What are your highlights this year?

こんにちは! We’ve been thinking lately about the incredible importance of:

• Unity
• Simplicity
• Authenticity

Leadership and friendships raise regular questions in all three of these fields.

We've been praying about:

• Our three outreach-oriented Christmas Services on December 19th
• Our family group’s growth towards Jesus and community
• God’s vision for 2022
• How to present Jesus via things like our Paz English Club

Visitors are coming every week.

Your added prayers are always appreciated. (And always needed.) 🙏🏻 We expect combined attendance tomorrow for our Christmas services to be over 250 attendees. Many of these guests are visitors and friends open to hearing about Jesus for the first time.

Book highlights to ponder as we enter a new year:

(By the way, if you’re not using Kindle's book highlight feature to reflect on the insights you’ve read, you’re missing out on the best reason to stop reading physical books. https://read.amazon.com/notebook)

Many of our churches have become cluttered. So cluttered that people have a difficult time encountering the simple and powerful message of Christ. So cluttered that many people are busy doing church instead of being the church.
​Simple Church: Returning to God’s Process for Making Disciples
-Thom S. Rainer and Eric Geiger

If you could get all the people in an organization rowing in the same direction, you could dominate any industry, in any market, against any competition, at any time.
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable
-Patrick M. Lencioni

The world pursues personal happiness as an end in itself on which every other decision we make should be based. Jesus teaches that happiness is a by-product rather than an end goal, and is a cheap imitation of the joy that emanates from a person who has discovered what it means to serve rather than be served.
No Neutral Ground: Finding Jesus in a Cape Town Ghetto
-Pete Portal

I needed to find Christian workers who loved the people they were working with more than the activity through which they were trying to reach them.
Chasing the Dragon
-Jackie Pullinger, Andrew Quicke

We do not weary of eating and sleeping every day, for hunger and sleepiness recur. Without that we should weary of them. So, without the hunger for spiritual things, we weary of them. Hunger after righteousness, the eighth beatitude.
Pascal's Pensées
-Blaise Pascal

The light of the love of Jesus shines brightly and always will.
I pray you enjoy Christmas this year, simply.