Christmas Greeting

We wish you a blessed Christmas season & a Happy New Year!
Kelly & Linda, Candace & fiancé Luke, Hannah & Nathan

Egg-faced...

Well, I usually do my homework and double- or triple-check sources on stuff that comes to me from the internet.

But, as occasionally happens, I did NOT check through on a recent item and now I’m wiping egg yolk off of my face.

Not long ago, I received an email that stated that Slovak was the world’s most difficult language in the world. I was so encouraged as I realized that I had reached a level of competency in that difficult language. I was blessed by being in a small group of people.

Sigh.

The truth is that Slovak is not classified officially as the world’s most difficult language. That email that I received was a hoax - in spite of the fact that it came from a very reliable source.

Sigh. Again.

Well, I am blessed by the Lord with the ability to communicate in a 2nd language. It has been a long haul and worth every step. The mistakes, the frustrations, the bloopers, the embarrassment - it’s all worth it.

Thank God.

The Nativity - re-thought - again

I guess every year there are people who re-study, re-think and re-imagine the Nativity.

I have that opportunity this year - at least to a small degree. Here are some thoughts that have come out of reading & prep for a message on the meaning of Christmas that I am preparing (many of these - if not most - come from David Jeremiah’s book, “The Nativity.”):

* More than 300 specific prophecies are in the Hebrew Scriptures (the Old Testament) about the promised Messiah.

* The odds of one person fulfilling 60 prophecies is said to be 1 in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 or 1x10 to the 157th power.

* The great problem of sin was resolved with the first step of God becoming a man. God in disguise as it were. Planted in the womb of a young woman still a virgin. The Creator among His creation as one of His own creatures.

* Have we considered the impact of the angel Gabriel’s announcement to Mary of her impending pregnancy - by the Holy Spirit? Here she is in the throes of preparations for a wedding. She’s dreaming of becoming Joseph’s wife, joining his family, becoming - eventually - a mother and raising children with her husband. All of a sudden, she receives the news that she will be pregnant BEFORE the wedding and it won’t be Joseph’s baby - it will be GOD’S baby. Mom, Dad, how would you react to your daughter’s news of this sort? Men, what would be your reaction if your beloved came to you during your engagement and told you that she is pregnant - with God’s baby?

* I love Mary’s response: “My soul magnifies the Lord! I am the Lord's servant. Let everything you've said happen to me.” WOW! I’m not so sure that I would have responded so calmly. I guess that’s one reason why the Lord chose Mary and not me - not to mention that I’m male and that, indeed, would be a miracle!

* And consider Joseph... What a humble man he was. Here his fiancee is pregnant with the Son of God and instead of “giving her the boot” he sticks by her, recognizing (through a dream from the Lord) that God is, indeed, in control. I wonder what other thoughts crossed his mind as he realized that he would be having a son. Did he look forward to raising this son or was he filled with confusion as to HOW to raise such a unique son? Did he struggle with wanting to raise his son in his trade or did he accept the fact that his son would take on a totally different focus in life? What dreams did he have for his son? If, as the angel told them, their son truly was the Son of God, how soon would it be obvious to Joseph & Mary? How would they know?

* Why did God choose such a “low-key” entrance into this world?

* And Bethlehem. Why Bethlehem? There’s lots of history there. Jacob’s wife, Rachel, was buried there. Ruth & Naomi moved there and Ruth re-married there. Bethlehem means “the house of bread” and Ephrathah means “fruitfulness.” Jesus called Himself “the bread of life” (John 6:51) and taught us that when we are in Him - the True Vine - that we would “bear much fruit.” (John 15:8)

* Some things we think we know about the Nativity story that are not in Scripture:
        -- Jesus was born in a stable - it is more likely that he was born in a cave
        -- There were 3 wise men - there were, indeed, 3 gifts, but we aren’t told how many wise men came
        -- Nor are we told exactly when the wise men came, but it seems that it was months to 2 years after Jesus’ birth
        -- Joseph & Mary went by donkey to Bethlehem - we don’t know how they traveled to Bethelehem
        -- Jesus’ birth probably took place in March rather than December - but this cannot be proven

* During the lifetime of Jesus Christ, the name “Jesus” was quite common. Even the insurrectionist called Barabbas was called Jesus. However, shortly after the death, burial & resurrection of Jesus our Lord, the name “Jesus” died out of popularity. Hmm.

* Why is it that the most spectacular appearance of angels at the coming of Jesus Christ was witnessed by “lowly” shepherds? In all of the other records foretelling His coming, Gabriel alone visited those involved.

* What is with the Star of Bethlehem? How did these wise men (astrologers?) follow that star? There is a lot of speculation about that star, but more mystery than anything remains.

* The wise men’s gifts are interesting: gold (signifying a royal gift of kingship), frankincense (the word means “whiteness” signifying purity and was the oil burned in the temple where the sacrifices were made - the priest comes to the people) and myrrh (and anointing oil for embalming the dead - significant of His death). I have to wonder if Mary & Joseph shuddered as they recognized the significance of the gifts...

* “Jesus didn’t arrive in the manner of a king for several reasons, the most important of which is simply that He came to turn the world and its values upside down.”

* The term “Christmas” comes from the Middle English term “Christemasse” or “Christ mass” meaning “Christ’s service of worship.”

Once again, I am filled with the mystery of the Nativity. I have more questions. More “What abouts?” and more respect for the God of the Universe that slipped out of His robes of majesty & power & acclaim and clothed Himself with skin, robes and sandals.

He did it for me. For you. For all mankind.

Merry Christmas? No. A BLESSED Christmas is my wish for you.

Language encouragement

I’ve always known that Slovak is a difficult language. After all, I studied Greek (Koine, the ancient Biblical language) for 2 years in Bible College and it seemed to me that it was easier than learning Slovak.

Of course, learning a language academically is always differently than learning one to use for everyday living, including teaching, training, etc.

Well, last week I received an email that came out of a report in Paris, France, at the end of September. Here are the findings:

Language experts met in Berlin and considered 7832 languages on the earth. Every week, 2 languages die out and 3 new ones are created.

EASIEST LANGUAGES:

10. Mongolian

09. Aramaic

08. Greek

07. Norwegian

06. Italian

05. Romanian

04. Croatian

03. Bulgarian

02. English

*01. Spanish (of which over 300 million speak)


The 10 most difficult languages on the planet are:

10. German

09. French

08. Chinese

07. Japanese

06. Korean

05. Persian

04. Arabic

03. Finnish

02. Hungarian

*01. Most difficult language on the planet is Slovak

I have to tell you that when I read that email, I was quite encouraged. I can converse, joke, teach, train, pray and live in this language. My “fluency“ is at the lower level of fluency, but I’m thankful for God’s grace enabling me to learn it enough to be useful to His Kingdom’s work here in Slovakia.

See, the old adage isn’t a rule, it’s only a ”general truth“ - Old dogs CAN learn new tricks!!!

Arf! Arf!

Hit hard!

This was a tough month, but the worst was this past weekend. I spent the weekend with 21 other Baptist youth workers praying, dreaming and getting to know each other.

On Saturday night, I had the opportunity to lead a session entitled, “Do examples attract or is it something else?” (I didn’t come up with the title - that was decided by the man who put the weekend together.)

The short version of the story is that I feel like I totally bombed out. I can’t even give you a clear 1-2-3 as to why I feel like that, but I was embarrassed to even think about the evening any more.

That was bad enough, but the hammer came down hard early on Sunday morning when I awoke (2nd to get up) and discovered with Peto that someone had come into the house where we were sleeping - while we were sleeping - and stole 2 laptops (mine included), a few cell phones, several pairs of shoes and more. The total loss that I personally experienced comes just short of $3900. They took my Apple PowerBook, iPod Video and digital Olympus camera, along with a bunch of cables and adapters, my “dob kit” and more.

I’ve spent the last 2 days changing passwords and trying to recover files and information from my desktop (which the kids use more than I do - until now, that is!) and having many, many “Oh, yeah!” moments as I recall different accounts & passwords that I should change. Unfortunately, I hadn’t done a backup in quite some time, so I’ve lost quite a bit of stuff.

As I (and the others who were robbed) talked - and over the past 2 days as I’ve thought - I realized that our Lord watched over the entire affair as it happened during the 3 hours that no one was awake (3:00am - 6:00am) and could easily have awakened one of the 21 people sleeping in that building. For some reason, He allowed us to sleep heavily and not hear any shuffling or noises of any kind. (We’ve ruled out an inside job because only 4 of us had cars and those were easily accessible to us all to see inside.)

My buddy, Jeff, suggested that maybe the Lord didn’t want me to travel to Poland this week as planned (I cancelled the trip in order to take care of all of these trivial - but important - details.) That’s a thought that hadn’t crossed my mind. God does work in strange ways, so it is very possible He was protecting me from something or that He wanted me here Banska Bystrica this week for a reason.

What is interesting is my reaction to the whole endeavor. As I thought about it, I was thankful that they had removed my passport, car papers, international driver’s license, car keys, house keys and keys to the church building as well as both of my Bibles (one English version that was a gift from Linda and the other a Slovak version) and 2 notebooks. I find myself strangely amused at their “thoughtfulness” at not making my life much more complicated by stealing my car, passport and more.

On the other hand, as I sat with the policeman giving my report, he asked me, “If the criminal is caught, do you want him to be prosecuted?”

I paused, not because I didn’t understand, but because I actually wondered if that’s what I wanted.

“It’s obvious that this is not the first time that these people have done this - it was too professionally done. Do you want them prosecuted?”

“Yes,” I answered.

I realize that I am the steward of these items and that if the Lord “stood by and watched” without waking anyone, that I simply needed to trust in Him to provide me more of “HIS” stuff to use. I’m upset, no doubt, but at the same time, I have done all I can do to retrieve the items. I’ve put out the word to Mac shops in Slovakia, the police (including giving the serial numbers), prayed and prayed some more (as well as asking others to pray). What more is there to do but wait?

The police officer said that if I haven’t heard anything in 2 months, that the case will be closed, so KEEP PRAYING!

More later...

***************************

For those of you who are interested, here is a listing of all that I recall that was stolen and the value:

POWERBOOK                                                2500
iPOD VIDEO                                                299
DVI TO VGA ADAPTER                                        19
S-VIDEO ADAPTER                                        19
iPOD VIDEO microphone                                11
iPod VIDEO iGriffin iTrip                                        30
IPOD VIDEO CHARGER & CORD                        29
OLYMPUS SP-350 DIGITAL CAMERA                249
512 MEG MEMORY CARD                                35
KODAK RECHARGE-ABLE BATTERIES                15
CLINIC LOTION                                                16
OLYMPUS SP-350 DIGITAL CAMERA                249
512 MEG MEMORY CARD                                35
KODAK RECHARGE-ABLE BATTERIES                15
SHOWER KIT                                                25
RAZOR, BLADES, SHOWER GEL, ETC                30
COMPUTER BAG                                                100
HeadSet for New Cell Phone                                30
HeadSet for Old Cell Phone                                25
Carrying Case for Digital Camera                        20
Data cable for cell phone                                        30
iPoD VIDEO case                                                15
Business Card Case                                        15
1 pound bag Dark Chocolate Peanut M&Ms        2.5 These were just sent in a gift box from Emily on Friday - :-(
All of that totals just over $3800

Trying to stay caught up!

Whew!

Got back from Prague on Saturday evening, directed the worship service at our church on Sunday, had some guests over for lunch on Sunday and spent Monday & Tuesday catching up on work that backed up with the week in Prague.

Early on Wednesday morning (Nov 7th), Linda & I jetted out to Holland to spend the night with Denise Detweiler and their kids (Jonathan, Denise’s husband, was away for the week). We had breakfast with Denise, met some of the women from their International Women’s Bible Study and headed out to Amsterdam for the GEM-YM Retreat.

The retreat was refreshing. Those present were Adam & Bethel Gascho (serving in Cologne, Germany), Tagg Wolverton (serving with his family in Hailoo, Holland), Jon Covell (serving with his family in Dublin, Ireland), Matt Kingsley (serving with his family in Dublin, Ireland), Holly Davis (also in Dublin, Ireland), Cam Daughty (serving with his family in Malta), Amy Williams (serving in Italy) and Linda & Kelly Shattuck (serving with 2 of their 4 kids in Slovakia).

We revisited the core values of GEM-YM and discussed more how to live them out practically. As well, we came up with some criteria to identify the GEM-YMers so that we can better strategize in the areas of training, mobilization, multiplication, etc.

We did take an afternoon and evening to go to downtown Amsterdam. Part of that tour was also spent in the infamous “Red Light District.” I don’t know what you know about or have heard about that district, but whatever fantasies a person can conjure up in his mind can seemingly come true there. However, as we walked through the district, we were given the suggestion not to make eye contact with the prostitutes standing in the windows and were forbidden to take pictures.

I broke rule number one - on purpose. Scripture tells us, “Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eyes are good, your whole body also is full of light. But when they are bad, your body also is full of darkness.” So I purposefully looked some of these ladies in the eye to see what would be found there.

It was a sad experience. I had to ask myself what happened to these girls/women in their past that brought them to a place to use the physical expression of the most intimate relationship as a means of earning money. My stomach turned. My heart sagged and my mind wondered, “What are their stories? Who hurt them? Who bewitched them to believe that this had to be the way to provide for themselves? How much pain is buried in those hearts under layers of lies, deception and confusion?”

More later...

Storying

Whew. My brain is mush, but I’m going to try to write a few thoughts right now to see if it will help me retain better.

The following is from a Church Planting seminar that I attended with Martin Jirku in Prague (Oct. 30-Nov 2) with Caesar Kalinowski, Todd Morr and many others.

Soma Communities are about 4 Identities and 6 rhythms. Those are:

IDENTITIES:
        1. Servant
        2. Learner
        3. Missionary
        4. Family

RHYTHMS:
        1. Story
        2. Listen
        3. Eat
        4. Celebrate
        5. Bless
        6. Recreate

Check out their web site - it’ll certainly make you think twice about how we “do church” and whether it’s really Biblically-based or not!

It’s an interesting approach to ministry - very fresh. I’m surprised how often I refer back to these identities and rhythms. For more information, check out their web sites: http://www.somacommunities.org

The Gospel

Here is one thought that came out of our training yesterday. I’m trying to catch my breath, ‘cause we’ve been hitting it hard and I’m only getting to bed by 1:00am or so and up at 6:25am. Guess I’ll be crashing on the train back home - but I did want to use that time for further prep for several things coming up in the next few weeks.


We need to keep a balance of the
        Power of the Gospel - (salvation) - Rom. 1:16
        Purpose of the Gospel - Eph. 2: 8-10 (to do the good works for which we have been created)

If there is an imbalance, these are the results:
        All power & no purpose - dead churches - saved & waiting for Heaven
        All purpose & no power - social gospel

Simple, no?

HIS Story

I am in Prague, Czech Republic. I am attending a “training event” for church planters lead by Todd Morr, who brought Caesar Kalinowski over from Soma Communities in Tacoma, WA. Yesterday, we spent all day going over God’s story as laid out in the Bible! Martin Jirku is with me - on purpose. He wants to plant a church in Zvolen (a town nearby Banska Bystrica) and I want to expose him to quality people who are already doing church planting so that he is challenged & encouraged in his vision to plant a multiplying church.

It was a lot of material, a lot of stories - 25 or so.

It is a narrative form of Bible teaching. The idea is to get the BIG idea of Scripture while at the same time building in key thoughts, doctrines, truths that are transferrable in the story form. I have to say that I believe that we are missing a big part of the believer’s relationship with Christ if we don’t have a good picture of His background, culture and the whole picture of Him as the Messiah.

If the whole Bible is about Christ, then it behooves us to understand very well how He is evident throughout the entire Bible.

I was also surprised how many times I thought, “Does the Bible really say that?” and, after further investigation and discussion, I would discover that it, indeed, did say what was in the narrative that we were hearing, repeating and discussing.

Today, we are going to be discussing & learning what it really means for a church to be “on mission” - to be missional. It is a popular word among churches & ministries right now, but the question is whether or not we are really doing it!

More later today - I hope! The schedule looks incredibly tight!

11 years in Slovakia and this is a first...

This afternoon at our church, we hosted a special presentation about Israel (and some end-time stuff) by a man from a nearby town.

I arrived about 10 minutes before the meeting was to start to make sure that the video projection & such was all going to work properly and Milos (one of our elders), who had arrived early to set up the video stuff, introduced me to Mr. Ostrolucky. Mr. Ostrolucky was thrilled to meet me (chairman of the elder board) and to have the opportunity to speak to our church body. He heartily grabbed my hand and as he pulled me to himself to kiss me, he said, “As brothers in the Lord, we can greet each other this way, yes?”

I panicked! I was sure that he was going for a kiss on the lips, so I turned my head to the side to get kissed first on one cheek and then the other.

Whew! I sat down shortly thereafter to regain my composure and convinced myself that I had probably over-reacted and that he probably wasn’t aiming for the lip-to-lip greeting. But I couldn’t shake the sense that he really was going for the lips.

Following the meeting, I said goodbye to my “brother” (as we call all men in our church - although in reality I am bad at this because I don’t ever recall calling my in-flesh/blood brother Mike, “brother” - I can’t figure out why we want to emphasize this in our churches - my bad, I guess). Brother Ostrolucky again grabbed my hand, pulled me towards him and - yes, I’m sure of it now - aimed for the lips!

I’m sorry, but I don’t kiss anyone on the lips these days except my children and my wife. I suppose if I lived in Russia that I would learn otherwise, but -- thanks be to God -- I DON’T live in Russia and I don’t have to kiss other men (or women) on the lips in a greeting, so I don’t!

I’ve been here for 11+ years and this is the first time I’ve experienced this. Guess the Lord is still teaching me -- and I’m still learning.

By the way, the presentation about Israel was quite good. I’m encouraged as I see things taking place that seem to point to the very-soon return of our Lord Jesus! WOW!

Blessings to you!

The Old Ways...

Just came across these 2 verses in my reading this morning. I’m including them in English & Slovak - just in case you decide you want to start to learn Slovak!

*****************
“This is what the LORD says:Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls. But you said, 'We will not walk in it.”

“Takto hovorí Hospodin: Postojte na cestách a vidzte a pýtajte sa po chodníkoch veku, ktorá je tá dobrá cesta, a iďte po nej a tak najdite pokoj svojej duši! Ale oni povedali: Nepojdeme!”
Jeremiah 6:16 - Jeremiah 6:16 (ROH)

*****************
“This is what the LORD says:Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, 24 but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight, declares the LORD.”

“Takto hovorí Hospodin: Nech sa nechváli múdry svojou múdrosťou, ani nech sa nechváli udatný muž silný svojou silou, nech sa nechváli bohatý svojím bohatstvom!”
Jeremiah 9:23 - Jeremiah 9:23 (ROH)
*****************

I was just reminded that newer is not always better. Even the Lord confirms that. He tells us to ask for the ancient paths - the good way - and then when we find it to walk in it. And we’ll find rest for our souls in it! Wow! What are we doing trying to re-invent the wheel?

God is good!

Leadership thoughts

“Leadership is stewardship. It is temporary and you’re accountable.” Andy Stanley

This is a statement that is heard during the intro of the Catalyst Podcast. It is a statement that rings terror in my heart as a follower of Christ and Christian leader.

I highly recommend the Catalyst Podcast - you can subscribe on iTunes by typing in Catalyst Podcast in the search window on the iTunes Store site. If you’re in leadership of any sort - youth ministry, children’s ministry, your own business, as an employee, whatever - you need to listen to this podcast!

It is serious business to lead others - where are we leading them? How are we leading them? What are they catching from our example? Do we lead them as Christ would if He were physically in our shoes? (By the way, the Slovak phrase for that is, “in our skin?”). Are we leading them with Christ’s motives or do we have our own hidden agendas (fame, power, influence, etc.)?

I want to influence people by the power of Christ & His Spirit in me to expand His Kingdom & influence and love for them.

Washington/Dulles layover

Nothing “big” to report right now except to say that only one of my bags was really overweight (69 pounds!). It cost $50 to check it in, but I saved so much more than that on the items that I purchased while here.

One example: I used Gillette Mach 3 blades for shaving. In Slovakia, I pay over $10 for 2 refill blades. I bought 12 blades for $8.44 on this trip!

I’m REALLY tired. Had to get up at 5:30 to take Peto to the MARTA (mass transit train) to get to the airport. It was well after 3:00am when I went to bed, but I did get another 45 minutes after I dropped Peto off.

I’m really looking forward to seeing my wife & kids - a week is a long time to be apart from them - for me.

Northpoint Community Church visit

Went to Northpoint Community Church this morning with the Parkers. Andy preached via video from the Buckhead campus. His image was projected life-size in High Definition on the screen center stage and then there are the 2 screens on the sides that zoom in on his face, etc. Interesting concept and quite convincing.

Peto and I were struck by the consistency of the theme of the message all throughout the campus. The place is enormous and unbelievable in so many ways, but it all makes so much sense.

Last night we had dinner with the Parkers and the Reeds. Libby Reed came to Slovakia twice to serve at our Big House English Camps and it was good to reconnect with her and the whole family.

It was also refreshing to have some concentrated prayer time with the 2 families. It is indeed a powerful tool for us as followers of Christ.

This afternoon, we had dinner with Joan Martin - a long-time family friend. We caught up on families, churches, personal lives and then enjoyed the fellowship that comes as we share what Christ is doing in our lives.

Catalyst Conference - Day 2

I think that the highlight of today is Andy Stanley’s session - which happened to be the last session of the day. Here are some thoughts from his session:

God created systems (the Solar system, the human body, etc.)

God uses systems for His kingdom.

We need to learn to use systems to accomplish the goals that we want to accomplish in our ministries. For instance:

We complain that people in our churches don’t bring their friends to church, so we exhort them all the more to bring their friends, but everything else that we do in our “system” is counter that goal. Andy suggests that we create systems that encourage & create environments to create the behavior that we want.

I have more notes on this in my conference notebook, but the notebook is in my bag (that’s checked on the plane), so I may post some more thoughts on this later...

Catalyst Conference - Day 1

Whew! What a day. With a lineup of speakers like Andy Stanley, Patrick Lencioni, Francis Chan, Erwin McManus, Shane Claiborne and others this is truly a “power-packed” conference.

That doesn’t include the contacts that Peto and I made with various schools, ministry leaders, organizations, etc. that we hope & believe will prove profitable for the growth of the local church in Europe.

Here are just a few snippets of some of the things that today’s speakers said:

ANDY STANLEY: “ What do you do when it dawns on you that you’re the most powerful person in the room?” Followed by a brief exposition of John 13 where Jesus washed the feet of the disciples. In that passage, the disciples are stunned by Jesus’ humility. “Has anyone ever been stunned by your humility?”

ERWIN MCMANUS: “What troubles me is how Christians are unable to discern between authentic & inauthentic.” Erwin is Salvadoran & grew up eating steak well-done/char-broiled (basically burnt). It was good to him until he was “forced” to eat a medium-rare steak - for the first time in his life. As the steak melted onto his tongue, he realized that a medium-rare steak is a beautiful thing. He realized that he had trained himself to love the worst. “Have we trained ourselves to love the ugly and thereby miss the beautiful?”
CRAIG GROSCHEL: “ Is the way I am doing the work of God destroying the work of God in me?” Do we pray “Disturb me!” to the Lord? “I was a full-time pastor and a part-time follower of Christ!”
I really liked the flavor of the teaching that ministry should be an outgrowth of the character & life of the believer, not something that we just DO.
One other thing that Craig challenged us to do was to pray, “Disturb me!” Let’s get out of our comfort zones!

Audio greeting from Catalyst Conference 2007

Here’s an audio greeting from Peto and me while at the Catalyst Conference.

This one’s in English:
Catalyst 2007 Greeting


This one’s in Slovak:
Catalyst 2007 Pozdrav

Dash Day Conference

What a cool day. Hanging out with youth workers who want to really reach & challenge young people of this generation, visiting the NEW World of Coke (with very cool things like a 4-D Theater that includes 3-D glasses, sprays of water in the face, simulation-type-kind-of-seats, and a very special tool in the seat back that pokes you at just the right time!), and then having a great dinner at the Sheraton Buckhead and capping off the evening with a time of worship & prayer at 5 different stations for a variety of purposes (praying for specific youth, their parents, youth workers and much more).

But the “capper“ was a testimony immediately following dinner. A youth worker at a church in the southern part of the USA told the story of accidentally leaving his 18-month old daughter in the car in the middle of the day for about 1.5 - 2 hours. The short version is that she of course died and what he shared was a heart-wrenching story of unshakeable love & forgiveness from his wife and the varied reactions of people around the country - some who even attempted to break into their house to attack him for his ”abuse.“

His humility, pain, suffering, love, acceptance of forgiveness, struggle with self-hatred & forgiveness and so much more was absolutely unbelievable.

I cannot even begin to imagine being able to forgive myself for being responsible for my child’s death.

Surprises & blessings

Well, the flight over from Vienna to Washington/Dulles was pretty uneventful. The only downer was the guy sitting next to me. His body odor and breath were so bad, that I almost gagged a couple of times. That was the (unpleasant) surprise.

The blessing just happened. As Emily & I were backtracking (from making a wrong turn towards our respective gates - the wrong turn was caused by the sudden emergence of a Starbuck’s Coffee shop as we exited from Customs) and heading the right direction to our gates, we passed a fellow that looked a LOT like the new president of Greater Europe Mission - Henry Deneen.

I turned, looked and said, “Henry?!” He stopped dead in his tracks and chatted with us. He was coming from Toronto and is headed over to Cologne for some GEM meetings. What a blessing to run into someone whom we’ve already grown to love and appreciate.

I don’t really believe in coincidences. We made a wrong turn, bought a cup of Starbuck’s and just happened” to run into him. The way he was going and the way we were going were not parallels in any fashion. We ran into him in an almost perpendicular fashion, so the timing had to be perfect.

God is good, isn’t He?

Glitch leadership

That’s my fancy term for how we handle the glitches of leading in a given situation.

Let me give an example: yesterday (Sunday) at our morning worship service in our church in Banska Bystrica, Slovakia, we had a serious glitch. The youth worship team was leading the worship (which they do once a month now - and a mighty fine job they do!), when the worship leader realized during the 2nd song that no one other than the worship team was singing. Glancing back at the screen behind him, he realized that the words were not being projected. He asked what the problem was and was quickly informed by the 2 guys trying desperately to get the computer up & running that it was an older computer and not the one typically used for the morning worship service.

There was a moment of uncomfortable silence after which I jumped up to fill in the lag time with announcements. As I stepped onto the platform, I commented that I had enough announcements to create a second sermon. The comment brought laughter, lightened the moment and enabled me to regain the attention of the congregation.

I proceeded to give the “dry” announcements - my term for giving information that could just as easily be projected on the screen, put up on a bulletin board as a poster or handed out as a flyer, but that is the way that announcements are still done here in Slovakia.

I asked the video technicians if they were ready to roll and received a frustrated & vigorous shaking of the heads. A shout from the back of the auditorium rang out, “Let’s just sing some hymns that we all know.”

Not wanting to cast aside our worship team (young & fragile in some ways!), I commented that I still had some announcements that needed to be made and after another brief comedic moment, I invited a guest to come up and introduce his ministry (a university movement of using Bible studies as an outreach to college students - very cool!), which he did.

Following that, I invited Emily & Michelle to the front to say good-bye to their church body. They did and they enjoyed the warm response which they were given.

My final announcement was just enough for our technicians to get the words up on the screen and we continued with our worship service.

And you know what?

God showed up. His presence was obvious & almost tangible to the human physical senses. It was wonderful.

My point of this musing? Just this, maybe God is not as fired-up about perfection as we are. We see glitches as hindering God’s work. Maybe it’s exactly what He wants in a given situation - a little chaos sends us rapidly to our knees begging for help, wisdom & direction.

Hmm, maybe we should be praying NOT for smoother services, but simply for God to show up in any way HE pleases and chooses.

Not perfection, but excellence - there’s a huge difference!

Traveling to Atlanta, GA.

I’m sitting in Starbuck’s Coffee in the Vienna, Austria, airport waiting for my flight. Linda dropped me off with Emily & Michelle at about 4:30am. We checked in (Michelle is going to San Jose, CA., Emily is going to Dallas, TX., and I’m going to Atlanta, GA.). Emily & I are on the same flight from here to Washington/Dulles and then we go our separate ways.

What’s funny is that as we entered the terminal area (after our passport & boarding pass checks), we headed straight to Starbuck’s! The funny part was the giddiness that overcame us as we spotted the familiar green/black/white circular sign indicating that yummy coffee & delicious muffins awaited our growling stomachs.

I’ve been blessed by many friends who have sent us Starbuck’s coffees for the past couple of years so I haven’t missed the coffee itself (my favorite is Italian Roast, but French Roast is a top-notch choice as well). (another aside here - did you know that the darker the roast is the less caffeine there is?) What I miss are the big, comfy chairs, the cool/funky music and just the overall atmosphere. Coffee shops in Europe are nice, but they aren’t made for long-term parking - they’re more like in and out in a jiffy. Not that that’s bad - it’s just different.

I think that there is also the feeling of a little something from “home” (which for a military brat and missionary is a very fluid term!).

Homesick for God? Fasting

Here are some random thoughts & quotes about a Hunger For God.

Do you hunger for God? To the degree that you ignore other “hunger pangs” that rumble in your being/your body? As I sit here, I haven’t eaten in over 12 hours - no, I’m not fasting - yet. But I am waiting for lunch. I’m reading, thinking & getting “cranked up” about a thought that John Piper has brought to my attention again.

Here are a few quotes from the beginning of his book (John Piper’s) “Hunger for God:”

“Christian fasting, at its root, is the hunger of a homesickness for God… Half of Christian fasting is that our physical appetite is lost because our homesickness for God is so intense. The other half is that our homesickness for God is threatened because our physical appetites are so intense.”
“Fasting is not the forfeit of evil but of good.” It is not the act of “purging“ evil from our lives as much as it is the act of keeping the good things in our lives from taking higher priority, a stronger love than our love for God. It is keeping the good things in our lives that cry for more time, more attention, more energy in their proper places, perspectives and keeping our love for God supreme, above - HIGH above - all other desires!
“We easily deceive ourselves that we love God unless our love is frequently put to the test, and we must show our preferences not merely with words but with sacrifice. (Fasting)It forces us to ask repeatedly: do I really hunger for God? Do I miss him? Do I long for him? Or have I begun to be content with his gifts?”
“I humbled my soul with fasting” [Psalm 35:13]
“I will not be mastered by anything” (1 Corinthians 6:12).
How often do we medicate ourselves with food, activity, habits, things?
I love coffee. Especially GOOD coffee. I’ve found a few kinds of coffee that I really enjoy. I enjoy the warmth of the dark brunette-colored liquid as it flows across my tongue and down my throat, splashing into my empty stomach and warming me from the inside. I savor the flavor of the roasted & ground beans radiating different flowery or woody aftertastes & aromas.
The question is: Does it master me? If I have 10-15 minutes in the morning before I dash out on some meeting or whatever, am I willing to forego the coffee to spend that brief time with my Lord to allow Him to prep me for my day? Or do I “need” my cup, the caffeine, the ritual....
Fair question is it not? That is what Piper is saying. That is what JESUS is saying. Coffee is a gift from God just as many other things are gifts from God. But what place does coffee take in my life?
For that matter, what place does anything I own, care for, manage, enjoy, etc. - what place do my relationships take? Am I really serving the Lord or am I medicating some kind of pain in my heart?
Fasting from that “whatever” brings to fore the pain and enables me to spend time with my Great Physician, my Shepherd, my All-wise One, my Father, my Friend, my Pure One, my Light of the World, my Joy above all joys, my Hope, my Peace -- my Jesus. And in that time, He works with me, in me, through me and -- often -- in spite of me to help me grow in and through those pains to become more like Him.
Fasting. Hm. Makes me want to fast a lot more when I look at it that way.

Zauflik visit

What a joy to have Frank & Andrea Zauflik with us since Friday. Frank & Andrea are missionaries w/GEM and are regional missionaries. That means (if I understand it correctly) that they don’t focus on one country but on a region of countries. In this case, they are focused on the Central East Europe Region (We call it CEER for short).

In the time that they have been here, we have met with Martin re: establishing a church planting movement in Slovakia starting with a church plant in a nearby town called Zvolen.

Martin was encouraged to continue to pray for God’s leading, for His creativity & direction in concrete steps in laying a healthy foundation for the church plant and the movement he desires to see from that church plant.

We also met with a woman in a nearby city who, with her husband, owns a business the employs 60 people. Her desire is to use her firm and her business contacts to share her relationship with Christ with other entrepreneurs and business people. We had a wonderful discussion and she was encouraged that the Zaufliks are desirous of helping her establish a network of business people for the purpose of encouragement, growth and outreach to their city.

We made a quick detour to the Tatras (the mountains on the northern border of Slovakia with Poland), but due to the cloudiness & rain, not a single peak was visible.

It has been a refreshing time with Frank & Andrea and we look forward to more time with them when they return for follow-up and further ministry opportunities.

What is it about fighter jets?

Today, as I walked onto the City Square for a meeting with a new young believer, 3 military helicopters swooped down low over our city as 2 of them released orange smoke trails. It was very cool (was part of the celebration of the Slovak National Uprising), but the best part was to come only moments later.

Shortly after the choppers disappeared from sight, 5 Mig 29s roared overhead in formation at a very low level of flight - maybe 500 feet off the ground.

It was a beautiful sight. The roar of the twin jet engines on the twin-tailed jets as they plowed through the air slowly for all of us to see brought me goose bumps.

I don’t exactly know why, but I dream of being able to sit in the seat of a fighter jet (F-14, F-15, F-16, F-18 or MIG 29) and pushing the throttle to the stops, pulling some vertical g’s, barrel rolls, chandelles, loops, upside down flying, and so much more.

I flew with my dad when I was in high school and he was getting his private pilot’s license. I loved it. The 2 of us squeezed into the cockpit of a Cessna 152 or 172 (whatever was available for that day), me watching Dad, looking out the cockpit, listening to the chatter between Dad & the tower or other pilots (rarely) and on many occasions actually having the wheel in my hands as he taught me some basics like flying level (not as easy as staying on the ground in a car!), some basic maneuvers and turns and even some time landing & taking off. Now THAT’S a rush - powering up for take-off and running through the checklist for a landing (especially with a crosswind!) - yeah!

I think one of the most difficult flying maneuvers has to be to land a jet on an aircraft carrier. There are so many factors to take into account - pitch and roll of the plane, pitch & roll of the ship, wind, etc. WHAT A CHALLENGE!

Flying. Freedom. Fun.

Hope in the life of a country

I just got off a Skype call with a brother here in Slovakia who leads a nationwide university ministry. The blessing - according to him - was supposed to be his and that being in the form of finding in me a co-laborer amongst the young people in universities in our city.

However, the blessing was mine. During the course of the conversation, I realized the quality of the character of this young man, his vision for reaching university students and his desire to know Christ, walk with Him and make Him known in any and every way possible.

It is always refreshing to meet and talk to people who have vision, a deep love for Christ and a similar love for young people.

Check out this page - although it’s in Slovak, I think that you can get the flavor of it. http://www.vbh.sk

I’m so blessed!

Leadership principles from the Life of Lani the Labrador

What i’ve learned NOT to do as a servant-leader (thanks to my Labrador retriever called Lani):

1. Be sure to dominate any discussion or conversation taking place when you are in the room. Make sure that everyone is focused on you, what you want/need and are doing.
2. Be sure to keep people wondering what you are going to do next. Surprise keeps people on their toes and ready to jump into action - especially if they know that their shoes could be destroyed in the process.
3. Don’t allow anyone else to have any significant input into the lives of other people. Make sure that it truly is all about you - you are the one who should be the center of attention - that’s why God made you! So, BE the center of attention!
4. Persuade people to play when they should be working. This must certainly instill a lighter-hearted attitude to life and is also good for the physical heart. Play should be a major part of everyone’s work day.
5. Organization is for the weak-minded. Spontaneity is the buzz word of the day. Feel the urge to chase a tennis ball? Go for it! (See #4 for reinforcement of this principle.)

There may be others, but they’ll have to wait for my inspiration!

Constant contact (I don't mean the email service)

Seems like camps take a lot more out of me than they used to - I still don’t feel like I’m caught up on sleep from camp & conferences, but what else is new?

The night before last night, some of our youth got together to hang out at the home of one of our students to eat, sing, share what’s happening in our lives and such. Many of them stayed overnight, but this old dog went home about 11:00pm.

Part of our discussion covered an interesting topic that maybe won’t seem so profound to you, but it certainly is hitting me in the core of my being these days.

The topic of backmasked music came up (see http://jeffmilner.com/backmasking.htm if you’re not familiar with this issue). At any rate, the discussion turned to whether or not it is possible for these kinds of subliminal messages to have an impact on us or not.

Not debating the potential effect on us, I turned rather to a sideline issue that has become a question of practice for me. But first, another digression...

Last night as I sat with Linda and a couple of elders from our church, our discussion turned to Islam and some of it’s tenets. Milos (one of the elders) told the story of a woman who had converted from Christianity to Islam and for 10 years did all in her power to hold to the Islamic faith in it’s entirety.

Near the end of the story, Milos said that one of the reasons she had turned to Islam is that in the context of Islam because everything had an explanation - everything is explainable.

What’s interesting is that it is just that issue that makes the Christian faith so attractive to me - not everything is explainable. It is impossible for us to comprehend an eternal being, it is incomprehensible to fathom the meaning of this eternal being becoming a finite being (a man) and dwelling in a finite body and so on.

It seems to me that for something to be truly eternal, there must be elements that are - for us as created, finite, limited beings - totally incomprehensible. Otherwise, it would be too easy to accept and “believe“.

I think that to have everything ”explainable“ is a human approach to life - not a divine approach.

As a result of these discussions - or rather as part of these discussions - it seems to me that our God is more desirous of having an intimate relationship with us than to have us follow a set of prescribed rules without thought or meditation.

As a matter of fact, the more I meditate on this, the more I realize that the essence of the Christian walk (not the faith as a whole, but the relationship we have with our Lord Jesus) is total, utter & complete dependence on Him day-by-day, moment-by-moment. Sure, we have some commands that are clear (don’t murder, don’t sleep with your neighbor’s wife, etc.), but life is more than these ”big“ commands.

Life is made up of a series of small decisions. Those decisions are left to the leading of the Holy Spirit under the guidance & wisdom from God’s Word (the Bible) and in the context of our relationship with the Father through Jesus Christ. How often do we really ”consult“ our Lord for direction & input on our ”mundane” and daily activities and issues?

I, for one, desire to be in constant contact with Him so that I may be available to do HIS will in His timing and way.

Food (or in this case - water) for thought...

I read an interesting article last night on the bottled water industry.

There may be more information on the industry necessary to make a wise decision on this issue (which you’ll see is quite a large issue as you read), but this, at least, is a beginning.

I have decided to NOT buy bottled water if I can at all avoid doing so. I have been drinking tap water for virtually all of my life (with a few exceptions) but this has cemented my view.

I’m curious what your reaction will be. Let me know.

BEFORE YOU READ THE ARTICLE, TAKE THE QUIZ FOUND ON THIS PAGE: (www.fastcompany.com/magazine/117 and look for The Bottled Water Quiz: Do You Really Know Your Bottled Water?)

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Here is the article in it’s entirety:

he largest bottled-water factory in North America is located on the outskirts of Hollis, Maine. In the back of the plant stretches the staging area for finished product: 24 million bottles of Poland Spring water. As far as the eye can see, there are double-stacked pallets packed with half-pint bottles, half-liters, liters, "Aquapods" for school lunches, and 2.5-gallon jugs for the refrigerator.
Really, it is a lake of Poland Spring water, conveniently celled off in plastic, extending across 6 acres, 8 feet high. A week ago, the lake was still underground; within five days, it will all be gone, to supermarkets and convenience stores across the Northeast, replaced by another lake's worth of bottles.
Looking at the piles of water, you can have only one thought: Americans sure are thirsty.
Bottled water has become the indispensable prop in our lives and our culture. It starts the day in lunch boxes; it goes to every meeting, lecture hall, and soccer match; it's in our cubicles at work; in the cup holder of the treadmill at the gym; and it's rattling around half-finished on the floor of every minivan in America. Fiji Water shows up on the ABC show Brothers & Sisters; Poland Spring cameos routinely on NBC's The Office. Every hotel room offers bottled water for sale, alongside the increasingly ignored ice bucket and drinking glasses. At Whole Foods (NASDAQ:WFMI), the upscale emporium of the organic and exotic, bottled water is the number-one item by units sold.
Thirty years ago, bottled water barely existed as a business in the United States. Last year, we spent more on Poland Spring, Fiji Water, Evian, Aquafina, and Dasani than we spent on iPods or movie tickets--$15 billion. It will be $16 billion this year.
Bottled water is the food phenomenon of our times. We--a generation raised on tap water and water fountains--drink a billion bottles of water a week, and we're raising a generation that views tap water with disdain and water fountains with suspicion. We've come to pay good money--two or three or four times the cost of gasoline--for a product we have always gotten, and can still get, for free, from taps in our homes.
When we buy a bottle of water, what we're often buying is the bottle itself, as much as the water. We're buying the convenience--a bottle at the 7-Eleven isn't the same product as tap water, any more than a cup of coffee at Starbucks is the same as a cup of coffee from the Krups machine on your kitchen counter. And we're buying the artful story the water companies tell us about the water: where it comes from, how healthy it is, what it says about us. Surely among the choices we can make, bottled water isn't just good, it's positively virtuous.
Except for this: Bottled water is often simply an indulgence, and despite the stories we tell ourselves, it is not a benign indulgence. We're moving 1 billion bottles of water around a week in ships, trains, and trucks in the United States alone. That's a weekly convoy equivalent to 37,800 18-wheelers delivering water. (Water weighs 81/3 pounds a gallon. It's so heavy you can't fill an 18-wheeler with bottled water--you have to leave empty space.)
Meanwhile, one out of six people in the world has no dependable, safe drinking water. The global economy has contrived to deny the most fundamental element of life to 1 billion people, while delivering to us an array of water "varieties" from around the globe, not one of which we actually need. That tension is only complicated by the fact that if we suddenly decided not to purchase the lake of Poland Spring water in Hollis, Maine, none of that water would find its way to people who really are thirsty.
A chilled plastic bottle of water in the convenience-store cooler is the perfect symbol of this moment in American commerce and culture. It acknowledges our demand for instant gratification, our vanity, our token concern for health. Its packaging and transport depend entirely on cheap fossil fuel. Yes, it's just a bottle of water--modest compared with the indulgence of driving a Hummer. But when a whole industry grows up around supplying us with something we don't need--when a whole industry is built on the packaging and the presentation--it's worth asking how that happened, and what the impact is. And if you do ask, if you trace both the water and the business back to where they came from, you find a story more complicated, more bemusing, and ultimately more sobering than the bottles we tote everywhere suggest.
In the town of San Pellegrino Terme, Italy, for example, is a spigot that runs all the time, providing San Pellegrino water free to the local citizens--except the free Pellegrino has no bubbles. Pellegrino trucks in the bubbles for the bottling plant. The man who first brought bottled water to the United States famously failed an impromptu taste test involving his own product. In Maine, there is a marble temple to honor our passion for bottled water.
And in Fiji, a state-of-the-art factory spins out more than a million bottles a day of the hippest bottled water on the U.S. market today, while more than half the people in Fiji do not have safe, reliable drinking water. Which means it is easier for the typical American in Beverly Hills or Baltimore to get a drink of safe, pure, refreshing Fiji water than it is for most people in Fiji.
At the Peninsula hotel in Beverly Hills, where the rooms start at $500 a night and the guest next door might well be an Oscar winner, the minibar in all 196 rooms contains six bottles of Fiji Water. Before Fiji Water displaced Evian, Diet Coke was the number-one-selling minibar item. Now, says Christian Boyens, the Peninsula's elegant director of food and beverage, "the 1 liter of Fiji Water is number one. Diet Coke is number two. And the 500-milliliter bottle of Fiji is number three."
Being the water in the Peninsula minibar is so desirable--not just for the money to be made, but for the exposure with the Peninsula's clientele--that Boyens gets a sales call a week from a company trying to dislodge Fiji.
Boyens, who has an MBA from Cornell, used to be indifferent to water. Not anymore. His restaurants and bars carry 20 different waters. "Sometimes a guest will ask for Poland Spring, and you can't get Poland Spring in California," he says. So what does he do? "We'll call the Peninsula in New York and have them FedEx out a case.
"I thought water was water. But our customers know what they want."
The marketing of bottled water is subtle compared with the marketing of, say, soft drinks or beer. The point of Fiji Water in the minibar at the Peninsula, or at the center of the table in a white-tablecloth restaurant, is that guests will try it, love it, and buy it at a store the next time they see it.
Which isn't difficult, because the water aisle in a suburban supermarket typically stocks a dozen brands of water--not including those enhanced with flavors or vitamins or, yes, oxygen. In 1976, the average American drank 1.6 gallons of bottled water a year, according to Beverage Marketing Corp. Last year, we each drank 28.3 gallons of bottled water--18 half-liter bottles a month. We drink more bottled water than milk, or coffee, or beer. Only carbonated soft drinks are more popular than bottled water, at 52.9 gallons annually.
No one has experienced this transformation more profoundly than Kim Jeffery. Jeffery began his career in the water business in the Midwest in 1978, selling Perrier ("People didn't know whether to put it in their lawn mower or drink it," he says). Now he's the CEO of Nestlé Waters North America, in charge of U.S. sales of Perrier, San Pellegrino, Poland Spring, and a portfolio of other regional natural springwaters. Combined, his brands will sell some $4.5 billion worth of water this year (generating roughly $500 million in pretax profit). Jeffery insists that unlike the soda business, which is stoked by imaginative TV and marketing campaigns, the mainstream water business is, quite simply, "a force of nature."
"The entire bottled-water business today is half the size of the carbonated beverage industry," says Jeffery, "but our marketing budget is 15% of what they spend. When you put a bottle of water in that cold box, it's the most thirst-quenching beverage there is. There's nothing in it that's not good for you. People just know that intuitively.
"A lot of people tell me, you guys have done some great marketing to get customers to pay for water," Jeffery says. "But we aren't that smart. We had to have a hell of a lot of help from the consumer."
Still, we needed help learning to drink bottled water. For that, we can thank the French.
Gustave Leven was the chairman of Source Perrier when he approached an American named Bruce Nevins in 1976. Nevins was working for the athletic-wear company Pony. Leven was a major Pony investor. "He wanted me to consider the water business in the U.S.," Nevins says. "I was a bit reluctant." Back then, the American water industry was small and fusty, built on home and office delivery of big bottles and grocery sales of gallon jugs.
Nevins looked out across 1970s America, though, and had an epiphany: Perrier wasn't just water. It was a beverage. The opportunity was in persuading people to drink Perrier when they would otherwise have had a cocktail or a Coke. Americans were already drinking 30 gallons of soft drinks each a year, and the three-martini lunch was increasingly viewed as a problem. Nevins saw a niche.
From the start, Nevins pioneered a three-part strategy. First, he connected bottled water to exclusivity: In 1977, just before Perrier's U.S. launch, he flew 60 journalists to France to visit "the source" where Perrier bubbled out of the ground. He connected Perrier to health, sponsoring the New York City Marathon, just as long-distance running was exploding as a fad across America. And he associated Perrier with celebrity, launching with $4 million in TV commercials featuring Orson Welles. It worked. In 1978, its first full year in the United States, Perrier sold $20 million of water. The next year, sales tripled to $60 million.
What made Perrier distinctive was that it was a sparkling water, served in a signature glass bottle. But that's also what left the door open for Evian, which came to the United States in 1984. Evian's U.S. marketing was built around images of toned young men and women in tight clothes sweating at the gym. Madonna drank Evian--often onstage at concerts. "If you were cool, you were drinking bottled water," says Ed Slade, who became Evian's vice president of marketing in 1990. "It was a status symbol."
Evian was also a still water, which Americans prefer; and it was the first to offer a plastic bottle nationwide. The clear bottle allowed us to see the water--how clean and refreshing it looked on the shelf. Americans have never wanted water in cans, which suggest a tinny aftertaste before you take a sip. The plastic bottle, in fact, did for water what the pop-top can had done for soda: It turned water into an anywhere, anytime beverage, at just the moment when we decided we wanted a beverage, everywhere, all the time.
Perrier and Evian launched the bottled-water business just as it would prove irresistible. Convenience and virtue aligned. Two-career families, overprogrammed children, prepared foods in place of home-cooked meals, the constant urging to eat more healthfully and drink less alcohol--all reinforce the value of bottled water. But those trends also reinforce the mythology.
We buy bottled water because we think it's healthy. Which it is, of course: Every 12-year-old who buys a bottle of water from a vending machine instead of a 16-ounce Coke is inarguably making a healthier choice. But bottled water isn't healthier, or safer, than tap water. Indeed, while the United States is the single biggest consumer in the world's $50 billion bottled-water market, it is the only one of the top four--the others are Brazil, China, and Mexico--that has universally reliable tap water. Tap water in this country, with rare exceptions, is impressively safe. It is monitored constantly, and the test results made public. Mineral water has a long association with medicinal benefits--and it can provide minerals that people need--but there are no scientific studies establishing that routinely consuming mineral water improves your health. The FDA, in fact, forbids mineral waters in the United States from making any health claims.
If the water we use at home cost what even cheap bottled water costs, our monthly water bills would run $9,000.

And for this healthy convenience, we're paying what amounts to an unbelievable premium. You can buy a half- liter Evian for $1.35--17 ounces of water imported from France for pocket change. That water seems cheap, but only because we aren't paying attention.
In San Francisco, the municipal water comes from inside Yosemite National Park. It's so good the EPA doesn't require San Francisco to filter it. If you bought and drank a bottle of Evian, you could refill that bottle once a day for 10 years, 5 months, and 21 days with San Francisco tap water before that water would cost $1.35. Put another way, if the water we use at home cost what even cheap bottled water costs, our monthly water bills would run $9,000.
Taste, of course, is highly personal. New Yorkers excepted, Americans love to belittle the quality of their tap water. But in blind taste tests, with waters at equal temperatures, presented in identical glasses, ordinary people can rarely distinguish between tap water, springwater, and luxury waters. At the height of Perrier's popularity, Bruce Nevins was asked on a live network radio show one morning to pick Perrier from a lineup of seven carbonated waters served in paper cups. It took him five tries.
We are actually in the midst of a second love affair with bottled water. In the United States, many of the earliest, still-familiar brands of springwater--Poland Spring, Saratoga Springs, Deer Park, Arrowhead--were originally associated with resort and spa complexes. The water itself, pure at a time when cities struggled to provide safe water, was the source of the enterprise.
In the late 1800s, Poland Spring was already a renowned brand of healthful drinking water that you could get home-delivered in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, or Chicago. It was also a sprawling summer resort complex, with thousands of guests and three Victorian hotels, some of which had bathtubs with spigots that allowed guests to bathe in Poland Spring water. The resort burned in 1976, but at the crest of a hill in Poland Spring, Maine, you can still visit a marble-and-granite temple built in 1906 to house the original spring.
24% of the bottled water we buy is tap water repackaged by Coke and Pepsi.

The car, the Depression, World War II, and perhaps most important, clean, safe municipal water, unwound the resorts and the first wave of water as business. We had to wait two generations for the second, which would turn out to be much different--and much larger.
Today, for all the apparent variety on the shelf, bottled water is dominated in the United States and worldwide by four huge companies. Pepsi (NYSE:PEP) has the nation's number-one-selling bottled water, Aquafina, with 13% of the market. Coke's (NYSE:KO) Dasani is number two, with 11% of the market. Both are simply purified municipal water--so 24% of the bottled water we buy is tap water repackaged by Coke and Pepsi for our convenience. Evian is owned by Danone, the French food giant, and distributed in the United States by Coke.
The really big water company in the United States is Nestlé, which gradually bought up the nation's heritage brands, and expanded them. The waters are slightly different--springwater must come from actual springs, identified specifically on the label--but together, they add up to 26% of the market, according to Beverage Marketing, surpassing Coke and Pepsi's brands combined.
Since most water brands are owned by larger companies, it's hard to get directly at the economics. But according to those inside the business, half the price of a typical $1.29 bottle goes to the retailer. As much as a third goes to the distributor and transport. Another 12 to 15 cents is the cost of the water itself, the bottle and the cap. That leaves roughly a dime of profit. On multipacks, that profit is more like 2 cents a bottle.
As the abundance in the supermarket water aisle shows, that business is now trying to help us find new waters to drink and new occasions for drinking them--trying to get more mouth share, as it were. Aquafina marketing vice president Ahad Afridi says his team has done the research to understand what kind of water drinkers we are. They've found six types, including the "water pure-fectionist"; the "water explorer"; the "image seeker"; and the "struggler" ("they don't really like water that much...these are the people who have a cheeseburger with a diet soda").
It's a startling level of thought and analysis--until you realize that within a decade, our consumption of bottled water is expected to surpass soda. That kind of market can't be left to chance. Aquafina's fine segmentation is all about the newest explosion of waters that aren't really water--flavored waters, enhanced waters, colored waters, water drinks branded after everything from Special K breakfast cereal to Tropicana juice.
Afridi is a true believer. He talks about water as if it were more than a drink, more than a product--as if it were a character all its own, a superhero ready to take the pure-fectionist, the water explorer, and the struggler by the hand and carry them to new water adventures. "Water as a beverage has more right to extend and enter into more territories than any other beverage," Afridi says. "Water has a right to travel where others can't."
Uh, meaning what?
"Water that's got vitamins in it. Water that's got some immunity-type benefit to it. Water that helps keep skin younger. Water that gives you energy."
Water: It's pure, it's healthy, it's perfect--and we've made it better. The future of water sounds distinctly unlike water.
The label on a bottle of Fiji Water says "from the islands of Fiji." Journey to the source of that water, and you realize just how extraordinary that promise is. From New York, for instance, it is an 18-hour plane ride west and south (via Los Angeles) almost to Australia, and then a four-hour drive along Fiji's two-lane King's Highway.
Every bottle of Fiji Water goes on its own version of this trip, in reverse, although by truck and ship. In fact, since the plastic for the bottles is shipped to Fiji first, the bottles' journey is even longer. Half the wholesale cost of Fiji Water is transportation--which is to say, it costs as much to ship Fiji Water across the oceans and truck it to warehouses in the United States than it does to extract the water and bottle it.
The bubbles in San Pellegrino are extracted from volcanic springs in Tuscany, then trucked north and injected into the water from the source.

That is not the only environmental cost embedded in each bottle of Fiji Water. The Fiji Water plant is a state-of-the-art facility that runs 24 hours a day. That means it requires an uninterrupted supply of electricity--something the local utility structure cannot support. So the factory supplies its own electricity, with three big generators running on diesel fuel. The water may come from "one of the last pristine ecosystems on earth," as some of the labels say, but out back of the bottling plant is a less pristine ecosystem veiled with a diesel haze.
Each water bottler has its own version of this oxymoron: that something as pure and clean as water leaves a contrail.
San Pellegrino's 1-liter glass bottles--so much a part of the mystique of the water itself--weigh five times what plastic bottles weigh, dramatically adding to freight costs and energy consumption. The bottles are washed and rinsed, with mineral water, before being filled with sparkling Pellegrino--it uses up 2 liters of water to prepare the bottle for the liter we buy. The bubbles in San Pellegrino come naturally from the ground, as the label says, but not at the San Pellegrino source. Pellegrino chooses its CO2 carefully--it is extracted from supercarbonated volcanic springwaters in Tuscany, then trucked north and bubbled into Pellegrino.
Poland Spring may not have any oceans to traverse, but it still must be trucked hundreds of miles from Maine to markets and convenience stores across its territory in the northeast--it is 312 miles from the Hollis plant to midtown Manhattan. Our desire for Poland Spring has outgrown the springs at Poland Spring's two Maine plants; the company runs a fleet of 80 silver tanker trucks that continuously crisscross the state of Maine, delivering water from other springs to keep its bottling plants humming.
We pitch into landfills 38 billion water bottles a year--in excess of $1 billion worth of plastic.

In transportation terms, perhaps the waters with the least environmental impact are Pepsi's Aquafina and Coke's Dasani. Both start with municipal water. That allows the companies to use dozens of bottling plants across the nation, reducing how far bottles must be shipped.
Yet Coke and Pepsi add in a new step. They put the local water through an energy-intensive reverse-osmosis filtration process more potent than that used to turn seawater into drinking water. The water they are purifying is ready to drink--they are recleaning perfectly clean tap water. They do it so marketing can brag about the purity, and to provide consistency: So a bottle of Aquafina in Austin and a bottle in Seattle taste the same, regardless of the municipal source.
There is one more item in bottled water's environmental ledger: the bottles themselves. The big springwater companies tend to make their own bottles in their plants, just moments before they are filled with water--12, 19, 30 grams of molded plastic each. Americans went through about 50 billion plastic water bottles last year, 167 for each person. Durable, lightweight containers manufactured just to be discarded. Water bottles are made of totally recyclable polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic, so we share responsibility for their impact: Our recycling rate for PET is only 23%, which means we pitch into landfills 38 billion water bottles a year--more than $1 billion worth of plastic.
Some of the water companies are acutely aware that every business, every product, every activity is under environmental scrutiny like never before. Nestlé Waters has just redesigned its half-liter bottle, the most popular size among the 18 billion bottles the company will mold this year, to use less plastic. The lighter bottle and cap require 15 grams of plastic instead of 19 grams, a reduction of 20%. The bottle feels flimsy--it uses half the plastic of Fiji Water's half-liter bottle--and CEO Jeffery says that crushable feeling should be the new standard for bottled-water cachet.
"As we've rolled out the lightweight bottle, people have said, 'Well, that feels cheap,'" says Jeffery. "And that's good. If it feels solid like a Gatorade bottle or a Fiji bottle, that's not so good." Of course, lighter bottles are also cheaper for Nestlé to produce and ship. Good environmentalism equals good business.
John Mackey is the CEO and cofounder of Whole Foods Market, the national organic-and-natural grocery chain. No one thinks about the environmental and social impacts and the larger context of food more incisively than Mackey--so he's a good person to help frame the ethical questions around bottled water.
Mackey and his wife have a water filter at home, and don't typically drink bottled water there. "If I go to a movie," he says, "I'll smuggle in a bottle of filtered water from home. I don't want to buy a Coke there, and why buy another bottle of water--$3 for 16 ounces?" But he does drink bottled water at work: Whole Foods' house brand, 365 Water.
"You can compare bottled water to tap water and reach one set of conclusions," says Mackey, referring both to environmental and social ramifications. "But if you compare it with other packaged beverages, you reach another set of conclusions.
"It's unfair to say bottled water is causing extra plastic in landfills, and it's using energy transporting it," he says. "There's a substitution effect--it's substituting for juices and Coke and Pepsi." Indeed, we still drink almost twice the amount of soda as water--which is, in fact, 90% water and also in containers made to be discarded. If bottled water raises environmental and social issues, don't soft drinks raise all those issues, plus obesity concerns?
What's different about water, of course, is that it runs from taps in our homes, or from fountains in public spaces. Soda does not.
As for the energy used to transport water from overseas, Mackey says it is no more or less wasteful than the energy used to bring merlot from France or coffee from Ethiopia, raspberries from Chile or iPods from China. "Have we now decided that the use of any fossil fuel is somehow unethical?" Mackey asks. "I don't think water should be picked on. Why is the iPod okay and the water is not?"
Mackey's is a merchant's approach to the issue of bottled water--it's a choice for people to make in the market. Princeton University philosopher Peter Singer takes an ethicist's approach. Singer has coauthored two books that grapple specifically with the question of what it means to eat ethically--how responsible are we for the negative impact, even unknowing, of our food choices on the world?
"Where the drinking water is safe, bottled water is simply a superfluous luxury that we should do without," he says. "How is it different than French merlot? One difference is the value of the product, in comparison to the value of transporting and packaging it. It's far lower in the bottled water than in the wine.
"And buying the merlot may help sustain a tradition in the French countryside that we value--a community, a way of life, a set of values that would disappear if we stopped buying French wines. I doubt if you travel to Fiji you would find a tradition of cultivation of Fiji water.
"We're completely thoughtless about handing out $1 for this bottle of water, when there are virtually identical alternatives for free. It's a level of affluence that we just take for granted. What could you do? Put that dollar in a jar on the counter instead, carry a water bottle, and at the end of the month, send all the money to Oxfam or CARE and help someone who has real needs. And you're no worse off."
Beyond culture and the product's value, Singer makes one exception. "You know, they do import Kenyan vegetables by air into London. Fresh peas from Kenya, sent by airplane to London. That provides employment for people who have few opportunities to get themselves out of poverty. So despite the fuel consumption, we're supporting a developing country, we're working against poverty, we're working for global equity.
"Those issues are relevant. Presumably, for instance, bottling water in Fiji is fairly automated. But if there were 10,000 Fijians carefully filtering the water through coconut fiber--well, that would be a better argument for drinking it."
Marika, an elder from the Fijian village of Drauniivi, is sitting cross-legged on a hand-woven mat before a wooden bowl, where his weathered hands are filtering Fiji Water through a long bag of ground kava root. Marika is making a bowl of grog, a lightly narcotic beverage that is an anchor of traditional Fiji society. People with business to conduct sit wearing the traditional Fijian skirt, and drink round after round of grog, served in half a coconut shell, as they discuss the matters at hand.
Marika is using Fiji Water--the same Fiji Water in the minibars of the Peninsula Hotel--because Drauniivi is one of the five rural villages near the Fiji Water bottling plant where the plant's workers live. Drauniivi and Beverly Hills are part of the same bottled-water supply chain.
Jim Siplon, an American who manages Fiji Water's 10-year-old bottling plant in Fiji, has arranged the grog ceremony. "This is the soul of Fiji Water," he says. The ceremony lasts 45 minutes and goes through four rounds of grog, which tastes a little furry. Marika is interrupted twice by his cell phone, which he pulls from a pocket in his skirt. It is shift change at the plant, and Marika coordinates the minibus network that transports villagers to and from work.
Fiji Water is the product of these villages, a South Pacific aquifer, and a state-of-the-art bottling plant in a part of Fiji even the locals consider remote. The plant, on the northeast coast of Fiji's main island of Viti Levu, is a white two-story building that looks like a 1970s-era junior high school. The entrance faces the interior of Viti Levu and a cloud-shrouded ridge of volcanic mountains.
Inside, the plant is in almost every way indistinguishable from Pellegrino's plant in Italy, or Poland Spring's in Hollis, filled with computer-controlled bottle-making and bottle-filling equipment. Line number two can spin out 1 million bottles of Fiji Water a day, enough to load 40 20-foot shipping containers; the factory has three lines.
The plant employs 200 islanders--set to increase to 250 this year--most with just a sixth- or eighth-grade education. Even the entry-level jobs pay twice the informal minimum wage. But these are more than simply jobs--they are jobs in a modern factory, in a place where there aren't jobs of any sort beyond the villages. And the jobs are just part of an ecosystem emerging around the plant--water-based trickle-down economics, as it were.
Siplon, a veteran telecom manager from MCI, wants Fiji Water to feel like a local company in Fiji. (It was purchased in 2004 by privately owned Roll International, which also owns POM Wonderful and is one of the largest producers of nuts in the United States.) He uses a nearby company to print the carrying handles for Fiji Water six-packs and buys engineering services and cardboard boxes on the island. By long-standing arrangement, the plant has seeded a small business in the villages that contracts with the plant to provide landscaping and security, and runs the bus system that Marika helps manage.
In 2007, Fiji Water will mark a milestone. "Even though you can drive for hours and hours on this island past cane fields," says Siplon, "sometime this year, Fiji Water will eclipse sugarcane as the number-one export." That is, the amount of sugar harvested and processed for export by some 40,000 seasonal sugar workers will equal in dollar value the amount of water bottled and shipped by 200 water bottlers.
However we regard Fiji Water in the United States--essential accessory, harmless treat, or frivolous excess--the closer you get to the source of its water, the more significant the enterprise looks.
No, no coconut-fiber filtering, but rather, a toehold in the global economy. Are 10,000 Fijians benefiting? Not directly. Perhaps 2,000. But Fiji Water is providing something else to a tiny nation of 850,000 people, which has been buffeted by two coups in seven years, and the collapse of its gold-mining and textiles industries: inspiration, a vision of what the country might have to offer the rest of the world. Developed countries are keen for myriad variations on just what Fiji Water is--a pure, unadulterated, organic, and natural product. Fiji has whole vistas of untouched, organic-ready farmland. Indeed, the hottest topic this spring (beyond politics) was how to jump-start an organic-sugar industry.
Of course, the irony of shipping a precious product from a country without reliable water service is hard to avoid. This spring, typhoid from contaminated drinking water swept one of Fiji's islands, sickening dozens of villagers and killing at least one. Fiji Water often quietly supplies emergency drinking water in such cases. The reality is, if Fiji Water weren't tapping its aquifer, the underground water would slide into the Pacific Ocean, somewhere just off the coast. But the corresponding reality is, someone else--the Fijian government, an NGO--could be tapping that supply and sending it through a pipe to villagers who need it. Fiji Water has, in fact, done just that, to some degree--20 water projects in the five nearby villages. Indeed, Roll has reinvested every dollar of profit since 2004 back into the business and the island.
Siplon acknowledges the risk of slipping into capitalistic neo-colonialism. "Does the world need Fiji Water?" he asks. "I'm not sure I agree with the critics on that. This company has the potential of delivering great value--or the results a cynic might have expected."
Water is, in fact, often the perfect beverage--healthy, refreshing, and satisfying in a way soda or juice aren't. A good choice. Nestlé Waters' Kim Jeffery may be defending his industry when he calls bottled water "a force of nature," but he's also not wrong. Our consumption of bottled water has outstripped any marketer's dreams or talent: If you break out the single-serve plastic bottle as its own category, our consumption of bottled water grew a thousandfold between 1984 and 2005.
In the array of styles, choices, moods, and messages available today, water has come to signify how we think of ourselves. We want to brand ourselves--as Madonna did--even with something as ordinary as a drink of water. We imagine there is a difference between showing up at the weekly staff meeting with Aquafina, or Fiji, or a small glass bottle of Pellegrino. Which is, of course, a little silly.
Bottled water is not a sin. But it is a choice.
Packing bottled water in lunch boxes, grabbing a half-liter from the fridge as we dash out the door, piling up half-finished bottles in the car cup holders--that happens because of a fundamental thoughtlessness. It's only marginally more trouble to have reusable water bottles, cleaned and filled and tucked in the lunch box or the fridge. We just can't be bothered. And in a world in which 1 billion people have no reliable source of drinking water, and 3,000 children a day die from diseases caught from tainted water, that conspicuous consumption of bottled water that we don't need seems wasteful, and perhaps cavalier.
That is the sense in which Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods, and Singer, the Princeton philosopher, are both right. Mackey is right that buying bottled water is a choice, and Singer is right that given the impact it has, the easy substitutes, and the thoughtless spending involved, it's fair to ask whether it's always a good choice.
The most common question the U.S. employees of Fiji Water still get is, "Does it really come from Fiji?" We're choosing Fiji Water because of the hibiscus blossom on the beautiful square bottle, we're choosing it because of the silky taste. We're seduced by the idea of a bottle of water from Fiji. We just don't believe it really comes from Fiji. What kind of a choice is that?
Once you understand the resources mustered to deliver the bottle of water, it's reasonable to ask as you reach for the next bottle, not just "Does the value to me equal the 99 cents I'm about to spend?" but "Does the value equal the impact I'm about to leave behind?"
Simply asking the question takes the carelessness out of the transaction. And once you understand where the water comes from, and how it got here, it's hard to look at that bottle in the same way again.
FROM: FastCompany.com ISSUE 117 | JULY 2007 | PAGE 110 | BY: CHARLES FISHMAN
From article “Everything You Never Wanted to Know About Bottled Water”
**************
If bottled water isn't proven to be either healthier or better for you, why drink it?
        •        1) It's mobile and convenient to use a bottle
        •        2) I don't know, I just do it without thinking
        •        3) Bottled water tastes way better than tap water
        •        4) Tap water isn't as healthy and good for me as bottled water

GEM change of leadership

We returned from our mission’s annual conference yesterday afternoon.

Every year our missionaries gather together in Europe to celebrate, worship, commiserate and dream.

This year, we met in Sopron, (pronounced “show-prone”) Hungary. This year was different in that we celebrated 15 years of growth & leadership under Ted & Lynne Noble’s direction and recognized the Nobles for their contribution. It also marked the end of their time with G.E.M. as God has called them on to other work in His Kingdom.

However, Henry & Celia Deneen, were installed as our new president this week and we are extremely encouraged by what they bring to the table.

It’s really difficult to sum up 10 days (I was at a pre-conference conference before Annual Conference) in just a few short paragraphs.

What I will say is that, thanks to Ted Noble, we have a solid launching pad and rocket delivery system in place for Henry Deneen to use to launch GEM into orbit and take us places that would not have been possible without Ted’s diligence in getting infrastructural issues settled and in line over the past 15 years.

Henry Deneen is a visionary, an encourager, a challenger and will take us into new paradigms, endeavors and experiences - of that I have no doubt.

After his Thursday night address to the GEM body gathered in Sopron, I approached Henry (who affectionately calls me “Gramps”) and said, “Henry, you have no idea how badly I want to go where I believe you are taking us.” Europe is desperate for a movement of God’s Spirit - morally, emotionally and so much more.

Please pray for Henry & Celia as they take hold of the leadership baton on Sept. 1, 2007.

Camp is over...

WOW! Big House English Outreach Camp has come and gone! We had a total of 42 people including leaders and campers, making it the smallest summer camp we have ever had. In no way is that a bad thing because the Lord is Lord over everything - as always.

I often hear, “The devil is in the details.” I don’t believe that, though. Especially as I see how the Lord put together this camp and cared for all of the details. The team that camp from The Kirk in Tulsa, OK., was superb! The average age was about 50! I honestly had my doubts as to whether or not this team would be able to keep up with high school teenagers! On top of that, they are all women!

Here’s the deal. We had twice as many gals at camp this year as we did guys (a first for Big House - we have always had more guys than gals in the past). We also saw that these women had TONS to give to our young people and that their love for Jesus and young people was very evident and deep. What a blessing for these young folks!

You probably want “the bottom line” as some call it - the “head count” as others call it. Well, Juraj & Mirka committed their lives to Jesus Christ for the first time during Camp. Petra rededicated her life to Jesus at camp as well. And Martina and Eva talked to some leaders, but weren’t ready to make any commitment just yet.

Please pray for Juraj, Mirka, Petra, Martina and Eva as they enter a new phase of their spiritual lives. Martina & Eva know how to receive Christ as their Savior - should they ever decide to do so - and we hope to help them along that path.

We will be having a re-union in early September, so keep your eyes open for that...

By the way, if you’re interested in bringing a team to Slovakia specifically for an English Outreach Camp, the next one is already on the calendar for July 19-26, 2008!

Blessings!

Why they call me "Gramps"

Probably like you, I’ve had nicknames all throughout my life. The first I remember is “Turnip.” To this day, I really don’t know where that one originated.

I’ve been called Shadow, Shaddy, Pops, Shelly Kattuck, Bear among others (some I cannot repeat here!).

Recently, I’ve been the focus of a new nickname - Gramps. It has nothing to do with being a real granddad - both of my daughters are still single, unattached and not desirous of having children before the wedding date (for which I’m thankful).

Back to the explanation at hand.

We have 2 young ladies living with us at the current time (among others!). Emily and Michelle are what our mission calls “EuroQuesters.” These are people who opt to come to Europe for about one year to serve alongside of career missionaries to determine whether or not God is calling them into long-term mission work.

Emily & Michelle arrived in Slovakia in October, 2006, but it wasn’t the first time for either of them.

Since their arrival and in light of the significant age gap (they are both 25 years old) between them and me, they started calling me (affectionately) “Gramps.”

I’m not offended - actually, I receive it as a title of respect and endearment. I’m near the “half-century” mark (Feb. 19, 2008 will be my 50th b-day) and consider it a joy to have walked on this planet as long as I have - especially since I have had the joy & privilege of coming to know Jesus Christ as my Savior and Lord.

Frankly, I could think of a lot of other MUCH worse nicknames people could call me. In that light, I like “Gramps.”

More later,
Gramps

Camp Plans

Of course we’re in the midst of final preparations for camp. It’s amazing how after 9 years of doing these camps, that things still are more difficult than anticipated.

I noticed that the difficulties come in the fact that we have a turn-over of leadership through the years and we have to continually train the new “batch” that is up and coming.

This year, of the entire leadership team that is working on the Big House Camp, only 7 of the 18 who are involved in any part of the leadership have had any experience with our camps. That means that 13 of them are first-time leaders (that’s 61% of our team). Of those 7, a few of those are not as involved this year as they have been in the past, so a greater burden lays on the “newcomers.”

Don’t take this as a complaint. I don’t mean it that way at all. It’s just a reality of our situation in working with young people. In some ways, this what we’re here to do - train others so that they can train others and on and on and on.

The positive side of this is to see the number of young people who do learn new skills and have new experiences that open up their “vistas.”

I am thankful for these young people (yikes! I sound like an old geezer!) and all that they are doing for this camp. It’ll make the camp because of their part as God uses them. Please pray for all of these young & older people:
        Michelle                Emily                Hannah                Martin        Eli        Dasa                Rasto                Tomas                Jennifer        Sally Sue
        Patricia                Jamie                Nancy                Linda        Kelly
        Lenka                Matt                        Chris                

Thanks for your prayer support! Please pray that these people are tools in the hands of our Creator to impact the lives of the young people coming to camp (which starts this Sunday!).

Epitaph - what's yours?

I’m reading through the Bible in a year by using a reading program that takes about 20 minutes a day.

It’s really interesting and thought-provoking - no surprise there.

But today, as I was reading chapters 13-16 of the book 2 Chronicles, it struck me that, although I was reading a historical book of the kings of Judah & Israel, that I was also very often reading epitaphs of these kings.

Here’s one from the life & death of Asa, king of Judah:
In the thirty-ninth year of his reign, Asa developed a serious foot disease. Even when the disease became life threatening, he did not seek the Lord’s help but sought help only from his physicians. 13 So he died in the forty-first year of his reign. 14 He was buried in the tomb he had carved out for himself in the City of David. He was laid on a bed perfumed with sweet spices and ointments, and at his funeral the people built a huge fire in his honor.

        Holy Bible : New Living Translation. 1997, c1996 (electronic ed.) (2 Ch 16:11). Wheaton: Tyndale House.

As I was reading the epitaph of Asa, I got to thinking about my life and wondered what would be written on my tombstone. What do I WANT written on my epitaph?

As I discussed this topic some time ago, one of my friends quipped, “I know what I’d want on mine!”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Just this: ‘O my goodness, he’s moving!’“

We laughed, but the question remains.

Asa was remembered as a good king. He was so committed to righteousness that he even de-throned his Grandma because she had built an asherah pole (an idol). He was hardcore. But in the last days of his life, he made an alliance with another king to avoid being attacked by another enemy king. Because he didn’t trust in God to protect him and give him victory, God told him that he would always be at war.

It appears that this made Asa angry and that anger eventually turned into bitterness. He turned his back on his Lord & God and refused to even ask Him to heal his foot disease, which evidently caused his physical death.

Is that the kind of epitaph I want?

Last night I spoke with some dear friends in the USA, who had just lost their husband/father. He was a dear friend, godly man, Christian to the core and leaves behind himself a wonderful, godly wife and children who love the Lord Jesus and walk with him.

Sounds like a fairy tale ending, doesn’t it? And in some ways, it is. But their lives have not been without pain, struggle, nor hardship. If I were to go through their history, you would be amazed at the fact that they now all love & serve the Lord Jesus Christ - but they do!

My friend left behind an epitaph, more so a legacy.

I wasn’t able to attend the home-going service of my friend, so I don’t know what was spoken at the service. But, I do know that he taught, trained, discipled, lived & loved people to Jesus Christ.

Hm, THAT sounds like a good epitaph.