 6AM Bible Study with Ukraine Staff 2 Kings 4: 3-6: ‘Go outside, borrow vessels from all your neighbors, empty vessels and not just a few. 4 Then go in, and shut the door behind you and your children, and start pouring into all these vessels; when each is full, set it aside.’ 5 So she left him and shut the door behind her and her children; they kept bringing vessels to her, and she kept pouring. 6 When the vessels were full, she said to her son, ‘Bring me another vessel.’ But he said to her, ‘There are no more.’ Then the oil stopped flowing.
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“Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring.” James 4:14 “God the Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer.” Hab. 3:19 I have been pondering passages like these recently. James writes to urge his listeners to humility regarding their plans for the future. Habakkuk confesses his trust in God, in the midst of extremely challenging times, and finds that a nimble, deer-like agility has come his way. For all of us, the past few weeks have brought enormous and difficult changes. A sprightly deer is not the best picture of my mental state as we have faced challenges and uncertainty, but at moments I have sensed God infusing agility into my heart. When a friend asked today how the CoVid-19 situation is affecting our travel plans, I replied, “At this point we have travel hopes, not travel plans.” So let me share our updated hopes, and two prayer requests. We remain hopeful and excited about the potential to serve the church in Southeast Asia by equipping its leaders and preachers. The first leg of our journey was to have been Rich training students and staff of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES, known as InterVarsity in the US) in Nepal, leaving June 10. That is most likely postponed to September. Our hope is that by late June, we will fly together to Kuala Lumpur (KL), Malaysia. The president of Alpha and Omega College (who is a three-time Fuller grad) continues to hope we can each teach an intensive course over the month of July. From there, we hope to travel to the Philippines to teach for a seminary in August. A promising development over the last month has been an offer for me to teach half-time at St. Paul’s Theological College (SPTC). This fast-growing college is an offshoot of Holy Trinity Bukit Batang. Many of you know the Alpha Course, which grew out of Holy Trinity Brompton, in England. Their sister church in KL is training leaders (from many denominations) for the church throughout Malaysia through SPTC. Rich and I hope to lead a retreat for their alumni in mid-July, and then I will teach theology, exegetical methods, and spiritual formation. Rich’s role with SPTC is less defined but his value to this and other colleges, churches and organizations, including IFES, will quickly become apparent.  wo Needs Have Arisen in Light of the Corona Virus:
First, our hope for this past month had been to drive to North Carolina to give our dog, Luna, into the care of our daughter and son-in-law. Since that was not possible, we now find ourselves hoping she could find a loving home with a friend in California. Luna is a sweet-tempered, gentle (barks about 4x a year) dog, about 8 years old, likely a blend of Black Lab and McNab Shepherd. Would you pray, think through your networks, and consider whether there might be a Luna-shaped void in your own heart and home, which you hadn’t known about until this very moment? Second, we find ourselves less confident of the rental market in light of global economic uncertainties, but we are moving ahead with packing up and preparing to put our house on the rental market in mid-April. Please pray for the right renters to emerge, for whom our home, with its quirky, older charm, will be just right. Fundraising Update: We are making progress! We are so grateful for the generosity of many of you who have given or committed to do so. Currently we have about 66% of our budget raised. If you desire to make your gift, or set up recurring gifts, please do so at our Paraclete page. Thanks so much! With love and hope, and even agility on our good days, Rich and Lisa  Dear Friends, I arrived home from Lviv, Ukraine January 25th, after 8 days in Ukraine and a day in travels each way. It was a short trip after a long 5-year absence from Ukraine, and only by the last day in Ukraine was I fully transitioned to the time zone! But the trip was well worth it. I had one full day in Lviv before the staff conference started. This day was scheduled, from my experience on past trips, simply to help me arrive ready to be able to teach when the conference started. I enjoyed a day in Lviv with Svitosar, the son of my friends Irena and Misha, whose English was excellent and who gave me a great tour of the city and of the principal universities, at one of which he was a student and a leader in the Christian student fellowship. The staff conference focused on Situational Leadership and the Leadership Development pipeline (see diagram below). We spent 3 sessions talking about the different leadership styles leaders need to be able to use when appropriate with people they are trying to lead, focusing on helping them to assess which style is appropriate for their specific students and contexts. This training is really helpful because everyone has a preferred style, and without thinking will tend to use that style even when it is not the right style for the person and situation at hand. Each staff person used as a case study for this training one or more of the students who would be attending the student leadership conference the next week. I heard from many of the 20 staff that this training was clarifying for them and helped give them specific directions on how to coach their student leaders over the following few days.  Situational Leadership Training Handout, emphasizing the invitation, coaching, supporting, delegating process to develop new students into mature leaders. After the weekend, the staff team was joined by nearly 40 students for the leadership training conference. My teaching, as requested by the conference director months ago, was focused on Biblical models of leadership, using the Sketches of Leadership curriculum recently translated into Ukrainian. The teaching was well received, and my interactive style with generous use of small groups, case studies and large group discussion format kept the interest of the students and even of the staff who were hearing from me for the third or fourth time. One highlight of the time was simply that many students had sufficiently strong English language skills that it was easy to talk with them outside the teaching time, and so I had several chances to do so over meals and breaks. Hearing their stories, of conversion or of campus discipleship, was inspiring and encouraging. Near the end of the conference two students approached me with a proposal, to continue to do the leadership Bible studies in a Zoom meeting (internet video call) format over the course of the year. Their English language skill is excellent, and they said that they'd have a small group of similarly motivated students to connect with me to go over the passage and discuss the case studies for other leadership topics we didn't have time to cover during the conference. It is always gratifying to hear from motivated students. The first session is in a few days--we'll see if they follow through, but I'm motivated! Finally, I asked for prayer for my connections with Irena (the CCX staff training coordinator) and Misha (the "Gen Sec" or General Secretary, the national leader of the movement). I had great conversations with both of them, and was able to hear from them about current challenges in their own ministry and to counsel them from scripture and my own experience. I look forward to continuing these relationships, over distance and perhaps with another visit to Ukraine in 2021. Thanks so much for your prayers on behalf of Ukraine, the country, as well as the CCX ministry there! (Below see pictures of Misha, the GenSec, and Vika, the conference director, with her husband Vasily, gifted team leader for the Kharkiv ministry.) More Clarity About July 2020 and Beyond We continue to see God opening doors and growing connections, to the point that now we anticipate a very full plate for the summer, and perhaps for the entire academic year beginning in the fall of 2020. We are actively seeking partners for our ministry now, so if you are open to considering this and we haven't personally contacted you, please do let us know or invite us to speak more personally about our needs, with our thanks! And thanks for your prayers and interest in this ministry. Rich Lamb Happy New Year! Nearly 20 years ago, I (Rich) went to Ukraine for my first time, teaching a "Developing Student Leaders" conference for staff in Eurasia. Staff from around the former Soviet Union attended the conference. In my class was a young staff person from Ukraine, Irena, and her English was good enough that we had conversations outside class about her life and ministry. Since then, I have been back to Ukraine many times, and Irena remained a fixture on that team, becoming more senior in the leadership of the movement in Ukraine. I always appreciate Irena's thoughtful and deeply poetic leadership style, and I have benefited from her meditations on scripture and our posture as leaders and servants. I've visited her home, with her husband Misha and their two growing boys, now mid-teens. A week from today I will once again be staying in Misha and Irena's home. They are hosting me again for the staff training conference and then student leadership conference that happens every year around this time. The IFES ministry to students in Ukraine is growing, and adding to their numbers through outreach and conversion. A growing ministry is fueled by growing leaders, and this strategic conference addresses that need. I will lead Bible studies in leadership and help students to sit at the feet of Jesus for a few days to learn from his example and teaching on shepherding and servant leadership. I will also be with the staff of the Ukraine student movement next weekend, just before the conference, to talk with them about leadership development, again learning from Jesus' model about how to develop rather than use students. Ministry and leadership with IFES should be a gift to students, an opportunity for them to see God at work in their own lives in a vital way. Watching a student fall in love with loving, serving and leading others in Jesus' name is, apart from conversion to faith itself, one of the great joys of being in student ministry. I was especially pleased to be invited back now. Five years ago Lisa and I went to Ukraine several times, and spent time helping Yulia, the new GenSec (senior leader of the IFES movement) and the staff there come around a renewed vision for the movement for the next five years. Recently, that young GenSec just stepped down from her leadership role, and a new leader, Misha (another Misha, which is Russian for "Mike") has been appointed as GenSec. I have a great deal of appreciation and affection for Misha, because he reminds me of myself in more than superficial ways. I look forward to getting to work more closely with him, at least during this next week, and potentially beyond that. Please pray for a good connection with Misha during my visit in Ukraine, and to listen to and serve him well as he leads to movement.  Conference Flyer for the "SALT" conference, "Richard Lamb, Sketches of Leadership" I was especially pleased to be invited back now. Five years ago Lisa and I went to Ukraine several times, and spent time helping Yulia, the new GenSec (senior leader of the IFES movement) and the staff there come around a renewed vision for the movement for the next five years. Recently, that young GenSec just stepped down from her leadership role, and a new leader, Misha (another Misha, which is Russian for "Mike") has been appointed as GenSec. I have a great deal of appreciation and affection for Misha, because he reminds me of myself in more than superficial ways. I look forward to getting to work more closely with him, at least during this next week, and potentially beyond that. Please pray for a good connection with Misha during my visit in Ukraine, and to listen to and serve him well as he leads to movement. More Clarity about What is Next While I have been in touch with people in Ukraine about my upcoming trip, Lisa has been communicating with a number of people in Malaysia, the Philippines, and elsewhere in Asia. As of now Lisa and I are planning to move out of our home by the end of June and to move to Malaysia, at least at first, expecting to teach two courses at a Bible College/Training Center near Kuala Lumpur for the month of July, and then for Lisa to teach her homiletics course at the Asian Theological Seminary in the Philippines in August. If you want to hear more about the process we've gone through to gain more clarity on where and why we are moving to Asia, please visit Lisa's latest post. We hope to be able to continue to invest in leadership development, in the context of the IFES work in Eurasia as well as in seminaries, training centers and with local church and ministry organizations, following our relational connections and going through doors as God gives us openings. We have are excited about the possibilities, but of course right now we are very aware of the losses, the dislocations, etc. If you have more questions, I encourage you to visit our blog. In general, more information is available at our blog, including our current understanding of our schedule in 2020. You may well be asking, "Are you raising funds for this ministry?" The answer is yes. We will be raising funds, not just for the trip to Ukraine that starts in a few days, but for an annual budget that would support our salary, our regional airfare and other ministry expenses. Of course, we would like for each person who reads this letter to consider becoming a part of our prayer/support team, and we do hope to connect with you directly over the next couple of months. Please prayerfully consider it, and please do pray for my trip and for the ministry in Ukraine (and the country as a whole, which still suffers in its war with Russia). If you know you'd like to be a part of the team, please visit our donation page to make a donation today. With gratitude and joy, Rich and Lisa Lamb  by Lisa Lamb
Some major life changes come from big, startling invitations--like the time the IVCF Area Director for Boston invited us, over dinner at a national staff gathering, to consider doing campus ministry work at Harvard. It was startling, utterly out of the blue, and eventually seemed to be God's clear invitation through that Area Director. Others come by way of a series of small invitations, which also seem to have the fingerprints of God on their envelopes. I"m guessing you have experienced both of those. Our sense of calling to devote the next 3-5 years to ministry in Southeast Asia has come to us more by the latter route, yet it leaves us no less excited to say yes. I (Lisa) want to share here five of the invitations we've received that lead us to this point: First, we were invited four years ago to teach at the Nepal Theological Seminary, when its dean was visiting Fuller Seminary. I have taught there once, and Rich twice, for the seminary and for the IFES students and staff; Rich will return in June to teach again. We loved the passion and devotion of the gifted leaders who serve the church in Nepal, which is growing rapidly under gifted leaders who are eager for more training in ministry skills. While we sensed that it would not make sense to attempt to relocate to Nepal due to visa restrictions, we have both articulated a desire to invest in the Church there. Second, Fuller Theological Seminary invited me in 2017 to teach full time as a Visiting Professor for three years. This is significant to the discernment picture for a few reasons. One is that I absolutely loved it! I had been teaching part-time while pastoring churches part-time for several years, but the chance to devote myself to teaching full time confirmed my sense of calling to the ministry of teaching. Not only did I love it, but I received confirmation from many students that I was quite good at it. My 'ratings' from student evaluations are consistently excellent. For various reasons, that has not been enough to garner a long-term position at Fuller. I have chosen to embrace that as guidance, and began during the second year (2018-2019) to inquire about opportunities to teach where the need was even greater, in the majority (developing) world. As I listened to where responses to those inquiries were positive, South East Asia consistently emerged. Out of all that inquiry, I received a third invitation. Third, Theresa Lua, the General Secretary of the Asian Theological Association, a consortium of 326 institutions from 33 countries, invited me to attend their triennial gathering in Singapore this past summer. This was an amazing, inspiring event. While there, I connected with deans and professors from schools throughout the region, and gained a clearer picture of how I/we could contribute. I learned, for example, that few seminaries have a homiletics professor. Their faculties are more skeletal, filling the 'crucial' positions of OT, NT, Theology, etc., and teaching homiletics in an ad hoc way. This is why I am not seeking a long-term faculty position at any one school. Rather, I am developing a curriculum that could work in a two-week module as well as a semester-long format, and we expect to itinerate as we build relational trust and receive invitations. Fourth, coming out of the conference, we did receive a few concrete invitations. One is to teach month-long courses near Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia in July at Alpha and Omega Christian College, followed by a two week module for Asia Theological Seminary of the Philippines in August. While at the ATA meetings, I met half a dozen faculty and church leaders from Malaysia who extended a warm welcome to Malaysia. Considering its cost of living (compared to say, Singapore or Hong Kong) and its relative stability, we believe it is a good place to make our home base. Fifth, we freely admit that we are also drawn to the region due to the invitation of our son and daughter-in-law to locate ourselves closer to them while they pursue business ventures in Hong Kong. Who knows, they may have thrown that out in jest, not thinking we'd take them seriously, but here we are! We enjoy them very much and are eager to connect more frequently than once a year. While we will be sorry to be much farther from our daughter, son-in-law, and my mom, we do look forward to that. Every invitation comes with a cost. Jesus told some parables about that. Saying yes involves saying no, to checking on one's oxen or, in our case, to hanging on to the home we've loved for 19 years. (We have come to the decision that it is too complicated to rent it out from this distance for this long, and that the best stewardship of our resources is to sell. We are sad about that, and daunted by the shedding task ahead, but we believe it is right.) But, as 2020 begins, we find ourselves excited and grateful to be able to say yes to the season of fruitful service we believe is ahead for us, and immensely grateful to you, our partners who help us to say yes. Dear Friends and Family, No year can be quite as momentous as last year, when both of our adult kids married the loves of their lives. But 2019 was a good year for us, as a couple and a family. First, a couple of updates and cute photos of our kids in their new locations and homes:
Becca and Avery and Sierra in Durham, NC Mark and Leslie and Moka in Hong Kong We too (Rich and Lisa) have had a great year. A special gift of our year was the way that both long and short-term guests filled our home with laughter and joy. Nelson, a graduate student at Fuller from Liberia, and his wife Esther completed a year living with us and will complete a second year with us while Nelson pursues his PhD studies in missiology. They have been a gift and a delight, sharpening our cross-cultural communication skills and offering enjoyable friendship.
Another highlight of our year was our trip to Hong Kong. It was a gift to get to know the city that has become home for Mark and Leslie--a vibrant and cosmopolitan place. Lisa went on from there to Singapore to attend the triennial meeting of the Asian Theological Association, a gathering of deans and professors from over 170 schools around Asia. Her hope in attending was to explore possibilities for teaching in Asia, and several strategic and fruitful connections were made there. That brings us to a significant update: we are discerning a calling to invest in leaders in the majority world, primarily in Southeast Asia. We are super excited about this! Lisa will complete her work at Fuller in June. We have re-engaged with our missions agency, Paraclete Mission Group, and we are in many conversations with deans, parachurch leaders, and missionaries in the region. Rich’s first missional venture, deepening his 18-year connection to the IFES in Eurasia, will be to Ukraine in January. We will then go to (between us) the Philippines, Nepal, and Malaysia this summer, offering training in preaching and leadership at a seminary, a Bible college, and for IFES campus ministry leaders. We hope to relocate to SE Asia long-term, as early as this fall. More details coming soon! We appreciate your prayers as we step out into many unknowns in the year ahead, trusting in God’s goodness and faithful provision. We wish you all a joyful new year! Merry Christmas! Rich and Lisa Lamb By Lisa Lamb
I attended the Asian Theological Association (ATA) meetings in Singapore this past August. I had expected to be impressed by the devotion and diversity of this gathering of over 300 leaders of schools served by the ATA in over 30 countries. I had not expected to be so inspired, even moved to tears, by moments such as when Dr. Ivor Poobalan, Dean of Colombo Theological University, brought out his guitar during a morning devotional and sang a profound lament for those killed in the Easter bombings in Sri Lanka. Three other takeaways stand out for me:
 Dear Friends, I have been back from Nepal for 2 weeks and have been reflecting on my time there. One theme of my teaching over the past 35+ years has been "multiplicative ministry." Multiplicative ministry is that training aspect of Jesus' ministry, when he is focused on reproduction of his own ministry in his disciples, calling them to go and do likewise. One key passage for this strategy is Mark 3:7-19, where you see Jesus teach the many, call together a selected group (those whom he desired), appoint the 12 as apostles, and rename the 3, his innermost group. I reflected on this because, during my time in Nepal, I had times of influence that seemed multiplicative and satisfying in inverse proportion to the size of the group to which I was ministering:
In Jesus, Rich Lamb (Below is the view from the prop plane flying at 16,500 ft altitude, looking up toward the Himalayan foothills at around 20,000 feet. I had this view for most of an hour-long flight.)   Dear Friends,
I have been in Nepal for 2 weeks and have less than a week before I leave. It has been a fruitful time. Some of the highlights:
Thanks for your support and prayer for this ministry. If you still had hoped to join the team, please visit our donation page today at Paraclete Ministries, and make a one-time donation. In Jesus, Rich Lamb  Dear Friends,
I arrived in Kathmandu (via a layover in Istanbul) yesterday around noon, and have been installed in the guest room at the seminary where I will be teaching starting this morning. As I arrived I was heartened by the warm weather, the air was fresh after a rain, and the temperature in Kathmandu was in the upper 50s (I'm guessing). I soon met with Sharad Lama, the General Secretary of the IFES movement in Nepal, and we went over details for my time here. Sharad is such a capable and gentle person, pastorally concerned for the comforts of my stay here, completely well organized regarding our various logistical details we need to arrange. I am confident my time in Nepal will be well used.
Being here in Kathmandu has made me grateful for heating in my home in California--it is nice to enjoy the fresh air but it is also nice to enjoy climate controlled living. (The buildings I've been in here are unheated and astonishingly well ventilated!) l Last night I went to bed with two layers of clothing over most of my body, and several blankets on me, and a hat on my head, as you can see from the picture. Actually, I was quite fine once I had all those layers. I slept for four hours, for which I was also grateful, and after that realized that I wouldn't be sleeping any more before class starts, so I began to work on this letter. Finally, I am grateful for reliable internet connection, which I will have at least during my time in Kathmandu, and which makes this letter and communication with Lisa possible during this long stretch away. Please pray:
In Jesus, Rich Lamb |
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