Dear friends, we would like to announce a very significant step in our lives and ministry here in Europe! It will require some story telling, so buckle-up and prepare for a long post…
If the length of this post seems daunting, and you want the bottom line on the changes that are coming, you can skip ahead to the bottom section in bold titled: “The Bottom Line” (Please do read the whole story at another time though…)
As I mentioned in my last post, 2009 was an incredible year, as well as an incredible process of seeking God’s promises and His clarity. These past couple of years have marked a time of God-ordained shaking in our lives – a good kind of shaking. It’s the kind of shaking that He uses to direct our steps. It has been a Proverbs chapter 16 kind of a process:
“In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps.” (Prov. 16:9)
As our lives and circumstances have been shaken, we have found that God is shaking certain things loose, He is shaking other things into place, and through the dust and rubble of the shaking we catch glimpses of His clarity shining through. In the past 9 months, the dust from all this shaking has begun to settle, we find ourselves standing at peace, seeing our surroundings and His path with remarkable clarity. I would like to share with you about that process and the resulting direction for our lives.
When God called us overseas in 2002, He “landed” us in Kristiansand, Norway to assist in planting the church here and develop disciples and leaders. He called us to put roots in deep here, and to allow the “seed” of our lives to fall to the ground and germinate here. We took up the attitude that we would live the rest of our lives in Norway. We had to approach living here that way so that it did not just become a “stepping stone” to something else. We had to give up any mentality of temporariness or “What comes next?” in order to truly be planted here and allow our lives to be shaped by the culture and people here. Sarah and I agreed that it would take nothing short of God’s divine direction to move us from Kristiansand.
For the past couple of years, we have known that we were in a process of growing into the next phase of our lives. What that phase would be or look like specifically had a lot of “blanks” in it’s description. We wanted desperately to fill in those blanks – especially when asked by others, “So what do you see for the next 5 years of your life?” Those questions were asked by very caring people who genuinely wanted to know. We had our ideas of what it would look like, and even had a lot of opportunities come our way in the process. However, what we lacked was clarity from God, and we wanted those “blanks” to be filled only by Him. This process required a lot of surrender, but in the long run, that process is always the most rewarding. We purposed not to fill in any of those “blanks” until God’s direction and voice provided the clarity to do so. That was not comfortable, but thankfully we are surrounded by so many people and relationships who cared for us and spoke into our lives in the process.
In February of 2009, I was traveling when I received the first inklings of clarity. In a very still and small way, I simply sensed the Holy Spirit tell me to be open to the possibility of moving to another location in Europe. God was giving permission to think about moving. This came as a bit of a surprise to me, and it was even more of a surprise when I got home and Sarah told me that God had told her the same thing while I was away! This began the process of God doing some surgery on my heart to receive the clarity that He would be bringing in the coming months.
To make an already long story shorter, God began turning our hearts and vision toward the city of Amsterdam. We did not create a list of possible cities and throw darts at it… This was birthed out of a growing relationship that was forming with Piet Brinksma – the national leader for Foursquare in the Netherlands, who is also the pastor of the church there in North Amsterdam. God had given us a vision for a more urban environment in Europe some years ago, and then told us to put that vision on hold until He asked us to pick it up again. As our thoughts turned toward Amsterdam, God told us to pick up that vision again and begin to dream about it. Dreams gave way to concrete ideas and creativity, and these ideas began to give way to a sense of resolve.
All of this coincided with the process that I mentioned in my previous post about how we were finishing up with our responsibilities in the church in Kristiansand. As God began to faithfully provide volunteers and leaders for the church here, He also solidified this vision toward Amsterdam more and more.
As this vision grew, we gathered our courage and knew that action would need to be taken. During a gathering of Foursquare Leaders in Europe in Budapest, God really did some intense surgery on my heart through the prayers and prophetic words spoken by some of my dear brothers and sisters here in Europe. God flipped on a “switch” in my heart, and I found more courage and resolve than I have ever had before. God was saying to me that the time to pursue this was NOW.
Sarah and I believe that our calling as missionaries and what we do should always be an answer to prayer and in collaboration with what God is doing in the place He calls us to. Like Paul’s vision of the man from Macedonia pleading for him to come. We want to set our hands to what God is already working in and among the people he calls us to. We contacted my friend Piet (the National Leader and pastor I mentioned earlier) to ask if we could come meet with him in Amsterdam. Rather than trying to “sell” him on our vision, we wanted to hear what God was speaking to him about his city. If what God was showing us was an answer to that, then we would know to proceed further. In that meeting, and during our time with him in Amsterdam, God met us with an overwhelming amount of clarity. Without either of us trying to “sell” each other on anything, we found that God was saying the same things to each of us. It was as though we had missing pieces to each other’s puzzles. God was preparing us for Amsterdam, and preparing Amsterdam for us to come. God went way beyond exceeding our expectations in seeking answers from Him. As in life choices that He has brought to us before, God opened this door for us, but required that we have the courage to choose to walk through it. From the beginning of the process we had been in communication and submission to the leadership of our Foursquare family, our sending church in Pasadena, and our pastor, John Henry, whom we have partnered with for over 7 years in planting our church here in Kristiansand, and in working in Europe. It did not take us very long after our trip to Amsterdam to decide that God was directing our hearts and steps toward the city of Amsterdam, and we decided to take the plunge to pursue it!
The Bottom Line…
SPOILER WARNING!!! If you have skipped ahead to this part, please do take time later to read the previous paragraphs. We want to convey our hearts to you as well as the information you are about to read.
God is calling us to move to the city of Amsterdam! We are planning on making the move in the Spring of 2010. We are not leaving Norway, but we will be sent by Norway. This is not an uprooting and a transplant, but it is an extension of our roots in Norway to Amsterdam. We look forward to receiving teams from Norway as well as from our sending church in the US to help us there! We will be pioneering ongoing community evangelism in practical ways that build relationship and add value to the communities in the North of Amsterdam. Sound familiar? Our approach and philosophy for this was developed in Kristiansand through years of partnering with Norwegians in the Quart Festival outreaches. As we build momentum, and a collaborative team of people, we have a vision to start a cafe in North Amsterdam as a hub for believers to live missionally, and to attract people to Christ as we serve the surrounding community together. Does that sound familiar? Because that vision comes from our roots in Pasadena, California in serving with No Future Cafe!
We are very excited about this, and confirmation on this move has continued to roll in over the past months as we have begun to pursue it. Please pray for us! The relationship, direction, and vision is in place, but God will need to provide financially to make this move and pursue the ministry there. Please pray that we would get the answers we need very soon to begin the process of getting a visa to live there. Also pray that God would provide the right apartment in the right location.
Even the process of getting there has become a collaboration with the local church in Amsterdam, as we already have many people on the ground there helping us with research, visa acquisition, etc.
Please stay tuned to this blog, and definitely sign up for our newsletter (right column of this site) to stay in the loop on how things are developing, and how you can continue to partner with us in prayer. Also there will soon be more information about opportunities for you to partner with us financially.
There it is. The road goes ever on and on, down from the door where it began… Stay tuned.
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Today was amazing! This was the culmination of two very intense months of planning and excecution (thank you Pasadena Foursquare Church for all of the amazing volunteers and for hosting this event). Since November, 2009 we have been working with Pastor El Clark (our District Missions Representative) to plan a gathering for Foursquare Churches in our district to connect personally with each other about our local and global mission together. The tag line for our gathering was “This Time It’s Personal” – meaning that local and global missions is a personal and relational endeavor for the church. Sarah and I, along with missionaries from Central Asia, and Scott and Jennifer Winter (Mediterranean), were able to personally connect with churches from our district to share about our mission and opportunities for churches to partner with us on the field. We also enjoyed some fantastic workshops by pastors El Clark (Developing a Missions Commitee), Brita Pinkston (Developing Effective Teams Locally & Globally), and Ralph Torres (Being a Missional Church). Pastor David Pinkston (my brother-in-law) was also there with his worship band “The Remnant” to lead us in beautiful times of worship together, glorifying God, and lifting up His Name in the nations.
