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    X-ministry: A Guide for Christian World Changers
    X-ministry: A Guide for Christian World Changers
    X-ministry: A Guide for Christian World Changers
    Ebook151 pages1 hour

    X-ministry: A Guide for Christian World Changers

    By Jay Neuman

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    About this ebook

    God has placed a ministry inside every Christian. We feel it beating with every heartbeat. Our purpose is found as we partner with Jesus to change the world around us. That is our ministry calling. But there’s a problem. For most of us our ministry does not have a name. Pastors and evangelists have names for their ministries. We have a blank waiting to be filled in by the story of our lives. It is a placeholder waiting for a name. It is an X.

    Without a ministry label we can feel like we have no ministry at all. We hear a subtle message that our careers and talents don't matter. Nothing could be farther from the truth. God has mapped out a path that leads to fulfilling our calling. Like all paths we must walk it to the end to see where it leads. Before we can do that, we must find it. And it is hidden.

    This book will be your guide to finding your X. It will show you how to walk your path. At the end of your path, history will fill in the blank with the name of a world-changer.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLulu.com
    Release dateMay 11, 2016
    ISBN9781365107634
    X-ministry: A Guide for Christian World Changers

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      Book preview

      X-ministry - Jay Neuman

      X-ministry: A Guide for Christian World Changers

      Title

      X-ministry

      A Guide for Christian World Changers

      Copyright

      Copyright  2015 Jay Neuman

      All Rights Reserved

      Cover image by Flavio Takemoto

      Dedication

      Dedicated to my parents

      Burt and Sue

      Chapter 1:

      X

      An infamous pirate captain, Long John Silver, and an innkeeper’s son, Jim Hawkins, became unlikely partners as they followed a mysterious map marked with an X.  It is the beginning to one of the most famous of all adventure stories.  The pirate map and the X lead them to a secret spot on a tropical island.  That is where the treasure is hidden.  It was on Treasure Island where Robert Louis Stevenson taught the world that X marks the spot. 

      X says something is there, but we do not know exactly what it is.

      Since Treasure Island, countless stories have been told of adventures leading to an X.  There is always a hero.  There is usually a beautiful woman.  Sometimes the hero is a beautiful woman.  Our hero uses courage, imagination and ingenuity to solve riddles, overcome obstacles and beat the odds.  It was always a long shot.  It started in hope.  It led to despair.  But it ends in glory.  Sometimes our hero reaches a dead end.  Is the story over?  No!  The X is meant to be found.  The X will be found.  But only if our hero refuses to give up.

      In Indiana Jones, The Last Crusade, we find the X again.  Indiana Jones is following his father’s diary of clues to find the Holy Grail.  The trail leads to a library.  But it is not just any library.  The library is housed in what used to be an ancient church, used by the Crusaders.  Indiana walks among the bookshelves searching for clues.  Then he realizes he needs a better vantage point.  He climbs an old metal stairway to the balcony level.  There he looks down and sees it.  In the tiles on the floor is a giant Roman numeral for the number 10.  In almost a whisper, he declares, X marks the spot.

      This is just the beginning of his adventure.  When Indiana Jones finds his X is when the story really begins.

      We each have an X

      Like Indiana Jones, we each have an X to find.  In the Crusader church, the X was built into the floor of the sanctuary.  It had been years since that old church had been used as a place of worship.  Still the X was there, right in its heart.  It never ceased waiting to be found.  It was just waiting for a hero with a spirit of adventure to search for it.

      God has placed an X in your heart.  With every heartbeat, your X calls out to you.  Your life is a temple built by a master architect.  There is a riddle to be solved.  There is an adventure to be lived.  There is a treasure to be shared with the world.  But first you must find your X.

      Generation X

      1991 was the turning point, or so we are told.  That is the year we labeled the generation who came after the Baby Boom.  They seemed aimless, without a cause or vision.  It was not yet clear what they would become.  In the absence of their own identity, they were given a place-holder, a non-name, an X.  It was up to history to fill in the blank. 

      Generation X was supposed to include everyone who was born between 1964 and 1984.  Ten years later, a new generation of young people was coming of age.  Journalists and marketers still did not have a name.  So they just called them Generation Y. Sometimes they are called Millennials.  That is just another non-name to label an un-labeled generation.  It is Generation X plus 1.  The funny thing is the name Generation X was actually borrowed.  It was first used in the 1950s to describe the generation born after World War II.  That is funny, because the label Gen-X was supposed to show how different this new generation was from the Baby Boomers born after World War II.

      What does all that mean?  It just means labels stink!  People love to put labels on other people they don’t understand.  That makes it so easy to think we know something about them without having to actually get to know them.  It makes things even easier when we give someone a label that says, You are nobody.  Just an X

      Fill in the Blank

      In 1991, the people in Generation X were too young to have made a mark on the world.  Nobody had started a Dot-com from their dorm room yet.  The X was really just a blank waiting to be filled in.  It was a question mark.  But the label was so strong to many it became a period.  The same is true for each of us.  The world is full of people who want to label us as nothing more than __________. 

      Your X is a blank until you fill it in.  It is a potential.  Your X is like that mark on the church floor leading Indiana Jones to his great adventure.  It marks the spot where you begin partnering with God to change the world.  God has placed a calling in your heart.  He has mapped out a path that leads to fulfilling your calling.  But like all paths, you must walk it to the end.  Before you can do that, you must find it.  And it is hidden.

      This book will be your guide to finding your X.  It will show you how to follow your path.  At the end of your path history will fill in the blank.  It will be the name of a world changer.  Your footprints along the path will be the lives changed because you were there to help them when they needed someone.

      Chapter 2: 

      Minister

      We drove to a dark parking lot in a corner of Joshua Tree National Park.  A cold wind blowing across the desert blew sand in our faces as we unloaded our cars.  Otherwise, it was eerily still.  A yellowish halo of light shone down from the parking lot streetlamp.  Beyond the light, shadowy outlines of cacti and palm trees could be seen through a sandy haze.  We pulled on our hiking boots and tied the laces.  Backpacks and tents were unloaded from our cars and hoisted onto our backs.  We had flashlights.  But we did not plan to use them.  It was a full moon in November. 

      My friends Bryan, Cuong, Danny and I had driven out to the desert after work for a short weekend adventure.  Before leaving the parking lot, we spread out a topographical map on the hood of Bryan’s car.  We placed a compass on the map and aligned it with the arrow pointing north in the legend at the corner of the map.  Then we rotated the map until the arrow was aligned with the magnetic north pole our compass was pointing towards.  The trail followed a straight dotted line towards the bottom right corner of the map.   It pointed southwest out of the parking lot.  The hoods of our cars were pointing directly towards it.

      As we made our way out of the parking lot and across the desert, the shadowy figures in the darkness began to take shape.  Leaving the halo of the streetlight behind us, our eyes gradually adjusted to the dark.  Before long, the full moon became a floodlight.  Shadows became dozens of varieties of cacti, yucca plants and small succulent bushes.  The occasional jack rabbit hopped nearby to stare at us, eyes glowing in the moonlight.  Then they darted off into the darkness.  In the clear desert air, stars crowded the night sky.  Even by the light of the full moon the Milky Way was clearly visible as swatch of hazy light spread across the center of the sky.

      The trail wound around some low rolling hills for about a half mile.  Then we saw it.  As we climbed to the top of a rise, the ground flattened out before us.  The winding trail became a straight line.  In the light of the full moon, our trail illuminated like a neon light.  It cut a straight line through the desert as far as the eye could see.  Directly above were the three stars of Orion’s belt.  They were stacked one on top of the other, exactly in line with the lighted trail.  It was a transcendent moment.  We spent the rest of the night following that trail through the desert towards those three stars, with Orion watching over us.  We felt like the wise men searching for Jesus.

      Finding Jesus

      You have probably heard it said that you cannot choose the family you are born into.  That is true.  At least it is true for you and me.  It was not true for Jesus.  Jesus was God in Heaven long before Mary and Joseph were even born.  He chose them to be his parents.  He chose to be born in a barn.  He chose to be the son of a poor carpenter.  From the time he was thirteen until he was thirty, he was a carpenter.  He chose that life for himself.

      We do not know exactly what Joseph did for a job.  The word carpenter in the Bible simply means craftsman.  Most

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