Highlight of the month:  We’re pregnant with our third...due in Feb!  We are excited and looking forward to what God has in store for us as a family.

In my January update I spoke about the possibility of starting a blog focused on frontier mission issues.  By the end of July, I had been selected to serve in areas related to Communications and Collaboration for our ministry, the Frontier Mission Fellowship or “FMF” for short.

The U.S. Center for World Mission has maintained a strong identity since its inception, but what many don’t realize is that there is an organization directly above the U.S. Center and a community of people who undergird, not only the Center’s ministries, but also those of William Carey International University, as well as a regional and global network of mission thinkers and mobilizers.  

This is the FMF.

We started our last update also talking about the “Wilder Conference” that happened on campus here in Pasadena.  Over 1500 young people gathered to hear about the unreached people groups of the world as well as receive a challenge to play their part in sending or going to the “hardest, darkest” places of the world.  See a clip here.

From The Wilder conference, the “Ekballo” House of Prayer was initiated on our campus at Mott Auditorium.  Led by Lou Engle of The Call, the goal of the house of prayer is 24/7 prayer for unreached people groups happening right here from our campus.  Learn more about Ekballo.

A group of Ekballo interns and staff are already on the campus and prayer shifts are going from Wed-Sat all day and night with the goal of expanding.  The family that manages the day to day operations for the ministry, Rod and Marion Hall, are graduates from our Bible College.  We didn’t plan to be here at the same time! They are one of the Godliest couples we know and we are so blessed to have them with us on campus.

As you may recall, we also entered into a 40-day corporate fast for new breakthrough and new seasons.  We also maintained our prayer focus for unreached people groups.  I believe we are experiencing some of the fruit of that fasting and prayer season even now!  We are seeing great things taking place already.

I want to give you a quick run down of what has happened from May-July of this year.

I traveled to Louisiana because of the death of my grandmother.  I was able to minister to my family and also travel to Florida to be with Liberty Church for their annual global missions conference.  It was a joy traveling back to where it all began for us, this time as representative of the FMF and all of its ministries.  I was able to connect with a real spiritual father in the faith, Pastor Buford Lipscomb.  He is the man who married Jacqueline and I and was my first real Pastor and mentor.  He and the church committed some support to help us in the ministry and let us know how proud they were of us.  I also connected again with Doug Gehman of Globe International.  They have been sending workers for 40 years!

Brayden’s speech competition- Brayden quoted a long passage from I Peter and received a superior mark.  We were so proud of his maturity and grace under fire.  Brayden continues with his crocheting hobby and will be starting up with Soccer and Cub Scouts again in the Fall.

We welcomed new interns for the summer and I worked with both Renee from Cal Baptist and Jeremy Leueng from Toronto.  Jeremy went on to China after his time with us.  Renee helped me work through some past Communications content that we were reviewing for the ministry.  Both Jeremy and Renee were excellent in heart and skill.  We need more young people like them!

I entered into a season of strategic planning at the FMF level and was honored to be in the room with men and women who have given decades to the ministry and have sacrificially served the frontier missions movement.  As the youngest member of the team, my voice was still honored and heard as we talked about the future of the ministry.   Our focus was on how we need to meld both the strategic and the supernatural in our planning.  It was a great time of learning and growing together.

Part of our discussion was about what it really means to have a “culture of honor.”   We are studying a book by the same name written by Pastor Danny Silk of Bethel Church, Redding. We took time to honor some of our cafeteria staff right then and there and it was a powerful example to us of the impact of honor.  As we prayed and blessed the staff, some of them were visibly moved to tears.  It has a profound impact on us as well and our next meeting included a time of reconciliation and tears

My cousin Heather visited from Louisiana and was able to visit our campus and hear the vision.  She was on a short-term missions trip serving the homeless on skid row with the LA Dream Center.  What a great opportunity to have an excuse to visit us!  She is also a monthly supporter and fan of what we do and was deeply impacted by her time here.

I spoke at our kids’ school, which is also a part of our FMF family of ministries.  I taught our son Brayden’s 4^th grade class on the book of Revelation.  No, I didn’t scare them!  My goal was to sow into them a missions vision, give them hope, and called them to their identity as sons and daughters of God. 

A precious little girl from Korea prayed to receive Jesus as well as the rest of the class.  She told me she was the first Christian in her family and would not be returning to school next month, but moving back home to Korea.  What will God do with this little one?

Almost since arriving at this assignment, I have been welcoming new people to our campus by giving campus tours.  The tours have been a way that I can express my passion for the history, vision, and future of the ministry.  No one formally asked me to do this, but I chose to do it on my own.  I didn’t realize that all along it would be part of my preparation from my new role serving the FMF.  There is so much rich story behind our ministry and even powerful stories that predate our nearly 40 year history.  I keep learning new things all the time and God is using it to open my eyes to what He wants to do...again!

In June, I met up with Peter McGowan of Plain Joe Studios, a design firm helping many churches and non-profits with communicating their story effectively.  I met Peter in Bangkok in a meeting with Pastors Francis Chan and Dave Gibbons.  We connected on Facebook but didn’t connect again until February when I reached out to get lunch.

The appointment was cancelled three times over four months before it was finally available!  The appointment slot became available AFTER I was offered the role in Communications.  I wasn’t expecting that role, so now I was on “high alert” for this meeting.

Peter and I met over Thai food and talked about what God was doing in our lives.  Peter showed me their studios and I was really impressed with his creativity and story.  As we talked I realized that Peter was responsible for the designs of some of the largest ministries in the U.S. including those close to some of our home bases, Healing Place Church of Baton Rouge and Elevation Church of Charlotte among many others.

Peter wanted me to also meet his brother Mel who runs Visioneering Studios in Irvine, CA.  Mel worked for Disney for ten years and now is responsible for some of the largest and well-known church and non profit architectural designs and redesigns.  I decided to go a step further and invite our senior leadership team as well as other key leaders to come with me to meet with Mel in person and hear his heart for serving non-profits and churches.

Our time turned out to be a divine appointment as we considered what a new strategic master plan for our campus might look like in the near future.  We are hopeful that Mel and Peter will be the right partners to help us look to the next season in the life of our ministry.  We will keep you up to date on which direction we choose!

Later in June, I prepared and presented a new branding and marketing strategy to our core leaders which would include a rebranding and possible renaming of the Frontier Mission Fellowship as well as a new branding and naming of our campus as a separate but connected entity.  This work took a lot of time to prepare and will be one of the main projects that I will be working on for the next year.  I believe it is a critical component that will not only affect our ministry locally but all of our members and partners serving overseas in various roles as well as the frontier movement itself.

In June Jacqueline and I celebrated our 12^th anniversary!  Just a day or so later, I put her and the boys on a plane to New Jersey so that she could spend some much needed time with her family.  Since the boys were born, Jacqueline’s family has not been able to spend much time with them, so I wanted to give as much time as needed.  They ended up staying for a month and a half!  I was able to fly out to Virginia Beach to meet my family for a week of vacation together.  My in laws had a condo near the beach and we spent a relaxing time together before I returned back to work in Los Angeles and they returned to New Jersey.  One great highlight was getting to meet Jacqueline's cousin and his wife.  They own 40 ice cream trucks in Virginia Beach and hire out loads of internationals each year, even from Thailand!  Their testimony is a great story of God's amazing grace, love, and power to save.

As a part of some major changes in the days to come, our ministry has been working with a lady named Vicky Warren to identify our most strategic objectives for the next year using a SWOT analysis.  SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.  We identified 13 key areas where we can give the highest focus over the next year as a ministry.  I am taking leadership in the area of External Communications.  Vicky has worked many years both with the Walt Disney company and with Steve Jobs at the beginnings of Apple.  She has been helping us grow tremendously as an organization so that we can better serve the Frontier Missions Movement.

Later in the month I was asked to be a member of the “Culture of Honor Task Force.” I am also serving as a part of our “Cause” team for the FMF and our Horizon team which is basically the “C Suite” level of our ministry.  Our groups are leading in all areas related to the future of our ministry.

Beyond that I have been given leadership of the prayer and worship time for unreached people groups.  Each Friday we pray for a different bloc of unreached peoples as a community.  Last month was South Asian peoples and this month we are praying for Tibetan peoples.  I continue to serve in the area of campus collaboration, helping to keep good communication going between our partners and spending time together with their key leaders over a meal each week.  Our ultimate goal is to make our 17 acre historical campus a place for new innovation and collaborative partnerships affecting the missions movement.

Some other fun events for this period were a visit from missionary statesman Luis Bush.  Luis coined the phrase “10-40 window” and has been a global leader for decades.  We honored him with a plaque and the gift of an ipad for his many years of service.  We are a part of his new Transform World initiative which includes a part called “Christ’s Missional Challenge.”  The USCWM is leading this part of the initiative.

I was able to attend a Jesus Culture LA event at the Gibson Amphitheatre at Universal Studios Hollywood.  It was a phenomenal event and I was very excited to see so many young people worshipping God with great passion.  Speaking of young people I also was privileged to teach a Perspectives class to the Traveling Team's Summer Intensive group.  I was able to teach on Lesson 10 of the course, "How Shall They Hear?"  It was a blast to be able to teach with a group of such energetic and engaged students.  Send more Lord!

I also attended a seminar on “Effective Ministry Communications” which was held locally at the Lake Ave. Church.  It was a great time of “sharpening the saw” and helping me to grow in effective communication skill.  We also had some great missionary speakers come through for our weekly seminars including a man who has been serving among Muslims in Indonesia for over twenty years and a Chinese lady named Mei who had powerful testimony of being rescued by Jesus from drowning to death even though she had never heard his name.  She was from an unreached people group in China and now serves as a secretary in a mission called African Enterprise!  Amazing story! Wish you could have heard it.

Finally, I will be announcing my new title in the organization soon.  My role will be serving the successor to our founder, Dr. Ralph D. Winter.  Winter was named one of the top 25 evangelical leaders in the country by TIME magazine.  His successor, Dave Datema, is my boss.  I feel privileged to be able to serve both him and the many ministries he leads.

If you made it to the end of this update, congratulations!  Thank you for caring enough to read it.  I will work on trying to do a monthly update rather than an update every three months.  So much has been happening that I have found it difficult to stop and make an update.  But I hope to do better starting this month in August.

Hope you enjoyed hearing from us and seeing a few key pictures.  We appreciate both your prayers and ongoing monthly financial support.  We could do none of this without people like you!  You share in the fruit of this ministry as a partner.  

If you have not partnered with us yet, we want you to know that we need you!  Take a moment and give a gift of any amount this month by clicking on the DONATE button.  Your giving will help us keep doing what we do by God's grace, but only stronger and better!

Thank you and God bless!  Love, the Lamberts