Compelled by Love...

I'm not sure if there's a statute of limitations on topical posting, but:

Our Evangelism Training on Saturday (2/4) was awesome!
"10 days ago, Sam?? That's the length of your whole Mexico Trip..."
Yes, yes, I'm sorry. It won't be a trend, lo prometo.

Our team worked through the condensed bridge diagram; a short and simple, but muy effective method of presenting the gospel. (Ask me sometime if you've never seen it; I'd love to share the gospel with you too). We practiced sharing the gospel and our testimonies with one another - it was so beautiful to be in a room where all of the conversations people were having were telling stories about God's power and love.

The primary thing I feel convicted in with regards to preaching the gospel is this:

"The love of Christ compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all..."

If you haven't read 2 Corinthians 5 lately, take a minute and read it. I'll wait. Well, sort of; I won't have to wait since I'll already have written this, but you get me.
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Isn't that crazy stuff? Anyway: to be motivated by Christ's love for a person, rather than my plan for my church's growth or my plan for their salvation or my plan for my evangelism time...what a beautiful and freeing thing this is. God is wooing hearts to himself; we're just telling people who it is that's doing the wooing. Evangelism is being God's wing-man; God is the impressive one and we're just pointing Him out (it's ok, you can quote me, that's why i put it in bold😁). "Hey, see my friend there? He's an amazing guy and He thinks you're worth dying for." God loves people more than we ever could, more than we ever could understand.

My prayer for you *i stopped typing to pray it* is that you would open your heart to God's Spirit showing you a deeper level of his love...for you, for others.

Please pray for our trip. My team is going to the Tec campus, where the choking weeds of comfort and worry grow. Pray for God to let some seed get through and some real growth happen.

much love to you.

Culture, Culture and Culture

or: "That's all I have to say about Oxford Commas."
or: "Rockin on the 1's and 2's."

Saturday we had our Cultural Training time for the Mexico team. I didn't sleep on Friday night (because, you know, life), so it was a bit of a blur for me, but it was a really pleasant blur.

We started by spending 1 hour of our scheduled 2 hour training doing a get-to-know-you exercise. It was essentially speed dating, where every person asked and answered the following two questions with every other person:
1. What makes you feel the most dead inside?
2. What makes you feel the most alive inside?

A bit weird, but it stirred some great conversation and let us get to know each other in a cool way (please keep praying for team unity for us!). It may seem like a lot of time to spend just conversating with each other; but what better way to get exposed to Mexican culture? We were investing in relationship, not task. If you are a gringo who wants to be more Mexican and you are reading this, here's the best two things to learn:
1. Relax; it will all work out.
2. People are more important than the thing you think you should be doing.
If you're Mexican, especially if you're a regio and reading this, let me know if that's inaccurate! I have a lot to learn still, but that's what I've got so far.

There's nothing wrong with being more task-oriented or more relationship-oriented, just know how you are slanted. I think God is both. I still remember when i learned that our task was relationship and our relationship expressed itself in tasks. Read Ephesians 2:8-10. Or read John 13 and 14, where Jesus says if we love him we'll obey his command...and that his command is to love.

Anyway, I'm excited to see what our team culture turns out to be like (every year is so different) and how we respond to regio culture and how it changes us and impacts our homegroup cultures when we come back.

Also, because i know you are all dying to know:
1. I feel most dead inside when my brokenness breaks other people.
2. I feel most alive inside when I get to help other people in a meaningful way. Also when i'm driving on a wide-open road.

Pray for love.
Pray for power.
Pray for vision.
All from God.

Support-raising

Joyful generosity on the part of the church brings God great glory, y'all.

Support-raising has always intimidated me a bit; i'm prideful and independent by nature. I don't like to ask for help or rely on other people. God always uses raising money for these trips to humble me (thanks God) and put me into a position to receive love from other people.

I felt it on my heart this year to try to rely entirely on other people to pay for my trip. If i wanted to contribute, to contribute to my team-mates in their support-raising, but to trust in God to provide for my trip through his people. It's telling that i kept this goal to myself; it shows i didn't really trust God to come through in this area.

I've been overwhelmed by the generosity of the people i sent letters to (and some that i didn't!). Thank you so much to everyone who has been giving. It has been humbling and i feel deeply loved and cared-for.

I'm getting pretty close to our goal and have a few more people who have said they want to give. It's still a faith question, but the generosity that i've seen so far has already moved my heart to worship God and his provision through his people.

:)

#squadup

See how a used a hashtag and a pop culture reference in my title? It's because I'm hip to the lit jive the kids are spitting, yo.

ALSO WE HAVE OUR TEAM(S) FINALIZED AND I AM SO REQUETE STOKED.

All caps is so obnoxious. But I am excited! Stephen and Hillary and Sheryl and I spent time praying and we came up with the following two teams (awesome names courtesy of Stephen):

Team Gringo

Stephen Campbell
Hillary Sykes
Claudia Flores
Zuri Sanchez
Aylin Ortiz
Maria Ortiz
Myra Rangel
Savannah Davalos
Steven Gonzales
Maegan Whitt
Matt Martin
Miranda Grey
Zachary Smith
Alex Cates
Isaiah Cruz
Emily Goldston

Team Extranjero
Sam Baker
Sheryl S
Evan Grant
Matthew Zawadzki
Travis Wheeler
Riley Knippa
Elizabeth Bustamante
Scott Fuller
Grace Muenich
Kelsie Kirk
Camden Ogier
Monica Nava

The next few months will be training and team bonding. We'll have Cultural, Evangelism and Spiritual Warfare training times. By the time we go, my hope is for the team to have a feel similar to a homegroup, where we know and trust each other deeply.

Extranjero means a foreigner; an alien or stranger. Think 1 Peter 2:11. If you've read much of my Monterrey blog before, you'll know that I think life and short-term mission trips are really, really similar. We'll be going somewhere that isn't our home, for a short time, with a distinct purpose: to see people come to know Christ.

Please be praying for us; I'll post after our training times.

Letter Go

We had our Support Letter Sending Party this morning. We all met up at the church office to finalize, stamp, address and send our letters.

I used to be uncomfortable with the support-raising process; it felt like asking other people to pay for something I wanted to do. Over time, I grew to be ok with it, viewing it as a "necessary evil," since I couldn't afford the trips without the help, but still never really liked that it had to happen. This is the first year I've actually been excited about the process. The church working together as a body to reach the lost is a beautiful thing! Our team may have the time and opportunity to Go, but we're only the hand, as it were, we can't reach without the arm.

If you're supporting a missionary or ministry somewhere, you are a vital part of the work God is doing. Be praying for your missionary (especially if it's me!), God knows they need it. Prayer is the best thing you can give to anyone. It's the most powerful ministry tool we have. Stop reading this and pray...I'll wait. Go pray for your family and your hurting and lost friends, pray for the people who aren't your friends, pray for your church, pray for our trip to Mexico...there's so much need for prayer, it's not hard to see the need to "pray without ceasing." (1 Thes. 5:16)

Our team looks pretty fantastic this year, there are so many of us that our team leader, Stephen, and the Missions Team at Fellowship decided to send us as two teams to allow greater flexibility, effectiveness and safety. Stephen asked me to lead the second half, which I am super excited (and un poco nervioso) about. We're deciding how to set up the teams right now and will have  it finalized next week. Please pray for wisdom and sensitivity to the Spirit's leading for us!

This is gonna be so good, y'all.

Orale! Training Number Uno

I'ma be honest with you folks...actually, disregard that intro, I shouldn't have to preface honesty.

Let's operate on the assumption that I'm always being honest with you folks (or at least trying).

Well, mijos, I'm going back to Monterrey this Spring and I. Am. Stoked. I tried to play it cool last year and pretend like I was fine with not going. But it was rough. The people I love, going to the city I love, to do the ministry I love (and eat the tacos de trompo I love)...without me. It were rough. As always, we're operating under the assumption that God knew exactly what he was doing and my not-going fulfilled the triplicate purpose of all God's plans (it is for his Glory, for my Best and for others' Blessing), but I still don't see it. We worked through it though and all's well.

AND I'M GOING BACK! (I slept about an hour and a half last night, so...sorry if I sound deranged any, I really can't tell how I come across at this exact moment).

We had our support-raising training today and, for the first time ever, I actually caught a little vision for why support-raising is good...which is exciting. In Matthew, Jesus says where your treasure is, your heart will be also. Note that it's the heart that follows the treasure, not the other way around. The act of Sacrificial Giving can actually soften your heart to things God cares about. How clever of him to redeem something that can become an idol so easily by using it to guide our hearts back to him...when we're obedient. So, follow me here: since the heart follows the treasure, asking people to support something financially is giving them an opportunity to take small steps to see their heart changed in a profound way and allowing them to partner in God's work and stack some treasure in Heaven... pretty crazy stuff.

In case you're a real person and you actually end up reading this (I operate on the assumption that is rare); consider giving to something you want to see your heart soften towards.Where is your heart calloused? Towards the poor? missions? refugees? addicts? the lgbt community? Who do you struggle to love? Maybe donate to a ministry geared towards that type of person and see what God does.

 grace and peace y'all

2015: Perfect in Weakness (what God taught me this year)

Over the last quarter-century, I have acquired a mastery of maintaining a perpetual dichotomy of knowledge and belief; in my mind knowing a Truth while my heart clings to leftover fragments of a Lie. God – in his mercy – is very gently persistent in cleaning these lies out of my heart while the truth trickles down and brings healing. Sometimes God moves a little more forcefully to help emphasize a point and bring me to a deeper level of believing his truth. This year’s short-term mission trip to Monterrey, Mexico was a definite time of growth for me in the area of relying on God’s strength rather than my own; a time of relishing my weakness because it brings him greater glory than my strength ever would. Leadership, language and evangelism are all areas that I have come to view as areas of natural or spiritual gifting in my life; yet in all of them I found myself without the resources I had come to rely upon. In this sudden place of “lack,” I came to find – yet again – that Christ is sufficient and that to solely rely on him in weakness leads to greater fruit trying to operate from a place of self-sufficiency and “strength.”

Leadership and I have had a long and erratic history, but I’ve come to understand that it is something God is using me in. After years of lifegroup and homegroup leadership, I have even come to view myself as a leader. In 2013 and 2014, I had the privilege of leading our short-term trips to Mexico (with tremendous amounts of the administrative work done by Pastor Rodger). This year, however, we began to implement a more universal system of organization for our trips in order to make them more uniform and create a higher standard of excellence. The amount of time and focus required to make the Mexico trip what it needed to be was more than I had to spare (O! bitter admission for my pride). I was not the only one who saw the need though, and it was suggested that Justin lead the team this year. This suggestion was perfect for a host of reasons ranging from logistical benefits for this trip to future vision for the UTSA church plant. Justin’s leadership style – though precisely what was needed for the trip – is very different from mine and learning to work with and under it in the preparation process was extremely good for me. I have a tremendous amount of respect for Justin; his leadership is a large part of what allowed for a larger team and beautifully successful trip. It was difficult to admit to myself that my leadership style and experience were not sufficient, however. God used this to begin to prepare my heart for the trip; forcing me to depend on him for security rather than on my control over a situation or group.

Languages fascinate me and Spanish has been in my life since early elementary. I discovered that language acquisition came more naturally to me than it did to my peers in high school and then chose it as my minor at A&M. I studied Spanish in school, spent a summer learning by immersion in Monterrey and continued studying after graduation by working through the Rosetta Stone program. Yet for all of my learning, I had a pretty difficult time getting by in Monterrey during the trip. The things I wanted to say refused to come out of my mouth and the things that others would say to me refused to get through to my brain. This was particularly difficult during our time at UANL – the campus where English was not taught – as I was my group’s “translator.” Fortunately, we met someone who had moved to Monterrey from San Antonio and we were able to converse in English. However, my understanding of Spanish and being seen as “the gringo who (mostly) understands Spanish” had become quite the source of pride for me it turns out. And the difficulty I had with it just served to put me on yet another level of depending on God instead of my ability to communicate.

Initially (and naturally) terrifying for me, evangelism was always something I felt convicted about, but avoided in my early Christian life. Through Fellowship’s Outreach Class, however, I discovered the beauty and joy of sharing the gospel. I came to love it and view it as the central purpose of my being alive. And, after taking the class and being a trainer and doing a solid month of non-stop outreach in Mexico in 2011, I became pretty comfortable with it. Sharing my faith became natural and easy. This year’s trip to Mexico bore more immediate fruit than all of the past trips I have been on combined. We saw 15 people give their lives to Christ during our trip. It seemed like every time I looked up, I saw people praying together or sharing the gospel. It was so beautiful. And I was struggling with evangelism. Every time I tried to share the gospel, the story and the words and what metaphors to use and what questions to ask got so jumbled in my head that I ended up just stumbling through the basics of it every time. I had a student in the church ask me to share the gospel with his friend, then about halfway through he took over and preached the good news beautifully and his friend accepted Christ. It was so amazing to see this student realizing that he was equipped to share with his friend and lead him to Christ, but it still stung a little that he learned it at the expense of my pride. But through this God taught me to depend on the power of gospel itself and not my ability to present it.

So, the recurring theme in my life for this STM was the beauty of humble dependence on Christ. Though it was a discomfiting lesson for my ego to re-learn, there is nothing more joyous than total reliance on God. We are made to operate from that place of broken dependence because we are made to be close to God and to bring him glory. If my own strength is sufficient, my tendency (sad as it is) is to rely on that, to walk “on my own” and not to lean on God’s everlasting arms. As much as I do not like the thought of my weaknesses, they are a blessing he has given to me to keep me in intimate fellowship with him and to let his glory shine through me. True joy can only be found when we are functioning the way we are designed to function – in the context of relying on Christ. So I will join Paul in boasting in my weakness, and doing so gladly for they avail me more and more beautifully then my strength ever has or ever could.