Five Words Today's Church Needs To Hear

My friend, Brady Traywick, has just returned from a week long trip to India to encourage the church there as it blossoms and grows.  

His email tonight to prayer partners and supporters both encouraged and educated me on what was going on there.  

His five words for the American church also humbled me and made me think just what is necessary for "church" to be church".   I share them here:

Several words frame my recent experience......Simplicity, Suffering, Passion, Urgency, Suck-it-up (okay, so not a word but phrase).

• Simplicity......the Indian church is rapidly reproducing itself and seeing the fruit we only dream about here......why? perhaps - because all of the trappings of materialism are cut away and they simply obey the Scripture. They tell their story, they tell His story, and they give account. Then they repeat the process.

• Suffering......it seems shallow, empty, very hallow to even type about this: We have no clue, better yet - I have no clue of the real meaning of suffering. Truly their suffering is not 'theoretical', it is not a suffering of words....it is real, it is visible, it is brutal.

• Passion......not the charismatic, I am so happy, I lift my hands to the Lord kind of passion - but real depth, breadth, kind of.....quiet strength that comes only after real suffering. You can see it in their eyes, hear it in their voices.....it is authentic, validated by first hand experience - not possibilities.

• Urgency......every trip to the "ends of the earth" only stirs my passion for my Jerusalem. My first inclination is to sell the farm and move the whole family tomorrow. I am confident that this will happen before God checks me out, Lord willing. Yet for now.....I am stirred with renewed passion that my Jerusalem needs the 'grace and mercy' of JC. 

• Suck It Up......we (I) need to quit whining! Christians need to get off of the couch and start telling their story, start telling His story, and then give an account. How much more 'equipping' do we need before we implode? We, (I) need to die to the American Dream and live with full abandon toward an eternal perspective. We need to engage people with the gospel at all costs and with all measures. Time is short!
  

So, if I were to ask you today "What is absolutely necessary for the church to exist in America today?--what would it be?  A building?  Programs?  Missions?  Just what is absolutely necessary?   Have we so adorned "the church" with our expectations that she can't function the way she is suppose too?

Food for thought--let me hear from you!

Jimmy, Jimmy

JIMMY, JIMMY
You’ve never lived until you’ve been wanded by an Indian security guard at the Dehli aiport while he’s looking at your passport and singing “JIMMY, JIMMY”. Huh? He said it was a famous song over here, but I wasn’t too sure as he looked me in the eyes. Scary.
Boarded the plane this morning--we gringos were late. Evidently they had moved the flight time up on us since we booked in December and they were waiting for us. The pilot in a not so sublte way apologized to everyone else on board for the late comers. I believe he said “ We don’t know what delayed them, but they had some excuse.” Thanks!
Spicejet is the equivalent to Southwest. Flight was full and the service was different. We were offered small bottles of water and mints and sugar cookies (Could I have a Diet Dr. Pepper please!)
We met our company man here. He drove us around and to our hotel. Not staying the same place that last year’s manager stayed when they were here visiting the company.
AMD is a different town. Basically the size of LBB but reminds me a lot of GUA. I observed a wedding taking place this morning ( or at least the procession to the wedding-very colorful and tradition rich)
Going to rest a bit before I head out to lunch with company reps.
Later
Paulo

The End From The Beginning

The End From the Beginning
As I write this we are about 6 hours out from New Dehli. It’s about 6 AM in the states and we are presently over the Baltic Sea. Who would have ever thought a little West Texas boy would be flying over the former communist nations of Poland, Czechloslovokia and Russia?
There are on this Boieng 777 neat little monitors at the back of each seat where you can chose between 15 channels of TV/Movies and Radio as well as a neat little feature that shows you exactly where you are on the Map route. One of the best pictures is when they show you the whole earth and show you the Day/Night--where it’s Daytime and where it’s night. You can literally see the beginning of one day and the end of the next. Fascinating.
No one really knows what will happen in a day. Normalcy, jobs, situations, events and the like are all ordained of God. Only He knows what a day will hold and seeing this little map reminds me that he knows the beginning and the end. That comforts me.\

What time is it?
My clock on this computer says that it’s 6 AM Monday morning in the states. By their calculations we should land in Dehli somwehere around 11:45 PM or about lunch time stateside. That would mean that we had been in process of getting here a little less than 21 hours. Yep--it took us until 10 PM to leave the states because of the icing situation in Chicago. It was a long, long wait for them to finally take off.
We ate dinner around 11PM-yum, don’t you know that my stomach was going “What are you doing to me?” I tried not to sleep-but when I hit the mark @ 3AM Texas time--I was toast. I woke just about 3 hours ago--so I think I can go again. Right now it’s supper time in Dehli and I just had my lunch bag--so my clock is really going to be messed up--Breakfast is lunch is suppoer ---something like that.