GlocalNet

This has been a very busy week, but a very good one.  My friend Suhail Khan, a Muslim Indian Republican Bush appointee has been here - wow that’s a mouthful.  Met with a Mongolian leader.  Had an American Hmong emerging pastor hangout with us last week.  A Chinese pastor just arrived.  An American pastor will be here this week with staff wanting to do serious engagement globally - lots of people in and out!  They say the primary gift of the early church was hospitality - I never understood that until the past few years.  You may write sermons, books, and administer in an office - but you don’t change the world there.  As you plant churches and engage cities - you wind up with lots of relationships, with lots of different kinds of people all over the place.  That’s what I like about our ministry at NorthWood.

Yesterday as I preached I interviewed Suhail some.  We talked about how we differed in our view of Jesus and Mohammed but how we can talk about that and be really good friends.  There’s much we can agree on.  I was preaching on evangelism - what a Sunday for him to visit!  I asked him how Christians should talk to Muslims about God.  People loved it.  We are brainstorming putting together a special service right now with Muslims, Jews, and us.  I love the fact that at NorthWood we can have conversations that you can’t a lot of places. 

Yesterday we had one group in Vietnam, another group of nearly 50 teenagers head to Hanoi to work at the orphanage, another group will be heading to Mexico this week - and some are doing daily things in the inner-city in DFW - it’s out of control, there’s so much that no one person can control it or direct it all - I love that.  We were also signing up people yesterday to take exchange students from Vietnam. 

Worship was good yesterday - it’s always different - never the same - and the power moments are always distributed over different things. 

I’m glad I’m at a glocal, globally conscious, church planting, city engaging, kingdom focused, disciple making church.  Are we perfect?  No way! We have a ways to go and are always working on stuff, but we continue to keep moving forward and learning and implementing.  I know of lots of kinds of churches, just not many like NorthWood where we can have conversations and do the kinds of things we all get to do here.  It shouldn’t be so novel.