The last few years has tested IGSL like the rest of the world. One of the things to praise the Lord for is that in all of the disruption and with limited resources and limited faculty, we still were able to keep accepting and graduating students!! 

         One of the highlights of the new year was the 1st ever international gathering of the IGSL Peace Studies community (faculty, students, and alumni). Beyond degrees, these are amazing people engaged in peacebuilding and reconciliation work throughout the world including Nigeria, Zambia, Cameroon, Lebanon, Thailand, India, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and more! Grateful for IGSL’s impact through this program and in my life. There are a lot of promising pathways for collaboration for the sake of equipping the global church in the area of reconciliation ministry and peace – both as academics and as field practitioners in and through the church!

        It’s a New Year!! That means new possibilities, new opportunities, and a new semester!  We have no new resolutions, but we are coming into 2023 with the hope that the Lord has produced in us over the past year and deep gratefulness for His goodness and mercy to us.  We have been grateful for the ways God has worked in our family the past year and continued to use us in His global mission.  We’re deeply grateful for the generosity we experienced in end-of-the-year giving as well – God continues to provide us a safe space to learn from Him, recover in different ways, and parent well through our transition. It’s still tough (see our seminar below), but we keep experiencing God’s faithfulness and gentleness. 

We are in the first week of the new semester. Here are some additional prayer items for the next month or two:

•  Pray for Christine as she’s leading her team to map out the next 8 months with an eye on 2023-2024
• Pray for me as I’m teaching new modules on mentoring and coaching in a course with 2nd and 3rd-year students.  I’m also teaching 1st-year students in Team Leadership and Biblical Peacemaking while helping some of my colleagues learn my courses and material to teach in our face-to-face-only sections
• Pray for Morgan as she approaches graduation and college.  It’s looming as we experience her rotating between strong sentimentality and “the opposite of that!” 🙂  But we’re wanting to make the most of our last semester with all 5 of us under the same roof so you can pray we steward the time well together.
• Pray for IGSL: the new administration’s mandate to have all classes at least 50% face-to-face has interfered a lot with our digital and online strategies and plans (this affects us teaching virtually!). It’s been super tricky with our international students who cannot get to Manila yet. We also want to keep innovating toward an online program or two, but politics is a hindrance right now.
• As we shared the seminar we gave to Asian American leaders in Cru, in the wake of the recent mass shootings, we know that many are deeply affected by those events. We can all be praying for our brothers and sisters in the Asian-American community right now.

      IGSL’s faculty team is facilitating 2 conferences in the next month. We are running a virtual parenting conference with face to face components for our students in Manila. The pandemic tested a lot of families in the parenting arena. There continues to be a need for spouses to learn how to be a team in parenting and to parent in godly ways – and learn how to equip their communities and churches for godly parenting as well.  In a few weeks we are running a 3 day conference for single students and alumni to help equip them for their discipleship journeys in today’s culture.

You can click on the video above to watch a 45-minute seminar Christine and I gave to Cru’s Asian-American leaders in Epic Movement. We were asked to speak on how God forms and shapes leaders through seasons like the pandemic and transition and to share from our experience. 

      We have not had many opportunities to share our “story” of what the last couple years have really been like for us. We were excited for the chance to organize and share some of that work in December in ways that could bless other ministry leaders.  We thought it might bless you or at least give you a window into some of the deeper work we’ve seen God do in us as well as see some of how God is starting to use that journey to minister deeply to others. We got some great feedback from this time.

       It’s the last day of 2022!  Turning over the calendar at this time captures the ongoing realities of transition – looking both backward and looking forward. The start of every calendar year echoes the rhythms of what we face at so many critical points in life. We’ve been living in transition for what feels like several years now, but this new year celebration has us remembering a few major things where we see God’s sovereign hand at work and that are a fruit of our (and your) prayers.

• First-Year Benchmark!
  God led our whole family through our first year “back” in American schools, culture, and life. That first year felt like such a mountain, but God showed himself faithful and merciful through the ups and downs.
   
• Completing my Dissertation and PhD
  It’s been glorious to have had some months now to recover and be free from that level of stress, but it still feels like a miracle how the Lord guided me through the process during a season of personal limitation and weakness. We continue to pray God uses the experience and the new platform for His glory and Kingdom impact.
   
• Spiritual Growth
  It’s hard to capture this, but 2022 was an unprecedented year of spiritual growth for all 5 of us. Maybe that’s what regular, desperate, and vulnerable prayer results in!  If you’re curious – ask us if you get the chance! But God has brought healing in some places where it was needed, restoration where needed, and increased spiritual hunger. What has been most encouraging is seeing our kids all take significant steps toward owning their own faith. Third-culture missionary kids live with both good and also very difficult burdens from growing up somewhere else.  We have been grateful our kids are each moving toward the Lord in their own ways in response to their challenges.
   
• Helping IGSL Open Its Campus and Residential Education Again
  It’s been bumpy at times, but August brought back face-to-face education at IGSL for the first time since the start of the pandemic. Christine and I continue to teach, develop faculty, and help prepare the way for the program and curriculum changes ahead with both residential and online education co-existing. We are continually thinking about how to both deepen our education for today’s challenges as well as how to expand access to more students hungry for Great Commission training at the graduate level.
   
• Leadership development – Our Own!
  We are often the ones doing the development. But this year brought several pathways to get needed personal and professional development ourselves. One of the most rewarding and unexpected areas has been getting significant training and experience coaching high-level ministry leaders. We’re excited for how God is preparing us for greater impact ahead!

Every year has its own story. This was another tough year in a number of ways, but it was a year where it’s led us to a place of being excited about what 2023 may bring. We continue to learn in deeper and more intimate ways just how much we can trust the Lord with the future.  We pray that you experience God’s faithfulness and intimate presence in 2023 as you trust Him as well. We are so grateful for you!

                         Happy New Year!!!!

                            In Christ, 
                                    Brian & Christine (and family)