Our team was invited to learn the sport, Pelota Vasca, which just translates to Basque ball or on Wikipedia, Basque Pelota. It’s a really famous sport here in the Basque country in Spain.

There’s a professional player along with a group of guys who run a business of teaching the sport and helping to expand its influence. The sport can be kind of described in American terms as a mix of squash/racket ball and handball. Two or four players hit against a wall and the game-play is much like racket ball. The catch is, you hit the ball with your hand. (pun fully intended)

Anyway, this business is doing some publicity, so a local news crew came by to record it and our team was on the news. It was kind of a fun “Let’s watch the foreigners try to play our sport” piece

You’ll see my teammate Brendan shaking off his hand after hitting the ball. That’s because the ball is very hard (almost like a baseball but smaller) and even with padded gloves, it hurts! The professional (Fernando) showed us his hands and all of his knuckles were sort of misshaped and bent or overgrown from all the fractures. Most pros have pinky fingers that are bent almost to a 90 degree angle from all the breaks, and even they wear pads!

So, we were on the news in Pamplona. For those of you that always wanted to hear me speak Spanish, this is your opportunity.

Click the link below to play the video. They’ll make you watch a 20 second ad, and then you can click forward a bit until you get to 2:55 or 3:00 minutes. You’ll get to watch our team as well as practice your Spanish a bit!

You’ll see me, Brendan, Christine, Minhee, and Dominic.

http://www.eitb.com/videos/television/navarra-directo/detalle/668579/navarra-directo-27-mayo/

-Brendan is the other guy that’s my age. He’s a tent-making teacher who helps with the ministry
-Christine is wearing all black. She’s also a tent-making teacher who helps with the ministry
-Minhee is a foreign exchange student from South Korea. She’s wearing the blue Gap shirt. We invited her as well since she’s another foreigner that’s involved in our ministry.
-Dom is wearing the Florida shirt. He’s the pastor and leader of the ministry here.

It’s a website focusing on encouraging and informing those that are seeking out a possible future in mission work.

I hope you find it encouraging! I’ll try to check in here a bit more often as well with personal updates. Thanks for reading guys!

-Jordan

Clocks and Clouds

I was honored to have my friend Luke Shogren write recently to ask my input on title ideas for a song his band is releasing. Luke is a wonderful musician and he, his wife Steph, and Derek (on drums) have been part of the worship team at the Rock (my church in Minneapolis) for years. I’ve always loved their music.

I was encouraged that he sought me out for a creative title because as an aspiring writer, it’s said that you know you have a knack for it if others seek you out for your use of words and then benefit by those words. I am very honored to be able to contribute 3 little words to the musical talent of their group, Clocks and Clouds.

I had a list of ideas, many of them bad. That’s how it goes with creativity though. Any photographer will tell you that out of quantity comes quality. “Just write,” is how that sounds for a writer. You can edit later.

So, I sat down and watched the video twice, brainstormed some ideas, then at the end of the day I watched it again and brainstormed some more. From my brainstorming, I narrowed it down to three. “Darkness Gives Way” was the best fit.

I hope you enjoy the song. -And the title

http://www.clocksandcloudsmusic.com/

From Left to Right: Christine, Dámaris, Debora, Dominic, Me, Naomi, Brendan, Daniel.

Naomi is our adopted team member from England. She’s teaching in the same program as Christine and Brendan.

Real world-changers don’t allow the failures of others stop them from being great.

What’s that one thing you should have done? What’s that one thing that’s been on your heart for a long time? You want to start an outreach? You want to finally kick your laziness and get time in the Word every morning? You want to pray more? You want to kick impurity? You want to take care of your body?

Start now.  The others will fail like they always do.  That’s their problem.  They’ll write snide articles about it to make themselves feel better and comfortingly reassure each other that people cannot really change.

Well guess what?  That’s a big fat lie.  Remember who the father of lies is?

I don’t wish you a happy new year.  I wish you a Christ-centered, God filled year. Most times those years aren’t easy, but I promise you, they’re better than just happy.  They are full of Joy. Let this be the year you laugh in the face of the father of lies, and realize why we are called “More than conquerors” in the Bible.  We did not receive a spirit of timidity and slavery to fall back into fear.  We are victors in Christ.

Let today be the day when you throw away your shackles.  You’re not a slave, you’ve been adopted out of that cursed inheritance.  You’re now a son, a daughter, an heir.

In his chapter on friendship, he discusses how a group of friends is naturally based on common interests.  In Affection and Eros the objects look toward one another.  In friendship, the members walk side by side toward a common goal.

He breaks away from his main theme for a second to talk about the awkwardness experienced by a group of friends when it’s invaded by an outsider who does not care for their conversation.

In the example he uses an uneducated woman (which by today’s standards, this passage might seem to be bordering on sexism, but I don’t believe he was drawing a blanket statement.)

In his example, an uneducated woman walks into a group of erudite intellectuals like himself.  It was most likely something that had frequently happened to him.

He says the men in this given situation “know what discussion, proof and illustration mean.” The woman hasn’t gone beyond high school and long since forgot those elements of culture, “whose reading is the Women’s Magazines and whose general conversation is almost wholly narrative…” To be polite, the men try to explain what they’re talking about, and try to make her feel better by trying to make sense of her “blundering observations.”

“But the efforts soon fail and, for manners’ sake, what might have been a real discussion is deliberately diluted and peters out in gossip, anecdotes, and jokes.  Her presence has thus destroyed the very thing she was brought to share.  She can never really enter the circle because the circle ceases to be itself when she enters it – as the horizon ceases to be the horizon when you get there.”

What really grabbed me was that this woman was only able to speak in narrative.  Was Lewis saying that those who lack intelligence and culture speak mostly in narrative?  Why yes.  It’s true isn’t it?

What a mind job! I’d never thought of it.  The more narrative somebody uses , ie “She told me,” “Then I went…” “I was like…!” the less intelligent they normally are.

Those who talk of ideas, truths, worldviews, and the meaning behind things rely little on narrative.  Ideas and abstractions lie outside that realm.

It’s something so simple really, but I’d never stumbled upon it.  Of course this does not mean that all narrative connotes low intelligence.  Many of the greatest teachers exercise narrative in order to better convey their ideas.  Think Lewis himself with the Screwtape Letters, or a better example, Jesus with his parables.

Well, now you have a cheat sheet for sounding more intelligent.  Less narrative.

What do you think?  Is narrative the sign of a lesser intelligence? Maybe I should rewrite the first line of this post!

You’ve been writing?

Yes, I took November as a trial period to see if I would be able to dedicate an hour to writing every day while not letting it affect my ministry work.  It was hard at times, but I did it.  I had to be more diligent in waking up early!  That said, this blog took the brunt of me spending my writing time elsewhere.

The reason I dedicated that amount of time to writing is that I hoped to start a missions blog/website and needed to know if I could commit to writing for that long without being distracted from ministry here.  I’ve decided to go ahead with the blog idea I shared about last month.  I hope to have it up within a few weeks.  To read about that, click here.

In November I took part in the challenge called NaNoWriMo, which stands for National Novel Writing Month.  I was a great way to test if I was able to spend that kind of time writing without it affecting my ministry.  The goal was to write 50,000 words during the month of November as a rough draft to some form of literature.  I got to 42,000 and called it a month.

I was very satisfied with 42,000.  The goal was to get people writing, and whether or not I reached 50,000, it served its purpose in getting me writing.

I started a novel idea that had been on my mind for quite some time.  I’m currently half way done with the first draft.  I think it’ll need about 70-90,000 words to be finished, which is the perfect length for a novel of its kind.

It’s a missionary story about loving God in the hardest of circumstances.  I’ll leave the plot out for now, but that is one of the spiritual themes the runs through it.  This theme has started to become one of my main ministry mantras.  I hope to finish the book someday and see what might come of it.

I won’t necessarily hold my breath hoping it gets published.  Those chances are incredibly slim.  However, I don’t want to take it less seriously than if I were trying to get published.  The quality of the book will be reflected in the attitude I have in the writing.  My real desire, Lord willing, will be to finish it and at least order a bunch of copies to give to supporters, family, and friends.

So, that said, I have been writing, just not so much here.  I hope to soon start the missions blog, and steadily continue on the first draft of the novel.  Maybe in a year or two you’ll be able to read the finished version!  Meanwhile, I’ll try to poke in here more often.  It doesn’t take long to write if I don’t take it too seriously.

I’ll let you know when the missions blog is up.  I’m really excited to try this!

Thanks for stopping by,

Jordan

I don’t currently write a great deal.  I do a monthly update, and normally a few posts per month on this blog.  It’s a personal blog, hosted at wordpress’s site, so needless to say, it’s not meant for a large audience nor could it really even attract one.  However, I’ve been truly shocked at the number of readers I have from time to time.  Last January through March or April I was faithfully updating and writing on serious biblical issues.  Through the wonder of the interconnectedness of the internet, I had people from many different countries reading and finding encouragement.  That’s since dropped off as I haven’t been as consistent in frequently writing edifying and biblically challenging material, but nonetheless it continues.

Other reports come back to me regarding the number of people that read my ministry updates.  I have my list of 200~, but I hear more and more after every update about how so and so forwarded my update to a list of 20 people and so on.  It’s amazing how far it goes simply through email.  It’s awesome to see that my writing is blessing people that I’ve never met nor ever will meet.

It’s not that I have much free time here (there’s that self-asserting pride assuring you that I work hard,) but I think I could use it more effectively.  *I know I could.  At one point or another haven’t we all done the math as to how many hours we have in a week? 168 hours total -56 for sleep (ideally,) 40-50 for work, -x for commute, x for meals, x for exercise, devotions, talking to loved ones, etc.  We normally come up between 25-50 free hours still left over.  It is those hours that we will be held most accountable for.

I have begun to ponder an idea.  I have many ideas, as I’m sure many of you do.  Many are whimsical, or strike after a cup of coffee.  I get really excited while buzzed on caffeine, then realize the absurdity of the idea later.  There are some ideas however that don’t fade, but only grow stronger.

Pondering the influence of even the sparse writing that I’ve done has led me to consider venturing something.  Nothing would change here in Spain, I would just need to be more disciplined with my free time in order to carve out 10 hours a week (most likely in the mornings,) to undertake this idea.  The goal would be to create a professional website/blog focusing on informing and encouraging those that feel the biblical calling of church planting and mission work, at home or away.  It would also be informative for those that would find encouragement in reading about the state of missions and church planting worldwide.  There are many missions organizations, but all focus on their own ministries.  I haven’t found anything like this and that’s why I think it could work.

Cross-cultural missions is still a subject that is mostly imaginary in readers’ minds.  It still is in mine!  How’s that for irony?  People think of themselves in their local first-world church, then we think of the missionary in the hut in the ubiquitously used “Africa,” -never mind naming one of the 54 countries, we’ll just say the continent… We think of the martyred Jim Elliot or a Hudson Taylor in some sort of river-network, inland Chinese wonderland toting a tackle box of medical supplies, and that’s where it ends.

I would like to bridge that gap.  There are many Christians who are a part of great organizations and they can pursue missions through them.  Think of Campus Crusade or Navigators, my ministry GCM, or certain denominations.  They have a streamlined process for going into missions and church planting. There are many however that do not have this option, and have no idea where to start. For lack of information and a constant rekindling of the desire, the vision fades.

In order to reach these needs, different days within the week could be dedicated to certain things on the website.  One day could be devoted to giving concrete steps to follow in pursuing missions -things like learning languages, reaching out to the foreign sociolinguistic and ethnic groups in your own community, international outreach, church planting methods, getting out of debt in order to be free to go, etc.  Other days could be used for encouragement and a home base for what is going on in the world of missions.  Most people have yet to learn  about the 10/40 window, the Two-Thirds world, or the shift of Christianity to the Global South.  Many don’t know that there are 50,000 new believers per day in China.  There are revivals happening all over Latin America.  Wycliffe is on track to having a New Testament language translation started in every language group by somewhere between 2025 and 2035.  Many do not know that we’re seeing faster growth now than in any period since the early church.  Many don’t know these things, but there is a hunger for this heart-changing information.  I believe these kinds of articles alone would encourage and inform many to take furthering steps in church planting and mission work, at home and abroad.

It’s still something I’m considering.  Part of me says, “Jordan, don’t bite off more than you can chew.” Another part says, “What are you waiting for? It’s now or never.”  What do you think dear reader?

Please comment or write me at jordanmonson@gmail.com

-Until the Whole World Hears,

Jordan