Author: rbarnett

Planning for the Future

As our team finishes up with their last VBS and then gets ready for a visit to the gypsy village, Johnny, Keith, Claudiu and I are discussing plans for future trips. The emotions I know were high today as our team said goodbye to many of the youth that are helping with the VBS from the local orphanage.

Tomorrow they will have time to shop for souvenirs before we head off to Budapest for the night so our travel day on Wednesday will not be as long. A few of us have succumb to either the water or the food but between Joey’s blueberries and the Imodium I found at the Farmacie in Baia  Mare, we are doing ok. Just pray that we are back to normal before we get on the plane.

I look forward to seeing my home again and my son, but there is still one more service and one more day of ministry plus who know what the future will hold.

More Pictures

Didn’t have time to blog last night but wanted to be sure to share some more pictures this morning before we get going. I stole Amy’s camera so if you have looked at the previous links you may want to look again especially for the traveling T-Shirt.

Anyway, here are the new links…

http://picasaweb.google.com/rbarnett73/Romania2010Day12?feat=directlink

http://picasaweb.google.com/rbarnett73/Romania2010Day4?feat=directlink

http://picasaweb.google.com/rbarnett73/Romania2010Day5?feat=directlink

http://picasaweb.google.com/rbarnett73/Romania2010Day6?feat=directlink

http://picasaweb.google.com/rbarnett73/Romania2010Day7?feat=directlink

Enjoy

Pictures and Brief Update

A number of people told me that they can not get to the pictures because they don’t have Facebook and it is requiring them to create an account to view the pictures so I am rectifying this. The new picture locations are as follows:

http://picasaweb.google.com/rbarnett73/Romania2010TravelDay12?authkey=Gv1sRgCJWF7sv15Y-Icg&feat=directlink

http://picasaweb.google.com/rbarnett73/Romania2010Day4?feat=directlink

http://picasaweb.google.com/rbarnett73/Romania2010Day5?feat=directlink

Hope you all enjoy.

I have been waiting to see if the team is going to Blog tonight, but we had a good stretch of storms tonight and I believe they said they had no power when they left today. They met us for service tonight. All were safe and had a good time today and the youth + Cathy, did a great job singing during the service. (Joey found a guitar so he was happy, I found Mountain Dew so I am as well.)

Tomorrow begins a long day for all so I am signing off for now.

Continue to pray,

In Jesus’ Name.

What Will the Future Hold?

Today we got to spend some time with the team during the VBS at Fanate. They were doing a wonderful job ministering to the children. Pastor, Johnny and I were able to meet with Pastor Claudu and Achim in order to discuss the possible future relationship between us. Afteraccessing their needs and the needs of their individual ministries we began to also encourage them to unite together in a partnership which will benefit both Claudu’s church and Achim’s camp. One thing about Achim, he has a heart of gold and is also a visionary with beig dreams to match his heart.

After the meetings were done our attention was turned to the Pastor’s conference. We were able to pour into 25-30 pastors who traveled a distance to listen to what two crazy Americans had to tell them. (I’ll let you figure out who they were) I was definitely humbled by the experience, but as pastor spoke about church planting I began to see some of the faces in a mode of disagreement. I believe that a number of them view their churches to be too small to plant another church, but the question is why. Why do we limit God by our own preconceived ideas of what is possible?

Luke 1:37 says, “With God all things are possible.” My challenge to the pastors was to answer the same way as Mary in this passage as she simply says to Gabriel, I am a servant of the Lord.

We then began to discuss church trends and throughout all of this discussion a reoccurring theme began to present itself, Making Disciples. At one point, I think I even heard myself say that it is better to make disciples than to make decisions. Now think about that for a minute. I explained my reasoning for this statement because on the surface it look like I am saying I am not interested in seeing people make a decision to come to Christ, but that is not it at all. I explained that as pastors, we are often tasked with the responsibility of reaching everyone, especially in a small church as many of these men serve, so it is better to make disciples who will also make disciples. It is at this point that the decisions being made will multiply rather than add up one at a time. Do the math. Imagine what our future will hold if we all began to think in this manner, that it is our responsibility to reach the lost and dying world around us.

I do not know what the future holds for the partnership between Kings and the pastors and churches here in Romania, but as Paul says often to the faithful followers of Christ in the churches, I from this day forward will always thank God for them, my brothers in service to Christ Jesus, for they are on the field fighting the good fight, being faithful to serve in a country where so many others have failed before them. Lord send a great Revival both to these people as well as to our own.

Amen!

For those who hung with me in yet another long post, I have included some more pictures at the link below. Oh and I think I am turning Pastor Keith into a night owl. Two nights in a row after 11:00pm, although it is only4:45pm back home right now so we will see.

Look forward to our return, but also to what more God has in store for us here.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2065931&id=1508080875

Hungarian Camp and Photos

I apologize that a few others did not blog tonight. We has a technical difficulty with the site that was beyond our control but is now fixed, but seeing that it is now 1:15am, I am hoping everyone else is asleep.

For those that like pictures, there are more posted here:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2065842&id=1508080875

Pastor and I we able to be with 32 Hungarian children today to be able to share with them the 4 parts of the gospel and to challenge them to not be ashamed as Paul writes in Romans 1:16.

So what are the 4 parts of the gospel?

Four Parts of the Gospel

  1. YOU ARE A SINNER
    1. The Verse:
      1. Romans 3:23: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
        1. When the Bible says, “All have sinned,” it means we have all broken God’s law.  All of us have sinned and fallen short of the standard God has set.  We have lied, cheated, and broken the Ten Commandments in thought and deed.
    2. The Illustration:
      1. The Rock
        1. Many people do not view themselves as sinners because they feel they are not that sinful.  “After all, I have never murdered anyone and I try to live a good moral life.”  We can feel “good” only when we compare ourselves to someone else who is not as good as we are.  However, the Bible says we fall short of God’s standard, not other people’s!
        2. Suppose each one of us were to pick up a rock, and I say to you, “We’ll throw our rocks and hit the North Pole.”  You might throw further than I, or I might throw further than you; and Mother Teresa might throw further than both of us, but none of us would hit the North Pole.  We would all come short. God has set a standard of righteousness that He expects every one of us to meet. While we may be more righteous compared to someone else, we are all sinful people, and no matter how religiously we live or how good we are, we cannot meet God’s standard.
        3. When we break a human law and we get caught, we have to pay a penalty, such as a traffic fine or a jail term.  What then is the penalty for breaking God’s laws?
  2. THE PENALTY OF SIN IS DEATH
    1. The Verse:
      1. Romans 6:23:  “For the wages of sin is death.”
        1. Not just physical death, for this death is later defined in the Bible as the “second death,” or “spiritual death,” which is separation from God forever in hell.   One may think this sounds somewhat harsh: How could a supposedly loving and merciful God send someone to hell who may be doing the best he can?   Besides the fact that none of us really do the best we can, we must understand that the Bible teaches that God is not only perfectly loving but is also perfectly just and perfectly righteous.  And a perfectly holy God cannot express one character quality at the expense of another.  For example, God cannot express His love in a way that would at the same time violate or compromise His justice.  Were God to do that even one time, he would no longer be a perfectly just God. Let me illustrate.
    2. The Illustration:
      1. The Judge
        1. Recently a San Diego newspaper  contained a story that implied a judge may get impeached for “fixing” his son’s parking fines.  Why couldn’t the judge still sit in judgment over bigger and more serious lawbreakers?  (This is what people expect God to do – overlook “parking fine” sinners and only judge the  “major leaguers.”)  The judge cannot do this, for even in the human judiciary system we recognize that if the judge violates the standard of justice he is obligated to uphold, he has no right to judge anyone else by that same standard.In a similar way, if God were to say to even one “parking fine” sinner, “You are free to go,” He would have no basis to send Adolph Hitler or even Satan himself to hell.  If even imperfect sinful man recognizes this by impeaching a judge, how much less can a perfectly holy God do what imperfect, sinful man won’t even do?  Would the Creator have a lower standard of morality than the creature?   God cannot grade on a “curve” and still be a perfectly righteous God; the penalty for sin must be paid.
    3. Transition:
      1. One could say that God had a problem, for God created man and loved man, but  man rebelled against Him.  We are a fallen race and God cannot overlook sin.   But the good news is that God found a way to solve the problem.
  3. CHRIST DIED FOR YOU
    1. The Verse:
      1. Romans 5:8:   “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
    2. The Illustration:
      1. The Judge II
        1. Let’s go back to the story of the judge who was impeached.  Let’s say that as the son stands before the judgment seat, the judge brings down the gavel and pronounces the verdict: “Guilty; the penalty is a $100 fine.”  But then an amazing thing happens.  The judge takes off his robe, walks down the stairs of his judgment seat, and stands with his son.  He turns to his own judgment bar and pays the $100 fine.  Then he walks back up the stairs and puts his robe back on.  Now if he were to do that, would the young man be free to go?  Yes, he would.  And would the judge have been impeached? Again, no, for he did not violate his justice because the penalty was paid. The San Diego judge could have paid the penalty in the place of his son and actually solved the problem.  In the same way, no matter how much God loved man, he had to bring down the gavel and say, “The penalty of sin is death.”  But He loved us so much that the Judge Himself, in the Person of Jesus Christ, came down and paid the penalty for us so we don’t have to pay it.  Christ died in your place as your substitute!
        2. There is one thing that God requires in order for you to get what Christ did on the cross applied to you personally.  The Bible says
  4. YOU CAN BE SAVED THROUGH FAITH 
    1. The Verse:
      1. Ephesians 2:8,9:  “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;  not as a result of works,  that no one should boast.”
        1. Faith in Christ saves from sin.  Works we do for God cannot save from sin, because works do not pay the penalty for sin.  It is not what I do for God that saves; it is what God has done for me.
        2. There are two elements to saving faith.
          1. Faith or belief means to accept something as true:  You must accept as true that Christ is the Son of God, that He died for your sins on the cross, was buried, and was raised from the dead just as the Bible says.  But just mentally assenting to the historical facts of the Gospel is not saving faith;  there is one other element.
          2. Faith or belief also means to trust or rely on someone for something. You must trust and rely on Christ alone as your only way to heaven. You must believe that Christ died for all of your sins – past, present, and future – and trust in Him, not your goodness, religious works, or anything else.

Sorry for the length of the post but I thought the content to be worthy of sharing.

No Mission is Stress Free if Done in Jesus’ Name

For those of us type A planners, Romania can be a challenge because it is such a fluid culture. It often becomes stressful when things do not go as smoothly as you planned them to be, but even the apostle Paul dealt with things being different that he had planned. If everything in ministry always went smoothly, Paul would not have had to written books like 1 Corinthians.

I was reminded tonight as I was talking to Keith what Dr. York once told me during my preaching class. He said that if I went to the pulpit with a full manuscript then I needed to answer for myself if the reason was because I was more worried about embarrassing or dishonoring myself rather than lifting up the word of God.

I think the same thing can be said in this culture of Romania. As a mission team, we cannot afford to allow Satan a foothold which is what happens when we begin to sweat the details so much that the ministry begins to be sacrificed. As the team continues to do a great job during the VBS, help me to be flexible, Lord help my wife continue to lead well, and overflow all of our hearts with both grace and com passion for each other and for the people of Romania. In Jesus’ Name…

Buonissimo

image

This is a bistro that serves awesome ice cream that we all went to after the service tonight. I’m not big on rasberry but it is great especially after the heat in the service.

Everyone did great and John and Cathy both gave his testimony.

I’m blogging from my phone so I’ll post more later.

Up Early? Believe it or not!

Most who know me know that I am a night owl and dread mornings, but I find that when I am away from home I am still a night owl, but mornings are actually really easy. I was awake about an hour before my alarm this morning, the sun was shining and it is already hot and muggy, but I am looking forward to the day and the new challenges it will bring.

I was thankful to read the blogs from Cori Beth and Joey since pastor and I are not with the rest of the team it helps to keep up with what they are involved in. This morning we are preaching at the camp and then again tonight. Pray that hearts will be broken for the gospel as this morning at breakfast we observed many in the streets of Baia Mare who were wandering the streets in need of salvation. This is why I am up early, because their is an urgency here for the gospel, but there is also an urgency back home in the states, probably even more so because we have cleverly disguised Christianity with religion and many are just as lost as those we witnessed this morning on the street, perhaps more so.

It is my prayer that we do not lose sight of this when we leave here. It is so easy to find the lost in a culture dominated by years of communism and Greek Orthodoxy, but may the Lord grant us the wisdom to seek out the religious in the states who are hiding amongst us with just as much a false sense of salvation as those who blatantly oppose the gospel. May we be ever vigilant in our efforts to see Jesus’ name made famous in both the US and Romania, but also in the rest of the world. (Acts 1:8)

Questioning the Ways of God

The Lord works in mysterious ways, we all know it, we all see it, but we sometimes don’t understand it. Tonight Pastor Keith and I prepared to preach a message of hope top a church of believers and the woman whose faithfulness provides a place for the church to meet inside of her home and one other lady who appeared to be a close personal friend of hers were the only ones in attendance and the woman whose home we were in had just had surgery for kidney stones and herself was not actually able to attend.

They were both apologetic, but it amazes me that it just did not matter. That seems odd to say knowing that we are here in Romania to preach the gospel, but was not the gospel preached this day to us through the women who opened their home to a group of pastors who were able to both meet together and also pray for them and each other? The question boils down to, “What is the Gospel, and how is it shared?” Christ often reached out to those who were struggling and did not need large crowds in order to love on people and to aid in and share in their struggles. Was it awkward that no one showed up, yes, but I did not see it as a failure or a problem, but according to God’s sovereignty and Hid purpose, we were faithfully there to serve in that situation. Because of the lack of attendance we were able to pray over this woman, her home, and her generosity, but also to spend time with Pastor Claudu (probably spelled wrong) who is a 30 year old pastor of a church of around 400 here in Baia Mare and encourage him in his current work.

So why do we question God’s ways? Accept the fact that he is God and that he works all thing for the good of the kingdom and be content and satisfied knowing that you were obedient to his word and his will. If you can do that, then you will truly know the joy of serving God. There will always be peaks and valleys in ministry, but we are not judged by the number in attendance in our churches but by the faithfulness by which we serve. In other words we need to not be “in ministry,” but we need to DO Ministry.

The Work Begins

Never fear, we are here. It was a long day of travel. Pastor and Cathy finally joined us at 3:00am, all of our luggage arrived, and God has already been blessing us and we are now with the entire team, translators included. This morning we were challenged by the pastor to recognize the True Jesus and to look past the preconceptions that we often place on who Jesus is in the Bible Belt. We sometimes see Jesus as our personal savior and one whom blesses us but we forget that we are to be sharing that blessing with others. This week we are going to do that, but the challenge is to not leave that in the country of Romania but to bring our service home with us so much that it becomes contagious.

In Luke 5:1-11, Luke tells the story of Jesus instructing the fishermen to fish in the deep when they knew that they should fish on the shallow. In this story we see Peter being faithful to Christ but also we see the pronoun change from the personal “I” to the pronoun “they.” For us the point is that our passion for fishing, for men that is not bass or crappie, should become contagious. God is in control and we need to Radically surrender to the Jesus of the Bible and not of the Bible belt, which often will mean abandoning what we think we know as Peter and the other fishermen had to do in Luke 5, and give authority over to Christ, and possibly with reckless abandon.

Continue to pray for us as the real work begins today.

For those who like pictures, I have uploaded some to Facebook at the link below:

http://www.facebook.com/photos.php?id=1508080875#!/album.php?aid=2065674&id=1508080875

Thank God for his blessings and for the work ahead.