We’ve made it to launch week. Beginning Reconciled World has been a two-year journey. In the early days it started as a discussion about the best way to serve the church focused fields of Food for the Hungry. After lots of prayer, brainstorming, and board level discussions, all agreed that the best thing was to establish a separate organization—a space where these fields could continue to grow and develop on their own.

Now as we launch, I am reminded of the story of Abram (Genesis 12) who set out, leaving the comfort and security of home. While he had a clear sense of calling he didn’t have a detailed road map or even, it appears, a destination. Moving forward into what you believe God is calling you to is exciting. Leaving the security and comfort of home is always a little scary. It’s been the story of my life.

I’ve lived in Asia for nearly 20 years, 17 of which I worked for FH. Almost 10 years ago I started the TCT program. The goal was to move communities out of poverty merely by teaching churches to walk in obedience to God. Even to me it was a crazy, implausible idea but one that I did believe was biblical. My great plan was to find 10 churches that would be wiling to do an experiment and find out what would happen if they obeyed God in all areas of their life. We ended up starting with over 300 churches. That’s a scary sized experiment! Three years later, while I was still trying to work out what in the world we were doing, the communities that we were working with started to announce that they had moved out of poverty. I know, it’s not possible – that’s what I thought too. And yet as the evidence stacked up it did appear that God had done what seemed impossible.

To me it seemed like an isolated, crazy miracle (one that kept repeating). For the most part I tried to keep it quiet, but God kept prompting me to share the story of what HE had done. Reminding me that it wasn’t my story, but His. So slowly and somewhat reluctantly I started to share. The word spread and we even replicated the program in another country, and then started in two more countries and created a website to share the ideas (tctprogram.org).

And now God has launched me into a new adventure, starting and leading Reconciled World. Thankfully we have great, mostly established programs, but there’s still a lot to put together and learn. And so I find myself yet again, outside of my comfort zone, looking ahead, wondering what God will do next. It’s another chapter in the great adventure. If the last 20 years have proven anything, it’s that God is worthy of our trust. I’ve been constantly amazed at what He has done. Thus far over a million lives have been changed through the TCT program; mine one of them. What this new chapter holds, I have no idea, but we’d love to have you along for the journey.