One Hundred homes

Jesus said, ‘Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age— houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life."   Mark 10:29-30

This promise makes me (Lisa) wince a little. Like fundraising, it carries an element of vulnerability. Rich has been convinced from the start that a key part of our financial model for our missional year should be that our offer wherever we go is this: “We’ll get ourselves to your city. You house us while we’re there to the extent you are able, ideally in homes--and feed us while we’re teaching.”  For many nights we’ll be at retreat centers anyway, but on the edges we’ve asked our hosts to arrange housing, letting them know we’d prefer a pull-out couch in their living room to a nice hotel. There is a certain genius to that. It turns out, plenty of planning time has been required to acquire visas, arrange air or land travel, and create various seminar materials in time for them to be translated.  On this end it’s been harder than we anticipated getting our house, mail, dog, etc. squared away.

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Not having to worry about housing is a huge help, and not having to pay for it keeps our budget relatively low. But it does mean we’ll be ‘imposing,’ sometimes on people whose homes are fairly cramped already. No doubt it will mean stepping on some toes on occasion when we take an American-ly long shower or inadvertently offend in some other way. But our hope is that it will mean late-night talks and laughter over meals that wouldn’t happen if we tucked ourselves back into a hotel at the end of a day of teaching.  So, I’m trying to wince less and trust more. This journey will stretch us in every way, but if Jesus is right here, it will make us immeasurably wealthier people in the kingdom real estate department, which I suspect has more to do with friendships, hospitality given and received, and seeing God provide, than actual acreage. So here’s to the One Hundred Homes Journey—we’re glad to be able to share part of it with you via this blog, and so grateful for your prayers!