Discipleship Around the World

You gotta read my new blog, Seasoned Believers. On it I will reveal the key points to how we set up growth and healing communities around the world.

Here is a clue: personal relationship training for every single believer.

Second, Believers always seek others to help them before they seek assistance from a Minister, Counselor or Professional. I mean help in prayer, share and care. We all talk to numerous friends, family and even strangers before we will seek advice or assistance from a pro.

So!!!! We need to train the ordinary people in our churches to be able to listen, love, care, encourage and equip one another.

When I set up the Life Way Christian Psychiatric Hospital Unit in 1989 I had no formal training in hospital management. PTL! That meant I was not Leashed to certain outmoded paradigms so I did a lot of very creative and innovative things but did not even know I was doing them.

Because I had decided to make our church into a "Growth and Healing Community" so everyone knew how to pray, listen and minister in the Spirit of God I did the same thing at our Hospital. It was my naivete that allowed me to create one of the most powerful healing communities I ever saw. The most distressed people in our area proved to be wonderful helpers and care givers and as a by product got a lot better themselves.

The Holy Spirit worked in the hospital. Not long ago I met up with Dr. Cooper, our Medical Director. He is a very smart and capable Psychiatrist. He told me that day on the Sharon Woods Golf Course, "My time with you and the people at Life Way Counseling was the most exciting time of my professional life." Mine as well.

God was at work. The churches that adopt the same values can do it as well.

The Real Revolution Continues in Russia

The Russian Revolution began some 90 years ago in 1917 when the Bolsheviks overthrew the Tsar in a bloody take over. A succession of brutal leaders whose main approach to governance was terror kept the people oppressed. Finally, the Communists were defeated by their own incompetence and foolish ways. The flood gates of freedom were thrown open and the Russian people began to recover.

Recovery, however, is a long, hard battle. After 70 years of be ruled by paranoia the people were confused and many suffered from ptsd. One of the most serious problems is a lack of decision making experience and a lack of self confidence.

When we began to teach and minister in Russia in 1991 Glasnost had just begun but we could already see glimpses of freedom and innovation springing up among the Christians, most of whom had worshipped God and studied His word secretly for many years. One of my first acts was to recruit the most mature and Seasoned Believers to be trained in care, counseling and inner healing. Galina Chentsova stood out from the rest.

Galina came to Cincinnati and learned about the importance of raising up thousands of Christians to love, counsel and pray for one another. We gave Galina and her team the rights to all of our materials so she could legally use them as she needed. She dubbed her ministry, Teleios Moscow and proceeded to develop a center much like ours in Cincinnati.

At first she simply printed up some rough Russian translations of our English materials. Using this crude method Galina set up training centers all over the region.

That worked in a way but she needed a good translation and published materials that could be distributed around the former USSR. The cover above is just that. PTL! We finally have some of our training materials published and distributed by a well known publisher in Moscow.

Take a look at the web site at www.liferoute.ru and keep them in your prayers.

Contribute to the Russian Revolution by sending a tax deductible donation to:

Sweeten Life Systems

P.O. Box 498455

Cincinnati, OH 45249

ATTN: Russian Revolution

New Book In Russian

PTL! We have seen God's grace once again as Galina has been able to negotiate the translation of one of my books into Russian. Since the era of I have traveled to Russia to teach my materials and Galina has traveled here to learn everything she could. Galina is a Medical Doctor a Psychiatrist and a Christian Psychologist. However, under the Communists it normally was not allowed for a therapist of any sort to actually learn the skills of counseling.

The Apples of Gold courses, including Listening for Heaven's Sake and Speaking the Truth in Love were conceived and written as a result of my doctoral dissertation in 1975. It is rare for a dissertation to be made into such useful materials.

This is enormously good news for Galina and her team have been teaching all of the courses I developed by using home made materials. These materials were sometimes rough and clumsy translations. Now, at long last, we have Listening for Heaven's Sake in very good Russian.

Our deepest thanks go to Kay Martin, a widow who sacrificed home and finances to be a missionary in Ukraine. Kay ministered to individuals and families, helped set up recovery groups for alcoholics and their families and paid to have our materials translated. She is a Seasoned Saint who transferred her grief from losing husband Bill into a wonderful ministry to deeply hurting widows and orphans in the former USSR.

Also thanks go to Galina and her team of stalwarts who give it all to bring peace and abundance in Jesus Name to Russia.

Better and Better

Six days each week I get an electronic version of the Wall Street Journal. I wish I could write as well as they. The writers almost always report on non-fiction topics but they rarely fail to keep me reading and interested.

My favorite is The Opinion Journal in the morning and The Best of the Web in the afternoon. Here is the link so you can get it yourself. OpinionJournal OpinionJournal@wsj.com

On another less dramatic topic, I am speaking at New Life Church in Sharonville this Sunday morning at the 9:30 AM Adult Class and at the Worship Service an hour later. In the class I will address the Spiritual Stages of Development. I will be very surprised if there are not a high percentage of Seasoned Saints among the church because Michael Boys has taught the people well.

For worship I will focus on the approach Jesus took to evangelize his neighborhood and surrounding cities. The chapter of interest is Luke 10: At the conclusion, Dr. Luke says that the approach used by Jesus to get His Apostles to reach outside themselves was very productive.

In fact, Jesus was quoted as saying, "I saw the devil thrust down from heaven". Now that is some powerful witnessing. What in the world did they do to make such wonderful advances? Tune in Sunday and find out.

Looking at a New Part of the Elephant

Do you remember the poem about the Six Blind Men from Hindustan? They all tried to figure out what they were seeing through the eyes of touch and each saw/felt something very different. My life is like that. I look at life and see a variety of things in its tapestry.

Michael Cristiani, an old friend from U.C., has generously added a blog for us called, Seasoned Believers. This is the newest member of the Sweeten Life Systems family of ministries that focus on Christian Growth and Healing. The link is at the top of this blog but it can be accessed now at http://seasonedbelievers.blogspot.com/



From now on I shall try to keep the comments on the general issues surrounding growth and healing confined to this blog. My comments about marriage and family life will usually be posted on http://committedcouples.blogspot.com/ and those about Seasoned Saints on the new blog.




As a Christian entrepreneur, I am constantly innovating and creating new ways to help people live more enjoyable, fulfilling and abundant lives. Many people have satisfying and economically fulfilling lives without knowing Christ as Savior, but I am convinced that coming to faith in God through Jesus Christ provides a significant and meaningful boost to life today as well as life eternal. So, this blog will focus on counseling, training, healthy lifestyles, my overseas adventures and other topics that add to the general health and welfare of all who read it.

Thanks for the Feed Forward

A manual for a ministry of listening.

All my life I have received Feedback. When I was a teacher my principals regularly gave me feedback on my performance and of course I was fed back on my classes from grade school to grad school.

As a minister/pastor/preacher I was evaluated and confronted regularly. If you do not want feedback, stay out of the pulpit. As Dad was wont to say, "We go to church every Sunday and afterward we have "fried pastor for Sunday dinner".

But we are happy to receive your feed forward. Eh, what did you say? Feed Forward? What is that?

Feed back is all about what you think someone needs to do differently. Fee Forward is what you would like people to do in the future. This is one of the greatest changes to have ever occurred in the field of counseling. People go to counseling expecting someone to appear with a beard and a monocle and look at everything you are doing wrongly. That has changed in my model. Now I always try to ask, "What would you like to do better?"

Sweeten Life Systems focuses on building up Christian leaders, Seasoned Believers and Christian groups. We work with folks who are paid to do ministry and folks whose professions are focused on providing goods and services.

Here is my question: "What would be most helpful to you as a Seasoned Christian?" How can we build a better mousetrap? If a miracle occurred and God answered your prayers and fulfilled your dreams, what would you be doing?

If an organization were to put on a Gathering that scratched where you are itching, what would it do? Be? Look like?

I have written several books on listening and we want to listen to you.

World Prayer for Missions-Singapore

Valerie Chan, our lead teacher, and her son, Hsien Riong in a training class.

I recently received an e mail from a good friend who knows of my love for the Singaporean people. God enabled me to travel to Singapore some30 times over the past 12 years. I met some of the most dedicated, prayer filled people in the world in Singapore and hope to see them all again before we meet in Heaven. These on the right are some students I had in my classes at Singapore Management University.

The e mail I received mentioned the need to pray for Singaporeans to come to faith in Christ. It is one of the most culturally diverse populations I know. That very small island at the tip of Malaysia and just across from Indonesia has some three million citizens. However, it counts another million as foreign workers plus several million as tourists and visitors who shop or transit to another Asian country.

About 75% of the population is Chinese with 15% Malay and 8% Indian. This leaves only 2% as Anglos and assorted others. Despite the very agressive and concentrated evangelistic outreaches of the Christians in Singapore, few Muslims convert to Christ.

On one of my earliest trips I was blessed to meet a Malay woman who headed a Muslim lay counseling group. It was not long before she discovered that I had some experience in training both lay and professional counselors and we became friends. As a result, I was able to help them set up a great training program for parents and couples.

God was honored and they learned that we Christians cared enough to give our very best to them. God's love was not lost on her or her bosses. The most effective way to "witness" to people is through loving action. This is especially true for those who do not trust us.

During my last visit to the headquarters of the Association of Muslim Professionals, one of the support groups for divorced women wept as they told me of their thanks for how we had led them to find love, support and freedom. Let us pray that God will now open their eyes to His love and freedom.