We been in Hawaii for about a week and a half now, and are beginning to settle in (perhaps with an emphasis on beginning). We are very thankful to have a great place for our family to live. Our new church family at Harbor has gone above and beyond to welcome us and care for us. We are so thankful for the community of faith we have moved into here and for Christ who binds us together.

Chris has begun in his role with the Antioch School and has spend this week planning and in meetings, Katie is working on our home, and the boys are enjoying life in Hawaii. However, we still have not quite found a normal routine. We are still waiting for our van to arrive and we still need to find quite a bit of furniture.

Please continue to pray that we will find the necessary furniture, that we will find a rhythm that is good for our family, and that we would build relationships in our neighbor and in our church.

We are thankful for your prayers and support and look forward to updating you on all that God has for us in the coming months.

Chris, Katie, Luke, Simon, and Elliot

· Tuesday, Feb 14, 10:10 am EST—fly out of Detroit Metro Airport

· Tuesday, Feb 14, 9:57 pm HST—arrive in Honolulu

· Tuesday—Thursday, Feb 14—16, spend two nights at hotel in Honolulu

· Thursday, Feb 16, move into our new home

As we are about to leave for Hawaii, we are excited to report several key answers to prayer. First, we have officially obtained both the necessary pledges for our full financial support and for our moving expenses. We also have found a rental home to move into in Hawaii. It is right in our target location and in our budget, so we are very excited about moving in there this Thursday!

In less than 48 hours, we will be on a plane to Honolulu. When we think of the many specific prayers that have been answers, the supporters who have committed to partner with us, and the way God has worked over the last several months, we cannot help but be amazed.

Thank you all for the role you have played in helping us realize this vision, and please keep praying for us as we settle in Hawaii and Chris’s ministry responsibilities begin. It will be an exciting time for our family, but doubtless will include many stressful times and temptation to doubt. Please pray that we will hold fast to the promises of the Gospel and remember God’s kindness to us.

We are so thankful that God has brought us to this point-though we have much work ahead the next couple days, we are looking forward to sending this ahead of us and spending some time with family over the next couple weeks.

I am not entirely sure what shape this website will take once we arrive in Hawaii, but we will certainly keep all of you who are praying for and supporting us up to date on what God is doing.

Please keep praying for us over the next couple weeks. We are seeing God answer many prayers. We have a place to live in Hawaii and have secured 100% of our support and our final moving expense funds.

We are excited to launch out on this new adventure as a family, but also realize many challenges are ahead. We are so thankful for the Gospel. Regardless of what God does or does not do in Hawaii, we, like the disciples who returned from preaching in Luke 10:20 can rejoice not in what God does in our ministry but what God has already done for us in Christ. It is in this hope that we are launching out to Hawaii.

These are busy, exciting, and sometimes scary days for the Bruno family. We are packing up the house and making 100 little decisions about what to keep, what to get rid of, and what goes in the nebulous “maybe” pile. We have many friends and family that we will see in coming weeks, and, while we are looking forward to seeing them, the good-byes will be hard.

Please continue praying for us over the next several weeks. Pray that God will provide the remaining $1700 that we need for our one-time expenses, as well as a bit more of ongoing support as necessary. Pray that all of the packing and moving would be as stress-free as possible. And most of all, pray that we would be ready to jump into this new ministry with both feet, ready to do all that God has for us in Hawaii.

We will be leaving the Chicago area January 30, and spending a week with Katie’s family in Wisconsin and a week with my family in Michigan before flying to Honolulu on February 14. We are very thankful for your partnership and prayers, and look forward to reporting all that God will do in the coming weeks, months, and years.

God is not dead, nor doth he sleep from an animatronic bird. Let earth proclaim her king from Mariah Carey. Son of God, love’s pure light, Radiant beams from Thy holy face With the dawn of redeeming grace from Justin Bieber. It is all very bizarre.

But the thing is, for most people these are meaningless words, sung out of nostalgia and empty sentimentality. That is why it is so easy to move on to the next holiday. The Valentine’s Day displays are already going up.

But are we treating Christmas any differently? God became man. Jesus did not regard equality with God as something to be selfishly grasped, but took on the form of a servant and became obedient to death, even the death of the cross. These are truths for the whole year.

Yes, the Advent season is over, but the incarnation and the Gospel need to be celebrated all year long. It really is a shame that we only sing our Christmas carols for one month per year.

O come, Thou Rod of Jesse, free
Thine own from Satan’s tyranny
From depths of Hell Thy people save
And give them victory o’er the grave
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

But even when the Tigers aren’t playing, I’m finding that the older I get, the more I like baseball. Though I probably still enjoy watching football on TV more than a baseball game on TV, the national pastime is a close second. And there is sporting event I’d rather see live than a baseball game. I think this is because baseball provides lessons for living life much more than the other major sports do.

Baseball teaches you to be patient. Watching or playing baseball is not like watching or playing basketball or even football. You need to wait for the right situation or the right pitch to hit before there is a pay-off. So it is in life. We have to be patient as we wait for God’s timing and the right situation.

Baseball teaches you about knowing when to be aggressive and when to play it safe. If you are playing third base and the batter bunts, you’ve got about a tenth of a second to decide whether to go home or to first with the ball. You’ve got to know the game situation, the batter, the man on third, and yourself. We need to have that kind of wisdom in life. We need to know our circumstances and ourselves when seeking wisdom for every potential decision, whether it is taking a new job or raising children.

Baseball teaches you about learning to endure for the long haul. A team has to play 162 games over the course of six months, and then play on for another month into the playoffs. The word you hear players use most to describe this is that it is a grind. They have to learn to find a pace to finish the marathon that is a baseball season.

So enjoy the end of the NFL season and the college bowl season, but remember pitchers and catchers report in just 65 days.

We still need to raise about $3000 more to cover all of our moving expenses, so please keep praying for that! We are excited about this move and trying to enjoy this Advent season while still whittling away the necessary moving details.

We have many things to sell, so if you live in the Chicago area and need bookshelves, a small table, chairs, or other household goods, let us know.

In the last 35 years or so, missiologists have sharpened the focus of what we mean by “all nations.” Beginning with the seminal work of Ralph Winter, who argued at the 1974 Lausanne conference (and in many other places after that) that a nation is not simply a geo-political state, but rather is a ethno-linguistic people group. Therefore, within every geo-political nation, there are typically many nations, in the biblical sense. This re-definition of nations has been missiologically fruitful to be sure. It has helped us focus our mission efforts on those people groups that are unreached and target them.

However, try as I might, I can’t shake the sense that this understanding of the nations is not exactly what the New Testament authors had in mind. As Ed Stetzer mentioned in his talk at the recent Desiring God conference on Missions, it is possible that Ralph Winter clued us into an understanding of “nations” that we had all been missing for nearly 2,000 years. However, when we consider the Old Testament background of πάντα τὰ ἔθνη, I think we’ll come away with a slightly different understanding.

The phrase πάντα τὰ ἔθνη appears 141 times in the Greek translation of the OT. The NT writers would have likely been familiar with this translation and had these uses in mind when they used this phrase. So, if we want to be faithful to the authors’ meaning in the text, then we probably need to start with the OT use of the phrase. While I won’t walk through all of the appearances here, I think we need to begin with the three places the phrase appears in Genesis. In these texts, the Lord says that all the nations on earth will be blessed through Abraham (Gen 18:18), that in Abraham’s seed all the nations will be blessed (Gen 22:18), and that God will multiply Abraham’s seed as the stars in the heavens and in his seed all the nations will be blessed (Gen 26:4).
The point is that the foundation for understanding the commission to the nations must begin with the Abrahamic blessings. Through the rest of the OT, the Davidic covenant, the promise of exile and return, and the blessings and curses on both Israel and the nations are seen through this lens. In Isaiah 66:18, God says, “the time is coming to gather all nations [πάντα τὰ ἔθνη] and tongues. And they shall come and shall see my glory.” When we come to the NT, we find that this time is now. The church is commissioned to go to all the nations.

And so, for nearly 2,000 years, the task of missions has been seen to see the Gospel go to every place where it is not. While we have gone in fits and starts, in the Western church, the last 200 years or so has been the most fruitful for pioneer missions–going where the Gospel is not.

However, with the introduction of Winter’s paradigm for nations as ethno-linguistic people groups, this focus was sharpened. And make no mistake, this is a good thing. To see where the Gospel is not and orient our missions efforts toward those places is important and proper. If we are taking seriously the promises to Abraham and the commission in the NT, then we must be continually pushing to reach all the nations with the Gospel. Initiatives like the Joshua Project, which tracks the current status of unreached people groups around the world, help us see clearly where we need to direct our resources, attention, and prayer.

But I do want to sound a small note of caution. Many disciples of Winter move from the definition of πάντα τὰ ἔθνη as “every single ethno-linguistic people group” tend to cite Matthew’s version of Mark 13:10: “And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come” (Matt 24:14). From this, some even argue, if we complete the mission and get the Gospel to every ethno-linguistic people group, this will trigger the return of Jesus. This is an overly mechanistic view and does not do justice to the full picture of the NT view of missions.

Most who trumpet the concept of completing the mission are not so extreme. For example, the theme of the recent Desiring God conference was “Finish the Mission.” But I’m not sure that I’m entirely comfortable with this language either. The idea seems to be that there is a clear finish line for missions. That is to say, once we have crossed all of our ethno-linguistic people groups off the list, the job of missions will be completed. But the vision of missions more than just a scattering from the nations, but rather a worldwide ingathering, a harvest of the nations, not a mere gleaning of the leftover crops.

So what is the solution? I would say do both. Yes, let’s work hard to reach every single ethno-linguistic people group with the Gospel, but also work hard to reach the people around us. Let’s avoid the trap of thinking about one or the other. Once a people group is reached, that does not mean it is reached for all time. Consider the example of Western Europe. By the time we reach all of the unreached in Asia, I suspect a whole new generation of unreached will emerge in Western Europe.

Reaching every tribe, tongue and people with the Gospel is an unbelievably important goal. But I am not convinced that doing will complete the task of missions. Rather, the task of reaching the nations must be both broad and deep, and this will continue until Christ returns.

Luke 2:52
And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.

Luke 9:47
But Jesus, knowing the reasoning of their hearts . . .

Have you ever thought about how Luke fits these two pieces together?

On the one hand, Luke affirms that Jesus increased in wisdom. That is to say, he grew in his knowledge and his understanding of the world. So then, we must affirm that, in his human nature, Christ did not, at least initially, exercise his attribute of omniscience.

On the other hand, Luke seems to affirm that Jesus knew what was going on in the hearts and minds of others. In Luke 9, he seems to know the hearts of the disciples in their desire to rule in the kingdom better than they did themselves.

So how does this fit together? I think this is one of the more fascinating and perhaps importance questions about the incarnation. I doubt I will have time to follow up on this in this setting, but would love to hear anyone’s thought if you happen to read this.