Jesus consistently blows my mind. His responses to poor, sick, disabled and abused challenge me to my core and make me examine my heart daily; but today it’s His interactions with the rich and powerful that are astounding.
guest
An Unlikely Planter
This is a guest post by Chizu Shimizu. She is on staff with Intervarsity in San Diego and works with Urban Projects and Student Missions.
This is an incredible story of being committed to planting new works of God. Chizu, in many ways, was the least likely person in my mind that God would send to get this job done – her role on staff has nothing to do with planting new chapters. But I have known Chizu for almost 15 years and she has a heart that beats for the path of God. I love her obedience to a strange call of God (totally outside her job role) and her willingness to follow God’s planting scent all the way down the trail. Watch this video testimony of her telling the incredible story of a planting mission this last year.
How Does Environment Effect Mission?
This is a guest post by Nick Johnson. He is the Director of InterVarsity for the State of GA and he is working hard with his team to make a culture shift to own the whole field of college campuses and commit to reaching all 90+.
Shortly after my wife and I got married we were wrestling with how we could better love the poor in our city. After reflecting on why it was hard for us to make it a priority, we realized it was where we lived. The Starbucks, nice shopping mall, and trendy restaurants nearby were a distraction. To fully press into this value we had, we needed an environment change. So we moved into a low-income neighborhood.
I wonder for how many of us our environment is hindering our abilities to fully press into our mission?
How to Pray for Healing: 7 Crucial Steps
NIcole Voelkel wrote us a great post on Monday detailing a wonderful healing story and how she goes about partnering with Jesus in evangelism and miraculous breakthrough. Read the post here. Now she is going to lay out for us 7 tips in praying for healing. Enjoy!
An Amazing Healing Story
This is a guest post from Nicole Voelkel. We met in grad school at Wheaton College. She is a really great example of a prophet and evangelist and really moves powerfully in the gifts of the Spirit. She, herself, is a free spirit and is always moving around the globe. I think she is in Spain right now. Enjoy a fresh story of healing below.
“Hey, how many of you guys would like to see a miracle right now?” Jerry and I had just walked up to a group of about 10 students sitting in the student lounge at the local college. We were met with some bemused (and some confused) looks. “No, I’m serious. Who of you is sick? Right now, I’m going to tell you about God, and you’re going to see a miracle in front of your eyes. Who here needs a miracle?”
One of the girls pointed to her friend. “She needs a miracle. She lost her voice and can’t sing, and she’s a voice major.” The kids nodded.
People Group Grows By 1400%: Still Unnoticed by Church Planters
picture credit to http://www.sacm.org/AcademicSupervision/TrasferAcad.aspx
This is guest post is by someone who oversees international student ministry and has a vision to see every American fellowship in her organization engage with international students. She chooses to remain anonymous as she is writing about a highly sensitive population.
Do you know who some of the most unreached people are? Do you know who’ve been most overlooked by missionaries and evangelists? And, did you know that this group is right here in the US?
3 Ways to Overcome Your Anxiety About Jesus at Work
Can’t seem to find the words at work? Let Anthony encourage you.
This is a guest post by Anthony Moore. He is the Director of Business Development at a San Diego Company. He is also a graduate of San Diego State University and was very involved in the InterVarsity ministry I led there for several years. I am so proud of how he is stepping out at work – I had to have him share!
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[you may also like “How to Start a Ministry at Work“]
I worked for a small marketing startup right after I graduated from college. It was difficult.
I worked alongside about 15 guys, and after my first week or so, I had decided that there really wasn’t any room for talk about “Jesus” in the midst of these 20-something-years-old guys whose main hobbies included getting blacked-out drunk and picking up girls at bars.
After a year of nearly nonexistent discussions about God at work, I was told that I was being let go – company restructuring. I felt defeated on every level – like I had missed my chance for Jesus. Again.
Book Review: Church Zero
By Dr. Mark Convoy
The Church of Jesus Christ sports a 2000 year history, punctuated by breakthroughs, set-backs, catastrophes, and new beginnings. Peyton Jones’s book, “Church Zero” is nothing less than a cry for a hard-boot, restart of the modern evangelical leadership structure. Imagine the gall of an upstart Southern California church planter, calling for nothing less than the restructuring of the modern common highly centralized evangelical church leadership model. Then imagine the possibility that he may be right.
How to Stop Running Fruitless Events
Here is a great article from the InterVarsity Evangelism blog. If you are calibrating your church or campus ministry to be more fruitful evangelistically, please read this. It has great advice. Here are a few excerpts below and a link to the whole post.
That’s right. Sixty newcomers have a great evening listening to someone explain the message of Jesus, love what they hear, and spend a long time discussing it afterwards with their Christian friends. Somehow, though, not a single one becomes a follower of Jesus.
Very odd. It’s not like this was a tough audience. What went wrong?
How To Welcome A Prophet
This is a guest post by Brian Sanders. He leads an incredible church network in Tampa Bay called Underground. He is one of the most inspiring leaders I know. I love listening to him teach and I love the way he thinks about leadership, church planting, and missional communities. He is an apostolic leader through and through and you see this no better than in the way he is the chief architect for his network of churches. But he also comes hard with timely prophetic words. One of which was his last post you can find here.
Prophetic types might be the hardest to welcome because their gift is often unwanted. Even the most refined prophets are hard to hear. The history of, well, history—is that religious people don’t just fail to welcome prophets, we kill them. Here, then are some tips on how to welcome (and not kill) your prophets.