Big Target...Easy Hit

About four years ago we began looking at the future plans of Mission Discovery. Each year there have been about 15% added to the number of participants we take on mission trips. That number was shocking to us when we projected it out 10 years. We began to lay some groundwork for the coming of those participants. Several of those steps discussed 4 years ago have been implemented like adding 5 additional full time staff, moving our office from the donated space to an office that could handle the additional staff, setting regular planning days on the staff calendar, rotation of board members to a 3 year term, and installing new board members with guardedness in vision and planning.

During many hours of planning with our staff and Board, we have come to the point of listing 4 priorities for the growth of Mission Discovery. Today one of the staff asked a question that I have asked myself for several weeks. "How large do we want to grow?"

During Christmas vacation that question came to the front of my mind and David and Goliath's meeting came to mind as well. Remember it? Little boy (David) meets big big man (Goliath). There were some exchanges of words and then David flung one of a few stones and nailed the giant right above the snoz. Killed him dead.

David was excellent with a sling shot, able to kill birds in the field and other moving animals. The giant was a piece of cake for David.....because....he provided a bigger target.

The coming growth of Mission Discovery in a way is like that giant, though not evil, it provides for us a bigger target to hit. Hard to miss. We expect some problems associated with growth, but we feel confident that God will show us these giants off in the distance so we can prepare our stones.

I find it interesting that it was the first stone that clocked the giant, but David had a few back-up stones. Unused as far as this story goes, but yet reported in the scripture. Insights welcomed on this point.

Facing a giant today....remember it's just a bigger target...at least you can see it! Prepare.

What People Will Forget

This is my Uncle Frank Buchanan. I can remember when I was 4 he took me to the airport and sat me in the passenger seat of a small two-seater plane and asked me if I wanted to fly. My response what that "I mighten' get killed."

A year earlier he came to my house in Jackson, Mississippi and brought me a red plastic play telephone. It was so cool. It rang too. He would mispronounce my name on purpose and rub my head. A few years later he would be the victim of a car crash. He was forced off the highway by a reckless car.

I read a comment in an marketing article I was reading two weeks ago, "People will forget what you said and what you did, but they will not forget how you made them feel." My immediate thoughts were of my Uncle Frank. I was such a little guy, I could not possibly remember what he would have said to me, but he made me feel very special.

Fifteen years ago, at age 40, I finally got my pilots license. This past Spring I took my 4 year old grandson, Bailey, to the airport and sat him in a Cessna 152. "Bailey, you want to go flying?" "No, grandaddy, you don't know how to make it fly...let's go home." Well another 4 year old Buchanan turns down the opportunity to fly. But it's not about what Bailey did or didn't do that day, it is about how I make him feel.

On the flip side of this topic....I have to admit that there are some people in my circle of relationships that I don't have a real interest in hanging out with. I can't pinpoint anything they said or did, but I have feelings around them. This year I will not let those feelings keep me from relationships. I like the way Abe Lincoln put it, "I don't like that man....I must get to know him better."

Missions Preparation

At Mission Discovery we spend a lot of time thinking about training and doing training for team leaders who bring group on our projects.

We ask ever leader who brings a group on a Mission Discovery trip to come to a weekend training event we host here in Nashville called Pre-Field Orientation or PFO for short. It is an experiential training weekend, in that we experience through activities what we want to communicate about culture, language learning and telling the story of God's love.

When a youth group or an adult group finally arrives in Mexico for their project or any other MisDis project, we hope that the leader we prepared has prepared his team with the same or similar experiences we provided in training. But some don't prepare the team. Our mission camps are 50 to 175 participants in size each week. There are about 4 to 7 church groups represented in those numbers each week. We can spot the team that is unprepared within 24 hours.

Two summers ago a team leader, who happened to be a medical doctor, was giving me the Opra head shake through the passenger window of my truck. He complained about how hot the bus ride was on the 45 minute trip into Reynosa, Mexico from the U.S. I know they are customers, and I do treat you (them) like customers and appreciate so much them coming with Mission Discovery and I don't like to pass an opportunity to teach when given one. "Doc, look over your shoulder, see that family living in the cardboard shack with no electricity or running water? What do you think they think of the heat today? I would love to take the heat away from you but I don't have that ability...it's a gift from God." I asked him if the heat was "evil." He said "no" so we assumed it was a gift from God according to James 1:12-f.

Our training revolves around three major headings I learned from Tim Gibson at World Servants: Be Learners, Be Servants, and Be Story Tellers. Thanks Tim for what you taught me about the simplicity of preparing a team for missions.

Here is the kicker. Even though a team is not prepared...God is going to do His work through them. I don't want anyone to miss the experience of seeing God at work. Jesus called the untrained and the misfit to His work. Recently Vanderbilt Divinity School took a good friend of mine and graduated him with an MD IV and taught him the ability to READ. What a loss, he use to be a great speaker.

At Mission Discovery be believe in training, but the kind of training that you wouldn't recognize is useful until you are journeying through your next day of activity.

While we receive the untrained, the trained are predisposed to look for God in every part of their day. They are Learners, they are servants, and they cannot contain the stories of what God is doing through them.

My First Posting....Careful

Can it be true that I have entered the 90's, even though it is 2007! Technology wise, I like to think I'm ahead of the game...but the game has moved so fast. So enough said about why I have not been a regular blogger.

Today I went out to iTunes and clicked on the iTunes store. Then clicked Podcast, and entered the search term "mission trips". Only three podcast came up in the search list. In contrast, my wife's industry, Real Estate, is loaded with information podcast.

One on the list of Podcast at iTunes happens to be Mission Discovery (our organization). There are two podcasts from Mission Discovery, both hosted by mua. Coworkers, friends of missions, dirctors, what do you say we beef up this area. We are planning to put our missions training outline on iTunes for anyone to use. I can't wait to hear back from those who might have used it.