Larry visits Mars Hill

Yesterday we went into Athens to see the sites. We made it to Mar's Hill. I will tell you about a really cool ministry connect we made there in my next post.

The book of Acts comes alive here as you walk around the marketplace, the temple sites, Mar's Hill.

I am standing next to his speech as recorded in Acts 17. I giving you the English version in case you cannot zoom in and read it in Greek.

²²Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: "Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. ²³For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.

I must say when you come to Athens you must try the "Frappe". I doubt the Apostle Paul was able to experience this aspect of Athenian life but the"iced coffee drink" is something to remember.

More Soon.

In Athens

We arrived last night in Athens. We flew in from Zurich to Madrid and then on to Athens. We had a long layover in Madrid so we took the metro into the city to get a cafe con leche (coffee) and some lunch. It felt good to be back in Madrid even if it were only for a few hours this time.

We flew out of Madrid and arrived late in Athens.
We are going to spend the next couple of days being tourists in Athens. We are grateful for staying at the home of some people who are doing "Business as Mission" with Greater Europe Mission.

More soon.

Partnerships

I think we see the importance of “partnership” with the apostle Paul to the church at Philippi. No blog post on partnerships would be complete without these verses:

3I thank my God every time I remember you. 4In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy 5because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, 6being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

7It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart; for whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God's grace with me. 8God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus. Phil 1:3 – 8


Some quick bullet points on these verses that always impress me.

• Paul is thankful to the Lord for that church.
• Paul is thankful because they have continually “partnered” with him in the good times and bad.
• Paul knows that their partnership is also growing them as a church and God’s grace is being shared.
• Paul has a deep affection for this church.

Some questions that jump out at me?

Was the church at Phillipi his “sending” church? What is the difference between a “sending” church and a “partnering” church?

In what ways did they partner with him?

In what ways did he partner with them?

Did they have a formal written agreement?

Did they pray for him?

Did they give of their resources to him?

Did they send out people from their church to help him?

How could they know his prayer request without “twitter” or “facebook” in those days? Grin.


More soon.
lmc

Partnerships

I am going to finally start my partnership series. I know you just cannot wait. Smile.

I feel that "partnership" needs a definition. It is a well used term. It may not be used as much as "missional" but I do hear "I want to partner with you" quite a lot.

What does “partnership” mean?

Is it like saying – “hello, how are you doing?”

When someone asks me that question do they really want to hear how I am doing? Do they really want me to stop and tell them if it is anything more than – “I am fine”.

That is the trouble with overused terms or phrases. They can lose their meaning.

So a quick google search on the word “partnership” and here is what I found.

A Partnership -

* the members of a business venture created by contract

* a cooperative relationship between people or groups who agree to share responsibility for achieving some specific goal; "effective language learning is a partnership between school, teacher and student"; "the action teams worked in partnership with the government"

* a contract between two or more persons who agree to pool talent and money and share profits or losses
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

In missions how do we use the word “partnership”?
What do we really mean?

What does this mean coming from missionaries or mission organizations?

What do churches and organizations who want to partner with the field mean when they say “we want to partner” with you?

I would love to hear your thoughts.