Lee's Lines

Vacation . . .

Thanks for praying for our week away. It was wonderful . . . a vacation that Mackie will never remember, but one that Brooke and I will never forget. Here's us and the sunset . . .

The power of vision!

Wednesday and Thursday of this week I visited Romania for the first time. The purpose of the trip was to spend time with Gavi Moldovan, director of "United World Mission Romania." Gavi is one of the most gifted and articulate ministry strategists I have ever known (and I don't even speak Romanian). Here's a picture from our meeting including Jay Weaver (our Budapest teammate), me, Gavi and his Romanian assistant, Ioana . . .

What makes Gavi so special? His passion for the saturation church planting vision. Hundreds of new churches have been planted in Romania in the past decade, but Gavi knows that thousands more are needed. And he has a strategy to accomplish the task, by God's grace!

We're blessed to have Gavi's partnership in the Alliance for SCP. Please pray with us for more church planting in Romania (see the specific prayer request mentioned in "Prayer Wish List" to the right).

We have a winner!

The winner of our mind bending missions history quiz is Susan Hart (embarrassing picture of Susan to come to this space soon)! Susan, our intrepid missions history detective, discovered the following . . .

In 732, Charles "The Hammer" Martel defeated Muslim armies that had invaded Europe. The victory came in France near the city of Tours, and was decisive for the turn back of the advance of Islam.

In 1450, Gutenberg invented the printing press. His invention hastened the spread of God's Word, which fueled the Reformation, which eventually ignited the protestant missions movement.

Speaking of the protestant missions movement . . . in 1793 William Carey sailed for India. Carey has been called the Father of Modern Missions, but actually Father of English-Speaking Modern Missions is a better title.

Congrats to Susan, Ayatolla of Christian missions history! (so to speak)

May ministry update

May was a whirlwind month for the Behars! The first week I spent in Pennsylvania giving oversight to the semi-annual meeting of the Alliance board of directors. Thanks to the Lord it was one of the most substantive and engaging board meetings in recent memory.

"I am excited about the insights that God is giving you!" That was the reaction of Albert Ehmann (president of World Team, key Alliance partner) to a presentation I made on the ministry direction of our Budapest team for the coming ministry year (more about that in a minute).

During the second week of May, I was reunited with Brooke and Mckenna in Indiana where we were able to take our first vacation time of the year. We relaxed, recreated and spent time with Brooke's family. Link to Brooke's Blurbs to see a very cute picture of Mackie and Brooke's parents' dog, Brie . . .

The third week I hit the books for a seminary class on the History of Christian Missions at Grace Seminary. The class was formatted well . . . exactly what you might hope for a graduate course . . . not a bunch of dry facts, but healthy discussions about how the history of missions applies to Great Commission efforts today.

So, ready for a quiz? A special prize to the first person who can tell me (through the "comment" function below) what important events in the years 732, 1450 and 1793 impacted the history of the church and Christian missions? Are you up for the challenge?

And during the final week of May, I returned to Budapest for our team's annual Strategic Planning Retreat. During that retreat we prayed and prepared to engage a new strategy for the year . . . a strategy we call acceleration. Here's a graphic that shows what we hope to accomplish . . .

We want to help "accelerate" what God is doing through church planting movements (the "CPM" referred to above) in our region so that those movements can reach whole nations for Christ. We will pray, discover, understand, help, share and mobilize toward those movements. I will give you periodic updates on how the strategy unfolds. Scott Friderich and I will be making the first "acceleration" trip to Ukraine sometime in July.

Don't forget to comment!