GlocalNet

When I was a kid, I wanted to help put the light bulbs in the sockets for the Christmas tree. My dad wouldn’t let me--afraid I’d kill myself. “What’s the big deal,” I thought. If the light bulb would light up just by getting screwed in the socket, would my finger light up? I waited till no one was around and performed the experiment. Oh, I lit up all right! I still haven’t forgotten what it felt like to get that jolt of current. I couldn’t see it, but electricity was present and active.
Monday, I got another jolt. I connected a group of churches in Tucson with Mark Harris pulling it together--with a very unique and isolated nation, someone from that nation, and with my nation building buddy, Ross Paterson. We all felt the current. All I did was plug everyone together--that’s it. Now, they’re all rockin’ and rollin’ and having a blast getting ready to do some serious damage in a very hard place.
Yesterday, I had lunch with a friend who has worked globally. He wants to plug in to us. Do we share the same values? Are we on the same page? If we do and he plugs in, we’ll go faster. If he doesn’t, and he plugs in, we’ll get a short in the line.
Today, I had lunch with a church planter named Mitch Jolly. He’s doing an awesome job in Rome, Georgia. His church has doubled in the last year and he’s also working in a wild and wooly place. He told me he heard me speak four years ago, and, for him, connecting the local and global had always been in him, just no way to merge the two--he just wanted to thank me. He didn’t need to, just seeing his church grow, do community work, work overseas, and now mentoring nine emerging church planters out of his church was enough.
This week, I’m working on my second book--lots of facts necessary for this one. Lots of stories are in it, as well. If I write it right and it plugs in as it should, current will flow and power will move things. I ought to be writing that instead of this!
God, help me connect where, who, what, when, and how You want. Sometimes, that’s all You want from us--just to connect the dots, the pieces, and/or the people. Father, help me know when not to connect—that, too, is just as critical.