The Sending Project

A few years ago, the Lord began to tug on my heart about the need for the churches of the Kansas City area to work together in their global missions efforts. Eventually, it developed into something burning strong enough in my heart, that I knew I needed to take that step of faith and not resist that tug any longer.

So, at the end of this year, I will transition away from my role as Missions Director with Heartland Community Church, to focus full-time on this dream of hundreds of churches in our city joining forces to help eliminate physical and spiritual poverty in the world. Exciting? Absolutely. Frightening? Extremely.

The name of this ministry is The Sending Project, and it's key themes are: 1) unity in The Church, 2) God's heart for the poor, and 3) God's heart for the nations.

Jesus prayed for His followers in this way: "May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me..." The Sending Project connects with that prayer of Jesus. It's focus is on unity among churches, not just for the sake of unity...but that the world will know about Jesus and his great love for them.

Your prayers are appreciated as we deliberately and prayerfully move forward with the purpose of uniting The Church to eliminate global poverty. For more information, you can go to The Sending Project website by clicking here.

Life Transition

After more than 2 years of being separated from my wife, our divorce was recently finalized. Although no 3rd person was involved, it was still a very difficult and painful season. And while I've been on an intense emotional journey over the past couple of years, I don't expect that the finalization of the divorce will bring a sudden halt to those feelings. While I continue to try to learn from the past...and seek healing...I do realize that life goes on...and while I have a great sense of failure, I also have a realization of God's love and grace.

I'm so thankful for several friends who have walked closely with me during these recent times. Can't imagine going through a season like this without close friends, coaches, and mentors. I'm extremely thankful for my two wonderful kids and my parents, whom I love very much. So...I have a lot to be thankful for. And while I continue to work through the emotional journey of this season...I will not let any emotion nudge out the space that "gratitude" holds in my heart. Thank you, Lord, for all of the blessings you've put in my life, including the gift of salvation. And above all, Lord, thank you for the friendship that I have with you.

2020 Vision in a Great Small Group

My small group includes Jack, Anita, Beth, Gary, Barb, Brandon, and me. I have to say, this is an awesome group! We really enjoy hanging out together...we're able to share differing points of view on various issues, and walk away just as tight of a group as we were before. That's so valuable. Right now, we're studying through a book together called, 2020 Vision: Amazing Stories of What God is Doing Around the World, by Bill and Amy Stearns. You should read it...but beware, it will rock your world. It opens your eyes to God's heart for His glory among the "nations," or people groups. Our group has decided that when we are finished with this book, we will study Richard Stearns' book, The Hole in Our Gospel (which I've mentioned in an earlier post on this blog). But, we've decided that as we launch into that next book, we're going to begin doing something as a group to serve, to put into action the types of things we're studying. Thanks, Beth, for nudging us that direction. I don't know exactly what God has in store, but I'm expecting some very impacting stuff to take place among our group! My prayer this morning is a prayer of thanks for these friends, and also a prayer that every follower of Jesus will have such a group to share life with.

Sent from Ken Westphal

A Matter of Perspective

Yes, I know, it's true, our economy has been through (and is still going through) some rough times. Investments have been hit hard, people are losing jobs, and we still have gas prices at well over $2.00 per gallon. But let me ask you to consider this. About 40% of the world's population live on less than $2 a day. A child dies every 5 seconds from hunger-related causes. And as many as 5 million die every year from water-related illnesses. It's all relative. If you make 18,000 dollars a year or more, you are in the top 12% richest people in the world! So, when we start to think our economy is so bad, it's probably time for us to step back and be thankful for what we've got...and consider how we can help some of the neediest people around the world who are dealing with questions like, "Will I die of thirst, or will I die of the sickness I will get from drinking the only water I have access to?"

How Vemma Helped Me

About 3 and a half years ago, I began having weird nerve pains in the lower part of the right side of my face. At first, I thought these pains were related to a recent root canal. Eventually, I was diagnosed with a condition called, "trigeminal neuralgia." These are sharp pains that feel like electrical shock, believed to be the result of something (probably a blood vessel) causing pressure on a nerve at the base of the brain.

As my face pain progressively got more intense, sometimes I would have to walk away from conversations or stop eating meals. When an episode would start, it would immediately send me in to an intense time of prayer..."Lord, please make it stop!"

During my research on it, I read about how it has been called the worst pain known to humans, and how it has been called the suicide disease. (Not really very encouraging.) It kept getting worse and worse until finally I called the neurologist and they prescribed some anti-convulsant medication for me.

Great! It was almost immediately helpful and brought relief. Well, after nearly a year, I began to develop a tolerance to the medication. I was taking the maximum amount recommended, and I was going through the days drowzy and my speech was sluggish...and it wasn't effectively keeping the pain in check! I met with the neurologist and learned of three surgical treatment options...none of which I wanted to do. One involved getting my skull cut open, and the other two would likely need to be repeated in the not-too-distant future.

About this time, some friends of mine, who knew about my trigeminal neuralgia, said I should try this Vemma drink. I was hesitant at first because I didn't understand how a liquid nutritional drink would help make the pain go away. Then my friend explained to me that what Vemma might do is help my body be more healthy and able to receive the medication better...allowing me to take less of it.

So...I gave it a try, and within a week I was able to cut back to 1/3 of the amount of the medication, and the pain was gone. Over the last year and a half, the amounts of medication I've needed to take have fluctuated, but it's almost always lower than it was before I started drinking Vemma...and most of the time it's significantly lower. The combination of Vemma and the prescribed anti-convulsant medication has been the answer thus far!

Really...considering the level and frequency of pain I was experiencing, and the drawbacks of the surgical treatments (not to mention the costs), I look at Vemma as a miracle drink for me. Of course, there's all the other health benefits of receiving the great vitamins, minerals, and more, that Vemma puts into my body each day. After drinking Vemma for about a year, I finally decided to become a partner with the company and distribute it, too.

There are usually three types of people that might be interested in Vemma: those who are health conscious, those who are looking for a great business opportunity, and those who have some type of health problem. Unfortunately, I was in the latter group. But I'm so glad Vemma was available, and I'm really thankful I had a friend who introduced me to it.

For more info on Vemma, go to: www.theworldofvemma.com

Or you can e-mail me at: rochester.eric@gmail.com

We Must Do Something

Hollow Ground

My son, Cody, playing drums for his band, Hollow Ground. He's really pretty good. And he seems like he's having so much fun. It's cool when a young kid seems to find a niche and really excel at it. Go Cody!

Cruiseship or Battleship?

I don't know who said it, but it goes like this...where is there more community, on a cruiseship or on a battleship? On a battleship, because there is an enemy that everyone needs to unite against. Makes sense to me. On a cruiseship everyone is more focused on their own comfort. On a battleship, there is a great sense of sacrifice in order to defeat the enemy. The analogy is this: first of all, the Western church, most of the time, does not act like it is in a war. But I believe now is the time for us to wake up to this reality. Our enemy is out to destroy us! Not just to destroy us, but to keep us from being a part of the effort to advance God's kingdom here on earth.

I say it's time for churches within our great cities in the United States to unite and get connected with what God is doing and wants to do to spread his love and message to areas of the world that do not have a discipleship movement among them. Would it make a difference if churches within our cities worked together on this? I say...absolutely. Imagine 100 churches from a city in the U.S. joining together to mobilize tens of thousands of people to go to the ends of the earth and serve the King of Kings. Various resources could be pooled together and shared in ways that would great accelerate the progress. The synergy and community that would result from this effort would also be exponential. Imagine the church of Kansas City joining together to reach an entire nation with the life-changing and society-transforming gospel of Jesus!

Pray about this with me, will you? I believe it can and will happen!

Pain

I hesitate to write about pain, because I don't want it to come across with a pity party sort of tone. With that said, I do believe that I have experienced more pain in the past 4 years than the rest of my life combined. (and I'm no Spring chicken!) I think it was about 4 or 5 years ago that I began to have what is called "trigeminal neuralgia." It is a severe pain in the face. The specific location of my face pain was/is in the lower right side of my face. This is not "take a tylenol" for it type of pain. It is nerve pain. It is the most terrible physical pain I have ever felt. Some people describe it as feeling like fire...I think it feels more like electrical shock. Usually lasting for 60-90 seconds (seems like 10 times as long). Debilitating, walk-away-from-conversation, stop-eating-your-meal, type of pain. Medication and a liquid nutrition product have combined to keep it in check over the last couple of years! I'm incredibly thankful for that...it's truly miraculous. That is the short story (and the story continues).

I have been separated from my wife for about two years. No 3rd person involved, but it's still a difficult and painful season. The most emotionally painful season of my entire life. We've decided to not go into the details with people (other than with the close circle of counselor/mentor friends that both my wife and I have...and for whom we are extremely thankful). My wife and I still have a mutual respect for each other. But...we are separated. That is painful.

So...I have experienced both physical and emotional pain to a deep degree in recent times. I do believe that these times of crisis have helped me learned much about myself, and that is helpful. I know that God is still God, and that He still loves me. I think I'm experiencing His love in a more profound way, in the midst of this pain.

Several years ago...I would become aware of some difficult times that another person was going through, and I would think, "Wow, I've never really had a really bad trial or season of crisis in my life. What would that be like if I had to deal with pain and suffering? Well...now I know. It has not been fun at all. Gut-wrenching, soul-searching, and heart-exhausting. But I have peace and comfort in knowing God, and that He is in the business of bringing wholeness to broken people like me.

Pain. It's terrible...and yet it is a great learning opportunity.

Unconditional Love

Unconditional love...I'm realizing that this is the theme that God has been hammering away on me recently. I've read a few books, and parts of a few more books, and it seems that almost all of them have had this theme in some way. I'm telling the Lord that I'm listening...

For sure, he has unconditional love for us. But is my love for Him unconditional? I would like to think so. But, really, it's far from it. It seems like my love for Him is very conditional...if I feel like it, if I have time, if I think I need Him, if other priorities don't get in the way...it's sad...but at least I'm identifying it, and I'm addressing the issue. It's a start.

Three books, that I will write more about in future posts, have helped bring this issue to my attention: The Road, The Life of Pi, and A Thousand Splendid Suns. All three are great...and very different from the others...yet all three carry this theme of unconditional love. An individual who loves himself/herself, and demonstrates unconditional love for others. Get these books, and read them. And let me know if you agree or not.

Confused? Helyes!

Sometimes words in one language don't translate well into another language. A classic example of this was when the GM car, the Nova, didn't market so well in Latin America. Probable reason? No va, in Spanish, basically means...No go. Hmmm.

I experienced a humorous case of this language confusion recently when I was in Hungary. I was at a gas station, paying for permission to drive on the motorway (like paying a toll, I think, but all at once, in advance). The worker showed me a little machine with the information on it. At the bottom of the screen it said, "helyes?" All the information looked correct, so indeed, I thought, as I gave the go ahead for processing..."hell yes!" I asked my Hungarian friends about this later...and sure enough..."helyes" (pronounced something like "hayesh") means "correct." Like in English, us saying...is all of this information correct? We got a good laugh about this later. I also mentioned in their guest book that if someone were to ask me if these things I wrote about them being great hosts were true, I would simply say..."Helyes!"

Loving Myself

I have a real difficulty with this one. You would think that being selfish (which comes easily for me) and loving yourself would be synonymous, but they are opposed to each other. Jesus said to love your neighbor as yourself. This implies that we must love ourselves in order to love our neighbor. So, how do I love myself more? I can't just snap my fingers and love myself more. Can I? Our emotions are so intricately tied to this issue. I need to love myself, without having a sinful pride about myself. Hmmm...this sounds crazy to me. I'm still trying to figure this one out. I know it's true, but to live it out is tough. This is no small issue. In order to be able to love God and others better, I need to be able to love myself. The Bible says that we love God because He first loved us (I John 4:19). That makes it pretty clear that our love for God is made possible because of His love for us. But what about our love for ourselves? Where does it fall in the sequence of learning to love. I think that it is shaped early on in our lives. In my brokenness, however, I find it difficult to love myself...so perhaps my love for God has been less than I thought over the years. I'm growing in this area...and I know it's only by His grace that this is possible. Okay: don't be sinfully prideful about yourself, but make sure you love yourself. I think this is a foundational key for any and all love you will ever have for God and others. Loving yourself is critical for establishing and developing healthy relationships. The journey continues...

District 9

Went to see District 9 today with my son. I have to say, it was better than I expected. The special effects were done well, and the story line was good. The acting was even very good, and the lead was some guy I'd never heard of before. All that factored into making this a movie that surpassed my expectations. But the thing that really captured me was how the aliens were represented. Seemed different than other sci-fi movies. Even though you knew they were from a different planet, the way they were portrayed made them more like humans. The "refugee camp" scenario just made it all seem like real-life situations we have on our own planet already. So...at the risk of sounding gullible, District 9 seemed realistic to me, in the sense that it was presented in a way that didn't seem goofy...and this was a movie that easily could've come across in a silly sort of way, had it not been produced like it was. I saw Peter Jackson listed as one of the producers...that explains a lot. Maybe the impression will wear off, but I would put it in the top 10 sci-fi movies I've ever seen. Keep in mind, I'm not a big sci-fi movie guy. Okay...the best thing about the experience was, of course, getting to go see this movie with my son! Cody and I have a great time hanging out together. For that, I am extremely thankful.

The Hole in Our Gospel

This is the name of a great book by Richard Stearns, the President of World Vision, which is a great organization that has positively impacted millions of people over the years. The Hole in Our Gospel cries out for the church to engage with the entire gospel of Jesus--to serve the poor and disadvantaged around the world. First of all, I am convicted that I'm not doing more in these kinds of efforts, and I'm on staff at a church, working with missions! It's time...now is the time...for Western churches to rise up and sacrifice in other areas in order to fill the "hole" so that there is a more complete expression of the good news of Jesus. Like Stearns writes, "God can't give you the blessings He has for you until you first put down the other things you are clutching in your hands." This is an incredible challenge for the Western church, because of how successful it appears to be in other ways. It will take sacrifice and great leadership for more churches to begin to lean this way. Now is the time. Read The Hole in Our Gospel and then decide what steps you as an individual and your church will take to fill up the hole.