LIFE: According to Jon

"No se trata de nosotros... Se trata de Jesus"           To every congregation, group or gathering...in every church...all over the world, I believe that this phrase is the key to life for every follower of Jesus! We truly begin living when our lives cease to be about our own needs, desires, and principles and begin to flow instead out of a fervent desire to please and glorify God in pursuit of His Son, Jesus Christ. But saying this phrase and putting it into practice are two very different things...even for pastors...           When we arrived in El Salvador, I was already burnt out but nevertheless excited to be joining our team on the ground and introducing two of my closest Bible study buddies to what has become for me a place very dear to my own heart. For the third time in two years, we landed in San Salvador and were greeted by Pastor Chuck and Carol preparing to board the plane where I had just spent the last seve...

          This is our "Love Board." I wish it were my idea but honestly, I saw it at some friends' apartment and couldn't help but make one for our fridge.           It started with an occasional note from me; a silly or sweet response from my bride. Then our 3-year old daughter got involved and wanted to express her adoration of mommy. When I was sick with the flu, our kids wrote some endearing messages to boost my spirits (before I was forcibly removed to the quarantine zone, of course). But one morning, I woke up and sat down at the kitchen table only to be captivated by this message in the picture that had been left by our "adopted" son.           Honestly, he's never known anyone as his father and his own personal mistakes began to lead him down a terrible road that created a rift in his life and family. Today, that young man is making real strides to follow Jesus, work hard, and right old wrongs. We ar...

"For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This mystery is profound, but I am talking about Christ and the church. To sum up, each one of you is to love his wife as himself, and the wife is to respect her husband." Ephesians 5:31-33 The single most important relationship that I have is with my King, my Master, my Savior - His name is Jesus Christ. Everything else rises and falls with the intimacy I share with the Lord. But immediately following that relationship is my marriage to Brittany. The three of us together create a cord that is not easily broken when our hearts are in sync but when sin and miscommunication enter the picture, it can be devastating. Just take a look around you at the shattered remains left behind by divorce and you can tell that marriage is simultaneously beautiful, hilarious, frustrating, messy, joyous and perhaps the most difficult blessing we will ever have. And it...

“Then he said to his disciples, "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few;  therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest." Matthew 9:37-38 On each of our trips into El Salvador, we are blessed to see so much of this beautiful country. We fly into the airport and are quickly escorted into a bustling city with many of the comforts of America (although certainly not all of them, of course). Each day we travel from mountaintop villages, to schools in the midst of gangland territories and even police headquarters. In November, we took flatbed pickup trucks into the jungles via a dry riverbed to conduct clinics for a town that rarely sees outsiders and is effectively cut off from the rest of the world during the rainy season. And this year, we finally got the chance to see the coast of our Central American home.  Again, we left at just six o’clock in the morning, drove two hours to the southern coastline ...

Wednesday, July 9th, 2014 I don't know how it happened. One day I'm preaching full-on, laughing and serving in Montrial, filling up on Chinese food for dinner and the next day I'm sick in bed, stuck in the hotel and severely dehydrated. As a team, we are aware of the cardinal rules: don't drink the water...wear sunscreen...don't share water...be flexible...don't brush your teeth in the water...don't go anywhere alone...and, oh yeah, DON'T DRINK THE WATER. But then you also have to be wary of local cuisine preparation techniques and consumable vegetation. Nevertheless, sometimes, despite our best efforts, we come into contact with certain "cooties" that our system just isn't prepared to defend against. So there I was, physically drained (in more ways than one, I assure you) and bummed that my team had to go on to Nueva Grenada ("New Fruit") without me. I was frustrated. I was exhausted. I was concerned that my absence wo...

Over the last several days in El Salvador, we have had the opportunity to impact the lives of approximately 1,700 people. Yesterday in the village of Apopa, we were able to treat and serve more than 500 people. That includes hundreds of prescriptions filled, dozens of haircuts, countless teeth cleaned (and pulled - ouch!). After two back-to-back days of relentless crowds and difficult work, our team returned to San Salvador exhausted but thrilled with so many seeds planted...in fact, an estimated 40 people responded to the Gospel yesterday and made the decision to accept God's free gift of forgiveness through Jesus Christ. We celebrate those numbers but our team leader, Jon White aptly reminded us that there are 7 billion people on planet earth. We know that billions are not believers and many have never even heard the Gospel. One team in one small, central American country is not enough. We need more people to live missionally every day - to go where Jesus' name has neve...

Normally, Mondays seem to come at the expense of an all-too-sudden end to the weekend. If you're anything like me, a rock'n worship song alarm barely begins to ramp up before you throw your phone behind the dresser (hence the hardshell, shock-proof case). Too much light is streaming through the blinds even at this early hour and there are just so many things that have to get done. Or maybe like Brittany, the alarm clock is a lively two-year old with an insatiable appetite who really needs to stay in bed a little longer but grumpily greets the day anyway. I toss the pillow off the side, drop to my knees by the edge of the bed, and thank God for the day and a night's rest, for my family, church, and friends. I pray for vision and God-sized goals and dreams then trudge through another Monday. But what if we treated that first day of the work-week like a fresh and new opportunity to do intentional missions? What if we sought Jesus and His Father's will for our vocatio...