Back in January, on stage with my friend Steven Hovater, we were sharing about our life and work in Arequipa with the Central church family when Steven mentioned the act of newsletter reading as a spiritual discipline. I think I've been thinking about it that way for a long time, without using those words. Definitely, as we write, my hope is that the things I share will come to you as prayer requests. Sometimes we explicitly ask for you to be praying, other times I know some of those reading will naturally pray for the people and stories and events that their eyes pass over on the screen. And so we practice newsletter writing as a spiritual discipline. It’s draining, sometimes, and always takes way longer that I think it will (I still haven’t properly accounted for the time it takes 9 years in 😂). As I reflect on this simple, tedious, not “new” act of sharing life and mission via newsletter, I can’t help but think how inspiring it is that God’s Spirit is at work in every place, and that we are tapping into that work and the diverse collaboration by praying together, for each other, across the world.
In the last couple of weeks, I got the chance to read a few newsletters, and as I read, I prayed for the amazing things going on, for the tough conversations, for the obstacles being faced.
The Bills family in Ghana, in a wonderfully alliteratively titled newsletter, shared their amazing work. I share just a paragraph here:
“July 25 marked FOUR YEARS IN GHANA! As we move into our 5th year, we are mindful that our initial commitment was for five years. We want to alert you that we will be sending out another newsletter no later than mid October that gives some details of our intentions for Team Bills beyond the five year mark. We ask for your prayers as we seek the Lord’s face.”
It’s amazing to me to see what God has been doing at HCC and the Bills’ participation in that for four years. That Central and Cedar Lane, our two supporting churches, combined to support them is icing—spiritual icing?—on the cake.
The Central Church supported the Meyer family for years. They were missionaries in Angola and now are campus ministry missionaries in Boston, and somehow, we have never gotten to meet them. But this summer, I had the opportunity to meet Efesson at Ganderbrook Christian Camp, and even though it was a quick 15-minute conversation, worlds collided as I saw so many interconnected relationships and themes emerge from a quick hello. They said, recently:
“Three students spent the summer with our family as part of their 12-week internship in cross-cultural ministry. They took a “crash course” in missionary anthropology with Robert and spent four weeks visiting various ministry efforts in Uganda. Then they returned to Boston to apply what they learned with different, local nonprofits who serve resettled refugees, people experiencing homelessness, and immigrant communities.”
So cool.
Now, for years, I’ve been hoping for something like a newsletter but coming from spaces where we’re being supported, to underscore how interconnected we all are and how true it is to understand God’s mission as happening in every place. And now, I think I have it, in two places I wasn’t expecting.
One is in the work and writing of my friend Greg McKinzie on his website Scripture and Mission. The McKinzie family is one of the main reasons that we ended up in Arequipa, and we got to see them for the first time in many years this past January. If you’ve been on this email list for more than a decade, you probably know Greg and have read a few hundred thousand words of his. I was thrilled to read about what he’s up to with the church the McKinzies are a part of, and as usual, blessed by the way he framed his thinking about mission:
“I am convinced, nonetheless, that part of the answer definitely lies in the practice of hospitality. This practice is complex, but let me focus on its essence. By hospitality, I mean making space for others. As God has opened the divine life for the sake of communion with humanity (John 17:20–23), the church community that opens its life for the sake of communion with its neighbors takes a step in the direction of participation in God’s mission. But opening congregational life means, concretely, making space—actual space—for that fellowship. Doing so in contextually meaningful ways is full of challenges. Moreover, making space specifically for neighbors who live on the margins of society, as Jesus so often encourages us to do, entails special difficulties.”
I’ve learned a lot from Greg and Megan about hospitality, and blessed by their work from afar.
Finally, just yesterday, I got a text message (SMS baby!) and email simultaneously, from my aforementioned friend Steven, in an all-out newsletter prayer and action symphony. In “Mission, Mortgage, and the Heart of the City” (the Bills have you one up on alliteration, my friend) I got to read about one of my supporting churches’ moves toward being more intentional of joining God in the mission in and around where the church meets. And it was so encouraging:
“About twenty years after moving downtown, Central has made progress on the mission that brought us here. By developing a network of relationships and learning to serve our neighbors downtown, we’ve become witnesses to the love of Jesus in this place. We want to lean into that mission even more—creating a position on our staff for a minister who will lead our work in the 72202 ministry.”
So, here I am, with a 1,000-word offering, going meta on newsletters (thanks for you being part of the spiritual connective pipeline, MailChimp), because I’m just so thankful to see and read about what’s happening out there, and encouraged to be all the more engaged in mission right here.