Chapter 4

This is part of series that began with Kamikaze: Preface.  For a complete listing of the entire series click here.  All material is the property of the writer and cannot be reproduced without the authors written consent (and all the rest of that “please don’t take my work and make money off of it” stuff).

I learned a lot on the Babylon.  More than I would have expected to learn that’s for sure.  I always knew the importance of discipline on a ship or in any kind of company, but the truth is that I never knew how important.  The men and women aboard the Babylon all wore uniforms for example, something that the K’s had never done.  I had the opportunity to watch a midshipman become an officer while I was onboard and the change in demeanor when he put on the officer’s uniform was…indescribable.  There was just such a change that came over the young man because he knew that the uniform carried a different level of discipline and a different level of responsibility.  And he knew it and embraced it.

Pine Ridge Mission Project: The People’s Story

As I write this it occurs to me that there is plenty of evidence to say something different, or that through a different perspective might lead someone to different conclusions, but this is the story of the Lakota of Pine Ridge as they perceive it to be.  I want to take a moment and emphasize this fact because the truth of the matter is that our perspectives of ourselves, not the reality, is what most often shapes our reality regardless of its compatibility with Truth.

Pine Ridge Mission Project: The Stories

Los Suegros (Bill and Martha)

My initial instinct in writing this piece was to call it the Mission Report. After all that’s what congregations want when their missionaries come back from a trip: a report on what happened, where the money went, how it impacted the community and all that good stuff.  Now I believe that there is nothing wrong with that, but this was not a dollars and cents kind of mission.  Yes we brought school supplies for the kids we’d be working with, yes we provided material goods for the retreat center where we worked for a week.  But none of that was the focus of this trip.  The focus of this trip was children, and it is not the kind of thing that be broken down into a report.  So over this next week, I’m going to tell you a story from our trip starting today with a story about family.

Simple Reminders: Write

A while back I wrote a post on some simple reminders, principles to keep in mind when things get tough.  One of those reminders was “The key to writing is to write.”  This came to me in the form of DC playwright when I asked her what the best advice she had for someone just starting out could do.  (I was interested in playwrighting back then) She said “Write and don’t stop.”  Her second piece of advice was equally stimulating saying “write what you know, but understand that you can know anything.”  But it’s the first one I want to share because it doesn’t just apply to writing but to life.

Another Thought on Vision

I know a man who was taking a course in evangelism.  They were going around the room asking each person to say how many people they wanted to win to Christ.  Now this was a small-ish community church and the class was designed to help ordinary people who may not have had a Billy Graham power anointing for Evangelism so people are saying things like “just 1.  I want to win just 1.” I think the highest number was five until this guy spoke up and he just blurted out “A MILLION!”

Of course everyone laughed a little bit and told him to calm down.  They patted him on the head like a good little boy with big dreams but with no real expectation that he would do anything at all like that.

Today, Doug Addison is training people coast to cast in the United States on Power Evangelism.  He has witnessed and won people to Christ and taught others to do the same and then teach others to do it through his ministry, InLight Connections.  If he doesn’t directly and/or indirectly reach a million people by the time our Lord calls him home I’ll be surprised.

There are two things I’m throwing out there today and both are from Mark 4:30-32.

“What shall we say the Kingdom of God is like?…It is like a mustard seed which is the smallest seed you plant in the ground.  Yet when it is planted it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants with such big branches that the birds of the air can perch in its shade.”

1. Don’t despise the days of small beginnings.
2. Dream big.