Welcome back to Berlin. We've been here for more than a week now, and it's the most relaxed I've felt in a long time. The weather has cooled off, we are enjoying spending time with our Gateway Berlin intern Jael Tang, and the Philips are back in town so it's a big fiesta every day.
In this post I want to begin fleshing out how the Three-Worlds team will operate. As Regional Coordinators for Europe and the Middle East we are focusing our entire region on specializing in 3 areas: 1) engaging young people in cross-cultural ministry 2) Connecting and encouraging EMPOWERED leaders under the age of 45 and 3) Creating inner-connectivity between the CHOG in Europe and the Middle East (and beyond).
Everything we do is somehow aimed at those three goals. Through all of this, we want to help the churches, pastors, and people we deal with learn how to engage the Three emerging worlds of Christianity: the Traditional World, the Post-Christendom World, and the world of Non-Western Christianity.
Our team members are located in different places: Berlin, Bulgaria, the Middle East--but regardless of where they are, they are working toward these goals AND we are doing it together. So our approaches is FOCUSED, STRATEGIC, and UNITED.
Focused because we are not trying to be all things to all people. We are a small crew with limited resources, so instead of trying to do everything badly, we focus on the things we can do effectively.
Strategic because we will be thinking through everything we do very carefully to make sure we are not hurting when we should be helping, wasting resources, or setting up fields where the relationships are undefined and prone to chaos or fragmentation. We will clearly articulate what we are trying to do in countries and have the expectations that those countries will be just as clear.
And united because it makes mockery of our testimony if we reject unity and accountability. We will be accountable to each other as a team, process things as a team, and work alongside each other as a team.
This is something I am really looking forward to. Instead of missionaries living in isolation, our team will visit each others fields, lend assistance, add suggestions, and give lots of emotional support.
It takes a high degree of intentionality and a common ethos to achieve these goals and that's what we will do at Three-Worlds. And adding team members will come slowly and very cautiously because intentionality and a common ethos will drive everything.
So that's a quick overview of the Team Approach of Three Worlds. In future posts, I'll speak more about other aspects of our work.
Stay tuned. Gateway Berlin Radio should be up and running relatively soon.