A Year in Austin

About this time 366 days ago, after a 20+ hour trip, my 2004 Chrysler Sebring, Matt Price, all my stuff and I arrived to a beautiful Spring day in Austin, Texas…

Probably to be expected, at some times that feels like yesterday and at others like forever ago. Either way, I have learned much in this last year. Here’s some of it.

I’ve learned:

1. Austin is a long way from Wheaton. Both geographically and culturally.

2. God is doing great things in both contexts. Among the students at Wheaton College, in the people of Wheaton Bible Church, and through the Austin Stone.

3. People here care a lot about college sports. Like A LOT. Sometimes I wonder if they realize that professional leagues exist.

4. I’ve been really good for a long time at confusing my insight and my obedience. They aren’t the same. Not even close.

5. Tex-Mex and barbeque are the two main food groups. Seriously. In Austin, Queso=Happiness. Not sure I disagree.

6. My church experience since high school has been ridiculously consumeristic. Repenting now.

7. In general, Austin drivers don’t know the rules of the road. The left lane is for passing, not going 10 under.

8. Jesus has remarkably blessed the Austin Stone with a great leadership team. We may not have the most degrees as a staff, but these dudes inspire and encourage me to be living in light of the Gospel more and more every day.

9. The music scene here really lives up to reputation. Always a good show to see. Bands love playing here. And both ACL and SXSW are so much fun.

10. I am terrible at communicating with people I don’t see often. I’d love to be in better touch with everyone who I miss from Wheaton (city and college) and even those I don’t see a lot down here.

11. North and South Austin are incredibly different places, but both are generally very far from God. The north tends to be semi-suburban in flavor but as you head south of downtown, it truly is a hipster’s paradise.

12. Being at a church where you aren’t known by a large percentage of the people is a bit of a challenge. Regularly reminding myself of who I am in Christ, and no need to attempt to control social status.

13. Texas A&M is a big deal to a whole lot of people. In a great way, as it sends out more missionaries than any other American university (so I’ve been told) and they have an incredible ministry on campus. And in a weird way, Aggies have more unusual traditions than I can count. Whoop?

14. God is faithful. Sure, I already knew this. But he has shown it time and time again in the last year through providing friends, finances, living situations, an internship at a phenomenal local church, and so much more.

15. Most people who are my age here aren’t from Austin. Through the University of Texas, the state capital, and many other factors, people move here from anywhere and everywhere in droves. Glad I could be in that club.

16. Ministry is messy. Theory is great up until the point that you get real live people involved. But that is where God works!

17. There must be more races in Austin than any other city in the country. It seems that every other week there are road closures because of a bunch of people running a long way.

18. God’s not finished with me yet, and although the process is hard, it is exciting to see real change and progress in the midst of the struggle.

19. Austin is green. Not in a save the earth way, but in color. It’s entirely the opposite of a stereotypical picture of Texas landscape. Hiking, biking, climbing, kayaking, running, paddleboarding, eating outdoors, and walking your dog are all seen in mass amounts.

20. Jesus blood never fails me.

Want to know more? Feel free to ask. A big thanks to everyone who has made my move down here a success and I’m looking forward to what the next 365 days hold!

3 Things I Learned at Verge 2012

This last week I’ve had the great privilege of attending most of the Verge 2012 conference hosted downtown Austin. It was a huge blessing filled with lots of encouragement and conviction. Here are 3 things I learned:

1. Leadership

“The first task of a leader is to define reality.” Visionary Alan Hirsch and practitioner Dave Ferguson gave an intriguing presentation laying out how a leader can change the state of a church and begin a new movement. A leader must define for the followers how things are going to be. That sounds simple enough, but to make the transition to something new is always easier said than done. Sociologically, the first step that needs to be made is to win the key leaders in your church. Stats say that a change in 16-20% of people will change the whole. Get your leaders on board and movement will come! The other 80% will see the change, follow, and according to Ferguson, “will act their way into a new way of thinking.” For me, it’s easy to get overwhelmed at the prospect of trying to change the whole. But with this framework, more time and effort must be spent on the few and the other 80% will follow suit.

2. Fatherlessness

“Fatherlessness is quickly becoming the defining characteristic of a generation.” In one of the more convicting talks at Verge, John Sowers, president of The Mentoring Project, brought forth a myriad of stats that left the room a bit shaken at the state of the fatherless in America.

• The results from fatherlessness:
  63 percent of youth suicides
  71 percent of teenage pregnancies
  90 percent of all homeless and runaway children
  70 percent of juveniles in state-operated institutions
  85 percent of all youth who exhibit behavioral disorders
  80 percent of rapists motivated with displaced anger
  71 percent of all high school dropouts
  75 percent of all adolescents in chemical abuse centers
  85 percent of all youths sitting in prison

These numbers are staggering and I have been convicted about the fact that I have little interaction with such an epidemic. I think I may coach a kid’s baseball team this summer from a low income area of town with RBI Austin in order to work against this gigantic issue.

3. Love

“Love is the only thing that can sustain mission.” -Jon Tyson.

This is such a simple, yet profound truth. I fail to live it all the time. Pastor Jon Tyson of Trinity Grace Church in NYC gave a beautiful reminder that if we in the church are not obsessed with people, our mission will die. Mission must be driven by a love for people, flowing out of a love for God, which has been gifted to us in the Gospel. In a 1 Cor 13-ish style, Tyson’s illustrations can be presented this way: “If I speak the best theology, but have not love, I am nothing. And if I have used all the best branding techniques, but have not love, I am useless. If I have the best entrepreneurs, but have not love, I am nothing.” None of the above things gives the Church the authority to speak into culture. Love does.

Be a missionary like Jesus was a missionary. Pt. 2

Having seen how much of my mindset needs to be shifted if I am to help reach the 70% of the west that will never take the first step towards stepping into a church, it is necessary to look back to the perfect missionary, the Lord Jesus, for an example and a model. Being the true “sent one”, who has now sent the church, Jesus provides the blueprint of how to reach those who do not yet know the glory of his name.

Alan Hirsch is helpful in identifying four “P’s” of how Jesus came and lived as a “sent one” and therefore how I, and you, can begin to shift our lives from being inwardly centered and attractional in our outreach to replicating the outward and missional example that Jesus lived so effectively.

Proximity: It seems so obvious. But do we live it? Jesus sure did. In the greater scheme of things, he came down from the heavens to dwell among us. The humility here is unfathomable in that he would associate with those who were his enemies! We marvel at this each year during the Advent season, but do we let it truly shape our hearts and then process what it might mean for us to do the same in order to bring Good News to a weary world? It very simply is hard to reach those who you are not close to. This has been hard for me as I’ve moved twice within the last year, but now feeling sort of established in Austin I can begin to place myself strategically in those places where a certain pocket of people will be hanging out.

Fortunately, I have seen this proximity modeled at both churches I have been a part of over the last year. Wheaton Bible Church as a whole moved its building into a closer proximity to a pocket of people they are seeking to reach. I also remember hearing of a pastor and his wife who moved from a nice home in a nice neighborhood into a hurting apartment complex in order to reach those in need with the Gospel. At the Austin Stone, it seems like a staff member a month is moving in to the St. Johns neighborhood, which is an area in great need of restoration, light, and truth, so that the Gospel is in their midst. These are great examples of people following Jesus and taking the Gospel to where the people are, not expecting them to magically come find a church.

Presence: As important as being in close proximity to us, Jesus was fully present here in our neighborhood! Hirsch reminds us “Jesus was no mere representative or prophet sent from God; he was God in the flesh (132).” He was not only close to us, but he became one of us. He was fully present engaging fully with every aspect of our culture and redeeming it in the process.

It only seems fitting then that we should aim for the same. For those pockets of people that we are seeking to reach with the Good News of redemption, restoration, and salvation, we must be fully present in the culture. Simply walking into a neighborhood and thinking it will be changed without taking the “time to simply become part of the very fabric of a community and to engage in the humanity of it all (133)” will likely end up in frustration as we fall short of living incarnationally in those places. I easily forget that Jesus loved to spend lots of his time with the extremely lost people of his day. He knew their situation well, he could relate in their subculture and he could speak into it without sacrificing his message. Do we know the fabrics of the culture of those we are seeking to reach and can we share the Gospel in a way that is specifically relevant to it’s needs?

Across the west, much of the church is still placing all of her chips on the fact that everyone wants to know how to get to heaven. Although important, this is not one of the questions that people are asking anymore. We need to identify what questions are being asked and be able to apply the Gospel to people where they are, not where we would like them to be. It will take time with people and with communities to learn all of these things. For me, it’s helpful to think of the stereotypical missionary situation overseas where a missionary will need to spend great amounts of time learning the culture and being a part of it before the Gospel can be preached in a way that will be meaningful and transforming. It is no different here. Nothing can replace being present and having built relationships in a culture before the Gospel is understood.

Powerlessness: Jesus again provides the perfect example by showing us that his message is not spread by using power as it is often seen through our world, but instead through purposefully exercising powerlessness. Perhaps the most clear picture if this is found in Philippians 2 as Paul reminds that though Jesus was fully God, he came to us as a servant. Jesus flips the world’s notion of power on its head as he becomes the most influential person in the history of the planet.

It should be no surprise then, that for us to have great influence in our cities and our nation, that we are to do the same. It is far too clear how damaging using coercive power has been throughout church history. I often find myself wondering, “What would it be like if i actually considered others more important than myself?” As we find ourselves present in culture and in close proximity to those in need, we must be like Jesus and forsake all positional power and instead serve and serve and serve and ask Jesus for grace to serve more. Demonstration of this shouts in the face of our consumerist world that there is something and someone more important than self and that the King of Kings deserves our allegiance much more than self does.

Proclamation: What good are the above principles if we do not share the message with which we have been entrusted? Jesus boldly shared the message of the Kingdom of God consistently. He did not share a pre-packaged script that was repeated over and over, but contextualized the message of the Gospel so that each hearer could understand and then repent and have their sins forgiven.

Growing up, I’d often heard and read the quote “Preach the Gospel at all times, and when necessary use words.” While this does point us to living out the Gospel in daily life, it is incredibly hurtful to our witness if we avoid speaking about the Good News. Paul in Romans 10 isn’t joking when he says, “How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?” We must share about Jesus in our speech in order for others to call on him.

While none of these four “Ps” may be earth shattering to us, how are we actually doing with these as we reach out to a broken world in need of grace? They apply to all of us.

I know I sure have a long way to go.

Be a missionary like Jesus was a missionary. Pt. 1

As the Church in the west enters the 21st century in the midst of decline and tries to grapple with how to reach the greater culture with the Good News of Jesus, there are obviously many conversations that need to be had. Alan Hirsch in The Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church presents a convicting set of principles on how the movement of Jesus can penetrate the culture to those who have either been de-churched or have never heard the Gospel at all. Within his work, he returns to Jesus as the example of how to be effective missionaries in whatever culture you and I may belong (p 129-136).

At the foundation, it must first be seen that Jesus himself was and is a missionary. “As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you (John 20:21).” He did not come to dwell among us without a mission or a plan. His life was lived on purpose and his mission was the mission of the one who sent him. It is in the same way that Jesus has sent his people into the world.

Think about this: Being sent is inherently an outward movement. How simple that seems when you think about it. But in my life, even though I know I am sent by Jesus, how ridiculously easy is it to find how inwardly focused I can be! This is clearly evident in how I live in sin by worshiping my idols of comfort and approval trying to make the world revolve around myself. But with a closer look into most of the church in the west, with myself at the forefront, I can see that even when I am seeking to reach out and share my faith with those whom Jesus has sent me to, I am really hoping and strategizing to win people to myself, to my preferences, and to the way of church that I have been raised in. Sure, there may be some people who like things exactly the way I do and Christ may call them to himself through that, but it is not how Jesus operated or instructed.

The numbers are clear in the west today that at best 30% of the population would ever have a desire to enter the door of a church service as is. So despite our greatest outreaches and ways of attracting people to Sunday mornings which are governed by our preferences, if we are to reach the other 70% in our cities, our nation, and the world with the Good News we must look outward from our Sunday morning gatherings. We must truly live as “sent ones” going to those who do not know and have not heard, whether in a neighbor’s home or another hemisphere.

Even with this 30/70 principle bouncing around in my head over the last few months, I know that my head and my heart still are in need of reorientation to what Jesus might actually want from me. After all, it is Jesus’ church, not mine. So I am left with questions.  What is the reorientation needed so that those who discard the institution of church will hear the Gospel? On a personal level, how am I to forsake my idol of comfort in order to reach those who will not come based on attraction to a church? Am I really willing to be disapproved of so that others may taste and see that He is good?

Fortunately, Jesus provides us with the example of the one who lived this out perfectly! And in my upcoming part 2 of this post, I’ll unpack four practical principles of how Jesus’ lived that Hirsch identifies as keys for the church today to be able to reach those would not be reached my our attractional Sunday morning model of church as we’ve come to know it.

2011/2012

We are two weeks into 2012 already, but I haven’t felt like I have had sufficient reflection on what God has done for me and taught me in the last year. As I have one semester under my belt at the Austin Stone, there has been so much input and much learning that has changed my understandings of church, of the Gospel, and of God’s relationship with me.

If I have to choose one word to describe my 2011, I’m pretty sure it would be realignment.

My understanding of what the people of God are meant to look like in community has been realigned. Through studying the Scriptures and learning from church history (ancient and modern), it seems almost naive to think that having a “small group” where a group of friends sits around, eats chips and dip and makes a couple comments about the bible is what God has for his people. Yet I had lived in this world for a long time. As long as I could check off having gone to “bible study” for the week I was good, right? Fortunately, through reading the Gospels and Acts specifically, God has shown me how sad my vision for the people of God was previously. Instead, I am incredibly thankful for the leaders at the Austin Stone who have rooted themselves in Scripture and are obedient to seek a better and a biblical model of community.

In Acts, the new church followed what Jesus ordains in 1:8 by gathering in community (seen clearly in Acts 2). This is what I have heard over and over again that a “small group” should shoot for. But Acts doesn’t end in chapter 2. The church continues to follow Jesus’ words throughout the rest of the book as they spread out as witnesses to what was the entire known world within one generation . Not exactly chips and dip stuff.

So at the Austin Stone, “missional community” is where we live and die . These communities are truly the heartbeat of the church. As we see in Acts, the young church first became a community (Acts 2) sharing life together and then different groups of people were witnessed to by the apostles and fellow ministers of the Gospel (the rest of Acts). In the next couple months I will be blogging much more about what this looks like for myself and the Austin Stone, so stay tuned!

My understanding of the Gospel and thus how I relate to God has also been realigned and deepened over the past year. This has been through teaching at the Stone, prayer, studying Ephesians 1, and reading Tim Keller’s book “The Prodigal God.” I have been learning to actually relate to the Father as a Father and not just as almighty, infinite God or even friendly God. As a Christian, I have been adopted by the King of Kings through the blood of his Son to the praise of his glory (Eph 1:5-7)!

This drastically affects the way I pray. I can come to God as Daddy. And I am promised that my heavenly Daddy likes to give good gifts to his sons and daughters, as I have been able to see in smaller measure here through my earthly Dad (Mt 7). As much as my earthly Dad loves me, my Heavenly Father loves me perfectly and knows without question what is best for me and is looking out for me at every turn. He knows how to answer my prayers and provide for my every need. It is in that sense that I can trust, “Ask and it will be given to you, Seek and you shall find, Knock and the door will be opened to you.” As I am learning to trust in my Daddy, just as I did as a child, I see that he gives, reveals, and opens when it is best for me.

One thing that is so awesome and inspiring at the Austin Stone is that it is their goal to find every orphan in the city (and that is a lot of them!) find a loving home. Check out togetherforadoption.org co-founded by Austin Stone Pastor Jason Kovacs. It’s an awesome ministry! Seeing this love displayed as kids are being constantly adopted by families across the city has opened my heart to a much larger degree to how God saw me as an orphan and adopted me into his family. I am a wandering, lost child seeking my own foolish way without his love, but praise be to God that he reached down down his hand and plucked me out of my orphan state and now counts me as his child and joint heir with Christ! How can I not overflow with thankfulness to this Father and trust him with everything that I am!

So I am thankful for 2011 and all that it brought into my life and how much of my life has undergone a realignment for his name and renown. As 2012 is here and already going quickly, I look forward to what God has in store for my heart, for the Austin Stone, and for his people across the world. It’s going to be a great year.

PS. Just for fun: For those of you who like church music, my top album of 2011 is really without competition. Sorry, Hillsong United and Passion, but Matt Redman’s 10,000 Reasons is just ridiculous. Eleven great songs for the church. Buy it if you don’t have it already.

Who is my neighbor and how am I supposed to love them?

How do we answer this question? Since I’ve moved is everyone in Wheaton/Chicago no longer my neighbor? Why should I even care?

Steve Moore’s book Who Is My Neighbor? looks at this issue from the context of the parable of the Good Samaritan. Were all of those who passed by neighbors and should have helped? In Jesus’ story, the obvious answer is yes. Steve Moore offers a compelling equation to consider when thinking of those who passed by and when we face needs today and want to be a “good Samaritan.”

Proximity + Urgency + Capacity = Responsibility

Using the above equation, those who passed by the “half dead” man in Jesus’ story had the responsibility to aid the man if he were to love his neighbor. They were obviously in close proximity to him, the urgency is clear in Jesus’ description of the man being on the brink of death, and surely a Levite and a priest had the capacity to help. That situation seems pretty cut and dry.

But how do we live this in 2011 where the world has become about as small as our iPhone and we can see needs in every city on the planet? There is a whole lot more proximity to help than there used to be (everywhere is within a click), there are plenty of disasters and crisis situations that need to be dealt with urgently, and as a middle class american I have the capacity to help whether I like to admit it or not. However, my typical response to this question is to get overwhelmed, feel bad for everyone in need, and then do nothing at all.

“How you respond to others depends on who you love the most.”   -Steve Moore

By doing nothing, even with the feeling of compassion, I am subconsciously saying that I love myself and my comfort more than I love God and others. And it’s in this moment that I come to grips with the fact that I do not always believe the Gospel. My lack of loving action for my neighbors awakens in me the realization of my worship problem. I’m worshiping my comfort more than God. How wicked I am!

I cannot somehow just muster up more of an urgent love for my neighbors. Maybe trying hard will help me to serve a need for a week, but I’ll get tired of it run back to my comfort of watching from my couch. It is only when I return to the Gospel of Jesus that the Holy Spirit begins to change my heart and grow my love for my neighbor. In the depravity of my ignorance and laziness, Jesus saw my need for saving and for a loving neighbor. He saw me beaten down by sin and by the world and when i was dead on the side of the road, he loved one who was his enemy and had great compassion on me. And just like the man in the parable, I did not like him, had no way to repay him for his kindness, and he knew that I may very well abuse his grace. But he chose to love me! Jesus is my true neighbor.

With the knowledge of that Good News in my sails, I am able to begin to love my neighbor.

The first step for me is to simply do something! Something that will both demonstrate and declare to those who are hurting that they are loved by a God who is for them, loves them, and is in the business of healing and restoring their broken hearts and lives. With a billion potential neighbors and issues to tackle, Steve Moore wisely advocates using our individual passions to connect with God’s passions to find the most effective place to love our neighbors. This connection place will allow us to use our God-given skills and spiritual gifts to bring the love and healing of Jesus to a hurting world, to increase our joy in our Savior, and to make disciples and be his witnesses in Austin, Chicago, America, and to the ends of the earth.

God is good.

So I apologize for this post being long overdue. Life has gotten crazy and I am trying to keep up.

On Thursday I received my first pay check from the Stone. THANK YOU so much for making that possible. God has provided so graciously through you all. Whether through prayer or finances, you have been a blessing and I am so excited and thankful to be blessed by you and able to serve the church and city of Austin because of you. I could go on and on about how perfectly all your prayers and gifts have worked to this end, but it is enough to say that it is abundantly clear that God (and you all) wants me here for the next year.

And therefore I am so excited to already be working on an amazing staff of leaders and pastors who have a love for Jesus and a vision to change the world. In my two weeks of work so far, I have been reminded multiple times that the world was forever changed by 12 dudes sent by Jesus and that same Jesus is sending out more than 12 of us on the Austin Stone staff today. What is to stop us, the disciples of Jesus 2,000 years later, from affecting change in Jesus’ name in Austin, in Texas, in America and to the ends of the earth?

That is the vision.

As I go through this internship year I know the binder stuffing and the name tag printing may seem menial at times, but even in the smallest activity I am serving the current and future leaders of the Church. But please don’t think that the small tasks are all I am doing. In my first two weeks, I have already had the privilege of preparing our Missional Community Leader Summit (a day long training attended by 150 small group leaders), helping organize a Missional Community Training (the beginning of a 4 week class for those who want to learn the Stone’s vision for MC’s), going along a handful of times with a pastor to times of individual coaching and vision casting for MC leaders and potential leaders, serving visiting pastors attending the Future Travelers conference hosted by the Stone and being graciously allowed to sit in on some of the sessions, and spending a lot of time just about daily interacting and being challenged by the pastoral team to process what I’m observing and learning in a way that leads not just knowledge, but more importantly obedience and the path to influence and leadership. I have already been immensely blessed. And I am tired. So I am going to sleep and will post more about what I am learning soon and more regularly.

If you have any questions about what I am doing in general or on a day to day basis please let me know and I would be glad to share.

In the midst of fundraising

As I have never had to raise much money before, I have had an enormous amount to learn about the fundraising process, and I am sure I still have equally as much to continue learning. Fighting through the awkwardness, finding the self-discipline to be working consistently, and praying with faith that God is going to provide have all been parts of a difficult growing process that I am going through while seeking to find people who will choose and have chosen to partner with me financially. Thank you so much to everyone who has already started supporting me through your prayers. It seems a bit cliche, but your prayers are invaluable and have been felt on this end of things.

In God’s perfect timing, a guest preacher at church (Jamie Munson) gave a sermon that struck right at the heart of some of my struggle with fundraising. Money operates either as god or gift. Either we view money as something that God has blessed us with to steward in a way that brings glory to his name, or we view money as a god, something that will bring us satisfaction, value, security and peace, all of which is idolatry. Although I have known this truth in theory before, it really hit home as I placed it in the context of fundraising. How was I treating money in this process? As a god or a gift. It is hard to say that it has always been a gift. In struggling through this, I’ve found that I began my fundraising treating my goal of dollars and cents as the great thing to be accomplished, the thing that would make me happy. But God has been showing me how money truly is just a gift, in this context and every context. The funds that are raised for the next year will not make me happy. They are simply a gift of grace from a loving Father through his beloved church in order to accomplish his purpose. It is not about how secure, how valued, and how at peace it makes me feel whatsoever. The only way I matter in the process is how I respond to the great generosity of the one who has given it all for you and for me and for his glory. And the same goes for you. Do we use  money for ourselves as we bow to our idols of comfort, power and approval? Or do we view money as a gift from our loving creator given to fulfill his purposes in this life? I pray that we would continue to have our view of money transformed in a godly manner both in this fundraising process and in every way we deal with what God has gifted us with.

To those of you who have given already, thank you so much!!! You have been a display of the gift and grace of God to me. Although the amounts do matter as far as a goal is concerned, the amounts do not matter when it comes to the awesome response of your hearts to God by giving to support his mission in the world. I could not be more thankful.

To those of you who have yet to give, I would ask you to pray about how you can give some of the finances that God has gifted to you to changing the city of Austin for his glory as I serve here for the next year. There still is a great amount that needs to come in before I am able to start working. I would love to talk with you more about what that looks like and how your generous giving can provide for me to participate in the great opportunity afforded in this internship.

Hey y’all!

Welcome to my internship blog!

Over the next year this will be a great resource for anyone who wants to stay updated on my journey as an intern at the Austin Stone Community Church deep in the heart of Texas. You likely have found yourself reading this because I have had the chance to let you know all about my internship, but just in case you have stumbled here by another means…

Beginning this fall I am blessed with having an internship on the Missional Community team at my church. You may ask, “What exactly is a missional community?”

“A missional community is not JUST a small group, Bible study, support group, social activist group, or a weekly meeting. It can involve these sorts of things, but it doesn’t stop there. Our missional communities worship God, live in community, get trained for ministry, and make disciples together… over time. Being involved in community is critical to being the church rather than simply attending church.”  -http://www.austinstone.org/what/missional_communities/

My internship will consist of being developed as a man, a leader, and a Christ follower through mentoring relationships, classes, and participation in a cohort of interns. Also, the internship will be a huge opportunity and challenge to use my passions not just through learning, but by participating in ministry in many ways, including missional community leader training, event and conference coordinating, and by serving as a missionary of Jesus in my community. The goal in all of this is to serve and equip the people of the Austin Stone, including myself, to change the city of Austin in Jesus’ name, and through redeeming such a culture-shaping city, to thereby change the world for the glory of God.

The challenge right now in this process is to raise the funding to be able to live as a missionary over the next year. I am trusting that the God who made the heavens and knows each of our thoughts will provide in order to further his mission here in Austin. So although we hear plenty about the economy still being down, and giving to missions may not be the trendiest thing today, I would ask that you pray and consider the opportunity to join me in training Christian leaders and in bringing the message of Jesus to those who do not yet know him. You can share in this ministry by giving some of the finances that God has entrusted to you back to him and to his work that I am blessed to be a part of. (There’s a link at the top of the page.)

Trust me, it isn’t easy to ask for money. I feel a little awkward even typing this. But just as I believe that God has called me to this position for the next year, I also believe that he will provide, and that the way he will provide will be through his body. Just as the early church gave so Paul could give up tent-making and do ministry full time, the Israelites supported the Levites in their priesthood, and those who followed Jesus during his ministry on earth provided so that he could eat and have somewhere to sleep, I am confident that God will provide today through the generous gifts of his people. I do not take this lightly and am deeply thankful for your partnership in bringing the Gospel of Jesus to the world.

I’ll be updating the blog here periodically and if you have any questions please don’t hesitate to leave a comment or email me at chrisnehmer@gmail.com. Thanks for taking the time to read and give to what God is doing in my life here in Austin and I cannot wait to share how he works throughout the next year!