Training University Missions Leaders in North America

The SMC is equipping campus ministries leaders and SMC staff for multiplication around the world. After running the School of University Ministries & Missions (SUMM) four times on three continents in 2010 & 2011, we will again run the SUMM in North America in 2012 and South America in 2013, this time as mobile schools incorporating mobilization events in various cities into the curriculum. In addition, our six friends from Madagascar who took the SUMM last year in Seoul are requesting the SUMM to be run in Madagascar for their growing university ministries; they’re completing their sixth UDTS and they are pioneering a second university ministry in another city. Aldrin Bogi and his team in Bangalore, INDIA are planning to run the SUMM again soon, perhaps in 2013.

The SUMM is UofN Student Mobilization Centre’s core training for all YWAM staff and students serving university students. (UofN Code: STU/HMT 293). The following is a rationale and purpose statement for the next SUMM in North America, scheduled to begin on December 27, 2012 at the URBANA Student Missions Convention in St. Louis, MO.

Mobile SUMM North America 2012-2013

During 2011, we convened two Consultations, on in Northfield, MA and one in San Francisco, CA, where we met leaders representing several new YWAM campus ministries which have emerged in the past few years in North America. The universities in North America represent a particularly urgent context with strategic importance to the future of the Western missions movement and the need for partnership with the new majority Church outside the West. It is time to cultivate and assist those new ministries and equip leaders for greater effectiveness and growth through collaboration and pioneering new ministries.

The SMC’s commitment to student involvement in world missions will be evidenced not only in the curriculum of the SUMM, but also through active mobilization and prayer with potential student volunteers at various campus events during the North American Mobile SUMM.

Since 1986, SMC’s Field Ministry Internships (FMI), the principal program of the SMC, has mobilized students from over 100 different colleges/universities onto 75 internship teams in over 35 countries. We have mobilized students, as learners and not experts, for every sphere of society. To date, the FMI program has been designed by and directed by SMC leaders. Beginning with this SUMM, we are making a change to the FMI program.

Participants in this Mobile SUMM will not only practically experience the mobilization process at events, they will also be involved in the planning and coordination of FMI field projects for which they are recruiting students. Every SUMM participant will identify Field Partners (YWAM and non-YWAM organizations) to help them design and register their own internship programs for students in 2012 & 2013. During the SUMM, we plan to have 100 internship FMI Field Partner Hosts and their Field Projects posted on the SMC website.

We are championing university students to serve Christ’s Great Commission through their life-work. Students and Associate Field Partners are challenged to partner together in the next major wave of collaborative missions and holistic witness in and from university communities worldwide.

North American Mobile SUMM Context: 

Today’s university students are more diverse, more pluralistic, more internationally aware, and more cross-culturally connected than previous generations. Students travel abroad and study abroad more than any previous generation. The number of internationals studying in the United States has more than doubled in the past twenty years, from 325 thousand to well over 700 thousand today, most of whom are from nations in the 10/40 window. Those seeking to plant churches among unreached peoples ought to make ministry to these strategic persons a priority. International concern about human tragedy and injustice, such as impure water, human traffiking, and HIV/AIDS orphans, have captured the conscience of this generation. Today’s students, both Christian and non-Christian, are seeking to make a difference and they are seeking a vital community that shares their concerns. Christian students, many of whom have desperate need for family and community, are at the same time seeking God for his justice and his mercy to be extended through a shared vision of a community and through their own life’s work.

North American Mobile SUMM Strategic Objectives:

This twelve-week interdisciplinary course emphasizes the impact and strategic importance of the mobilization of students toward their life work and calling. It is the SMC’s objective to recruit, equip, and place student volunteers ready to practically serve communities caught in a cycle of poverty resulting from unproductive worldviews. International Student Ministries (ISM) are a priority of the SMC. It is our objective to help North American YWAM centers within reasonable reach of university communities to adopt this priority. In addition, we will be encouraging YWAMers and former YWAMers currently enrolled in university to form missional communities with fellow students. It is the aim of the SMC for students to learn more deeply the importance of a biblical worldview, their calling from God, and what it means to love our global neighbor. Participants in the SUMM will therefore:

• Examine and practice teaching how God’s calling relates to the destiny of nations.
• Research the migration of students, the growing international student population, and learn how to equip university students for effective witness in their generation and in various areas of society: arts, business, education, government, media, science and technology.
• Gain understanding and practical knowledge of university student ministries as a mission strategy with particular application the variety of cultures in the North American context.
• Study the historical and biblical basis of university student ministries,
• Learn how to lead an intensive and integrated discipleship and outreach experience, and
• Gain practical instruction for pioneering and leading a campus ministry and for leading Field Ministry Internships.

We accomplish our objectives through a four-part strategy, which will be applied to this SUMM:

• We Gather - We will gather students & leaders from university communities in several North American cities through mobilization events.

• We Train - We will further develop curriculum through contextual and practical research in university communities in North America.

• We Send - We will recruit students for 100 different service projects related to global human need, their individual fields of studies, and their future influence in the spheres of society. Students will have opportunity to participate in short-term outreaches, serve long-term field projects, and discern their life-work and calling.

• We Network - We will cultivate missional collaboration and partnerships with various organizations, churches, and agencies in and around university communities in North America for the purpose of mobilizing an emerging generation of student volunteers serving Christ’s Great Commission.

North American Mobile SUMM Plan:

This Mobile SUMM in North America will visit several cities to observe and serve some of the most effective campus ministries and leaders. The SUMM mobile community will participate in and/or help organize mobilization events in several cities, including St. Louis, MO for the URBANA 2012 Intervarsity Student Missions Convention (Dec. 27-31, 2012). Every SUMM participant will enroll with the expectation of participating as one of the YWAM international exhibitors at the URBANA 2012 event. (SUMM tuition fees will include URBANA 2012 exhibitor registrations fees.)

SUMM Staff:

SUMM staff assignments are limited to those who have completed the School of University Ministries & Missions -or- current YWAM staff with a Four-Year College Degree and Student Ministries Leadership Seminar (STU 195). All staff members for the North American SUMM will make a full 12 month commitment, in order that they may serve as participant mentor/overseers for SUMM Field Assignments.

SUMM Values:

The Foundational Values of Youth With A Mission are integrated into the teaching/learning experience in a variety of ways. The Values we find most closely relating to the School of University Ministries are:

1. Godly Character & Servant Leadership: SMC seeks to build Godly character and demonstrate principles of servant leadership; humility and integrity are essential to produce in the student a trusting relationship with God.
2. Championing the potential of young people: The SMC seeks to mobilize today’s university students recognizing this population may be the most potent missionary force on earth.
3. All ministries and functions are equal in the Kingdom of God: the SMC course seeks to promote calling in relation to a broadened understanding of the character and ways of God to reach and teach all nations;
4. Commitment to the Word of God: SMC is committed to the authority of the Word of God, to seeking to know and hear God’s voice, and to a lifestyle of intercessory prayer.
5. Visionary: Students come with a desire for revelation of how their field of study in university (other than the UofN) relates to God’s call on their life. The SMC curriculum is designed to foster the development of that vision.
6. Great Commission & Discipling Nations: Believing that the Gospel of Jesus can transform not only individual lives but the structures of society, SMC is dedicated to fulfilling the Great Commission to disciple all nations.
7. Hospitality: The Biblical meaning of hospitality is ‘friend of the foreigner’. God has always instructed His people to love and care for the strangers and sojourners in their land;
8. Communication: SUMM participants will communicate and methodically follow up with students and leaders from a wide variety of backgrounds and cultures. Participants will articulate succinctly and clearly what today’s students need to be able to serve as missionaries in a 21st century mission field, emphasizing YWAM’s commitment to the Christian Magna Carta and a spirit of collaboration in response to dramatic shifts in the Church globally and extraordinary economic and societal crises. Communicating to mobilize students on cross-cultural, serving-learning experiences is an integral part of YWAM’s discipleship of students in every campus ministry location.

If you or someone you know would be interested in the SUMM course in North America or another part of the world, or if you can host the North American Mobile SUMM for a campus event at one of the cities we plan to visit (St. Louis, Minneapolis, Madison, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Boston, Baltimore, Richmond, Atlanta), or if you know of an organization leading a project that needs interns to serve and learn for a few weeks or a full semester, contact us. We’ll be really glad to help you connect with this exciting series of events.

Top Posts in 2011

#1
William Carey’s influence on “Haystack” Students
Setting the stage for the historic prayer meeting with the five students who gathered under that haystack to find refuge from a storm in August 1806 was a little booklet written only a decade or so earlier by William Carey. The booklet was entitled: “An Enquiry Into the Obligations of Christians to use Means for [...]

#2
A “New” Kind of Church Minister: George Isley
My pastor, George Isley, who went to be with the Lord five years ago, modeled a kind of leadership in the Church that is, from my perspective as a missionary of 25+ years, too rarely seen. One of George’s classmates, Dr. Don Lundgren, Missions Minister at College Church in Northampton, MA, said George had been [...]

#3
Introduction to Missional Collaboration
As I develop a new training course on Missional Collaboration for the University of the Nations, I will be unveiling several aspects of the course through this blog. Today’s post originates from one of my papers and in response to an article on the Trinity by Mark Avery, professor of a course on Collaboration at [...]

#4
New, Old Meaning for Hospitality
Hospitality has taken on fresh meaning to me lately. I’ll explain. I understood hospitality to be mainly “friendship with the stranger,” and NOT primarily how to set your table to impress your dinner guests. Welcoming strangers, radical as that view seemed, isn’t broad enough. Recently, while doing some research on church eldership, the word hospitality [...]

#5
Table Fellowship
Our table is the center of our home. It’s the place our family comes together, the place we welcome friends, neighbors, and strangers. We invite others into the kitchen where we chop and sauté vegetables, bake bread, stir sauces, pour the fruit of the vine (juice or wine, you choose), and prepare to savor the [...]

#6
History: Adoniram Judson
In September 1809, college student Adoniram Judson began to ponder seriously the subject of foreign missions. At the age of twenty-one, he had just finished his first year of theological studies at Andover. Judson read a sermon which was preached in the parish church of Bristol, England, by Dr. Claudius Buchanan. Buchanan had been a [...]

#7
Calling: What I’m looking for…
U2 singer songwriter Bono expresses a spiritual yearning in the 1987 album The Joshua Tree hit single: “Still haven’t found what I’m looking for…”  New Musical Express (a pop music mag in the UK better known as the NME), points out that the popularity of the song may be due to the way it showed [...]

#8
Easter Note: Holiness is Intimacy with God
“What language should I borrow, to thank Thee dearest friend, for this Thy dying sorrow, Thy pity without end? O make me Thine forever, And should I fainting be, Lord, let me never, never outlive my love to Thee.” This line comes from “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded,” a 12th century hymn by Bernard of [...]

#9
Henry’s Hawai’i
Sitting here warming in the sun and listening to the gentle spash of the waves along the jagged lava rock of the Kona Coast of the Big Island of Hawai’i, I find it difficult to believe this is where a tsunami slammed the small shopping center along the shore on March 11, 2011. That contrast [...]

#10
Holiness is MORE than Intimacy with God
At Easter I wrote about Holiness, that holiness is intimacy with God. (Here’s that post.) I described how Bernard of Clairvaux’s 14th century hymn, O Sacred Head Now Wounded, was a personal and public pre-Reformation plea for intimate relationship with Christ. I return to this subject because I did not adequately describe the beauty and [...]

#11 Special Tribute:
It Happened at a Haystack
I first learned of the monument on the Williams College campus in 1988 while researching student missions. In 2006, I joined several student ministries leaders from across the nation at the 200th anniversary of the event that led to the establishing of this memorial. Do you know why there is a monument on the small [...]

Thank you for a great year! – John Henry

P.S. We’re making changes to internships and outreaches, helping Field Partner organizations to start their own Field Projects internships program. Soon, all Field Projects will be posted on the site. We are seeking 100 internship projects. Know of a Field Project?

Go to: www.studentmobilizationcentre.comSMC Goals:
1. To foster missional partnerships, placing interns to serve field projects worldwide.
2. To recruit and place students and staff ready to serve and learn a biblical worldview as a missional strategy worldwide.
3. To establish an international coordination office, including guest house, study center, and library.

Three Measures for the New Year

‘… Yet if the gross national product measures all of this, there is much that it does not include. It measures neither the health of our children, the quality of their education, nor the joy of their play. It measures neither the beauty of our poetry, nor the strength of our marriages. It pays no heed to the intelligence of our public debate, nor the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our wit, nor our courage, neither our compassion nor our devotion to country. It measures everything in short, except that which makes life worth living, and it can tell us everything about our country except those things that make us proud to be a part of it.’

Robert Kennedy, US Senator;
Kansas city, 1968.

Amid all the protests of 2011, Robert Kennedy’s words are a timely reminder of what is really important for the citizens of a nation. Of course, the famous words of Jesus of Nazareth are most appropriate for the citizens of his kingdom.  Jesus instructed his disciples by telling a story about a king that went on a journey. He told them to “Occupy Until I Come.” He told them to stop concerning themselves about when the end of the world would come (hello 2012!) or when the world would somehow suddenly have justice (hello “Occupy”). Instead he told them to remain faithful and fruitful in their life and work.

Ps. 90:12 (Message) reads:  “Teach us to live wisely and well!”

Before this New Year begins, stop a moment to consider making these three things your priorities for 2012. I’m convinced by doing so, we will avoid the dead-ends of life, such as climbing the corporate ladder, joining a protest movement, or sitting in a religious sanctuary waiting for the return of the king. Instead of measuring our bank accounts or the days until Jesus returns, we can choose to measure what is really important.

1.  Be Creative. 

Eleanor Roosevelt said it well, “‎Do one thing everyday that scares you.”  Invest the time to do that big project you hoped to do “someday.”  I’m not getting any younger. I’ve been around the world several times, but I still have very big dreams. So, this year I recommit to getting some big projects started and some smaller projects accomplished. This year, I recommit to closing the door and shutting myself off from distractions so I may finish my book manuscript and seek to get it published. I also recommit to a radical redesign of our student outreaches. By the end of 2012, I commit to identifying 100 Field Projects for student outreaches doing things like volunteering in orphanages and clinics in China, helping start businesses in the Middle East, and teaching forgiveness in war-torn cities of Africa and Ireland.

What about you? Stop dreaming and start doing.  There’s no better time than now.

If you have dreams, or ideas that you think would change the world for the better, write them down.

^“And then God answered: “Write this. Write what you see. Write it out in big block letters so that it can be read on the run. This vision-message is a witness pointing to what’s coming. It aches for the coming—it can hardly wait! And it doesn’t lie. If it seems slow in coming, wait. It’s on its way. It will come right on time.” Habukkuk 2:3 (Message)

2.  Enter the Story

The thought of making New Year’s resolutions is a bit annoying. Lose weight? Pay off debt? If you are like me, you can get a bit overwhelmed with the realities of life. Paying bills, family pressures, deadlines to meet, and the barrage of bad news and suffering we read about and see on the nightly news, it’s too much to handle. And yet, this is our reality. It’s a drama playing out in our lives and the lives of our families and neighbors. Some may seek escape from the pain with a diversion. That diversion may start as a harmless hobby and become an obsession, a wall around your heart to protect you from seeing and hearing the suffering all around. Whether you drown your sorrows with a six-pack of Budweiser, smother the pain with another brownie, or  resolve to lose the weight, fit in those jeans, and buy that new car, you may have lost something important along the way. You’ve lost your story.

This year I am committing to enter the story more fully, to listen, and pay greater attention to the drama playing out all around me. I recommit to engaging with the grand narrative through prayer.

“Stay alert; be in prayer so you don’t wander into temptation without even knowing you’re in danger. There is a part of you that is eager, ready for anything in God. But there’s another part that’s as lazy as an old dog sleeping by the fire.” Matt. 26:40b-41

When we are wide awake, we can learn the art of storytelling. I recommit to learning from the stories of the Bible. But I want to learn from the stories playing out on the world’s stage, in my neighborhood, and in my family. I also want to learn from the great fiction writers. Their stories may not be “true,” but it’s “truth.”

3. Enjoy God’s Presence and Listen to His Voice

If you are reading this post, you are likely “connected” to Facebook or Twitter and the expanding blogosphere. I’ve found it tempting to get distracted, to check Facebook before reading the Bible in the morning. True, God can speak to you through a friend’s post. However, you need your time with the Father. In order to share the good news of the Father’s love with a hurting world, you and I need to first enjoy his presence. I recommit to time with my dearest friend, my hope, and my king in 2012. I love his presence.

Though I may experience pressures and fears of failure, and though I may not have a lot of money, I know I have a calling from God to fulfill. He’s my source and my supply. He does not call the qualified; he qualifies the called. The concern for paying bills and raising funds sufficient to accomplish all that God has called me to do may weigh heavy on my, but when I am in his presence there is joy and hope with faith to fulfill all he asks of me.

Whether you are rich or poor, we all have the same precious and practical asset. It isn’t money or even knowledge; it’s time.  I read recently that time is the currency of the most successful people in the world.  My prayer for you in 2012 is that you really live in the time you have this year, that you really live each day before the face of God.

Oh! Teach us to live well!
Teach us to live wisely and well!
Come back, God—how long do we have to wait?—
and treat your servants with kindness for a change.
Surprise us with love at daybreak;
then we’ll skip and dance all the day long.
Make up for the bad times with some good times;
we’ve seen enough evil to last a lifetime.
Let your servants see what you’re best at—
the ways you rule and bless your children.
And let the loveliness of our Lord, our God, rest on us,
confirming the work that we do.
Oh, yes. Affirm the work that we do!

^{Ps. 90:12-17}

 - John Henry

P.S. We’re making changes to internships, helping Field Partner organizations register their own internship program and student outreach opportunities on our website. Soon, all Field Projects will be posted on the site. We are seeking 100 Field Projects. Know of a project that needs some short term assistance? Go to: www.studentmobilizationcentre.com

SMC Objectives:

1. To foster missional partnerships, placing interns to serve field projects worldwide.
2. To recruit and place students and staff ready to serve and learn a biblical worldview as a missional strategy worldwide.
3. To establish an international coordination office, including guest house, study center, and library.

Free Christmas Gifts

Every Christmas I get a bit nervous. I experience waves of emotions, a series of changes in my thought life consistently aligned each year with the Advent season.

At first I feel Christmas pressure, a negative reaction to the appearance of Santa in shopping malls. Have you noticed he’s earlier every year? What are they going to do, have him sit on pumpkins next year? I react to the World’s Way trying to press me into it’s mold. That first wave of pressure makes me resist shopping. So I put off shopping to the last week or so, until after a careful look at my budget. It’s not that I don’t want to give gifts; I just want to give freely, and without all the commercial expectation.

The Appearing of Christ at Christmas

That early phase of unholy pressure begins to fade as the date draws near. My heart warms to a different expectation. I begin to hope for the appearing of the Christ of Christmas. But then I notice the World’s reaction. Here in Madison, the Freedom from Religion foundation objects to a Christmas tree on public property and so they protest by placing a fake crèche and a baby girl doll and Thomas Jefferson figurine in the Wisconsin State Capitol. Sadly, those who reject Christ are stuck in a world without hope, a Darwinian world where survival of the fittest remains the ultimate value. The hopelessness of a purely materialist worldview will drive people to seek significance and happiness in material things, including saving the planet.

Then, the deep hope of Christ’s appearing takes new root again in my heart. Slowly, subtly, I find the grace to celebrate the birth of Christ. I realize that the expectation of his appearing is not complete in merely remembering that manger scene, where the Son of God was born 2000 years ago. He has come. He is Emanuel, God with us.

The expectation of Christmas, the Advent season, is his appearing AGAIN. He is coming. And all creation is longing for his appearing. That same longing is for the appearance of the sons of God, the Body of Christ. Not only will Christ Jesus come, he will set all things right.

Because we received the free Christmas gift

Meanwhile, the sons of God, those of us who have received the free Christmas gift of faith, are urged to “appear” with Christmas gifts. We’re called to make things right, reconciling relationships of all sorts, in his Name. We’re called to reconcile all relationships, beginning with our relationship with Him.

We “appear” as “Sons” when we love God and our neighbors. The Christmas season is the time to be reconciled with family, with our community, and with our nation (despite political differences), It is the time to be reconciled with our world. It is wrong to reject the world, the world to which Jesus was sent, because he loves the world.

Receive and Give the Free Gifts of Christmas

This Christmas, we can receive again the free gift of our world and we can choose to love it. We can love the amazing creative structure of our world, and we can help reconcile the mis-direction, the way of the World.

This Christmas, may you enjoy the wondrous appearing of Christ again in your family, in your world. Have a blessed Christmas!

Occupy Christmas

And he called his ten servants, and delivered them ten pounds, and said unto them, Occupy till I come. (Luke 19:13 KJV)

This call to “occupy” is not new. Jesus of Nazareth told a story to his followers to encourage them, especially the ones who were asking if the kingdom would appear right away. They asked, “Will we live in a world with justice and mercy today?”

Interestingly, the people in the story actually “hated” the king. According to the Message, a popular common language translation of the Bible, those who hated the king…

“…sent a commission with a signed petition to oppose his rule: ‘We don’t want this man to rule us.’ (Luke 19:14 MSG)

What does it mean “to occupy”?
Well, according to this ancient use of the term, it refers to good stewardship. Those who were faithful to what the king entrusted to them, those who increased the King’s wealth, were given more than they already had. And to those who did not faithfully invest his wealth, the king took away everything.

Why was this the story Jesus told when asked if he was going to establish his kingdom now?

Perhaps the cry for justice in the heart of every generation can help us understand.

Most people do not want a king. They do not want to serve another, to be faithful to the cause of another. Most would choose not to trust a leader. While crying out for justice, they would reject the most faithful, the most merciful, and the most just leader the world has ever known. Few would see the importance of their own faithfulness.

Most did not, and still do not recognize him. He hid his identity in his humanity. Born in a little corner of a Roman Client State, Palestine. Entrusted to human parents of a middle eastern tribal people, Israel. Jesus was born a king. And only young shepherds and angels knew it. A few odd astrologers too.

Jesus, the son of God, preferred to be addressed as “son of man.” He occupied a human body. And, even after being rejected and killed by those to whom he came to love, he did not reject his creation. Raised in a resurrected body, he occupies that body today.

And he will return, no matter how many Freedom from Religion petitions are circulated, or similar petitions rejecting leaders. No matter how many continue to hate the thought of anyone being their leader, Jesus will return as king.

Have you been “occupying” in anticipation of the king’s return? Have you been faithful with what he has entrusted to you?

He is coming soon. In this Christmas season, may we all occupy our human bodies, our neighborhoods, and our world with the same attitude that Jesus did. Though he was privileged, he became a servant of all.

Have a blessed Christmas!

Blow the plaque out of your arteries!

Watch this video and consider taking one of the Perspectives Courses taking place around the world. I will be teaching in two courses, in Madison, WI and in Elgin, IL.  On January 15 at Door Creek Church in Madison, WI, I will be teaching on “Your Kingdom Come” (Lesson 3). And on February 21, I will teach at the Vineyard Christian Fellowship in Elgin, IL on the “Expansion of the World Christian Movement” (Lesson 6).

Watch the Video and go to Perspectives.org to find a class near you.

Want to Host Student Interns for a Field Project?

Interested in partnering with SMC hosting student interns for a Field Project serving the poor?

Field Ministry Internship - Health Care India 2007

In order to become a Field Partner with SMC, your organization must be leading (or in partnership with an in-country organization) a Field Project, which will at least:

• Have a history (at least 2 full years) of serving the poor, excluded, and/or vulnerable people for the purpose of alleviating poverty or reducing vulnerability.
• Be registered as a legal entity in your country of operation. (Note: We understand that the Field Host may not qualify. For this reason, we encourage the Field Host to place students with legally registered organizations.)
• Provide opportunities for the intern(s) to practice and/or research components of your Field Project related to the intern’s field of study.
• Provide the intern a weekly schedule, including participation in your community/team practices of worship and intercessory prayer, and community living work duties. The FMI intern will function in the regular schedule as if he/she were a member of the Field Project staff team.
• Be personally available to the intern(s) for advising, including at least a (one-hour) One-on-One interview at regular weekly intervals. You will agree to offer timely and candid feedback on the quantity and quality of the intern’s work.
• Provide a short online evaluation on the intern’s performance at monthly intervals (after every 30 days at your location) and upon completion of the internship term. All hours accumulated by the intern will be signed off by the Field Project Internship host supervisor.

What SMC Offers:

• We offer you the widest possible participation in the internship program decision-making. We want you to actively engage in the process. We agree to actively recruit qualified student interns on your behalf if you allow us to post your Field Project opportunity on the SMC web site and at various mobilization and recruiting events throughout 2012 and 2013.
• With your help, we are creating a registry of 100 Field Projects for university student internships to be displayed at YWAM International’s URBANA 2012 Exhibit. Registration as a Host for student interns is just $50 USD until June 1, 2012. After that date, the fee will be $100 USD.

Ready?

Campus Ministry South Asia Leaders meeting.

At the recent Campus Ministry South Asia Leaders meeting Peter Moon was named CMSA director.

CMSA 2011 Team

The CMSA team meetings were met with a strong unity and excitement . All came to agree to CMSA ‘Vision 725′. The 725 stands for the universities in South Asia.

 

Immediate January-Term Internship Opportunity

Teaching Teachers Forgiveness Education in Liberia

In partnership with Dr. Robert Enright, licensed psychologist and professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the International Forgiveness Institute, Inc., and Grace Network, the Student Mobilization Centre is seeking students and volunteers to help teach Enright’s Forgiveness Education curriculum to primary school teachers in Liberia.

Despite fourteen years of civil war, the future of Liberia is not without hope. The children of Liberia are the future. What is desperately needed in Liberia right now?

Liberian pastor Josiah T. Cheapoo, Sr., President of Grace Network, and Norm Bucholtz have a plan. Josiah and Norm are leading this two week outreach in January 2012. And Norm has 5 years experience teaching forgiveness education. Last January 2011, Josiah and Norm went to Liberia to teach this extraordinary curriculum. As a result, they have been invited to teach forgiveness education in every school in the country, both public and religious schools.

To complete this challenge, we need to teach teachers who will teach both children and other teachers. This strategic plan will begin with this first team of up to ten participants teaching teachers in Gbamga, Liberia.

Who should apply?
Education, Social Work, Psychology, and Youth Workers and students.

If you know someone that may be interested, please use our social networking links (Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn) at the top of this email notice. Thank you!

Request More Information

Missions and History Book Readers

Purpose of our Missions and History Book-reading group:

To learn more through reading books about missions, past and present, from a Christian theological perspective. And that learning is incomplete until it is operative in our changed behavior (motivating actions, decisions); learning is more properly  and biblically understood to be discipleship. That learning, that discipleship, must become an integral part of the fabric of our dispositions, what Aristotle and Aquinas called habits. We are forming a community of missional learners, whose rhythms of life and ministries are bringing change to our wider community, including the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

We meet in Madison, Wisconsin (though some are now also meeting with us online). We currently meet in the offices of Youth With A Mission’s PHOS House on the corner of Langdon St. and Frances St. adjacent to the University of Wisconsin Campus.

This monthly book discussion group began in the summer of 2006. Since then we have read and discussed over 40 volumes. On occasion the authors of the books have honored us with a presentation of their book. For a complete listing of the books we have read, visit our Missions and History Book Reader’s Blog.

You are not required to read all the books to participate. This group is ideal for anyone, particularly christian leaders desiring to learn in a small community of fellow readers.  Students, business people, government officials, pastors, and faculty are all welcome.

Post a comment with a request to attend our next meeting. Even if you cannot attend, we’ll add you to our list and keep you posted on the next gathering.

http://missionandhistorybookreaders.wordpress.com/

Discipleship and the Culture of Our Formation

This is from a short talk at the recent Missional Learning Commons event in Chicagoland:

Though part of a “warm” fellowship, many Christians have an internal war and their secret prayer is “please God, do not send me to hell.” Christian children often wake in the morning worried that the rapture had already happened and that they were “left behind.”

The predominant experience for too many is fear, which instead of producing spiritual growth results in a cycle of fatigue and burnout. Then depression.

Many who graduate from college, even Christian schools, end up as atheists. In the past, perhaps after a few years, they come back to faith, often to bring “stability” to their young families. However, most in recent years are not returning.

The young man who reported on this experience at the MLC meeting realized he was never discipled. Thankfully, he was liberated into an intentional process of learning, but he had to first recognize that he could not do the basic things of a vital Christian life. He did not truly know the Lord. He had much to unlearn as well as much to learn.

How about you? Does the experience of true transformation only happen after being pushed to a place of weakness?  When did you learn to hear God’s voice? Have you learned to hear the voice of the Spirit?

I believe the most transformation comes when we are in obedience to what we know is God’s desire; it may be even in the simplest things, like reading the bible. Discipling others and being discipled in accountability is a process of obedience and immitation. That is how we learn to do the basics (following the example of others.)

As we form Missional Communities in formal and non-formal settings, we must consider the importance of the culture of our own formation.

These are process questions from Mike Breen at the MLC event:

As we are becoming disciples with the life-style of making disciples, we must understand that belief is more caught than taught.

• What is the culture that formed your early Christian experience?
• What worldview, what language and practices, formed you?
• Where and what is the formative culture of your life?
• How has it influenced the forming of your faith?

Let’s hear from you. Feel free to respond.

Blessed with Discomfort

May God bless you with discomfort

At easy answers, half-truths, superficial living and superficial relationships,

So that you may live deep within your heart.

May God bless you with anger

At injustice, oppression and exploitation of people,

So that you may work for justice, freedom and peace with the Prince of Peace.

May God bless you with tears

To shed for those who suffer pain, rejection, hunger and war,

So that you may reach out your hand to comfort them

And turn their pain into joy.

And may God bless you with just enough foolishness

To believe that you can make a difference in the world

So that you can do what others claim cannot be done

To bring justice and kindness to all our children and the poor and needy.

Amen – Author Unknown

Shaken, not Stirred

The day the world changed for me was like any other. I was eleven, riding alone with my dad in our Pontiac Bonneville 2-door. We were on our way to the barber on a sunny Wisconsin saturday afternoon in 1969. Dad parked downtown, turned the key, and the engine went silent. Then, looking straight ahead at the parked vehicle in front of us, he said these few words: “Your mother is leaving.”

I was only a child, but I could hear the pain in his voice. I do not blame my Mom or my Dad. I learned over time that both of them were just kids that grew up and had kids. They divorced. At the time, it felt like the end of the world.

The world around us is changing. Change often comes suddenly, like a gut-check. For many, change comes when a loved one dies unexpectedly. For others, it’s the loss of a job, changing a home town or school.

Change can shake us to the core, making us feel powerless, wondering if anything will ever return to normal. There’s something change does NOT do, however. Change cannot necessarily rouse us from our slumber or cause us to grow up out of our immaturity.

Yes, we all face dramatic personal shakings. However, too many continue to live in denial, never changing themselves. They live as though somehow everything is going to get better, like it was before, if they just hope for it. Or they spend their lives blaming others, think OccupyWallStreet, and seeking a way to hang their troubles, like a Scarlet Letter, on someone else.

The shakings that happen in life will not necessarily change you, unless you allow yourself to be stirred deeply at the core of your being. Change, real change, is not what happens TO us, it is what happens when we choose to do FOR others.

Change does not come when we complain that the world has gone wrong; change comes when we become world changers.

So deep personal change must occur, in spite of all the changes that happen in our surroundings. If we fail to allow our hearts to be stirred, choosing to change from the inside out, we will not have a positive influence in a rapidly changing world. And change is happening like never before.

Few people in history have ever lived through the kind of dramatic global and cultural change taking place during our lifetime. Jesus of Nazareth announced major change for the Israelites; he told them their Temple, the center of their culture, was going to be destroyed. They could not accept it; and they sent him to the brutal public and painful death of crucifixion. The Temple was destroyed, and everything changed. But too few living in Israel understood the importance of the changes taking place. Too few allowed their hearts to be stirred.

Jesus warned that they should “flee to the mountains”, but too many held out to protect their precious Temple, even fighting each other when the Romans surrounded the city just before they burned the Temple to the ground. After the destruction and the fire ended, Roman soldiers entered the temple to harvest the gold much of which had melted and seeped between the stones in the floor. Yes, as Jesus foretold, “not one stone” was left unturned. The city of Jerusalem could not be recognized after the destruction. People could not imagine anyone living there. Change.

It appears today that the very fabric of modern society is collapsing. Have the foundations been destroyed? If so, what can be done?

When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?” Psalm 11:3

This video outlines the changes occurring today, especially how they relate to the church. Watch it and let us know what you think.

Calling All Readers

John Henry

Since the summer of 2006 a group of friends in Madison, Wisconsin have met monthly to discuss books we have read related to Missions and History. Recently we decided to create a blog to list the books we have read and make comment on them. The initial work of posting all the books, over 40 in all, is now accomplished. As time allows we will post comments about each of the books. Take a look and consider reading one or more of them. I highly recommend everyone of them for anyone interested in university missions.

http://missionandhistorybookreaders.wordpress.com/

John Henry, SMC International Leader

Open Secret

In this short post, I invite you to think a bit about this quote from a book I read by Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret:

“Significant advances of the church have not been the result
of our own decisions about the mobilizing and allocating of resources…The significant advances in my experience have come through happenings of which the story of Peter and Cornelius is a paradigm, in ways of which we have no advance knowledge. God opens the heart of a man or woman in the gospel. The messenger (the ‘angel’ of Acts 10:3) may be a stranger, a preacher, a piece of Scripture, a dream, an answered prayer, or a deep experience of joy or
sorrow, of danger or deliverance. It was not part of any missionary ‘strategy’ devised by the church. It was the free and sovereign deed of God, who goes before the church…this mission is not ours but God’s.” (1995:64)

In this respect, we can see that significant missionary advance is not primarily a human enterprise. We should be fully and actively involved in missions. However, we must reorient our posture, because it is not God’s Church that has a mission. Instead, it is God’s Mission that has a Church.

Every church community must recognize the Lord Jesus, not merely for their own salvation and acceptance, but for their orders and instructions in His Mission to all people.

If we properly understand our Identity as “members” of the Church, we will then fully participate in our Responsibilty in Christ’s Mission.

Cultivate Consultation in San Francisco – Sept. 2011

What Happened in San Francisco at the SMC Consultation Sept. 14 & 15, 2011?

A brief summary report by John Henry.

A big “Thank You” to Tim and Karol Svoboda and the team at YWAM San Francisco for extending their gracious hospitality in the Gold Rush City and the Tenderloin District of San Francisco. Thanks especially to Karol who was so engaged in hosting us that she rarely sat down, let alone sat in on our meetings. Bless you!

I must apologize to everyone for the delay in writing this summary report on our consultation. Thank you all for coming and participating. For me, the meetings and conversations kindled new and growing friendships. I must admit I did not keep very good record of all that was said. I invite you to pass along your notes if you can complement what you see here. In any case, I came away with an expanding vision and a deepening sense of the call of God to the universities, especially as they relate to the cities.

We began our meeting with a report on the history of student involvement in missions and a report on a book I recently read, Desiring the Kingdom, by James K.A. Smith.

Exegeting the City and the University – Tim Svoboda

Tim, you gave us an excellent picture of the contrasts, the “Geek”/Silicon Valley with its algorithms on one side and the artists/wealth and wine community on the opposite side of you. You helped us feel the tensions between Berekley, and its Prophetic voice, and San Francisco, with its extending of Mercy without boundaries, which may have a tendency toward anarchy. I wish we could have stayed longer to experience the small, organic church life, the marina, and the multi-lingual mosaic of peoples, the Vietnamese, Yemmeni, Cambodian, and Afghani, etc.

As I was departing the city at the end of our consultation, I was struck by the story of William Taylor, the Methodist preacher, who in the 1850′s wrote the book, “Seven Years of Street Preaching” and how hundreds would come hear him sing on the streets and then preach. Though his church is now a law college, I am also moved by the continuing story of how a Hastings Law College student, Randy Shaw, applied his studies to reality in the Tenderloin. The start reality of the story is both at your front door and inside the Ellis room where institutionalized poverty and homelessness now costs over 1 billion, with several non-profits enriching themselves off government system.

Yes, I was struck by the thought that God may intend for the Bay Area to be ground zero and the epicenter of the next major move of missions and the transformation of a Church caught up in the Fourth Wave of Missions. I was struck with the thought that it may all begin with students, prepared to act “Because Justice Matters” and collaborate, because they are equipped with tools unlike any previous generation. Perhaps, God in his mercy is calling for a new generation of followers to get their own “better cut of steak,” like NYC Tenderloin’s “Clever or Cleaver” Al, without the extortion and beatings, of course.

Perhaps God is calling for a new engaged church community, those Donald McGavran would say are not “birds of the same feather” and do not “tend to flock together.” The newly engaged church with a broad vision for the city must include students in university, especially the vastly different demographic of today’s universities. (i.e. Berkeley Enrollment: African American 3.4%; Asian American 45.7%; Latino 11.5%; White 31.7%)

Amid the wasteland of broken dreams where 11,000 people live in SRO’s and where police are social workers, God still offers hope and a future. The YWAM community and the Ellis room is not only a peaceful place to drop in: it’s also a peaceful place for guests. The Ellis room is a beautiful “third-space” between the streets and a 10×10 over-priced single, where conversations can lead to relationships and relationships can lead to prayer.

The Ellis room and the ministries of YWAM San Francisco are ripe with opportunities for university students like Randy Shaw. However, I believe God may be calling a different generation of Christ followers to leave the lecture halls of universities to enter a live-learn laboratory of urban life. Yes, the city is a funnel for 360 discipleship, your 1 year program in 4 phases of 3 months each. However, there are many more learning-serving internship experiences that may be also be honored in academic institutions, as Doug Batson so adroitly told.

I came away from our meetings with some action items and some books to read. Among them, I am committed to read The University and the City (1988). Tim, you are modeling the way by asking the right questions to exegete the city. And you began a process I will continue when you began to exegete the university.

Theology of Evangelism & Place

Tim, you and Karol and your team are helping provide a “Theology of Evangelism and Place”, which will be most readily adopted by university students. Church folk, even YWAMers, may be a little slow to see and hear, smell and taste, the gut level “pull” of the gospel to the city. However, students will need far less convincing; they will respond as you (and we) present a gospel big enough for the city, living as stakeholders and adding value to the city.

What is missing in university community? Yes, they are transient neighborhoods.

There are few automobiles, particularly on campus. Everything is roughly in walking distance. The are institutionalized young adult free agents cloistered in a tightly defined neighborhood. The contrast of the diverse typically cloistered university to the diverse un-cloistered urban community must be examined. We must come to grips with the fact that we are, most of us, not insiders; we are outsiders. As with any missions endeavor, there are implications and consequences for the missionary. Tim, you said it well: “If you are an insider, it’s because you are a resident and have a theology of place.”

And then you asked, “How does a city transforms a university?” and, inversely, “How does a university transforms a city?” Hmmmm….Good questions. “The world is the domain of the university, not just the city,” you added. Yes, in the origins, the university would pick up and move if they did not receive the benefit of the city. However, the earliest prototypes of universities were on the frontiers where the need was great. Today’s urban centers are areas of incredible need, including the spheres transportation (GO), communications (PREACH), and cultures (ALL NATIONS).

What I saw in San Francisco are myriads of opportunities for students in the Bay Area’s 200 colleges/universities looking for ways to apply their studies to reality. Everything from urban agriculture and art to law and economic development, from health and beauty to medicine and social work, every field of study has application in the city. There’s opportunity to study and serve as we all exegete the city, including issues related to the Poor, Suicide, Church, Media, Family, Prisoners, Muslims, Government, Business, Gutter Punks, Homeless, Drug Addicts, Migrant workers, Elderly, Street Kids, Handicapped, Arts, Education, Prostitutes, Sports, Middle Class, Unemployed, and Hindus.

Opportunities for University Students

I came away with some important words ringing in my ears, “The weakness in YWAM is the need for a central database.” That statement is something I have been giving a lot of thought to. How can we connect students in universities outside of YWAM with the myriad of opportunities for student internships/outreaches both at YWAM ministry locations and at partner organizations around the world? I have been working furiously to answer that call through our new web site and Salesforce.com cloud-based database. The programming I am doing (way over my head, so I hope to get some expert help from Kyle and Angie) is linking many-to-many applicants-to-projects, all though a web-based applications and approval system. To see the new SMC web site (embedded applications not all operating yet), go to http://www.studentmobilizationcentre.com.

Tim mentioned another book, Salt & Light, about Knoxville, TN and how partnerships have formed across the entire city. This approach, city leaders setting the stage for collaboration, is necessary to begin the mobilization of students into city projects. What kind of partnerships can be created for internships? One of the partners can be the university or college. For example, Grand Canyon College wants to plug their students into internships. Their goal: “Break their hearts for the city.” Another example: Westmont Urban College, which offers internships in city, and their professors visit YWAM. The city is divided up according to majors, partners, etc.

For SMC’s Field Ministry Internships (FMI) teams, students participate in five phases, including: 

1. Orientation (mini-DTS type; one-week),
2. Enculturation (history of project, leaders and cultural background),
3. Assessment (listening, observing, and interviewing while serving the project),
4. Ministry (serving the project while writing a research paper or proposal for ministry related to the students’ field of studies), and
5. Debriefing (final 3 days of reporting and celebrating). – initial times

Note that FMI students are not experts. They serve as learners, with the accompanying vulnerability. In so doing, the students observe, listen, and interview leaders and clients of a project in order to discern, while on the ground serving, how their field of study may best be offered as a research or proposal for an extended ministry project. The posture of a learner is fundamental to FMI. YWAMers who work with FMI student teams are few and far between, however this kind of ministry project with students could help us “get YWAM out of YWAM.”

How to Mobilize a New SVM – Doug Batson

Doug Batson, Human Geographer with US Gov. DOD, and Analyst for Turkic Speaking World spoke about adult continuing education, which he did mostly while with the Department of Defense DOD. Doug notes that missionaries (and missionary candidates currently in high school) are a traveling constituency, like the thousands of soldiers and family members he has helped to earn college credit. Doug suggests an approach to education that examines and addresses global needs, which thereby can fuel a new Student Volunteer Movement. What would that look like…tens of thousands from North America every year? Doug writes:

“Today, millions of 18-23 year olds pursue an increasingly costly campus-based undergradaute education with decreasing relevance to globalized business environments and their own life goals.  Many believers would rather choose the mission field as a place of Christian service, learning, and building relationships, if only that were a valid option.  Good news!  With the right counsel, it is a very valid option!  Via exams and portfolio assessments (not on-line courses), young adults can serve Christ cross-culturally and, as a by-product, earn a B.A. degree from a State University in the same 4-5 years, and for the same $40,000-$50,000 charged by traditional  institutions! How?  Through assessments of relevant learning acquired from missions fields:  foreign languages, cross-cultural communication, comparative religion, social sciences, administration and leadership.”  

Why pursue such a radically different education path?

• Offer the first fruits of one’s life to make Christ known where He is not
• Test one’s God-given gifts and talents in real-world environments
• Avoid student loan debt
• Become a local church missions catalyst and mobilizer—before age 30
• Choose graduate education based on reflections from a purposeful personal journey

Students may desire to go, but they are too often caught in debt trap, and therefore, despite their best intentions, often do not get involved in missions.  There are currently 1,000,000 students in North American colleges every year. If 10% are evangelical enough to desire Christian service, then that’s quite a few candidates for missions mobilization!

Doug suggests a plan to move these missionary candidates from institutional structures of universities to a Christian missional community, with options to gain academic credit, saving thousands of dollars, through testing. Some institutions will recognize genuine learning and offer transcripts with minimal expense. Should we present an alternative to earnest missionary candidates currently in high school? Should we help them save 4-5 years, and $40 to $50 thousand dollars for education and career training? For many parents and many forward thinking high school students, this will be a very attractive option.

Goal: Minimize Tuition cost and residency.

Doug listed three regionally accredited secular state colleges/universities that require have no residency requirement:

1. Excelsior.edu – part of SUNY system
2. Thomas Edison State College – tesc.edu
3. Charter Oak State College in CT

What would it look like ON a university campus?

Imagine a missional community of students with a few students taking courses, but with no intention of graduating. Those students could graduate with far less expense and far less time from Excelsior.

The plan would be different for every student, so making this work will require some basic information accessed perhaps by a web site and a deeper consulting service for those needed additional help. Here’s an example of College Level Examinations that Doug says every high school student could do…

1. Analysis and Interpretation of Literature. (6 semester hours.)
2. American Lit. (6 semester hours.)
3. British Lit. (6 semester hours.)
4. Gen’l Humanities (6 semester hours.)
5. UNC challenge exams. (pay $150 for proctor) NT & OT as Lit. 3 semester hours.

What kind of savings would this mean for a student/family? For 30 semester hours, it’s $10,000 = One year of college credits.

Doug suggests a supportive missional learning community could help prepare students for these exams.

Doug is a living example of this method of gaining credit. He has a Ph.D. and he’s never been a resident. Most all of his credits were gained through testing. He got 36 hours credit, saving $12,000, by taking German language tests while a soldier in Germany. He didn’t get German degree, but he said he didn’t need it.  Then he took the GRE Subject Test – Aptitude predictor in Grad School, testing content knowledge of a full grad degree. He asked Excelsior.com: “What if I took a GRE Subject Test and got a top half score? Would you give me degree?” They answered: “YES. We’ll give you 30 sem. hrs and a degree.”  He did it all for just $89.

Doug says this is a matter of educational justice. The University of the Nations does not have regional accreditation, but has excellent training. He asks: “Why shouldn’t UofN students be recognized for their knowledge of the subjects?”

Consultation Summary: Take Away Action Items

Most participated in our wrap up session, listing take away actions on PostIt Notes. That list is below. Thank you again for praying and participating in this important gathering in San Francisco. I believe God has already formed new friendships. I trust the fruit of our time will be new partnerships and a focused mobilization of university students.

The following is a summary of all action items:

Personal

• Continue study of Worldview/cultural studies.
• Spend more specific prayer time for campus-on campus.
• Read Salt & Light book re: Knoxville, TN
• Read University & the City book.
• Be a servant-hearted minister to current campus ministries.
• Be more intentional about prayer.
• Write a blog for student audience.

City

• Pioneer house of worship to strengthen and encourage campus ministries.
• Focus our outreach teams around prayer.
• Create a summer opportunity to immerse students in city-wide evangelism locally and overseas.

International

• Develop closer working with international bases for partnership, especially in Latin America (Mexico).

Campus

• Encourage campus groups in strengths to develop love of place and to engage.
• Develop alongside to provide symbiosis at UC Berkeley & YWAM
• Networking between campuses through quarterly combined prayer meetings.
• Evangelism & Service workshops held off campus in central location (maybe YWAM SF?) and/or Niko?
• Join in meetings of campus ministries alliance
• Participate in campus ministry activities whenever possible
• Survey: Inventory what’s present on campus (CM’s, service orgs, student orgs) What does each do? What are the gaps?
• Create a tool to assess campus issues and various projects
• Create database of projects
• Create a web-based platform to highlight and help students to find overseas ministry opportunities.
• Challenge students to take language courses to gain long-term affinity with that people group.
• Perspectives Course was originally designed for secular campuses, but gravitated to churches. Praying for it to return to campus, with result of sharing Christ.
• Presence on Campus; regular place, meetings, and exegetes campus.
• Present models for communities of faith, with best practiced on web site. Restart more on UW campus.

YWAM

• Start a UDTS
• Continue to pray for for the start of a YWAM engagement at Berkeley
• Launch DTS with focus on releasing students to support and strengthen ministry outreaches.
• Visit YWAM bases with university focus.
• Develop relationship with regionally close based (Tyler, CSprings, Denver)
• Connect base leaders to vision through regular SMC updates

Campus

• Christians and mission orgs= student-led and missionary mobilized prayer mtgs. & missionaries equipping supporting students in leadership& students leading other students on mission trips= Missional generation of influence.

Network

• Connecting students & Professionals
• Have a network of Christian professionals who would mentor/be available for students looking to go into that field. E.g. Med students connecting with Christian doctor once a month?
• Investigate running perspectives intensive Boise In mendecino (w/college credit)
• Maintain contact with this group of direction seekers: mutual prayer, shared resources.
• Adopt-A-People group incorporated into campus ministry. Many of us have been processing deeply the implications of a fourth wave of missions, which we believe will include a flourishing of missional communities, a fresh movement of church planting with missional focus. Our goal is to ride this wave of change by fostering missional communities in university settings. We believe these missional communities will be very strategic if they work in collaboration with global missions, leveraging the resources of universities and NGO’s, and churches of all kinds.

Final post on Smith’s book: “Desiring the Kingdom”

What do you think is lacking in a university education?

Could it be we need a fresh vision of education? We have been discussing the book Desiring the Kingdom by James Smith.

In his book, Smith has outlined an “anthropology of desire”, which may shake up your thinking about education, culture, institutions, spheres of society, and the discipleship of nations.

I promised a few questions in this final post about the book. I will in just a moment. First, I want to share a bit of my perspective as i read this book.

My focus and my interest in reading the book is to think through how Smith’s message relates to the call of God and the living witness of the gospel of God’s kingdom in every sphere of society in every culture. Education, most especially the university, is at the heart of this discussion.

Calling infers that human persons are responsive and responsible. Smith writes that we are “dynamic beings” and “desiring arrows” aimed at something ultimate, which in turn reflects the kind of people we desire to become. In my view, God’s voice, his calling, is never “heard” or responded to by anyone who does not desire God’s kingdom, his vision of human flourishing.

In my view, calling is meaningless if it is not responded to. And calling is not directed and fulfilled merely as individuals. We are, all of us, embedded in social relationships and institutions. Therefore calling is both vertical, directed in response to God, and horizontal, engaging our world and all our personal, social, political, and material relationships.

This is why Smith’s book is so important. He writes,

“Through practices, the self is shaped by, tethered to, and embodied in concrete social institutions.”

Therefore, there are no truly private practices; our hearts are constantly being formed by others, and the institutions we create, and in which we participate, especially our educational institutions.

In other words, culture is formed through practices, shaped by desire for a kingdom. Culture is more a verb than it is a noun. Smith writes, “Culture is not ‘out there’; it’s what we do.”

Institutions are cultivated through practices by a people seeking to address human needs, wants, and desires. At the most basic level, people have sought to meet bodily needs for provision and protection. At a higher level, people have sought to order their cravings for intimacy and the meaning of their lives. The result is our cultural institutions.

Cultural institutions have systemic power which gives them an influence that is far beyond what any individual may do to change it. On the other hand, cultural institutions possess a similar “hope for a future”, a similar telos, to that of individuals.

The main difference, however, is that our cultural institutions powerfully promote practices to point the desires of multitudes, and generations of people, toward certain ends, a certain vision of the good life. This “vision” is inscribed into the institution itself.

That specific configuration of cultural practices, which become our cultural institutions, function as “liturgies”, in Smith’s words. Those cultural liturgies are pedagogies, or methods of instruction, teaching people an (ultimate) desire, a desire for a kingdom. Smith suggests, “We need to ‘read’ these institutions and practices in order to discern the telos (future) at which they’re aimed.

So, rather than concern ourselves solely with ideas or beliefs bandied about in the universities, we ought rather to be discerning to what ends they are seeking to direct our love. We need to discern an array of “liturgies” that function as pedagogies of desire.

Okay, now on to the questions I promised. If our practices can become powerful cultural liturgies, shaping institutions and cultures, I suggest we take Smith’s (somewhat revised) “Practices Audit”:

1. What habits shape your actions and attitude?

2. What does your time look like? How much time is spent on what?

3. What is your most important ritual? Is it toward God’s kingdom or not?

4. What is most potent practice in university?

5. Do you have any “thin” habits that might really be “thick”?

6. Is worship a thick habit? How?

7. What competes for worship in your life?

Take some time to reflect on these questions, and let me know you did.

To close, here’s a great quote summing up Smith’s book: (it refers to a bible text, 2 Pe. 1, which I often quote):

“The end of learning is love; the path of discipleship is romantic.”

Desiring the Kingdom 9

Rituals are among several ways we picture and practice our ideals, our vision of a kingdom with human flourishing. For example, the marriage ceremony is the ideal of marriage. The bride is in white, representing purity, and celebrated for her surrendered devotion to one man. The groom is in tuxedo, honoring the bride with his commitment to love and cherish one woman.

In a few months the two will be settling into married life, with daily chores, and other habits. Some habits are not bad at first. However they can grow in their influence, often with ill effects on cherished institutions like marriage. Shopping at the mall or jockeying a recliner in sweats for weekend football games are not harmful if we are attentive to their potentially destructive power.

In his book, Desiring the Kingdom, James Smith outlines how over time our rituals, especially our most cherished practices, help train our desires. Rituals mold and shape our worldview, our precognition of the world. Our daily motions and rhythms, our embodied routines, train our minds and hearts so that we develop habits. Habits are like attitudinal reflexes; they make us tend to act in certain ways toward certain ends.

For example, most of us use a keyboard pretty regularly. So, where is “d” key. Do you know? Not so easy to say where it is, is it? But, your hands “know”, don’t they? How? By practice. rituals, routines, and exercises. It’s not reasoned thought that tells you where to find the “d” key.

Philosopher-scientist Blaise Pascal writes, “The heart has reasons of which reason knows nothing.”

There are different levels of habits according to Smith: thin and thick.

The thin habits are mundane, like brushing teeth; they are the instrumental things we do. Thin habits do not touch our identity, or our fundamental desire, our love.

Thick habits are meaningful, significant to identity. They are representative of our core values. Often, they are religious habits.

Cultural anthropologist Charles Taylor emphasizes that we understand before we “know”. And we love before we know. Ancient Christian ascetic tradition had the axiom: “Desire forms knowledge.”

So James Smith proposes: “We must shape desire in order to know.”

He continues: “What we do (practice) is intimately linked to what we desire (love), so what we do determines whether, how, and what we can know.”

Maximus the Confessor in One Hundred Chapters of Love, writes about the key to directing and increasing one’s desire for God; it’s in the acquisition of virtues.

How are Christian virtues acquired? Through concrete practices like confession, communion, prayer, service, etc.

According to research by Bargh & Chartrand, “the development of most acquired forms of automaticity (habits/virtues/skills) depends on the frequent and consistent pairing of internal responses with external events..over time, conscious choice drops out as it is not needed.”

In my final post on this book, I will ask several questions to help us think through the implications for our lives, particularly as habits and “cultural liturgies” relate to Christ’s mission. Of course, for those of us in university life, the implications are culture forming. Look for that final post very soon.

Goals: What the YWAM-SMC network is doing now.

SMC Summer Internships

The Student Mobilization Centre is a centre of the University of the Nations, a ministry of Youth With A Mission. The SMC is not a local ministry; we are an international network of YWAM staff fostering the emergence of a new movement of university students serving Christ’s Great Commission through their life-work and calling.

Through our ministries, university students are challenged to lead the next major wave of collaborative missions by partnering with global projects with holistic witness in every arena of society and major field of studies. In addition, we are affirming and assisting the emergence of student missional communities in universities worldwide.

SMC Objectives

To recruit, equip, and place students ready to serve and learn cross-culturally.

We Gather - Students & Leaders through Consultations, Events, and Projects.

We Train - Developing curriculum through contextual research, and conducting seminars and schools.

We Send - Mobilize students into service projects according to their field of studies and the spheres of society. Our short-term programs, while bolstering long-term projects, serve the students as they discern their calling.

We Network - Cultivating missional collaboration in and around university communities for the purpose of mobilization of an emerging generation of student volunteers serving Christ’s Great Commission.

Immediate SMC Goals

Gather

• We will host Passion Points Conferences: 3-day events in 2013.
• We will host Consultations in Australia, Europe and Africa – By Sept. 2012.

Train:  We will post Best Practices and Curriculum Resources for all our SMC Programs and Courses on web site  by Mar. 2012

Send: We will send hundreds of Field Ministry Interns (FMI) by Jan. 2013

• Redesigning to attract non-christians
• Tie internships to UDTS outreaches
• Focus FMI for Thematic, Passion Points, Causes, and Projects in Society
• International & year-long projects: Megacities/Africa

Network:

• We will unveil a new Web-based Project Development Registration Process for Hosting FMI – By Jan. 2012
• Develop new Strategic Alliances/International Partners (Call2All-Students, UofN Colleges, YWAM CMI, Christian Colleges, Churches, National & International Student Organizations, IJM, etc.)

In addition, the new SMC Web Site will provide a collaborative information gateway for strategic networking.

The SMC offers student organizations and churches access to a missions networking centre where credit card payments, donations and field support can be channeled to mission projects globally. The SMC is providing a new framework for student groups and campus churches to cooperate with YWAM and other global partners and nongovernmental organizations.

The SMC represents a global Kingdom community for the emerging student missions movement.  Our goal is to provide the arena—the forum—where students who are embracing a missional life-style and life-work can learn from one another.

John Henry – SMC International Leader

New, Old Meaning for Hospitality

Hospitality has taken on fresh meaning to me lately. I’ll explain.

I understood hospitality to be mainly “friendship with the stranger,” and NOT primarily how to set your table to impress your dinner guests. Welcoming strangers, radical as that view seemed, isn’t broad enough.

Recently, while doing some research on church eldership, the word hospitality emerged again. I thought a practical, personal, and local expression of hospitality helps us engage with Christ’s mission. It does and it should. However, it should not be limited to a ministry of elders.

Of course, Paul’s instructions regarding elder qualification, at first glance, is rather unremarkable: “Don’t get drunk.” I’m pretty sure that didn’t mean everyone else should get drunk.

The elder, besides being “apt to teach,” must be hospitable. Certainly it means elders should be friends to strangers, including strangers from distant cultures, as part of Christ’s mission. Perhaps the broader meaning is given if we drop a letter, “r”. It’s not merely welcoming the stranger; it’s welcoming the strange.

Hospitality has been reduced in modern times; it’s about folding napkins and making table decorations. The original meaning of hospitality is much broader, tied to Christ’s mission.

That little “r”
The challenge to my missional view of hospitality is that even “friendship with strangers” is too narrow a definition. Drop the “r” and you get “friend of the strange.”

Our modern definitions of biblical terms tend toward reduction, therefore “Mission” has been reduced to reaching every individual from every nation. Sounds like a broad definition, doesn’t it? However, reducing the kingdom message of Jesus to individual decisions has contributed to a church of spectators and a society that demands their rights at the expense of others. As a result of the modern interpretation of mission, the modern church formation and leadership has separated out the missionary to go do missions elsewhere, not inside the church structure or the culture in which that church has settled.

Paul was not a modernist. What Paul instructed Timothy and Titus, and the members of the early church, was a Missional meaning to hospitality, that elders were to welcome the “strange.”

Certainly, the gospel and the message of the kingdom of God is a “strange” message; it’s “foolishness to the Greeks” and a “rock of offense to the Jews.” God’s message is fresh bread from heaven; we’re called to live by every word that proceeds from God.

That message from God will tend to be “strange,” shaking us out of our complacency and our tendency to settle into the surrounding culture, protecting our position, our power, and our privilege gained.

Hospitality is a vital part of leadership of a church community because an elder must be careful to listen for the word from the Lord, even though strange to the ear or delivered through a strange means. The message may come through a prophetic word, a tongue to be interpreted or a vision of something like a “sheet with animals”.

The elder must be hospitable, protecting the freedom in the Spirit for anyone to bring a word and not be hindered, including women and little children. The elders must welcome that strange word and test it carefully as a community, always ready for that teachable moment led the Spirit of God.

Now, the table is set. This is hospitality. Enjoy the feast!

Desiring the Kingdom 8

What “mechanism” could be employed to motivate them and help them govern their way of life, decisions, actions, pursuits, and relationships?

The answer simply is this: Habits.

Habits are what we ultimately value most deeply. Habits are love’s fulcrum, according to James Smith in his book Desiring the Kingdom. The fulcrum is the support on which the levers of our lives rest. Habits serve us or hurt us.

Desire for a vision must motivate our actions and our decisions by becoming an integral part of the fabric of our heart’s dispositions, those precognitive tendencies, which Aristotle and Aquinas called habits.

Our love is predisposed to be aimed in certain directions, which over time and practice become habits.

Good habits are virtues; bad are vices. We learn habits. They are not innate, not biological, but they are a kind of second nature, intricately woven into the entirety of our being.

Habits are like default, quasi-automatic dispositions, the product of long development and formation. Habits become our hard wiring; the way we function without reflection or cognition. Habits tend to fly under the radar.

Habits are the fulcrum of desire, the hinge that turns our heart.

How are habits are formed?
By practice.

This is why we must have a theology of embodiment. We must understand that we are affective, desiring animals, and embodied creatures.

Alongside a theology of embodiment, we need to present messages that will capture hearts, shock us at our gut, shock us out of familiarity, touch our center of gravity and identity, and our embodiment. The most effective discipleship, therefore, is the kind that sends us out of the classroom or the church building and into the world.

We feel our way more than we think our way through the world, because worldview is more imagination than intellect. Imagination runs off the fuel of images that touch our senses.

The result of a “come, follow me” discipleship approach is a more holistic, less dualistic picture of the world and of humanity. We learn through our gut; we are embodied.

As it turns out, I will offer two more posts: One to summarize the importance of what James Smith’s book, Desiring the Kingdom.calls Cultural Liturgies, and the Final post, a personal inventory questionnaire to help you make application.

Desiring the Kingdom 7

When we have a distorted vision of the kingdom, the kingdom where the good king Jesus is not the supreme leader, we are deceived. Sadly, though we are created in the image of a God of love, our love can be misdirected. The shape of God’s kingdom is contested. Different stories are generated from different kinds of people, citizens of rival kings.

We established earlier that we are not primarily thinking beings. At core, we are loving beings. Decartes, the French mathematician and philosopher offered a notion to help a divided and skeptical world a way forward. His philosophical notion, “I Think, therefore I Am”, centered and founded modern philosophy on human rationality. The problem is this: We are too easily deceived. Perhaps Cartesian philosophy is best understood as “I’m deceived, therefore I am.”

Yes, any vision of hope and a future that does not have at the center a faith-filled vision of Jesus Christ, our supreme God and king, the ultimate lover who demonstrated his love through the ultimate suffering at the cross, anything less is a distortion, a delusion, a deception. Our vision of hope for the future must be centered on the One who created us and loves us supremely. He holds the future.

So then, how can we present a picture of the good life, a vision of human flourishing, to students and university communities?

How can we “read” the different configurations and distortions of kingdom which is assumed by and often enforced by different cultural institutions and narratives?

How does love get aimed in different directions?

Most importantly, how can we assist a generation of students to aim their love at Christ and his kingdom?

Or rather, how is a vision of a good life in Christ’s kingdom best presented?

Do we use arguments or propositions?

How does a vision for Christ and his kingdom get infused in the hearts of students and faculty?

What “mechanism” could be employed to motivate them and help them govern their way of life, decisions, actions, pursuits, and relationships?

The.answer: the gut, the kardia, the heart.

I will wrap up this series by outlining how to do that in my next post.

Desiring the Kingdom 6

Because we are created in the image of God, we are compelled by love to a vision of a kingdom. How? We begin to pursue the goods, the practices, and aspects of a vision of human flourishing which are painted in our imaginations by alluring pictures. The vision of a kingdom, and accompanying components, seep into our being, our subconscious and our gut, our hearts. That is when the compelling vision begins to pull us, to govern and to shape our decisions, actions, and habits.

We become a people who mimic, emulate, and reflect a particular vision formed by desire.

So, as James Smith’s book Desiring the Kingdom argues, our ultimate decisions come from desire, not thinking. To be human is to desire a “kingdom”.

Every human being posseses some version of the kingdom. We posses a vision with an aim, a quest. And we are all groping, feeling our way to a future, a dream of utopia, a vision of human flourishing.

This deep vision is what pulls us up out of bed in the morning. We put on our armor and go out on our quest every day, whether we are a student, a baker, or a candlestick maker.

We are all “lovers”, but we don’t all have the same love. However, the great human tragedy known in the Bible as the Fall, when humanity failed to trust the good dreams and visions of our Creator, still didn’t take away our capacity to love. The Fall into sin and selfishness merely distorted our love, and with it, our vision for human flourishing. How is this great tragedy rewritten to end with good news?

I will attempt to answer that question in my final few post in this review of James Smith’s book.

Desiring the Kingdom 5

Possessing a vision of a kingdom is what makes us human, created in the image of God. That vision pulls us to a future and a hope, though often times our actions and habits in pursuit of the vision creates a distorted example of the kingdom of God. Our actions and attitudes, and the cultural habits and institutions that result, fail to realize the hope of a heavenly kingdom.

The university is one such institution, which was first established in Paris as an Academy alongside a cathedral church. Shortly thereafter, or perhaps simultaneously, the universities of Cambridge and Oxford emerged. Each of these institutions of higher learning were established for the purpose of teaching leaders who would in turn teach all people the good news of Jesus Christ and God’s ways in regard to culture, law, and the sciences.

Do you possess a love for students and university communities? Do you have a vision of human flourishing through the establishing and reforming of social institutions? Do you seek to fulfill the Great Commission through teaching and learning, seeking dialog and making disciples? This is not insignificant ministry. Today’s students become tomorrow’s leaders. The point I am making in this series on Desiring the Kingdom from James Smith’s book is that our vision of a kingdom, the issues of our hearts have great consequence. We will create a future according to that vision.

Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is within you.” In Mark 7:20-23, he continues:

“What comes out of a person is what defiles them. For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person.”

Examine for a moment what governs, shapes, and motivates your decisions and actions. Your vision for “the good life” moves you because it is what captures your imagination and your heart. We are not motivated primarily by what we think or believe; instead we are motivated by affective, sensible, and even aesthetic images of a future, a desire for a kingdom.

This vision captures our hearts, most often without our conscious choice. Think for a moment how many times you have driven home in your car lost in thought about family or work. Then, pulling into the driveway, you realize you didn’t make a conscious choice about which way to get home. This is how we live much of our lives. We get up day after day heading in a direction without giving it much thought. However, our hearts are captivated by a vision.

If you possess a love for university students and a vision for university missions, you may be surprised to learn that true discipleship, the kind that transforms and re-directs the heart, is not accomplished primarily in the lecture halls and formal educational methods. No, it is pictures of the good life which communicate powerfully to our hearts. These images are imparted through stories, legends, myths, plays, novels, and films, and not through dissertations, messages, or monographs. In addition, the disciple must step into the story to experience the joys and the pains of the heart that make the story, the vision of a kingdom, more vivid and more enduring.

We are all motivated toward a shared vision of the good life, human flourishing. We are not pushed or mobilized by beliefs; we are pulled by a telos, a vision of a future, a desire for a kingdom. With regard to the issues of the heart, we are not intellectually convinced, then muster the will-power to pursue what we ought. Instead we are attracted, at a precognition level, to a vision that has been painted for us in stories, myths, images, and icons. That attraction draws us, pulls us into action, and captivates us toward a vision of a future.

So then, it’s not primarily the minds of students in university that are captivated; it’s the imaginations that are hooked by very different visions that are fed into the mind.

This presents a very important question: What images, what vision of human flourishing is being presented to this generation of students in university?

Desiring the Kingdom 4

So then, as creatures of desire, created to love and be loved, we have an intent, a direction and purpose in life. We seek a vision of the good life. All our choices, actions, and habits emerge as we are pulled by our hearts toward a picture of that good life, the city, or that kingdom.

Such a vision will always include implicit assumptions, which may include some kind of answer to the following questions:

What is a good relationship?
What is a just economy?
What play or recreation do we value?
How do we relate to nature and our environment?
What is good work?
What is flourishing family?
What, therefore, does it mean to be “saved”?

Everyone has answers of some kind tucked away in our hearts. Possessing a vision of a future is implicit in the fact that we are created in God’s image. Our hopes and dreams are what get us up out of bed in the morning. Our desire for a kingdom may or may not be the same desire, or the same kingdom, for which Jesus of Nazareth went to the cross. However blurred or distorted our vision may be, the fact that we have a vision is testament to God’s creative impulse within us.

The question we must ask ourselves in the quiet place is this: Does my heart pull me toward the One who created me for good?

Your answer will lead you to live a life worthy of such a calling.

Desiring the Kingdom 3

Desiring the Kingdom 3

This is a continuing discussion with thoughts stimulated by James Smith’s book: Desiring the Kingdom.

In the previous post we established the fact that we are creatures of desire. We are not primarily thinking or believing beings; we are primarily loving beings. We are created in the image of the One who is love.

Martin Heidegger, influential German philosopher, said we are essentially discovering beings; we are feeling our way around.

He apparently agrees with the apostle Paul, who said we are “groping”:

God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’ (Acts 17:27, 28 NIV)

So then, we are not static, isolated, and primarily thinking being, who are individualistic at the core, merely perceiving people and objects around us.

No we “intend.” We are in motion over time in relationships with affective connections and interactions with family, neighbors, our community, our society, and our environment. We are creatures of desire who are moving in a direction compelled by our heart, our gut, which is the meaning of the original Greek word found in our Bibles, “kardia.” Our hearts are compelled in a direction, a telos or destination, of a perceived and believed and shared notion of human flourishing.

In the next post, I will discuss components of human flourishing.

Desiring the Kingdom 2

I began to explore the Calling of God about 25 years ago. I’ve learned through the Scriptures and my love of the study of history of the Church and Christ’s Mission. Even more, I’ve learned as I’ve listened to students who have gone on summer internships testing their calling by serving people through the field of their studies.

So now I have a long history of teaching on calling, on four continents and over 20 countries. My learning, my understanding of God’s calling, came through practice, trial, experiment, and relationships with hundreds of students who are learning outside the classroom and on the field, loving and serving others.

What have I been learning? I have learned that I have more questions. I have learned that teaching and learning is not accomplished by talking, teaching, or even preaching. I see that we all need to fine tune our vision for teaching, and making disciples, especially disciples of nations.

What questions do you have about your calling? Those questions are being asked multiplied hundreds of thousands of times every day in university communities around the world. Too often insufficient answers are found in their classrooms, and in their churches.

This is the question I ask when I walk and pray on the university campus: How best can we reach, equip, and mobilize students? To what do we mobilize them? What targets?

In universities, we are taught that we are primarily “Thinking” beings, with human rationality as the basis of deciding what is valuable and true.

In churches, we are taught that we are primarily “Believing” beings, choosing to trust in God and believe his promises.

The trouble with both of these bases for our identity as human beings is that they place our ultimate identity as individuals, largely isolated from others in our thinking and believing.

What are we ultimately?
We are ultimately loving beings, designed by a great God who is love himself. He created us with desire, affection, and as the objects of his love. He created us in his image, with a desire for love and to give love.

Thinking-Believing-Loving

With French philosopher Rene Descartes, we were taught to doubt everything and we were given an identity founded on the phrase: “I think, therefore I am.”

This elevation of human rationality reversed what St. Augustine had ordered as the human way to faith: “I believe in order to understand.”

But Augustine had framed the faith at a deeper level. He wrote, “Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee.” We are foundationally desiring beings, with affections, and love which seeks the ultimate object of love. We are created to love, especially the One who loved us first.

Where is love and how does love shape our identity and vision for humanity?

Love is not a list of abstract, disembodied concepts and values. We are fundamentally noncognitive, affective creatures. Our vision for life, the good life, is not a list of ideas or propositions or doctrines. Our vision for life comes from the heart, the deepest part of our being.

In my next post, I will begin to unpack that deep part of our human identity.

Desiring the Kingdom

Desiring the Kingdom

I’m writing from Kona, Hawaii where I am attending the University of the Nations Workshop, an international gathering of YWAM leaders. Before the Workshop we had Student Mobilization Centre leadership team meetings. I shared with that team a devotional with refections from James Smith’s book, Desiring the Kingdom. This is a portion of that devotional:

During much of August, I woke early to take my daughter Becca for swim team practice. She was not happy at first, having to be in the water by 5:30am, but before I left for Kona, she was adapting. As a father with some experience in sports, including early morning swim team practice, I’m aware of how this experience is helping Becca develop character. Her coach says she’s pushing the team with morning and afternoon practices now in order to develop “muscle memory.”

What does that mean?

With the next few posts, I wiill attempt to unpack the formation and re-direction of human desire, the shaping of habits, the establishing of institutions, and the discipling of a culture and nation.

At Cultivate: New Friends and New Partnerships Forming

Northfield Consultation 2011

Participants at CULTIVATE, our consultation on the Future of University Missions, were inspired to gather so close to the birthplace of the Student Volunteer Movement and just steps from Roundtop, the gravesite of D.L. Moody. The weekend was awe-inspiring and it was a joy to be with friends and co-laborers on the mission fields of the university.

Like so many other consultation gatherings we have had around the world, including N. American Consultations (’97 and ’99), Africa Consultation (2001), S.E. Asia Consultation (2003), European Consultation (2004), and South American and China Consultations (2005), the Northfield gathering-Cultivate! (2011) has helped us build friendships, partnerships, and some collaborative projects. At Cultivate, we met new friends and began the first steps to coordinate some new projects to reach students on campuses in North America.

Who Was There?

Eleven people attended the consultation. Here’s a list of those who attended, their backgrounds, and prayer requests:

• John Henry – SMC International Centre Team Leader – Madison, WI – with YWAM for over 25 years. For  the development of a new SMC/UofN course on Missional Collaboration, for next SUMM’s, for help with a virtual centre office via Salesforce.com, and for a new international centre for operations.

• Todd Johnson – Assoc. Prof. Global Christianity at GCTS. Worked with YWAM 33 years. Great Need: Two excellent missions profs at GCTS. Tim Tennent, now at Asbury. Another is gone. Todd is doing too much, writing, research, and teaching two courses a year. Need grad students to work with him.

• Deonn McDowell – YWAM Tyler – 23 yrs mobilization coordinator – 1994-5 met John on PHOS mobile team. SMC since ’97. Mentoring SOE students. Getting ready to lead an outreach to Israel in Fall. Wrote a book for young adults: Love Needs – Getting them met in the best possible way. Publication and outreach are prayer needs. And to get what God wants here.

• Justin Henry – John’s son – Sr. at St. Olaf College – History – Prayer for guidance, what next.

• Tae Oh Kim – YWAM Atlanta – Came to States 3 yrs ago in MD. Working with Int’ls at U of GA. Staff, but no students. Prayer: Focusing on family for God. Take good care and fruitful ministry.

• Jihoon “Peter” – YWAM Boston – CM in Korea since ’99. Called to Boston 3 yrs ago. USA needs missionaries. In Boston about 1 yr. Not yet sure what to do. Need H.S. to speak and lead. Call: Reaching out to international students in English in USA. Looking for better view of what God is doing and why he called us here to do CM. Experiencing culture shock working with YWAM in USA. Need courage…to overcome fear. Seeking strong confirmation from God.

• SuCheor Jang – working in MD. SMC staff. CM in Baltimore area. Worship meetings on Thursdays for UMBC and Towson. Prayer on Tuesdays. For Church, Campus, and Nations. Still few gather, but all you need is 2 or 3 and keep going. Now doing UDTS in YWAM Richmond with Tae Oh and UnJae (sp?). Next phase will be campus outreach. Planning outreach abroad.

• Daniel – UMBC – Music, Sociology, Psychology – working with 2nd gen Korean church. Seeking direction.

• Sungwon “Paul” Park: Work with Peter in Boston. From CM Seoul – Came 5 months ago. Learning English. First prayer request is surviving in Boston. Need money and ability to have conversation in English. Also pray that I am close with YWAM Boston staff, especially leader. Help the leader to understand CM more and release our team. Last week at MIT campus worship. God said “Your praise is received and your prayer is answered.”

• Ryan Dutra – Ryan’s wife Crystal is due in Oct. Just returned from 10 month trip to 11 countries. Learned about selves, how to be led by Spirit, and do a documentary. CM Pitt – mobilization, international students…but for now working with Pastors, churches, etc. Helping re-locate the base to the international heart of the city with a building with 100 rooms.    Need wisdom, timing, people to come help, build a team…near Carnegie Mellon and UPitt. 10 minute walk.

What Did We Talk About?

We enjoyed several short presentations including the following: Each of these short 15 minute presentations was followed by 35-40 minute process/discussion times.

Topic	Speaker	From
Overview and History of Students in Missions	John Henry	Madison, WI
Global Christianity	Todd Johnson	S. Hamilton, MA
Korean Campus Mission in USA	Tae Oh Kim	Atlanta
Cultivating Truth on Campus	Deonn McDowell	Tyler, TX
Jesus People & Implications for a Movement Today	Justin Henry	Madison, WI
Kingdom Partnerships	Phill Butler	Edmonds, WA
MobilizeMe Documentary Project	Ryan Dutra	Pittsburgh, PA
Report on Campus Ministries in Baltimore	Daniel & SuCheor Jang	Baltimore, MD
Processing and Committing to Action	All	Northfield, MA

What Was Memorable?

Our weekend was framed partly be the historic setting in which we met. The prayers of a brother and sister during DL Moody’s summer bible camp in Northfield, MA in 1886 led to the Meeting of Ten Nations and therefore the first 100 volunteers to sign the Princeton Declaration & launched the Student Volunteer Movement, which had over 100 thousand volunteers and over twenty thousand sail overseas. The place we met was awe-inspiring.

Memorable quotes: 

Sadly, I did not capture all the wonderful statements made at this gathering. We have yet to transcribe the video that Ryan Dutra took of each of the presentations. Look for clips of our gathering on our web site in the coming weeks. Here are a few quotes that were captured:

John Henry: “To be called to be with Jesus will always result in being sent out by Jesus.”

“The church on earth is by it’s very nature missionary.” (Vatican II)

“Western Christendom has been Christianity without mission.”- Wilbert Shenk.

Todd Johnson: Missions once was “from West to rest”, but today it’s all mixed up. And that’s good news for us.

More Memorable quotes: 

Todd Johnson:

• “Churches and our missional communities need to sing African, Latin, and Chinese worship from the new Majority Church.”

• “Resources for equipping us in community are best those who come from cultures that emphasize community.”

• “We need to sing African, Latin, and Chinese worship from the new majority Church.”

TaeOh Kim: “There is a lack of Christian education in Korean Churches USA. The Reasons Koreans come to USA: Education 47%, New Business 35%, and a Better Job. Ultimately it is for “my money” or “my children’s money”.  “There is a big gap between Koreans and Korean Americans (twinkies/bananas).”

Deonn McDowell: How do we help students really know God? We must model it. We must go to them. They are tired of being fake; they need authentic relationships.

Justin & John Henry: “How do we mobilize a civic generation, very different from the idealist Jesus Generation, who are concerned less about the inner life and more about public institutions?”

Phill Butler:

• “Before partnership formation meeting, you may need to have up to 50 one-on-ones.”

•  “Get to know the people who know your area of concern and learn from them. Ask questions.”

• “Become an expert to be credible so that you can begin to form a partnership.”

•  “To start, learn what’s going on. Calling or concern alone is not enough.”

• “We all believe in collaboration, but we don’t know how.”

• “Reaching internationals on campus requires partnerships with families and churches.”

• “No people group remains unreached where there is a working partnership.”

•“For the gospel to be believed, churches must work together.”

•“Transformation leading to working together is fundamental to the gospel message.”

• “We were designed by God for open, trusting and fruitful relationships.

What Questions Were/Are Being Processed?

As a result of this gathering, all of us have begun processing more deeply the implications of a “Fourth Wave of Modern Missions,” which some of us believe will include a flourishing of missional communities, a fresh movement of church planting with missional focus. The aim of this consultation was to consider how missional communities can be strategic if they work in collaboration with global missions, leveraging the resources of universities and NGO’s, and churches.

So What?

What was the result of this gathering? During the wrap up final session, we considered specific action items and possible partnerships to work together and create momentum in our ministries on campus and off. Each participant wrote on Post-It notes the various take away action items that God spoke to them. Then we posted them on several large flip chart sheets entitled: On Campus, UDTS, FMI and Outreaches, Seminars, and Other (gatherings and communications). We then closed with a prayer time over each of those major items and dedicated ourselves to complete the “easy wins”. Here are those items we committed to:

On Campus

• University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) – SuCheor Jang, his volunteers and new staff will lead intercessory prayer gatherings with Campus Worship participants. They will meet up personally before the fall semester and begin to regularly message all the campus leaders. They will talk about the urgent need for unity and collaboration. And they will help foster a prayer and worship movement on campus.
• Harvard, MIT, Boston University, & Berklee College of Music – Peter & Paul will do evangelism on campuses. They will begin Campus Worship at Berklee College of Music every Monday, at Harvard every Tuesday, at MIT every Wednesday, at Boston University every Thursday beginning in September.
• Meeting existing international student ministry leaders.
• Pittsburgh – Ryan Dutra will seek partnerships with churches and begin to recruit families to host international students. He will help organize a monthly international student dinner.

UDTS

• Deonn McDowell (SMC/YWAM Tyler) offers herself as resource teacher on Intimacy with God (Created for Relationship, Hearing God’s Voice, Intercessory Prayer, Meditation on Scripture, Nature & Character of God, and Love Needs), Also Spiritual Warfare, & Humanism. (Can teach 2 sessions of 6 sessions)
• SuCheor Jang (SMC MD), Peter & Paul (YWAM Boston), and TaeOh (SMC/YWAM Atlanta), will serve the next bi-lingual East Coast USA UDTS in 2012.

FMI & Outreaches

• SuCheor Jang (SMC – MD) will go with Summer 2011 UDTS from Richmond, VA
• Paul & Peter (YWAM – Boston) will take 3 week campus evangelism and English teaching outreach to Delhi, India in Jan. 2012
• John Henry (SMC Int’l Office) will coordinate FMI team leadership training for any who need it in 2012 & 2012.
• Deonn McDowell (SMC/YWAM Tyler) will attempt to go to campuses on outreach to Israel with SOE in Oct. 2011.

Seminars

• Deonn McDowell (SMC/YWAM Tyler) offering to assist with mini-DTS Seminar.
• Ryan Dutra (SMC/YWAM Pittsburgh) will run a seminar at a new church and possibly at YWAM base this winter 2011/12
• SuCheor Jang (SMC MD) will run a seminar on individual and group collaboration in UDTS.

Gathering & Communicating

• A Korean Ministry Staff Conference/Consultation in the USA – TaeOh
• Write Staff Job Descriptions for SMC and CMI North America – John Henry
• Meet with Boston and Pittsburgh YWAM leaders – John Henry
• Lead Consultations in San Francisco and Perth – John  Henry
• Lead Monthly Online Meeting for all SMC Staff – John Henry
• Complete MobilizeMe Documentary in time for Fall 2012 Tour
• Talk to Faithful and Like-minded brothers in MD for better collaboration and setting up a “capital” for prayer and worship gatherings to break the “viscious” cycle in Korean local churches.

School of University Ministries & Missions — North America

• Co-Leading Mobile SUMM in NE USA Fall 2012 – John Henry
• Staffing/Hosting for the Fall 2012 – Ryan Dutra
• Redesign Curriculum to include Partnership/Collaboration Model, Emphasis on Global Community, and Worship from New Majority Church – John Henry

What Questions are We Still Processing?

Challenges in Pioneering Campus Ministries: Where do we start? Who do we meet?

Campus Ministries is not familiar to YWAM leaders in USA. We need to communicate better. We need video clips with YWAM International Leaders declaring importance of Campus Ministries.

Do we keep international students, including 1st and 2nd generation Koreans, divided or should we intentionally combine them into the same gatherings, with all the accompanied cross-cultural challenges?

How do we help YWAM Leaders understand Campus Ministries?

• Too much expectation to stay in office and run program.

• Not understanding value of college education.

• Field based ministry requires time on the field (university)

• They think Campus Ministries is only Korean.

This is especially challenging for experienced YWAM Campus Ministries staff who are serving in a cross-cultural setting. (e.g. South Korean CM staff moving to USA to serve in CM in cooperation with a YWAM Base.)

Additional Deep Processing to Continue:

What great call/declaration for this generation?

How are students different today? How are they leading the way for a new era of missions?

How can we encourage Missional communities without controlling them?

Future Gatherings: 

Todd Johnson invited us all to the Conference at the 200th anniversary of first Christian missionaries in Boston: Feb 17, 2012. (Ryan has been invited to present a portion of the MobilizeMe documentary).

Next Cultivate Consultation – YWAM San Francisco – Sept. 13-14, 2011. Learn more. Join us!

Holiness is MORE than Intimacy with God

At Easter I wrote about Holiness, that holiness is intimacy with God. (Here’s that post.) I described how Bernard of Clairvaux’s 14th century hymn, O Sacred Head Now Wounded, was a personal and public pre-Reformation plea for intimate relationship with Christ.

I return to this subject because I did not adequately describe the beauty and purpose of holiness. There’s something else at work here. Holiness is also an outward response to that intimate friendship. To live in holiness, we must walk in holiness. The apostle Paul writes:

I am a prisoner because of the Lord. So I am asking you to live a life worthy of what God chose you for.  -  Eph. 4:1

Building on the foundation that I laid in the previous post: Holiness is more than intimacy with God. Holiness is both:

1. Personal intimacy resulting from relationship in righteousness through faith and
2. Public witness of ethical behavior. God’s people are called to represent God’s holiness to a hurting world.

Holiness is not merely intimacy; it is also action and ethical behavior within the community and with all people. Old Testament scholar Christopher Wright‘s book, The Mission of God, expains that holiness is manifest through ethical behavior, works of righteousness. The New Testament narrows it down to loving our neighbors. If you love your neighbor as yourself, you have fulfilled all the law and the prophets. Holiness, in contemporary language, may best be summed up in social justice. Paul writes:

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. Ephesians 2:8-10

Please understand, you do not earn holiness through any actions of your own. Neither are you holy if you simply do good works of social justice. However, those who have been called to intimate friendship with God have no choice about whether or not they are to love their neighbor, through ethical behavior in and through their community and through acts of mercy and social justice among the nations.

To be sure, holiness literally means to be ‘set apart,’ to be wholly different. God is holy, completely different, other than all other gods. And God in Christ Jesus calls his people to be holy as he is holy. Israel was also called to be holy, unlike any other nation.

In his book The Mission of God, Christopher J.H. Wright outlines the nature of being “set apart”, the election of Israel. Israel’s election is:

• In the context of God’s blessing of “every nation”
• Does not imply rejection of other nations
• Not due to special features of Israel
• Founded only on God’s inexplicable love
• Instrumental, not an end in itself
• Part of the logic of God’s commitment to history
• Fundamentally missional, not just soteriological

When God accepts us and welcomes us into close fellowship with him through the blood of Christ, we are “MADE HOLY.” That holiness calls us to be wholly different:

Finally, brothers and sisters, we taught you how to live in a way that pleases God. In fact, that is how you are living. In the name of the Lord Jesus we ask and beg you to do it more and more.You know the directions we gave you. They were given by the authority of the Lord Jesus. God wants you to be made holy. – I Thes. 4:1-3

Equipping Leaders: Listening, Learning, Teaching

Learning to Listen, Learning to Teach: The Power of Dialogue in Educating Adults (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2002), by Jane Vella, will challenge you to adopt principles of listening, learning, and teaching, useful for leadership, relationship, and ministry.

Vella educates adults; however, she does not simply teach. And she does not merely stick to her own cultural group. She facilitates learning in many cultures and for many different groups, mostly community development projects.

I’m personally very familiar with this kind of work and many of the places and people Jane Vella writes about. Vella’s books are important to me because my goal for summer outreach teams of interns is for the students to have the best learning experience of their lives. I want students to gain a deep revelation of who God is, His love and grace for the world, and their calling to engage the world in response to His amazing grace. Vella refers to this kind of learning as the ‘quantum’ concept, that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

To teach effectively, we must listen.

To teach effectively, we must listen.To truly listen, we must ask open-ended questions.

Our Student Mobilization Centre (SMC) team is in the process of writing their own job descriptions. This is a very open process, requiring each of the members to engage, initiate, and define their contribution to the whole. That process and this book has helped me realize I need to be even more effective at listening and giving open questions when teaching.

Open questions need to be put to the ‘safe’ environment; they are usually best when posed in small groups. For example, when I teach I ask participants the question,

“What was your best learning experience?”

When forming small groups to process questions, Vella encourages teachers to define learning tasks and follow through on them so that the participants truly participate in the learning process. Defining the learning task is done when we apply Vella’s Assessment Principles, which is simply done by asking questions.

Applying Vella’s Principles

#1. WWW

Who needs What and defined by Whom? or ‘WWW’

Vella’s key assessment principle is the question:‘Who needs What and defined by Whom?’  This assessment is best accomplished by building questions into the application process, either before or immediately after acceptance to a training program or internship. Prayer for participants and decisions about what should be emphasized in a training experience can be made with greater effectiveness when we ask the right questions, keep record of responses, and assess the information gathered. This WWW assessment is not only for training; it is also an important leadership tool for assessing the needs and capacities of our team, their staff and their projects.

2. Safety

SMC Summer Internships

Field Ministry Internships (FMI), a principal program of the SMC, is a serving/learning outreach project for university student teams. Students integrate their field of study with a cross-cultural ministry over an eight-week summer intensive. Jane Vella, her books and other web resources for Dialogue Education, have  confirmed that many of the aspects of our FMI program help students gain that quantum learning experience.

For example, to help students feel ‘safe’ we form small teams of 4 to 7. During the first few days in the host country, we typically send small teams out on a scavenger hunt in order to expose them to the new surroundings and help them learn how to get around with some measure of independence. However, this exercise is also a bonding experience that takes place within the safety of their small team.

 Another reason for small FMI teams is that they may integrate well as a short-term team on a long-term field project. In this way, the students also gain a greater level of participation in the serving/learning process. The students design their own field projects on site as they learn to observe and listen to nationals and long-term project leaders. They are taught to assess the needs of the long-term personnel and projects while they are serving.

The safety challenge for FMI is the uncertainty of a cross-cultural experience. This challenge is overcome when FMI participants are safely embedded into the long-term project team. Within that safe environment for learning, FMI participants become more deeply involved in the learning process, which raises the creativity and energy level. Participants are therefore offering more of themselves in service and learning more about the contribution God has specifically called them to make during their summer internship, and perhaps, over the course of their lives.

3. Listening: Student Participation in the Assessment

Applying the Assessment Principle is a leadership challenge. We set the example of Listening and we invite our participants into the Learning process by giving them a Leadership assignment: Participate in an Assessment.  

Before reading Vella, FMI was structured with four phases:

1. Orientation – an intensive seminar, like a mini-Discipleship Training School, and project preparation.
2. Cultural Awareness – the first few days at the site of the field project, getting acquainted with the new surroundings/people, including a scavenger hunt.
3. Ministry - while serving the field project, participants write a proposal for a 5-year ministry project.
4. Debriefing – the final few days reporting, saying good-bye to new friends, and evaluating.

I have since added a fifth phase, an Assessment Phase, just after the Cultural Awareness phase and before the Ministry phase. The assessment of the project was originally assumed by the FMI leaders. However, students had little appreciation for that important phase. To better equip the student participants for leadership in learning, we now require them Listen and to document their Assessment before writing their project proposal. By doing so we are showing more respect to the field project and the community they serve. We also show more respect to the FMI students, giving them more opportunity to participate and take responsibility for their project proposal.

Summary

These are only three principles, however Vella’s books outline 7 steps for course design (PDF download). I commend this amazing teacher and her principles to you as you develop training in your context. Pay particular attention to the key words, RESPECT and ENERGY, which are at the top of my list of priorities for equipping students for the life-work and calling.

If you or your group would like to learn to apply these principles for outreach and training, please contact me. If you would like to know more about the Field Ministry Internships program, and the Student Mobilization Centre network of Youth With A Mission‘s University of the Nations, send me a note.

I am expecting quantum changes as we train emerging leaders for every arena of society in response to Christ’s command to ‘make disciples of all nations’. (Matt. 28:19)

Three Principles of Growth for a Community in Transition

This past Sunday I spoke at a local church on the topic of Transition. They are welcoming a new pastor into their midst. This is the second post outlining what I shared. In the previous post I outlined how everyone is in some kind of transition. Much of what I have shared comes from lessons learned as a member of a search team seeking a pastor for a community just a few years ago. Go to this link if you would prefer to listen to this message, A New Kind of Transition, online.)

What Pastors Want

To the best of my knowledge, no pastor in his right mind wants to lead a church community by himself (or herself). If they understand their role biblically, they operate out of their gift, not our of their position. Most pastors (and most evangelists, prophets, teachers, and apostles: See Eph. 4) want Jesus to lead and the Body of Christ to grow in maturity. They want Jesus to be the center of every gathering, whether it is formal or informal.

I believe the biblical model and Jesus’ instruction is for pastors to operate as part of a team. They are one of many gifts of leadership for the growth of the Body of Christ.  Paul understood this well. Even when he did not work closely with the itinerant preacher Apollos, Paul understood that each has an important contribution to make.

“I planted, Apollos watered, but God made it grow.” (1 Cor. 3:6)

Jesus is causing us all to grow. When we recognize and affirm the gifts to the Body of Christ in their proper perspective, growth will occur not only in numbers, but also in the character of the members. That growth will also increase the influence of a worshipping community. As we love God and love neighbors, understanding that the image of God is imprinted on every person whether they are a Christ follower or not, we will treat every person with dignity in our witness and service to a needy world.

The goal is a community that both loves God and loves their neighbors, both global and local. If we sacrifice this primary focus for other goals, such as “church growth”, we become neglectful of Christ’s mission. Recall from a previous post where I quoted David Bosch:

“Christ’s Church does not have a mission; Christ’s mission has a Church.”

When we follow Christ’s mission first, the leadership of our community will follow his principles for growth and our community will grow deep in character and wide in influence.

How does that happen?

In the previous post I promised to share a few principles for growth that I learned from a father figure, Loren Cunningham, the founder of Youth With A Mission. My wife, Mary, and I have served with YWAM for over 25 years. Loren is a spiritual father to me because he has encouraged me and prayed for me at decisive moments in my life. When asked what I wanted to name the ministry God was calling me to establish in YWAM, a Centre of the University of the Nations, I timidly proposed: Student Mobilization Centre? Loren said: “Avec Courage! Say it with courage, John Henry!”

Then during an intense time of prayer in 1996 with the International Leadership Team of the University of the Nations, we were all laid out on the floor crying out to God for the future of the university and God’s dream for the nations. Loren knelt down and placed his hand on me and whispered, “Receive Your Inheritance.” He quoted scripture and prayed from 2 Chron. 16:9:

 ”For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show his might in behalf of those whose heart is blameless toward him.”

Three Principles for Growth

Loren shared these three points of fatherly wisdom with our YWAM Leadership a few years ago. Interestingly, George Isley, my pastor  and spiritual father who went home to be with Jesus five years ago, exemplified these principles in a small church community in Upstate New York. I celebrated George’s life and ministry in a recent post.

These principles stand together like a three-legged stool; they work together as an integrated whole. I commend these three principles to you and for any community that desires to grow:

1. Freedom in the Spirit – Every individual, young, old, male, female, must have freedom to hear from God. But we must also obey. This is the pattern: God speaks, we interpret, and then we apply. We may make mistakes, but that’s okay. That’s how we grow. However, this freedom is not in isolation; it’s in a community with elders.
2. Spiritual Eldership – To be a spiritual elder, you do not necessarily need to be older. Paul’s disciple Timothy was relatively young, but he had maturity. Elders have a breadth of experience and spiritual maturity. They are submitted the Lord and one to another. They do not stomp on new vision, they test it and seek God about it. They lead primarily through prayer, influence, and relationship. They fulfill the scriptural criteria in 1 Tim 3 and Titus 1, which is really unremarkable. It says they should not drink too much or beat up people. Does that imply the rest of us can get drunk or beat up people? No! There are two characteristics that are important for our discussion: First, in those texts it says elders must be “able to teach.” They should be investing in others and able to communicate through godly example the gospel message. Second, elders must be “hospitable.” This term comes from the Greek word “xenophilo”, which means “a lover of the new, the strange, the different.” Spiritual Elders need to be open-hearted toward new vision. And they need to be able to coach their group to test the word to see if it is from God and apply it in the context of the whole group. They do not exercise authority over others, they serve. The greatest, as Jesus said, is the servant of all. Elders are open-handed, giving way for Spirit-led vision, and they serve well.
3. Relationship – Elders should only intervene after appealing through relationship. They need to be mature enough to wait for the right timing, and the right approach. The danger in any community is when structures dominate. Those structures and policies tend to take a position above the importance of hearing from God. Structures and legal boards are necessary to hold elders accountable in all legal and financial matters. However, if elders fail to lead out of relationship, they tend toward legalism and hierarchy that is not godly. No leader is more valuable or important than another. Leaders are called to salute the dignity, value, and equality of every person. The functions of the various ministry gifts God has given us may be different, but the value of every individual is equal.

When we work with each of these principles, our community and our people will grow. However, true spiritual growth in community, the kind of growth that goes deep in character and wide in influence, will not occur when there is only a single leader or when there is formal board that leans on positional authority and policy rather than the gifts of the Spirit. Positional authority is the mark of a bureaucratic institution, which tends to take power away rather than encourage the people who are created in the image of God and spiritually gifted to join His mission.

The Mission of God

I recently finished reading (and discussing in our monthly book group on the University of Wisconsin campus) the book:  The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative by Christopher J. H. Wright . In future posts, I will be unpacking much of this important read. For now, let me conclude by saying a growing community is led by a team of servant leaders who are giving freedom in the spirit for anyone to hear from God and obey. A growing community sees their primary goal as the Mission of God, their highest operating principle as relationship, and their God honoring principle of honoring the value of every person.

Transition: We All Experience It

This past Sunday I spoke at a local church on the topic of Transition. They are welcoming a new pastor into their midst. The thoughts below are part of what I shared:

For any follower of Jesus Christ, the biggest transition, our most drastic life-change, begins when we have our own personal encounter with Him. The simple response to his loving initiative of grace, of turning our hearts toward him, and believing he rose from the dead, that he is Lord, begins, as the scripture says, our transition “out of the kingdom of darkness and into the kingdom of his dear Son.”

The truth is this: all of us experience transition whether we know Jesus or not. If you want to be perceived to be a “prophet,” all you need to do is say, “I see there are some people here who are going through a transition. God is taking you into a new season of life.” People will respond with amazement: “How did you know?”

Everyone is going through transition. Here are a few examples:

Growing up. Welcoming a new baby brother or sister into your family. Your first day of school. Over the summer young people transition from one grade to another.  The teen years are one long transition between childhood (dependency) and adulthood (interdependency and responsibility). The process of preparation for your life’s work, the contribution you will make to your generation: Going to college. Getting a new job, Moving to a new city, a new house, meeting new friends.

Sometimes transition comes in the form of a life change. When you or a loved one is arrested, spends time in jail, or lives with a record for a crime. Or perhaps you or someone you know is living with addiction, a life-controlling problem. You may be in the process of recognizing your weakness and failures to yourself and to those who love you.

I was just ten years old when a huge transition began in my life and my four brothers, the day my dad told me he and mom were getting a divorce. Transition is learning to deal with new realities, which may not have been our own fault.

Transition is also the process of healing, which is usually preceded by an event, getting very sick, or rushing to the emergency room after an accident.

In 2nd grade, i was playing in the back yard with a wheelbarrow, a plank of wood, and a picnic bench. I was pushing my “heavy machinery” up on the bridge, picnic bench. But the wheelbarrow tipped, the bench gave way, and I fell over and I broke my arm. I freaked out and grabbed it, “it’s broke!” I yelled as I held it at the break and ran into the house to find my mom. Mom said, “Let’s just run cold water over it.” She couldn’t see the break because I reset the bone when I grabbed it and I wouldn’t let go. Finally, she agreed to take me to the doctor, who said, “your son should be a doctor. He set the bone perfectly.” I did not become a doctor. I wanted to be a builder. Healing was a transition, and the process meant I needed to sit on the bench during recess. Transition may be a time of isolation, a normal process in anyone’s life…especially those of us God is calling into some kind of leadership.

Transition may be emotional healing from childhood abuse, or some other trauma. The process of healing may take years. And during that time you typically have time to stop and consider what is really important in life. But time does not heal, especially the emotional wounds of abuse or any event that allows a bitter root or a lie to embed in your spirit. Healing comes when we encounter Jesus, the Truth, who sets us free from the bondage of lies.

Growing old is also a transition; your body doesn’t work like it used to. Pains in your body become too familiar. Your financial situation may be much worse than you had hoped and planned. Transition may be a forced career change; businesses downsize, and the economy changes.

Transition may be a change in life-style, exercising self-control of your diet, exercise, and the way you manage your money. It may be saying “no” to things you really want, because they are not God’s best for you.

On the other hand, no matter how much we try to control our lives, the world around us is in constant change. We cannot control everything, no matter how much discipline we have. Self-control is not merely the strength of personal will; it is the fruit of the Spirit, which is life-giving.

Love is the only thing that never changes. God is love; he chooses never to change. Some take this notion of immutability too far; they believe God is incapable of changing. They think he would never smile, that he could never respond to us because he is “perfect” and if he responded, he would “change.” Those who believe that become like their “god”; they show no emotion. They are the “frozen chosen.”

But God is not merely the human ideal of unchanging perfection; God is personal and he lovingly created us in his image. God is love. Love is choosing the highest and best for someone, beginning with ourselves. We’re called to love our neighbors as ourselves, which is not very loving if we don’t first love ourselves unselfishly, saying “no” to things that harm us.

TRANSITION IN PREGNANCY

My wife Mary reminded me of another meaning of transition. It’s a phase of pregnancy after the water breaks. It is when the pains of contractions become unpredictable, just before pushing. It is the phase when many birth moms say, “I’m done. I don’t think I can go on.”

As a dad, I have a bit different view. The day I became a father was the day Justin, our first son, was born in Hawaii.

Everything changed for me and everything changed for the rest of human history on that day. Really! My wife gave birth to a little boy who has grown up to be a man, who will make decisions that will affect many others. The world changes when we have kids because our children have their own children, and they have children, and their children have children. The responsibility is HUGE!

I was thinking about all that when Mary was in that little hospital on the Big Island of Hawaii. I was overwhelmed at the joy and the intense pressure I knew Mary was experiencing. I was trying to focus on two things:

1. Coach my wife (breathing, speaking words of affection and encouragement, and holding her hand through the contractions) and
2. Don’t say it!

What was I trying NOT to say? Well, when Mary began to really push, I offered my hand, my left hand, the one with my wedding ring, and she squeezed so hard she pinched my fingers around the ring. I was tempted to say, “Mary, that hurts.” I didn’t say it.

Transitions can be painful…

The transition of a new leader in a church community should not be mistaken to be the end of transitions, no matter how tired or excited you may be.

We must recognize that transition will continue. We must welcome a new encounter with Jesus. We must accept the fact that we have been in transition since the day we came to Christ. And leaders must accept the fact that transition began the day this church community was born.

A church transition may be painful. During the process, some people must work very hard.

I think it’s important, especially at the key moments in a church community’s life, moments such as the introduction of a new leader, to look back and thank God for the seasons of transition.

For example, it is good to thank God for the day the church community was born. Thank God for the original vision, the message and ministry that drew the people together. That message and the gifted preacher that drew the community together is a gift of God, which should be recognized at key moments in the life of a church.

The trouble is this, we tend to make our leaders into “Rock Stars.” Leadership is a ministry gift, and we can put ungodly pressure on those key people when we set them up as heroes. The pressure hurts the leader, their family, and the community. Could it be that the church, as it is currently organized, puts undue pressure on her leaders, causing break downs in their bodies, their marriages, and their families?

Sadly, I have seen several pastors crushed under the pressure. Their marriages, families, and churches end up paying a huge price. This should not be.

What should we do? We should not sit back and passively wait for a leader to carry our spiritual load; we should not look to them to be the answer to all our problems. We must wake up and we must grow up.

I believe God is looking for his “body,” the Church, to be a community, a family with friends, sharing a life-style of ministering to one another and to their neighbors. We must all become ministers.

Some might said,

“If everyone in the church is called a pastor, then, to a new person, it looks like there’s no leadership. People are used to the idea of a main pastor.”

My previous post, “A New Kind of  Church Minister: George Isley,” is an example of a church leader who gave freedom for all to be ministers. I also want to respond to the confusion about church leadership and “being the body” by sharing principles gained from another spiritual father, Loren Cunningham, Founder of Youth With A Mission…I will continue with his story on my next post.

(Go to this link if you would prefer to listen to this message, A New Kind of Transition, online.)

A “New” Kind of Church Minister: George Isley

My pastor, George Isley, who went to be with the Lord five years ago, modeled a kind of leadership in the Church that is, from my perspective as a missionary of 25+ years, too rarely seen. One of George’s classmates, Dr. Don Lundgren, Missions Minister at College Church in Northampton, MA, said George had been so brilliant at Princeton Seminary that many expected him to become a professor there. However, his vision was for a small church in rural New York. He started as a Presbyterian minister in Valatie, NY.

George’s methods were always “unorthodox,” according to the old guard, whom I came to know years later. He led the youth to memorize scripture and rewarded them with money for Bible Summer Camp or Mission Trips. This practice began in the ’60′s and one young couple, Tom and Libby Little, were among those who joined him on outreach to Guatemala one summer working alongside Ralph and Roberta Winter. They were sent out as missionaries and, long before the Taliban, and before Soviet occupation,  Tom became an optometrist to help the people of Afghanistan. Tom was martyred in Afghanistan last year. He and Libby worked at the Noor Eye Institute in Kabul for about 30 years. Libby received the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the White House for Tom and spoke at the Lausanne Congress in South Africa last year. In closing her address on “The Church and Other Faiths” to the Lausanne Congress, I could almost hear the heart of Jesus in the life of George Isley:

‘In communities where power rules, strength prevails, where you work hard to attain honor and avoid shame, where you get what you deserve, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, this talk about God’s grace, the vulnerability of God, his loving kindness is too foreign. It’s too distasteful. It’s almost repulsive. It needs to come in small doses over a long stretch of time.’

When the old guard voted to have George and Carol Isley removed from the pastorate in the early ’70′s because they had experienced and taught a more complete faithfulness through fellowship in the Holy Spirit, half the congregation followed them. Shortly thereafter, he and several others started Christian Community Church (affiliated with the CCCC) and met in a partially renovated barn outside Kinderhook, NY. The community was not led by one person, but rather through a plurality of elders. And rather than fill the church schedule with meetings, this community decided there was no need for any more than the one Sunday morning gathering, where each member was encouraged and afforded the time to bring their offering of a poem, a hymn, a word of exhortation, a testimony, or a prophecy. The members ministered to each other, oftentimes for the majority of the Sunday gathering time. The elders would rotate as teachers, and when there was no time for that, George would offer a short summary word about what God was saying to us through his people that morning. The rest of the week was freed up for informal gatherings in homes, sharing their tables with friends, neighbors, or just to enjoy quality family time. The community still meets there today under the leadership of Bill Otterbeck and his team.

I was invited to live with George and Carol and his family for two years. The table was the center of George and Carol Isley’s home, and all important discussion, questions, stories, and jokes, were held until everyone was gathered at the table. I was working in the community as a District Executive for the Boys Scouts of America, while I was being equipped for ministry, giving direction to Solomon’s Porch Coffeehouse, a Friday night ministry of the church. George met with me every Wednesday morning for a few hours and, after praying and sending me out as a missionary in 1985, I returned to Kinderhook to meet with George to debrief and pray for each other.

George Isley on his last hike in the Catskills

Because he loved hiking the Adirondak, the Catskills, and the Berkshire mountains of Upstate New York, we chose to spend time together on a mountain nearly every year for the following 20 years.

George’s vision for a community was not your typical “church-growth” strategy. He served the community in a way that brought a deeper growth in me and the others in the community through a few key strategies:

1. Forming a team of elders, all of whom were being equipped for ministry.

2. Receiving only a housing allowance. Rather than receive a salary from the church, he worked in the community as a bus-driver for the public schools and as a chaplain for Berkshire Boys’ Detention Center.

3. Relaxing the typical church’s weekly schedule, so families can be more intentional as neighbors and friends (MISSIONARIES) in the community.

4. Allowing the members of the community to share testimonies and minister from the front and to one another during the Sunday morning gatherings. This resulted in less passivity and a growing maturity among all the members, including a greater tendency to minister to their neighbors during the week.

At first glance, the life and ministry of George Isley seems unimpressive, uncelebrated, and somehow lacking the “marketable leadership skills” of a “well-trained” church minister. However, George lived his vision for a community that follows Jesus.  The “New” Kind of Church Minister may not be all that new; George simply set a true example of a surrendered life, minimizing “church” expenditures and maximizing “missions” expenditures. George Isley’s example exemplifies what I believe is this shift from a traditional “attractional” church to a “missional” church. It starts with leaders. The value of this kind of “church growth” strategy is not readily apparent and it may only be measured at the Throne of God.

An e-book on Calling, by John Henry

Now, you can make an investment in my ministry and get my e-book: A Conversation on Calling, for just $4.00.

Go to: http://store.empowergood.com/

Thank you!

John

Fatherhood and the Future

There’s no day in my life that has had more impact on the future of this world than the day I became a dad. Really. When my first child was born, everything changed for me and my future, but it also changed for a future I will not see. The day I became a dad changed history. Future generations will be changed, either positively (or negatively), through my children, and their children…and so on.

We were in Hawai’i in a little block-walled clinic on the Big Island the day our first boy, Justin, was born. Yes, Justin is ‘Hawaiian’ and his birth certificate looks just like Obama’s. I will never forget the intense emotion of holding my wife’s hand at the moment she was giving birth. I made the mistake of offering my left hand with my wedding ring. She squeezed very hard and my ring pinched. I was tempted to say, “Mary, that hurts.” But of course, that’s not what you do. (Hint to expecting fathers: Take off your ring or offer your right hand.)

Father Knows Best

This has me thinking today about what Mom’s already know best: There is no future without the pain of anticipation in the present moment. Every major decision or purposeful act in life, has painful consequence. Living life with purpose is difficult; you must forego easier options, less painful choices. Fearing the pain may lead to the failure to act or decide. But that also has consequence, a delay of living with purpose. A delay of fulfilling a greater purpose, a greater contribution to this life. The future is shaped by those who decide, those who make sacrificial choices, not for themselves, but on behalf of a future generation. Father’s make sacrificial choices in hope that their children will make choices that will please them.

Sadly, there is a deep pain that father’s can carry into the future too. My own dad went through plenty of pain with me when I was a boy, especially my teen years. My mom and dad broke up in the late 60′s and my four brothers and I were, there’s no other word for it, brokenhearted. The result: we all carried the pain. We failed to communicate and I ultimately turned to rebellion.

My choices produced a lifetime of strained relationship with my dad. My utter failure in so many categories when I was younger has made it difficult for my dad to forgive me. I also know I am not the only cause of the pain of those past years. Nonetheless, I know my choices in life, including those choices after I met Jesus, have been different than what my dad would have chosen for me, especially my call to serve as a faith missionary.

The Call

Whether I make him proud with my life choices or not, I know my life has been shaped in part by my dad’s commitment to do the right thing. Doing the right thing, as a father or as any leader in any organization or any nation, will require courage and a willingness to be misunderstood. This is why I regularly teach the biblical doctrine of vocation or calling. I will be teaching again this week in our University Discipleship Training School in Madison, Wisconsin. Beginning with the example of Fatherhood and Motherhood, we need to teach calling, which extends into every sphere of society. Understanding God’s calling and leading by example is so urgently needed in our society today.

Leaders must be willing to make the difficult choices on behalf of their community. For example, here in Wisconsin, we have Gov. Walker and the duly elected legislature making difficult budget choices on behalf the community and future generations. The US Congress is facing the same difficult choices, requiring leadership and an understanding of calling that transcends party and politics. Making the decisions required will cause pain in the present; certainly those making the difficult decisions are facing terrible accusations and threats. Like a father and mother paying down a household debt, elected leaders need to balance the State and Federal budgets. Today’s challenges require leadership that chooses to trust and not control those they serve. Like the trust I must now have for my adult sons, Justin and Nathan, our society needs leaders who trust members of the community, other leaders in the private sector, to take risks, create wealth and jobs, and thereby serve their community.

May we all walk worthy of the calling.

As a dad, I know there is probably no more difficult calling on planet earth (probably second to being a mom.) This Father’s Day, I sent my dad a note thanking him again for the many ways, even through the pain of a broken home, he sacrificed and made good memories for me and my brothers. Thanks dad!

When the Flood Comes

“If you work the words into your life you are like a smart carpenter who dug deep and laid a foundation of his house on bedrock. When the river burst its banks and crashed against the house, nothing could shake it; it was built to last.” (Luke 6:48 Message)

Jesus said, “These words I speak to you are not merely additions to your life, homeowner improvements to your standard of living. They are foundation words, words to build a life on.” (Luke 6:47 Message)

Sounds pretty important to me

But what was Jesus referring to exactly? What are we building and why?

Jesus was wrapping up his Sermon on the Mount, including the Beatitudes, the DNA of the Kingdom of God, and the Lord’s Prayer, instruction on how to appeal to God for his help in fulfilling his mission in the earth. Jesus was a carpenter by trade; he used the metaphor of building to get his point across. His sermon was kind of like a builder’s “shop-talk” for the large crowd that gathered to listen to him in Galilee.

Do you find it interesting that the crowds that gathered around Jesus were often too big for the buildings of his day? On one occasion when Jesus did gather people in a house, a few determined men who sought healing for their paralytic friend “removed some tiles” from the roof, and “let him down in the middle of everyone.” (Luke 5:18 Message) Of course, Jesus healed the man because he and his friends had great faith.

The Building Process: Internal and External

Imagine walking through the trailer on the site of a major new building project. On the wall is a chart showing all the various tasks for each of the contractors. Jesus sermon was about all the tasks and tools used to build our lives, our families, our communities, and our nations. He was speaking of how to build a community which would soon be called the “Church.”

Jesus was teaching his audience about the tools of the kingdom, how to love enemies, how to be merciful, giving, forgiving, and not-judging. He said, “Wipe that ugly sneer off your own face and you might be fit to offer a washcloth to your neighbor.” (v.42) He spoke of the organic nature of the kingdom when he spoke about fruit-bearing, “your true being brims over into true words and deeds.” (v.45) It appears the “building” Jesus is referring to is NOT a place of worship; it’s a people of worship.

Who is doing the building?

Neil Cole, in his book “Organic Church” asks: “Do you trust laymen on their own?”

Look again at what Jesus said: “If you work the words into your life you are like a smart carpenter …” Sounds like Jesus intends for “you” to be the builder.

Unfortunately down through the ages spiritual authorities, whether they are Pharisees or modern ministers, have too often failed to trust God’s people to “build”.

Paul’s Missionary Method our Ours?

Roland Allen‘s important book focuses on the fact that Paul’s missionary activity was church planting and that he quickly turned over leadership to the “builders.” Without exception, all the churches that Paul planted in the gentile world were left alone; and, in every case, God’s people managed to survive and express Christ and His church. Certainly, Paul’s missionary work produced what we call “New Testament churches.”

Paul’s “New Testament churches” seem to be different than ours. Our concept of New Testament Church keeps coming up with a “senior” pastor and a passive and mute laity. Paul’s method was to “equip the saints for the work of the ministry” which is to proclaim Jesus is Lord in every family, every community, sphere of society and every nation.

A Changing World

Today’s world is very different than the Paul’s world, but let’s look at the similarities. The first century was dominated by a single world power, Rome. Today’s world also has a single world power. At the same time, the Roman world was culturally diverse, pluralist. And today, when you visit any major city, university, or shopping mall, you will see and hear people from many cultures. In fact, there has never been a time in history like the first century quite like there is today.

And yet, the world is vastly different from the first century and any other time in history. Within the past few years, the demographic center of the Christian world has shifted from the North and West to the South and East. The new Majority Church is in the Global South. The accessibility to information technologies is rapidly changing the world, including the Arab world and China. It appears the pressures caused by the flow of information among the people in the Arab world will effectively change Middle Eastern nations and their primary business models. OPEC will likely face pressures and break up, releasing a more market-based system. Those nations will likely shift from economies based on a single product, crude oil, to a market-based economy. That change will likely also open the way for alternative energy sources; a change that is too restrictive now due to our dependence on foreign oil.

The emerging generation has more access to information and connection with “friends” than any previous generation. Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat helped frame the significance of these changes. Friedman’s book was out before the emergence of FaceBook. If Facebook were a country, the number of people on that one social media tool would be one of the five most populated nations on earth. It is second nature for most people today to collaborate for social change. This change alone will affect every modern institution including churches. The effect of these major socio-political, economic, and demographic shifts is “like a flood.”

Like no other time in history is it necessary to build on a solid foundation in obedience to Jesus. Building the people of God to do the work of God everywhere. We must trust God’s people to be the priesthood to proclaim the good news by every means, inside the domain of church ministries and outside that domain. If we do follow Jesus’ instruction and Paul’s method, what is built will be “build to last.”

Thought Captivation: Who Gets the Worship – part 2

 For though we live in the world we are not carrying on a worldly war, for the weapons of our warfare are not worldly but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle to the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ, being ready to punish every disobedience, when your obedience is complete. - 2 Cor. 10:3-6

This passage has had special meaning to me for many years. My earliest devotional writings, which accompanied our monthly newsletter, were entitled “Thought Captivation.”

It has been my practice during quiet times with Jesus to stop and consider where my ideas and prevailing thoughts come from. Actually, I take the thoughts by the throat and wrestle them to the ground and say, “Where did you come from?”

Here’s the most recent example of what that process looks like:

I have come to a fresh understanding of my wrong thinking regarding an important part of God’s creation. For as long as I can remember I have not been an animal lover.

Today I asked, “why?”

After I saw a twitter post that said Leona Helmsly’s dog, the world’s richest dog, died with a multi-million dollar estate. The dog’s personal security expense was $100 thousand dollars annually. This actually sickened me. I knew I needed to examine why.

It was while reading the final chapter of  The Great Divorce, the final speech of C.S. Lewis‘ character George MacDonald, that I had insight into why I have this extraordinary aversion to animals. In case you haven’t read it, the book is about a group of people who ride a bus from hell to heaven. MacDonald is a resident of heaven who becomes a guide for the main character, one of the residents of hell, the “grey town” below.

When “grey town” visitor asked if anyone could go from heaven to hell, MacDonald got down on his hands and knees and plucked a blade of heaven’s grass. He explained that the bus and passengers came up through a tiny crack as small as the blade of grass. He said,

“All hell is smaller than one pebble of your earthly world, but it is smaller than one atom of this world, the real world.”

MacDonald continues:

“The damned are shrunk up in themselves…their fists are clenched, their teeth are clenched, their eyes are fast shut. First they will not, in the end they cannot, open their hands for gifts or their mouths for food or their eyes to see.”

“Can no one reach them?”, the visitor asks. Can anyone travel from heaven to hell? MacDonald replies,

“Only the Greatest of All can make himself small enough to enter hell. For the higher a thing is, the lower it can descend.”

It was the next thing MacDonald said that helped me change my thinking about animals:

“Man can sympathize with a horse, but a horse cannot sympathize with a rat.”

Why did I have an aversion to animals? I have been reading C.S. Lewis’ works since before I came to know and love Jesus Christ. Most all of his allegorical works, including some of his best overall works, have talking animals.  Even with my distaste for animals, I have enjoyed Lewis’ books. His treatment of the animals and his message through them was always somehow acceptable to me.

However, I did not think through exactly why until today.

It was in this statement by MacDonald that I had a change in my thinking. Put simply, I have not allowed myself to have affection for animals because so many people attribute human qualities to animals; they seem to elevate the animal. I know this sounds hard-hearted to some, but I think people spend too much of their time, their energy, and their money on animals.

Did you know the USA and Europe spend $17 billion dollars every year on pets, while only $0.81 billion is invested in reaching the unevangelized? Actually, this has been my reasoned position and that part of my thinking has not changed.

What has changed is this: Just because other people have an excessive affection for animals does not mean I should dislike animals.

MacDonald said “Man can sympathize with a horse, but a horse cannot sympathize with a rat” and “the higher a thing is, the lower it can descend.”

Yes, I agree with Lewis. Human beings are “higher” than all the other animals. This is where my thinking changed. We do not elevate animals to human status when we show affection to them; we “descend” or condescend. When we stoop to love an animal, we exercise the kind of grace that God himself shows when he condescends to love us.

I do not have to agree with those people who spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on their pets. However, I can condescend with the same kind of love and affection that Jesus shows to me.

No, I’m not running out to get a pet. And I will continue to devote our resources to world missions. However, I will not reject animals. I can show them kindness and have more patience with those who are affectionate with animals.

Who Gets the Worship?

Dear gentle reader,

Thank you for your interest in this blog. During the past month or so I have been on a blogging hiatus. This was for a variety of reasons, but it was mostly a season of rest from writing. I’m back now and will be posting at least once per week. I will also be limiting my posts to no more than 800 words per post. This is partly a service to you, my dear gentle readers, and partly a discipline I need to develop, brevity.

So, I will keep posts short and if I need to further develop the idea on my mind I will simply continue in the next post. Here’s an example: I will begin a thought today on worship.

“Here I am to worship, here I am to bow down, here I am to say that you’re my God.”

Worship is more than a song. It is “bowing down,” submitting your life to another.  The joy of worshipping Jesus, the Redeemer of the world, cannot be measured. Worship is not merely what takes place during the four or five songs at a gathering of fellow believers on a sunday morning.

“I’ll give you more than a song, for a song in itself is not what you have desired.”

Worship is directed outward, giving honor, respect, and trust to some greater being than ourselves. Trouble is, many of us sing songs on sunday morning, while putting our ultimate trust in something or someone else.

Little do most of us realize, the source of our pain, our sinfulness, and our bondage is in the battle for the mind. We need to learn to take every thought captive. We need to take hold of those pesky ideas that come creeping into our daily habits. We need to take those thoughts by the throat and squeeze hard. We need to wrestle those thoughts to the ground and demand an answer to this simple question:

“Where did you come from!”

More on this in my next post.

Easter Note: Holiness is Intimacy with God

“What language should I borrow, to thank Thee dearest friend, for this Thy dying sorrow, Thy pity without end? O make me Thine forever, And should I fainting be, Lord, let me never, never outlive my love to Thee.”

This line comes from “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded,” a 12th century hymn by Bernard of Clairvaux. Bernard was a reformed Benedictine abbot in France during the time of great challenges to the Church. Islamic nations, European kings, and even as many as three simultaneous popes all vied for power in “Christendom,” where the Roman Church was preeminent in the Western culture. I cannot defend all that Bernard did during his thirty years as a minister, however I can safely say that his life’s work elevated personal faith over religious ritual. He called upon his generation to truly know Jesus.

I am moved again today by this personal and public pre-Reformation plea for intimate relationship with Christ.

Nearly every time I teach for a week in a Youth With A Mission training school, I invariably return to the primal call of this hymn to intimacy with Jesus. This call is consistent throughout the Bible and throughout history. God calls us to intimacy.

When God called him by name, Moses replied, “Here I am.” “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” (Exo. 3:5)

How strange. What made that place holy? The Almighty not only introduced Himself to Moses, but He shared the deep things of His own heart with someone he chose to trust. The LORD said,

“I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians.”

What made that place holy was intimacy; God revealed his deepest hurts to Moses. It is the same when I share from my heart the things that cause me pain. These things are not for everyone to know. If I choose to trust someone and share my pain, it is a ‘set apart’ conversation, a holy moment with a trusted friend.

That place of trusting relationship is ‘set apart’ – it is a ‘holy’ place. When God chooses to open His heart to reveal His thoughts, it is a most Holy place because His character is perfect and His abilities are limitless.

God knows all things perfectly. He saw the suffering of the people of Israel in captivity that He chose to represent His name and bring forth the Messiah. They were in chains and cruelly mistreated and He heard their cries. God felt something in His heart that He shared with Moses. God invited Moses to the Holy place of intimacy where He felt that pain.

Centuries later, the apostle Paul went to Athens where he found an altar with the enscription: To the UNKNOWN GOD. This was Mars Hill, the place where people considered ultimate questions of origin, destiny, and value. Plato had taught his students, including Aristotle, to consider the uncaused cause, the wholly unchangeable and ultimate good. Perhaps Plato was a pre-Christian prophet to the Western world?

The difficulty with Plato’s line of thinking is that the ultimate good, the UNKNOWN GOD, cannot change. He cannot experience anything, including pain. This line of thinking became the frame of reference for Western theologians for most of Christian history.

However, the God who is revealed in scripture, Righteous and Holy, is also honest when He says He feels pain. Scripture says in Genesis 6:6:

“The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.”

Some say these ‘human-like’ expressions of God are anthropomorphisms, that God is only using language that we can understand in our frailty and limited understanding. They say God is pretending to be like us so that we may relate to him.

If that is true, the ultimate anthropomorphism is Jesus. The ‘Word’ became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1). He is Immanuel, God with us, offering intimate friendship to all who will come near.

Jesus is ‘the exact representation’ of God’s being (Heb. 1). He represented perfectly the love and justice of His Father. Jesus said, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” (John 14:9)

When Jesus wept at the tomb of his friend Lazarus, the Father wept. When Jesus felt the pain of rejection, the Father felt pain too. When Jesus made the atoning sacrifice on the cross, the Father made the sacrifice as well. God knows everything about everyone, including me. He knows every sin act that produces broken relationship and it causes Him pain.

God is all-powerful and all knowing, but He restrains His power and knowledge for the sake of relationship with us. If I had all power and all knowledge, I am sure I would determine to make use of my abilities. The results would be disastrous. However, I am not God. Inasmuch as I chose to break with my conscience and choose to selfishness, I became morally depraved. I was without hope and without God. I was in need of a Savior.

God could judge the earth and all the wickedness, but he waits patiently for you and me to return to our source of life and hope and love. God is restrained from judgment for the sake of relationship. He always chooses the highest and best for everyone.

“For this is what the high and lofty One says–he who lives for ever, whose name is holy: “I live in a high and holy place, but also with him who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite.” (Isa. 57:15)

His invitation to “Take my yoke … and learn from me” is a call to intimacy with Him, “for (He is) gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” (Matt. 11:29)

God is patient. He limits His judgment, not his ability or his knowledge, for the sake of relationship.

God stoops down to love you and me, free moral beings, because He is condescendingly gracious. God’s eternal nature is limitless from time eternal past to time eternal future; He is eternal in duration. The Greek notion, representing mankind’s highest thinking, says God is timeless. This sophisticated human invention gave rise to the ultimate ideal, the UNKNOWN GOD, who exercises His power and knowledge without restraint.

There is no point in confusing this issue; we either worship an ideal  UNKNOWN who controls all things perfectly and is therefore responsible for all things good and bad, or we worship the God who is all powerful, yet patient, humble, and not responsible for the evil acts of humanity. We either worship a god who could not limit his power or we worship the One Moses met at the burning bush, the all-powerful “I AM” who shows restraint. We either worship a god who absolutely never changes, including no emotional responses to the acts of his human creation, or we worship the God of the Bible who responds to our prayers, is touched by the feelings of our weaknesses, and feels the pain of rejection and the joy of new life. We either worship a god who controls all things, or we worship Jesus who makes us free to choose to love him or reject him. We either worship a god who is created after our own image, or we worship the Suffering Servant of Isa. 53 who went to the cross to die for my sin.

Relationship with an UNKNOWN GOD is impossible. That is how we have true intimate relationship with a wholly blameless Eternal God. And this is why my prayers echo the words of Bernard of Clairvaux:

“Lord, let me never, never outlive my love to Thee.”

Cultivating Communities of Practice

Cultivating Communities of Practice, by Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2002), is one of several required books I read for Fuller Theological Seminary‘s MA in Global Leadership. The following are my reflections:

I have a great interest in how organizations, particularly those with Christian leadership, work and how they respond to change. This book is rich with practical insight as to how non-profit organizations, churches, and christian ministries may develop in a globalized society.

I wondered as I read this book how Youth With A Mission‘s Student Mobilization Centre might create truly life changing learning spaces for students and leaders who participate in our ministries.

One trend I have observed helps me see the way forward. In recent years several international conferences, training courses, and outreaches have been convening around points of passion and global human need, like water, women’s issues, slavery, and children at risk. YWAM International and other Christian missions agencies have also begun to look at a new mapping paradigm for global strategy called Project 4K wherein the map is divided into about 4000 geographic units, Omega Zones, highlighting those areas still requiring engagement.

What appears to be needed is a new cross-platform, multi-disciplinary team approach to properly engage each of those geographic regions.

Through the Student Mobilization Centre‘s School of University Ministries & Missions, we are equipping field leaders who will be able to coordinate multi-disciplinary field project teams. During the past 15 months, we have presented this 12-week training program in India, USA, Korea, and Colombia.  I leave today to teach on Missional Collaboration for the final week of the school. Participants in the SMC school learn how to collaborate with leaders and communities to harmonize outreach teams to serve broad-based long-term community development project goals while mobilizing students for field based learning.

YWAM’s University of the Nations operates according to what Wenger, et al conclude in Communities of Practice; that is, “useful knowledge is not a downloadable commodity.” It requires participation.

The best learning experiences are in the context of relationships, especially those experiences with others that at the same time unfamiliar and familiar. In my experience, students learn best when taken out of their familiar culture to serve and learn in a context that challenges their expectations and status quo learning experiences. They also learn best if put in a situation where they are challenged to work together with those who share their skill set, academic training, and/or missionary goals.

By cultivating these communities of learning and serving, I believe we will ourselves learn how to do world missions and how to participate as a global church in the twenty-first century. By developing this field project model of university ministry, placing students as interns into a wide array of community development projects with national leaders who require their service, we will all learn, we will become a community of practice.

By requiring students as part of their internship to research and write about their cross-cultural serving-learning experience, we will thereby share knowledge gained both with the field project leaders and with the universities and professors that sent the students. These project teams will help us steward and share the knowledge gained. These long-term community development field projects could serve as “laboratories” for curriculum development as well as cross-disciplinary field project leadership development.

By working together across cultures toward a big vision of collaborative ministries, leaders of missional communities, churches and organizations, will increase their ability and speed generating and implementing creative ideas for community development, evangelization, and training.

To accomplish this, we will need to form missional communities in university settings, and cross-platform, multi-disciplinary, communities of practice at field sites where internships may be hosted and field project staff leadership may be trained.

The most essential element of this field-based learning community is the authentic cross-cultural ministry that must be the foundational intent and the fruit of the project.

Where missional communities of practice exist, the witness of the Kingdom of God will be evident in a much greater way, both in the university and at that field projects’ community. These communities of learning and leadership equipping may in turn affect a change in the whole of the Christian missionary enterprise through an integrated development model of field ministry and leadership equipping.

This book is ‘salty’. I am thirsty for more with each page turned. Even more so, I am hungry for the practical outworking of this vision within the context of my own life and ministry. That is why I am developing a seminar and a 12-week course on Missional Collaboration. The challenge to me is to deliberately form communities of practice in my ministry context, the universities of the world.

God of the Empty-Handed Key 4 of 4

The noise of the one hundred students moving their metal chairs into circles was deafening. The Nairobi Church auditorium echoed with loud screeching as students from nearby University of Nairobi shuffled to form their groups according to the spheres or domains of society; arts, media, business, education, family, government, etc.

CallingQuest

The room was buzzing with excitement. The intensive seminar, “Calling Quest 2001 – Transforming Your Nation Through Your God-given Vocation” is one of a series of seminars I have presented around the world for Youth With A Mission‘s Student Mobilization Centre. At this event, I had the help of three of our YWAM Madison School of the Bible interns. After the first of several presentations, the students were anxious to discuss and search the Scriptures for answers to the hard questions.

Accompanying us was a team of thirteen students from Brown University, Providence College, Rhode Island School of Design, UC San Bernadino, and UVA, all of whom had been prepared to lead the Domains Small Group discussions during our week-long Field Ministry Internships orientation in Switzerland. When we arrived in Kenya, they came with questions too. Ju Rhyu, one of the Brown students, brought these questions:

How can I bring transformation in a world of injustice? What is my place in this world? Though I yearn to see justice in a world with nations rejoicing, the burdens and problems that stand before me seem too daunting, too massive. AIDS, poverty, corruption – how do I even begin to think about these things?

It was the week of July 24-27, 2001. Yes, only a few weeks later the world would be shocked at the events of September 11, 2001. (Several American colleagues and I were still in Nairobi on that day. We were attending an international conference for the University of the Nations. We were stranded in Kenya and then Europe, waiting for the airports to unclog so we could return to our families and friends in the USA, and a very different world.)

Ju’s questions loom even larger in the face of a world terrorized by a few radicals. What could a few Christ followers do in the face of such evil? How could they help end the injustices of the poor? What is God’s good purpose for humankind? What does it mean to be created in the image of God? And are we called to serve the needs of the world?

Two Callings

Actually, we have two calls from God. Enjoying friendship with God, not merely right relationship, is our first call. Adam and Eve, the first inhabitants of the world in our God Story, enjoyed friendship with God. They were called twice. First, they were called to serve in the garden with the words “dress it and keep it” (Gen. 2:15). God made human beings in His image to rule and to be fruitful under His reign with full dependence on Him. Second, after Adam and Eve disobeyed and sin entered the world, God’s call became a cry seeking his lost friends. “Where are you?” (Gen. 3:9).

However, calling changed after the tragic Fall of humankind. Because of the Fall, our first call is not to service, but to restored relationship. St. Augustine expressed the call to restored relationship to God in his Confessions,

“Thou has made us for Thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee.”

When we are lost and outside relationship with God, our first call is to restored relationship through faith.

Calling to do something in the world was not separated from the call of intimate friendship. Both callings are integral to our relationship with God; both are integral to the imprint of God’s image.

High Calling?

Sadly, most of the students I spoke with in Nairobi that summer were not able to see a valid contribution or calling beyond the domain of the church.Though many were students of architecture, business, and communications, they did not understand the God-given calling to be an architect, or business person, or journalist. They thought the call to be a pastor or evangelist was the highest calling.

What do you think?

Our Domains Small Groups continued to press in diligently with their questions. They began to understand the imprint of God, what it means to be created in God’s image. The student groups searched the daily newspapers to see what was happening in their chosen sphere of society. Then they sought the Scriptures to understand God’s ways of governing the world.

Our team of student leaders prayed together with the Nairobi students for the very real and very current needs in the domains of health care, education, business, family, etc. They began to see past the stigma and blindness to the ills of their own society. For example, though there were already ten million AIDS orphans, it was only that summer that the first newspaper article reported that AIDS was the cause of someone’s death.

After the intensive seminar, the students continued to meet weekly to study and pray in their groups. They even took prayer walks around major centers of business, education, media, etc. They became activated in God’s calling to “dress and keep” the world. One group was ushered into the Deputy Mayor’s Office to present some of their findings and discuss the need for a better sewage system.

The students began to understand the high calling of living according to God’s design, offering their gifts, skills, and natural abilities in service to their neighbors and their world. Much of our ministry to the Poor is in helping our them understand their high calling, that they are created in the image of God. This leads us to Key #4.

Key #4: Defend the Image of God in the Poor.

The Nairobi university students at that CallingQuest and other seminars conducted over the summer of 2001 were among the most privileged of Kenyan society. However, they were missing something. We too are “Poor” if we fail to know our identity and vocation, our calling in God.

Those who know God have responsibility to the Poor. We are called to define and defend the image of God in the Poor. Because we know we are created in His image and we know His voice calling us to intimate friendship and purpose in this world, we must be diligent to defend the image of God in the Poor.

Diligence.

The Poor are not lazy or stupid. Jayakumar Christian writes,

“A people so close to the edge cannot afford laziness or stupidity. They have to work and work hard. Most of the lazy and stupid are dead.”

We too should be diligent. Our church life and worship should celebrate our relationship with Jesus Christ, our reconciliation with God. However, we also have the responsibility to minister to the Poor. We must look for ways in which the Poor have been limited in their access to love, justice, or peace.

Ministry to the Poor is not merely about access to material needs; it’s about removing obstacles and giving access to the cultural, social, spiritual, personal, and biological spheres of community.

Our outreach to the Poor should affect the whole system of poverty, the diabolical web to which they are bound. Our ministry is reconciliation. We are called to restore relationships, including relationship with God (religion, philosophy, theology), Community (political science and economics), the Environment (biology, ecology, engineering), the Wider World (sociology, international relations, justice), and Individuals (psychology, health care).

Ju Rhyu expresses her deepest desire that:

Through our time in Nairobi we would be able to teach that God reigns over and in and through all. He is Lord of government, business, science, technology, education, family, the church, arts and communications.  The sacred should not be self-contained and relegated to a position of non-influence, but rather, should extend itself to influence holistically.

God of the Empty-Handed: Key 3 of 4

Goliath (pronounced: “Go-lee-at” in Spanish) was an especially big baby born to a single mom in a four-foot high cardboard box with only a straw mattress on the dirt floor of the Guatemala City garbage dump. Thousands of squatters made their home living on top of the garbage. They made their “homes” out of scraps, tires, boxes, and other discarded items found on the dump.

It was our Field Ministry Internship health care team’s first day at the clinic at the City Dump. The clinic might have closed that summer in 1991 if we had not arrived. The YWAM staff team leading the clinic were all enrolled in the first University of the Nations Introduction to Primary Health Care School for Spanish speakers. They were glad we came. Our FMI team, led by Nurse Bonnie, kept the clinic open and operating.

Our journalism and social work interns took a walk with me through the Dump community. We met a man with bright yellow eyes, a key symptom of an acute and fatal case of hepatitis, probably due to alcohol abuse. He was silent, but his facial expressions betrayed the fact that he was a dangerous man. After we directed him to the clinic, a woman told us the same man regularly beat his wife.

Smoke rose over the mass of garbage burning at the center of the dump. Our eyes began to burn and I wondered how anyone could live in this place. We continued to visit families in their “homes.” One family of twelve seemed very well settled with a larger one-room hut, probably 12×15 feet, which included a large family bed and hammocks for the smaller children.

On our return to the clinic, we almost walked passed the “box.” But we heard the whimpering of a baby inside. I stooped down to look inside. This small box was a woman’s home and she held her oversized baby, Goliath.

We were welcomed “in,” but only one of us could fit on the straw mattress on the ground next to her. I looked in the sad dark face of the woman and joined her. I held her big baby.

I didn’t know whether to choke from the smell, or cry for the conditions this baby was born into. With the help of a translator, I spoke to the woman about her baby and the Child Jesus, who was born in an animal stall.

The woman paid close attention and I sensed the Holy Spirit drawing her as my words were simple and direct. I spoke of a hope that was beyond all hope. I shared Jesus.

Goliath’s mom prayed with me that day. As I opened my eyes I could see something happened; her grin was from ear to ear. The next day, Golaith’s mom was at the clinic asking to help. She became a true follower of Jesus that day.

Key #3: Power from the Throne of God.

The third key to ministry among the poor is “Power from the Throne of God.” The Poor are powerless in many respects. The Poor are most often born into poverty, like a lottery of life. Most of us, certainly most Westerners, would likely not survive in such conditions.

The Poor are denied access; they are held in powerlessness primarily because of broken relationships. All their relationships are working against them. It’s as if they were caught in a spider’s web, a diabolical trap from which there is no escape.

The Bible says there are “principalities and powers,” or rulers of darkness, which keep people in bondage to sin and misery. The evil spirits lock the Poor out of healthy relationships, especially from “seeing” Jesus Christ.

“In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the likeness of God.” 2 Cor. 4:4

The enemy keeps the Poor in the cycle of poverty, a cycle of broken relationships. Relationship is the key dynamic of the throne of God.

What do the Poor need?

They need to be connected in relationship with God and others. They need a right relationship with their family, their community, and the resources of this world.

What is the problem with sin? It separates.

Sin separates us; relationships of all kinds suffer due to sin. The poor are no different from anyone; they need to be connected to others. The connection with others should not be primarily for the sake of provision; providing food, shelter and medicines has often been used as a means of control.

The poor need to be connected with the broader community where they have been restricted from access.

Kingdom-based Responses reflect Power from the Throne of God

A kingdom-based response to poverty will reverse the “process of dis-empowerment.”

A kingdom-based response will confront spiritual powers and principalities, including  “god-complexes” that pins one group of people over another.

A kingdom-based response will heal bodies and relationships; it teaches and models a more complete worldview based on Christ’s character and authority to set them free.

A kingdom-based response will challenge the principalities and powers of darkness (including institutions that are instruments of those powers).

A kingdom-based response will establish “truth and righteousness”, and proclaim that “all power belongs to God.”

A kingdom-based response will restore a person’s relationship with himself/herself. As I wrote in the previous post, poverty, ultimately, is the poverty of “being” and of “purpose.” Conversely, abundant life is the abundance of “being” and “purpose”. It is from the vantage point of the throne of God that an individual and a people may find their God-given identity and vocation conferring the essential being and purpose.

My son, Justin, was there at the garbage dump clinic with my wife, Mary. Justin was just 15 months old. I held my son that evening and prayed with him as he went to sleep. We had little to no money, only $25 USD, on the day Justin was born. For many, we would be considered poor. What’s the difference?

Kingdom relationships.

God of the Empty-Handed: Key 2 of 4

Key #2: A Kingdom View of the Poor.

“Line up!” shouted the man who climbed out of the Ford Econoline 350 box truck. “Stand back! Stand de vuelta!” Clowns, balloons, and face painting helped attract people from the nearby pueblos. The dry wind swept up the grey dirt as the crowd of people from Cuidad Juarez, and the surrounding Mexican border squatter villages, gathered to receive clothes, food, and other donated items. Obediently, the people stood in line and waited for the man to open to back of the truck. I have no doubt the man and the others with him had kind intentions, however my heart sunk as I watched these people reduced to pitiable passive recipients of American excesses.

The truckload of donations was part of an outreach ministry of a church on the El Paso side of the Rio Grande. It was the summer of 1990. We were in Juarez for six weeks with our Field Ministry Internship student teams of Youth With A Mission‘s Student Mobilization Centre. On this hot July afternoon, we were assisting the American group that came to plant a church. We were asked to conduct simple health examinations, primary health care, in a makeshift medical clinic. This personal contact also gave us opportunity to ask if we can pray for the children and their families.

However, the oversized sound system and overzealous worship leaders made it difficult to pray, let alone conduct any thorough examinations in the clinic. The loud and raucous singing and music was giving me a headache.

I stepped out of the clinic to observe the open air meeting. The music continued as young American evangelists, many with clown outfits, went into the audience to pray for the sick.

Please understand, I am a firm believer in prayer and God’s power to heal.

But this disturbed me.

A small Mexican child, obviously frightened by the clowns laying their hands on him, was crying and reaching out toward his mother. Others were surrounding “Mom” and praying for her. The noise and confusion even had me anxious to leave. I wondered what this child and family would think of Jesus after this traumatic day.

This brings us to the second key to ministry among the poor.

Christian ministries will always reflect their leadership’s view of the poor, their understanding of the nature of poverty. That view may be less biblical and more the prevailing view of the surrounding culture.

What is your view of the poor?

The way we approach our ministry to the poor communicates value, either positively or negatively. No matter how many dollars or valuables we donate, our posture and attitude in what we do and say communicates far more than what we give.

When Christians reach out to the poor, we too often unintentionally communicate what we think of their value.

This is what the poor “hear”:

“We are complete, you are not.”

Simply put, the goal of our outreach to the poor should be to avoid communicating that lie. Our goal should be to identify with the poor in our mutual recovery of identity in relation to God’s creative design and purpose.

How do we do that?

In order to communicate value to the poor, we must first communicate value to the volunteer serving alongside us in ministry to the poor.

This is why we emphasize “Calling” in our university student ministries and outreaches. If our outreach emphasizes the discovery of vocation in the life of the volunteer, the Christian participant in ministry to the poor, then we will effectively communicate the value of the design and purpose of God to the community in which we minister.

Then we will fulfill the commission to preach the good news to the poor.

Our aim is the same as that of Jesus’ public ministry:

“And He opened the book and found the place where it was written, ^‘THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD IS UPON ME, BECAUSE HE ANOINTED ME TO PREACH THE GOSPEL TO THE POOR. HE HAS SENT ME TO PROCLAIM RELEASE TO THE CAPTIVES, AND RECOVERY OF SIGHT TO THE BLIND, TO SET FREE THOSE WHO ARE OPPRESSED,  TO PROCLAIM THE FAVORABLE YEAR OF THE LORD.’” (Luke 4: 17-19)

Our goal is to ‘set free’ the poor from their destructive relationships so they may enjoy Shalom, a Hebrew term for peace, completeness, and welfare. All of us are called by God to an abundant life of healthy kingdom relationships.

The way we reach this goal must begin with the right posture, the right attitude. We must begin by demonstrating a servant heart, the nature of our servant King Jesus.

In our outreach to the Poor we must represent a kingdom community, demonstrating the biblical story and representing God’s identity and purpose in our relationships.

Our outreach should portray the kingdom of God, which represents the character of God in all the various expressions of his callings.

God is healer, communicator, builder, author, creator, artist, counselor, teacher, etc. Therefore, these vocations are representing God’s character in community.

Outreach is best when we represent the kingdom of God in a community of servants. We represent the character of God and the holistic and interrelated spheres of His ministry.

Ministry to the Poor requires a view of the poor and a vision of the kingdom of God.

In this series, I am referring to the book: God of the Empty-Handed: Poverty, Power, and the Kingdom of God, by Christian, Jayakumar.

God of the Empty-Handed: Key 1 of 4

Key #1: Knowing Who Are the Poor.

Jesus said: “The poor will always be with you”. In his book, The God of the Empty-Handed, Jayakumar Christian writes that the poor are caught in a web of relationships that are working against them.

In 1989 my wife and I visited our Field Ministry Internship teams in Hong Kong and the Philippines. The Health Care, Social Work, and Education teams in the Philippines were working just outside Manila at the Smokey Mountain city dump, where thousands of poor families lived amid the garbage.

Robert Chambers writes, “poverty is entanglement”. That is to say, they are caught in a web of systems; they have a lack of power, materials, choices, relationships, and influence. Donald McGavran contends that the poor are exempt from experiencing transformation until they have all been saved:

“The only place large social action is possible is in countries where the majority of the population are members of Christ’s Church.” (p. 78)

Many missionary agencies and churches have taken this perspective into their ministry approaches. But is this true?

What do you think?

Is poverty caused by sin?

Is it the sin of others?

Is poverty caused by the sin of the poor?

At what point are the poor set free from the cycle of poverty?

When my wife, Mary, and I met our team on Smokey Mountain, they took us to meet a man they were helping start a business. Our team ordered several handmade bamboo frames created with scraps found on the dump. Because our students ordered several frames, the man decided to build a “factory” a back porch extension of his “house” which was made of scrap tin, wood, and tires. He also hired a few workers to help meet the deadline for his first big order. The smile on the man’s face told the story well; he was so excited he was recognized for his gift and talent and that he was making good use of it to serve others.

The poor, as most refer to them, are living on bare subsistence; no savings, no investments, no opportunity for technological improvements, and therefore no income increase.

Jayakumar Christian’s book explains what most do not understand

The poor are poor due to a loss of identity and a loss of vocation. Therefore, the poor are set free, not merely through a steady income, a job or a hand-out. They are truly free when they gain understanding of their identity in God and discover their calling in God.

Paulo and The God of the Empty-Handed

Looking into the hollow eyes of Paulo, I wondered what we could do. Paulo was emaciated and gaunt, but with a bloated belly. His parents asked us to come see him. They worried that he would no longer eat the corn tortillas they had been feeding him. Because he was weak, his mother kept Paulo hidden in the dark corner of the small mud brick house. She feared that the sun and the warm air in the mountains of Guatemala would harm him.

It was 1991 and our university student Field Ministry Internship teams visited this mountain village to serve the Rabinal Achi people, a poor community with little or no access to health care and education.

Bonnie, a nurse and our health care team leader said Paulo was dying; he was at the final stages of starvation.

With the mother’s permission and Bonnie’s recommendation, I picked up the frail boy and held him to pray. He was light as a feather. I carried him into the sun. A member of our team ran to get some 7Up and soda crackers to attempt to rehydrate him, but he would not eat. I fed him the liquid with a tea spoon, which appeared to help him. We prayed earnestly as tears welled up in our eyes for the boy and his family. “Jesus, please heal this one today.”

The clinical name for the condition is called Kwashiorkor. The belly swells due to the lack of protein. The parents did not understand that the diet of tortillas, the only food available for their little boy, was insufficient. Paulo was not getting the nutrients he needed to survive.

We learned the next day that Paulo died. Even as I write this today, I agonize over the loss of this small child that had so little hope of survival. Even now, I want to bring a good report; I want to say, “Jesus healed Paulo!” But that is not what happened.

Paulo’s family is among the poorest of the poor. He is not merely a statistic, but he is among three billion people, almost half the world’s population, who live on less than $2.50 USD a day. Approximately 24,000 children like Paulo die every day due to malnutrition and impure water. (See Facts on Global Poverty.)

That experience, and dozens of others like it in as many countries over the past two decades, shaped my vision and passion for mobilizing university students toward their calling in Christ’s mission to a needy world. I ache to see a generation of university students offer their lives, including their studies and their careers, as living sacrifices in worship of Jesus. I long to see communities of faith, churches, devote more of their resources to mission and less to the one hour event on a Sunday morning. I long to see Christian business leaders, educators, scientists, communicators, food growers, builders, health care specialists, and families connect, conspire and collaborate to serve the world’s poor, starting with one small boy or girl in one small village.

One of the most important books I have read on the subject of ministry to the poor is God of the Empty-Handed: Poverty, Power, and the Kingdom of God by Jayakumar Christian. (Amazingly, this book is not available for less than $200.00. Therefore, I will provide a brief synopsis for my next four blog posts.)

As I read this book I was challenged to understand several keys to ministry among the poor. I’m convinced these key principles are important for any ministry, any Christian desiring to serve Christ’s mission. Additional posts with stories of our ministry among the poor will follow soon.

(Note: The name “Paulo” may not be accurate, but the story is true. I may have confused this boy’s name with another we ministered to some time later.)

The Open Secret

Lesslie Newbigin’s The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission is a tightly-packed book; it’s a summary of a four-year missiology course. I really like Newbigin. I joined many others who have followed his re-examination of our job as Christians, particularly in the Western world, which is:

“to learn what he [God] is doing in the world which is already his, not to introduce him to a world from which he is absent.” (1995:67)

Newbigin was a missionary for three decades. His practical experience shaped his theology, and not the other way around. Forged in the years of missionary service, Newbigin returned with a very different view of his own homeland, England, and the Church in the West. Newbigin paved the way ahead for the Church in an increasingly globalized and pluralistic world.

Before I read this book, I asked the following questions: (It’s a very good practice for reading; engage the author with your questions before you read.)

1. What key insights will Newbigin offer to my understanding the theology of mission?
2. What is the role of the local congregation?
3. How can I apply these understandings?

1. Newbigin’s key insights on the theology of mission:

If you have questions about the doctrine of election, the law, and the covenant of God, all of which have been distorted to the detriment of missions, you should read this book. Newbigin, like the apostle Paul, saw these issues as central to his call. The doctrine of election should be taught as a “fearful responsibility,” rather than defining an exclusive group. (1995:73)

Newbigin explains how the law, the Torah, exonerates God of all blame for sin. The biblical narrative shows how the law itself is insufficient. The law was “ordained by angels” (1995:75), a delegated authority which is limited. That law, like any “elementary principle”, was used by its angelic agency which ultimately gained control, a control from which humanity needed to be liberated through a spiritual battle:

“For though we live in the world we are not carrying on a worldly war, for the weapons of our warfare are not worldly but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle to the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ, being ready to punish every disobedience, when your obedience is complete.” (2 Cor. 10:3-6)

(This notion of spiritual control through “elementary principles” or “stoichaea” is outlined in Paul’s letter to the Galatians and unpacked in chapter 16 of Newbigin’s book, “Gospel in a Pluralistic Society”.)

Newbigin fills out the unchanging nature of God’s Mission, which is:

“Proclaiming of God’s kingdom over all human history and over the whole cosmos” and “…the active agent of mission is a power that rules, guides, and goes before the church. The free, sovereign, living power of the Spirit of God.” (1995:56)

Probably my most important insight in Open Secret is that “significant advances of the church have not been the result of our own decisions about the mobilizing and allocating of ‘resources,’” Newbigin writes,

“The significant advances in my experience have come through happenings of which the story of Peter and Cornelius is a paradigm, in ways of which we have no advance knowledge. God opens the heart of a man or woman in the gospel. The messenger (the ‘angel’ of Acts 10:3) may be a stranger, a preacher, a piece of Scripture, a dream, an answered prayer, or a deep experience of joy or sorrow, of danger or deliverance. It was not part of any missionary ‘strategy’ devised by the church. It was the free and sovereign deed of God, who goes before the church…this mission is not ours but God’s.” (1995:64)

2. The role of the local congregation:

“As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” (Jn. 20:21)

The Great Commission is not given to individuals, but to the Church which he has sent into the world. The role of the local church has been one of my greatest questions as a missionary. Why do so many churches behave competitively with their neighbors? What kind of leadership formation is needed to lead a community? What is the ultimate purpose, the fruit that we should look for in a church community?

Newbigin points out that Jesus explanation of the gospel was to be “introduced into history…in the form of a community, not in the form of a book.” (1995:52) It is the role of the local congregation to gather to celebrate “the centrality of the Lord’s Supper in the continuation of Jesus’ mission.” (2 Cor. 4:10 and Jn. 13-16) When we gather, we celebrate this “happening” in history and its continuation.

Rather than write a book (or give instructions for the writing of a book), Jesus instituted a community, which ‘remembers‘. The New Testament was written as an act of remembering, first the letters and then the gospels. The gospels were written a generation after Pentecost, when the only eye witnesses of Jesus death, burial, and resurrection were themselves dying off. When we gather to celebrate Jesus’ lordship over all creation, we remember. And as a community, Newbigin writes, we:

“enter into the stream of historical happenings and become part of its course. In other words, if it is true that God’s reign concerns history in its unity and totality…we must be related to it, and must share in its power, not merely by reading of it in a book or hearing it in a verbal report, but by participating in the life of that society which springs from it and is continuous with it.” (1995:51)

This participation in that community of faith, through the agency of the Holy Spirit, gives us the authority to be his witnesses in life of the surrounding society. We can rest with confidence in our authority as messengers of grace and judgment. We can, by virtue of the deposit of the Spirit of God, be the presence of Jesus in a community as well as the announcement of the in-breaking kingdom of God. (Jn. 13:20 and Mt. 11:25-30)

“The presence of the kingdom, hidden and revealed in the cross of Jesus, is carried through history hidden and revealed in the life of that community which bears in its life the dying and rising of Jesus.” (1995:52)

I have seen many churches today strive for some modern business success model of growth, but this is not the biblical model of the local congregation. Instead, it is simply through dependence on the Holy Spirit, and especially when there is evidence of humility, failure, brokenness, and foolish mistakes, that our witness is authentic and the Lord will judge us ‘faithful’.

“The real triumphs of the gospel have not been won when the Church is strong in a worldly sense; they have been won when the Church is faithful in the midst of weakness, contempt, and rejection.” (1995:62)

The New Testament provides little definition of the local congregation. The word “church” or “ecclesia” only appears in one of the gospels, Matthew’s Gospel, and only in relation to a discipline issue that apparently emerged. There is, however, plenty of instruction as to the leadership, character, and purpose of the congregation (mostly found in Paul’s letters). This gives an amazing flexibility for a community of believers to bear witness to the in-breaking presence of the kingdom.

3. Applications:

Newbigin offers a timely prescription for gatherings of believers today. He prescribes a missiological understanding of theology, rather than a theological understanding of mission. Part of my call, though primarily focused on student initiatives in missions, is also to work with gatherings of believers, especially in university communities, to work collaboratively following God’s mission. My work as a missionary has changed me and this book mostly confirms and clarifies those changes. Newbigin puts it this way:

“Mission (led by the Holy Spirit) changes not only the world but also the Church…There is a conversion of the Church as well as the conversion of Cornelius.” (1995:59)

So my role is becoming more and more involved in engaging and mobilizing local congregations and their leaders to work together in Christ’s Mission.

Newbigin points out the ‘fact of Christ’ as a happening at one time and place showing that “God’s reign concerns history in its unity and totality.” (1995:51) We therefore all relate to this monumental event, and we must learn to share in its power in our witness to the wider world. The cross of Christ is:

“a happening, it is a part of history. It is located at a particular point of place and time in the whole vast fabric of human affairs.” (1995:50)

This book convicts me. I must confess that too often I have made missionary plans using my own ideas and my own strength, forgetting the most important thing about that mission. Though I know how to listen to the voice of the Lord, I often launch ahead without clear instructions. I must always remember the mission is not mine and it’s not the Church’s, it’s God’s.

This book has helped me learn afresh that as we learn not to depend on human ingenuity, we can demonstrate the “hope that is given by the presence of the Spirit who is the living foretaste of the kingdom.” (1995:64-65) We may not only announce the kingdom of God, we can embody it.

The Trouble with Partial Understanding

Have you ever heard this complaint? “I don’t understand my son. He never listens to me.”

The trouble, sir, is that you need to listen if you wish to understand your son. Conflict inevitably comes when we do not listen.

If you have been breathing for any longer than a few years, you’ve seen conflict. My hometown, Madison, Wisconsin has been the epicenter of conflict over the past few months. During his campaign for Governor, Scott Walker’s symbol was a “Brown Bag” with promises to balance the budget and return to fiscal responsibility. When Walker came into office, he set out to accomplish that goal by submitting a bill to limit the collective bargaining powers of public employee unions. This is a classic example of what is called a “political moment”; it’s when you have limited resources and varied interests. The trouble with political moments is the partial understanding; people on either side refuse to listen to each other.

Conflict!

Thousands came out in protest at the Wisconsin State Capitol, but few listened to each other. Fourteen Democrat senators fled the State to avoid the inevitable vote on the bill. Most of the protesters were against the Governor’s bill and the Republican controlled Assembly and Senate. The Tea Party came out one saturday to show support for the bill. Since then committees have sent around petitions to recall sixteen elected representatives, both Democrat and Republican. Each side is convinced they are right, which means the “others” are wrong. But can both sides be right? Could there be something both sides are not seeing? Will we listen? Will we learn? Do you think our leaders should set a better example of listening, learning, and leading through collaboration?

Speaking out with personal opinion is natural; it’s easy. Following people with strong opinions is easy too.  My outspoken preference for important things like my political or religious views may encourage some people to change their views, to “follow” me. However, some may feel somehow diminished for their different view. How do we communicate what we value without devaluing the values and beliefs of others?

I must admit I do not have a full understanding on these matters. I do not see everything. I do not understand everything. This may be the point. In order to learn, we must admit we do not know everything. I think most will agree that Jesus of Nazareth was a master teacher. But just how masterful was his teaching?

Consider with me how Jesus teased out the implications and consequences of his disciple’s narrow views. These first century Galileans had a narrow monocultural myopia, they did not see the need to show love and mercy to people from other cultures.  But Jesus leads them through their world as if it were his classroom.

Jesus alludes to the disciples sense of privilege as Israelites. He says the “children’s bread” should not be fed to “dogs” in response to the plea of the foreign woman who asked Jesus to free her daughter from an evil spirit. (Mark 7:27) Jesus spoke aloud the inner thoughts of his disciples’ religiously bigoted views. Probably satisfied that the woman would leave them alone, the disciples were likely surprised when she replied to Jesus, “Yes, but even the dogs get the crumbs.” What humility! Jesus responded and healed the girl.

Did the disciples learn? Could they confess, albeit with stammering lips, what they learned? Jesus, the master teacher, then heals a deaf and mute man. Do they still not understand?

Jesus then immediately leads the disciples into Decapolis, the Roman/Gentile cities nearby, to continue to tease out the implications of their narrow worldview. He displays compassion on the foreigners and tells the disciples “you feed them.” He’s now telling them to share the “children’s bread” with foreigners.

The Pharisees ask for a “sign,” apparently not seeing the “seven loaves” which became “seven basketfuls of broken pieces”. (Each basket required two men to carry them.) Jesus says there will be no sign. Huh? He tells those he heals to go home, not to tell anyone. Why is he withholding this important information? Did he need a publicist, someone to keep his popularity ratings high? What sort of politician would Jesus be?

Jesus then makes another point with this extended lesson. While on the boat crossing the sea, Jesus warns of the “yeast” (teaching/worldview) of the Pharisees and of Herod, but they had an incomplete revelation/understanding. They thought he was speaking about lunch.

Jesus said, “Do you still not understand?” Clearly not.

To demonstrate his lesson further, Jesus heals a blind man, but only partially at first. He saw people “like trees walking around.” A complete healing came when he prayed a second time. Do you see the point of his lesson? We do not see everything. We only have a partial revelation.

Capping off the master teacher’s lesson is a question (of course, he’s asked several questions all along): “Who do people say that I am?” Various replies. He doesn’t criticize or correct them. “But what about you?”, he asks. Peter jumps all over it, bursting with revelation. “The Christ!” Wow!

Trouble foretold. It’s only a partial revelation.

Henry’s Hawai’i

Sitting here warming in the sun and listening to the gentle spash of the waves along the jagged lava rock of the Kona Coast of the Big Island of Hawai’i, I find it difficult to believe this is where a tsunami slammed the small shopping center along the shore on March 11, 2011. That contrast is stark, but the story of a young boy named Henry who lived here two hundred years ago details an even more striking contrast. For more than a generation the island was inhabited by a war-like Tahitian tribe that enslaved the more peaceful Polynesians through violence and fear. I wonder what it was like for the first known Westerner, British explorer Captain James Cook, when he arrived in 1778. The inhabitants thought Cook was Lono, the god of fertility and peace. In time, they realized he was merely human, so they killed him. Henry’s is the story of Hawai’i, beginning with violence and fear, but ending in hope and joy.

I’ve been to this island many times over the years. For over 20 years, my work with Youth With A Mission has brought me here over a dozen times. This island is home to University of the Nations-Kona Campus, one of our largest training locations. I made this place home and had offices for our ministries here in Kona two times, once in ’89-’90 and later in ’98. My son, Justin, was born on this island in 1990. The story of this campus is significant; it is found in the book “Is That Really You, Lord?” by Loren Cunningham, the founder of Youth With A Mission.  The back story, the story you will not find in Loren’s book, is how the gospel first came to the Kona Coast.

When I first moved to Hawai’i with my wife in 1989, I was surprised by the contrasts. This island is volcanic and hazardous. The barren expanses of jagged black lava fields are contrasted by amazing vegetation and beautiful aromatic flower trees. Amid the harsh surroundings is a rich dark soil producing coffee beans, pineapples, and coconuts. The amazingly diverse climate has several micro-environments with unique weather, plants and animals. When we lived here, we took a few long drives around the island, which took us through tropical rainforests, cool alpine regions, stony deserts and sunny beaches. This is the place Henry grew up about 200 years ago.

When Henry Opukahai’a was just ten years old he saw his parents killed as two warring men fought to show their manhood. Henry took his baby brother on his back and fled. Sadly, Henry’s brother was killed by a spear and he was captured. Orphaned and alone, he was forced to live with his uncle, the man who apparently killed his parents. Henry was being trained to become a pagan priest. Henry saw the emptiness of the rituals and chants. He and a friend Thomas Hopu successfully escaped swimming out to the Triumph, an American tall ship and became cabin boys. Some time later, the ship was anchored off the shore of New Haven, Connecticut. Henry was found weeping on the steps of Yale College. He is quoted: “Someone please teach me the truth.” Timothy Dwight, the president of Yale, took him to his home and Henry began his formal education. He studied Greek and Hebrew and translated parts of the Bible. It is important to note that Timothy Dwight’s daily messages in in the chapel are attributed to have sparked the Second Great Awakening.

Henry and Thomas became the first Hawaiian Christians in 1815. They were befriended by Yale students. Henry was later introduced to and discipled by Samuel Mills, the leader of the Haystack Prayer Meeting in William’s College, Williamstown, MA. (See my previous post about the Haystack.) Henry was very intelligent and his zeal for Christ led him to pray for his homeland, the Islands of Hawai’i. In his memoirs, which sold 500,000 copies, Henry Opukahai’a wrote:

“My poor countrymen who are yet living in the region and shadow of death, without knowledge of the true God, and ignorant of the future world, have no Bible to read, no Sabbath.”

Henry’s faith and courage led him to sign up as an original member of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, the earliest foreign missionaries in the new nation. He intended to return to Hawai’i as a missionary. But Henry died of typhoid fever in 1818. His life and faith inspired Thomas Hopu and Hiram Bingham, and a team of others, to be the first missionaries to Hawaii. The words of this sermon show the influence of this faithful young Hawaiian native who died at the early age of 26 years:

“‘It is the Lord’s doing, and marvelous in our eyes.’ To him it belongs to bring good out of evil and light out of darkness… Ah! Opukahaia cannot go with you. He will not, however, forget you. Perhaps, if you should prove steadfast in the faith, he may look down and smile upon you from heaven. …. From a land of Bibles and Sabbaths and churches, where you have been nurtured and instructed in Christian charity; where you have enjoyed the prayers and counsels of the wise and good; and where some of you hope that you have been made savingly acquainted with the Lord Jesus Christ, you are going back to that land of idols and darkness, from whence you came…”

They landed at the Kona Coast on April 12, 1820. Before they arrived, the ruthless King Kamehameha the Great died. Idolatry and human sacrifice had ended by King Kamehameha II and his Queen mother Ka’ahumanu. The queen soon became a Christian and helped spread the Gospel in the islands.

The missionaries established the first church on the island (shown here). They devised a 12-letter alphabet, translated the Bible, set up a school, and a newspaper.

Revival swept the islands. By 1840, 20,000 Hawaiians had become Christians. Just prior to her death, Queen Ka’ahumanu was presented with the newly completed version of the New Testament in the Hawaiian language. Her last words were: “I am going where the mansions are ready.”

Building Up and Tearing Down

“But if I build up again those things which I tore down, then I prove myself a transgressor.” – Gal 2:18

This phrase penned by the Apostle Paul follows the prophetic impulse of the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah:

“Then the LORD reached out his hand and touched my mouth and said to me, “I have put my words in your mouth. ¹⁰ See, today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant.”  Jeremiah 1:9-11 (NIV)

For those of us with that same prophetic impulse, I hope that you will be fueled with a passion to “build” what God is wanting to build and “tear down” those systems, beliefs, and practices which God does not approve. The apostolic and the prophetic are essential to the laying of foundations of the Church (Eph. 2:20). The “builder” anointing and impulse of the apostolic and prophetic is coupled with the “destroy and overthrow” anointing. The Spirit of God resists the proud. Anything, temples, kingdoms, or belief systems which resist the gentle flow of the Holy Spirit are marked for destruction.

Isa 57:14 And it shall be said, “Build up, build up, prepare the way, remove every obstruction from my people’s way.”

Then, after the destruction, the anointing to build takes the lead. Those whom God has rescued, the poor and the needy, the ones who have humbly sought God for grace, then become the builders.

Isa 61:4 They shall build up the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations.

The caution Paul offers in the building process is to beware of building systems that will resist the gentle flow of God’s Spirit as He seeks to rescue and restore the poor and needy.