As an eighth grade girl, I was forced to run track for my junior high school. Yes, forced. If you saw me run, you’d believe it better. No one with my lack of speed and stamina volunteers for such humiliation! You might be thinking, “Well, Tessa, surely they wouldn’t have forced you to run track unless they thought you had potential.” Let me help you out on that one. I only signed up for athletics because I believed the junior high theory that only dorks were in P.E. First mistake. There were only three sports we could participate in for the entire year of 8th grade athletics: volleyball, basketball, and track. Volleyball seemed easy enough, so I signed up for it and had fun playing it. Then came basketball season. I, under the kind offer of the coaches, happily bowed out of basketball. It really would just not have been fair for me to humiliate those other girls with my incredible skills. I mean, they would feel so inferior once they saw me play and it would only hurt the confidence of the whole team. I decided to do the honorable thing and keep my skills a secret. Yeah, right! Second mistake. You see, at the end of basketball season, our coaches informed us – for the first time I might add – that everyone who sat out for basketball season automatically signed themselves up for track. Oh, snap! Third mistake. If I had known that in advance, it would have saved all of us a lot of trouble. I mean, if I had just signed up for basketball season, I could have suited up, warmed the bench, avoided running track, and still have been cool. Remember: P.E. = dork; Athletics = cool.

 

Here’s the best part. I don’t run. I mean it. I don’t run. I tell my brain to do it. I move my legs. I swing my arms. What results just really doesn’t qualify as running. My heart beats out of my chest, my knees feel like a hammer is pounding them to bits, my feet more like … prance … than sprint, and then it happens. I vomit. I know it’s graphic, but it’s true. I vomit. Never have I ever attempted to run without vomiting. On a serious note, I think it has something to do with my heart beat. I got queasy the minute Kevin proposed marriage, too, and it had nothing to do with nerves, but everything to do with running and my fast heart rate. That’s a story for another day. Back to the point, would you want me on your track team? How many times did I hear in the pauses between heaving, “Suck it up, Tessa. Keep running.” Okay, first of all…not a good suggestion – sucking it up. Secondly, did they fail to notice that there was no running taking place?” I guess they did, because not long after I “signed up” to run track, I was assigned to the distance runs. It was clear that speed was not my forte, so for some reason they decided that stamina would be. Just take me out back and shoot me. Really. Obviously, I couldn’t throw the discus. I couldn’t do the long jump. I couldn’t do the high jump. Hurdles were hurdles. What am I missing here? You get the picture? At 5’2” and 85 pounds, I was missing … athleticism. But hey, I was still cool being in athletics and all, you know.

 

Turns out, I was the only junior high girl assigned to the distance runs – the 800 and the mile. I got to run with the high school girls. Add to the humiliation, please. These girls could run. We were sent to run through the woods, on back roads, and back to the track 5 days a week. Fortunately, I didn’t have to compete against them. How’s that for finding the good in every situation? I’m trying, here.

 

Sadly, I did have to compete. Imagine that. Again, in basketball, I could have camped out on the bench. There’s none of that in track. You sign up (even accidentally), you compete. I’ll never forget my first race. There were only six of us girls. I got placed on the inside lane to run the 800. I don’t know what number the lane was, but I do remember liking it because it seemed a little shorter. I’m also not sure what the lane number was because I’ve tried to put that behind me and suppress it the best I can. What I do remember is what I saw in all the other lanes. Big, strong, intimidating girls who all looked to be able to run for real. I take that back. There was one girl that gave me hope over in the last lane. Besides the fact that her lane looked much longer than mine, she was kind of short, kind of round, and very friendly looking. There was hope … until about 30 seconds later when I found myself about a quarter of the way around the track and all the other girls nearly halfway around it. Maybe she wasn’t so friendly after all. I have never suppressed what happened next …

 

… in the next blog post, run, part 2 …

 

tessa

Today we celebrate our 13th wedding anniversary in the very place we met as 15 year olds, had our first date as 18 year olds, and married as 22 year olds … just wanted to share it with you! We are more in love with each other as time passes which only makes us anticipate what’s next. We just cannot believe the way that God created us to complement each other as we do and we just have to say … there is nothing like this!

Yesterday in Albert Reyes’ blog Pan Dulce I commented on his questions: “Does short-term missions make a long-term impact? How is Buckner International doing in this area?”

Here was my answer:

Buckner is doing a good job mobilizing the short-term missionaries and serving as a conduit for ministry in other cultures. I feel that Buckner can evolve its already great mission endeavors into training, preparing, and educating potential participants better for short-term missions. Intentionality is the key with an understanding that those who serve alongside Buckner will be expected to develop what David Livermore writes in his book - Serving with Eyes Wide Open: Doing Short-term Missions with Cultural Intelligence - as “CQ” or Cultural Intelligence (quotient).

I know there needs to be a balance here understanding that the participants are spending/raising many funds to go and giving much time away from family and work. However, there needs to be a higher level of CQ for participants as Buckner tries to assist with the huge explosion of short-term mission trips. I believe the more CQ we have as participants, the more open another culture might be to our serving alongside them and ministering to them. This will then result with possible long-term impact.

I particularly appreciate Buckner taking cues from the Christian/partnering Nationals in those countries where Buckner has teams serving. This is a less colonial and more humble style of missions. It is also more effective. Long-term impact will have a greater chance to take hold.

Livermore gives some practical insight for short-term teams as they try to make a lasting impact:
1. God is a lot bigger than Your Short-term Mission Trip
2. Stop Petting the Poor
3. Be Yourself
4. Seek to Understand
5. On Second Thought - Think Again!
6. Try, Try Again
7. Actions Speak Louder than Words
8. Give Up Trying to See Who’s In and Who’s Out
9. Incorporate Short-term Missions as Part of Your Seamless Missional Journey
10. Love God, Love Others

What other resources would you point to for Cross-Cultural Competency? You may have been on a mission trip before where all these rules of engagement were violated. Having a high CQ is a must for effective short-term and long-term missionaries.

kevin

Over at Buckner Prez there has been a discussion about the term “millennial” these past few weeks.   What is a millennial? What group is described as “the millennials”? Go over and see.

By the way, today’s guest blogger at Buckner Prez is Matt Homeyer, my cousin. Hear his perspective. Dialogue with him.  He and others (Cara, Analiz and Jenny) have been blogging/writing/sharing from a millennial point of view.

Seeing the Church of Christ Jesus rediscover being missional is dear to my heart. I have previously posted about the Church being missional; there is more I will say in the future. It is my belief that the hope I feel in my heart has much to do with what I see millennials saying and doing these days. Maybe I will see in my lifetime the millennials leading the charge in seeing ALL the nations reached with the high hope of the Christ.

expectantly,

kevin

One of the problems that many ministers have to deal with today is the often overbearing power of emotionalism. Emotionalism is not to be confused with emotion. Emotion is a natural part of humankind. We welcome emotions of all sorts. Emotionalism is not to be welcomed. According to the online dictionary, Wiktionary, emotionalism is “the tendency to be over-emotional.”

In church life, emotionalism which is not identified and combated can lead to debilitating problems. Ministers need to recognize this fact. Parishioners need to be on the watch also. There are still worship wars today in churches with the underlying issue or instigator: emotionalism. Worse still, ministers and/or church leaders sometimes harness this great power of emotionalism to manipulate others for a desired, selfish result.

The theological implication can be even more destructive for the Christ follower. Many people confuse their feelings and emotions with God working in their lives. To be sure, God’s Spirit does work through our emotions but we must be careful. Many things affect our emotions: physical health, emotional health, rest (or lack of rest), external influences, and so on. We must be mindful that these emotions can be manipulated at worst and misread at best. What cannot happen is our allowing emotionalism to rule our thoughts and actions.

James Emery White in his book, Embracing the Mysterious God, said about emotion and spirituality, “The reality is that authentic spirituality has more to do with how we respond to emotions than it does with a given emotional state. There will be times we feel high or low, near or far. Those feelings may have very little to do with where we actually are with God. The real state of our souls does not rest on how we feel but on who God is, who we are in relation to God and who we are becoming.”

from my fishbowl,

kevin

An MSNBC article popped up on my computer this week titled “Could you pass the latest citizenship test?” and I just had to check it out. You might enjoy that, too: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25461301/. I know my own adeptness (or lack of) in American history and I take glad comfort in knowing that I’ll never have to pass that test to receive my American citizenship. Being born into my citizenship is a gift that I am grateful for, especially as I consider that I’ll never have to master that exam in order to stay here! Yikes!

 

I got to thinking about that and quickly came to find solace in my greater citizenship. As a believer, a Christ-follower, a child of God by his grace, I will never have to pass a test in order to earn a place and stay in His Kingdom. It’s a good thing! I can’t help but think of the man born blind from birth in the book of John, chapter 9. The Pharisees are taken aback by the whole story that standing before them is quite visibly a man who was truly blind and who now explains that Jesus healed him. They offer him a line of questioning about Jesus that the healed man cannot answer. Once enough dismay and disbelief have transpired, the man says about our Healer, “Look! I can’t tell you all about Jesus – his age, his favorite color, his hobbies, his family history, his favorite food! What I can tell you is that I was completely blind and now I can see!”

 

I’ve felt like that man plenty of times! There’s so much I don’t yet know and am loving to discover as the Lord unfolds Himself to me through scripture. My testimony is much like the healed man’s. I could never pass a Kingdom citizenship test but what I can tell you is that I once was blind and now I see!

 

tessa

As a little girl I occasionally enjoyed cinnamon toast, made just right and especially for me by my grandmother. She was a phenomenal cook and I’ve always wanted to emulate her knack for whipping up kitchen feasts. My goodness, my grandmother’s treats threw parties in my mouth. There were lots of things that she made in her kitchen that held the prize of “favorite” on my palate, but there was something special about her cinnamon toast that I’ve never been able to imitate with my own. All over each slice of bread, delectable shapes of buttery, candy-like, bite size, cinnamon sugar flakes would sparkle that I could carefully pinch off and then place on my tongue. They wouldn’t dissolve instantly, but would instead melt like a thin piece of gourmet toffee. Is your mouth watering right now like mine is? Yum.

 

It’s funny how this childhood memory has landed itself right on my own cookie sheets as I’ve worked so hard to make that same concoction of cinnamon treat for my own children. Since my firstborn was a tee-niny thing, I’ve worked to form those candy bits on her cinnamon toast and it just hasn’t happened. “Maybe I’ll use more butter next time” I say. Or, “Maybe it just needs a big mound of cinnamon sugar instead of that little sprinkle I used.” My daughter’s old enough now to give her advice on the whole thing. We have fun and we laugh at ourselves as we try to figure out just exactly how to make my Grandma’s cinnamon toast.

 

I laugh more when I think of the most obvious solution to all of this experimenting. Wouldn’t this all be a lot easier if I had just gone into the kitchen and watched Grandma make her cinnamon toast? The guessing game would be over. I would know exactly how she whipped up that kind of magic and be enjoying it with my children today. Here’s the thing, though. I wasn’t allowed in the kitchen when she was cooking. My grandmother had a galley kitchen and she just didn’t want us all in her way. She didn’t really need any help and she liked her space. That was just her way. Oh, how I wish now, as a lover of cooking myself, that I could have stood by her side as she created. What an honor that would have been … and what an impressive repertoire of recipes I would have to add to my own favorites! Looking back, I think that maybe with a little sad eyed pleading I could have been granted special access to her kitchen for training. More so, I think that if my grandmother had only realized that I really wanted to imitate her in this way, to be her student, and to join her life through this shared love of ours, she would have been more open to sharing her kitchen and expertise with me.

 

I wonder sometimes if we in our local churches have our own spaces, our own ministries, where we’ve come to feel quite at home. I wonder if there are people watching us stir up incredible dishes with our gifts and talents and they stand in the doorway wishing they could come inside. Like my grandmother, it’s not with malice that we guard our galleys, but with good intentions. We’ve been at this for years, we have our own take on the recipes, and quite frankly we don’t see much room for more feet along the galley floor. I wonder, at times, if we offer our family sweet samples from our kitchens, but have strict rules about who belongs in there. Does that make sense? Just imagine the aroma that could warm the entire home if we would open our kitchen doors to all who want to join us!

 

tessa

I am increasingly coming to understand through observations of our history that when the Church is sanctioned by government entities or by the ruling powers, it begins to lose its prophetic voice. This is also true when denominations and other Christian religious groups gain notoriety and influence on the world scene. In many ways they become less “other than the world” and more “of the world.” In careful reading of the New Testament scriptures we see that the New Testament Church was always on the fringe of society’s expectations. The New Testament Church spoke courageously and prophetically to the world. These believers had different views than the world now that they had a new reality in Christ. They undoubtedly recognized that they were in the world in order to speak to the world about the reality of Jesus Christ. Many Christian scholars today believe that the Church’s prophetic witness began to erode during the Constantinian times when they were granted official status within the Roman Empire and then later were given most favored status within the Roman Empire. At any point corporately, collectively, and/or personally when we think too highly of ourselves, we lessen Jesus within us, therefore diminishing the capacity to be incarnate representatives of Jesus to a lost and dying world.

Church leaders must always seek ways to help the churches where they serve  be “other than” the world so that they can speak prophetically to the world. This is not mean to lob insults at the world but to speak the truth in love unswervingly and courageously. Healthy churches have pastors and lay leaders who understand this. What does this look like?

In his book, The Provocative Church, Graham Tomlin surprisingly uses the legend of Robin Hood as an image for the church. He writes:

“Robin Hood’s band of resistance fighters is surprising, but not a bad image for the Church in the world today. They live under an oppressive regime, but they can laugh merrily because they know that the present system is not the last word. They know that the true king is coming (King Richard in the Robin Hood tale), and that things will one day be different. From time to time, they still remind the false powers (the Sheriff of Nottingham in the Robin Hood tale) that their rule is temporary and bogus, by acts of rebellion that recall the true king. They also whisper around the good news that things don’t have to be like this. The king is coming, in fact he has already landed, and others can begin to live joyfully in the light of this coming kingdom as well.”

Missional churches must seek to be on the edge of society, harkening the world to join us, introducing others to our Lord and King; BUT always speaking in a way that boldly proclaims that this world - with all of its trappings of power, money, etc. - is a dying kingdom and a temporary reality.  The early Church knew that as they lived out what it means to be a Christ-follower, their “living out” would shed light on the deficient and threatening values of the world.  This prophetic, incarnational living caused many to lose health, wealth, family, and sometimes life.  It cost them much.  The early Church had a totally different way of looking at what is important.  They also continually preached, lived, and loved in such a way that says, “Jesus is Lord and His Kingdom is come!”

The Message paraphrases 1 John 2:15-17 like this. “Don’t love the world’s ways. Don’t love the world’s goods. Love of the world squeezes out love for the Father. Practically everything that goes on in the world—wanting your own way, wanting everything for yourself, wanting to appear important—has nothing to do with the Father. It just isolates you from him. The world and all its wanting, wanting, wanting is on the way out—but whoever does what God wants is set for eternity.”

expectantly,

kevin

FOCUS: Here’s where we oftentimes fail in being missional. We get so busy focusing on things that don’t really matter that we crowd out those who do matter. Our attention must be the same as that of Christ’s. If we’re to have the mind of Christ, shouldn’t our focus and attention be the same as His? You see, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit – that is, the triune God – has a totally different economy than we have, especially as the Church in America today. Our God is focused on who is missing, not on who is here. We’re often worried about how many are sitting in our pews, we’re worried about average attendance in Bible Study, and if we’re honest, we’re often worried about whether our numbers beat those of the church down the street.

Instead, we have to be focused on who is missing. It really is that simple. Why do you think Jesus offered the Parables of the LOST Son, the LOST coin, and the LOST sheep? Jesus didn’t give us “The Parable of the Father Left Behind and his Ever Present Son”. He didn’t give us “The Parable of the Coins Still in the House”. He didn’t give us “The Parable of the Sheep that Stayed”. God is always concerned about who is LOST, who hasn’t been found, who hasn’t been reached, who hasn’t been touched, included, brought back.

Again, it’s about focus. Show me a church that’s focused only on the FOUND, and I’ll show you a church that is in decline and has lost it’s effectiveness. Show me a church that is focused on the LOST and I’ll show you a church whose buildings are packed, whose Bible Studies are well attended, and whose budget is astronomical because focus is pointed toward reaching the LOST.

kevin

A note from Tessa:

 

Kevin and I have always agreed that we will only post pieces on this blog of which we have both approved. I’m breaking the rule today. Our ten year old sweetheart wanted so badly to write a post in honor of her dad for Father’s Day and I decided to ask for forgiveness instead of permission in regard to breaking that rule. This post was written solely by Miss Alli Grace and it is presented here to Kevin just as she wrote it, unchanged. She and I are posting it without his permission or knowledge. We ask for forgiveness. (Grin.)

 

I have never posted a blog before so this may sound rusty. My dad is extra - super cool. The day I was born, my dad began to sing the “Baylor Line” to me. When he finished the whole song, the doctor said “Don’t sing that to her. Sing the “Aggie War Hymn”. I began to cry. My dad said, “See, you made her cry.” I surely was taught by the best! 

 

My dad is an awesome sports fan. You could say he’s well rounded. We like to watch sports together sometimes, especially during the football season.

 

My dad and I are just alike when the subject of video games is brought up. The only difference is that when go head to head, I get whooped!

 

My dad is a genius when it comes to the “elegant art” of hunting. When I was little, and we went hunting, my dad would stand up to shoot a quail and when he did,  I was wowed.

 

I am so proud to be the ten year old daughter of Kevin Hall. I love you daddy! Happy Father’s Day!

 

Alli