35 YEARS MINUS 8 DAYS

August 8, 1988, was my first day. After raising adequate support, I reported to the U.S. Center for World Mission’s Mobilization Division. I realized later I should have bought a lottery ticket since it had four 8 numbers. . .

July 31, 2023, will be my last day with what was once called the U.S. Center for World Mission (now Frontier Ventures). The run will have been one week short of 35 years. That is 35 out of 60. What I initially thought as a two-year commitment turned out to be 35 years since our eyes were set on going to Southeast Asia to work among the Muslims. During our 35-year span, we had two close calls of packing up and going to the field (the first one was my initiative and the second one my wife’s). Since we were not on the same page, we discerned that it was not the time to go both times.

After tens of thousands of meetings, an ungodly number of emails (millions to exaggerate slightly), and circling around the world numerous times, we both sensed time is now. The call to go came about 4 years ago when we received God’s initial nudge from Psalm 45:10 of “forgetting your people and your father’s house” in which we interpreted “your people and your father’s house” as FV at the time. Psalm 45 passage was repeated through two random people in unexpected times. I even had a lucid dream when my eyes traced the verse plainly opened before me in a library filled with Bibles in many different languages. That was June of 2019, a few months before our planned sabbatical.

Undoubtedly, I am forever changed as a result of my years with Frontier Ventures (FV). For what seems like my “previous” life, I am who I am now because of FV and more precisely because of my work and study apprenticeship under Ralph Winter. I learned how to see beyond what was visible and accepted and how to probe relentlessly, questioning existing assumptions and beliefs. I also learned how to see big and bigger pictures and develop an ability to connect the dots between seemingly disparate disciplines and fields. Until I met Winter, I was not interested in studying. I studied because I had to. In retrospect, my natural apostolic and prophetic bent meshed well and flourished under Winter. For the first time in my life, learning was fun and meaningful. Furthermore, FV and two organizations I started became my learning lab for action. The years represented an unbeatable combination of book learning and action learning.

At the same time, my soul began to yearn for which it did not know how to articulate and FV or Winter could not help or provide. It was the beginning of my contemplative journey which ironically started (as one source) as I began to dig the history and unpack the unique gift of the monastic order tradition to the Church and to the world. I say “ironic” because Winter emphasized and modeled FV as a religious order, following the monastic order tradition minus my view and need for contemplation. (Winter had his own interpretation of what and how renewal functioned in the monastic order tradition.) This phase for the most part coincided with my leadership years, and I was convinced that I saw the indomitable relationship between contemplation and action (in missions circles, it was the missiological practices) or what I initially coined as “renewal and expansion.” I discovered contemplative postures and practices (that had been sadly and largely forgotten in the Protestant tradition) cannot be divorced from the missional endeavors for our own benefits as well as for the world.

The integration of contemplation and action remains one of my bedrock convictions.

Unlike the first two hiccups of desiring to go to the field, this time we are on the same page. After 35 years and with “forgetting our people and our father’s house” call, we feel we are finally ready to go to the field.

In recent years, we have crossed multiple significant thresholds in our life. We sensed that exiting FV is the last big threshold crossing from our “previous” life. Time is now for us to cross and to be fully unleashed and released—to live as free as the sky. John O’Donohue in his book, To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings, nails my process, sentiment, and emotions with astounding precision. It is a long quote but worth pondering if especially you find yourself standing in some new threshold.

To change is one of the great dreams of every heart – to change the limitations, the sameness, the banality, or the pain. So often we look back on patterns of behavior, the kind of decisions we make repeatedly and that have failed to serve us well, and we aim for a new and more successful path or way of living. But change is difficult for us. So often we opt to continue the old pattern, rather than risking the danger of difference. We are also often surprised by change that seems to arrive out of nowhere.

We find ourselves crossing some new threshold we had never anticipated. Like spring secretly at work within the heart of winter, below the surface of our lives huge changes are in fermentation. We never suspect a thing. Then when the grip of some long-enduring winter mentality begins to loosen, we find ourselves vulnerable to a flourish of possibility and we are suddenly negotiating the challenge of a threshold.

At any time you can ask yourself: At which threshold am I now standing? At this time in my life, what am I leaving? Where am I about to enter? What is preventing me from crossing my next threshold? What gift would enable me to do it? A threshold is not a simple boundary; it is a frontier that divides two different territories, rhythms and atmospheres. Indeed, it is a lovely testimony to the fullness and integrity of an experience or a stage of life that it intensifies toward the end into a real frontier that cannot be crossed without the heart being passionately engaged and woken up. At this threshold a great complexity of emotions comes alive: confusion, fear, excitement, sadness, hope. This is one of the reasons such vital crossing were always clothed in ritual. It is wise in your own life to be able to recognize and acknowledge the key thresholds; to take your time; to feel all the varieties of presence that accrue there; to listen inward with complete attention until you hear the inner voice calling you forward. The time has come to cross. (Italicized mine)

If I read O’Donohue right, entering or crossing new thresholds is not the main point as it is merely a natural outcome of walking the life, fully woken up. It is all about the process: the recognition of the change of the interior landscape and the attention to divine details of where our life has been and needs and wants to go.

Having done our due diligence in this season, we believe the time has come to cross.