Gilson Family News

We’re all back home again! Jonathan returned yesterday afternoon from 50 days on a mission trip to Orlando, where he was part of a Creative Arts ministry team sharing Christ at tourist attractions, in churches, and at Give Kids the World. Sara, Tom, and Lisa were in Colorado for a nine-day conference with all the U.S. staff of Campus Crusade for Christ.

Jonathan came home very much in need of sleep, so we haven’t heard a lot of his story first-hand yet. It was a great time for him, anyway; we know that much already. He made some great friends, and God used him personally to lead at least one person to Christ, in addition to what was accomplished through the team working together.

The three of us who went to Colorado would all say it was our best conference there in many years (we have this conference every other year). Campus Crusade is adjusting its methodology to the 21st century, adding social networking (blogs, Facebook, Twitter) to our means of connecting with lost people and anyone we may be working with. Although I (Tom) am a blogger, it’s taking me a while to get used to the other methods, but I’m learning.

This does not replace face-to-face ministry, though; in fact, through pastor Timothy Keller and some of our own staff we were strongly reminded of the need to express love through tangible acts of service wherever we minister. This is both an expression of God’s character and an evangelistic strategy. In fact, we’re finding that non-believers are often eager and willing to join us on humanitarian trips, and there they see Christ at work in Christians’ hearts. It even works the other way around: some of our ministries have joined with secular-sponsored humanitarian efforts and shared Christ with their fellow-workers.

Is there a danger in this, that we’ll focus on giving immediate aid and let it substitute for sharing the message of Jesus Christ? The answer is yes: we’re seeing that tendency especially among college students we’re working with. Part of our purpose at this conference was training and discussion on how to keep the Gospel message central to our outreach.

Jesus Christ left us with both the Great Commission (to make disciples of all nations) and the Great Commandments (to love God and our neighbor). They are inseparable.

Finally on the conference, both Sara and I did considerable networking among the many staff and ministries of Campus Crusade for Christ. Our ministry has long been focused primarily on “ministering to the ministers,” as we have put it, and the connections we made will open relational and organizational doors to help keep us busy and fruitful for quite a while to come.

I had to get this blog entry posted early today, because later today the first sentence won’t be true. Lisa will be taking off for a Youth Evangelism Conference later this morning, an overnight trip to Richmond, along with other members of our church’s youth group. Sometime tomorrow afternoon, we’ll really be all back home again.

Thank you for praying for our time here in Colorado at the Campus Crusade for Christ staff conference. It has been a mix of biblical encouragement, prayer, worship, connecting with friends, and discovering new connections with strategic needs we can help with, many of which we will be working on over the next 12 to 18 months.

Our plenary conference sessions have been filled with reports of progress, including significant partnerships among mission organizations and Christian denominations to finish the task of reaching the world for Christ. I especially wish I could share with you some of the first-hand reports we heard this evening from staff members working in some of the most difficult and dangerous parts of the world; how God has rescued them from danger, and with what joy they are continuing in ministry there. We’ve been encouraged and received guidance through discussions with other leaders here, and we’ve received training in handling new opportunities (especially via the Internet) and sensitive issues.

Lisa has been experiencing a mix of teen fun and ministry in her conference. Today she and the other high schoolers at this conference packaged food sufficient to feed 245 hungry children for a year through Campus Crusade’s Global Aid Network ministry. They’ve been learning about evangelism, and tomorrow will be going to various locations around the Front Range of Colorado to practice sharing their faith.

And the three of us had a chance yesterday afternoon to take a short hike on a mountainside in the Poudre River Canyon, experiencing God’s glory in yet another way.

We have three days to go yet, and we’re looking forward to more good progress here. Since our ministry is primarily with Campus Crusade strategies and leaders, this has been and will continue to be one of our best opportunities to do the work God calls us to do. Thank you for praying with us!

Jonathan is on mission to Orlando this summer, and loving it. He’s part of a creative arts ministry team, reaching out to youth and children in local churches, and at least once a week also doing performances and sharing their faith at one of the popular Orlando tourist attractions.

Sara and Lisa are once again taking part in the local mission trip to Lackey. In teamwork with a friend from the African-American church we partner with, Sara was able to help lead a 14 year-old boy to the Lord just a couple of days ago. This is the third annual mission to Lackey (map), and members of the team say they are sensing an increasing openness to the Lord there each year.

Thank you for praying for our recent (and continuing) work with the Christian Embassy to the United Nations. My colleague Clark Hollingsworth and I were able to gain a good overview of their ministry, including areas of potential growth and challenges they face. One of their most interesting challenges is how to tell their story, for purposes of fund-raising and recruiting staff members. The staff there shared several stories with us of significant ministry in the lives of diplomats from all parts of the world. These men and women are world leaders being influenced for Chris. In many cases they are actually becoming followers of Jesus Christ.

We’re working with them on ways to communicate their message, along with other ways to help them obtain resources they need for ministry. They have plenty of opportunities for ministry, but they could use more help in the form of staff members and funding.

Josh McDowell, Basketball, pneumonia…

Josh McDowell is in town for the weekend to share with parents and youth in Williamsburg. Our office team arranged for his coming, and we’ve been excited about this for months. His ministry is to help people understand what God says to us, and that it is trustworthy and true, as we live in a culture with an opposite message. That understanding is not only mental but relational, as Josh continually emphasizes, and the way it is passed along is not only academic, but it too is relational.

But it’s a busy weekend in many ways. Lisa Ann’s last Upward basketball game ever is tonight at 7:30. Both of our kids have been doing Upward every year the last ten years, and it’s hard to believe either of them has grown too old to play next year–but in fact now both of them are there now! So we don’t want to miss this final game, a kind of passage through time for our family. Which means we’ll miss Josh’s talk this evening.

He’ll be speaking at the Williamsburg Community Chapel tomorrow morning, and the family plans to be there then. I (Tom) have worked with Josh and his team extensively, and I would be finding ways to spend some time with him in between family events today, except that the pneumonia I’ve had since mid-January is still with me. It has me running at about half speed, or sometime less. I’m scheduled to see a specialist about it first thing Monday morning. Please pray that he will get it figured out, or that God would heal me even before that time.

Please keep praying for Jonathan, too, as he is studying Spanish at the community college while also taking his normal high school load of classes; and pray for Sara who has to manage all of us while I’m not at my best. Thanks!

Tom’s article on leaving legalistic religion behind has just been published in the November-December issue of Discipleship Journal. Unfortunately it’s not available online, but the magazine is sold at most major bookstores.

Here’s Life Inner City

• Tom just completed a strategic planning session with leaders of this nationwide ministry. HLIC is partnered with over 1,400 urban churches in America providing compassionate aid, after-school mentoring programs, leadership and character development programs for adults, and training in ministry for church leaders. All of this comes in the name of Jesus Christ and with an explanation of who He is.
• Our strategic planning work focused on developing a younger generation of leadership, on recruiting, on making HLIC’s expertise more broadly available and widely known, and more.
• In the process, Tom also brought a potential part-time team member along to orient him in ministry strategic planning and explore the possibility of him helping in the future. This proved very positive, and is likely to expand our own team’s effectiveness over the years to come.

Bright Media Foundation

• Brad Bright’s newly revised God Is the Issue: Recapturing the Cultural Initiative has just been mailed to 10,000 pastors in the U.S. now. (Our team was closely involved in strategizing for this and other Bright Media Foundation initiatives.)
• This book is not yet available for sale to the public, though soon it will be.
• Tom has spoken and written on this topic recently, and has submitted an article on it to a nationally known outlet. (A link to the talk will be added by Tuesday.)

Ministry Partner Development

• We are concentrating for several weeks on strengthening our team of ministry partners and our financial support for ministry.
• At this time we are in need of approximately $900 in new monthly support.
• The President’s Office matching grant is still available for new ministry partners, or for increased pledges from current partners.
• We are very encouraged by the progress we’re making, but we have considerably more distance to go with this.
• Our prayer is to see the full $900/month pledged by the middle of November.
• Please contact us if you have questions regarding the matching grant.

Community Ministry

• Sara is leading a women’s Bible study, helping them to understand basic and not-so-basic truths about faith and about God’s work in us through the Holy Spirit.
• She continues to be involved with youth through a local Christian club in Lisa’s school.

Family News

• Jonathan is learning Spanish through an independent study/tutoring program; he’s doing well in school.
• Lisa is having a great year, enjoying being in band and in stage band. She just submitted a homemade video to the PTA’s “Reflections” contest. She shot and edited it. The subjects of the video were Jonathan and a friend, both of whom have become rather accomplished jugglers.
• Michigan State (we’re all fans) is having a great football season!

We’ve just reached the halfway point on our $12,000 matching contribution opportunity! Thank you to you who have helped get us this far.

For clarity’s sake: we’re not yet halfway to our current goals for new support development this year. The total need was greater than what will be matched.

Nevertheless we are celebrating a milestone, and thanking God for his provision.

Tom is preparing again for strategic planning with Here’s Life Inner City, only this time with a larger scope than before. Last February he met with the Youth Development sector of Here’s Life Inner City; this time it is the entire national planning team for the ministry. These meetings will be in Baltimore, Sept. 22-25. He’ll be bringing along a long-time friend, Dave Fackler, to help with planning and possibly become an occasional future partner in more projects like these. Dave already has plenty to do as an assistant director of Keynote, but he has graciously agreed to come, participate, and see how God leads.

Meanwhile Sara is helping to start up the First Priority club at Lisa’s middle school again. We’re devoting extra time this month, and probably through most of November, to developing financial support for our ministry. The matching funds opportunity is still there for new support, and we want to take full advantage of it. Thank you for praying with us.

Our August newsletter is now online. Since writing that letter, I (Tom) have been to the meetings with Bright Media Foundation that we mentioned there.

Brad Bright, president of Bright Media Foundation, is a brilliant thinker and more importantly, deeply devoted to helping the world discover who God is and understand that God really is the issue that matters. We have an election approaching in the U.S. Part of Brad’s message is that whatever issues rise to the surface, our view of God is the foundation that lies underneath all of them. There is nothing that says more about a person than how they view God. He is currently revising a book, God Is the Issue, with hopes to mail copies to thousands of pastors before the election.

Our strategy sessions with his team were more positive even than we had expected. For me, one of the great victories was helping them decide not to do some things, so that they could focus on activities that will have the greatest impact.

I have a strong sense that you’ll be hearing about this from sources other than just us. They’re developing a website along with their publishing projects, and when it’s ready to go, I’ll let you know. It’s a bit early for that yet.

Meanwhile, since I travel a lot, I had some frequent flier miles available to share with our daughter, Lisa. She is still “best friends forever” with our former next-door neighbor in Orlando, and she was able to come along on this trip and spend a couple of days with Kelsey. We had some great daddy-daughter time, too!

And last Sunday was Youth Sunday at our church. Lisa sang in the choir, and Jonathan delivered one of the messages! Though it hasn’t been posted quite yet, be able to find it on the web soon at the church’s website.