We are so very excited to announce that our four new additions - Jalynn, Josie, Bryan and Elly - are now officially SHACKELFORDS!! We are so blessed to permanently add the four beautiful children to our family. Thank you for your prayers during this almost 2 year process! (Okmulgee, Oklahoma)
To partner with the Shackelford's financially (or to move your support over to Lumenations for the Shacks), click on the pic above or click on the "Give" menu option at the top.
NOTE FROM KEN:
Many of you have continued to partner with our family and our global ministry. If so, thank you so much! We pray that you will stick with us in this transition and join this new exciting vision that focuses on mission, ministry, mobilization and media.
For the rest of you, would you prayerfully consider joining with our family in a powerful global mission? All donations are tax deductible.
For information on how to give, click the picture above. For more information about the vision for Lumenations, go here: www.lumenations.org.
After we stepped down from our role with All Nations, we thought we would most likely be looking for a church ministry position. Back in July, we began immediately getting the word out and sending out resumes. Full time church ministry is a “comfort” place for us and, after 10 years of challenging and sometimes gut-wrenching global work, it sounded “nice” to say the least. BUT, we always want to do exactly what God wants for us, no matter how challenging it may be, so we continued in earnest prayer and fasting - seeking God for HIS next step for us. We were blessed to get some interest from some churches in Indiana, Kansas, Michigan and Oklahoma. Before we began moving forward with them though, we felt redirected by God - convicted that we were to continue our focus on disciple-making on a global scale. God is leading us to step out in faith yet again and move towards a vision that He has been working on Ken's heart for many years. We are calling this work “Lumenations”. We feel the work of Lumenations has incredible potential to impact the Kingdom both here in the states and around the world by meeting several needs that we have witnessed in our stateside and global ministry and training work. We plan to stay in Kansas City through the end of the year to allow our adoption to finalize and then move to Searcy, Arkansas to "set up shop" for this work. We are partnering with J.P. and Heidi Wornock in this work. Heidi is Tanja's sister for those of you who don't know and their involvement was one of several BIG confirmations that this is the direction God is taking us. We also feel convicted to be closer to our parents in this season of life. Ken's mother has Alzheimers and is will be a blessing to help care for a woman who cared for so many so well in her younger years.
I wish I could sit down with you over a cup of coffee and share with you about Lumenations and all the ways that God has convinced us that “now is the time.” Hopefully that can happen soon but, until then, I have created a video to tell you all about it. This is a very unique form of global ministry that does not fit into any preconceived boxes so I feel it takes a video, at least, to give you a picture of what Lumenations is. You can check it out on our web-site:
https://www.lumenations.org/
Would you please take some time to sit down and watch this and prayerfully consider how you might like to be involved with Lumenations and with our future work? As you will hear in the video, the are four "levels" of involvement we would love for you to consider:
Please pray for us as we transition our family back to Arkansas. Please pray for our adoption to finalize. Please pray for Bethany who will be moving back to the states, for Robbie who will be on his own as he continues work and college here and for Shelby who is making plans for global work in the near future. And please pray for Lumenations - for God to make this vision a reality and use it to spread disciple-making movements and cross cultural missions around the states and around the globe.
Please do not hesitate to contact us with any questions you have.
Thanks and God bless!
Ken and Tanja
This coming weekend, I will be speaking at a missions conference in Emporia, Kansas. They asked me to make a promo for them to show the week before (last Sunday) - here is what I came up with:
I love getting away, getting into God's word, and worshipping. Still in the process of writing this one but I thought I'd record it while it was still fresh. (thanks to Tom Shpakow for letting me borrow his guitar when inspiration hit!)
It has been a while since I've posted on the ShackLOG (the KenandTanja Shackelford Facebook profile has replaced it I suppose. BUT, this news is worthy of a new blog post! (see video below)
NOTE FROM KEN:
Hi friends and family,
My time in the states is flying by and I have some BIG NEWS to share with all of you (news much better served face to face). For those of you in Northwest Arkansas, I would like to invite you to a gathering this coming Monday, June 29, 6:30 pm at the GO Center on College Ave. in Fayetteville (next to the Prayer Room, click here for directions). If you are able to attend, would you shoot me a message (click here) and let me know?
I know summer schedules are crazy so if that time doesn't work for you PLEASE GIVE ME A CALL, [nwa area code] 684.7475. For our supporters, if I don't hear from you, I will be calling as I have some important information to pass on.
Thanks and God bless you all!
Ken
Here is my new Christmas song with lyrics. Enjoy and have a Merry Christmas!
"Missions exist because worship does not." This is one of my favorite quotes (this particular one is by John Piper). God created us with the capacity to follow Him in LOVE. We are uniquely made in His image because we have been given the ability to LOVE. We worship God when we LOVE God. We worship God when we LOVE each other the way God loves us. This is what we were created to do and when we open our hearts to love him, it just feels right! This is what worship is - it is simply loving God, offering all of us to He who is worthy. God created us to fill the earth with worship. When we see the evil that permeates every corner of our fallen world, we clearly see places where worship does not exist. That's why Jesus-followers are ALL on a mission, to help people connect with their true purpose for being - to LOVE God.
I encourage you to spend some time loving God today by speaking out loud (it's called praise) truths about who He is, what He has done and why He is worthy to be number one in our lives! If you want something to help get you going, click below to go to my 10k blog, which have 1,200 of what will eventually be 10,000 reasons to praise our Lord. God loves you, so LOVE God today!! (it's what you were made for)
We were blessed with a very busy first half of the summer as we helped lead the GTS Albania team. There was so much that happened in six weeks, I created a whole section of our web-site just to share the pictures and stories. CLICK HERE (OR THE PICTURE BELOW) TO GO CHECK IT OUT: http://theshackfamily.com/global-training-school/
