A Kindom of No Walls

This past August I walked the grounds of Windsor Castle in London, England. On the grounds were actors and actresses reenacting scenes from the past; there was a changing of the guard, and people lounging in the green grace of the lawns. Surrounding us were the walls of the castle. I'm guessing the walls were 30 or more feet in height, 15ish feet thick and plenty of room on the top of the wall for ammunition, troops etc.

I'm sure the King's of Windsor Castle felt a security here in this place and were able to rule without fear of reprise.

I wonder if Jesus disciples had wanted something similar? A safe place where Jesus ruled. In the book of Acts starting at verse 6 they asked Jesus if he was going to "restore the kingdom to Israel?" Remember, they are talking to the resurrected Jesus. There must have been all kinds of rumors circulating about Jesus and his followers, possibly a certain volume of fear was present when they asked the questions.

There will be a day for what the disciples asked, but Jesus said that day was a secret! Then verse 8 starts with a "But"! It's impossible to know the inflection in Jesus words, but imagine with me the best storyteller at the public library pausing before her sentence, leaning forward then saying, "But you shall receive power." Stop here; think about what prompted this answer. It was the question, "Jesus, when will You establish power?" So Jesus switches it and says, 'lets not talk about My power...let's talk about your coming power.' "But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."

So if I am reading this correctly, the Kingdom that you will witness will be the works of Jesus not just in your home town, but in places where you think they don't like you, and even that place in the world where you would stop, look around and say, "How in the world did I get here? This must be the end of the earth!" And even see Jesus at work there!

So God's Kingdom has no walls! We are subjects in the largest, grandest Kingdom ever. You and I have opportunities to meet other members of this Kingdom wherever we go in this world. And regardless of where we are, invite others to be citizens of this Kingdom.

And the benefit? It seems simple and complex too....as the library storyteller leans forward to speak in a whisper...."and once the Holy Spirit comes to you...you will be able to see Me...all over the world!" She closes her book and says, "Who would like to travel all over the world and see Jesus?" Every child's hand goes in the air. Is your hand in the air too? Let's go!

Jen's Jamaica Story

Jen Pignataro is one of kind and one of hundreds! Jen served in Montego Bay, Jamaica two weeks ago with as a part of a team of 48 adults serving with Mission Discovery. One of a kind in that she brought the unique talent of being a mural artist, and one of hundreds in that she represents what we have seen hundreds of times on Mission Discovery projects---that God continues to reviel new passions, and open doors not previously considered of service to Him.

Jen’s passion can’t be contained. She met an orphaned child at Blossom Garden Children’s Home named Emmanuel. Since Jen’s return home to New York she has work tirelessly to find a way to adopt Emmanuel or find a family that would adopt him.

Several years ago Jen came to Jamaica on a Mission Discovery project for the first time with her mom. I’m sure her mom would be proud of how that first mission trip has blossomed in Jen’s adult years!

Not just Jen, but 47 other participants connected deeply with the needy in Jamaica. One team lead a pastors training conference, another prepared a meal for the community one evening, another labored installing windows at a school for the deaf and another labored hard mixing concrete and building classroom space for a Christian pre-school in a needy neighborhood. It was a great week of hard work, but most would report that it was the relationships they built with Jamaicans, and seeing people give their lives to Christ that meant the most.

Everyone I talk to about Mission Discovery wants to go on a project, but wonders if they would really fit? Would you like to experience something life-changing? Go with me? I have the perfect location for you! And I make this promise, that you will never be the same…Just ask Jen!

Jamaica Project Report

The verdict in in and it's "Guilty". 48 adults from Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina and even London, England just concluded a final day of work here with Mission Discovery in Montego Bay, Jamaica and they are "Guilty" of having done an incredible work in the name of Jesus!

Teams worked at Jamaica Christian School for the Deaf, Blossom Garden Children's Home and Victory Christian Fellowship School this week. They mixed concrete, held babies, gave out hundreds of shoes to children, installed windows and doors and left the project sites today saying what countless others have said, "We received so much more than we gave!"

This Saturday, November 1, marks Mission Discovery's 17th birthday and there couldn't have been a better party that seeing the scripture in action this week. Thanks to all of you who poured out your lives to the poor this week!

Flowers in Bomb Craters

During World War II the bombing of London left devastation. Lives were lost, buildings destroyed and bomb craters littered the landscape. After the passage of some time it was noticed that in the bottom of some bomb craters was a flower growing not seen in this region of England in quite some time. It seems that some of the bombs contained phosphorus, which trigger the growth of what had become a forgotten flower.

Hard times have fallen on our country economically. Ann asked if I would turn the television off this morning before coming into work, that the news was “just too bad” to listen to. I agreed, and turned the television off.

This morning I met for coffee with 10 businessmen and women, some of whom were non profit directors based in our town. We all shared the same concerns. I shared the news that this past week cuts impacted every staff. Two of our staff are or have departed; others must raise additional support to maintain their current salaries. These changes are all because of a 21% drop in the number of those going on trips with Mission Discovery.

As we sat together as a staff there was grieving and sadness. Rob, one of our departing employees gave me his book “Raving Fans” in jest remarked that this was no indication that he was not still a Raving Fan of Mission Discovery! These are and have been incredible ministry partners going to the worst places in the world to serve the poor and depart Mission Discovery with dignity and hope.

I know for us here at Mission Discovery we are looking for and have found “flowers in bomb craters.” The scripture says it this way, “I’m confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ.” While the world’s confidence in the U.S. economy falters, we find our confidence in a foundation of Jesus, who has a purpose in our lives and uses every event that passes through our lives to make that purpose possible.

Thank you for remembering Mission Discovery’s work in the poorest part of the world through giving. Thank you for remembering our staff in prayer.

I'm a Space Traveler

My grandson is inquisitive. He's 6 years old, his grasp of the English language is funny. I was in Guatemala last spring on a Mission Discovery mission trip with a group of adults. I stay in touch with home now through Skype. It's free to call home from an internet cafe anywhere in the world. I Skyped home one Friday night and Bailey, my grandson was in the background. We did the regular greetings and Bailey walked over and said, "granddaddy, where are you?" "Bailey, I'm in Guatemala." He replied with a question, "Is that in this 'wworld.'" (his pronunciation). After I hung up the phone I walked home in the dark, in a city of few lights lending the sky radiant with stars and I thought of Bailey's question. It meant that he believed that I was capable of traveling to other worlds. Worlds where comic and cartoon super heroes live. Some day Bailey will bring into focus the reality of "granddaddy" and "inner galactic travel". God may believe about me much like Bailey. He says that there is another world, a world hard for me to see, but a world called eternity. He even says my home is not here, that I'm gathering "treasures" in my new home, another world where nations and tribes of all languages gather. At one of the gates of Rome a sculptor was carving an object. It was an odd shape and a passerby asked what in the world it was? "It's for the arch above the gate. I'm carving it down here so it will fit up there." Thank you Jesus for carving me in You so I will fit in a better world to come. (Eph 2:10)

Internet Only-Mission Trips Jamaica and Hurrican Ike Relief

Last year one of our Board members asked me "What would Jesus do?" in dealing with an issue that need a decision. My response was, "I don't know, He's to unpredictable!" I don know that we have many resources to know what Jesus would do, I had just been struck recently in my reading how unpredictable, radical etc. He was and how much more that made Him interesting to me.

So, needless to say, Mission Discovery is that as well. Each year we produce a catelogue of trips, but because our world is so unpredictable, we have started publishing internet only projects.

Here are two. Galveston, Texas was devistated by Hurricane Ike and is receiving very little help, according to our sources on the ground in Houston, from volunteer group. Mission Discovery has responded with a series of mission trips starting October 19.

In Montego Bay, Jamaica, Mission Discovery is responding the needs of the Jamaica Christian School for the Deaf. They are in need of a vocational educationl building for the 40 students there. The directors are passionate, have long term concern and desperately want to prepare Jamaica's deaf population with the tools to make it in the vocational world.

As the world changes, so do we at Mission Discovery. Have a great evening.

India – More than 70,000 Christians displaced in Orissa

UPDATE: The Voice of the Martyrs contacts working to assist believers affected by attacks in Orissa state report that more than 70,000 Christians have been displaced and forced to live in refugee camps.

"At the Peyton Sahi relief camp which houses 35 families and 130 distraught tribals, Chabila Naik, a man who ran an orphanage for 50 children in Sarangada spent three days in the forest after their houses and churches were razed [with fire]. He has not been reunited with the children," VOM sources said.

Stories coming from persecuted believers in Orissa are heartbreaking. Christians spent days hiding in the forest following the attacks that erupted on August 24, after the murder of a prominent Hindu leader by Maoist extremists. “One family which did not want to be named said they had to leave their elderly mother in the jungles while the others walked through rain and darkness for 60 hours to get out of Kandhmal,” VOM sources added.

"We had no choice; I could either save my wife and two kids, or stay with her and ask for death for all of us. But, I am sure God has saved her, though I have no idea where she is," the man told VOM sources with tears in his eyes.

VOM is assisting displaced believers in Orissa and other areas in India where persecution has spread. Pray for believers who face these intense hardships and have in some cases lost contact with family members. Ask God to protect them and provide for their needs. Pray their testimonies will draw nonbelievers into fellowship with Him.

Christians in Mosul are fleeing their homes

By Leila Fadel, McClatchy Newspapers Sat Oct 11, 6:43 PM ET

BAGHDAD — Christians in Mosul are fleeing their homes after a spate of killings this week that left 12 Christians dead in one of the largest Christian communities in Iraq.

The killings follow large protests by the community last month against the passage of the provincial elections law. An article that would give representation to Christians and other minorities was removed from the law before its passage.

Now the last safe haven for Christians is gone, said Canon Andrew White the vicar of St. George's church in Baghdad.

After a spree of killings and forced evictions of Iraqi Christians in Baghdad last year, many fled to Mosul. But even there they could not escape the danger. In February of this year the Archbishop Paulos Faraj Raho of Mosul was kidnapped and killed.

"Christians are being killed in the only place they felt safe, in Ninevah," White said, referring to the province of which Mosul is the capital. "This is where they fled to and now there's no safe place for them."

Over a thousand Christian families have fled Mosul for outlying villages and villages in the Kurdistan region in search of safety, a spokesman for the Ministry of Endowment and Religious Affairs said. Posters are being put up with guidelines on how to leave.

"The Christian families left in Mosul are very few indeed," said Mariwan Nakshabandee, spokesman for the Ministry of Endowment and Religious Affairs , which oversees Christian communities in Mosul.

Iraqi Assyrian and Chaldean Catholics trace their roots to ancient Mesopotamia and Christian communities were prominent in many major Iraqi cities, including Mosul in the north and Basra in the south and Baghdad . The capital had enclaves in the central neighborhood of Karada, the eastern neighborhood of New Baghdad and nearby al-Ghadir as well as Dora in the capital's south.

Christians once were estimated to be about 3 percent of the Iraqi population or about 800,000 people.

But as Iraq grew bloody and violent the Christian community dwindled. Now some estimate that more than half of Iraq's Christians have fled. White believes that the Christian community is about a quarter of the estimated 800,000.

"It isn't easy for these people to leave," he said. "They have no representation... we need the Christian world to do something about it."

On Saturday, three more Christian men were found dead in Mosul . Among the 12 killed just this week were doctors, engineers, pharmacists and at least one disabled man. Three empty homes of Christian families in eastern Mosul who had fled were reduced to rubble as a warning, police in Mosul said.

Some of the assassins told those they killed "you want an autonomous region," said Auxiliary Bishop of the Chaldean Patriarch in Baghdad Shlemon Wirduni, who was getting updates every few hours from churches in Mosul . The assassins were referring, he said, to aspirations of some Assyrian and Chaldean Christians to create an autonomous Christian region in the northern plains of Ninevah Province.

Wirduni lamented that despite outcries to the international press, United Nations officials and Iraqi government officials nothing was being done.

In Ninevah province, governor Duraid Kashmoula said the increase in attacks on Christians was due to the failure of a recent security operation in Mosul . He blamed Al Qaida in Iraq , an extremist Sunni group, for the recent string of killings.

Mosul remains a volatile province despite a recent security operation and both Iraqi Army and Iraqi Police officials said they'd seen and uptick in Al Qaida in Iraq activity in the area.

(EDITORS: STORY CAN END HERE.)

"Killing the peaceful Christians is a crime and it doesn't pass without punishment," he said. According to Kashmoula, the killings were because of "the failure of the security plan and the fleeing of the elements of Al Qaida from Anbar to Mosul unchecked."

The Hammurabi Association for Human Rights released a statement demanding international attention to the assassinations of Christians likening it to "genocide."

"We call on the authorities, central and local and international to stop this Christian bloodshed and to contain the violations and violence and terrorism that Christians in Mosul are facing," the statement said.

"We also are victims of the civil war between Iraqis and the objective of the threats of Al Qaida is to displace Christians because they are a minority in Iraq ," said Salwan Khoshaba from Al Tahira Church in Mosul.

Special Correspondent Yasseen Taha contributed from Suleimaniyah.

Back Stage at the Grand Ole Opry---A Look Into the Workings of Mission Discovery

Bringing a team on a Mission Discovery project is loaded with benefits. But the one that may go unnoticed. Every day there are 11 of us full-time staff here at Mission Discovery along with our 9 partner field workers, working to make your week the best possible experience for your team. From ordering building supplies to knowing where the nearest emergency facilities are. From having a backup plan in the event of rain to having extra water on hand with a team accidentally spills the 10 gallons on their site at 8 am that morning. No detail goes without deep consideration.

When I was a youth leader at Hendersonville Chapel in Hendersonville, TN and the years I was on Youth for Christ staff here in Nashville, TN, I did the planning for most of the mission trips planned. The two most memorable projects were in Belize, Central America and in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. In Belize, I assisted YFC director Bill McDowell with construction and outreach projects through an arm of YFC called Project Serve. We built a classroom at a Salvation Army church and lead a youth outreach at the civic auditorium there in Belize. I'll never forget the long lists of details for preparing for that project, then implementing it on the ground in Belize City. I think that Bill and I always felt like were were playing catch-up. Hopefully none of the participants noticed, but it had to be evident that we were in over our heads on the construction project and yet felt prepared when over one thousand showed up for the youth event at the civic center.

In contrast, Honduras afforded me the opportunity to take Bill's role as a leader of the project near San Pedro Sula in a community known as Higito. The team of adults was much different than the team of high school students I'd been with in Belize City, Belize. The adults were actually more childlike (kind word for childish) in there performance often seeking some kind of impossible creature comfort during the work day. Questions like, "Can you pick me up a Diet Dr. Pepper when you go into town?" "I forgot my Sholes Ice Pack...will you be passing a pharmacy to pick me up another?" Needless you say this community had never heard of the word "Diet" most of the community lived on $1 a day. I don't think Higito, Honduras was on the Dr. Pepper marketing team planning board!

Still here at Mission Discovery we find that each project brings unique challenges and rewards. Challenges that range from a simple supply need to team personality issues. But just like those projects I led as a youth pastor years ago, each day something falls apart on a short term experience. The good thing about Mission Discovery leading a project is that the youth leader no longer has to concern himself/herself with what's falling apart, we have it under control. The youth leader is free instead to focus on the team's experience, ministry and know that there is a plan to make "this day" successful.

I was recently back stage at the Grand Ole Opry at the invitation of Nora Lee Allen, a backup singer for the Opry. The beauty of the Grand Ole Opry is that it is actually a live radio show. In other words there is an audience, but it was never meant for television. So what you get is a stage with no curtain. The audience can see back stage. While the performer, Vince Gill, was on stage there were all kinds of things going on back stage. Everyones function back stage was making it possible for Vince to sing his hear out and prepare for the next act, Diamond Rio.

We believe strongly that your team is the next "act" to perform so to speak on the mission field. Our responsibility as Mission Discovery staff is to work "back stage" to open the door of opportunity for you and your group to communicate God's love through simple and complex acts of service and to prepare you to effectively hear the hearts of some of the neediest people in the world. I believe in your ability to be used by God to impact the world and see it change before your eyes as children and adults trust Christ. I also believe in the abilities of the poor to reach into your heart and draw you closer to Him.

This October I will be "back stage" in Montego Bay, Jamaica with a team of 40 adults from all over the U.S. and England. They will serve the poorest of the poor on the not-so-beaten-paths of Montego Bay sharing God's love wherever they go. Would you join me? How could you say no?

Top 10 Reasons to Take you Team on a Short Term Mission Trip

Pictured here atop a Mission Discovery Mexico house (top right of picture) is Bob Carol, an elder at Heritage Christian Church

"Maury, I'm having a meeting with the Elders of my church and I'm talking to them about why we want to go to Mexico this year with Mission Discovery for our short term mission trip. Got any help for me?" It really only happens a hand full if times during a year but enough to cause me to write out what I'd love to spend time telling a group of church leaders about the value of short term mission trips for teenagers and adults alike.

My experience may be unique, but most of my meetings with church leadership about youth short term missions as a young church staff finally led to the price of the mission trip I wanted to do internationally and then to a comment like, "Maury, can't you accomplish the same thing locally for less money?" That question positively shaped my thinking in a list I call "Top 10 Reasons to Take Your Team on a Short Term Mission Trip".

Honestly the question irritated me but also challenged whether I had really thought deeply enough about the "Why" of leading my youth on a short term mission project.

If you are a youth leader, establish a ministry plan that includes within its structure a plan to experience God! A a component of that plan is a short term mission experience that has levels of service. Some group leaders have a plan to offer a local, regional, and international project within the time frame of a students involvment in youth group. When the leadership of your church and parents know that an international project to the "Congo" for example, is a part of an ongoing educational/growth experience they are more likely to be on-board. Same is true for those who work with adults. This top 10 list gathered over these last 22 years might be of help:

10. Short term mission project support the overall mission of the church by involving the congregation/youth as "world Christians".
9. Teams who return from short term mission trips report that that seem to have received more than they gave. Some have even reported to us at Mission Discovery that they felt that the price they paid was much to low for the experience they received. Wow!
8. They return with a new understanding of the journey of the poor.
7. Most short term mission trips take people out of their zone of comfort. This added pressure brings great opportunities for change in one's relationship with God and can provide a "new" persective on life back home.
6. Participants learn by experience just how unique God's work is in other lands and tend to return home talking about their experiences with God.
6. Mission Discovery short term mission projects focus on areas of the world where we have been invited to serve alongside long term ministries. These ministries have invited teams because they know their value and consider them vital to their ongoing work of spreading God's love.
5. Short term mission trips involve more than just the participant. They involve the whole family even though the rest of them may not go on the journey! Each friend or family member participates either in pray or financial partnership in the project. Whole churches have attached themselves to participants in short term mission projects and benefit from the results.
4. Pre trip training for mission trips not only provide a participant with skills for the project, but for life as well. Mission Discovery teams learn to tell the story of what God is doing in a 5 minute presentation. That training is beneficial for a lifetime not just for the short term mission trip.
3. We place value on higher education and are willing to invest our time and dollars in that education. Consider the average price of a short term mission experience being about $500 U.S. The return on that investment is lifelong.
2. Teams learn the difference between the God of their culture and the God of this world.
1. Because the scripture encourages us to go to witness the works of God in Jerusalem, Judia, Samaria and the ends of the earth. Acts 1:8

Remember, when your you are able to explain clearly how your mission trip fits in the larger picture of the churches plan for mobilizing people to serve God, it becomes not a matter of will the project happen but when! Once church leadership sees you are only fulfilling "their" vision they can only say "yes!"