Category: General

Even though it is frustrating, this was also a funny thing that happened as I have been developing the Come Follow Me sites. Yesterday, I developed an advertisement for Facebook based on Jesus’s teaching in Matthew 5:43-48 to love your enemies. Facebook rejected the ads on the grounds of their dating policy. HA!

When I saw the rejection initially, I laughed because I thought that it was just the algorithm messing up. But then I appealed the ruling, presumably to have a human look at the ad, and it was still rejected! Well, on to the next one, I guess…

Just for posterity, here are the videos and the landing page for those ads:

English – https://comefollowme.it/post/3542

Italiano – https://vienieseguimi.it/post/1588

Français – https://viensetsuismoi.it/post/310

I appreciated the stories and background from these pastors talking about how their churches started down the path of working toward a NoPlaceLeft vision. Here is a quick Table of Contents for the video:

• Sugar Creek Baptist Church, Don Waybright – 00:25
• Ross Ramsey – 7:44
• Brian King – 16:35
• JT Timblin – 23:30
• What’s a barrier you faced in implementing NoPlaceLeft disciple-making / church planting? – 31:15
• What would you encourage someone to do who wants to implement what they have learned with regard to NPL or help their church catch the vision? 36:45
• Can you share a story from the harvest, something you have seen God do? 39:45
• If you had to do it again, what would you do differently? 45:20
• As pastors in established churches, what encouragement or challenge would you give to someone else in your shoes? 48:45
• Common objection: Can we trust individuals who you are releasing to not become heretical? 52:50

Found this time-lapse visualization today over at La Repubblica, showing the spread of the coronavirus over time in Italy. It is terrible how the virus has ravaged Italy, but we are thankful that there has been less of an effect here in Sicily.

I’ve been enjoying various podcasts recently. Here are a few that I would recommend based on some of my recent listening:

How Do I Know if the Holy Spirit is Within Me? – Desiring God

Stronger in the Fire with Chris and Rebekah – Antioch Resiliency

• Part 1
• Part 2

Radical Effects of the Resurrection – Desiring God

The Opioid Tragedy, Part 1 – Freakonomics

Soup is Soup – The Daily

Changing Your Church Culture – The CDM Podcast

Such a strange time to be living to see a place with such life brought low so that everything is now completely empty.

This week, living under quarantine in Italy, we had a meeting with our leader’s team over Skype. We read the book of Philemon where the Apostle Paul sends a letter to Philemon, asking him to welcome back Onesimus as a brother in Christ.

It is a great story of Paul’s attempt to reconcile these two men, although the reason that we read the story was to highlight for the men that are leading the discipleship work here that Paul did this while he was in prison.

In 1 Corinthians 11:1, Paul told them to imitate him as he imitated Christ, so I asked the guys to think about what we can learn from Paul and how we can imitate him. Paul was doing this work from prison, and while we are not exactly in prison, we are quarantined in our homes here in Italy.

Here were six things that the team pulled out of the passage that we can learn from Paul:

1. We can be of use to others in any situation.
2. We should strive for unity, standing up for unity amongst our brothers in Christ.
3. We should be bold, as Paul was boldly stepping into this situation between Philemon and Onesimus, yet do all of these things in love.
4. We see that Paul was evangelizing and seeing people come to Christ, even while in prison.
5. He is bringing people together, discipling them, and encouraging them, even while he himself is in prison.
6. Paul knows that he has spiritual authority, and suggests it, but he is gentle in his approach, knowing that he is entering a very difficult and challenging situation.

At the end of the meeting, we each made a commitment to take action from one of these points…something that we can do this week in view of following Paul’s example. How can we continue to make disciples, even while under quarantine?

For whatever reason, I frequently wake up at 3 or 4 in the morning. Not wanting to actually get up, but instead continue to rest and sleep, I will put a headphone in one of my ears, listen for a minute to whatever podcast is next in line on Spotify, and head back to sleep. Often, it will play through several podcasts and I find that I frequently will wake up to John Piper preaching because I have subscribed to some of the podcasts that his Desiring God website puts out.

This morning, I woke up to the start of a talk that Piper gave, I believe in 2009, at Angola prison in Louisiana to many of the inmates there. Given that I have a little extra margin time due to being quarantined at home here in Sicily, I thought that I would both watch the video in whole and share it here as the message is beautiful.

Piper says Jesus teaches that we should not look to him for what he can give us, in this case the bread, but instead for the preciousness of who he is. I hope you enjoy and will eat of Christ as Jesus calls us to do.

I can’t say that I’m very interested in free diving, but I accidentally came across this video while looking for something else yesterday. I found it mesmerizing to watch this diver hold his breath and move through this amazing underwater world. Worth a few minutes to watch. Beautiful job, National Geographic!

Our church in Colorado recently sent out a newsletter that included a link to a conference called the Multiply Vineyard Summit. I particularly enjoyed two of the sessions that I saw given by Ralph Moore. His message was directly aligned with the work that we’re doing here in Italy.

Ralph starts with some recounting of his work over the last several decades, and then subsequently goes into the “how” of the work, speaking of disciples making disciples. Hope you enjoy!

From 12 People to 2300 Churches

Disciples Making Disciples: The Key to Multiplication