In two days I'll be headed to Clondalkin, Ireland (right outside of Dublin) to meet with over 350 other passionate worshippers in an event we're hosting called "The Awakening".

 

 

Here we will spend 4 days worshipping, praying, teaching, listening, sharing and growing.  The Awakening will be featured on a live-stream online.  So if you're around 5am EST or 2pm EST tune in and see what's going on!  Worship will be led by my new favorite worshipper Jonathan David Helser and his team.  Large group sessions will be led by our own Michael Hindes, and good friends Andrew Shearman and Anthony Chapman.  Smaller breakout sessions will be led by yours truly and other leaders within our team.

 

I can't tell you how excited I am by this upcoming event.  I will be rolling out our new Apprenticeship Program and introducing some details regarding our pioneering work in Kenya, India and Thailand.  I'll be featuring some more details on these projects in later blogs, but suffice it to say: we're out to change the world.

 

If you'd like any more information on the event, want to support me as I cast vision for this new season or even tune in and watch yourself, let me know!

In Greek mythology there is a story of a young man named Narcissus.  By a divine union (the river god trapping his nymph mother) came an incredibly beautiful boy.  In fact, his handsome physique quickly became talk of the town.  And like most of humanity: we like being friends with beautiful people.  Narcissus was no exception - people flocked to know him, befriend him, seduce him, etc.  However, the vanity of this young guy grew into disdain.  He stiff-armed any that would seek him in relationship.

 

One day, a smitten nymph named Echo followed him out on a hunt.  After a time following him into the woods, she finally expressed her feelings, only to be rejected like everyone else in Narcissus' life.  Seeing her devastation, the mischievous god Nemesis punished Narcissus as retribution for his cruelty.

 

His punishment came as he walked by a stream and noticed his own reflection.  Captivated by seeing his own beauty, myth says he couldn't pull himself away from the sight and there he sat until he wasted away.

 

 

 

From this story we get the word "narcissism" and "narcissistic" which literally means "to fall in love with oneself."  Now I'm pretty sure if I polled the audience here, no one would outrightly confess to being in some kind of creepy love relationship with themselves (I think we have medical terms for that kind of insanity).

 

But as it so happens, we are all narcissistic.  Call it "self-preservation" if you want, but we are born with an innate sense of protecting and promoting ourselves above anything in our lives.  Even the most selfless humanitarian gets some intrinsic satisfaction from helping those in pain.  Think about every decision you've made today.  Maybe you can justify 50% of your actions as "necessary" (waking up, brushing your teeth, eating a meal, etc.) but if you were to catalog every move you've made today, how many of them would be self-serving in some capacity?  (deciding to pass a slower driver, getting Starbucks, wearing an attractive article of clothing, stopping by a friend's desk just to say "hi")

 

We can be disgusted with the thought of wasting away at the sight of our own reflection, but are we truly any better?  Philippians 2 says "Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus, who, being in very nature God did not consider his equality with God something to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking on the very nature of a servant."

 

How many decisions today will be "narcissistic"?  You want to see the character of a man, watch what he does not what he says.  What is your money spent on?  Who do you talk to?  How do you make your decisions?

 

Pay attention!  There are an incredible number of needs, hurts, and realities out there.  They're not going away just because we get to captivated by our own lives and ignore them.  I want to edit that last sentence, and maybe I'm just overwhelmed by how much there is to do in the world today (hunger, thirst, trafficking, orphans, AIDS, lost, hurting, dying, etc. etc. etc.), but we have to talk about it!  

 

What was the last altruistic decision you made?  When will be the next one?  I'm not condemning, I'm challenging you to consider how you live and what's truly important.  If this describes your life, then I applaud you.  If not, would you consider a change?

Closure.

 

Tomorrow they leave.  Unbelievable how it's only been 8 days but this group already feels like family. 

 

We end the week with a day of action.  We send them out to put into action everything they've been taught.  Listen to the Lord, speak boldly, help show how God is interested in the person not the behavior, share the most intimate part of you: your story, share God's story, let their story intersect with God's and let them hear God's voice for the first time.

 

... and voila: a new lifestyle emerges.  Intentional.  Compassionate.  Obedient. 

 

There's a little bait and switch that happens when we invite them to a "training camp" only to spend days on end working through the healing of past and present scars, wounds and issues.  But by the end of it, the completeness of the person is really all that's needed - a new person acts; the skills they'll mostly figure out on their own.  But now they know how to start using them.  

 

It's a beautiful process.  One I marvel at each time. 

 

Life's completely changed.  New passions, new compassions, new motivations to move.

 

There it is.  My contribution to the kingdom.  And I'm but the least of this community all working toward this same end.  Job well done team. 

Good. Grief.  It's hot.

 

I just finished a session with the racers on "Culture and Evangelism".  I usually illustrate the conversation with a ridiculous exercise where we have half of the racers become a "Tribe" with all sorts of quirks and the other half becomes a missionary crew having to meet this group for the first time.  The results are hilarious!

 

 But what I've learned in the past 9 camps is that we always come up against the same issues.

 

Quite frankly, my generation is TERRIFIED of the message we believe.  

 

We're afraid of being rejected, disliked, offensive, looking stupid, not having all the answers, feeling ignorant, misrepresenting God, saying something wrong, steering someone the wrong way, making a mistake, disappointing people, disappointing our leaders, missing an opportunity, having things be us instead of God and not knowing the difference, of trying something new, of not liking where we end up, of feeling trapped, of getting caught up in a mediocre encounter at the exact moment the "big opportunity" comes around, of being associated with an organization that teaches something we don't completely understand and if we DID understand it, we would discover we don't agree.

 

If fear wasn't enough to keep us from sharing the hope we embrace or the relationship we have with the Father, pride, ego and insecurities round out this wonderful family of justifications for our inaction.  I define pride as "considering yourself before anything else."  Arrogance is the promotion of our self in comparison to other things.  But insecurity is inaction due to a preservation of ourselves before considering the best for others.  

 

Either way, there's no place for fear or pride in what God's ultimately called us to do.

 

The way I put it: we are more than just friendly travelers.  The world is full of those.  We're missionaries, we're God's chosen.  In fact, we're plan A... and there is no plan B.  WE have been entrusted with the nations and message of truth. 

 

A Cambodian monk once indignantly asked me why we were so lucky to have Christianity when the people of his country suffered for generations without it... and that it, quite frankly, wasn't fair.

 

You know what?  He was right.  I had no answer other than... "well... I'm here now, can we talk?" 

 

It's not God's fault the nations haven't been reached...He entrusted them to us. 

 

And that's what I do.  Help mobilize a generation to understand that and move.

Wow, today is the mid-point of our training camp.

 

Last night the racers spent the night out under the stars.  They built their own shelters, dug their own latrines, cooked their own food over a fire and spent the night together.  It was awesome!

 

Today we're building teams.  We don't send racers out as individuals, we send them out in family units.  Today and tomorrow we will do several rounds of experimental groupings so that we can arrive at the best possible combinations in which to send them out onto the World Race.

 

We are firm believers in community.  The people around us become our greatest "mirrors".  People who grow to love you should desire your best.  We reflect back who people are to them in an effort to help them realize their deepest potential.  So we reflect back reality (in all it's glorious mess) and reflect back the potential so people can grow.

 

It's an awesome tool that God has given to us to refine us.  It's hard, it's messy, it's inconvenient, it's time consuming and it demands everything.  But we believe God is more interested in our character than our comfort. 

 

So we engage in community even though it's dangerous... because it's the best way.  

So we're at the start of day two and I have a few brief minutes to post this...

 

Good news!  We're running ahead of schedule... the incredible night of worship we were "planning" for tonight kind of just erupted last night.  For those of you who don't know, a worship leader named Jonathan David Helser has come for his second visit to the World Race.  This time Jonathan (who runs a school of worship in North Carolina and has some incredible worship albums) brought his wife and family. 

 

Melissa, his wife, called out in worship for God's rain to fall and almost before the words left her mouth a literal downpour started... coincidence?  Maybe... but a beautiful coincidence if nothing else... you decide.

 

Yesterday we fought through some of the bondage from the past.  I've said this before, but my generation is a staggeringly wounded generation.  Did you know out of the 150 racers we have with us this week, over HALF of them have been physically or sexually abused at some point in their lives?  It's no surprise we spend the first 3 days talking about healing and spiritual formation, but let that statistic sober you for a moment.

 

Today we talk about redemption.  We talk about the power of the Spirit of God and what a life truly dependent on the Lord looks like.  Not a life doing good things, not a life hoping God will notice, not a life that give us a sense of satisfaction at the end of each day just so we can wake up and start the checklist all over again...

 

...but a life in relationship.  If we only accepted that the Spirit of God was underwhelmed with our "doing" and passionate about our "being" (we're human "beings" not human "doings" right?)  It's time to redefine some identity and this morning we're going to do just that. 

 

Keep praying for breakthrough!  We've already gone further than we ever have - I'm not sure it can get better today, but God's just big enough to outdo Himself (4 hours of worship followed by another 3 which spontaneously erupted apparently is just the beginning)...

There are a ton of goals that we set when preparing for camp.  Only last night I sat down with a group of leaders and talked about where we're going and the path we're taking to get there.  Maybe we've misled people (I don't believe we have) but no one ever expects the journey they take in the course of a trip around the world.

 

Our goals are not that our World Racers would accomplish a lot of good.  We don't hope that they become superstar preachers or evangelists (although we aren't disappointed when they find life in sharing truth and hope).  We don't even expect them to blossom into even more mature, disciplined, amiable, competent people (although, again, that wouldn't be a horrible outcome).

 

As I told our leaders last night: training camp is about beginning the journey to brokenness.

 

"Brokenness?!" You ask?  They raise $15,000 to get broken?!

 

... yep.

 

The reality is, life is messy.  People are messy.  People's backgrounds are messy.  People's coping mechanisms are messy, their fears are messy, their attitudes are messy, their relationships are messy, their families are messy.  As I have heard before: where there's poop, there's life.

 

We're not here to mold people or exalt their abilities, skills or natural talents.  We exist to help people on their track to brokenness because once they reach that crossroads, change can truly occur.

 

Think about it, when has your faith been the strongest?  I would venture a guess that it's in the times of deepest crisis and worst hurt.  We don't truly learn how to trust God nor live a life of faith, until we've been broken.  We must come to the end of ourselves to truly understand what a life dependent upon God truly looks like. 

 

Because, let's be honest: a life dependent on God is a good, nay, the best possible place we could be...right?

Tomorrow we begin the arrivals of our leadership.

Friday we caravan to our camp location to make final preparations and set up.

Saturday... they arrive.

 

One of the things I consider as I prepare for camp is remembering back to that very first moment.  That second when you're stepping off the plane, having committed to this insane journey (but not quite sure how you're going to pay for it) ready to meet a bunch of strangers who claim to have been radically changed by this journey and wondering if it will have the same impact for you...

Questions drive this moment.  Doubts, skepticism, excitement mingled with anxiety, optimism and realism battling it out.

 

And they haven't even been truly overwhelmed yet...

 

150 racers just as overwhelmed as they are, 40 staff, 30 "past racers", older married couples hanging around hugging your neck getting weepy as they thank God you made it... good grief, can you even imagine?

 

Trust is a fragile thing.  Building trust is a process, and my goal as we look toward the launch of another training camp is how to earn trust (not assume it, earn it).  Because when the time comes for the unveiling of the things I see as critically important to that mission, it will be presented as a life-changing challenge.  This challenge will ask for the most vulnerable and sacred pieces of the heart to be given over to God, it will ask for a knife to be thrust into egos and agendas, and it will ask for relationship to be forged quickly and without back story or history.

 

Sometimes I marvel at our audacity... but it's a method that's changing a generation.  I'll keep you posted as we progress through our week.  Be in prayer for our leaders as we begin training tomorrow!

It's already time to ramp up for another camp.  Summertime is consistently a busy season for us in the World Race/Real Life departments.  We just watch the O and P Squads successfully launch in the Ukraine and Dominican Republic.  Next week I will facilitate a camp which will train our biggest group to date, 157 racers, leaving in September to the Philippines and October to Guatemala.

 

 

I was asked recently what I actually do.  It seems like I post a ton of pictures from places all over the world, seem busy every time I report and talk a lot about Training Camp.

 

Well the truth is: all of those things are true LOL.  My job is the "before" and "after" with all of the college and adult participants of the Real Life and World Race trips.

 

"Before" consists of preparations for their time abroad.  We include a Spiritual Formation series which delves into some foundations for our faith and ministry - we also talk about the past hurts and wounds they bring to the table.  We build teams and talk about healthy community living (since they live together 24/7, we want them to start off knowing how to communicate when their lives are so crowded with each other that things start to feel intrusive) and finally we equip them with real skills to live and serve cross-culturally.

 

"After" consists of what we're going to do with all this valuable exposure.  I am preparing to launch the Apprenticeship program which will help send alumni from our trips out to walk out everything they've seen, heard, felt and become passionate about.  Right now that looks like starting an outreach to refugees in Kenya or starting a women's shelter for women coming out of sex trafficking or starting ministry bases in Latin America or the Middle East.  If you can dream it, we can make it a reality.

 

Be in prayer for our staff and leadership as we embark on these next couple weeks of ministry.  People are messy, but God's grace is always perfect and at rest.

As I wrap up my processing of Haiti I want to look at what we're going to do about it.  By the end of the summer, the general consensus is becoming "crisis managed" and some of the major relief work organizations will (or have already) pulled out of Haiti.

The rebuilding process is literally going to take generations.

I don't know if you understand...

GENERATIONS of Haitians will have to buckle down and band together to rebuild this country.  And that's under the optimism that it's government can make the decisions that need to be made, determine where to begin such a massive overhaul, and steward the billions of dollars that have been donated to this cause.  

But when it comes down to it, why bother?

We do this because the people of Haiti are first and foremost: people... right?  We do this because children deserve the opportunity to learn or to live a life where their own drinking water won't kill them.  Rebuilding is a tribute to the fortitude of the Haitian people, the spirit of humanity and, for the Christ-follower, the obedience to James 1:27 and beyond.

As I walked down the streets of Haiti, I saw waves of tents set up to provide basic shelter for the hundreds of thousands of displaced people (human beings remember).   I noticed one thing: American's aren't the only ones who have responded to this crisis.

Good news right?  Thai people, European people, Brazilians, Canadian, Chinese, and a host of other countries have responded...  It's exciting.

So why was it so hard to see plastered over the tents, the inscription: "USAID: From the American people."

Think About It

There's probably no one who meant this as an arrogant gesture.  But in the midst of the travesty that was the Haitian earthquake, we take the time to make sure it's advertised who was there and that we helped.  Do we ever think that way?  Do we ever sacrifice a sense of selfless altruism when we serve?  Have we, in a sense, robbed ourselves of the blessing of serving (Scripture says "do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing" ... "give in secret")?  Does it not reveal the status of our hearts when we advertise before everyone "we were here...we helped!"?

 

My dad asked me a great question: "So what do we pray?"

My recommendation?  Pray for the spiritual leaders in Haiti.  They carry an incredible responsibility to not only provide for their own families but organize incoming teams, start schools, organize orphanages, (raising money for both), leading 3-4 services a week for their (in some cases) booming congregations - and quite frankly, they're exhausted.

Secondly?  I'm part of one of the many organizations who is doing something about this.  We have a long term commitment to Haiti.  We're not pulling out, we're mobilizing pastors, feeding children and helping rebuild.

I just returned and many more are going. 

I am helping mobilize people into the nations of the world and will continue to do so if you are willing to invest in my efforts.  Click "Support Me" on the left hand side of my blog and designate your investment into this and many other endeavors.  I need several more financial partners who will give $50 and $100 per month toward these endeavors.

 

May God bless our efforts and God bless Haiti.