God Desires a Bethany in Every City: It’s Open Lines Until Monday

In May of last year, I delivered a message entitled Bethany: The Lord’s Desire for His Church. That message was transcribed and made into a 24-page free eBook. It captures the central thrust of my heart toward the church, mission (the mission of God), and the Christian life. The eBook is in PDF format. If for some reason, [...]

Saying “Yes” to Jesus Christ: Open Comments

Back in the 80s, I heard a song that I immediately fell in love with. Here are the words . . . I’ll say yes Lord yes, to your will and to your way. I’ll say yes Lord yes, I will trust you and obey. When your Spirit speaks to me, with my whole heart I’ll agree And my [...]

Guest Article: Four Tragic Shifts in the Visible Church by Jon Zens

Read this superb article here: http://www.searchingtogether.org/articles/4tragic.htm       

An Answer to Prayer

I love the way God sometimes answers prayers just to delight us. We had lost our camera (or maybe had it stolen) in France. Everywhere we have been since, we were sure we would find somewhere to pick up another...

Central India

We are in Central India with some good friends and have spent much of the day listening to amazing stories of how God is working here. It is different from what He is doing in the US because most of...

France

We are now in France and speaking at meetings in both Paris and Nice. The simple church movement here is in its infancy, but very much alive and well. With everyone we have met, there is a great sense of...

China: It's only taken 58 years to get here!

It has always been one of my goals to get to China. Having been born in Taiwan, there is a special fascination with coming to the mainland. Beijing is pretty much what I expected having watched some of the Olympics. A complete mix of the modern (the airport is up there with Dubai and other amazing airports of the world) and the ancient (slum dwellers within easy walking distance of our hotel at the airport). We are on here for one night, before going on to Mongolia tomorrow. But we will be back here in a week and I am really looking forward to some time in Beijing and in Hong Kong. Tomorrow we will fly over the Great Wall of China which was built to keep the Mongols out. Walls are never much good for that any more than other types of walls can keep people from hearing things that the people inside the walls want to keep out. It reminds me of Christian families that try to put up walls to keep out "the world" like most of the missionary community that I grew up in. All it did was make the kids inside the walls even more curious about what went on outside, however dangerous it might have been. People always want to know about what they are not supposed to have. Let's pull the walls down and go out ourselves to learn from and give ourselves to those that we don't yet know

Around The World in 45 Days -almost!

Yesterday we saw the Queen's home at Windsor. Today, much more importantly, we saw most of Felicity's immediate family. So yes, the first stop has been England. But there are 8 more legs to this trip before we get home on November 1st, and we would be really glad of your prayers for safety and blessing.

Stop one: France for 5 days of meetings in Nice and Paris. The folk here have translated some of Felicity's books into French, and have been using them as the core of a church planting course that they have developed. This is a chance to meet with many who have been through this course, and encourage them in one of the least Christianized countries in Europe.

Next stop India: Here we meet with close friends very involved in powerful and rapidly growing house church movements. They are going to explore with us whether they want to get involved in a rural health project that we have helped to initiate, along with very active involvement of two British colleagues. See www.reachvision.org if you want to learn more about this. We then travel to S. India to meet with the people who are running the pilot project within this REACH vision plan.

Stop three is Mongolia: Have you ever read, "There's A Sheep In My Bathtub" by Brian Hogan. You will love it! The description in this book is of Brian's work in helping to start a church planting movement in Mongolia. We will be sharing with movements like this in Mongolia.

Now we get a break - in Beijing. I have never been to China, even though Chinese was my first language! I wonder if I can remember any from when I was 5 years old? Our friends from Mongolia are coming with us to show us the Great Wall of China, and maybe some other noteworthy areas of Beijing and surrounds. This should be a blast. I wish it was for more than 3 days!

Stop five is in H.K: Do you remember Jackie Pullinger's book, "Chasing The Dragon," which was a major Christian bestseller in the '80's. Well Jackie has asked us to take some time with her to explore the impact of house churches. Since in my youth I grew up in Taiwan, and spent quite a bit of time in HK, this is like a chance to come home for me.

Stop Six: Now we are back in India again, but this time right in the south, to meet with friends who do a lot of church planting work in A.P. There is quite a lot of unrest in India right now, with some very serious persecution for Christians in part of the country. Pray that we have wisdom in how to be an encouragement and help at such a time as this.

Stop seven is back in Europe, with Wolfgang Simson, and a number of other friends, to have a few days to wait on the Lord together, and just take time to see what the Holy Spirit may want to say to any of us, or through any of us.

Then back to the UK to spend a few days with Felicity's Mum, and then finally back home to Austin.

Could you pray with us through these times! Please!!

Multi-tasking, relationships, and simplicity!

I'm getting some help with what is at times an overwhelming amount of email from a wonderful "virtual assistant" in Israel. (See Secretary In Israel for more info!!) As we were sorting out the technology that allows me to have voice mails from both my office and my cell automatically transcribed (I presume by computer, rather than a "real" person, but I don't know for sure) and sent as files to my email, I found myself wondering about technology and efficiency. Twelve years ago when I started my company (see www.thekarisgroup.com) it was me and a laptop which by today's standards wouldn't even have enough memory on its hard drive to run my operating system, let alone any of my software. And I remember thinking that me and my laptop and my fax/copy machine were doing the work that only a few years previously took me and a secretary, and a couple of additional office assistants to handle. It is unbelievable what one can handle now if you are not frightened of the technology. BUT(!!) we can't survive without real relationships.

Conversations today ranged from 45 minutes with a brand new friend from Campus Crusade to Christ, to calls over a complex business situation with a friend in England, to phone conversations with well known Christian leaders in this country, and unknown Christian leaders in other countries. Add to that setting in motion a new relationship for our company with a major insurance company, sorting out the insurance issues with the company who are handling the FedEx truck that went through our fence, trying to track down if my passport and visa are back from the Chinese embassy in Washington DC in time for the trip starting on Friday, and it is easy to say HELP-TO MANY TASKS! Is this what multi-taking is all about.

Not at all. In the middle of two of the conversations people stopped to say, "and how can I pray for you today." Now we bring (actively bring )Jesus into the midst. And where two or three are gathered (even by phone) in His name, then He is in the midst. Now we are not just having a conversation, or even a prayer, but we are experiencing His family, His body, His Church. Now this is SIMPLE CHURCH. This is the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) principle at work.