Tokyo City Focus Trip

I forgot my digital camera, or else you could be enjoying another picture of me in an airport. I’m in San Francisco on my way for another CityFocus trip to Tokyo. (In case you are new to The Global Road, CityFocus is WSN’s partnering effort in some major cities of the world to see spiritual awakening among the students) I’m going with John Waidley, a way cool friend from Mission Viejo, CA with a huge heart for the cities of the world. And Sam Osterloh, long time friend from college days at Southwest Missouri State University and current fellow National Team member with CCC. Joining us will be Scott and Jen Thomson from Yale and Greg Triplett from USC, Dennis Chen from Austin and Ralph Cooley from Idaho.

What strikes me as pretty amazing about John, Sam, and I on this trip is that we were all present at the spiritual birth of WSN in 1988 at Horn Creek Ranch in Colorado. This gathering of about 100 or so CCC staff from around the world launched what God had been putting on many hearts for years, that students could actually be effective “short term” missionaries that planted campus movements all over the world, and not just go for week long experiences with a hope that they would go long term some day overseas. And that it would be about all students going, not just American students.

But what signified this as a spiritual birth, and not just a strategy or conceptual meeting, was what we all experienced from the Lord one evening. A powerful wind rushing down the mountain during an evening of worship knocked out the electricity. We continued to worship by candlelight with an acoustic guitar and some simple choruses, and what happened next can be told, but not fully appreciated unless you were there.

Within a short time, we were led to a time of prayer and confession of sin in this mountain lodge, and you could feel the Spirit of God in our midst. Mixed with prayers of confession of pride were prayers for the nations to know the glory of God, for His Kingdom to advance, and for the gospel to reach out to the “Powerful Percent”, the 1% of people in the world who are university students. And when we ended that time, everyone felt a sense of awe, that we had just experienced something that was of God, and His presence was there in a special way. For many of us, it was and continues to be one of those defining moments in our Christian experience.

So here we are, three of us from that gathering, 19 years later, still involved in the vision that had grabbed our hearts; seeing God change the world through the lives of university students. Please pray for these meetings as we gather this week and pray and plan for an outpouring of His Spirit on the students of Tokyo and all of Japan.