News & Stories

Report from camp

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Camp week in Romania was an exhilarating experience. The 40-50 young people were some of the most eager students I’ve had yet. Lots of great discussions about the Kingdom, prayer times with individuals looking for their place, and simply drinking in the beauty of the little village of Prod. After an unplanned session on grace, one young friend sat down across from me and said “So… you slaughtered a few sacred cows today, didn’t you?” I’m always saddened at the narrow understanding most believers have of the grace of God. It’s no wonder we’ve become known for our legalism and judgmental attitudes. Back in Sarajevo I’m hosting two dear American friends, Brian and Adam. It’s been a real gift from the Father to have the rich, daily fellowship we’ve been enjoying. Tomorrow we head for the Croatian Coast for a few days before escorting Brian on to Genoa, Italy, for Architectural studies. I feel so blessed.

This is the little village of Prod, Romania, site of last week’s camp. The second photo is of a few of the students.

The Kingdom, Worldview & Truth

To love the Truth

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I don’t know which gripped my heart first: a love for the Kingdom, or a love for Truth. There’s no difference, really, because the Kingdom is the totality of Truth, and Truth is the Kingdom. In fact, the King himself declared “I am the… Truth.”

One of the greatest grievances I carry in my soul is the abandonment of truth I see in today’s culture, (both Bosnian and American, I’m sad to say). Living here in Sarajevo has worked in me an utter detestation of lies: They kill. They destroy. They create wars, poverty, bondage, prejudice, broken relationships and emotional illness. I suppose its simpler to recognize it here because it’s always easier to see someone else’s lies than your own.

Several years back my friend Bill Burtness gave me a little formula for knowing truth:

  • We’ve gotta be honest. A dishonest person can never grasp truth because his very being rejects it.
  • We must know why we believe what we believe.
  • We must know why we don’t believe what we don’t believe.
  • We must be willing to change.

It’s all such hard work, really: thinking and honesty, and being willing to change. I have to say it’s a daily challenge for me to to sift through information and news and even the perceptions of my heart. But for all the annoyance, it’s worth it to occasionally find a little nugget of the Kingdom hidden under the rocks of illusion. It’s like discovering treasure in a field.

“The pursuit of truth shall set you free – even if you never catch up with it.”
– Clarence Darrow

News & Stories

The capture of Karadzic

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I’m sure some of my friends are wondering how the capture of Radovan Karadzic, (the accused war criminal), has played out itself out here in Sarajevo. It’s been a quiet response. I think people have just taken a collective sigh of relief. Hopefully justice will be served by the Hague, and Bosnia will be able to move another step towards healing. It was encouraging that the Serbian police arrested him rather than the international police force. That, too, will be a positive step in relations between Bosnia and Serbia.

The Trinity

Reflections of the Trinity

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Today I had a sweet opportunity to share my Kingdom stuff, (six hours worth), with a small group of missionary friends. It’s the first time I’ve had the chance to share the teaching in its entirety here in Sarajevo. And that in itself was a real gift

But even sweeter was a dream I had last night: I fell asleep thinking about the Trinity, and how so much of life reflects the stunning oneness in diversity that spoke the world into existence.

At 2:30 am I woke up with a string of ideas rumbling around so strongly in my heart that I had to get up and write them down: Human beings are a trinity of body, soul and spirit. Atoms a trinity of electron, neutron, proton. Family is a trinity of man, woman, child. Music a triune oneness of melody, harmony and rhythm. Musical harmony consists of three distinct tones played as one. All the colors of the spectrum flow from a trinity of three primary colors. Matter exists in a threeness of liquid, solid, and gas. Time is comprised of past, present and future. Creation is a trinity of animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms. And we live in a three dimensional world of height, width depth. It’s no wonder the angels cry Holy! Holy! Holy!

Poetry and Prayers

Learning from the sunflowers

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Sunflowers are really cool: flowers made with a message. I passed fields and fields of them in Transylvania; several million I’d bet if you could tally them up. And invariably they had their faces full open to the sun. Morning pose: bowed to the east. Noontime posture: erect and looking up. Evening position: nodding to the west. It’s a great parable for me right now.

I’m back in Sarajevo and feeling grateful and rested, but troubled. Been seeing some things, and reading up on other worrisome trends in the church: teachers, healers, “prophets”, “miracle workers”… many of them quite quirky. It weirds me out completely, (and embarrasses me for unbelievers), to watch some of the antics on YouTube that we so quickly attribute to the Holy Spirit.

For several days now I’ve been asking God to sort out some of this stuff for me. Been reading lots of scripture about discernment, false teachers, sound doctrine, and deceptive spirits. It just feels like we’re blithely embracing just about any happy-clappy thing that comes down spiritual pipeline these days. A friend reminded me this morning: “You just gotta keep your eyes focused on the simplicity of Christ”, (like those sunflowers seem to do). When Jesus walks onto the scene, whether in the face of a stranger, in a revival meeting, or at the end of the age, I want to be looking in the right direction and recognize the genuine lover of my soul. Don’t wanna fall for some cheap counterfeit.

News & Stories, The Kingdom

Compatability issues

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I arrived in Romania Sunday afternoon, and have a class of young people from seven different nations. Several are former students from past schools, so it’s a joy to reconnect and to hear the stories they’re living.

The forty hour trip from Albania was taxing to say the least: a non-air conditioned bus, upright, non-reclining seats, and passengers lighting up along the way! But even worse was the toll of Communism that unfolded in the passing scenery. For the first ninety minutes I counted military bunkers built by the Albania’s former dictator, Envir Hoxha.  Stopping at one hundred fifteen, (out of a purported seventy thousand!), I turned to writing in my journal:

“Run down properties, soupy, polluted streams and a littered roadside reel past my bus window. The cities are crowded with decaying Communist apartment blocks, discarded scrap, and half-finished projects. One ten mile stretch of oily, abandoned factories with their overgrown parking lots weighed especially heavy on my spirit.

‘You were never meant to live in such a place,’ the Spirit whispered. ‘This is the work of the enemy, whose purpose it is to destroy the bright, the beautiful, and the glorious. You were meant to live in a world of glory and gardens, beauty and brightness, purity and order. In the same way that glory feeds the human spirit, destruction and disarray burdens the soul and depresses the heart.’ ” Communism is incompatible with human life.

But when the church neglects the message of the kingdom, Marxist ideology surfaces as one of the few human ideas that actually talks about justice, equality, and a future. That’s why I’m here, to point to the real thing: the Kingdom of God.

News & Stories

From Tirana

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No fancy update today. Just a bit of news. I arrived in Tirana on Sunday morning after 35 hours of travel. It’s stinking hot here, and the electricity keeps going off.

But we’ve got a small class of great students: Five Albanians and two Latvians plus local and Danish staff. I can always tell the week is going well if I get choked up when I’m teaching. The kingdom has a strong grip on my emotions, and when they push themselves to the surface I know I’m speaking from the deepest places in my heart. It’s happening, and the students are getting it.

I began praying for this country twenty-some years ago when I heard there were no known believers here. Albania was declared the world’s first officially atheist country in 1967, and all religions were strictly banned under the constitution. Now they tell me there were five old priests who were meeting together during the Communist years and praying for God to move. Even their wives didn’t know they were doing such a dangerous thing.

So I feel pretty honored to be here. The church seems to be healthy and growing, and from the quality of these young people I’d say it has a bright future. Hopefully I’ll have some photos to post soon.

News & Stories, Poetry and Prayers

Mental makeovers

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Where does the time go? Obviously I’m overdue for an update again. So this is just to report that things are challenging as always in Sarajevo. And the fact that I’m “stomping on my brains” again doesn’t help. I just finished reading Shane Claiborne’s Irresistible Revolution. It’s a dangerous book. Don’t read it unless you’re prepared for an insane mental makeover of what the Kingdom of God really might look like. It’s left me reeling with radical thoughts and feeling like such a complete rookie.

Tomorrow I leave for a week with the Discipleship Training School in Tirana, Albania, and then another week in Targu Mures, Romania. I’ll be teaching the Kingdom, (as always), but with a fresh dose of humility.

The Kingdom

From cabbages to kings

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Driving rain has marooned me at La Hacienda with no chance of leaving. So it’s a great chance to shoot off a little update if I can draw some inspiration from the Holy Spirit, my own heart, and this vegetable Quesadilla in front of me.

“Nathaniel”, (who laughed and told me to use his real name – “Amer”), did a terriffic job telling his story to a packed house last night. He’s a gifted storyteller, so the audience sat in rapt attention to his tale of encountering Jesus in dreams and Coffee bar conversations.

I’ve been thinking about the church lately. I reckon for a missionary I don’t talk a much about the church. I love the church, believe in the church, support the church, and of course “attend” church. But it’s the Kingdom that captures my imagination. After all Jesus told us that we should seek first the Kingdom, and He would build the church. But somehow it feels like we’ve gotten it all backwards with disasterous results. (He mentioned the word “church” twice in the four gospels, and the kingdom over one hundred seventeen times!

Lots of Jews in Jesus’ day missed the kingdom because they confused it with the Jewish nation. “Lord, are you going to free Israel now and restore our kingdom?” (Acts 1:6) You gotta understand this question came after the resurrection, and after three and a half years of preaching the “gospel of the kingdom.” Can you imagine that maybe the Lord might have felt like banging his head on the nearest brick wall?

As long as we equate the Kingdom with the church, or with heaven, we’ll never understand the Gospel as Jesus preached it. The Kingdom is the fullness of Christ filling ALL of creation, from “animals to atoms” and “cabbages to Kings.” (Eph. 9-10) I look forward to the day when the church awakens to the call of being God’s arrow pointing the way not to heaven, and not to itself, but to the Kingdom. That will be a fresh, new day in the history of the Church.

News & Stories

“I felt like I’d been waiting my whole life…”

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“Spiritual Fathering” was the theme of the Central European YWAM conference last week in Slovakia. It really affirmed to my heart with what I’m doing here in Sarajevo. So I’m feeling both excited and sobered to be raising a handful of spiritual sons in this part of the world.

Today I spent a few hours with “Nathaniel”, the young Bosnian friend I mentioned earlier. He’s volunteered to share his story with a group of university students next week. It’s a very courageous thing for him since former Muslims can come under a lot of pressure and ridicule when they make a decision to follow Christ. Please pray for him. He told me today that the first time I mentioned the name “Jesus” to him he felt like it was something he’d been waiting for his whole life.