One Boy's Dream to be Darth Vader

It's a blessing to have a kid who rolls with ministry life so well. He "works" at his desk in our office, runs errands, attends prayer meetings, takes naps on the go, eats dinner anywhere from 5-8pm and all with a (mostly) sunny disposition.

As any four-year-old boy, Little Nut is completely obsessed with Superheroes and Darth Vader. All day long we hear, "Does Darth Vader live in a dark house? Darth Vader has big boots! What can Batman do? I want to fight the bad guys! Does Superman shoot lasers from his eyes? Is the Hulk nice? I might be the Hulk!"

So, today we took a little time to enjoy the beautiful day and fulfill a little boy's dream:

Changes Ahead: The Medlen Journey Continued

As I sit here I am thinking of all the things our family has been through this last year. Some of them were amazing and wonderful, like the adoption of our Little Nut! Some of them were heart-breaking, confusing, and difficult. And boy, have we seen our fair share of change this year! Yet, the one constant through all of the shifting seasons of life has been the Lord. He is so faithful--faithful to lead, to love, to redirect, to heal, to strengthen.

And, in light of God's boundless grace and enduring faithfulness, what can our family do but respond with complete openness and surrender to Him?

In the last few months the Lord has increasingly laid on our hearts the call to be part of a church planting movement among the urban poor. This call and burden for the city is what has tethered us to World Impact, even through the darkest of days. Our desire to be open to the Holy Spirit has now opened the door to a new opportunity for our family. One that we are excited and passionate about.

Starting in June we will be transitioning once again, still within World Impact and for now, still in Wichita. Our roles will be shifting to a church planting focus and we will be working with the Wichita staff primarily through their Christ the Victor (CTV) church planting efforts. The prayer of our staff is that CTV will become a movement of churches for the urban poor.

We love Christ the Victor because it proclaims to the broken and oppressed that our Lord is victorious and no earthly limitations can bind the strong arm of Jesus Christ. Our cities yearn for this message. CTV is in a season of strengthening and deepening its mission, vision and strategies and we are privileged to participate in the efforts to more effectively facilitate church planting movements in the cities of American and the world.

Even in our excitement there is a sense of loss as we close another chapter in our story and journey on to the next. God has used so many things in the last year to bring us to this point, not the least of which has been our time and the staff at The Urban Ministry Institute (TUMI). We came to serve with TUMI, not knowing what God had planned, but trusting in His provision and leading. We have been blessed abundantly.

To serve with men and women who take seriously their calling and serve the Lord with love and fervor and sacrifice has been a privilege and an honor. We did not (and still do not) see our time with TUMI as a stepping stone to other ministry, but as an act of unexpected grace from our Father, as He is refining our family for His purposes.

Even in nine short months, the staff at TUMI has become our family. They embraced us with love and acceptance in a difficult season of our lives and spoke the truth of the Lord into us in ways that brought healing, strength and clarity. They challenged us to serve with sacrifice and vision, never forgetting our purpose on this earth or what we ought to be willing to do to fulfill it.

Our family is more certain than ever of the burden God has laid on our hearts to see the cities won for Christ and more determined to do whatever is necessary to follow the Lord in this endeavor,

A verse that the Lord has continued to bring to our attention in the last nine months is Exodus 14:14 "The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still." We have clung to this promise, knowing that the battle is the Lord's to win. When the Lord is advancing, there is none who can stand in His path. Too often I so badly want to make things happen, or right wrongs on my own, not acknowledging that if it is something that the Lord wants to accomplish I need only wait on His timing and follow His lead.

Our family is determined to follow closely behind the Lord as He advances His Kingdom in the cities. We have done this, and will continue to do this imperfectly, but we know that there is no other place we would rather be and no greater effort for which we would expend all of our energy, than to win souls for Christ.

Please pray for our family through the next few weeks as we make this transition.

• Pray that God would continue to pave the way for our family and that we would respond to His leading. Pray for peace in the Lord as we make yet another transition.
• Pray for TUMI, a ministry and staff that is so dear to our hearts. God is doing amazing things to raise up leaders through this ministry, so many amazing things that it is surely the Lord who will be the one to accomplish them because there are few laborers and an abundant harvest. Pray for God to provide for their every need and bless their unwavering commitment to serve the Lord through the urban poor. Pray for laborers!
• Pray for the Wichita staff and the Christ the Victor Church Planting efforts. We want our efforts to strengthen CTV to be firmly rooted in Christ and completely contextualized for effectiveness in the city. The church is the answer to winning our cities for Christ. Pray that the Spirit would guide our plans and efforts and that the Lord would start a revival in our cities through the urban poor!

 In all we do, may Christ receive the glory!

Holy Week: Preparing our Hearts

As a society, we spend little time in contemplation. We're busy, so busy that we usually just run ourselves ragged right up until a moment of significance and hope that the depth of the moment will leap out at us. It doesn't work. The important moment hustles past with the rest of life and we are left with a somewhat hallow experience.

Without proper anticipation we cannot feel the excitement and full impact of resolution!

As Christians, we are days away from the most important celebration of our faith. We'll be planning family events and purchasing new Easter outfits, meanwhile, our hearts are left unprepared for the climax of the Christian year.

Don't let the Resurrection sneak up on you! Take this week to quiet your hearts and minds and give yourself over to the story and anticipation. On Sunday we celebrated Palm Sunday and let our hearts be glad for the arrival of the King! Later this week we meditate on the Passion of our Lord, as He willingly went to the cross. And, then we wait, with solemn anticipation for the moment the whole world has waited for...the Resurrection!

Here are some resources to help you prepare your heart this week:

• HOLY WEEK: Daily devotions and scripture readings are available on The Urban Ministry Institute's online Church Year Annual. For Holy Week visit here. 
• PALM SUNDAY: A sermon by Rev. Dr. Don L. Davis (sermons available late Monday or Tuesday of each week)
• GOOD FRIDAY: I prepared a booklet for personal or corporate meditation. Good Friday:Meditation and Prayer on the Last Seven Sayings of Christ. (It is meant to be printed double sided and folded in the middle in booklet form.)

Let's beat back the frantic pace of life this week in exchange for a deep anticipation of the greatest moment of our faith!

Set the World on Fire

Driving in the car, listening to Lacrae's song "Fuego" I suddenly thought, how did we get here? Dull and impotent shadows of ourselves, a society of Christians more concerned with the safety of morality than living in the power of the God of the universe. The holy fire of the Spirit being suffocated inside our need for control, when it should be consuming us from the inside out, setting the world on fire with God's glory.

I mean, do we even look like who we are? The fathers and mothers of the faith taught us that being a Christian means so much more than following a moral code, attending church services, and volunteering. During the explosion of the early church, we saw a birth of a people who were wild with abandon, embracing the cross rather than running from it. Christians were families who walked the outskirts of town looking for abandoned babies who were left to die, carrying them home and raising them as their own. Christians were those torn to pieces by lions in Rome. Christians were the apostles, preaching to thousands and boldly declaring truth to persecuting authorities. Christians are missionaries who go to their deaths, even as they take the Gospel to the ends of the earth. Christians openly embrace the sick and the dying. Christians burn at the stake. Christians embrace sinners with Christ-like redeeming love.

We are Christians.

When did we become so domesticated? We've lost our first love...Jesus. Instead we love tame and controllable morality. We love love that doesn't take us to the cross.

What the heck are we doing?

Kevin DeYoung says it well, “The world needs to see Christians burning, not with self-righteous fury at the sliding morals in our country, but with passion for God.” We must unleash the fire in our heart and let the Spirit burn through all the safety nets we've built for ourselves, until all we can see is God's hands holding us.

Then we'll have nothing to live for but Jesus and He can use that kind of abandon to set the world on fire with His glory. To quote Lacrae, "Get your torches high let's set ablaze the sky/Passion's a fire bright and we'll be burning forever/Set the world on fire."

Lecrae "Fuego"

Lent: A Call to Freedom and Maturity

This Lenten season I have been thinking a lot about freedom in Christ. Perhaps, not a completely traditional theme for Lent, but I've been pondering the sense of freedom that comes when you release everything that is not Christ.

I am in Christ, and therefore free of the pull that the world has on me. I am free from fighting for my personal "rights," free from expectations about my life, free from materialism...all things the world promises will bring fulfillment, yet, do not. And still, my flesh spends so much of my waning energy on things that don't matter, when Christ offers me a yoke that is easy, and a burden that is light (Matt. 11.30). It is for freedom that Christ set us free (Gal. 5.1)!

Recently, God has been speaking to our family about release...release from the things that hinder us from following Christ wholly. The way our culture feeds us lies about our rights and our need for comforts, it seems counter-intuitive to find joy and freedom in the absence of these things, but there is. We are experiencing it a little more each day.

Lent reminds us that we can be gloriously free from everything that is not Christ, but, it also exhorts us to a maturity that accepts all that is.

Freedom comes at a cost, namely Christ's, but Lent is a season that we remind ourselves that, as followers of Christ, we share in the lowliness and suffering of Christ as well. How can we expect to share in the freedom and not in the lowliness?

Yet, even in this there is freedom--the freedom to choose maturity and the road to Calvary, as Christ did. In Gethsemane our Lord prayed, "My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will." (Mat. 26:39). Christ chose to drink from the cup of suffering. Only hours before he asked His disciples to also share in this cup at the Lord's Supper. It is offered to you and to me as well. Will we drink of the cup Christ shared in, or do we imagine ourselves exempt?

In Christ we are free to choose freedom in the Spirit or to choose the bondage of our flesh. It seems like an obvious choice, but it takes maturity in Christ to find the resolve to do it, for choosing to walk in the Spirit, as in Christ's life, will often lead us directly into suffering.

Yet, Lent also reminds us that our God did not call us to a path He was not Himself willing to walk. We follow the footsteps of Jesus Christ, who was unwavering in His journey to the cross. He offers to walk beside us if we will hold on to His hand with everything we have. As Christians, our greatest aim is to be like Christ. So, let us use this season to refocus and recommit ourselves to the path He, and so many saints before us, have trod...the lowly path to eternal glory.

This Lent faithfully walk in freedom, walk in maturity, walk in humility, knowing that our Lord walks with us.

For I, the Lord your God, hold your right hand; it is I who say to you, “Fear not, I am the one who helps you.”

Isaiah 41:13

Too Much Stuff to Go?

Recently, Andrew and I have been talking about how ready we are to answer God's call. We determined that we aren't as ready as we thought.

Our years as inner-city missionaries and the last year of transition have helped us look at things different, it's true, but we have so much more to learn. We never expected to leave St. Louis, but we have since realized that we weren't really thinking like missionaries. A missionary is on a mission, and any good mission has a beginning, middle, and, most importantly, an end. The last thing a good missionary should ever do is become entrenched. This is not to say that staying in one place for a long period of time is a bad thing, but it should be done because God directs it, not because it's hard to leave. Staying should be as active a decision as leaving and we must be ready to stay or to go at God's command.

Along with a change in thinking we realized that we needed a lifestyle change. If we are to be ready to be on mission, we need to be able to travel light. WE. DO. NOT. TRAVEL. LIGHT. We have stuff upon stuff--too much stuff. It's happened gradually, mainly because we don't get rid of things. We both get sentimental and I'm cheap...if I paid for it once I don't want to have to buy it again someday. But, it's hard to move stuff and I cringe when I think about ever having to move again. If stuff becomes a hindrance to joyfully following my Savior then it's got to go! Plus, Andrew heard a news story about clutter where the "expert" reminded people that almost everything that clutters up our homes can be replaced for $20 in 20 min, which I have found to be fairly accurate as I mentally catalog our junk.

So, we have begun a purge project in our house. I'm sure what we feel is a huge cut may still seem small to others, but we have to start somewhere. What it really requires is a lifestyle change, which is a process, but we are committed to making a change!

The last thing we would ever want is for stuff to be the reason we can't follow (or don't want to follow) Jesus anywhere He may ask us to go.

A Psalm of Mama

A song of the exhausted mother. Accompanied by the piercing cries of small children and dinner boiling over on the stove.

O, Lord, I feel weary and oppressed. 
My patience has withered beneath a sun that seems never to set;
    the relief of bedtime always just out of reach.
I am assaulted with questions until I feel I will go mad.
I have grown weary of my own name.
The "Mama" that once made me glad,
    has become a scourge upon my ears.
Little hands and crying faces press in on me from all sides;
    I am surrounded by needs that are never satiated.
Dishes and laundry conspire against me--
    multiplying at an impossible rate.
I am in a desperate way.
My only sanctuary is the bathroom,
    while a little person stands outside the door asking,
    "What are you doing in there?"
Even a full night's sleep cannot banish this exhaustion.
Will I ever again complete a day feeling sane?


I am done in, yet, I will not despair;
    the Lord is my true salvation,
    because Dora the Explorer only lasts twenty-four minutes.
Patience elludes me except by Your Spirit,
    and gentleness in the face of blatent disobedience is what I long for.
I will take joy in the moments when "Mama" is accompanied by "I love you,"
    and not, "I pooped in my pants."
I will meditate on Your words--
    the ones printed on the decorative plaque,
    across from the couch,
    where I find my glassy-eyed, quiet place while my child naps.
When my alarm clock wakes me from a dead sleep,
    and I am tempted to curse the sun's consistency,
    I will try to remember this is the day the Lord has made,
    and children are a blessing from the Lord,
    and then REJOICE,
    for soon these years will be gone and I will miss them--
    proof that motherhood really does kill brain cells.

Selah.