I am a Spirit…

Two months ago, a few of my friends shipped me to Finland for 3 weeks to do there what I already do here.

I was surprised, since it was my first international trip that was at someone else’s request.

I lived with Samu (who I had never met up to that point) and his family for 2 weeks. I did 2 meetings during the first 2 weeks and then 2 more meetings during the last week. It was cool to get acquainted with the culture and see what the people were like.

Finland is a very developed nation, and from what I was told, people are very closed unless it’s a foreigner. Despite the internal culture, we still saw some people get rocked on the streets one guy even ditched his crutches after Samu ministered to him.

They organized 2-day conferences in each city I was in. It was definitely a stretch for me because they had me speaking up to 6-7 hours per day, granted, everything was translated so it took twice as long as normal.

Every session that I taught, with the exception of 2, was recorded on video. I already have 1 session put up on my YouTube channel and I’m in the process of editing some others.

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There is one thing that I did catch in Finland:

During one of the weekends, there was a music festival in Oulu.

So if you could imagine that whole area in the middle, along the water, and around those two large buildings, jam packed with hundreds of goth teenagers drinking, smoking, and just hanging out.

While Samu and I were just strolling around, I noticed something:

These goth kids know how to do family better than most Christians.

It didn’t matter where you came from, how old you were… as long as you looked like them, were interested in what they were interested, you were like family.

They had a community where they naturally cared and served one another because they considered each other family.

So it got me thinking. I basically realized that you can either spend all your time, deprogramming and then reprogramming Christians to do family, OR you can find a community of people who already know how to do family and then just bring the kingdom.

The latter sounds much easier, but it’s the one that I haven’t done much of… but a few examples of people who already know how to do family? High school (sports, clubs, extracurriculars), college frats, ethnic groups, gangs, prisons, AA.

Any place where people consistently spend time with each other has potential to be a place where a family-like community can exist. It’d be so easy to bring in a new message and watch the entire family shift as a whole.

We are currently in the midst of invading my old high school’s Christian club and potentially influencing the entire high school. It’s definitely one of the most hopeful projects that we have going on.

I think Bill Johnson really hit it when he said (paraphrase), “When you lose the concept of family, you lose the concept of the Kingdom.”

Family is the most natural place where love develops. Across every cultural boundary, the love of the Kingdom is frequently found where families are. Obviously, referring back to the teenage, smoking, and drinking community in Finland, doesn’t mean I think their lifestyle is ok… but the fact that they understand family is what I took from it.

This is a HUGE part of the Kingdom. But even beyond just learning to do family, Jesus takes it a step further… we’re to treat people like family with people who don’t love us back. Jesus was clear, anyone can love those who love them (Matt 5:46). To do the Kingdom is to love those who can’t love back, because that’s what He first demonstrated to us (Rom 5:8, 1 John 4:19)!

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