Wyoming is a really incredible state. Random, crazy things to see everywhere you go. Also lots of antelope. Lots.

The most amazing thing I saw in Wyoming was a place called Hell’s Half Acre. It’s an escarpment.

Nebraska and Missouri are both less spectacular but more inviting.

At Missionary Training and Renewal, I met several different people who had some connection to the school I will be teaching at in Belgium, Continental Theological Seminary, so I got several different perspectives on it. One woman on the Europe leadership team had worked there for years some time ago and told me a lot of the practical things I wanted to know, like what the physical structure of the school is like (it is in an old chateau which was constructed out of the horse stables belonging to an ancient castle…). I had a lot of questions answered that people are always asking and I have no idea about since I have never been there. (Alas, I have no pictures that I have permission to use. But you can go here and see pictures for yourself.)

With Paul and Angela Trementozzi (on left) and Joseph Dimitrov (on right).

On the very last day, at the commissioning service, I got to meet two presidents of CTS. The last president, Roland Dudley, is now teaching at Trinity Bible College, my own alma mater, and I got to be introduced to him in passing there. The current president, Dr. Joseph Dimitrov, was also there. Dr. Dimitrov is Bulgarian and is the first non-American president of CTS. I’ve talked to him on Skype once, but I actually met him properly, and he prayed for me during the prayer service at the end.

But my first meeting was with Terry Hoggard, CTS’s Director of Development, and it answered my most important question: What on earth do you want me for? I have caught myself wondering, What have I got that someone else can’t provide for you? Am I really going to do something indispensable? Am I worth people supporting me when they could be supporting orphans in Africa?

Without knowing any of that, Terry told me about CTS’s goals for the future, and those goals are something I can contribute meaningfully to. The European model of theological education is totally academic and intellectual. Now, I adore the academic and intellectual, as anyone who knows me knows. But, he said, they need to learn how to integrate the intellectual with the spiritual. European students don’t expect their spiritual life to be enlivened by their theological education. The CTS leadership is making a concerted effort to move in the direction of community and spiritual life. Forty students were filled with the Spirit there last year! That’s nearly half the student body.

Davidson Hall at Trinity Bible College, my first dorm, now being refurbished for an academic building. Picture by Alyse Erbele.

Ever since I was at Trinity Bible College (I graduated in 2003), I have longed to help students make that connection. When you go to Bible college, you’re often warned to take extra great careful care for your spiritual life, because being in theological classes all the time can kill it. (Never mind that if you don’t take extra great careful care for your spiritual life, anything will kill it.) But I found the exact opposite to be the case. My spiritual life was enlivened and expanded by being at Bible college and in theology and missiology and Greek classes. When I learned something about, say, God’s purposes behind the sacrificial structure established in the Pentateuch in an Old Testament class, or about how Francis of Assisi became a Christian in a Christian history class, or about particular strategies for reaching a particular people group in a missions class, or about the significance behind Paul’s use of a participle in a particular passage in a Greek class…my mind expanded and with it my heart and my excitement about what God does and my enjoyment of who He is. Oh, I loved it.

That’s the teacher I want to be, not just one who says, “This is what a participle is,” but one who shows why the participle is important to the structure of Paul’s sentence and the overall goal of what he is trying to teach about God and the church. Or not just one who teaches the dates that Francis of Assisi lived and the structures he established in the Catholic Church, but one who can show how his life was transformed, how God used him to transform aspects of the Church of his era, how similar that is to what God did through John Wesley, how similar that is to what God wants to and can do in the Church in Europe…

CTS needs me. Isn’t that crazy? I need CTS, because I don’t have much teaching experience, and being there will give it to me. But they need me, too, because I have a perspective they are deeply wanting, and the very thing I have wanted to contribute to any school I am in is the very thing they want from me. Why, yes, I am actually worth people supporting. Because I’m called by God, for one thing, and because I’m going to go do something rather special He’s laid out for me.

He has told you, O man, what is good;
    and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
    and to walk humbly with your God?
                                                                    Micah 6:8

Probably my favorite part of my three weeks in Springfield was all the time spent with the other Europe people. We had three days of classes/sessions together during Training and two days during Renewal as well as a couple of picnics and other such get-togethers. I got to meet people I will know in the future, not necessarily people I will be directly working with in Belgium, but other new missionaries who will be in Spain and Greece and Wales, and I’ll get to see them at future Europe gatherings. I made some good friends.

Belinda and Rhonda, new European missionary friends

The Family
The European leadership is making a concerted effort to create a family-like atmosphere of support for all the missionaries. Gone are the days of someone striking out by himself and living alone in a little hut somewhere, to live or die entirely on his own work. New missionaries are given mentors and help in acclimating to their new culture, and there are yearly get-togethers in areas. We don’t have to struggle through our problems alone and are not shamed for facing problems. I love this emphasis on the family of missionaries in Europe.

Europe Leadership

Paul and Angela Trementozzi

The world is divided up into regions, each with its own director. Europe is a region (but does not include Eastern Europe, which is part of Eurasia), and its directors are Paul and Angela Trementozzi, who are two of the dearest people I have ever met. Then each region is divided up into areas. Belgium is in the Northwest Europe area. I guess I can’t get away from the Northwest, which is fine with me. My area directors are Tim and Marketa Southerland, whom I didn’t meet until my last week there. There are other people in other areas of leadership while also doing their own ministries in Europe, like a missionary who is working in Romania and is in charge of the outreach to the marginalized of Europe. We got to hear from all of them, learn from them, talk to them, pray with and be prayed for by them, watch soccer/football with them. (I tell you, those Europe missionaries are crazy about their soccer/football.)

I found it splendid to learn about the overall missions strategies for Europe. I tend to like to see the big picture before getting into details, and they provided us the big picture, the DNA of missions in Europe that unifies all the individual ministries that all the individual missionaries are doing. No matter what you’re doing in Europe, it’s hard to not somehow be involved in one (if not all) of these three things: reaching the secularized, touching the marginalized, and revitalizing the European church.

We were all given this coin with the DNA and goals of Europe missions on it.

Revitalizing the Church
How will my particular little task, teaching theology in a Bible college, fit into these goals? Well, I will probably be indirectly involved in all of them through my students and the ministries that they go on to do. But the biggest one for me is church revitalization. I will be teaching some of Europe’s future church leaders, helping to create a culture of passionately spiritual theology in their lives. The European church as a whole is so dead and dry, but Continental Theological Seminary is turning out Spirit-filled leaders who won’t let it stay that way. It has always been a deep interest of mine to help people within the church become spiritually, psychologically, and interpersonally whole and strong, to help bring them to theological and emotional maturity. Those people will then go out and plant strong, mature, living churches. Those churches will reach Europe’s marginalized and secularized. I get to play a part in all of them.

I knew my own fundraising was not going well before I came, that I ought to have several thousand dollars in monthly commitments, and I didn’t even have even a thousand a month committed, and I knew I was not going to enjoy my meeting with my itineration specialist (though he is a kind and friendly person). The meeting turned into a meeting with AGWM’s head of mobilization/itineration and an analysis of everything I am doing and what more or different I needed to do. He actually invited me out for dinner with his wife so they could give me some tips and help. Which was good and lovely of them but oh so humiliating and served to deepen my discouragement about my progress and abilities. Until then I had actually been enjoying itineration while still recognizing my lack of financial support.

Later on in the first week there was also a session in which a number of new missionaries who were doing really well in fundraising were interviewed about how they did it. In my currently discouraged mind, I heard a lot of people who had all kinds of advantages I did not have (a spouse, to give support or fill up their lack, or a big district with lots of churches in a small radius to go to, or skills in marketing), and no wonder I was not doing well in my own progress.

But gradually, over the course of the three weeks, as my emotions went up and down and I had lovely times with God and He sent people to encourage me in certain ways…gradually I was thoroughly encouraged, even though my financial situation did not change, nor did my marketing skills change nor the difficult size of my district. I gained some tips and strategies for things to do, but more importantly I had a turnaround in my thoughts about myself, my calling, God’s plan for and thoughts about me. I still don’t know in any way how I am going to raise my budget, but I know how to face discouragement and try to combine trust in God’s plan with my own hard work.

Forsyth, Montana, Assembly of God church

I learned to see value in discouragement. For one thing, discouragement shows you that you’re paying more attention to circumstances and your own inabilities than God’s plan and abilities. I tend to find it harder to believe that God will do something than that He can. But if I hold on to trust that He has a good plan whatever the circumstances look like and whatever I think He should do, it puts things into perspective.

For another thing, my discouragement, coming from feeling alone and small and unable, made me realize what a lot of the churches I will be speaking to are going through. Montana churches tend to be small and poor and isolated, and it must be so easy to feel discouraged about where they are and what’s going on. If I can use my own experience with feeling that way to encourage the churches I will be speaking at, then it was worth it.

A completely random picture of a building and a bit of urban art on Historic Commercial Street in Springfield, MO

Since arriving back at home, I spent five days with my sister and her children visiting from Washington and two with about half of my voluminous family in Butte for the 4th of July, and now I am off again journeying to North Dakota with two services along the way. Last Monday I had a day off, perhaps I may have another next Friday, and I’ve been enjoying it all. Tired, but enjoying it.

Missionary Training and Renewal (MT/MR is the ungainly shortened form) were quite extraordinary. Sort of a combination of Bible Camp and Bible College, with missionaries. Every year all the newly appointed missionaries spend two weeks in June at Training, with chapel services, classes, meetings with the leadership of their region of the world (AG missions leadership, that is), meetings with fundraising people, and (this year) lots of World Cup soccer/football watching.

And then all the veteran missionaries currently on furlough in the US come for Renewal for a week. More chapels, more classes, more meetings, and more World Cup. It was perfectly amazing and marvelous to get together with other new missionaries who will be serving in Europe, to meet more of the leadership of European missions and find out their goals and plans for the whole region, and then to meet people who have already been working there for years and to be welcomed into the family by them. I felt so highly valued as a new, youngish, inexperienced person with all kinds of ideas and dreams and no actual idea what it will really be like.

My next few blog posts will be about a few particular elements of MT/MR.