The truth is that for one era to begin, another has to finish.  In many ways that message was the theme of my week.  On Tuesday, we celebrated the end of eight years of the Scalante family living on the hill here at our mission headquarters campus in Fort Washington.  On Friday, through a miracle of packing science, we fit the whole family, me and their luggage in the CLC van and I took them to the Newark airport for their trip to Miami where they will now be living.  While I know this is a great move for them for both schooling and ministry reasons, it still doesn’t make it easy.  Gerardo is my boss, my colleague, my friend and my mentor.  I know that I will see him many times in the future, but it will not be quite the same as bumping into him in the hallway or having him and the family over for a picnic.  Change rarely is easy, but often is necessary for growth and development to take place.

The night before this celebration with the Scalante’s, I attended a celebration of a very different kind.  After thirty years of ministry, CLC is closing our bookstore in the Northfield, NJ area.  We had gathered missionaries, employees and volunteers together to remember God’s faithfulness over three decades and the many lives that had been impacted and transformed by the dedicated team at this store.  One story in particular from that night made a real impact on me.

Many years ago, a little girl named Sara would come into the store on a regular basis with her mom.  They would often stay so long that they were the last customers to leave.  Our store was pretty small and the two founding CLC team members, Roger Perry and Steve Steffel had built an ingenious play house for the kid’s area that doubled as a product display.  On a number of occasions, Sara would fall asleep in this little house waiting for her mom to finish her browsing, discussions and shopping.  Later on, as a teenager, Sara came into the store that had moved and grown and found resources that she needed for her own spiritual growth and development. 

In her twenties, Sara got married, had kids and became one of the employees of the store.  She now got to minister to others with the very resources that had meant so much to her growing up.  The store team became a second family and prayed her through many of the challenges of early adulthood, marriage and parenting.  Sara was with us on Monday night and was a shining example of God’s faithfulness to many generations.  She and her husband are now part of a church plant and are praying about their next season of ministry and what He might want them to do.

This week, I could not help remembering something my Grandmother used to say, “Nothing is wasted in God’s economy”.  In our lives, we all experience seasons of starting and ending.  The challenge is to see and remember all that God has done in a previous season as we begin the new one.  The same God that has been faithful to us in the past will continue to be faithful to us in the future. 

It quickly became obvious that this little guy was one of Eric’s two sons.  He quickly went over to his dad and you knew he was loved by the way Eric embraced him.  A few minutes later we decided to take a family picture.  As it turns out the son is a lot like his father.  Eric quickly pulled on his jacket and popped on his hat and what a great picture the family made.  I have a feeling I know where this little boy gets his fashion sense from.

We men can be like that.  No matter what it looks like on the outside, most of us really have a built-in gene that makes us want to be like our Dad.  For some of us it may have been the first time we saw him dress up and we wanted to look like that.  For others of us it may have been the way that he laughed and captivated an audience and we wanted that kind of attention.   It may have been that moment that we knew he really loved and cared for our mom no matter what and we wanted to love someone just a little bit like that too.

 For me, it was all of those things and more.  My Dad, however, had one special relationship that always made me a little jealous.  When I was really young, I did not understand why he spent so much time reading one book, writing notes, praying, teaching and talking about Jesus.  It almost seemed like overkill.  We had family devotions almost every day and somehow I knew that my Dad had found the one thing that made his life truly meaningful.    I couldn’t compete with this person who had so captivated his life.  While I knew that my Dad loved me, I knew that he loved someone else even more.

The older I get, the more that this crazy relationship with Jesus makes sense to me.  Ironically, some people say that I now look a lot more like my Dad.  Since he hasn’t lost much hair and I am balding fast, it must be something about our ever expanding and contracting waist lines that they are referring to.  There are many things about my Dad that I do aspire to – his love for people, his tendency to see the best in others, and his deep desire to be an encourager just like Barnabus in the Bible.   Most of all, however, I desire to know Jesus like He does.

As I think about my relationship with my Heavenly Father, I am not always sure that I want to be just like that Dad.  He loved me enough to give up his son to die in my place.  The truth is I still don’t fully understand the story of Abraham and Isaac.  I mean I understand what the Bible says happened; I just have a hard time believing that any real Dad would do that to their son.  I am pretty sure I would have spent a long time looking for the ram in the bush before I tied up Kenny or Mike.  Even then, it would have taken a whole lot a faith for me to point a knife at them and prepare to sacrifice them on an altar.

This life of faith seems pretty messed up sometimes.  I am supposed to die so I can live, to surrender so I can win, to love my enemy and hate my family.  What is that all about anyway?  Being just like that Dad can seem pretty weird when I really think about it.  I am fine with owning the cattle on a thousand hills and having the power to create by speaking things into existence, but letting my son die for someone else’s sin doesn’t feel like something I want to aspire to.  The more I ponder this truth, the more it makes my head spin.

The reality is that Jesus had a special relationship with His father.  It was one of complete trust and obedience.  Even as He sweat drops of blood and asked for His Dad to reconsider what was about to happen to Him, He prepared himself to be led to the cross like a lamb to the slaughter.  He never asked why, He simply obeyed.  I may not want to be just like my Heavenly Father and give up what is most precious to me, but He knows that and loves me anyway.  What a great Dad He is!

In their early thirties, the Jeske’s returned to the US to pursue work and further education and start life with their two kids in a country they really did not know anymore.  The reality of suburban evangelical living and the busyness that many Americans find normal were almost more than they could bear.   Daily life was no longer so amazing and this book was the result of their struggle to “settle down without settling”.  I have found it particularly refreshing to read their candid accounts of learning to see the extraordinary in the ordinary routines of every day life.  The following is one of my favorite excerpts from the book so far and is from a chapter called Faith Muscles written by Christine:

“…I wondered why we adults still find it so difficult to get moving in life.  Whenever I looked back over my lists of prayers from past years, I would always find requests that remained unanswered for years.  Did God just forget those prayers?  What about the famous Bible verse about “ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find (Matthew 7:7)?  I found it hard to believe that God would leave people in such stagnant waters for for so long without a single opportunity to move toward the good dreams people claimed to most desire.  I knew people with all the skills and ambitions to start their own businesses, who never worked up the courage to begin.  I knew people who left church over some spat and meant to find a new one but never tried for so long that they could scarcely remember what it felt like to get out of bed before ten o’clock on a Sunday morning.  I knew people nursing grudges, wishing for a spouse, growing disillusioned with their career paths.  In my own life I saw goals that seemed so huge that I had defaulted to doing nothing.  I wondered how many times people missed on-ramps to a better future because they did not really ask and seek, or because they didn’t like what they heard and found.  Sometimes the road God leads us on looks steep and overgrown.  We worry that we’ll get lost or pricked or dirty or pass some No Trespassing sign, when really the path is waiting to be enjoyed.”

As we American evangelicals continue to pursue radical and missional lives, I hope more and more of us will not simply assume that it can only be achieved by full time Christian professionals or people that move overseas to serve God.  More importantly, I pray that we will not let these God inspired ideas of responding to the call of the gospel to lead a transformational life atrophy in the face of every day life.  As we embrace the ordinary miracles that happen all the time and learn to see God at work in every aspect of our existence, we can have amazing days even if all we are doing is washing dishes and going to soccer games with our kids.

Some people really like roller coasters.  Some of those people are in my family and call me Dad.  A couple of years ago, we went to Busch Gardens as a family and discovered a ride called The Griffon.  This roller coaster became the highlight of the day for my two boys.  I am not sure exactly how many times they went on this same ride in a row.  What I do know as that it was after 8PM and nearly dark before they finally convinced me to go on it with them.

I have always struggled with a fear of heights and this ride was really high.  Ironically, the height of the ride was not even my biggest concern.  At just about the highest point in the ride, the ride slows down and you are suspended over the edge of the roller coaster tracks and are held there for what seems like an eternity.  You are about to take the steepest drop of the ride and you don’t know exactly when it will happen.  Just when you can’t take the suspense any longer, you plunge downward and the “free fall” is over in a nanosecond.  Afterward I could see why my boys liked the ride so much, but also understood why you had to experience it to come to that conclusion.  No amount of simply looking at the ride was going to convince me that it was a fun experience.

Life is like that sometimes.  For a really long time as a teenager, I wanted the freedom of being a “grown up”.  I wanted the ability to drive, to own my own things, to decide where I was going and what I was going to do.  No more being stuffed in a car with my brothers and sisters and taken to wherever my parents saw fit.  Then 1985 arrived.

I graduated from High School, went to college, attended my first Christian Booksellers Convention with my Dad and I met the girl who would become my wife.  From where I sat, things looked pretty good and it was just about as much fun as I had imagined.  The great adventure of adult life had begun and I was “all in”.  Somehow though, just like the roller coaster ride, things did not go quite as I had expected.  That December my grandfather died.

My grandfather was my earthly hero.  He had founded the worldwide ministry of CLC, had allowed me to live in his home for two summers, taught me how to drive and was my mentor.  He was the first person to ever ask me to speak in public in front of a crowd of adults, and I was only 14.  This was not supposed to happen so early in my life.  I was the first family member to arrive back in Fort Washington to be with my grandmother and the responsibility seemed overwhelming.  How was I going to comfort her?  Wasn’t that a job for the adults?  I wasn’t even 18 yet and it didn’t seem fair.  All I could do was to hold her in my arms, cry and pray.   If this was adulthood, I wasn’t sure I wanted any part of it and yet there was no turning back.

Christian maturity is not an easy thing to measure.  It’s not like there is an official age that you become a mature Christian.  In fact, for many of us it is a lifelong process.  One marker, though, is our willingness to embrace the adventure God has prepared for us with complete abandon.  This has not always been easy for me.  I would much rather measure my spiritual growth by tangible results like studying God’s word or spending time in prayer.  While spiritual disciplines are very important in the life of every believer, an exclusive focus on these can lead to a dry, performance oriented journey and not much of an adventure at all.

I believe that God calls us to swim out into the deep water, get on the roller coaster and meet our fears head on.  For some of us that may mean walking across the street to meet the neighbor we have been avoiding ever since we moved into the neighborhood.  For others, it may mean starting or joining a Bible study and learning to be vulnerable and transparent with others – discussing our sin, repenting and being held accountable.

This week, I had the privilege of meeting and teaching four young adults who are about to begin a spiritual journey with our ministry this summer.  Amanda and Jen will be going to England, Geli will be staying with us here in the USA and Ben will be going to Burkina Faso.  My prayer is that each of them will be willing to step off the edge of their own spiritual cliff.  As they surrender to will of their heavenly father, their lives will become more meaningful than they could have ever imagined.

“How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.”

Just a few years ago, I got to travel to Liberia and take a few books with me.  On this trip, one of the things I was going to do was to meet some people at the Monrovia Bible Institute (MBI) to see their library.  This school has been devastated by war during the 1990s as was the entire country and it was just getting back on its feet.  MBI was founded by an African American mission agency (Carver International Missions) and was in the process of starting up their classes again. 

When I got in contact with them for their first time and suggested that I might be able to bring some books for their library, they were delighted.  They were particularly excited that they would be able to hand pick the resources that I was bringing.  I had taken books to lots of places around the world and did not realize how meaningful these books would be.  All I could bring with me was a carry-on suitcase filled with reference books – it seemed like a pretty meager gift at the time.

On the day that I went to the Carver campus, I could see that it was bustling with activity as they had a K-12 school (Carver Mission Academy) functioning again and lots of kids in classes.  They took me to the library and I was encouraged to see that not all of their books had been stolen or damaged.  What I had not envisioned was that the library would have so few books available and that the ones they had would be so dated.  With no Christian bookstore in the country since 1996 and many missionaries just returning after the war, it was not surprising that they would have had a lack of current resources, but it was still overwhelming to see.

I put my small suitcase on a table and proceeded to show them what I had brought.  As I took the books out one by one, I will never forget the looks on the people I met that day. You would have thought that I had unpacked gold bars and not academic reference books.  Everyone in the room was smiling from ear to ear and some were nearly tearful.  They were particularly excited when I took out the Africa Bible Commentary that had just been published.  This book was written by Africans for Africans and they had never seen it before.

This small suitcase and its contents were so much more impactful than I could have imagined.  Today, the Carver team can get great Christian resources again in Monrovia as the CLC store re-opened last September.  Reference books are a major part of the product selection being offered and there are now many options to choose from at reasonable prices.

I love to be the one who brings good news, whatever that news may be.  The reality though is that I will only be able share the good news of the gospel in person with a limited number of people in my lifetime.  The books that I help to publish and distribute, though, may have a far greater impact.  They will get passed from person to person and last long after I am gone.   They never get tired, worn out or grumpy like I do.  A book placed in the right hands can change a life forever. 

As you will see from the picture in my blog this week, I got to cross off one of my bucket list items.  That’s right; I got my picture taken with the Chick-fil-A cow.  That may not be a big deal to most people, but considering how much chicken I have eaten in their restaurants over the years, I deserve some kind of life time achievement award.  For now, I will just have to settle for my picture with the cow. 

Our paths crossed this week at the Chick-fil-A Leadercast event.  The Leadercast is a nationwide simulcast of John Maxwell’s day of leadership training that he and other prominent teachers lead each year.  I had gone to this event a couple of times in the past and was really excited to be able to attend at the location sponsored by my friend Angela Piperburg at the Enterprise Center at Burlington Community College.  What a great location and what an impactful day it was.  Several other CLC folks attended with me and we hosted a book table with resources from the various speakers.

The keynote speaker, Andy Stanley (pastor, speaker and leadership expert), was particularly helpful in bringing clarity to the day’s theme – SIMPLY LEAD.  He told the story of starting his church in Atlanta and putting three critical questions on a three by five card.  He used those questions to simplify everything he did.  He has kept that card with him and looks at it regularly.  During these past seventeen years his church has grown extraordinarily with thousands attending every weekend.   His organization may be far more complex today than at the beginning of his ministry, but his mission and vision are crystal clear.  He challenged each of us to do the same and I am taking a leap of faith and going to that in the rest of this blog post.  So here it goes:

Question #1:  What is it that you do?  (this is meant to clarify what your organization does, not you personally).  As I thought about this question I was overwhelmed by a sense of gratitude to my grandfather and others of his generation who started CLC.  Of all the things they could have done to advance God’s kingdom, they picked one thing.  For over seventy years CLC has made evangelical Christian Books, Bibles and other resources available to the nations.  There were other men in that generation, who held crusades, started Bible translation ministries and harnessed the power of the media to spread the gospel.  While Ken Adams was a good speaker, loved technology and certainly wanted to see the Bible translated, he chose a different path.  The simplicity of Christian literature distribution to the nations was a big calling and one that defines us to this day.  What a blessing to know what you are supposed to be doing each and every day.

Question #2: Why are you doing it?   There are many reasons that we do what we do, but the two most important reasons were enshrined in our mission statement – so that people may come to faith and maturity in the Lord Jesus Christ.  The dual purposes of seeing people come to a saving faith and then growing as Christians is why we do what we do.  The Christian literature is simply a tool that God has given us and a powerful one.  Over the years, these two things have motivated generations of people to serve in this ministry as they witnessed the power of the gospel impacting people’s lives one book at a time.  If C.T. Studd wanted to run a rescue mission within a yard of hell, he was going to need a supply tent.  CLC has been that supply tent for countless ministries and churches that are pushing back the darkness in their corner of the world.

Question #3: Where Do I Fit In?  Another way of phrasing that question was, “What is my unique contribution and core responsibility?”  He encouraged each of us to develop a one sentence job description for ourselves and our direct reports.  I will be working on that in the days to come, but have to say that this was critical question for me.  As the National Director for CLC USA, I have a complex and challenging job.  It is easy to let one aspect of the job dominate the others even when it is not my core responsibility.  As I have thought about it, my core responsibility and unique contribution is to be the Chief Inspiration Officer of our organization – the CIO rather than the CEO.   I have the privilege and joy of communicating what we do and why we do it over and over again in a thousand different ways to many different audiences.  My goal is to motivate our team to achieve our goals, to dream bigger dreams and to have fun doing it. 

Taking a day out of my normal routine to meet the cow, eat lots of chicken and hear many motivating leaders was well worth the time.  I would encourage every leader at any level to make the time to attend one of these events in the future and commit to significant personal growth and development.  It will make you a better leader and a better person.  If you are serious about this, the event takes place again next May 9^th – put it on your calendar now.  You will be glad you did.

As I was looking at some incredibly beautiful flowers recently, I was struck by the reality of their fleeting time here on earth.  Each year, we enjoy the arrival of the cherry blossoms on the trees on our campus and watch the daffodils peek out of the undergrowth.  It is such a miracle that you can know that this will happen every spring no matter what has happened in the months before. Despite their beauty, it is also a little bitter sweet that the blossoms fall off and the flowers of the daffodils will disappear just as miraculously as  they arrived.

While I am often envious of my friends who live in the ever temperate climate of central and southern California, I am coming to have a new appreciation for the four seasons we experience here in Pennsylvania.  I even wonder if the incredible beauty of the spring and fall would be so meaningful if it were not for the winter and summer that precede these two seasons?  What I do know is that it takes a pretty creative God to display His very nature in the leaves and flowers that I so love.  He is the creator of all things and the sustainer of life itself.

It seems that in this ever increasing desire to create a God in our own image, we really want a God that would make our lives a little bit more like Eden or at least like Santa Barbara.  Life would be so much better if it were sunny and 72 degrees every day.  The reality of our world is a little more gritty than that and I think God wants it that way.  He allows the rain and the snow in our lives to prepare us for the growth He desires to see in us.  His harvest of Godly character in us is only accomplished by our learning to embrace all the seasons.

The truth is that I serve a God who allows leaves to die, flowers to disappear and grass to turn brown.  In doing so, he prepares us for the miracle of the first bulb bursting out of the soil, the trees budding again and the grass growing so fast that it seems to need cutting every other day.  He is not a God that can be controlled or manipulated to be more like me.  In fact, He wants just the opposite.  He wants me to be willing to die so that He can breathe new life into my every fiber.  What a scary prospect.

He is not a safe God, but He is good.  Oh what a beautiful God he is!

“Honey, you set standards that no family activity can live up to.”  

I love his classic response, “When have I ever done that?”

Deluding ourselves into this kind of thinking is a major part of everyday life.  I start the day assuming that I will eat right, exercise and lose five pounds.  Somewhere along the way, I consume a burger, fries and that irresistible birthday cake in the office.  Still determined to get to the gym, I get changed into the right outfit and then remember the errands I promised to run for Deb.  No wonder I wake up the next day two pounds heavier.

How many times have we made a plan to complete our important “to do” list of activities and gotten to the end of the day with none of them checked off?

This week, I realized that I have been treating God with a similar attitude.  I keep setting false expectations for Him.  The problem is not that I expect too much of Him, but that I expect too little.

Do I really believe what it says in Ephesians 3:20?

“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us”

For most of my life this has been a pleasant benediction to hear at the end of a great sermon and not a promise to cling to like my life depended on it.  So this week, I am determined to ask myself a different set of questions:

•  Can I believe God that my children will not just turn out OK, but that they will have a passion for His Kingdom that impacts all their life choices?
•   Can I believe God that my marriage will not just be better than average, but that it will actually become a picture of the bride and groom portrayed in Ephesians 5?  Can I really love my wife the way Christ loves the church?
• Can I believe God that the church I attend will be more than a comfortable place to go on Sunday?  Can our church really change the community we live in?
• Can I believe God that He will not just take care of my needs, but that He will transform my desires?
•  Can I believe that the God I serve really does hold the keys of death and hades? Can I trust that His word is true and does not return void?

I fear that many of us have settled for a God that fits in a safe “natural” box as our conference speaker, Fred Hartley, said this past week.  May I not be afraid of His supernatural power and instead learn to live with great expectations of His work in my life each and every day.

One of the great joys of my life has been to work alongside the amazing people that serve in CLC USA each and every day.  For the last eight years it has been my privilege and deeply humbling experience to be their leader and to watch our ministry grow and develop.  This weekend I was re-elected by these dedicated servants to serve them as the National Director for another four years.  I can’t imagine a more challenging or exciting task that the Lord has called and prepared me for.

Each year we have an annual team gathering that we call “conference”.  CLC USA has been holding this event for over 50  years and a lot has changed in that time.  While the world that we live in today would seem very strange to those very first conference attendees, our purpose and core values would be very familiar.   Our books, people and methods have changed, but our commitment to the spread of the gospel through Christian literature remains rock solid.  As we gather again this weekend to have celebrate what God has done in our midst during this past year and dream about the future, we do so on the foundation of sacrifice, fellowship, holiness and faith that have sustained this ministry for over 70 years.

I will be posting pictures from this dynamic time together as a extra blog post next Wednesday.

This feeling of un-rootedness is actually fairly common amongst missionary kids and was probably true for many of the kids I grew up with.  By the time I attended Messiah College near Harrisburg, PA, I was determined to have a place that I could call home once and for all.  In God’s providence, I found my wonderful spouse, Deb, during my college years and we settled down in the suburban Harrisburg area with a subtle determination to put down roots.

We were blessed to be able to establish ourselves professionally and move from an apartment into a house of our own within a few short years.  So much seemed to be falling into place – even our five year plan to wait and start a family.  Despite this, I could not escape the nagging feeling that something was just not right about our situation.  What was I missing?  We both had great careers, a house of our own, a church we loved, and a new son on the way.

The missing link was God’s plans for our lives.  Everything up to that point had been motivated by our career aspirations, the expectations of friends and family, my desire for deep roots and the desire to please God by what we were doing.  In a blog post for another day, I can share about how God got ahold of my heart and gave me a new dream.  He gave me a dream of an eternal home where moth and rust cannot destroy and thieves will not break in and steal.  This dream, however, was not going to be fulfilled in the safety and security of a good paying job, where I got to call the shots.  Instead, it required complete surrender to His will for me and my family.

 It also required selling our house and moving onto a mission campus where we would never own a house again.  In the irony of God’s love for me and my family, it also meant that one day, we would move into the house that my grandparents and parents had lived in on this mission campus.  We would ultimately live for the majority of my adult life within a few minutes of the very hospital that I was born in.  I would get to live in one place for a really long time, become a member of a local church where I would one day become an elder and I would serve as the leader of the US branch of the ministry that my grandfather had founded.

So where is home – it is wherever God calls you to serve.  Nothing is more unsettling that trying to put down roots in a place that God has not planned for you to go – Jonah found that out the hard way.  The most satisfying place to live is in the center of God’s will, wherever that is.  For me and my family, that has been a missionary campus near the city of Philadelphia on a hill in a house that we will never own.  What a journey this has been so far.

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