We went camping with all of our adult kids (except Emily) and five grandkids over Labor Day weekend to Rickett’s Glen in the Endless Mountains of PA. We had so much fun. The video clip below is of The Mummy.  The story of the Mummy began when John and Andrew realized that their tent was highly vulnerable to the attacks of the grandkids waking up early in the morning. So they hid their tent in the woods. The grandkids said, “Where did you tent go?” John said, “It didn’t go anywhere. It is still there. Only Christians can see it. If you can’t see it you must not be a Christian.” So the grandkids proceeded to hunt for the tent in the woods. When they finally discovered it John and Andrew told them that they had wakened the spirit of the Mummy. Hence the Mummy coming out of the woods! My son John is the Mummy and my other son Andrew is the narrator.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoDNXQaCg1s

fyi. Rickett’s Glen is one of two old growth areas left in PA. So on the waterfall trail you see towering Hemlock trees that are hundreds of years old. It is like a small version of one of the redwood parks in California. 100 years ago the state was completely logged over. Oddly enough, the use of oil and coal for heating reforested not only PA but most of the US which was down to about 10% of its original forests. The wood was used for logging and heating.

I’ve been thinking about Jesus a lot these days. I think the reason why goes back to three years ago when I began to pray daily that the church would “see Jesus”.

If you’ve read A Praying Life you know that I keep forgetting to pray about obvious things in my life. Beginning in the early 90s, I wrote the Love Course, The Person of Jesus study, Love Walked Among Us, and taught about 60 Person of Jesus seminars, but only in the last three years did I start praying regularly that the church would see Jesus! I’ve prayed for all the pieces of this, but I’ve not prayed for the whole enchilada, the big picture.

Only during this summer did I connect the dots between my praying daily for three years and this new ache in my heart. As usual, when God wants to do renewal he doesn’t begin with other people, but with me by deepening a 20-year old ache in my heart.

This summer I took two seminary professors that I know to lunch and asked them, “Has the church missed studying the person of Jesus? I know of only three books or articles in the last 500 years that have thoughtfully studied what Jesus is like as a person.” After about an hour discussion one said, “Yes, I guess it slipped through a crack.”  At which point I about jumped out of my chair, “A crack?! It is a huge hole! How could we have missed something so fundamental? The other professor and I brainstormed for almost an hour for some of the underlying causes on why Jesus is missed.

So would you join me in my daily prayer that the church world seeJesus? If the Spirit is going to reveal Jesus in new ways to his church it can only come through and be driven by a movement of prayer. I have a ten year old prayer card with just those two words scratched on the top “see Jesus”.

Please also pray for us from Sept 22-29 when we are doing three Jesus Conferences in a Muslim country. Our hope is that the growing house church movement will be equipped in a new way to share their faith and also mature their faith by looking at Jesus. A team of six of us is going: Bob Allums (PrayerLife), Richard Eckhardt (Person of Jesus), Julie Courtney (Women’s Ministry), Justin Wilson (Partner Relations), Doug Wallace (board member), and myself.

I got this email yesterday from a missionary in Ireland who is teaching the Person of Jesus study:

“We now have a nightly Bible study once a month and we have had on average 14-15 women each time. Plus, two Irish women who have NEVER led a Bible study before have taken the lessons and actually taught for the first time! Because the material is so detailed and the questions are spelled out, both women felt quite at ease and did an amazing job! Thanks so much for all prayers for us.

“This material is like a breath of fresh air to so many who have been “religious” their whole lives in Ireland, but have never known who Jesus really is!”

I thrill when I see emails like this, partly because I love to hear about Jesus being lifted up in other cultures and partly because it shows our strategy working at multipe levels. Here’s how….

1. I wrote the Person of Jesus manual for non-teachers. If they follow directions, they can be moderately effective. The manual shows a teacher, step-by-step, what they need to say next. Our goal is for someone to “teach better than they are”.

The manual combines the Socratic method of questions with a transferable style of teaching that can be duplicated world-wide. In our seminars, I describe this method as “Socrates meets McDonalds”. It integrates a right-brain questioning method with left-brain systemization.

2. Oddly enough, professional teachers sometimes struggle initially with the manual’s method because they are used to a sketchy outline and then they fill in the gaps. But there aren’t that many professional teachers out there. There are lots of Christians who are afraid to teach because they can’t see themselves as small group leaders. We hope to provide the ’software’ to help make that jump.

With that in mind, we’ve started to encourage pastors to bring both current and potential small group leaders to our pastors’ conferences. “Let us help you create your middle management.”

3. The other thing that thrills me is that this missionary sees our strategy of focusing on Jesus. The center of Christianity–Jesus– is also the most attractive part!

4. You can also see our marketing strategy at work. We focus on top-down marketing, getting pastors and Christian workers to our pastors’ conferences. This missionary came to our Cape May, NJ ‘04 Pastors’ Conference.

5. Finally, it thrills me to see the study working in multiple cultures. In the last several months, we’ve heard of the study being used in Ireland, India, Indonesia, Peru, and inner city Chattanooga.

Who knows what God might do?