You might be forgiven if this causes you some surprise. A dozen leaders in European mission sitting around for four days discussing the need for prayer in mission. Shocking! Despite the obviousness of prayer being essential I left last week’s training with the utter certainty that I haven’t been praying enough.

God has called me into a leadership role in the reaching of 80,000 university students with His Great news. And I’m so busy I’ve allowed the need for making prayer central fade from my vision.

I’ve made a fresh commitment to get back to the basics, to restore some of my former prayer disciplines, start some new ones and have myself held accountable for doing the basics before I try the fancy methods.

So I’m praying again…….

The first thing that happens since then is we had a Thanksgiving party! I’ll leave it to Bethany to tell you more later this week.

A day in the life of Robert the Irish guy

I sometimes stay awake at night wondering how to fill YL hoodies!

We got back from training yesterday and slept for an hour then went to our Friday Night Hang Out. Only one girl turned up but as we were leaving a South African student stopped us and asked where we were from. He got an invite to next week’s hang out.

During training I received an email from a student I haven’t heard from in two years; one of the guys from our Impact days. He saw me on Facebook and wants to hang out. So next week when I get back from advanced training we can grab a coffee and catch up.

During training this week I also met an awesome young couple who were visiting Munich. They weren’t part of training but God conspired to allow me to stay up late one night with them and have a conversation about life, and spirituality. I crawled into bed that night at 2.30am looking forward to 4 hours of sleep with a huge smile on my face as I’d just spent the past three hours with two of God’s wonderful creations.

Then tomorrow night Bethany and I are having a young German married couple over for dinner before we all go to Church. It will be another opportunity for us to spend time with students, practice our german and just enjoy the presence of two incredibly interesting people! What an awesome week!

Now before any of you start worrying about me thinking of people as just objects to stuff into hoodies, let me explain! By the time I reach the point where I would be stuffing a student into a hoody I would have already earned the right to be heard, heard their story, shared my story, had them ask me the “WHY” question and then been on the joyous journey with them of sharing Christ and Him Crucified! I’ll have invited them into our community, taken them on a hiking trip, Film Fest, or just a road trip. After which they’ll be wearing something with YL written on it!

At training this week one of my teammates described me as an Evangelist. I loved that she described me thus; for at the core of my being I believe this is what God made me to be! So YL training is now finished and a chapter of our life has closed. Below is the group we trained with and our trainers. Everyone of those people are dedicated Evangelists and it is my deep privilege to serve with them here in Europe.

We have the rest of weekend to rest, do laundry, repack, eat dinner with our young friends, have a staff meeting on Monday morning then grab a train to go back to another training session. All the while I’ll be dreaming of opportunities to fill 80,000 YL Hoodies with my 80,000 closest student friends in Munich! Before you smile too widely at that image just remember I’ll be asking many of you for the money to buy the hoodies! Hope your week has been as eventful as mine!

We have had two weeks at home continuing to meet students and build the relationships we need to have earned the right to share with them the awesome news of Christ and him crucified.

I had the privilege to meet with two awesome young Christian men this month and be a part of their journey.

The remainder of the month has been filled with preparing for our final Young Life leadership training session. 18 months have sped past and I’d be a liar if I said I wasn’t absolutely delighted to see the training finally coming to an end. Bethany and I will gain roughly an extra 30 days next year which we are excitedly intending to use reaching more of the 80,000 students in Munich! Please don’t take my delight at ending the training as a negative statement about Young Life’s training. We needed to learn what Young Life is and the principles behind almost 70 years of successful youth ministry that today reaches a million kids a year with The Gospel. But an extra 30 days to reach students and equip young christian men and women is something we jump up and down in delight at the very thought of! I think we are truly happiest having a group of the least likely students sitting at a table allowing us to be part of their world.

So tonight we are back in the bar to meet students and create that place where they can finally meet our Lord. I just love this aspect of our life!

I will spend the rest of the weekend working on assignments for next week and preparing some material for a staff meeting on Vision and Community for our team.

Then on Monday we’re off to training for a week, then we have the weekend back at home before we head straight back out to attend the Advanced Training for the region’s Area directors and above. But that will have brought us to May so I’ll talk about that next month DV!

We’ll also have a presence every Sunday night at the church we’re partnering with as that is where most Christian students attend. During the week we’ll be around the University area in coffee shops and bars just being a presence there. And also meet with the students we already know.

So we’ve gotten a weekly schedule and places where students can see us and hang out with us. So much work has gone into creating this and after all of that work I lay in bed last night and knew that only God can take our efforts and turn them into something tangible. We take baby steps to proclaim Christ and God responds with giant steps and amplifies that proclamation! Praise God!

I’ve surprised myself by just how much I liked food. I never thought of myself as an Epicurean but it seems a love of fine food was hiding away under the surface!

I’m still eating only bland food and while it is nice to keep food down I’d love to be able to just bite into a tasty filling meal of meat, potatoes and vegetables all spiced, marinated and flavoured for optimum pleasure. I’ve gained a new insight and respect for just how much a God-given blessing eating can be. Giving thanks for food has taking on a whole new dimension.

God willing this illness will pass and I’ll be back to normal, but the surgeon did hint that perhaps my digestive system may not be as robust as it once was and I may need to exercise caution when choosing what to eat. Coffee has gone and may never reappear. Fatty fish and chips will be months in the future if they ever return. Fortunately I love steamed vegetables as much as fried fish so perhaps my new diet will be as pleasurable as Bethany is truly a wonder in the kitchen. But right now finding a safe, bland food outside of the house as proved impossible. Again as my system recovers I’m trusting food will again become available.

So I’m still sick and suffering, but I thought I’d focus on what I’m missing and may one day again experience rather than what I’m experiencing and may one day not miss! Still no sign of a departure date to Munich. But God is good and we can wait for His timing.

Hope your last six weeks have been as interesting as ours.

As most of you know I fell ill on the last day of a week-long seminary class on Systematic Theology. Our assignment is to write a couple of two page papers and a ten page theology paper on any topic we wish. I’ve decided to choose “Suffering” as my subject.

Three weeks of suffering, of losing all the major joys in my life. For three weeks I’ve been unable to “be” a good husband, to “be” a good friend, to “do” my work, and even to “be” my normal self. The places where I normally enjoy living out my identity have been unexpectedly ripped away and I’ve been slowly coming to grips with the idea that perhaps I find too much identity in these relationships and roles. I feel God asked me this morning if it was enough that I have been left with only my relationship to Him for these past three weeks. If it would be enough to find peace knowing my identity hasn’t changed despite my circumstances.

I love “being” a good and caring husband to Bethany. I find great satisfaction in trying to live out my love for her in tangible ways. I love that I have many great friends who love and respect me. I find great joy in playing, talking, and striving with my friends. I love what I “do” as a vocation and I delight in being able to do it everyday. I even like myself, I’m normally comfortable just being with my own thoughts, waking up full of energy and interest in what today will offer. But for three weeks these have been profoundly reduced if not completely removed from me. And I find myself asking the question: “is it enough that God loves me and I’m still intrinsically the same person even if I can’t display it tangibly?”

All of the things I listed above are wonderous gifts from God that I derive great pleasure and satisfaction from. But they are only gifts, only blessings from my God and as such I need to learn to enjoy them when He gives them but not gain my identity from them.

I’m still ill, I’m still feeling awful and I would love to be healthy sooner than later. But I know my identity is secure. I am His and He is mine!

Truly my God can do anything! I’d value your prayers for my healing but I think this will end when the purpose for it has been accomplished.

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!

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!

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.