Friday, October 28, 2016

Road Trip!

For the past few years, Darlene and I have been dreaming and thinking about some road trips.  We are starting that adventure today!
We sat down at a water side cafe on Lake Tahoe, just a few days before the forth of July and started a mondo list of Young Life club kids that we wanted to go and see.  We dreamed about having an old truck or 4x4 to pull a vintage camper.  That way we could just pull up and plug in, physically, relationally, emotionally and spiritually.  We felt like this would be a fun and impactfull way to see the country and old friends.

Today we are leaving for Garden City, KS.  We ministered there from the late eighties into the mid nineties.  We really loved our time and friendships in Garden, we also felt like it was possibly the most fruitful times of ministry in our lives to date.

Let me just jump in here and insert what I mean by fruitful.  I am not just talking about sheer number, I think this is a misnomer about ministry and fruitfulness.  I know there were several times in Garden, when the numbers were high, but our impact was low or minimal.  We had mistakenly focused on the wrong things, this led to a seasonal downturn in impact.  Fruitfulness should be measured by the fruit, first by the quality of the fruit. i.e. love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness.  Let me say, that none of the above mentioned from Galatians 2, have anything to do with numbers, also you have to get up close and personal to see if these fruits are evident in a person's life or ministry.  Second, I believe a fruitful ministry has on-going reproduction potential.  You may not see the increase right away, all seeds have different gestation periods.  But, the widespread potential must be there, otherwise you have sterile fruit.  Much like the plastic fruit that your grandma had on her kitchen table.  Looks good from afar, but has no aroma or reproductive ability at all.

Our time in Garden, did produce good, reproductive fruit, for which we are really grateful.  I really don't think we had much to do with it, other than for the most part we tried to pay attention to the "fruit" in our own lives.  Thanks be to God who issues grace sufficiently for our feeble attempts to abide in Him.

I will keep you posted as to how our travels and visits unfold over the next few days.

Blessings,
Joe

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