So Father in heaven for this brief session and for this afternoon of sessions we ask for

your grace.

Brood in this assembly with the power of your spirit.

Open our minds, open and shape our hearts.

Help us to see and savor Jesus in the word, make applications to our lives.

And bless us now in these coming moments.

In Jesus, name we pray.

Amen.

One of the most controversial issues in missions today is speed.

How fast will the lost come to faith?

And how soon will new churches be able to plant new churches?

And how quickly will a new believer be able to move

into a leadership role.

And how long should cross-cultural missionaries

work on learning a language?

And in our times, we do well to carefully interrogate our assumptions about speed and pace.

Our internal speedometers are being conditioned by the quickening pace of modern life and

the rapid flow of our technological innovations.

And so, in our age of accelerations,

pressing questions relate to speed, not just for effective Christian mission, but for the healthy

Christian life. Will we be driven by the hurried pace of our world? Or, with the help

of God's word and his spirit in the life of the church, will we find a more

...