Nav Night Message: Reaching the Nations

On November 3 I taught at Nav Night, the FSU Navigators‘ weekly fellowship meeting, for the second time in three week. This time my topic was missions. When I first started to prep for this talk I thought it was going to be easy to put together. After all, I’d just been on a mission trip this past summer. But as I started to put my thoughts to paper I realized that I was about to talk to a group of people about sharing their faith abroad when, for many of them, it was still a very new and scary thing to do right here at home.

I’m happy to tell you that you can listen to this message online by streaming it below. You can also listen to more messages by staff and student leaders on the FSU Navigators Podcast.

I never really felt like this message had as much cohesion as I would have liked. Still, I was able to create a three-point outline to lend some structure to my thoughts. As a way of addressing my concern of speaking to neophytes I decided to emphasize the fact that sharing your faith is not optional, even though it is often the one part of being a Christ-follower that is easiest to treat that way.

One way to know whether this message had any impact will be to check back with me in three months. Students will be deciding where to live for the following year. I challenged them to have a missional mindset when making that decision, to live around those they can impact for Christ. Additionally, three months from now will also be near the sign-up deadline for summer training programs and short-term overseas mission trip. Any student who signs up for one of these trips will be demonstrating a willingness to grow in these areas.

Near the start of my message I made reference to buying a used car. I lifted this example from the intro to Donald Miller’s new book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. Also, I chose an ’89 Ford Taurus (rather than the Volvo in Miller’s intro) because my parents owned that car when I was growing up. I have more memories of that car being in the shop than of it being on the road.

I extensively used Crazy Love by Francis Chan in the preparation of this message. I recommend you check it out.

I’m not sure when I’ll next be teaching at Nav Night. At the earliest it wouldn’t be until January. For more information about the FSU Navigators visit us at our website, on Facebook and on Twitter. We also have videos on YouTube.