Rich’s Travels

This short film reminds me of my pre-K (pre-Kourtney) days…

This film is part of a greater collection of short films found at the www.globalshortfilmnetwork.com. It’s pretty funny, but don’t you think there might be a greater issue going on here with the lead character? (hint, hint see the title of the film).

That’s right, this guy is pretty lonely.  How many of us can identify with feeling lonely in life?  Did you know what the first thing that God said was “not good” after creation (Genesis 2:18) Do any of you have a long term maybe spiritual solution to lonliness?  If so, why don’t you share this film with a friend and talk about how you deal with your lonliness and if there is someone who has taken away your lonliness?

Do you see other themes in this short film?  If so, let me know and let’s begin the discussion.

A blogference?  What the heck is that?  All of us in CCC are professional conference attendees.  We kiss our families or shake our roommates’ hands goodbye and fly half way around the world to listen to great speakers and interact with other like minded people on a particular issue that concerns us all.  Great stuff there and I have many memories of some great conferences I have attended in my lifetime.  In fact, Dr. Bill Bright founder and President of Campus Crusade has been attributed as saying, “If I had to do it all over again, I’d have more conferences.”  Many a person’s life has been changed by a conference they have attended.

However, what about all those who weren’t able to attend?  Work, family life and especially finances can play a huge role in whether or not one is able to attend a conference.  What if we were able to eliminate many of those obstacles? (especially the finances in this day and age!).  I think someone has come up with a great alternative.  It’s called a “blogference” (hopefully, Urban dictionary definition coming soon).  Basically, a great way to “listen” to a lineup of “speakers” based on a theme (this year’s theme is “re-think”) except the CCC blogference links you to the speakers blogs where you read what they are saying and are able to express your thoughts and opinions on the subject presented.  Pretty cool, huh? (at least I think so).

So, check it out.  No time away from the family, the conference is free and even better no long security lines at the airport and best of all…no bad airline food (if you are even lucky enough to get a meal!).  See you there!

Here is the latest about Joseph from my facebook page.  As usual, it is Kourtney that writes these updates. Thanks for praying for him and continue to pray.  Our journey continues with his asthma.

Dear Friends,

Thank you so much for your prayers and encouragement of our family this season. We have officially passed the halfway mark of our time in Denver and are beginning to think through preparations for our return to Orlando. Here is an update on the last leg of our journey.

Get out your Kleenex…

Joseph is thriving. It’s like we have a new child in our home. I don’t know any other way to say it, but each day we see more and more of who God made him to be. Probably the most enjoyable part for us is that he cracks well-timed jokes with a precious little grin on his face. His abdominal pain is gone. He doesn’t have bowel issues anymore unless he is exposed to gluten (Mom’s fault twice). He’s gained weight for the first time in over a year. He’s continued to grow taller. He is on the lowest possible dose of asthma medicine.

The Celiac Disease experiment turned out to be very fruitful. With our lead doctor’s blessing, we chose to omit the small intestine biopsy and remove gluten from his diet (no easy feat, we assure you). We began in January and almost immediately saw relief from his abdominal pain and bowel issues. We are still addressing his GERD symptoms, but we have been encouraged by our nutritionist that there is a huge chance that those will cease eventually. His asthma has continued to be much less severe here in Denver. We are hopeful that as his immune system continues to heal (CD is an auto-immune disease) that he will grow stronger and healthier. We met with the top endocrinologist at Children’s Hospital, and he said that Joseph absolutely does not need to be on growth hormones.

Our weeks ahead include more testing to ascertain his overall lung function at this juncture, 2 trips to the nutritionist, a gastroenterologist, our endocrinologist and our last few visits with our lead doctor. We are still uncertain exactly how much his asthma is impacted by his Celiac Disease or if they are separate issues altogether.

There are a few questions that many of you have asked:

1. What happens if Joseph eats gluten?

He has an immediate and violent bowel reaction + abdominal pain. Gluten hides in the most unlikely places (i.e. Powerade as we learned the hard way at the top of a mountain a few weeks ago. It wasn’t pretty, but he handled it with such humor and courage that I wanted to weep, giggle at his jokes, and worship God simultaneously).

2. What about our other family members?
We are all eating gluten-free at this point as it is frankly just easier than doing it the other way. Because Rich’s Dad has the same gluten-issues and CD doesn’t always present as dramatically as it has in Joseph, we will eventually explore David and Rich’s situations. Right now, they are being INCREDIBLY good sports and are eating G-free and donning the same supplements as Joseph.

3. FUTURE? What about our geographic future?
Our lead doctor said last week that she believes that we will know within 3 months of returning to Orlando if Joseph will be o.k. in the Florida humidity long-term. This is definitely the hardest part of journey right now for us. We have always wanted to be in Colorado long-term. We love our friends here and have made new friends, too, who have become very special in a short time; however, being here has showed us how much we LOVE/ADORE/MISS our roots in Orlando with our ministry teams, our home, our church, and the friends that God has given us. Feeling up in the air about the permanence of our return is unsettling. We are thankful that we work for such an incredible organization that is willing to allow us to serve from here as it has completely changed our lives. We are trusting that God will continue to lead and provide in this part of the story.

Please don’t stop praying. We have miles to go before we sleep, but we are definitely celebrating at this leg of the race!

With Love and Thankful Hearts,

Kourtney + the boys
www.hearditonthestreet.com/kourtney

I read this quote today and feel like it captures my heart for this journey to help Joseph!

“It is not enough to put your heart and soul into something..

The really important things require much more than that.”

Ever have one of those days when you accidentally stumbled upon something that was really cool?  Just did it today when I discovered www.studentalpha.org.  Way back in the day, I partnered with a church to run what we called “Alpha Express” (a short modified version of the Alpha course) on a local college campus. Of course, this was way before internet useage was common among students.  Well, now it exists online below.  Check it out.   Maybe you could run an Alpha course in your home, dorm room or office. All the material is right there.  You just need to do the asking! Why do students need the Alpha course? Listen to this and hear their answers to “Who is Jesus?”.  Watch this promo to find out how you can be involved.

Recently I returned from halfway around the world (my bottom swears it was longer!) to present to all of the campus staff how they can integrate using the internet with our traditional face to face strategies.  Out of a 1 1/2 day conference, they dedicated most of the time to addressing this issue of integration so the pressure was on.

“Movements everywhere” is the rallying cry of Campus Crusade.  You will see it in all of our publications.  We want to help build spiritual movements everywhere “in order that someone knows someone who truly follows Jesus.”  Makes sense, but what does that look like on the internet?  Our leadership has come up with the term a “virtually led movement” (or as my Singaporean friends who love acronyms like to say “VLM”) I was tasked with trying to help define “VLM” for Singapore.  CCC has not specifically defined a VLM yet like it has been defined for a face to face movement, so that made my job that much easier (or harder depending on how you look at it!)

I was also able to share some of the great things that others around the world have been doing both inside and outside of CCC.  Some of the new strategies that I am particularly excited about are:

1) a “spiritual starter kit” from our friends at everystudent.com. You can also sign up for other spiritual growth series here.

2) A site called starterbible (developed in the Netherlands). Starterbible is an e-learning course for new Believers.

3) The Global Short film network.  Using short films that you can download to your computer, i-phone, i-pod or other mobile phone for use in your everyday conversations.

4) Soul cravings (from Canada’s power to change).  What does your soul crave?

5)  Easy ways to use the internet found here.

6) Lifechurch.tv - A physical church as well as an online church in Oklahoma City.  Students (and people worldwide) can go to church online 24/7.  No more excuses now for not going to church!

After presenting how we can use the internet to help build both virtual and face to face movements, it was on to a knowledge cafe facilitated by one of my teammates. We didn’t want to tell Singapore what to do, but instead let them come up with their own next steps for the campus ministry in Singapore.  How can the internet help Singapore build spiritual movements? For some of their answers you can go here.

Pray for me as I continue to help Singapore in their quest to build virtual and face to face spiritual movements.

 One of my meals in Singapore. Duck!!  MMMMMM!!  I guess I can’t really say it’s Finger lickin’ good since it’s a duck.

Ok, I’m a John McEnroe fan I admit it.  This post comes directly from my good friend Brian Barela from his blog “The Necessary things.”  I love” people that continue to push the envelope as it relates to new ways of doing evangelism.  Check out this video on using twitter to do evangelism.  Sort of a 21st century way of doing what CCC calls “random evangelism:

Just created a facebook fan page called “The Street’s Ministry“.  Seems a little vain to create a fan page about your family, but this page is simply designed to connect those that partner with us to those that we minister to in the US and abroad.  With so many people on facebook today (over 70% of North America has a facebook account!), it just seemed like an easy way to stay in touch with our partners.  One of Kourtney’s and my values is to maintain not only regular but excellent contact with our partners.  Now, not only can we report on what we are doing, but allow those that we minister to report themselves directly to our partners.  Become a fan and experience firsthand what we are doing as well as interact and get to know the people we serve!  Enjoy!

The Street’s Ministry on Facebook

As you might know, we have been wrestling with health issues with Joseph since he was about 22 months old, battling his asthma very consistently. We learned last spring that he wasn’t growing as he should be, and he failed each of six Growth Hormone Stimulation tests. We know that it’s not Cystic Fibrosis, allergies, or a brain tumor as these were ruled out. However, asthma that is not well controlled and/or steroid use are potential causes for growth problems. We also have some strong genetic factors related to his asthma and growth issues that seem to be playing a role.

This summer Joseph grew 3 cm while we were serving in Colorado and had a huge respite from his typical asthma issues. While this could be totally coincidental, our doctor feels that there is a strong possibility that his asthma is exacerbated by humidity, and we’ve spent most of his life in very humid places (France, Florida, Texas, and Mexico). Consequently, our Pediatric Pulmonologist recommended that we spend the winter and spring in Colorado to see if he does as well in Colorado during the cold, winter months as he did in the summer.

We received permission from our boss, Ken Cochrum, Vice President of Campus Ministries for CCC, to spend the winter in Denver. Almost immediately, things fell into place. We found a wonderful Christian family to rent our furnished home in Orlando for six months. We were given an appointment almost immediately at National Jewish Hospital in Denver (one of, if not the top respiratory hospitals in the world). We have dear friends who direct a Classical Conversations group in Denver so the boys will continue their schooling with little interruption. God continued to open doors to lead us to spend six months in Colorado to get to the bottom of Joseph’s health issues. Our prayer is that we can reduce his steroid use, increase his lung function, prevent lung scarring, and hopefully prevent the use of Growth Hormone Therapy unless absolutely necessary.

I will be continuing my ministry from Denver. Our team is hosting our annual meeting with the main campus ministry leaders from around the world in Orlando this year, and I will return to Orlando the first week of December to participate. I will return most months for our team strategy meetings, and I can easily do my international travel out of DIA. The great thing about my role is that I can truly do my job from anywhere. I look forward to continuing to engage with ministry leaders globally as we seek to help grow student led movements everywhere…especially virtually!Thank you for your prayers and support of us during this journey. We thank God for your partnership with our family in the wonderful ministry that God has called us to. If you have any questions, please feel free to email or call.

I just returned from Turkey as I helped lead the program for ministrynet.  What a great time meeting up with so many practioners from around the world.  Here’s a great summary of what went on from my good friend Keith Seabourn.

Ministry Net and VLM Integration from Dennis Strellman on Vimeo.

Thanks for praying for my time. Pray for all the participants who came to ministrynet that they would continue to connect with one another and learn from each other even after the conference. Pray for them also as they go back to their leadership with some crazy ideas that their leaders would give them the sponsorship they need to lead in this new world of integrating virtual strategies with our traditional strategies!

Sorry it has been a long time since my last post.  Being in a car for over 10,000 miles and being away from home this summer can do that to you.  I did come across this video on tube and wanted to pose the question if this is the beginning of the end for face to face evangelism and its’ relevance.

Thoughts????