Revisiting ruins

I’ve been touched again in the past few days by the utter ruin of the Church here in Europe. One can see the splendour of bygone days and touch what remains in awe. Yet there is a remnant huddled in small corners of the ruins. They possess their own splendour, and if it is somewhat less than the splendour of Luther and the other German giants; it is still splendid.

It is easy as an outsider to come here and see only the ruins, but miss the fact that while the place is ruined, there still remains something from the past for us to see, if we are willing to close our eyes and imagine it as it once was. So I’m imaging Germany as it once was and may one day be again and I’m in awe.

 God is doing something here in Europe and for those with the imagination and faith to see; it is an awesome vision. With less than 3% of Germans claiming to be evangelical there is much to imagine before we see a Church grow in size and substance. But God has never been daunted by our lack of imagination so I’m going to watch and wait and see just how He rebuilds the ruins of His European Church.

Post-Christian; Post-modern and prideful are not the building blocks I would seek out if I intended to build something beautiful. I’d first try and change the place before building here. But God just loves these pagan Germans and their unfortunate habit of doing a better job of obeying the sermon on the mount than us Christians. How on earth can I convince them they are bad if they are so socially conscious!!?????

I hope your week has been less trying than mine. But I do hope it has been as fruitful. I may be living in a spiritual building site but at least it never gets boring!

Have an awesome weekend!

Our guests and new eyes

We’ve spent the past week hosting people and my awesome wife is the grand dame of all hostesses! I offer personality and a capacity to move furniture around and Bethany does the rest! We’ve had one of our financial supporters from America staying with us and now we have a group of young ladies from World Race staying for a few days. So it has been a busy week but enjoyable. Seeing where we live and what we do through the eyes of outsiders gives us a fresh perspective of why it is God called us here.

We went on a prayer walk on Monday around the University area and as always God had a lot to say to those who participated. When groups or individuals come through Munich and ask if they can do anything for our ministry we almost inevitably ask them to participate in a prayer walk. It shows them clearly what God has in mind for the city and its’ students, but also confirms in our hearts what it is God has already said to us. Prayer truly is the work.

I also had a very unexpected ghost from Christmas past as it were in the person of a 25-year-old American student who is studying here for six months from Utah University. He was part of a team of young men who were doing their two-year mission with the Mormon Church and spent a portion of it trying to share their believes with the people of Munich. They also managed to find the time to come to my house every Monday for three to four hours of Bible study and discussion about the differences in our believes.

Elder ***** (I want to protect his privacy) was a passionate and frequent visitor for the months he lived in Munich until his Church moved him on to new fields in Regensburg.  Last weekend Bethany received an email from a friend who lived next door to me at the Men’s House telling how a young American man arrived at her door looking for Robert and asking if I still did Bible studies and could he attend one! She passed on our contact details and he sent us an email. Yesterday I met him, and we spent almost three hours walking in the park and talking about the past five years.

 One of the ladies from World race asked if our aim was to reach Christians at the University. We responded by saying our goal was to reach the furthest out students and that if we helped our young brothers and sisters along the way then we would be delighted. But our goal is to reach out to the kids who are furthest away from Christ. The young man I walked with in the park yesterday is one of those furthest out kids. I’m so excited to be a part of the effort of reaching kids like my mormon friend. Yesterday reminded me that this is what I’ve been made to do. God has seen fit to make me good at one specific thing and that is talking to people who appear to have no interest in meeting or knowing my God. I feel like Eric Liddell ( Chariots of Fire) when he says that he feels God’s pleasure when he runs. I feel God’s pleasure when I talk ; Liddell was made to run, I was made to talk!

New people have looked into our world and seen it with new eyes helping us see again where it is God has placed us and why.

One of Young Life’s slogans is “You were made for this!” I’ve been reminded very forcibly this week that Bethany and I have indeed been made for this!

Do it my way!

I’ve been chewing on the question of how we view our relationship to God and others. Our place in the grand scheme of things. For some Christ followers it is all about self-denial; finding fulfillment in service. For others it is self-realization; finding fulfillment in accepting the wonder of God’s creative genius and embracing the blessing of sitting at Jesus’ feet.

Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem called the “Sons of Martha”  www.online-literature.com/kipling/920/ in which he expresses the differences between the two perspectives. The Sons of Martha and Mary find each other’s perspective of God to be often unacceptable and at best bewildering to them. I clearly fall under the category of a Son of Martha; finding a life of service to my God a comforting and rewarding vocation. One of my closest German friends is called Roger and he falls firmly into the Sons of Mary category. The challenge for our friendship has been learning to respect and understand each other’s very different perspective of our place before God.

As an Area Director for Young Life I have the unique privilege of building and leading a team of passionate Christ Followers. I feel God has given me a vision to be part of building an eclectic evangelical team; a group that covers the broad spectrum of mainstream Christianity. In preparing me for the role; God has dipped me into multiple pools of spiritual expression, immersing me in the labels we stick on each other. Charismatic; Liturgical, Emergent, Cessationist, Calvinist ect ect! The outcome of bathing in this spiritual communal bathtub has been to broaden my mind and heart to the Truths that other Believers hold dear in how they worship and serve God.

I’ve become convinced that Jesus Christ is sitting in every denominational expression the Church has created. I’m also convinced He has no preference among His children’s multitude of opinions about who He is and what He wants. He simply delights in our passion; while urging us to love each other unconditionally.

So I’m working on not only saying I respect other believers’ believes but also respecting them by embracing and living out my brothers and sisters’ believes in my own life. Christ is in all of His Church; so I want as much of His Church in our team as possible.

The massive downside is that the team won’t DO IT MY WAY!!!! They’ll want to occasionally do it their way too! How inconvenient!

Hope you’re enjoying whichever expression of faith in Christ Jesus it is you value above all others.

The week at a glance

Life here is rolling along at a tremendous pace and we can hardly believe the year is in its last quarter. We’re still busy studying language and completing Young Life’s leadership training, alongside building the team and preparing the way for ministry to take-off next year.

 

Probably the most substantial thing to have happened in the past few weeks is that we formally asked a German couple to pray about becoming our first official volunteer leaders. They are both medical doctors; Stephie is a children’s doctor, while Roger specializes in internal medicine. While their substantial educational and professional status will be valuable to our team, our main reason for asking them to join us is their gift in prayer and their passion for reaching the city with The Gospel.  Bethany and I have known the Vogelmanns for three years, and have prayed with them for almost that entire time.  They are already part of our team prayer meetings and plan to continue praying with us even if they are not called to join us in reaching the students here in Munich. Please pray that they have a clear answer from God for what they should do. Better to have a pair of passionate prayer warriors on our side than an uncertain pair of leaders.

 

My back continues to slowly heal and I had my latest (and hopefully last)set of injections last week, and won’t need to see the doctor again for five weeks. God willing by then the pain will have completely gone and I will be able to resume a normal life again. Bethany continues to see the doctor concerning stomach problems, and while thankfully all of the tests have come back clear we are no closer to discovering exactly what the problem is beyond the general diagnosis of acid reflex. I’d really value prayer for our health.

 

We just finished our first full fiscal year with Young Life and are awed to discover we ended the year in the black! Considering the global recession and the increase our budget has undergone  in the past 18 months it is nothing less than a miracle that the ministry’s fiscal needs were met. I’d also appreciate your prayers for our endeavors at raising this year’s budget.

 

All in all it has been a pretty normal week. The fiscal year has begun and I’m looking at a budget of $130,000 to be raised in dollars and euros! Our team will be traveling in America and Spain for most of December and January. (We have a seminary class and training followed by our European conference.) So in the next seven weeks we need to finish up our assignments from the last leadership training; complete the pre-assignments for the seminary class and finish our language commitments which for the Sandefurs includes passing a language test on December 4th! Bethany and I have a support trip in December to plan and a banquet information evening in St. Louis just before Christmas.

Just an ordinary week in the life of the Millars!

Rebooting and refreshing

I’ve just spent the bulk of this weekend either talking via internet with Microsoft’s support staff or reinstalling everything back unto my laptop after engaging the “Factory reboot facility” Dell has kindly hidden away in my laptop’s systems. While having to put everything back unto my laptop and having to endure the inevitable loss of data my incompetent computer skills cause; I do like the idea of erasing all of the junk; corruption and general mess that has accumulated over the past 18 months from spyware; malware and every other kind of ware nerdy, mafia types keep trying to infect my computer with!

So the problem was my Vista system had become corrupted, a little harsh perhaps, but that was what the expert said. Corrupted! It sounds a tad final; it brings to mind James Cagney walking that last 100 meters in “Angels with dirty faces.” All shadows and light, with the tension oozing out of each step. But the bright side is that like Cagney there is redemption in the rebooting.

My wee laptop (I call him Jeeves from P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._G._Wodehouse )  is purring away trying to reinstall my giant computer game from its’ online storage site while also installing my langauge course called Rosetta Stone. I lost all of the giving data from my TNT program, which keeps all of the names and contact details for our supporters in one handy place. While I have it all safely stored online and on our external hard drive I now have to manually input all of the giving details for the past 4 years! Argggg!!!!!!

I feel much like my Jeeves in that I could do with a factory reboot. What with all of the medicine the doctors have pumped into my body in the past year and the constant traveling; stress, sleepless nights and pain I feel like my body is completely drained. And where my body journeys so inevitably does my emotional and spiritual health. So I’m trying to reboot and refresh my poor misused self in the hope that like my wee buddy Jeeves I’ll look and feel reborn! I’m down to 175 pounds with the goal of dropping another 15 pounds by December 7th; I’m exercising more and my back is definitely hurting less and feeling stronger each day, and I’m using a new devotional routine in response to a training assignment that has me journaling and memorizing more and reading less. I read Sexual Ethics by Stanley J. Grenz last month and I’m still trying to digest it all. My teammate Ryan Sandefur loaned me his copy so now I need to buy at least one copy for my book shelf. I highly recommend this book, well worth the time and energy.

In keeping with my new rebooted self’s energy levels I’ll attempt to write on a more regular basis. So enough for today.

Hope your lives are as exciting as mine!

Training days and Praying days

Two weeks ago we attended the latest staff introduction training week; which is a two year training program that includes leadership training; teaching on Young Life’s ministry methods and seminary classes. We did Leadership 1 and New Staff Training last year and will complete Leadership 2 and Winter Training by April 2010. The whole course is called “Certificate in Youth Ministry” and is six accredited seminary classes or 18 credit hours (if I’ve understood the American educational system correctly) towards a Graduate degree of our choosing. Which for me will almost certainly be a “Masters in Global Leadership” from Fuller Seminary. The primary goal of all of this training is for Bethany and I to gain a thorough understanding of the principles and practices of Young Life’s ministry model so that we are personally well trained, but also capable of contexualizing those principles and practices in our college ministry and developing the skills necessary to train future staff and volunteer leaders in YL College Munich.

So Leadership 2 training was two weeks ago; and this week was spent at our region’s advanced training session and I confess there are times it feels as if we are drinking water through a fire hose. All of it is hugely valuable and immensely needful but it is a lot to absorb in such a short amount of time.

I’m constantly amazed at how much I don’t know! Everything we learn is of immeasurable value which then beggars the question of how on earth we did ministry without it! We both love the level of professionalism and practicality Young Life brings to its’ training sessions and are immensely blessed by everything we’ve been exposed to in the past 18 months since we began the journey with Young Life.

Alongside the training and langauge classes we’ve started a weekly team prayer meeting and have our first Young Life College volunteers. Roger and Stephie Vogelman are a German couple we’ve known for three years who came to faith when they lived in California. They moved back to Germany three years ago and have been a constant blessing to us ever since. They are both medical doctors and they have two wonderful daughters. Roger and Stephie bring a beautiful spirit of worship and intercession to our team times of prayer and worship which is an awesome blessing for all involved. While we’re no where near ready to launch active contact work with students we are praying for the volunteers and open doors we need for when that day arrives. To create and sustain a vibrant ministry in such a spiritually impoverished place as Munich means building the necessary frame to support that edifice. Developing a weekly prayer meeting is one of the essential cornerstones of the entire structure. It is where our future volunteers will be first introduced to our vision and passion for reaching adolescents in Munich. It is where we all will receive the power and insight to be effective in reaching those same adolescents. And it is where we all will meet with God who is the entire reason for having a college ministry in the first place! So having that weekly prayer meeting up and running is a huge step in the right direction.

If our goal was just to tell half a dozen kids about Jesus and be content then Bethany and I would be sufficient with God’s help for the task.

But our goal is to reach 44,000 students with the glorious good news of Jesus Christ! Then help launch a Europe-wide movement that reaches every adolescent in Europe! That is beyond six human beings, it is perhaps beyond any number of human beings. But it is not beyond God; nor those He will bring to join us in such a huge undertaking!

We shall have many more training days and praying days ahead of us as we stretch towards that incredible goal. But when i think of all of those kids living out their lives in the darkness with Christ I get motivated to ensure our team is the best equiped it can possibly be to be part of leading them to The Light.

The past two weeks

It’s 6.30am and I’ve already been up and hammering away on my laptop trying to catch up on my immense undealt with emails.

I’ve made a dent in the backed up emails so now I need only write a post for the blog and I can grab a shower and shave before heading out for the start of my day!

I had a meeting with my Sprache Partner (speaking/language partner) last night which was meant to be an hour long dinner with30 minutes in German and then 30minutes in English. We met at 6.30pm and left at 10pm! It worked out at about 2 hours of german and 90 minutes in English. Michael is a financial controller for a German PR firm that has international client so Michael’s English needs to improve. We both think the other speaks much better so we both have a lot of doubts and fears. Ironically I feel I have no german yet I can talk for two hours and Michael says he thinks my German is fine. Unbelievable to my ears but I had to suck it up and accept my perception of my language skills doesn’t tie in with those who have to listen to me speak. I’ve a long way to go but last night was super encouraging!

 

We spent last week in Young Life leadership training and while it was tiring it was very encouraging. We will leave next Monday for another week of training.  As I want to give this the detail it deserves I’ll try and write in more detail about last week in another post.

Bethany and I visited Northern Ireland last weekend for a four day visit and got back on Tuesday where we went straight to October fest to join the Munich Young Life teams for a celebration. lots of fun even for an Irish alcoholic.

My back is slowly recovering and the new medicine has helped deal with the pain immensely!

Patience personified….. or perhaps not.

Our ministry year is coming to a close and that from my perspective demands a little reflection.

Having seen God provide 100% of our budget; bring us the ideal team mates, walk us through the first year of Young Life training, allowing us both to be accepted at Fuller Seminary and faithfully granting us gains in learning the language I’m reluctant to bring up what might appear to be the giant cloud in the midst of all of this silver lining.

My back has been an almost constant drain during the past 14 months. Even when not in acute pain I was aware of just how limited my capacity was and since July I’ve been living through a repeat of last August through October’s intense muscle spasms and sleeplessness. Last Friday I received another bout of injections and some new medicines after a rather disappointing relapse. I’m now taking muscle relaxant and a different painkiller. The combination is giving me 5 solid hours of uninterrupted sleep for the past three nights which weirdly helped me grasp just how little sleep I’ve been getting for the past two months! The specialist I’m now seeing wants a new MRI taken along with some X-rays so perhaps they will shed some light on why I’m still in so much pain.

We have Young Life training next week; a trip back to Ireland the weekend after and then a brief rest before another four days of advanced training in October,  so my two months of not having to travel is coming to an end. We’ve managed to book the best bed we can find for both training sessions and my doctor is going to give me another set of injections this Friday before we leave so that my back has the best chance of surviving the trips.

But despite the back pain I feel like everything is running smoothly. I had the opportunity to preach for the entire summer at our local church and last Sunday was my last sermon in the series. Our ministry rarely offers me an opportunity to preach from a traditional pulpit so spending at least ten hours every week during the summer preparing a 25 minute sermon was an unusual experience. I do confess it is the only part of a Pastor’s job I envy!

So our new year is blooming with everything in the ministry going smoothly and my own particularly painful personal journey through life this past year is helping Bethany and I comprehend a deeper sense of what it means to have patience!

My back is getting back to where Backs belong!

I have the apartment to myself this afternoon and back is feeling comfortable enough that I can face typing an entry.

I’ve got the Shrek soundtrack playing in the background and realms of German homework cluttering up the kitchen table with Hagar the Horrible auf deutsch open and as hilarious in German as it was in English! I’m using Hagar and Asterix as my reading material to practice German….. the unrelenting revelations of a misspent youth are just crowding back through the deep recesses of my almost defunct memory!  

I’ve been responsible for preaching every Sunday of last month and all of this month at our local Church. I started out with a couple of poorly prepared and even  more poorly presented sermons but at the half way point I’ve managed to kick it up a gear and I’m feeling more comfortable with preparing a weekly sermon. It’s Wednesday and by 10.30 this morning I had the text; the three point alliteration and a strong conclusion all worked out!!! I won’t share here what I’m going to share at Church but I’m feeling pretty good about myself this afternoon!

My back continues to cause me pain but it get less painful each day with only occasional bouts of intense muscle spasms to remind me that I’m still in a process of recovery. I’ve lost almost 20lbs in the past two months and I’ve been eating well and living well so despite my back I’ve a lot to be thankful for.

The summer has both flown past and also been so crammed with a mountain of activity, that it sometimes seems as if I’m sprinting blindfolded, while holding a tray of fragile crystal goblets full of priceless wine that are meant for an impatient, important guest. Thrilling, terrifying and tumultuous all combined with an unutterable sense of someone guiding my blinded feet!   How is that for a weird picture of how I feel?

I’ve never been more sure that what we are doing here is important. We’re praying more intensely than we’ve prayed in years; seeking God’s face for favor to reach the students at LMU. Our team is forming into a tight knit spiritual core group ready to embrace an influx of new leaders as the year progresses. Our God can do anything and we’re feeling really confident He intends to do something amazing at LMU! So keep praying and expect some stunning results as the years unfold!

Update on my back

I’d like to say thank you to all of you who have been praying for me. My back is still quite painful, but with physiotherapy I’m hopeful that by the end of August I’ll be over the worst of it. I exercise and stretch every day, walking for at least an hour and then two to three sessions of stretching each day, and I have physiotherapy twice a week. I endured language class until the end of last week; but on Friday after discussing the situation with Bethany and my teachers I eventually came to accept that I can’t effectively learn a language while enduring enough pain to cause a cold sweat! So now I have to wait for three weeks until my physiotherapy is complete before restarting class. I’m going to study at home as much as my back can take, but it was a blow to have to accept I couldn’t stay in class. But I needed to accept the truth that I was wasting money just sitting there gritting my teeth and taking in about half of what the teacher was saying. Bethany is continuing her studies and is making good progress. Our interns are in America for three weeks helping to lead a wilderness camp for a small group of German high school students.

Despite my back problems life is good. I’m married to the most amazing woman I know; I live in a fantastic place, I’m surrounded by people who love me and I’m part of a great ministry that is reaching kids for Christ.