The annual Proclaim non-conference.

Every year about this time, PROCLAIM! International has something called a "Gathering".  It's called a Gathering because it's not a conference.  Even though a bunch of people  get together at a specified location and have meetings and discussions and prayer times just like is done at a conference, this is NOT a conference.  It's a gathering.  I'm not all that sure why the distinction is important, but it gets made every year, so I guess it is.

Although Proclaim is not a large mission organization (just over 30 people for the moment) it still involves considerable time and expenses to gather people together from all over the world for this event.  Because of this it was decided this year to combine several types of conference, er, gathering events at the same time.  

So for Marj and I our time started with two days of meeting with the International Council, of which Russ is a member.  This is the council that oversees the functioning of the entire Proclaim community.  After this we had three days of "CrEW", an acronym which stands for "Creative Evangelism Workshop".  Then seven days of the "Gathering" proper, followed by another day and a half of International Council meetings.  

This adds up to about two weeks of staying at the same Conference Center, sorry, Gathering Center.  Two weeks of meetings, prayer times, praise times, small group discussions, teaching and learning times, and fun times of playing together.  The place where we stayed was in Germany, located somewhere in the Black Forest.  It was a nice enough place, with a quaint city center, good selection of shops, and more importantly nice places to have coffee.  We also took a trip as a group to nearby Heidelberg as a way of doing something fun together besides sitting in meetings and eating.

One challenge that a lot of missionaries face, and that many Proclaim missionaries are currently dealing with, is isolation.  Although the current trend in missions is to work in teams, which is a good thing, often these teams do not live close together, and especially new missionaries can have a very tough time where language learning, cultural adaptation, radical lifestyle changes, loss of identity, and changing expectations all hit at the same time.  Having a time together where people can share their hurts and concerns and receive prayer and understanding can make the difference between someone staying on the field and leaving.

It's also encouraging for us to hear each other's stories.  Stories that tell of God working in amazing ways encourage us, as do stories of God's faithfulness in difficult times.

This year the main speaker was Walt Barrett, a former Greater Europe Mission missionary, and someone that many of us in Proclaim had known for a long time.  Walt spoke about suffering and death as a blessing.  Although this is a difficult topic, it spoke to many and was greatly appreciated.

It was near the end of our time at the Gathering that we started receiving emails asking if we were safe and that we discovered the unrest and violence that had happened in the city in which we lived in France.  But that's another story...

In His Service,

Russ