Here are two stories that I posted on the blog for New Orleans with AIM and thought I would post these over here as well.  Enjoy the stories of how God is at work…

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Earlier this week, I had a conversation with Pastor Sherman Shelton. Pastor Sherman is the pastor of Firehouse Family Ministries and one of our valued ministry partners.  He told me a story about a guy named Mark in his church.  Hurricane Katrina destroyed his mother-in-law’s house.  Their initial plan was to cut and run, but he and his wife felt like God was telling him to sell their house, quit his job and move near her and work full time to rebuild his mother-in-law’s house.  Quickly, Mark became overwhelmed with the scope of the job.  It was too much.  Yet, as he prayed, he kept feeling like God was telling him, “August.  The house will be done in August.”  He couldn’t understand.  Was God going to give him superhuman strength to work all day and night?  At a meeting Pastor Sherman held, he asked if anyone needed help and Mark replied that he could use some help moving drywall upstairs.  “Is that it?” asked Pastor Sherman.  That was the week before the first week of trips here.  Nearly every day since there has been a team of AIM participants at Mark’s house insulating, putting up drywall and now starting to finish as well.  The first time I saw Mark’s house, it was basically just a shell, but almost almost all the walls upstairs are complete!  God did not give Mark superhuman strength.  Instead, he gave Mark a team of people to show up and help every day. And Mark is overwhelmed.  In AIM, we speak a lot to our participants about listening for God’s voice.  In Mark’s case, our participants faithfulness have taught Mark how to listen to the voice of God.

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What’s so cool to me is the unique blend that a missions experience like this offers in that in the first story, it was the AIM people whose ministry was so life-changing to Mark.  In this second story, it is the the AIM participant whose life is being transformed.  Each week, we are running community dinners around the city.  At one of those dinners last night, I spoke with a girl from Virginia and asked her this question, “When you go home, what story are going to tell people?”  She told me about how amazing it has been for her to be so intentional about prayer, especially simply walking around the community praying for people.  I asked her if she was going to take it home and she was so excited.  She’d never considered “prayer walking” before, but now she sees that she could prayer walk in her own hometown just like she did this week.  I’m not sure how much more we could long for than for one of our participants to leave with a passion to pray for her own neighborhood.

We’ve been in NOLA for three weeks.  After a week of training, we just finished our 2nd of 9 weeks of missions teams coming into the city.  But yesterday was far and away the most difficult day that I’ve had since arriving here.  At 6am, I received a call from one of our team members because the night before a tray of chicken was left in the oven with the oven still on.  The whole place was filled with smoke.  Thankfully, everyone was safe and they were able to move to the smoke out quickly.  After Kim and I raced over there to address that, I received a phone call from one of our ministry partners that all but eliminated his church as a location for us to run Vacation Bible School (canceling it after just 3 days).  Then, and this is the kicker, one of the ministry teams was out painting a house and needed a long ladder to get the higher parts of the wall.  All of our ladders were 6-8 feet, not nearly long enough.  So I borrow a 12′ ladder, bungy it into the back of the pickup, and start heading toward the house where they were painting.  Then, in the middle of I10, I look in the rearview mirror to see the ladder stand straight up, then fly out of the back of the truck.  Kim and I lose sight of it for a minute before we see it bouncing on the highway.  Thankfully, once again, no one got hurt.  But this day had gone phenomenally awry.

A little while later, I was once again driving down the highway when I called one of my team members, Melissa, with a question.  I began by asking her how her day was and she says, “Steve, it’s been awesome.  I can’t wait to tell you what’s going on.”  I replied, “Tell me now, I really need a good story.”  So here is the story she told me…

Last night (Wednesday) at the community cookout, several students met and spoke with a homeless man named Richard.  One student in particular spent about 2 hours just talking with Richard.  The next morning, that ministry team had an “ATL” (that is, “Ask the Lord”) ministry block where they pray and ask God what He would have them do.  As they prayed, that one student couldn’t shake the picture of Richard and felt compelled to find him again.  The team was behind him, so they start walking around looking for him.  They can’t find him, but Melissa knows that one of our ministry partners has a lunch ministry for the homeless.  So the team proceeds to walk (3 or so miles) to that church.  When they enter, they describe Richard (they didn’t know his name at the time) to one of the women from the church and she says, “Oh, he’s almost always here.  You’ll definitely see him shortly.”  Sure enough, Richard shows up and that student who saw Richard in his prayers lit up.  They spent quite a while speaking once again.  After talking for some time, Richard went up to Melissa and confessed that he did not have a relationship with Jesus and, right there, he prayed to accept Christ.

Wow, what a story.  It was the hardest day since we’ve been here by a long shot.  Yet God is so faithful.  My eyes started to tear up as I was reminded that, for all the trials and struggles of that day, God was at work.

Please pray for Richard in his new relationship with Christ and for me that I would be able to see God at work when everything around me seems to be falling apart

Congratulations to Sean & Sarah (Henry) Linville who are now the proud parents of their first child, Trinity!  Sarah gave birth Saturday afternoon to Trinity who is 6 lbs. 10 oz. and 20 inches long.  Sarah is doing great and hopefully we’ll have pictures soon:)

It’s official!  After a lot of interviews and a whole lot of prayer, Steve accepted a job in Delaware yesterday.  He will be serving as the minister of outreach and sports at Glasgow Reformed Presbyterian Church in Bear, Delaware starting September 1st.  We are very excited to finally have some definition in our future and a place to go after we leave New Orleans in August.  Our next prayer request is a job for me and a place for us to live.

In other news, today our first youth groups arrived in New Orleans.  There is a whole lot to keep us busy (as if we weren’t busy enough before!)  I had fun cooking dinner for 120 people today (took me back to my days in the kitchen at Innabah!)  Things are going well and we have a really fun team to work with.  Thanks so much for keeping us in your prayers…we really appreciate it!

Last week I wrote, concerning community, “People are always looking, always searching, in the hopes of finding a place where they are welcomed, accepted and liked. People long to belong.” I wrote that as I was on a plane flying from Orlando to Philly. On the way back, I flipped through this the US Aiways Magazine when I came across an article entitled, Welcome to the Social.

Now, I’ve already written that people are living more and more of their lives online and that, in particular, the internet is becoming the place where they search for community. But, in that article, the stakes got raised raised again. Consider this quote…

If you don’t belong to some kind of social network, you soon may not belong anywhere.

Now, that is a pretty serious claim, but to the extent that it is true, is already a serious challenge to the church on two fronts. First, it means that we that the church, the community of God, whose very call and purpose is to invite those around us (and around the world), into fellowship with Christ and his people, is failing. Once upon a time, the church was the center of community in the church. It was the gathering place for the town social life. Not anymore. The challenge for the church is to recapture our God-given responsibility and status as a place of true community. The second challenge for the church, in light of online social networks replacing “traditional” real life socials, means that the church needs to find a way to foster community online.
I know I’ve mentioned it before, but this article raised the stakes again for me. It is our mandate as the church to engage people, meaningfully, in relationships. How can we use the internet to do so?