i laugh now because that moment seems like ages ago, and yet at the same time, just yesterday.

I am actually blown away by how much I have learned over this last year. Grad school has a way of stretching me with out me really recognizing it... looking back and remembering how inflexible i was, actually makes me shake my head in amazement. I've done so much growing and have so much more to do.

It been such a good year. lessons learned, cars towed, friends made, battles won, roomies teased, tears shed, wine drank, hearts broken, games played, friends t.p.'d, fiances kissed good bye... & hello, families met, weddings planned, churches found, prayer rooms prayed in, studying done, grades earned, jobs changed, karaoke sang, sardine pasta ate, camping survived, fears unanswered, hopes remained...

all in all its been fantastic and full on.

This year brings a whole new set of challenges. I will finish my thesis, make trips to England, quite my job, get married in England, relocate to england, find a new job, join a Boiler Room, and spend my first fall as the wife of Steve Lawton....

it kind of makes me tingle... and that how I know that life is good, hard sometimes... but I give God all the glory and honor for sticking it out with me and blessing me so...

so MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL AND TO ALL A GOOD LIFE!

ahhh well, its been so worth it.

we are hosting a "Wine and Cheese Christmas Party" at the house I live in... we are excited about that!

we also just made christmas card for our house and I am soooooo pumped about sending those out this year. they will be hilarious!

this months is actually turning out to be quite fun and I am so thrilled that there are only 20 more days until christmas... come on christmas and get here already! soo excited i can barley breathe!

so i couldn't go to work monday night... it only had snowed an inch, but Seattle just can't handle cold weather at all!

so tuesday i made it slowly to work, but then wednesday I had the night off for my thanxgiving celebration.

thursday night i strutted into work to to finish my normal work week. but seeing as how i missed work on monday I asked to come in and make it up on Saturday. so this week has been the most interesting leap frogging work week. work a day relax... work a day relax... work a day relax... i kinda liked it! wink wink!

STEVE AND I GET MARRIED IN THE UK

AT 217 BOILER HOUSE

WITH BOTH OUR FAMILIES THERE

ON 8/08/2011

BY RUSSELL GODWARD

WITH CHEESE!

now for my save the dates... tickle tickle tickle!!

"Nudge" by Leonard Sweet

It says all the things I want to about evangelism but way smarter then I ever could.

p.s. interesting story, I ordered this book off Amazon and it arrived at my house 12 hours later.... seriously they must have had a guy waiting at the door and then 'potato gunned' him to my door... ridiculous!

I live in Seattle, a city known as the least churched city in the whole of America. When I first heard this, as I was packing my bags for Seattle, I thought "Wow, it must be a den of darkness there"...

So when I rocked up here, I was a bit surprised to find that about ever 3 or 4 block in any direction that I walked... there was a church. Ok fair enough... so my question.... Why do I keep running into people that are "going to build churches in Seattle"... to me there seem to be enough churches... but what appears to be lacking is people willing to go and support these churches.

I can't speak for the rest of the world, because I really have only lived in America, but if there is any one thing wrong with the growth of churches in America, its that there are too many of them!

Now, you might think I am one of those haters against church diversity and such... and I completely am not... but the majority of people that come up to me and say "oh you live in Capitol Hill??" or "oh you live in the Central district?" I"m going to start a church there!!" ... and then I ask them "Do you know the churches that are in that area? Do you know the network of intentional communities that are working there already?" ... in which the majority of them stammer and stutter, then declare to me how they are going to do "something different" or "something new"... in which I give them a "ahhh ok... God bless... " and then whisper (maybe a bit too self-righteously) "you are going to need it!"

I am just finishing a course on Collaboration.... Absolutely Brilliant. Grant it, the course is a little tedious, but the material is seriously phenomenal.

The author Phil Butler, comments on how important partnerships are to building quality relationships and opening up opportunities for prayer. He also comments on how out of all the groups of people in the world, Christians have the hardest time working together. Why is it that a group of people that claim to have the same leader (God, Jesus, The Holy Spirit) struggle so much to find a common vision to work together and help each other reach their goals?

I thought the author was a bit crazy when he first started writing... I mean Christians are about selflessness, humility, and love... they practically have "to live is Christ and to die is gain" tattooed on their foreheads... right? But then I realized as I read case study after case study that, somewhere in the beauty of Church, some wires got crossed.

Maybe its just me, but I tend to find that churches like to see themselves as little tropical paradises. They've heard the good news, they are about it... if you want to come to their island then awesome, but otherwise they are a bit oblivious and less then enthusiastic to know what is going on around them... if a church is "radical" they might even send out people to go "make other island churches".

I've by no means am a world traveller.... and I definitely write this from a position of inexperienced and ignorance, but it seems to me that God is a pretty big God... and that he pretty much is working in ever nation, city, town, village, and (gulp, shall I be so bold to say) person....

Don't get me wrong... there soooo is a need for people to have passion "To Go"... but somewhere along the way the reason for "going" seems to have gotten mixed up. The way I see it, the biggest reason people should have a passion "To Go" should be to find God in the midst of the struggle and pain they have heard of... to find the best way to support His work. Some times, and I would dare say it is rare, God will ask people to build something from the ground up... but most the time God simply is asking people to go and find Him and support His body...

So why are people so fascinated in "church planting" and not "church nurturing/supporting".... Ok this is where I might get a little mean... so stop reading if you want to think I am nice...

To me it has to do with pride. There is no personal glory in supporting something you didn't "create" or "plant". It sounds a lot more exciting to say you went to a city and "made a church", that you "personally made a way for people to find salvation"....

I've heard lately that Europe is one of the spiritually darkest places and I've been reading ways that people are attempting to reach out to Europe. I ran across a definition of a city in Europe as any "place that has a cathedral", which makes me think that Europe probably has enough churches too... This got me to thinking. Wouldn't it be great if somebody... somewhere... started training up loads of people "To Go" and be "Church Supporters"?... That simply said... churches in Europe could get on a master list that identified them as site that wanted people to come and invest in the work of strengthening and empowering the church. (gosh they even good let local people know they were recruiting! wink)

In a way its flipping the coin... instead of Churches proclaiming, "come to us because you are messed up and we want to fix you" they could instead use the asset approach and be like "we see the worth in you, come get involved with us, we could use you around here!" Thereby letting people enter a loving relationship with God through the art of support and encouragement. hmmm sounds like love to me.

But it will take both the Church and Planters to realize there need to be a change in how churches are being strengthened and empowered.

Basically... all this just made me realize, that a seed is planted in a moment, but a tree takes a lifetime to grow... seeds are amazing wonders to impregnates the earth with... but trees are what give us the oxygen we need to take all those collective breaths of life. It amazing having seed planters, but it is also just as vital (if not more) to be the one that nurtures the tree and tenderly cares for it to make it the most helpful and beautiful creation it can be.... planting takes a moment... nurturing takes a lifetime.

all this to say... as important as planting is... I think there needs to be a revived training of people to support the seeds that have already been planted.

I'm in a course called "Women and Children at Risk" this semester. I wasn't that bothered to take the class, but sense it is require... I am...

Its been a rough go. The professor is an Essex boy, that knows his crap and keeps you on your toes... I've never had to work so hard to get a "B"... hahaha, but I'm proud to say, I earned that "B"

This last class was blowing me away. I literally was on the edge of my seat. Statements like "Being focused on Child Development has shown positive community development for all" had my creative juices flowing for how I could use this to promote prayer communities.

I love prayer communities, but sadly the year i spend living in one, I wasn't a very good person and knew nothing about what it takes to be a leader. I was a hot-headed, judgemental, undisciplined person, that thought I knew everything about anything when it came to loving God and being radical... "psshhhh"

Really at the heart of it I was desperate for someone to tell me "Tina its ok.. you don't have to be a hero for God to love you" and was hurting because I just wanted someone... anyone to notice I was alive. I remember when I ran into one of my heroes. A famous 24-7 prayer-er... He compiled this book called "Writing on the Wall"... I remember really wanting to impress him and just standing there like a fool. My life compared to what he was doing for God was like... pathetic.

Tracy and Brian Heasly 24-7 Prayer Ibiza leaders

Hahaha, have you ever wanted to impress someone so much that you end being a twit!?!? wow, story of my life! wink... but even through my blunder of a year being involved in 24-7 Prayer Communities, people just kept loving on me.. Why!??! Only God knows. From the moment Andy Freeman greeted me at Heathrow airport with a warm smile and hug, to Sally and Rob Harman shuttling a homesick and confused American back to Stanford, to the lovely Carla Taylor being the most amazing host, to Richard and Katy Smith showing us around Colchester and letting us pray with their street pastors, to Brian and Tracy Heasley teaching us amazing spiritual lessons while gardening on the farm, to Dan Jones and Alana Wiens dedication to teach us the Story of God.... not to mention the people I did my gap year with Charl Young the young and fearless church pioneer, Gemma Prescott the famous Olympian and prayer warrior, Steve Lawton the golden boy of prayer, James Godward worship guru, Jono Freeman super servant... I mean truly amazing people!!

Charl Young and Colchester Boiler House leader Katy Smith

I had never felt so deep... and it scared me. I loved God a lot, but I was nothing compared to these heroes.... praying nonstop, open prayer center in the middle of clubs, prayer walking through towns, writing books about community, knowing the whole bible by heart, smile when they were sick, loving people who were creepy, not worrying about money, pioneering radical new forms of church...

And for one glorious year, I got to be in the club! haha it felt good to be in. But how shattered I was to have to leave, I thought for sure this was God's sign to me that I had, in fact, failed to prove myself in the hero club of praying and so I was out.

But something I've come to learn this year is that the people I labeled

as heroes, are not... that nothing they did even came close to being heroic. See cuz a hero lives for the sake of his story. something momental happened to them and only them and heroic stories are told to build on the identity of the hero.... see the people I look up to, in fact, are Saints. Why? Because Saints point to a Savior. They live not purely for selfish gain, but personify Philippians 1:21 "For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain".

The Gang from my gap year getting breaky at Ikea!

Prayer communities are not built on the backs of phenomenal, accidental, and rare heroes, but on the knees of simple, messed up people who chose to be intentional about pointing to a mighty Savior.... my definition of the everyday Saint.

To me 24-7 Prayer seems to carry a high concentration of these simple, everyday Saints and because of their intentionality I'm learning how to point to that mighty Savior too.

I am starting to but together my thesis for my masters degree and humbling am hoping to add to 24-7 Prayer amazing Vision 2020, specifically their dedication to mission and spreading prayer communities. Its my prayer that I can take the massive experiences of love and give them back to 24-7 Prayer, in a way that honors their rhythm of "being blessed to be a blessing"... yes, the longest ass Thank- you notes ever... a Thank- You Thesis.

so here is to the beginning!

xxx

Thank- You everyday Saints of 24-7 Prayer... for giving me a nudge that pointed into an intentional direction of eternal transformation!

(Transit 09: Gemma Prescott, Charl Young, Carla Taylor,

Me + Rob and Sally Harmon Stanford Boiler House leaders)