Dear Support Team and interested people,

Some of you may be interested in a subterranean stream that flows under the landscape of our integration into the United World Mission (UWM).

A few years ago, while I was serving on the board of the United World Mission, the board of the Latin America Mission approached UWM with a request to be merged into the United World Mission. I had served with LAM from 1988 to 2004, but I’d not had all that much contact with the LAM and its people since moving to Overseas Council in 2004.

As the UWM board deliberated, I was on several occasions inexplicably overcome with emotion. I supposed it was because I saw this potential merger as a way to salvage LAM’s amazing legacy at a time when the mission—like so many other smallish missionary organizations—was facing what appeared to be insurmountable challenges.

Little did I know back then that God’s providence would bring us back into the LAM family by way of our appointment to UWM to serve in Latin America. Sometimes the heart knows more than the head can take in, but ain’t talkin’ about it.

As part of our re-integration into the LAM/UWM family, I’ve recently read Ken Strachan’s The Inescapable Calling. Strachan was the son of LAM’s founders and something of a legend among old-time LAMers. Because he died very young in 1964, when I was five years old and getting ready to flunk Beginner’s Swim Class at the Millersburg Area Swimming School, I never met him. But I should have read his book as an adult LAMer. I simply never got around to it.

Until now. Quite simply, it’s amazing. I posted a review of The Inescapable Calling over on my Canter Bridge blog today. Some of you may want to take a look.

I feel a real sense of wonder about how many paths have come full circle, back to the LAM via UWM, back to Latin America yet without forsaking the place in global theological education that came to me through Overseas Council, and so forth. Yet this is only really right if it’s a move forward to a new thing that the Lord is doing rather than a retreat to past things. I dare to think that Ken Strachan would have smiled and nodded affirmation if I’d had a chance to express this to him.

Thanks for listening in.

Warmly,

David