Ever been to Atlanta?

I have never spent more than an hour our so in Atlanta (airport layovers). It’s a pretty cool place! Our regional leadership team meetings were held there last week. A few highlights…

Great food! We had Hawaiian, Indian, Mexican, Thai and Korean! (those are just the ones I can remember)
Really good to be with team-mates in person (two couldn’t be there due to Covid).
Nasal swabbing for rapid covid tests – an acquired sensation!
Time in scripture! Psalm 31/61 and 2 Cor 2.
Revisiting our strategic plan – The 2030 Calling
Having a meal in three different GFM staff member’s homes!
A very spacious Air B&B with plastic plants growing out of the walls!
My teammate Michael’s very cool Nike shoe collection (seriously a different pair every day).

I really appreciate the effort my regional leaders put forth to get our team together, to pray, and hear from God and each other. It does us so much good to revisit our goals and our leadership seeking God’s refreshing and resharpening. We typically spend four days together either in December or January. Covid has disrupted this greatly the past two years. So it was especially life-giving to be together. I always get to look at my work from a different angle when I’m with colleagues. Especially men and women who do my job better than me.

We would appreciate your prayers as we lead our staff teams into a new year. We took aim on several important items. Here are a few you can wrap your prayers around in 2022:

Planting witnessing communities on more corners of more campuses.
See more students and faculty respond to appropriate gospel invitations.
Increase staff recruitment w. emphasis on people of color and women.
Fully resource our work with adequate ministry partnership and financial support.

I’m eager to lean into our strategic plan in the coming days. I’m kind of itchy for results and momentum after being cooped up in this pandemic. Most immediately from the list above, I have two new staff that will be transitioning to my team in the weeks ahead. I ‘ve written briefly about Sarah. In a future post I hope to introduce you to Chad who will be joining us in Ames, IA. Our team is planning an in-person retreat in St. Louis April 8-10th. That will be a high-water mark for us as we welcome Chad and Sarah. We also anticipate having our volunteer staff with us! That will be a team of eleven if we can pull it off! At some point our biggest threat to being together won’t be Covid, but ourselves! Feel free to start praying now!