Finding the well in this global village

I recently attended a mobilization conference at our organization in January. Beyond the amazing stories we heard of God's love for his children in East Asia, we also heard about how the world is changing and how that is effecting missions. We are no longer in a colonial model to world missions. (Thank God!) It's not about western Christians bringing religion to the heathen (i.e. anyone who is not from the west). Christianity is on the rise in Asia and often we in the west are languishing in post-christian countries. Who will lead? Who should follow? How do we honor Christ together?

Some of this came out in Lausanne (which Patrick Fung talked about how equilibrium, or a balancing between east and west is a bad way of looking at it). I've heard it described as everyone reaching out to everyone from everywhere. I think that's a bit nebulous.

But the tension of this change has been showing up internally in our missions organization as we see many home sides (sending countries) struggle to be relevant in a context that is increasingly hostile to the gospel. We are faced with changing "how we do business" to follow the great commission not because the commission has changed but because we have changed. Our culture has changed. What we are doing over seas has changed.

For instance, if you are of an American church tradition that originated somewhere else (Lutheran, Episcopal, etc.) how will your tradition adapt to be in communion with shop keeper churches in Taiwan or a Filipino Christian tradition that is as vibrant as your own? My favorite challenge to date: how does the organization I work for interface with the established African church (in the different African nations) to reach the estimated 750,000 Chinese who are in their communities but who do not know Jesus . . . or a lick of the native language? And then successfully include the American church, which at times is still stuck in the colonial mode of sending Missionaries (TM) to Save(!) them unbelievers.

I don't know the answer, but I do know that that is just crazy God stuff.

But it could mean that the organizations like ours may need "bringers" as well as "senders" For Paul and me, that would look like Singaporean Christians joining our ministry team (which would be freaking awesome!) Not to bring over our vast specialized knowledge (yeah right!) but maybe just to be there as a witness to the Spirit moving in his church. How much healthier and relevant would we be if we were prayed for by the people we came to serve with?

Nov 4: floored

Everyone has a story about how they came to believe what they believe. Some where born into it, some found it, others picked it up from their friends. Whether you are an atheist, a christian, a buddhist, it all came from somewhere. For me, I've spent a lot of time in different flavors of american protestantism. Who I am and what I value have come from stepping stones communities which God has led me through (sometimes kicking and screaming). I thought I'd share some of my story.

I am a cradle Episcopalian, with a major focus on music and liturgy. My mom was in the choir and was on the altar guild, my dad played the organ and directed the choir, I was an acolyte and played, etc. The church I grew up in was not a high or low church when I was there, but a middle of the way church. Guitars would appear at communion. I remember my folks being excited about being a part of cursillo. The high points of this church were: a) we had a good teacher as a preacher, who emphasized education at all ages b) we worked as a community to show christ's love to each other c) we liked being Episcopal, with the bells and vestments (not to many smells I'm afraid)

I went to a small liberal arts college which had many different beliefs represented, including nontraditional things like wicca. Being Episcopal wasn't very viable there as the local Episcopal church did not really think about the colleges around them but were going through their own thing. I had my first experience with evangelicalism visiting InterVarsity. The biggest difference is we spent a lot less time caring about vestments and hymns, and a lot more time in bible studies. Now I say that, and its not that my church wasn't reading the bible, but it was the first time that it was separated out from worship and done for its own sake in my life. It felt vaguely empty to me, singing to guitars and generally sitting around and praying out loud with nonspecified prayers. It was like tearing up the carpet and getting down to the floor boards and the nails to define the floor. Good to know why the floor was still there, but not really something I had worried about until someone brought it up.

I married a Lutheran and was faced with a choice of becoming one or staying Episcopal. I got to see what someone else had been doing with their vestments and their hymnals. (We will not get into the debate about green book vs red/blue book. ) It opened my eyes to exactly how a lot of what I had taken for staples of good christian worship, were really just preferences as I listened to the bizarre calls and responses, and sang completely different service music. I say that but you must realized it was only because I had grown up in such a similar denomination that I found it peculiar. A traditional Lutheran would probably say the same about an Episcopal service. (does this communion music smell funny to you?)

At the same time, the Episcopal churches around us had moved on. The middle of the road was not where I had left it. The options were either low church or high church. You couldn't have both. Fortunately, we followed some friends of ours to an 'authentic' church; a church that at the time had leanings towards high church, but was really in the business of serving the people who were in it. I remember it for its causal, hollar out atmosphere. Not exactly where I started, but maybe to the right. After a while though, me and my husband both felt we should be doing more. It was too easy to be pew sitters, we needed to change. Fortunately, God had an idea. We moved across the country to be moblizers for a missions organization.

In this chapter of my life, we found that our happy little high authentic church didn't exist out here. (and in truth, this same church was transforming into something new back home) Though the missions organization we work for is non-denominational, it is prevalently evangelical in culture. We were back again to the floor boards and bible studies, though technically there is no reason why you can't say the nicene creed at prayers. For me, God began to really tear down my ideas of worship I had set up in my heart and we got down to my personal floorboards. Do you really "crown him with many crowns" or do you just like singing the hymn? Why does it matter what color of vestments the priest wears? Who are you really here for? Big questions. Hard questions.

And we found answers. We eventually found a biblically literate evangelical church with a worship style we can respect and dedicated to missions. We are infused with prayer and the word on a regular basis and the music remembers where we came from without turning the service into a time capsule of things that were or might have been. We pine occasionally for the smells and bells of our other parish, and some day I will post about having to learn "evangelical-ese", but for the most part we are where we are suppose to be. What god is preparing us for next, I can only guess. But it means that I now recognize the hills to die on, and hope I can advise my friends who have not been on a journey like this that if you don't know the reason why you are doing particular things at service, you might want to find out.

[ed: just to note, this is absolutely no slight to the communities and churches that supported me through all of this. If anything, it is a commentary on my own crass heart as God works on me.]

baptized!

I'm still processing this whole weekend, but Tobo is now baptized:



We went down to florida to visit my family and were joined by Tobo's God parents, the J's.



Here is what we did with the rest of our vacation:

From Cute Things M...

It was Tobo's first airplane and he did great.



On top of joining the body of christ, he has also been making leaps and bounds developmentally. Some of this was having older boys to watch and learn from, but some of it has just been clicking. A few days before we left he started grabbing fabric:



And now he's starting to grab toys, clothing, as well as suck not just his fist but thumb and finger. He's also got much more stable since we got to florida, so he's really interested in looking around and sitting up. He also likes standing up while being held. He even took a few steps today. He's not really rolling over any more (kind of stopped that) but does have pretty good head control:



He's spent most of the trip in the sling. In fact, tonight we had a wonderful time where he was fussy until we put him in the sling for a bit, since he had a mostly wiggly day today.

I'm going to go back to my vacation, just thought I post to let you know we're still alive. More later. Here are a few more photos:

Shot of the 4 generations:




The lady who came across the state to celebrate:

From Cute Things M...