Why Angie is Recording Music?

In the last two months, Angie has set up a studio in our basement and taken over my office.  (no I am not bitter about this, really,  I'm not. )

She is in the process of learning the ins and outs of the software and working out all of the bugs. She will hopefully start to actually record music in the next couple of weeks.

The purpose of the music is for our church planting.  In Wichita, our vision as a staff is to plant many churches among the poor.  We are working on developing resources that will assist in the planting of the churches.  One of those resources will be the music Angie is producing.

As we plant a church, if there isn't someone gifted to lead worship in the church, anybody can lead with the CD. Below is a few pictures of Angie in her studio.

Please pray for her as she records the music.   The project at times feels enormous and overwhelming to her.   Pray that this CD project would be truly used to help us plant churches here in Wichita and that through it people will be lead into the presence of God.

Why I "Tri"?

This past Sunday, I completed my first triathlon.  For the past 6 years, I have wanted to do one but only in the past year have I gotten serious about getting in shape.

The past 10 weeks, I took a tri class at our YMCA.  I had already been swimming, biking, and running, but in the class I was able to learn more about the sport and take my fitness to another level.  I have so much to learn and will need to increase my fitness a lot more in the future. But I feel great about where I am at now.

I am not sure what first attracted me to triathlons.  I often like to read stories about humans doing incredible feats and I think I was just intrigued with the thought of being in great shape and doing all three sports.

A couple of years ago, Lisa Entz, one of my leaders and co-missionaries suggested to me that I needed to be more competitive.  Growing up and all through college, I competed regularly in sports and mostly in tennis.  But in these last years, I haven't done much competing.  She suggested for my personality and overall health, that I need to compete.  She thought as I find something to compete in, that it will help me in other areas of my life.

I am seeing if triathlons are something that I can get into that can be my competitive outlet. This past Sunday I finally did my first one. It was a very small one and as I was finishing it, there were inner thoughts that were whispering, "Why in the world are you doing this?'

But I kept plugging away and was able to finish.  This summer, I plan to do a couple of tri's outside.  The first distance will be a Sprint, and the 2nd is a shorter version of an Olympic.   My goal someday is to think about doing a half Ironman, but for now I am taking it one race at a time and seeing how I enjoy it.

Here is a link to some pictures I posted on Facebook


http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=341766&id=534216971&l=eb364e3ff3

Why we love serving with World Impact?

This September, we will complete 12 years of service with World Impact.

Angie and I are more excited than ever about serving. Here are some reasons why we love ministering with World Impact.

• Their commitment to empowering the urban poor.   (James 2:5)
• Their commitment to starting churches in some of the hardest communities in the city, often where the church is currently not thriving
• We love all of the staff we serve with in Wichita and in other cities.  Because Wichita hosts many conferences, we have had the privilege of getting to know many staff in other other cities.  We feel like we serve with the finest missionaries.
• We have great leadership.
• Our staff has become our family and they have truly embraced our kids as "Aunts" and "Uncles".
• Serving with World Impact allows us to do many different jobs and roles.  Our days are never dull or boring.  Whether we are trying to use our broken Spanish in helping a church plant, or hosting college students, or interacting with different leaders who are in for training with TUMI, we are blessed to meet a wide variety of amazing people who love the Lord.
• Best of all we get to serve God and give Him glory everyday in all of those roles!

Moody Students!!!

Instead of answering a WHY question this week, here is an update on our week with Moody Students.

The past two years I have made 5 recruiting trips to Moody.  They have a great urban missions program there led by Professor Clive Craigen.   He really loves World Impact because of our emphasis on church planting.  So in the last year, we talked about having students come for a learning trip with us here in Wichita and with our ministry in St. Louis.

The past week, we had 5 students visit Wichita for 3 full days.  Part of the time was spent in the classroom doing different teachings on culture, the city, and church planting.  Then the rest of the time was visiting different church plant services, or just learning from various church plant pastors that I know.

On Tuesday afternoon, we spent two hours doing door to door evangelism in our old community of Oaklawn. The students enjoyed partnering with Lighthouse Community Church and putting into practice their faith.

The last evening, Angie and I hosted them in our house and we led them in prayer and worship.

Below are a few pictures.

Why I am trying to be healthy?

In our culture there are two extremes.  One side of culture tempts us with any good food imaginable and teaches us to indulge.  Our society has never been unhealthier and obesity is a major issue.  Yet the other extreme of culture says that it’s all about image and looks.  There are so many fad diets and quick fixes to offer good health.

Then within Christian culture there is wide opinion.  Does it really matter if I am healthy?  Does God only care about my soul?  What does it matter since I get a new body in heaven?

Growing up in my Penner family, nutrition and health were something that was often discussed. My dad, being a dentist, has attended many lectures over the years on health and this has lent toward many discussions. I can remember my mom cooking oat bran muffins and at times having to eat cookies and pizza with ground whole wheat flour!  Also playing tennis and attempting to be an athlete, I somewhat cared what I ate. 

But once marriage and ministry hit, these values left me.  I didn’t care about my weight or my eating habits.  I was living in a culture that didn’t care about health at all so it was easy to fit in. 

We were extremely busy with planting a church and raising a new family, so caring about what we ate or our weight, or exercising were things far from the reality of our daily lives.  Deep down I had this longing to be healthy and to get back in shape, but at that point in my life it wasn’t possible.  I struggled with my weight getting to a max of 210 which was 35 pounds more than when I was first married.  I couldn’t run.  I felt lousy, and I was down about being so out of shape.

As we shared our story in an earlier blog, God has brought much healing to our lives. It’s also brought a conviction that I need to be healthier.  All of 2010 was a process of me learning about health and learning a new lifestyle.  I am still learning, but I feel that we have made some traction towards better health.

In the past year, I have lost 25 pounds - most of that since September.  But it did start earlier since I had slowly started to and now focus on eating better and exercising.

Now back to the questions of “Why?”  I do believe that God cares about our bodies and that he wants us to take care of them.  We do this to honor and glorify God.  God only gave us one body to live in. This is now our moment to live our lives fully for the kingdom of God, and if we are not taking care of our bodies then we are going to be of less use for His kingdom.

A good friend and spiritual mentor of mine, Dave Williams, said at our missionary retreat. “You take your body with you everywhere you go.”  That is the “vehicle” that God has given all of us and it is our responsibility to take care of it.

I have often struggled with being tired and not having enough energy which then can directly affect my spirituality.  For me to have energy, I need to sleep at least 8 hours at night.  Often I will sleep even 8 ½.  That may not be possible for everyone but that is what I need to do.

I will talk in another time about my exercise and eating habits.  But the green smoothie has been my key.

I do firmly believe that our health needs to be in balance.  Ultimately it is our soul that we should be most concerned about. The great news is that we do get new bodies in Heaven.  So if ours have failed, we still have a great hope.

But if we can, I do think we should take care of the body we have now.  Most importantly, so we can be as effective as possible for the kingdom of God.

I would love to hear your comments!  Even if you think I am off-base on this, I would love to hear from you!

My one scripture that I often think about is 1 Corinthians 6:19 (NIV, ©2010).

“19 Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;”

If my body is a temple of the Spirit, then I think I should provide the Spirit with a good home.

WHY?

We are going to start a new series on our blogs and we will answer different WHY questions.

I (Matt) am definitely not a gifted writer.  One of my gifts in  strengths finders is communication but for me that normally comes out in verbal and not written communication. (Surprise surprise).  So keeping up with this blog is sometimes a chore but we enjoy having it to keep our supporters updated with the personal side of our lives.

So for the upcoming weeks and months we’ll answer different questions about us.  Like Why do we care about our health, Why are we missionaries?  Why do we like living in the city?  and so on.  Some of them will be about our individual lives and others about our ministry with World Impact.

So please check in on our blogs on Friday’s.  

God's Provisions

We are often amazed at how God blesses us in small and big ways.

Many times in the past years, God has provided something for us as we were thinking that it would be nice to have.  One example a few years ago was our piano.  Our first 8 years of marriage we were in such small homes that we didn't have room for one.  Then as we were living in our current home, Angie was mentioning how much she would love to have piano.  We thought that we would start to save for one.  Then we got a call that some good friends of ours were moving out of Wichita and they wanted to give us their piano!!  We were so shocked and overwhelmed by that gift.  Angie has since filled our home with so much music and praises. (Thanks Paul & Kay!)

We recently had another blessing.  Ethan has wanted a loft in his bedroom and we heard of someone selling their old one from college and we only have to pay $20.  So tomorrow we are going to pick it up at Tabor.

We are so grateful for how the Lord takes care of us!