Sending Church Gathering

This fall I have the privilege of helping facilitate the Sending Church Gathering at LifePoint Church in Smyrna, TN. The Upstream Collective is partnering with LifePoint Church to help churches think through what it means to be a sending church. Here is a quick blurb from the website about what you can expect from the Sending [...]

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Be a Learner

When it comes to short term missions trips, churches often ask what they can do on the mission field. How can they help? They often ask this assuming the answer will be that they should come to teach, show, model and develop the people they are trying to help. We come in as teachers. We [...]

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The Intentional Traveller

I do a lot of traveling. I mean more than most but not quite as much as George Clooney in the Hollywood film “Up In The Air”. I am constantly in conversations with people who are doing business all over the world. They fly about from country to country.  They work for multi national companies. [...]

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Students Studying Abroad

A few weeks ago I was able to speak to a group of educators about how God uses students to spread the Gospel across the Earth. Although students often have many opportunities to do short terms missions trip or summer long missions trips, we can’t forget that students also have other alternative paths to mission. Consider this: [...]

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Encouragement

I interact with a lot of short term teams that go on mission trips and I also interact with missionary teams that are sometimes in less receptive areas. One thing that I often notice with both short term and long term workers is that discouragement can set in after awhile.  I believe that one way to guard against this [...]

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Learning the Art of Coffee Roasting

Lately I have tried out a few new hobbies. One of them is roasting my own coffee. My wife gave me a coffee roaster for our anniversary along with a tour of a local roaster where I was able to purchase several types of green beans. It was a tremendously fun gift. I did not [...]

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Utilizing Your Marketplace People

Recently I was in a midwestern city at a church. We had a gathering of young adults who were interested in working overseas on purpose. As we were talking a very cool conversation took place. This young man was telling how he and his wife wanted to live abroad through his job and he had [...]

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