Challenge to Change

How can I best capture October 2014 in one word?

S t r e t c h

It's another one of the Christians' favorite words, no doubt. (Don't forget this handy resource for many of the rest.)

My sister got married last weekend. It was a good and exciting thing, of course, but I think I 'zilla-ed out more than she did during the few days leading up to it. When things weren't getting done the way she wanted or 1am ticked by and the "To Do" list seemed only to grow or anyone so much as thought about saying words to me within an hour of my waking the following morning, the snappy and selfish and First World entitlement complexed Reagan monster flared up, and I found myself continuing to repent and ask questions like, "Who am I? I thought I was over this."

Behold my alter ego. 

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This is a post from the "Missionary-ish Tales" E-News.  Read the rest here, or subscribe to the monthly e-mails here.

In the Quiet

When was the last time you let God meet you in the silence?

Maybe you were out of words.  Maybe you were out of ways to fix, to solve, to do it on your own.  Or maybe you were just weary in your body, your heart, your mind.  You didn’t have any fancy prayers to conjure up for Him, so you sat still, waiting with only minimal expectation.

Maybe you lay on the floor, face down, candle burning in the background to offer some sense of presence and scent of comfort.  Maybe you even whispered, “I’ve got nothing, God.  I need to hear from You.”

And maybe He spoke.

In that moment of surrender, maybe He affirmed things He has already said before, like Humble yourself, therefore, under My mighty hand, that I may lift you up in due time.  Cast all your anxiety on Me because I care for you.

In My presence, there is fullness of joy.

Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins maybe blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from My presence…

And maybe refreshment did indeed come.

God has drawn me lower than my knees more often that not this month.  And while the literal posture of submission isn’t always comfortable, it inevitably reminds my spirit who’s in charge.

And, you know what?  That’s a really good thing.

Because, seriously, how often do we find ourselves praying for things we only sort of believe God cares about or will follow through on?  Or feeling like His attention is better directed elsewhere, that we shouldn’t take up too much of His time?  Or praising Him for being such a great Creator and for saving us from eternal punishment, but not believing in His intimate love for His creation and his ability and desire to save us from anything else?

Most of us have frequently heard of the ACTS (Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication) method of prayer.  And although some may get hung up on whole “formula” sort of approach, I think there’s something to it, and especially to beginning our conversation with the Almighty with adoration and praise. 

Because, really, our view of who God is and how He relates with us directly correlates with how we view every other aspect of life.  Adoration and worship must be a part of our prayers to keep us in perspective. 

Praising God for being sovereign leads us to believe that He sees and orchestrates the bigger picture.  Praising Him for being faithful reminds us He will keep His promises to us.  Praising Him for creating the world affirms that He will sustain our needs. 

Knowing and recounting the works and character of God fan the flame of confidence that He will continue to be exactly whom He has always been.

How it actually went down

…Or maybe if I check Instagram one more time, I'll feel better about myself, since my internet presence and likeability reflect my real life power to please the masses.

It's a lie I've believed more times than I can count. 

There's always something, you know? Some way we compare ourselves to the ideal, to each other, to our selves who are becoming. For many, it's the dollar value of their occupations, the final settling down of the restless dreamer, the arriving at a longed-for destination, the ring on the finger. The inner voice of failure arises when we see our youth kids get engaged before we do or find ourselves at a job far from worthy of our ACT scores. And when we see "everyone else" get there, that magical land where the grass is greener, we sink and sulk and strive to be as good, holy, and finally trusting enough as they must have been to have the desires of their hearts – our hearts – fulfilled.

Because, of course, that is the Christian formula for happiness.

A couple months after I announced that I would be heading out to the world, I got a message from a friend who has followed my blog for awhile. He asked me how I got there, how my longing and doing finally converged, how it all came together and my calling became a crystal clear path before me.

The assumption was well-intentioned but a little… well, skewed.

I sort of laughed as I replied.  It made me feel like one of those happily married people I had so often envied, heart panging every time I scrolled past one of their #besthusbandever  posts.  People see me and think I have arrived?  Seriously? 

Because here’s how it actually went down.

I went on the World Race and came home a wreck.  Not because I hated America or because I had a distinct calling to start an orphanage in Africa and didn’t have the funds or balls to get over there yet, but because I knew the world was broken and lost and I had no freaking idea what to do next.  I mean, I knew I’d be going to Alaska again, so that became sort of my lifeline for a few more months.  On the Race, the biggest “future life work” hint I took away was that my heart came most alive when I was in evangelism/church-planting/Gospel-discussing kinds of ministries… but no more of this short-term missions business.  The place I observed the most spiritual darkness and need to be reached was India, and that was the country I liked the least, so obviously that made the cut for my limited search criteria once my feet hit American soil and I started scouting out the next big thing.  (You know us Christians, always feeling like we are called to only the hardest tasks...  Scratch that, I can only speak for myself… maybe.) And not that I thought that I was some big BA missionary who had it all together, but I figured… What else am I supposed to do with my life?  This is all I care about.

Anyway, I didn’t find anything that stuck.  Plus, I was dealing with whether I was feeling led/feeling like I wanted to commit to a romantic relationship, and… well, you know how that goes.

So I went back to Alaska as a summer staff member at Echo Ranch Bible Camp.  As I toiled in the Lord’s work on the last frontier, I asked God to open a door.  You know, God, for some long-term church planting-ish thing in India (or anywhere else in Asia, if that’s cool with You).

The next week, Justin, Director of Recruitment for Avant Ministries, showed up to be the camp chapel speaker for a week, and we became friends over controversial theological conversations and mostly-agreeable mission trip stories.  He told me I seemed like I would be a good fit for Avant’s short-cycle church planting Thailand team because I “have missions experience” and “take God seriously” and “want to go to Asia”, so I should check them out.  My reply?  “You’re a recruiter.  Of course you’re saying that.”

I spent half the summer researching missions opportunities in India and the other half wondering about Thailand and the whole 5-7 year thingy and the entire summer freaking out about not having a plan.  I battled bouts of anxiety and loneliness and knowing I wasn’t being present where I was but not feeling motivated to be anywhere but everywhere else.  The more I researched, the more overwhelmed I felt, and the more I just prayed for a blazing, this-can-only-be-from-God kind of sign. But pseudo-signs came and went the whole three months long, with little confirmation or peace or whatever seal of approval with which we so often seek to stamp our big decisions.

I got home.  Still no burning bush or writing on the wall.  I job hunted.  I job landed.  I online dated.  I put missions on the back burner.  I took missions off the back burner and decided, What the heck.  I might as well go to their orientation thing and confirm that we are definitely not what each other is looking for.  I was brutally honest on all my personality/emotional & organizational assessments, determined to display the same amount of I’m seriously not good enough for you guys in my interviews with the staff once I got there.

And I did all those things.  And guess what? 

“We really appreciate your honesty, Reagan.  And if you feel okay about going through with it, we will go ahead and appoint you as an Avant missionary.” 

I freaked out all two weeks long, simultaneously loving all that I was seeing and inwardly dying over the (non-Holy Spirit inspired) conviction that, if I really signed up for this thing, I WAS GOING TO BE SINGLE FOREVER. 

But I decided to trust God who appeared to be showing me an open door.  I wrote, “I think I’m going to marry Avant,” in my journal.  And I took the leap.

As I have progressed through giving others the news, asking for their prayers (and their money), I have held this opportunity with open hands.  It’s not the time frame I was looking for.  It’s not the location I was looking for.  It’s certainly not the marital status I was looking for.  On my own, I am not cut out for this.  I have never lived in another country for more than a month.  I have never seriously tried to learn another language.  My spoken words are quick and choppy and mumbled and jumbled and don’t always know how to present Jesus in all the right ways.  I can be painfully sarcastic and heartbreakingly uncompassionate.  And yet, it appears that God has called this mess of a human to the nations, because it’s not about my missionary prowess, but about His miraculous power.  And if that same power that raised Christ from the dead really does live in me… then maybe I have a chance after all.

And so maybe all that makes it a little easier, this mindset of You can take it if You want, Jesus – it’s not mine to cling to.  And I wonder if that was always meant to be the point of a calling, the pinnacle of “arriving” – that it is He who calls and He who directs us because it is He who created and He who knows us…  So when did it ever just become about our passions and the line of work that makes us happy and what everyone else has made of themselves and what we surely “deserve”? 

When did it ever become about measuring ourselves against ourselves or others, completely disregarding the reason God created us in His image? 

What if we just asked God to show us where He is already working, where He wants us to join Him… and quit worrying about whether it’s good enough?

Time in a Bottle

I have three months left in America.

Three.

People keep asking me if I’m excited about moving to Thailand, and of course I am…  but THREE.

It’s almost like an itsy, bitsy, mini-experience of what being on your deathbed must feel like.  What do I wish I would have done?  What do I regret?  What do I need to make right before I leave?

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This is a post from the "Missionary-ish Tales" E-News.  Read the rest here, or subscribe to the monthly e-mails here.

When God's Will Gives You Lemons

Honk if you love planning.

Or if you love when plans exist.  Ones that are relatively foolproof and give you peace of mind from any stray detours that may pop out of nowhere because not only is Plan A a thing, but also Plans B-AA.  The world and all its unpredictables submit to you.

I think Christians, for the most part, feel entitled to have their plans work out.  You know, because we’re “in the will of God” or whatever.  Like we forgot all the times in the Bible when Paul was in God’s will when He shared Jesus with people who didn’t know Him, and then he got stoned/beaten/imprisoned/killed.  Or when the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah spent 40 years warning his people what would happen if they did not give up their sin and turn back to God – and was completely ignored.  Or when the Israelites asked God if they should go to war, and He tells them yes. They follow through… and are annihilated. They ask God again, with tears and offerings, and He confirms that they should fight a second time. Again, they are horribly defeated. They ask Him again, earnestly seeking Him once more, and He tells them to go and fight a third time. This time, they nearly wipe out their adversaries.

We talk a lot about the idea of failure and "was this really God's will, since it's not working out?" kind of stuff.  We sit on the floor with faces in our palms, tears in our eyes, fire on our lips, asking, “What the heck, God?  I thought this is what you wanted me to do.”

And sure, sometimes we take a chance, and things fall through.  Sometimes we hear God wrong (or "hear" what we want to hear).  But sometimes, and perhaps a lot more often than we suspect…  The will of God looks to us like a catastrophic failure.

I don’t know if you guys know this, but missionaries have actually been in Thailand for a really, really long time.  Yet, somehow, the percentage of Christians remains below 1%.  Of course, we want to analyze all the approaches to evangelism and church planting and what those guys did wrong and how we can be the miracle cure to the vast shortage of Christ followers.  And there’s validity to a lot of that, probably.  (Well, besides us being the miracle cure.  We’re not that cool.)

But… maybe those missionaries weren’t all necessarily doing it “wrong”.  Maybe, for whatever purpose that only He can see for now, for whatever greater thing there is to come… God designed it that way.

I mean, that sounds really harsh.  Like God doesn’t give a crap at all about us or what we think.  And that is a lie.  Somehow, this mysterious God of ours simultaneously loves each of us fiercely and cares about every single detail of our lives – and His "ultimate goal is to uphold and display the glory of his name."  Small picture and big picture.

The truth is, sometimes, our perspective is just small.  

I wonder what it would be like to stand back and ask for His perspective.  If we surrendered our false genie gods and prosperity gospels and said, “Lord I don’t get it, but I have to believe You do.”  What if “living a better story” quit being about how dazzling our repurposed efforts looked and, instead, had only to do with seeing where God was working and joining Him in it, for His glory, no matter the cost?

That’s what my teammates and I are trying to wrap our heads around:  the idea that, in spite of our beautiful and God-inspired vision for Thailand, we don’t know what will happen.  Because people ask us about the strategy, the grand plan, the So what are you guys going to actually do? all the time.  And honestly?  Our plan is to ask God.  To see where He is already working.  And then to join Him in it.  No matter what that ends up looking like.

Have you ever been there?  That place where you thought you heard right, you truly believed God led you somewhere, and it didn’t work out… only to see Him bring it all together later?  Or maybe He hasn’t – not yet – and you’re wondering what’s going on.  Tell us about it.

Tree Training

Team training is behind us, the world ahead.

Team Thailand just wrapped up a whole 2 weeks of training at Avant HQ in Kansas City, MO, and now we know everything there ever was to know about how to plant churches where they don’t exist in the country of Thailand.  Seriously.  When it comes to the know-how of being a good teammate to knowing the number of flush toilets vs. molded bucket latrines are present in the country to developing intercultural effectiveness to taking JUST THE RIGHT visa photo to communicating like a pro to expecting reality to pegging you on the Thinker-Feeler-Doer Triad to mastering exactlyhow our taxes are going to work to knowing whatever the heck tactical advantagemeans… *BIG GASP*… we’ve nailed it for sure.

Alright, for real, now.  We did learn a lot of useful stuff.  We went through the book of Acts and studied the “missionary methods” of Paul and his buddies.  We discussed how suffering for Jesus is actually a real thing and how, really, planting churches has nothing to do with how awesome we are, but with the power of the Holy Spirit.

One of our assignments as a team was to cast a vision for what we want Thailand to look like as a result of us being there.  Being good Christians and average creative geniuses, we took the entire two weeks to define our roles and create a visual image of the thriving church of Thailand. 

We pictured a tree.  Because a tree speaks of life and growth and something that starts small but becomes big and keeps getting bigger.

A tree, as we know, begins with a seed.  This tree will begin with the seed of the story and life and Good News of Jesus, the Light in the darkness.  We will be carrying that seed with us – we, Team Thailand, the shell.

Seeds don’t grow in dirt that is hard and dry, but in soft, broken up soil.  In the same way, the Gospel will not thrive among people with hard hearts, but with broken ones, recognizing their desperation for something beyond themselves.

Watered by the refreshing, life-giving rain of the Holy Spirit, the seed springs up, growing into the trunk of a mighty tree that is the Church.

As the tree continues to grow, it bears branches, then, leaves, the fruit of a maturing church, a national Thai church that reaches beyond itself to the broken world outside:  to break the chains of false religion, to fulfill the physical needs of its own people, tomeet together to talk about Jesus when we’re not there, to fight for social justice.

That’s our vision for Thailand.  And not that we want to tell God what to do, as if He looks at our plans and goes, Yeah, that idea is actually a lot better than Mine, let’s go with that instead.  But if it’s really God’s desire for all people to be saved, we hope and pray it’s a lot like the plan He already has for His people there.   

NEWS:

• The team has set an official date to arrive in Thailand:  January 8, 2015.  Yay!
• It looks like the way I've been reporting my financial support has been an little janky.  Right now, I have raised 74% of my necessary monthly support (not including one-time gifts, which will go directly to one-time costs like language school, my plane ticket to Thailand, etc.).  I'm so excited to be nearing the 100% mark (which I have to reach before I can board the plane)!  If you would like to be a part of our ministry through monthly or one-time financial gifts, please click the Help Send Me to Thailand! button below.  

PRAYER:

• Please pray for me and my team as we prepare to go:  that we will complete the "tasky" things that need to get done, but especially that we will be able to invest well in our relationships with people.
• Please continue to pray for the people of Thailand:  that God will empower Thai Christians and missionaries already there to share the Gospel boldly with others, and that He will draw even more Thai unbelievers to His Son.

Kòp kun mâak!

Help Send Me to Thailand!

Photobomb!

Better late than never, right?

Apologies for the delay on this month's e-news, but I figured I'd try to crank something out before the next one is due in 3 weeks.

I can't believe we're wrapping up another whole summer.  School supplies are flying off the shelves, people are finally coming home from DisneyWorld, and all I can think about is how the current temperature is what I'm going to h̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶t̶o̶ get to experience everyday for the next 5-7 years of my life.  Good times.

Khon Kaen, Thailand is where our team will most likely be living after our year of language school.

As I'm sure many of you have experienced, this last month of my life has been pretty packed.  So instead of giving my usual quirky sermonette, I decided to update/bomb you with photos of my July existence.

Here's where I've been the last month (and where I'll keep being until the end of this one):

Don't take it too literally.

I resided in the home of Mark and Denise Bruner, who have been missionaries in Africa for most of their lives.  Mark works for Avant, and the two of them regularly host people like me in their home to disciple them and help them explore their ministry giftings (i.e., they feed us and let us hang out with them and talk about Jesus and our lives, rub off all of their wisdom on us, and sign us up to volunteer in various ministries and outreach centers in Kansas City, MO so we can actually practice doing some of the things we’re going overseas to do).  So, obviously, that’s exactly what happened.

I helped out at , which is an organization that seeks to transform impoverished, violent, and hope-started communities into healthy, thriving, and Gospel-living communities.  I interacted with groups of youth in different neighborhoods and helped the staff with random administrative/organizational tasks.  

Sweet baby kids who came to the carnival neighborhood outreach.

At the  office, I worked with the same recruiter who spoke at Echo Ranch Bible Camp last summer and convinced me to give this organization a shot.  In addition to a couple other writing projects, my main gig was to feedback and fancify his PowerPoints for this summer's chapel messages at ERBC.

he year wasn't important.

At , a coffee shop that provides food, clothing, other essentials, and the Gospel to the down-and-out in Northeast KC, I had coffee with a gangster, put together puzzles and talked about God with a 4-year-old, invented sandwiches, and helped transport a semi-homeless lady to a psychiatric hospital.

Coffee for Jesus!

While July was a whirlwind of different ministry roles and interruptions to normal life, August here in Kansas City is a little different.  I'm spending this month with my team at the Avant headquarters, where we'll be going through team training (i.e., learning how to plant churches without killing each other).  More on that in the next e-news.


THE STUFF OF PRAYER:

• God has been giving me a heart overhaul over the last month.  It's one of those pain-leads-to-growth kinds of things, so I am honestly excited and grateful for it.  He appears to be doing the same thing in a few of my teammates as well.  Please pray for us, that we will hear His voice and be obedient to what He desires for us.
   
• I have reached 82% of my required monthly support!  Thank you to those of you who have chosen to partner with me in this Kingdom work.  Please pray for my team as we continue to seek ministry partners to serve with us through prayer and finances.  If you believe the Lord is leading you to help send me to Thailand, please click the button below.

Help Send Me to Thailand! What have you been up to this month?  What has God been teaching you? I would love to be praying specifically for each of you.  Please tell me how!