Alive!

One of the advantages of our present situation is that we get to visit lots of different churches, and we can actually sit together to worship because Bill doesn’t have to preach all the time. That is something special for a pastoral couple.

This weekend brought a meaningful worship experience for me. I deeply appreciate the sensible, step-by-step approach to seeing ourselves in God’s light afforded by a thoughtful liturgy. Yesterday, when the liturgy brought us to the confession of sins, the pastor gave a time for silent confession before the General Confession. I sharply felt the acuteness of having a sin nature and the impossibility of escaping those sins that cling to my basic personality. I envisioned this like being encased in a hard plastic bubble where you can see what it would be like to be on the outside, but you can never get there. I prayed that God would continue to shrink and soften the hardness of it.

Then the sermon was on the meaning of Christ’s resurrection as explained in the first 14 verses of Romans 8. I have lots of “favorite” Bible passages, but if I were forced to choose one that stands out from all the others, it would probably be Romans chapter 8. My heart throbs with the awesomeness of salvation every time I read it.

This time the emphasis was on the fact that when Jesus died, he was really, totally dead and could do nothing for himself. But, verse 11 says that the Spirit raised him from the dead and THAT SAME SPIRIT is given to those who trust him. The Spirit who guarantees our salvation “gives life to our mortal bodies”. Wow! That was quite a reminder that even the hard plastic bubble was pierced (shattered?) from the outside when God took the initiative and put his Spirit in me, and that the Spirit of Christ is working in me, even as I struggle with what remains of the bubble. That gives both life and hope.

How lovely that the liturgy then leads us to raise our voices all together in the words of Scripture as we glorify the author of our salvation and our sure hope. Praised be the Lord!

Transitions in olive oil

Today I emptied the last few drops of olive oil out of the bottle that had come back with us in our shipment from France. As I did, it became a symbol of so many things that have “run out” and been replaced by new forms since our arrival back in the States 20 months ago. In those first months, the period of mourning for all we had left that was near and dear, I treasured every bit of French life I had brought back with me. During that time I desperately needed to lean on that normality. But, the void of what was left behind has little by little started being replaced by other new experiences, ones that would not have been possible if we had never moved. In that way, Germany and Eastern Europe, West Africa and Southeast Asia have not only been useful extensions of our ministry, but they have given the time and space needed to heal our souls and give us a new direction.

Whether it is a deep cut in the skin or a deep hurt in the heart, healing is a process that needs time. Just as the hurt came from being torn away from so many close Christian friends and colleagues, the healing has been provided by dozens of gracious, competent, and dedicated new Christian friends that we have had the privilege of meeting and working with on 3 continents. After all these months, I can now see that our heart bonds have not been reduced because we left France but have actually expanded and increased.

So, just as a mother’s capacity to love is expanded by each child she brings into her family, so our capacity to “feel at home” has stretched to include many new places around the world. Of course, France will always hold an exceptionally special place in our hearts because it was, after all, the French who made this all possible through their acceptance and love.

During this process it was also great fun to discover how closely linked the worldwide Christian family really is. In every place we ministered we met people who already knew some of our friends in either France or the US! I like the French expression which calls such experiences a “clin d’œil de Dieu” (a wink from God). He really does demonstrate his love in very personal down-to-earth ways.

So, today I opened a new bottle of olive oil. The label says that this one was bottled in the US using oil imported from Tunisia, Spain, Turkey, Italy, and Argentina. An appropriately eclectic mixture, it seems. Hmm, I’ve already visited Spain and Italy. Maybe someday I can get to each of those other countries, too!

Instant communication

Over the past few days we have had direct (skype) conversations with people in such far-flung and separate places as Croatia and Singapore. We get regular Facebook news from our friends in France (our FB friends list is purposely very limited – we don’t have the time to handle more!!). When we had urgent need of a document a couple of days ago, we emailed someone several hundred miles away and the document arrived in our in-box within 10 minutes. There was a similar contact this week with a local pastor in West Africa. We are negotiating for the purchase of a home half-way across the country and are getting continuous feed-back by email and phone, eliminating the need to be on-site and in someone’s office. Yesterday we needed a series of pictures from a mission partner in Europe and the pictures arrived on our computer within half an hour. Just 15 years ago any one of these communications would have required at least a two-week turn-around time to be completed. My! How times have changed!

Sometimes all this instant access can feel rather frantic. Whatever is needed must arrive NOW. If the requested information doesn’t arrive within three hours, we call to find out what is wrong! Our level of expectation (and impatience?) has been raised dramatically. We must be vigilant that such speed does not lead to superficial thinking and reacting. Having time to “mull things over” does have its advantages.

But, in my opinion, these new communication possibilities are among the most exciting things that have ever happened in missions. The cyber café phenomenon has meant that nearly everyone on the globe can communicate with everyone else, even from remote places. There is no longer an excuse for not knowing. If we want to, we can get in touch with our Christian brothers and sisters in Zambia or Bulgaria or Thailand at almost any time. We are no longer dependent only on official media to inform us of what is happening on the ground elsewhere. We can now weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice almost as though we were there, even when we are not. Being part of the worldwide Christian family no longer has to just be a theoretical theological theory. We have the possibility of living out Kingdom participation, our most essential loyalty, in very practical ways.

How exciting! I’m thrilled to be able to be around while this is happening.

Thoughts after 6 months of missions projects – (2) Influence

There are great debates taking place right now in the US concerning the influence of the church in and on society. To what extent does the church (all Christians, in a collective sense) have political clout and how fervently should it be involved in social activism? To what point should it exercise such muscle, or even have it?

In most of the places that we have visited over the last six months, that question is not even being asked. It couldn’t be asked because Bible-believing Christians are a minority of a minority in those places. Other religious systems dominate the culture and are intertwined with those in power so much that these Christians are nearly invisible within their own countries. Their political weight is close to nil.

Do they suffer from being in this powerless position? Sometimes they do. In one country we visited Christians are trying to get a local government to agree to let them acquire land for a burial ground. Even such a “normal” request is being met with resistance. Their small numbers also mean that they usually do not have a voice that can be heard in denouncing problems such as corruption, human trafficking, or religious prejudice. Sometimes, they are even in a position where they don’t want to become more visible as this could lead to more negative attention and reaction by the majority movements.

But on the whole, it seems like the question of political and social influence and the lack of it doesn’t affect them because it has hardly crossed their minds. They are too busy bringing people to know the Lord, serving the weak and defenseless around them, and building the church to even bother with such a useless distraction. Their energy is focused on proclamation and service. Period.

We did see one striking example of a church located in a country which has complete religious freedom that was using its influence wisely. Instead of promoting itself or a narrow range of hot-button issues, it works humbly as an advocate for those in the country who the powers-that-are were overlooking, particularly handicapped people and immigrants. Because of this, the church is listened to and respected. I saw the same “service ethic” carried out by the church I visited in Zambia last year.

The subject of influence seems to only be one that is a concern for wealthy, majority Christian movements. History shows that such concern rarely leads to positive spiritual results and may even hurt God’s mission in that society. So much time, as well as mental and spiritual energy, is expended on something that often seems to actually move even the way Christians think further and further away from the goals that the Bible describes for the people of God: that of building a just Kingdom that spans all eras and cultures, and that is characterized by faithfulness and humble service to others. It seems flagrantly evident from my observations that the individual members of those minority churches we observed are closer to expressing these goals than are so many people in our established Western-culture churches. Yes, they struggle. But they have a focus and intensity – maybe even purity, in the sense of simplicity – in how they understand salvation and its consequences that are hard to find in the Western world.

My thoughts on this subject are obviously colored by the fact that I lived and served in France for so many years. France’s Christian history spans 12 centuries, but the Christian church in all of its forms is in the process of being totally sidelined by the culture. This has happened in spite of the fact that at one point in history, it was THE influence in French culture, controlling nearly every aspect of life and death for the ordinary citizen. But that total, overall influence only led to corruption and deep resentment, and when the people attained freedom, they spat the Church out like polluted water. Maybe they did “throw the baby out with the bathwater”, but today they make it clear that they will never, never go there again.

Actually attaining the position and influence that we think will help our cause can end up being the thing that hurts it the most. Success often has unintended consequences. Trajectories such as those of the State Churches in Europe should be a cautionary signal for us. They started with the desire to have all of society benefit from the enlightened principles of biblical living, but the influence they gained has actually made such a result all but impossible.

Individual Christians may be called to defend certain causes or promote certain ideas. But, as groups of believers, what are we called to defend or to promote? Who sets the agenda? How should we be serving the Lord until He returns? Personally, I prefer the enthusiasm and hard-working zeal of those Christians we’ve met over the past six months, serving and actually being able to influence people’s lives in spite of facing numerous limitations and constraints, to the ease that allows us to argue with each other and spend our energy on secondary pursuits.

I guess it really is true that travel expands one’s horizons! :-)

travel and housing

Well, I've been on the road again this week. I flew to Chicago on Tuesday to start looking for housing in the area. After all, I hadn't flown for over a month, so it was about time!! :-)

My search was successful and we will be moving to the western suburbs of Chicago, 30 miles west of the lakefront, sometime in July. After having all our household goods packed in boxes for nearly 2 years, it will be somewhat of an adventure to unpack and "rediscover" what we had actually decided to bring back with us!

Guests

What fun to be able to repay just a tiny bit of the hospitality that we experienced in Southeast Asia.

This weekend some of the people we met at the Autism Centre in Singapore were here in the US, visiting care centers for ideas. They were staying quite near us. So we showed them around the area all day Saturday and took them to one of our supporting churches in NJ on Sunday. During the coffee hour after the worship service they gave a very interesting presentation on the social services organized by the Anglican Church in Singapore, and especially the Autism Centre.

But, we learned that you always seem to end up on the receiving end when these people are around. Before leaving they gave us a beautifully embroidered Chinese hanging representing dozens and dozens of children, so that we could remember them and their work.

How could we ever possibly forget!