Today I want to post a post that a mentor of mine in movement building wrote. It describes well one dimension of what I am working towards, and gives me a measure of comfort in how slow the process is. There were once three builders. They had very different approaches to building. Each builder thought…
I’ve been in Russia now for 9 years, which has the advantage of allowing me to see how the frog is boiling in the US from a distance. I’ve been here so long Facebook was a near start-up, so in the earlier days one of the best means of seeing where things were on a…
I could hardly be more excited about a new study I am writing for small groups. I’m going to beta test it first on my own group in St. Petersburg starting in April, and then offer it to others to try out, in Russian and in English, I expect by the fall. Here is the…
I’ve been a missionary to Russia since 2007, and I was in Virginia in March to reconnect with the city that gave me my start in ministry. I also lead a seminar called RealTalk. The workshop provides us with a key missing dynamic to every God-given dream in our lives… dreams for our children and family, dreams…
This past spring we announced a citywide art competition, the idea for which God gave me to help foster vision for the city as a whole, under the reign of Christ. The call was simple: portray St. Petersburg as God sees the city. To help, I wrote a document and made a presentation during a…
I’ve been musing a lot lately on this, and wanted to get my thoughts out, and maybe even get some feedback on them as well. I wonder if most Christians don’t see how insidious this tendency is, even as they lam-blast liberals and others as ungodly. What am I talking about? Here is how the…
We held the second in a likely series of meetings this month with the assistance of a Belgian missiologist that does not live here, but with whom I resonate deeply. The first, last year, was about trying to understand the cultural nuances here that help or impede the Gospel. This year we took the idea…
I got invited to a conference this month by an odd-sounding group who call themselves Mentologists. But the topic was so interesting and relevant that I had to give it a go. The entire two-day event was devoted to the subject of trying to understand the Russian mentality. As a person devoted to trying to…
We generally go away for a weekend retreat twice a year. This fall my vision was to for the first time take with us several new people who have been slowing gathering towards us in ministry – volunteers, students, and leaders of a the “satellite” ministries that are under our umbrella. But frankly, it’s been…
This past month I lost my father to lung cancer, diagnosed less than three weeks prior. I had the privilege of speaking at the memorial service. But this was a moment I had been thinking about for an awfully long time. Back in 2004, I got the inspiration to write a eulogy for Daddy that…
Here is a section of my recent newsletter that didn’t make the cut. My editors thought it was a little gross for most people’s tastes. So I’ve preserved it here. They say insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting a different result. So how many of us stay in our…
Although I am far from an expert, I have taken some interest in the spiritual history and destiny of St. Petersburg, just as I used to do so when serving in Richmond. Here is a document that I wrote a few years ago that I hope to expand as more people can join me in…
