A few of us from our church are headed to China (Oct 24-Nov-4). I am blessed that three people I am discipling are going with me, two of them have never left America, one has never gone outside of California! plus two of them will be planting a church with me in 2007, so experiencing cross-cultural stuff is a must.
We will work with three missionaries: Two University teachers who allow us to hang our with their students, they also oversee many house churches, so we attend church with them and talk to some of their leaders. We also spend time with a woman who adopts street kids and brings them to an abandoned chili factory teaching them about Jesus while giving them life skills.
We are in the middle of fund-raising, which is a great opportunity for some of the folks to own and admin events. My desire is that they learn how to admin a trip initiating, overseeing, and follow-through all the steps needed to take their disciples on cross-cultural journeys. We do odd jobs for our money, which is a character and team building adventure. Most of our work has come from people who don’t know Jesus, so it’s a great witness as well.
We started our college group. After much prayer and fasting God finally gave me the name for our group: The College Group! Totally PoMo (postmodern) so we’re guaranteed to bring um’ in. I’m into cell church, so The College Group will meet as a small group, evangelize (which was our topic last night Luke 10:25-36), grow, and then multiply & do it again & again & again etc… When we have four groups we’ll get together as a large group (Cell-ebration)
We had two new folks and when we started talking about taking a mission’s trip this next summer they were stoked. My intern will help me lead next week. I think he'll be ready to lead his own group in Jan? Good stuff.