Journey to Dubai

Why Not You? Why Not Now?

Mobilizing the Church in Missions

"If there be any one point in which the Christian church ought to keep its fervor at a white heat, it is concerning missions. If there be anything about which we cannot tolerate lukewarmness, it is in the matter of sending the gospel to a dying world." -C.H. Spurgeon

Above: my co-worker praying with a student at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Faithfulness.

This fall has been packed with traveling, coffee, speaking in classrooms, and talking with a lot of new people about life and godliness—I can't believe this is my job.  Mobilizing and recruitment with Pioneers has proven difficult but much more rewarding. After speaking to over 1,000 people this fall—as much as an extrovert as I am—I have begun to highly value my alone time and the sabbath. It's far too easy to work out of my own strength without resting in the Lord which results in my focus becoming the visible fruit instead of faithfulness. When walking in faithful obedience to the Lord my joy comes easy and ministry much more rewarding— even when it seems I am ineffective— because I know our God is in control and at work. When my joy is constant and abounding in the Lord, I am able to love and counsel others in the ways of the Lord selflessly. 

Black tie dinner at Passion 4 Christ Summit

  Story Time.

At the beginning of summer, I traveled to Birmingham, Alabama where I originally messaged over 50 individuals/couples in our database, 11 responded, but only 1 meeting happened. It was a married couple, who happened to be age, and they invited me to their home for dinner. I thought to myself, "Dinner, their home, my age", this is going to be a slam dunk. In our mealtime conversation they shared their heart for missions started a few years back at the end of college but life got busy with new careers, new house, and community in Birmingham, so they put missions on the back burner. They wanted to continue their careers but didn't know how that would work with missions. I was able to share that it is possible and how they could just that but they still seemed unsure. After having this tasty home cooked meal—such a relief from eating on the road— I finished with the question of "Why not now?". It's part of a phrase my boss uses in presentations,  

Why not you? Why not now?

 Shortly after I was on my way but with uncertainty if there was any impact at all. It seemed the certain slam dunk had deflected off the rim, especially as time went on and I hadn't heard back from them. Fast forward 3 months, I was in a meeting with my supervisor when he showed me how this very couple started the process of going with Pioneers. There were a few notes from their profile and one note mentioned the meal we shared together had kindled the flame they have to take the gospel to nations,

AMAZING!

  Interactions like this abound with individuals and couples that I meet. This my friends is why I am doing what I am doing right now. This is the fruit of our faithful obedience to Christ in prayer for the laborers to go and in word and deed. Let us not grow weary but trust in His power and promises to accomplish His will.

A Few of My Destinations

Southern Seminary & Boyce College

One of my favorite places to mobilize. An institution with a deep culture of discipling students for cross-cultural frontier missions.

Passion 4 Christ Summit

A conference full of refreshment through teaching and fellowship, accompanied by some good ol' brothers. I had the opportunity to speak on the importance and need for long-term missions.

Campus Outreach, OSU.

This wonderful campus ministry allowed me to share my story of how the Lord led me into missions and the need for missionaries to their staff and students. 

Crescent Project

National Conference

A new co-worker, Sam Welch (far left), and myself with Fouad Masri, director of Crescent Project. This conference is more of an intro to muslim ministry; providing encouragement through testimonies, simple teaching sessions, and workshops. 

University of Georgia

Something special is happening here through different churches and orgs joining together in prayer and deed around this campus. The Lord is bringing children into His fold and sending them out as laborers. A missions fair was hosted on campus this fall, the first time I have experienced this at a secular university.

  Teaching at the Missionary Training School in Atlanta. 

This fall I had the privilege of teaching at the 5 month Missionary Training School of Global Frontier Missions. I helped teach World Religions and Orality: Sharing the Gospel through Story. It was a fantastic opportunity, as many of you know I enjoy teaching. The training here goes beyond the classroom teaching by having students practice what they are learning. The first picture below—taking place at my house—is of the class on the final day acting out the stories they chose from the scriptures. This picture is capturing the scene of a student telling the account of David and Goliath with the help of some fellow students—see if you can figure out the scene! 

Pictured below are a couple of illustrations I used while teaching on Buddhism and different methods of sharing the gospel with Buddhists. This definitely isn't my area of expertise, so studying for this one was a bit of a learning curve. Most of my time teaching during world religions was focused on Islam—a lot more up my alley but I'm still learning. 

Holidays Are For Celebrating Together.

During the week of Thanksgiving this year my roommate and I had a few of our friends over to share a Thanksgiving meal with the classic dishes. You know, for a bunch of bachelors we didn't do too shabby, but as you can see it definitely is missing the womanly touch. One guy who joined us is a new friend/neighbor of ours, Sam, originally from Pakistan. During the meal we found out that in his three years of being here he has never had a Thanksgiving meal. Let that sink in.

THREE YEARS

. This astounds me! I know it's not that common for international immigrants to not be invited into homes or to holiday celebrations but this was the first time it became real for me. This holiday season, I pray as believers we take advantage of this time and would strive to show hospitality to our neighbors. Let us imitate the love of Christ who brings us and clothes us—once His enemies—into His feast at the dinner table. At this very moment in time our family, friends, co-workers, and neighbors have been put around us. We may never be here again in these moments, so let us be thoughtful about how to share the truth of Christ in the love of Christ.

  No reserves. No retreats. No regrets. 

Pray for our friend, Sam. As we continue to share the gospel of Christ with him that he would taste and see that the LORD is good.  

Upcoming.

Over the next two months I will be focused on mobilizing at 3 big conferences with Pioneers. Please be in

prayer

for these different conferences, there are some great opprotunties to see more laborers to be raised up to

GO

out into the harvest and more people recognizing their—just as important—role of being a

SENDER. 

Urbana 

(St. Louis): December 28th-31st;  14,000 studnets.

 

Cross Con

 

(Louisville): January 2nd-5th; 5,000 students.

G3

(Atlanta): January 16th-19th; 4,000+ pastors.

   Thank you for you prayers & support! 

-Todd Born