministries, this is the almost predictable slide into an inevitable conclusion—a whimpering end of the ministry with many regrets. I’m sure you have observed some recognizable version of this story in your own church, if not your own attempts at ministries.

    Here are a few suggestions for breaking this pattern and prolonging the effective life of your ministry!

    1. You never have enough new people! If the ideal number of workers is 10, then seek 20 and plan on seeking replacements continually.  If the ministry does not have a recruiting strategy , purposefully and intentionally organized to bring in new people, it will not survive long.

    2. Those involved in the ministry are the best recruiters. Every volunteer can be asked to be a recruiter. Some will be better than others, but every new person should feel some responsibility for recruiting others.

    3. Keep recruiting personal. Pulpit announcements, videos, church bulletin announcements can create some general name recognition of the ministry, but one person tapping another on the shoulder saying, “Come go with me” will yield greater results.

    4. Teach volunteers how to expand their circle of friends. Most workers invite their immediate friends—and then they stop because to talk to others is outside of their comfort zone. One way to expand their circles is to help them recognize other points of contact at church that exist, but that they do not necessarily think of right away. For instance:

    1. Parents of their children’s friends
    2. People who sit in seats near them at church services
    3. Common demographic groups at church—parents of teens, retired, but still active, stay-at-home moms.
    4. New people at church who have yet to be plugged into a group or ministry.

    5.  Utilize the best recruiters among your volunteers! Former cheerleaders (like Sherrylee) are much better recruiters than bookworms (me!).  Use people’s natural talents. It may be more important for someone to Sherrylee to recruit than any other task in your ministry!

    How long the ministry will thrive and survive depends to some extent on the ability of the Starters to recognize the need for expanding its circle of friends.  The earlier in the ministry that friend-building becomes a part of the model, the greater chance of blessed longevity the ministry will have.

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    For Those Who Have Fire In Their Bones

    September 30, 2010 by Mark Woodward

    You are not the preacher. You are not the head of anything at church. But you have a great ministry just started, or a great ministry idea that you would like to see get traction and grow.  What do you do now? Here are a few tips from our experience of trying to get Let’s Start Talking established in lots of churches. This is what we have learned from watching people enthusiastic about short-term missions try to work with their home congregation.

    1. Don’t even start unless you are committed to doing whatever it takes to succeed yourself! Lots of people want to start things for other people to do. Just forget it! You should be able to accomplish the ministry yourself—at some level—or you will never get others to buy into it. For LST, this means that if you are not willing to go, you will not be successful in getting other people to go.
    2. Try to get the blessing of church leadership from the very beginning. If the preacher and/or church leaders are opposed to your ministry idea, it is not likely to survive. It might possibly survive if they are indifferent, but the chances are much better if you have their blessing.  Notice, I said blessing, not commitment. See below!
    3. Do not expect to get leadership commitment to your ministry until you have proven that it will be successful! LST actually made this mistake in our Centurion project which launched about three years ago. We asked churches to commit to a goal of sending 100 workers with LST over a five-year period—with no financial commitment whatsoever.  Although a few churches committed, we were absolutely shocked at how resistant most churches were to making any kind of a commitment at all.  We have since modified our approach, so that we only ask for permission to test run LST in their congregation to see if their members have a good experience with it.  Church leaders are much more open to us with this approach.
    4. Don’t reinvent the wheel! Join with established ministries who have proven track records and who can help jumpstart your ministry. So you think your teens should do mission trips to learn to share their faith! Rather than asking your youth minister or some parents to plan and organize such a trip, why not ask a ministry like LST YoungFriends to help you, since we have been planning short-term missions, including special ones for teen groups, for thirty years! If you want to start something for the poor, why not contact existing ministries and partner with them–or after-school programs, or abused women, or English As A Second Language outreach??
    5. Be spiritually prepared to be ignored. If I were a church leader and if I knew what kind of transformation happens to every person who spends two weeks on an LST project, I would do everything in my power to make it possible for every person in the church I was leading to participate—there, I said it as boldly and honestly as I can.  However, the fact is that a very small percentage of Christians really want to engage their faith as actively as most ministries require. If you, as the promoter of your ministry, let the massive indifference discourage you, then you are defeated! You must be willing to do your work without recognition, without popularity, and without any other reward than the smile of the Father!  If you need more than this, you will give up!
    6. God has His own schedule for growth! I love flowers—Sherrylee calls them annuals and perennials and I have a vague idea what that means. But I really love flowering trees. I love the blooms on our fruit trees, I love the beautiful white flowers of the Bradford pear trees, and I really love the Oklahoma redbuds!! The time from seed to bloom is very different for these plants. In reality, only God knows the proper time and season for your ministry to bloom. You can choose to acknowledge God’s sovereignty here—or you can try to set your own schedule. Occasionally, we may be able to hothouse something into rapid growth—but these efforts are rarely long-lived. I recommend you let God be in control.
    7. If you are called by God to a ministry, you will never be truly happy until you are answering the call—so get on with it!  I love the story of Jeremiah, called by God to be a prophet to the nations, who yells at God and says, “You deceived me! I did what you called me to do and I’m having a terrible time! In fact, I’ve tried to quit several times . . . but I couldn’t because your word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones–and I can’t keep it in.” (Jer. 20:7-9)

    One of the biggest problems ministries have is surviving the exhilarating start-up phase.  I’ll give you some suggestions about that in the next post.

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    What Does God Think About Fund Raising?

    September 28, 2010 by Mark Woodward

    Consider the lilies of the field!

    Just one month ago, Let’s Start Talking began our annual general fundraising drive.  We had approximately five weeks left in our fiscal year and were $135,000 short of our 2010 budget projections for fund raising—a very serious amount for LST.

    We had a multi-pronged approach for reaching our fundraising goals: We all committed to prayerfully ask God; Sherrylee committed to calling all general donors (not worker donors) from the last two years; the staff committed to calling all our former LST workers who had been out of college at least five years, and we would ask the guests attending our Harvest Call Benefit Dinner on September 25th in Fort Worth to give. Our need/goal  was much greater than we had every even dreamed of attempting before.

    By God’s grace and mercy, I’m happy to say that we received enough donations to cover the entire ministry shortfall!  I’d like to share with you, not how-to’s, but lessons remembered and learned in this month of intense fund raising!

    • God is rich! He has all the money in the world. If we look at money has something that belongs to us, then we should worry about the hard economic times many of our supporters are facing! If we understand that God is the Creator and Donor of everything we receive, then we and the people we ask for funds are just caretakers/managers/temporary users of His things!  And He is not short of funds!
    • God is grace-full! The core idea in the word grace is that of a gift!  When we ask people for gifts, we are asking for grace. If they give us a gift, they extend grace to us. If God is the First Donor of every good gift (James 1:17), then His generosity is the same as His graciousness—and He is rich in grace (Ephesians 2:7), full of grace (John 1:14), there is no end to His generosity!
    • Asking is part of God’s plan. I know we hate to ask, but this must be our problem because over and over, God has told us to ask!  Listen to these explicit instructions from God:

    “If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.” Matthew 21:22

    “Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete.” John 16:24

    “We have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we obey his commands and do what pleases him”. 1 John 3:21-22.

    Maybe our problem is that we have gotten into the habit of asking for ourselves.

    “When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.” (James 4:3)

    • Offering others an opportunity to be blessed is a wonderful act of Christian love! Donating is a special opportunity to receive God’s blessing, if we really believe  Jesus’ words, “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35)

    A Choice Between Fear and Confidence!

    The economy is poor, everyone’s budget is tight, our home church just launched a huge capital campaign, the economic future is unpredictable—these are all good reasons to fear asking Christians for special gifts to meet big goals.

    God is rich, God is generous, and God is good—these are all better reasons for not being afraid to ask Christians for special gifts to meet big goals.

    The last month of asking for LST and the astounding goodness of God in fulfilling all of His generous promises has confirmed for me again that fear is a sin, not a choice.

    Posted in Christian Missions, Other, Short-Term Missions | Tagged , , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

    A Personal History of Let’s Start Talking, Pt 10 – Final Thoughts

    September 25, 2010 by Mark Woodward

    Tonight September 25, 2010, is the 30th Anniversary Let’s Start Talking Celebration Dinner—and this is the last in this series of blog posts on the history of LST.  It’s been fun remembering all the days, but I’ve been reminded of a few things from writing down our history as well:

    • “The horse is made ready for battle, but the victory belongs to the Lord.” Proverbs 21:31 We have made many, many plans for how to start things, how to improve things, what to do next, where to go, who to work with, how to fund things, but rarely do things go as we planned. You are either frustrated because you can’t make things happen—or better, you are thankful that God is in control!  The verse above does not say, don’t prepare; rather, we are reminded that God’s Way is the best way, so hurray that God took the steering wheel out of our hands!!
    • “A friend loves at all times” Proverbs 17:17 – We are still friends with some of those very first students—who at the time were just 10-12 years younger than we were. We don’t see Amy or Pete or Lisa that much anymore—but I would do anything for them, and they would do the same.   Many of the adults who began to go with us in the 90s are those we visit and sit with at lectureships—even travel with occasionally—because we love each other.  The average age of the people on staff has always been about 30 –and we are dear friends and love to do things and have fun together.  People come and go in your life, but those you serve the Lord with are your brothers and sisters forever!
    • “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding.” Proverbs 3:5 Our work for 30 years now has been with that which is unfamiliar. We’ve worked in countries we didn’t understand, with cultures we didn’t understand, with people who thought differently from us. We have always tried to be wise and use good judgment—but I know that it is not our wisdom or intelligence or experience that has created a good work or kept it on course. God alone has provided  all that is good. Sherrylee and I have been the recipients of His mercy, and have, in the process, learned to trust Him even more!
    • “The harvest is plentiful.” Luke 10:2 – I’m pretty well convinced that people are receptive all over the world and that we are very foolish to try to decide on our own who is and who isn’t receptive. It’s like being a day trader and trying to pick the stock that is going to make us money today. I’ve never been in any country where there weren’t  more people to talk to about Jesus than you could accomplish in a lifetime! I’m OK with having places where certain people can work better because of the way God wired them up, but I believe God is loving and seeking in all places, and we should be sowing and seeking –and sometimes harvesting in the same places where God is!

    Well, I’m committed to getting back to shorter posts, so I’m going to stop and make breakfast . There is really just one story that counts, only one story that gets us up every morning of our lives:

    “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son so that whoever believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life!”

    Posted in A Personal History of Let's Start Talking | 2 Comments »

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