Several days ago I received a letter from the Wisconsin Department of Transportation alerting me that a bridge nearby was going to be reconstructed over the course of the summer. For weeks I’ve wondered why I’ve been maneuvering around orange barrels, detours and burly construction crews busily preparing the area for this sizeable undertaking. I now know why.

Building highway bridges like these takes time, effort and energy.

While bridge building is what I have to look forward to this summer, it is also an apt metaphor to describe BrookLink’s ministry. For the past few months I have been helping ten students (5 men and 5 women) build bridges! Not a literal bridge, but a bridge of understanding through communication and preaching. You see, preaching is a lot like bridge building. I remind my students that they are building bridges between the first century world and the world of today. The proverbial bridge every preacher constructs is a means of communication between two places that would otherwise be cut off from the other—the ancient times of the Bible and the modern contemporary world. This kind of bridge enables God’s revealed truth to flow out of the Scriptures and into the lives of real men and women today.

Building communication bridges like these takes time, effort and energy.

By the time you read this letter, I will be in Prague, Czech Republic building a bridge of yet another kind. It’s called MOSTY—the Czech word for ‘bridges’. This will be my second trip to Prague in the last six months to gather with Czech, Dutch and American leaders who minister in this post-Christian-urban-European city. Our purpose: to construct ‘bridges’ that resource local churches and ministries in disciple-making and mission in the church and society.

Building relational bridges like these takes time, effort and energy.

As soon as I return home from Europe, I depart March 31^st for a country in North Africa. BrookLink has been invited to help build a bridge. My longtime friend Ian Lawson and I will be teaching and training church planters from several African countries. Each devotes one year to studying the Word of God, theology, principles of church planting, and spiritual leadership. They are then commissioned and sent off to remote and oftentimes hostile regions to start churches among people groups who have never heard the name of Jesus. Imagine building a bridge to the vast numbers of people who have little knowledge of Jesus Christ.

Building strategic bridges like these takes time, effort and energy!

Right now there are quite a few work crews preparing for the construction project near my home. No doubt when the actual bridge construction begins those numbers will swell. Why?

Building bridges takes a lot of people.

As we step into a very full spring travel season (Prague, North Africa and Democratic Republic of Congo), I am deeply thankful for the prayers, encouragement and financial support of so many!

We simply cannot build these kinds of bridges without you, so thank you!

If you do not yet give to BrookLink, or have not yet made a gift this year, I invite you to make a one-time or monthly recurring gift. It’s easy to do. Visit brooklink.org to learn how you can become a bridge-builder. Each dollar given helps build a bridge and impact lives around the world.

Ever grateful,