Hi fellow SEND-ers,

We are now starting the fifth week of the SEND U online course for team leaders. Eleven SEND team leaders and three World Team leaders are enrolled, coming from Alaska, Yukon, Spain, Japan, Taiwan, Poland, Macedonia, Moldova and a couple from the more southern parts of USA and Canada. Probably none of us are awake at any one time, so it is good that the course does not have any “live” sessions. All the interaction happens in forums, as course participants share their leadership stories and lessons learned, and comment and ask questions about the stories and lessons learned by others. I really enjoy facilitating the course, now for the third time, and particularly because I see team leaders encouraging and challenging one another throughout the course. One of the main texts that we use is Daniel Sinclair's A Vision of the Possible, which is available as a free PDF download on the SEND U wiki.

Many of you have benefited from the webinars that have been offered on a regular basis by The Mission Exchange and CrossGlobal Link. A webinar is a seminar offered through the Internet. SEND USA and SEND Canada had associate memberships in The Mission Exchange, and a full membership in CrossGlobal Link. Under that arrangement, SEND members from USA & Canada were able to watch these webinars at no cost if we watched them “live”. But in the past, watching recordings was not free, although SEND U had purchased some of the webinars, and could distribute them within the mission.
Now with the merger of these two associations into Missio Nexus, SEND has a new status. We are a Premium Access Organization, meaning that now all of our SEND members (not just those from USA and Canada) have full access to all webinars, and can download previously recorded webinars at no cost. This is a significant benefit to those who prefer not to watch webinars at 3:00 AM! Because we are members of SEND, we are also able to receive book reviews and book summaries from Missio Nexus on a regular basis. In order to take advantage of these free learning resources, you have to personally create a profile on the Missio Nexus website. Once you have a profile (with a login and password) on the Missio Nexus website, you can register for webinars and download recorded webinars for FREE. No longer do you need to write me to ask for the download instructions. Just go to the Missio Nexus store, and download whatever is of interest to you. Update: as of April, 2016: The instructions have changed. Ann Baur at mailto:abaur@send.org is the primary administrative contact for SEND. She can add new or delete staff from the organizational profile; if staff had a profile on the old website (prior to 2016) it was transferred to the new one but they must request a new password to login. Once someone is logged in, the live webinars can be found on the calendar or under the Categories: Event Proceedings-Webinars in the column on the right hand side. Old webinars are also available for viewing at the same location.

Here are a couple of my favourite webinars:

• Overcoming Death by Email with Ted Esler
• Leading from the Sandbox: Develop, Empower and Release High Impact Ministry Teams (As of April, 2016, this is no longer available on Missio Nexus)
• Eight Full-Funding Essentials (That We Too Easily Neglect) > recommended by USO appointee coaches

Back in December, I mentioned the upcoming Cross-cultural church planting school that EFCA EQUIP sponsors each summer. SEND U has been recommending this training for church planters and church planting coaches, and we are doing so again this year. Ted Szymczak, our SEND U Coordinator for church planting training, has updated the information for this training on the SEND U wiki. The dates are June 19 - 22, 2012, and the venue is 10 miles south of the Minneapolis International Airport. If any of you have completed language school and are going into church planting assignments or will be coaching church planters, we would strongly encourage you to take advantage of this training this summer, particularly if you will be in North America during the summer. Although SEND U did not design the training, we see it as a key component in the multiple step training process for our main task, that of establishing reproducing churches among the unreached. Please let Ted know (mailto:tszymczak@send.org) if you are interested in attending.

A few weeks ago, I was struck by these verses at the beginning of Paul's letter to the Romans – “I long to see you so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong—that is, that you and I may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith.” (Romans 1:11–12) Why does Paul need to see the Roman Christians in order to minister to them? Wasn't it sufficient that he wrote to them? After all, Romans is Paul's most complete explanation of the Gospel. But he apparently did not know much about specific problems and needs in the church, and so Paul wanted to interact with the Roman Christians to get to know them, and then minister to them more specifically and powerfully. Here in the greatest doctrinal treatise ever written, Paul argues for the importance of two-way interaction and mutual participation for effective ministry.
I do not believe that Paul's words necessarily can be used to conclude that face-to-face interaction is always necessary for effective ministry, for interaction can happen today in ways that were not possible for Paul (through the Internet). But we need to hear from the people to whom we are ministering before we can impart some spiritual gift (truth) to them to make them strong. Furthermore, ministry needs to be mutual. Like Paul, we should seek to be mutually encouraged by the faith of those we teach and disciple. We receive as well as give. We respond to what we see and hear, and allow them to respond to what they see and hear in us. Learning happens best in the context of a conversation, not a one-way transmission of content. SEND U wants to provide a forum for those types of conversations in all the training that we do.

Keep learning,

Ken
Ken Guenther
SENDU Director
living in Kiev, Ukraine