Change - Navigators Train – Develop

How Spiritual Direction Has Changed Me and My Ministry

Jin Rood April 29, 2025

By Jin Rood, World Missions – As my husband, Mark, and I were completing our final year overseas, discerning where God was leading us next, I felt drawn toward a ministry of care. A mentor suggested I explore spiritual direction, and I was immediately intrigued. This form of caregiving focuses on deepening an individual’s relationship with God. Richard Foster explains, “Spiritual direction involves a process through which one person helps another person understand what God is doing and saying.”

With Me on My Journey

Jo Newell April 29, 2025

By Jo Newell, TDC

God walked so faithfully and kindly with me in the year following our only son Nathaniel’s death. He met me often through people, almost daily in nature, and usually through His Word. As I was approaching the first anniversary, I sensed from Him that He wanted me to seek a companion to accompany me as I continued this heartbreaking journey.

Building Below the Waterline

Howard Baker September 23, 2024

When surveying the landscape and mining the data around what is happening to people in positions of mission and ministry leadership, several trends become apparent. Among them are: While social science research gives us a laundry list of heed-worthy reasons why there is such a crisis in leadership happening today,

Black and White to Color: Rewiring My Brain for Intimacy

Dave Mead September 23, 2024

“I just wish you could connect with me better, and relate to me at a deeper level,” my wife said. It didn’t sound mad this time—but it was with heartbreaking sadness. After decades of marriage, we were once again having this weighty conversation. My dismissive attachment style wanted to run

The Voice of Belovedness and Freedom

Rhoda Owuor September 23, 2024

“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt so that you would no longer be slaves to the Egyptians; I broke the bars of your yoke and enabled you to walk with your head held high” (Leviticus 26:13). As a young child, my Sunday school teacher

Riding the Waves of Transition

Serene Chua July 22, 2024

Transitions can be hard, especially those that aren’t expected. But even for the ones we long for, there are still lessons to learn, emotions to sort out and most of all, places where we can meet with the Lord. I had always wanted to be married. In my mid 20s,

The Reality You Feared: Practical Steps for Making it Through

Austin Olinger July 22, 2024

I had been crying loudly for 15 minutes. My wife was laying peacefully and mostly non-responsive in bed next to me. Cancer had been taking her life for over a year and she was days away from breathing her last breath at age 38. I was at the end of

An Empty Place

Mark Rood July 22, 2024

With our belongings loaded onto a ship for the journey back to the U.S., I find myself sitting among the dust bunnies on the floor of our vacant Tokyo home, pondering the significance of the past 24 beautiful and complicated years. The farewells are over, our missionary roles are finished,

Transitions and Thresholds

Elizabeth Davies July 22, 2024

As soon as you hear the word transition or change, I’m sure a range of images, experiences, life stages, and emotions occur. As they signal the end of one thing and the beginning of something else, transitions also include a threshold: the “space between” that incorporates the ending of the

Does Fit = Faithful?

Lyndi Lee Markus April 2, 2022

Revealing a false equation that results in disordered thinking, eating, and emotional attachments as we swap the balanced, kind care of our God-given bodies for the pursuit of cultural constructs of beauty and fitness.