Laura, Jacob and I want
to thank you for all of your prayers, gifts, partnership and well wishes over
these many years in ministry together. We have transformed individuals,
communities, nations and impacted generations with the Gospel of the Kingdom.
We are blessed because of your love, friendship and support!
Beginning
August 22, 2011 (as Lanny & Laura celebrated their 30th Wedding
Anniversary), God called Lanny to follow Him in obedience once again to the
nations in a new venture. Lanny has accepted employment with a newly
established company called DFGM Enterprises LLC.
DFGM Enterprises LLC is
a newly created Christ-Centered, missional minded company dedicated to honoring
Christ in all they say and do. The company exists to initiate, develop and
maintain strategic partnerships ...
To Eliminate all vector
born diseases - such as Malaria, Dengue & Yellow Fever in Mexico and the
nations of Central & South America.
To Establish and fund
missional enterprises around the globe for community transformation and the
spread of the Gospel of the Kingdom
Please join DFGM Enterprises
LLC in welcoming Lanny as their new employee and pray for his and our Godly
success, together!
Jesus said in Mark 8:34-38 that the key to following Him is to die to self. It is hard to give up self interest; yet Jesus promises to take care of us (cf. Luke 6:47-48).
Here's the issue - Do we really trust Jesus while following Him to take care of us? The Message states Mark 8:34-38 in this way ...
"Calling the crowd to join His disciples, He said,
'Anyone who intends to to come with Me has to let me lead.
You're not in the driver's seat; I am.
Don't run from suffering; embrace it. Follow Me and I'll show you how.
Self-help is no help at all.
Self-sacrifice is the way, My way, to saving yourself, your true self.
What good would it do to get everything you want and loose you, the real you?
What could you ever trade your soul for?
If any of you are embarrassed over Me and the way I'm leading you
when you get around your fickle and unfocused friends,
know that you'll be an even greater embarrassment to the Son of Man when He arrives
in all the splendor of God, His Father, with an army of the holy angels.' "
Missional Maxim #1 - To follow Christ, you must stop following the crowd
Some would say that "Spiritual
Formation" is a synonym for Spiritual Growth, Discipleship, or Sanctification.
Yet, the best way to define "Spiritual
Formation" is to allow the Holy Bible to give us its definition. By reading what God has said, we begin to
gain an understanding of the importance and function of Spiritual Formation for
the individual follower of Jesus Christ.
The supreme consideration would be
passages of the Holy Bible that place the Holy Spirit in the context of forming
the individual's life toward the likeness of Jesus Christ. For example:
Galatians
4:19
speaks to the importance of forming one's life toward the likeness of
Christ ... "until Christ is formed in you."
Ephesians
4:11-16 show us the importance of equipping believers for the
work of ministry, to build up the body of Christ, to attain the unity of
the faith and fullness of Christ which brings maturity in all matters of
living.
Romans
8:27-29 further show us that the shaping ("forming") function
of God's divine Holy Spirit is carried out according to the will of God
the Father, for the purpose of conforming us to the image of His Son -
Jesus Christ.
2 Corinthians 3:18 says
that we are being transformed into Jesus Christ's likeness with
ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Holy Spirit.
Romans 12:1-2
encourage every believer to present themselves to the Lord as an act of
spiritual worship and not to be conformed any longer to the pattern of
this world, but be transformed by the renewing of our mind. Then, you will
be able to test and approve what God's will is-His good, pleasing and
perfect will.
We are not bystanders in the spiritual
formation of our lives. We are to be active
participants with God, who is ever inviting us into a deeper relationship with
Him.
In this way, Spiritual Formation is
both a process and a journey. It requires a commitment of each one who has put
their trust solely in the pure Gospel of Salvation by Grace through faith alone
in Jesus Christ to allow the work of God's Holy Spirit to daily transform their
life based upon the truth of what God has said in His Holy Word.
Jesus has commissioned us to make disciples of
all nations, baptizing
them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
and teaching
them to obey everything He has commanded.(Matthew
28:19-20; cf. Acts 14:21)
Let each of us dedicate our lives to the transforming power of God's Holy
Spirit to cause us to be the hands and feet of Jesus Christ to a lost and dying
world.
To become Missional, you must allow God to redefine, shape and guide your whole life to the purposes of God. Important lessons to learn ...
Missional is about implication, not application. The mission of God cannot be something you add or
fit into your life. Nor is it even something for which you simply
sacrifice to make room for. Rather, it is about examining the very
real implications of what it would mean on every level of life if we
were defined by God's Divine Agenda.
Missional cannot be understand apart from ecclesiology (or vice versa). You don't go to church. You are the church. Being the Church is much more than a place or Sunday gathering.
Missional is incarnational. As a people of God, we relate and engage the world
after the way that God relates and engages the world. This is
expressed primarily in the person of Jesus.
Being Missional has a few core principles, such as:
Community: We called to be in genuine community, seeking to be many
united as one. We are not able to become gods in our unity, but
rather, through the work of Jesus on the cross, we die to self and are
resurrected into His Body, bound together in the Spirit. Being "His Body" is more than an analogy, but a defining description
of our nature as the Church. Our commitment to unity and community does not
require the irradication of the individual. While we must resist the
disintegrative force of individualism, true community always celebrates
and nurtures healthy individuality. In fact, it is only within the
Chirst-community that individual identity can truly be realized. This
is perhaps the single greatest tension we face- the battle between
rampant individualism and soulless uniformity. I would go so far as to say that a person cannot be truly
missional apart from community, because that very community is
essential to mission and the Godhead that gives it form.
Contextualization: Jesus, fully God, entered into our
world as fully man, the ultimate contextualization. He divested
Himself of many things that were His right in order to make a way for
God's mission of love and redemption to happen. In the same way, we
must enter into the world around us in such a way that allows people to
encounter Christ in ways that they understand. It means that we must
give up many things that we (may) have every right to, but that get in
the way of representing Christ's incarnational presence in our
neighbourhoods, cultures and world.
The Apostle Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 9, that we are to "become all things to all men so that
by all possible means" others will be saved. So we do not simply
contextualize, we contextualize as Christ in the culture. It is important to note that, while
we seek to "become all things to all men", we cannot be all things at
the same time. This is why singular expressions and models copied
elsewhere can undermine the effectiveness of being truly missional.
Countercultural: We are be an incarnational expression of Christ in culture, but not
simply an adaptation (or compromise) with the culture in general.
Going back to my reference to "implication not application", we must
recognize that the incarnational presence we are called to represent is
not compatible with all aspects of our world around us. Be it
individualism or consumerism (two of the most serious threats to the
Church today), we cannot and must not attempt to accomodate aspects of
culture that would undermine the mission of God, but rather live boldly
apart and even against them. We are called to be a peculiar people in
that our radical obedience to Christ will set us apart, not simply
through rejection and isolation, but by engaging the world as living
alternatives. At this point, we must be careful, for we can call all sorts of
isolationism "counter-cultural". Further, we can even begin to gain an
identity around those things which we reject (as many Christians seem
to be defined by their anti-gay or anti-abortion stances, or more
subtley and closer to home, by being anti-program or
anti-institution). We are to
be countercultural, not in what we oppose, but through the living
alternative we represent before a watching world.
God is using Haiti to open up ears, eyes and hearts to Him and His
power. His Kingdom is moving and we are moving with Him.
Within this Kingdom move, the greatest challenge for the believer is to live with expectancy but not with expectations. Will I ... Will you live each day in expectancy that God is going to reveal His power but not predetermine how it will happen?
Yeah, you say you want God to move and show you that He is God. But, can you give up your expectations of the "what, when, where, who and how" of God's moving and simply trust that He will?
"Be still and know that I am God"
(Psalm 46:10)
Be (Being) still (Stop striving against God and His way and become weak in your own power and abilities)
and know (personally experience the power of God operating in your life).
If we try to "box" God into our expectations, we will miss His move.
If we live with expectations and they are not met, we will take offense and try to "steer" God's move by making our own paths.
...other results (you suggest) ...
For me, it all boils down to TRUST. God is teaching me the depths of His intimacy with me through the truths of Proverbs 3:5-6. Here are some questions for you to ponder:
Do you Trust IN the Lord?
Do you Trust IN the LORD With ALL your heart?
Do you Lean NOT upon your own understanding?
Do you Acknowledge Him in ALL your ways?
If you can say "YES" to all four questions above ... HE WILL make your paths straight!
But remember, it will not look like you think it will... (ouch!).
One of the most interesting opportunities afforded to me while in Haiti this past month was to help create spiritual community among our AIM Staff. I can still remember the spiritual empowerment I felt when I walked into a room filled with 50+ World Racers who had just landed in Haiti - www.theworldrace.org. Pouring into other followers of JESUS is the passion of my life.
Spiritual Community is both an enactment and an experience. It is the expression of unconditional love of one another while recognizing the image of God within each. It is all about Spiritual Formation - learning to trust who God says that I am and walking in that identity.
Spiritual formation is tied to knowing Christ deeply with others. This is why Spiritual Formation happens best within community. The goal of God is to "form Christ" in the believing community (see Galatians 4:19).
The marker for spiritual formation is living by an indwelling Lord rather than by trying to imitate His outward behavior. What the Father was to Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ is to you and me. He's our indwelling Lord. The Lord declared, "As the living Father sent me, and I live because the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me" (John 6:57).
The Apostle Paul later wrote, "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me" (Gal. 2:20). Jesus Himself said that without the Father, He could do nothing (see John 5:19). Jesus then said to us, "Without Me, you can do nothing"(15:5).
Spiritual Community is about learning how to live by the indwelling life of Christ. And
therein lies what being a follower-a disciple of Jesus is all about.
As I reflect on our AIM Haiti Staff, I am excited that God has provided a launching pad for them to go deeper into developing community among one another. I pray for Seth Barnes, Jr & Aaron Brunner as God has anointed them to take this development to the next level.
A couple of years ago, I had an interesting conversation about the Kingdom of God with Joe Countiss (former staff of Adventures In Missions). I took Joe to lunch just before he left AIM to bless him and thank him for his faithfulness to God through AIM. During this lunch we discussed many issues relative to the Advancement of the Kingdom of God "here on earth as it is in heaven".
I shared with Joe about a dream God had given me earlier, "The NeXt Move of God". The dream held many components of calling out a generation to AWAKE, ARISE and ALIGN so as to ADVANCE the Kingdom of God. Since those early days of the dream, God has brought much clarity through the wise counsel of other JESUS followers.
Joe listened to me discuss how these aspects of God's move were tied to the first blessing of God in the Bible ... "God blessed Adam and Eve and said to them, 'Be fruitful, multiply, subdue and take dominion'" (Genesis 1:28). God used Joe to respond in this manner ...
"Multiplication is a result of Manufacturing
but Reproduction is a result of Relationship"
God uses the word transliterated "rabah" in Hebrew for "multiply" in Genesis 1:28. If you study this word usage, you will find it comes from the root word meaning "to be".
The key to walking in the blessing of the LORD is learning "to be" not "to do". While in Haiti, God gave me many tests to see if I had learned this lesson with the assignment I had been given through AIM.
While many organizations and agencies seeking to follow the LORD in Haiti are focusing on multiplying systems and structures to accomplish their goals, the test of AIM and my leadership is to focus on relationships for Kingdom reproduction.
Yes, it would have been easier to just tell a key Haitian pastor that we have changed our methodology from our previous discussion in January and now we are moving on to something new and different. However, there was something within me that spoke soflty ... "It's not about manufacturing, it's about reproduction." So, I spent 4 different meetings with this key pastor rebuilding relationship that will lead to greater fruitfulness.
This was my first test that I faced when I went back to Haiti. I knew that bringing ALIGNMENT was key to more fruitfulness. So, I invested not spent many hours listening and sharing.
Too many times in the rush "to follow God's lead" we focus on a multiplication process instead of a reproduction process. This is the challenge of all who want "to be"
The video attached below is a recent Orphanage discovery in great need ... watch.
The video helps explain how our Church-to-Church Partnership Program between a Haitian Pastor and a church in America help to meet the great need of Haiti.
Share this with others and ask them to pray for how their church, home fellowship group, etc may help to be the hands and feet of JESUS to those in Haiti.
