Kudos to my wonderful family for managing to hide from me and trick me into thinking that the one thing I most wanted for my 50th birthday was not going to happen – a surprise party. The ruse was laid well. We all went out Friday afternoon to a mysterious spot in the south of…

Every once in awhile I try to expand myself out of my left-brained box, hopefully in cooperation with the Spirit. Here is my latest attempt, which I wrote one day while at our agency’s semi-annual conference. The challenge to us was to write a lament. Time How long is time for you, O Lord? What…

I get wonderful testimonies all the time, but I seem to rarely remember to record them. This week in our group one woman, the wife of a pastor started talking about how much the course I have been writing and leading had impacted not only her but her entire church (through her),  I asked her…

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…