A new year gives us the opportunity to return to the basics of faith. When I make priorities for my personal life, I want to make sure that the most important pieces are placed first. Secondary pieces can be added later. What is the most important part of a life of faith? What are the important things that God wants us to do?

We will begin 2010 by focusing on Micah 6:8, a Scripture that gives insight for what God hopes for us. “He has shown you what is good, and what does the Lord require of you? To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God.” It may be a surprise to find that all of the expectations that we have built up around Christianity can be stated so simply. It is probably not surprising that the Lord’s requirements for us have everything to do with relationships.

As we work through our look at Justice, Mercy, and Relationship with God, I hope that you will take account of your own life. I also hope that you will help analyze the life of your community in light of these requirements. Commit Micah 6:8 to memory. Say it everyday during January. Perhaps, it will help to shape each of our walks. Perhaps, it will also help to shape our life together and our witness as a church.

I woke up today thinking about Missions and Missionary work and was compelled to share why I believe Missions matters.

I was born a refugee – that is not necessarily the greatest of conditions to be born into.
I think I was lucky that my parents, having escaped Vietnam, ended up in Hong Kong in the early 1980s. We were very lucky.
Sit down with a group of middle-aged Vietnamese “boat people” and they will share with you a plethora of stories that are beyond belief:

• Tiny 40-60 feet long boats that carried 200 people
• Boats breaking down at sea
• People dying of disease and dehydration
• Pirates attacking these boats, killing the men and raping the women

There aren’t often many happy stories found in the stories of the Vietnamese boat people.
We were and still are a people who were forced to leave our home countries due to political strife.

Worldwide, there are still thousands of Vietnamese people who are stuck in refugee camps in Cambodia, Thailand, the Philippines and various other Southeast Asian/Indonesian countries. Globally there are over 33 million people from all different nationalities who are displaced, whether it is outside or inside of their own countries. That is larger than the population of Canada.

These people have no voice, they have no home, they rarely have a face that Westerners can connect with and they have very little dignity.

The refugee camp I lived in was pretty big. I don’t remember much about it other than the fact that in any one room, we had three to four bunk beds one on top of another and there was about 2 feet of space for a person to sleep in-between the bunks. The refugee camps weren’t incredibly dirty or anything like that; however, the military presence of guards with machine guns and german shepherds still lingers in my memory. Life was simple at best – at least in my eyes.

It was Western missionaries who brought love, compassion and aid to our refugee camps. Two years before I was born, my great aunt and my mother gave their lives to follow Christ after attending a local church established by the Western missionaries. I believe the missionaries may have actually been Canadian because years later, my mother had attempted to find her missionary mentor in Toronto and I believe we had found her.

These missionaries were a blessing, and I honestly don’t think I realized the impact they had on my personal spiritual formation until years later.

I went to school at the age of three (the standard age in Asia to start attending school), and the school was actually run by missionaries. I remember vaguely that my teacher was a Caucasian woman who spoke English. The only thing I remember from school was her teaching us the song “Go Tell It On the Mountain”… a song that has stuck with me since my childhood.

It was the missionaries and churches worldwide who met our plight and tried to find sanctuary for the people at the camps. A local church in Calgary, Alberta had reached into their hearts and sponsored our family to Canada and we have been here since 1989.

Missions is important and as Western churches, we cannot stop doing it – by doing missions, you are not only bringing relief and development and aid to a people group, but you are bringing something eternal and lasting to these people and it is the message of the gospel. If it was not for the missionaries who met us in our time of need, I don’t believe that my family would have given their lives to God.

If your church is currently not involved in missions, I implore you to encourage them to do missions (whether it is local or overseas). People need compassion and love and they need to know that they have value in the eyes of their fellow humans and value in the eyes of God.

There is a need for missions worldwide and we are losing missionaries to retirement and attrition; parents are also discouraging their children from doing missions as well. In a world with so much need for love and compassion, I believe it is our call to respond to that need.

-end-

Merry Christmas.  I hope that all of you will spend time today with family and friends celebrating that God was made into flesh.

This is an almost picturesque, Norman Rockwell scene for Christmas.  My parents live in a historic home that was built in the early 1900s and looks like an English cottage.  There is mistletoe hanging from the trees in the backyard.  The other night, real carolers came by the house to sing five different songs, and after it was over, they all laughed, hugged, and remembered past Christmases together.  Walking downtown is like taking a step back into the early 1930s as the city has painstakingly preserved  buildings, decorations, and atmosphere.

Last night, on Christmas Eve, we sat by the fireplace.  We drank coffee and hot chocolate, ate tons of snacks, and laughed together.  We watched movies like White Christmas, It’s a Wonderful Life, and A Christmas Story.  I read ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas and A Christmas Carol before going to bed.  Our day today will be with family and friends filling the house with laughter and the smell of Christmas dinner.  The only thing that would make this more picturesque would be if it….wait, nevermind, it just started snowing.

All this is fun and makes memories, but it’s not what makes Christmas.  Today, we take intentional time to pause and remember that

…there is a light shining in the darkness

…God was made into flesh and dwelled among us

…a hope is calling us to restoration with God and with others

…in Christ the fullness of diety dwells and we are made complete in Him

…God is love.

…we can transform our communities because of Christ

“He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world.  Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh…”  - Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

It has taken me a few attempts to try to figure out how to say what i want to say here. i am not sure whether or not it will be understood and i am just trying to be sensitive (ok…not really), but i have had a time organizing my thoughts on this topic.

i mentioned in my last post that i would reveal what i think is one of the greatest fears in the church. that fear is not having an answer to a spiritual question. so many of the words parroted by the faithful are words passed on from seasoned christian to newbie christian and are never questioned.  here are a few…

the bible is inerrant and does not contain any contradictions.
christians are required to tithe.
God created the world in six days
there will be 7 years of tribulation and then Jesus comes back.
the rapture happens before the tribulation.
sanctification depends on you.
you must have daily times of devotions.
the bible says that God will give the believer everything he asks for and more if he/she gives to christian television.

Now what if the newbie christian finds out that…

the bible actually presents two creation stories.
there seems to be many contradictions.
God does not need our money to have a ministry run effectively
there are many christians that think that the Tim Lahaye end time construct is a bunch of crap.
as hard as the newbie tries he cannot overcome some sin in his life and continued sanctification seems impossible.
devotions are not a magic charm to give you a good day.
God does not seem impressed with our television ministry giving and the seed money we gave to benny hinn hasn’t brought healing or a fat bank account.

So then the newbie asks questions, many questions. They are then criticized for doubting or not having enough faith. they are ignored by the religiously “mature” and labeled liberals or worse heretics.

they leave the church and the church says  “thank God He has judged this reprobate.”

Once again the church would rather live in ignorance and superficiality rather than in openness and transparency allowing for doubt and questions, which truly help the believer to grow.

Questions and doubt are not the sin here…the spiritual pride that comes from the, “God said it, i believe, that’s enough for me!”, crowd is the sin that has turned many away from the One who is the Answer.

We need to repent!

Last week controversy broke out after the Christmas Party for international students due to 15 minutes of dancing prior to a short presentation of the gospel. It’s a long story and an ongoing discussion (argument) among both students and leaders.

• Some say there’s no problem with occasionally doing something fun that students relate to – dancing included.
• Some say that dancing is fine as long as the music is Christian.
• Some say that dancing is fine as long as the music is Christian and the lights are on.
• Some say there shouldn’t be any dancing at all.
• Some think the whole discussion is pretty silly.

How do we resolve the issue? I’ll tell you once its resolved.

It seemed that most of the students enjoyed the dancing, though at least one protested because we turned the lights down. According to him, the dancing wasn’t wrong, but making the room look more like a club (by dimming the lights) we had crossed the line.

It’s dangerous to assume that these are simply cultural issues. Paul says that whatever is not of faith is sin implying that even violating a cultural taboo can be sin for a less mature believer. In addition, by arguing that dancing, clubbing, or the level of the lights is nothing more than cultural, we run the risk of communicating that morality is relative and contextual and that there is no such thing as objective moral knowledge.

As one African student once told me, ‘We know it’s ok for Americans to smoke, drink, and have sex. But it’s a sin for Africans.’ Initially what I noticed was the three things that he linked together as being ‘ok’ for Americans. But on deeper reflection, I realized that he had fallen victim to the same thinking that plagues so many westerners. Namely, that what’s a ’sin’ for people in one culture may not be for people in another. In other words, right and wrong are relative and cultural rather than grounded in something objective.

Another danger, though, is that a specific rule that is culturally based is enforced in such a way that it actually suppresses a greater moral good. In the case of dancing with dim lights, this may make sense in one culture. Yet if the same rule applied in another culture unintentionally excludes people who might have an opportunity to hear the gospel, then the rule – good in one culture – has done harm in another.

At issue here is whether or not there is such a thing as moral knowledge. Is morality something that can be known in the same way that the laws of physics can be known? Or is morality nothing more than tradition and culturally grounded sentiments?

Jesus said that all the laws can be summed up in two: love God and love your neighbor. In other words, morality is known through  the prism of love, but this love must have both a horizontal and vertical dimension. The Bible also tells us that God is love.

So how do we move forward when issues such as dancing, dancing with dim lights, dancing in church, dancing in clubs, dancing with secular music, etc. surface?

1. Recognize that there’s more at stake than simply dancing. This is about how we determine what’s right and what’s wrong. Important lessons.
2. I ask everyone involved to back up their position with scripture. When the student said that dancing is ok but dancing with dim lights is wrong I asked him to defend his position using the Bible. ‘What fellowship has light with darkness’ was his response. Is there a discipling opportunity here?
3. In light of the love revealed on the cross, what is the loving thing to do in this situation? How can we get beyond strategy to love? After all, we can mimic the music and lights of the club, but ultimate it’s the love of Christ that will transform hearts.

This was written on the fly, but I hope you get the idea.

 This week, my wife and I are in Kentucky celebrating Christmas with my parents and family.  It’s been several years since we’ve made it back here for the holidays.  Last night I was reminded of the true meaning of Christmas. 

Each worship service before Christmas, my dad has a tradition of leading the church in communion.  This is the remembrance of the Passover meal Jesus celebrated with His disciples and His sacrifice so we could be restored to God. 

Well, as we walked in the church, there was a woman sitting in the lobby who is handicapped.  Her hands are shriveled and contorted; she can only walk with great difficulty, and her speech is severely slow and labored.   My dad told me that she recently became a follower of Christ and this would be her very first communion.

This woman was excited to take her first communion, and she was not going to let her physical condition keep her from participating.  She asked another lady if she would be willing to give her the bread and the cup at the appropriate time. The woman who was asked was visiting the church and was so moved by the request that she decided to become part of this community.

As I watched this story unfold and watched them take communion together with tears streaming down both of their faces, I was reminded of the real meaning of Christmas.  Jesus came to bring us into a restored relationship with God and with others, and through remembering Him these two women began a new relationship with each other.

Yesterday I had a long chat with Prof Fr Germanos Marani, SJ, of the Gregorian University in Rome about an idea he had for a missional (or missiological) symposium, primarily between Orthodox and Roman Catholic missiologists.

It sounded like quite an exciting prospect to me, and I hope that some of the ideas we tossed around will bear fruit.

I’ve been to many academic conferences on missiology, at which people read their learned papers to their peers, and a few questions are asked from the floor, and everyone goes home to mull over the ideas that have been presented in private, and perhaps incorporate them into their own journal articles or papers to be read a future conferences.

In our discussions, it seemed to me, we were looking for something different, applied missieology, perhaps, where “missional” might be a better description than missiological. One aim would be to have a comparative look at Roman Catholic and Orthodox mission practice, and the theological assumptions on which it is based,  to see what similarities and differences there are, and how far the theology is reflected in the mission practice, and what works and what doesn’t.

One of the inportant questions is that of the Gospel and Western culture. For those living in the West, part of that means understanding the West as a mission field. But other places are also influenced by Western culture. Africa, for example was influenced by Western culture through colonialism, and more recently globalisation has made Western culture all pervasive. During the Bolshevik period in Russia, for example, one of the things that kept Christianity alive was Russian Orthodox culture, which pervaded books like those of Dostoevsky. But since the fall of Bolshevism there has been a much greater degree of multiculturalism. Bookstalls outside Moscow metro stations had more books by Stephen King than by Dostoevsky.

Akiviadis Calivas put his finger on it at an Orthodox mission conference in Brookline, Massachusetts, in 1995, when he said “As the culture of the contemporary world has become universally secular, it is not the medieval model of synthesis between culture and religion which is applicable, in practical terms in our situation, but rather the model of early Christianity, which the Church was conscious of its ‘otherness’ and its eschatological mission.”

Protestant Christians involved in the “emerging church” movement have been saying something similar, but based on very different assumptions, experiences and perceptions. I suspect that their perception of early Christianity is very different from that of Orthodox Christians, and far more shaped by modernity than many of them realise. But it is those assumptions that need to be taken out and examined, and that is one of the things that I hope such a symposium might accomplish.

Further discussion of this topic in the Missiological and Orthodox Missiology forums.

As Joshua, an international studies major at Texas Tech University serving on a Go Now Missions Christmas trip in the Middle East, spent the last 10 days in the Middle East, he shared that his world view of the area has drastically changed. Many times, mission trips not only provide a way for students to share the hope of Christ to changes others’ lives but also their lives and views of the world are bettered in the process.

In Joshua’s update, he mentioned believers must allow God to provide their world views and not the media, noting how prevalent that is in American society. Below is some of what he shared.

First Impressions: First and foremost, American media gets a grade of F for representing the Middle East.  It is definitely not a complete desert.  Nor is it primitive or nomadic.  The people are not all extremists. And it is definitely not dangerous. In areas where wars are and have been on-going for 30 years, people, even Americans, are comfortably and safely living.

I would say that the downtowns or ghettos of most larger American cities are more dangerous than these areas.  Where in America can one leave one’s cell-phone at a mall bench and be confident it will still be there in three hours or leave one’s house or car unlocked?

Yet, for some reason, I doubt that even if I shouted this messages from the rooftops in America, people would remain skeptical.  It has become ingrained in us the images we conjure up when we hear the words “The Middle East.”

So, what can I do to remedy this misinformed view? Not much unfortunately…You must make the decision to be informed.  All I can do is share my story, and highly recommend you go and see for yourself what the Middle East is really like.  It will change your view and most likely your life.

CONNECT

This is the discipleship model that I have spent hours and hours of study time developing. Work began on this model in 2000.

Your faith journey begins with connecting with God in a way that allows you to believing he is who he is, making him the central part in every part of your life. This may take different forms for different people, but connecting with God essentially involves making him Lord of your life.

We know from the Bible that there are several gods and lords in all of our lives (1 Cor. 8:4-6). Connecting with God involves finding God in the different areas in our life where he may not be your Lord already. Connecting is the worship, the exposure, of one’s self before God and adoring him as Lord over everything. It’s the process of identifying God as the One that is more important than your health, your finances, your family, your job, even your hobbies or things that bring you the most enjoyment.

Making Jesus Lord of your life is something that not everyone “gets” in the same ways, nor does everyone perfect until Jesus comes. So we begin with the understanding that there’s more to a person’s life where Jesus isn’t Lord.

Through the CGS process we help you to allow Jesus to become Lord over more and more of the areas in your life, making opportunities for you to find him and connect with him in transformational ways.

Jesus is Lord. It’s all about Jesus!

John 14:6: “Jesus answered, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’”

GROW:

The key to connecting with Jesus more and more is learning to know Jesus deeper and deeper in an ongoing relationship with him. This is where growing in Christ comes in. It involves two aspects: studying the Bible and applying it to everyday life, and developing deep, authentic relationships with other Christians so that in community, we can find Christ together.

Christianity is more about something that happened, rather than a system or religion for living. The Bible isn’t an instruction manual on how to live, it’s the story of what happened and a counsel for how to get connected with that faith journey associated with making Jesus the Lord of your life.  You’ve gotta read it. You’ve gotta be in it constantly. You’ve gotta trust it and listen to it. Because the story of God is there and understanding it more and more is the first step in becoming a follower of Jesus Christ, his disciple. The key to following Jesus more and more is learning to know Jesus deeper and deeper in an ongoing relationship with him.

However, understanding isn’t the goal, it’s the beginning. The process of weeding out all the areas in one’s life where Jesus is not Lord is the pathway, the Christian journey. We call this discipleship-becoming like Jesus as his student. As Jesus was able to keep his Father above everything he did and submitted every area of his life to the Father, we are to seek the same as the goal of our discipleship.

In addition, you can hear the story of God through others. The second side of growing in your relationship with God is growing in your relationship with other Christians. They are the journalists that tell the current story of how God is moving. As you love others, helping to make Jesus the central aspect of their life, everything must revolve around the knowledge that no one has “arrived” at the goal quite yet, but everyone is on the pathway. As we trek this journey together, living authentic and realistic lives, our job is to encourage and to share with others the centralizing stories of Jesus Christ in our life. We desire to love our brothers and sisters, helping them find the best things for them as God intended in the beginning, though this sometimes requires humble correction and loving intervention when we see a brother or sister choosing things that are destructive to them and their relationship with God.

Proverbs 27:17: “As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.” The more you understand about God, the more central he will be to your life in all aspects.

Romans 12:9-21: “…Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves. …Share with God’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality. … Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. …”

SERVE

If God is Lord of all, the one and only God, how’s come we have so many Christians ending up to be practicing polytheists? Alan Hirsch, in the book, the Forgotten Ways, offers the following reflection: “Isn’t it interesting that most churchgoers report a radical disconnect between the God that rules Sunday to the gods that rule Monday? How many of us live as if there were different gods for every sphere of life? A god for work, another for family, a different one when we are at the movies, or one for our politics. No wonder the average churchgoer can’t seem to make sense of it all. All this results from a failure to respond truly to the One God. This failure can be addressed only by a discipleship that responds by offering all the disparate elements of our lives back to God, thus unifying our lives under his lordship” (97).

If connecting with God is the worship, awareness, and adoration of God, and growing in Christ is the process of relating to God and others on a deeper level of intimacy, then serving God is about making a difference in the world around, helping bring about God’s Kingdom as one used by Him. It’s about putting God first and living under the rule and reign of God. It’s about being about the things that God is about. It’s about doing something to help others see that Jesus is Lord and should be central to their life as well.

The core of serving God entails keeping Jesus at the center of his own movement based on the commands he gave us to “go and make disciples” (Matthew 28) and to “love others as I have loved you” (John 13:34-35). Essentially, this means getting your hands and feet dirty and serving other people in a way that exemplifies the love of Christ and makes a difference in someone’s life and in the community you live in.

Luke 6:46-49: “Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say? I will show you what he is like who comes to me and hears my words and puts them into practice. …”

Recently I have had a thought going through my mind on how I can make a real impact in my community.  I thought about my profession, architecture, and what I could do to better the community.  My thinking was influenced by what a friend of mine said that we as the church should be doing what our government social programs are doing.  Those were my guiding factors in my thought process.  This is what I came up with.  It’s just in the idea phase now and obviously requires a lot of planning.

As a deacon I know that the low-income housing in Ottawa is not very abundant.  So my idea is to provide my architectural services to design some low-income housing in the area.  I also thought about changing municipal legislation so that with x many new housing developments a low-income housing project must also be built.  So the costs would come from the developers and the city’s development fees.  This would ensure a consistent amount of low-income housing being built along with all other developments.  It would also ensure that low-income ‘areas’ such as ‘projects’ don’t happen because they would be spread out across the city.  Being in architecture I know that the majority of this idea is logistics and political red tape, and the actual architecture is the easy part.  But regardless I can come at it from the architectural point of view and make it happen from there.

So that’s my idea.  Purely still in its idea form, but I think it can be done and would have a large impact on the community.  Now to start.  Let me know what you think!

bg

Many times, I get told, “I could never do what you do….the ministry to addicts, homeless, and gangs is too raw, gritty, and real for me.”  I understand the point but couldn’t disagree with them more.  All of us are called to share Christ when and where He opens up the opportunity, and how God’s called each of us to carry out that mission is as unique and individual as each one of us. 

What does “raw, gritty, and real” actually mean?  In a cultural context, it usually means something that gets down to the core.  When you are “real” with someone means that you are being honest, transparent, and straightforward with no pretenses.

Do you want a fake ministry?  I’ve never actually asked this question, but I always wanted to when someone tells me the inner-city is simply too real for them.

What makes a ministry “raw, gritty, and real”?  Cutting to the core of human sin, need for relationship, and the need for restoration and bypassing all the normal excuses. 

What does this type of ministry look like?  It looks like people being transformed for Christ and then going out to transform their community.   Jesus hung out with the sinners of His day.  Hang out with the sinners.

Do we have to work with gangs or homeless? Nope.  A friend of mine is a college minister, and his college ministry is a raw, gritty, and real ministry because of how he challenges them to think and act.

It’s important that we don’t compare and compete with ministries.  God’s called me into the inner-city, but that doesn’t mean all others are inferior.  I’ve seen youth groups, senior adult groups, college groups, and wealthy suburban small groups be just as raw, gritty, and real as some inner-city ministries, and I’ve seen some inner-city ministries that had as much pretense that you didn’t know which way was left or right.

Human trafficking is a horrible atrocity.
Please contact your local (or home) church, your denomination and your local government and find out what they are doing to combat this horrible atrocity.

It’s not just happening somewhere around the world, away from your way of life. It’s happening in YOUR city just as much as it is happening on the streets of Thailand or Cambodia or elsewhere!

Borrowing a slogan from World Vision’s 30-Hour Famine campaign years ago: REFUSE TO DO NOTHING.

I believe God has given us a voice to be the voice demanding justice for those who are slaves.

Check out the following organizations:

http://www.ijm.ca/ (International Justice Mission Canada)

http://www.notforsalecampaign.org/ (Not For Sale: End Human Trafficking)

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If you are a Christian who has legal training, please considering joining IJM and their crazy ministry!

Be the voice for the voiceless, speak up in your youth groups, your churches and your school and ask people to get together to end slavery!
If you are a pastor or a church leader, get this message out. Let’s mobilize our churches so that we can shake the foundations of the slave trade and free those who are in bondage to slavery.

I am continually reminded that we are given freedom and resources for a reason: let’s be Jesus’ hands and feet to the world.

so yes, it has been a while since i visited to update…and a lot has transpired in that time. a lot!  i am not sure where to go here. there are a couple of things that i want to talk about but they are both rattling around in my head at the same time. let me start with my pet peeve of the season the move on to the great fear of the church.

American Family Association and Focus on the Family among other Christian organizations in America  have a campaign. that campaign is not to rescue men, women and children from being forced into slavery, it is not a campaign to help the over one billion illiterate people  living on the planet to learn to read and write. It is not even a campaign to raise money to help build wells for the millions upon millions that do not have safe drinking water. It is a campaign that is much more noble than that…a campaign that will change the hearts of millions of American pagans! What is this noble and pristine cause for which millions of dollars is raised?

To make sure that  from your neighborhood  shop owner to the great mall temples to the god consumerism, sales associates and advertisers wish each and every consumer a Merry Christmas!

Yes, you have read correctly, this is the great mission of the Christian, this and every December. The reason is that “Jesus is the reason for the season”. So Jesus is the reason people who can barely get by spend billions of dollars, charge it and go into greater debt? Jesus is the reason we decorate our houses with evergreen trees, wreaths, holly, yule logs, garland and a multitude of other symbols that have their origins in pagan religions? Jesus is the reason we celebrate His birth near or on the great pagan holiday of winter solstice?  

Did anyone one ask Jesus what He thinks?

So if an employee says Merry Christmas to you after you purchase that shirt sown together by an 11-year-old boy living in abject poverty and forced to work 18 hours a day so that he can take home the equivalent of 20 cents a day, that is ok?  Ask Jesus if He is happy about that?

Ask Jesus if He is happy about the  Gap advertisement that says Merry Christmas, while every day 25,000 children die around the world, mostly from things that can be prevented. in just the “12 days of christmas” 300, 000 children will die.

Ask Jesus if He is pleased with what we as christians think is the most important thing we can do for Him this Holi….or sorry, I mean Christmas season. But you may have to wait until He is done weeping. Weeping over what Christians have done to trivalize Him and the true gospel message.

well this went on for longer than i anticipated. i will be back tomorrow and discuss what the great fear of the church is and how you can be someone who helps spread that fear.

It seems that when it comes to a defining statement of Christianity, people always seem to go to the “turn the other cheek” statement of Jesus in Matthew 5:39.  It’s been used to promote pacifism, non-violence social activism, an argument for non-action, and to promote Christianity as a faith for the weak.

Not everyone in our great American society walks around getting slapped or punched in the face physically, but all of us seem to get verbally and emotionally punched and slapped in the face.  What if this passage is telling us not to be someone’s punk?

What do I mean by “not to be someone’s punk”?  When we have someone under our control, they are our “punk.”  (There’s another term starting with a “B” that people use, too, but the meaning is essentially the same.)  We control them…their actions, emotions, and thoughts all for our personal gain or satisfaction.  When we verbally slap or punch someone, we’re looking for a reaction that we want…it’s that sense of control.

People tell me in counseling that they react to verbal abuse because they have a right to, don’t want to be controlled, and want to defend themselves.  The question is, when they react, aren’t they falling into the trap of control that was set by the other person?  Just because we can react doesn’t necessarily mean that we should react.

Turning the other cheek is one of the hardest things to do in following Christ.  To not react when all in our fiber tells us to react takes great strength, will-power, and discipline.  We want to react, but sometimes the best course of action, the Christ-centered course of action, is not to react…not to allow ourselves to fall into the trap of being controlled by the other person.

No one wants to be a punk.  Don’t react and you won’t be someone’s punk.  Turn the other cheek and let God do the reacting for you.

Cultural differences often arise in a multi-cultural church such as the Nicosia International Church. As we worship, learn, obey, and fellowship together as one community from many nations, we’ve noticed significant differences between the ‘global north’ (Europe and North America) and the ‘global south’ (pretty much everyone else). Obviously, these are gross generalities with many exceptions, but we have noticed them as general trends.

1. Worship in the global south often begins with a shout of victory. Worship in the global north begins with a cry for forgiveness.
2. Prayer in the global south petitions God and expects intervention and deliverance. Prayer in the global north asks for strength to endure.
3. Leaders in the global south are expected to have spiritual power. Leaders in the global north are expected to have spiritual wisdom.
4. Jesus in the global south is seen as a reigning King. Jesus in the global north is viewed as a suffering servant.

I’m not sure how to articulate them, but I suspect there are differences in community, mission, and the Bible as well.

For those of you with cross-cultural experience, can you offer any help here?

  As it is with most of us, this time of year puts me in a reflective state of mind.  I look over the past year and see what choices I’ve made, how God’s worked in my life, and what He’s brought me through over the twelve months.  This has been a significant year for me.  I entered my most challenging year in seminary and at work, and I became a pastor at an inner-city church working almost exclusively with people that have been overwhelmed by addictions, alcoholism, homelessness, criminal behavior, and lack of purpose.  

Of all that has gone on this year, there is one thing that stands out to me that has probably done more to develop me, move me, and allow me to see the missional purpose in my life, and that’s prayer discipleship with another person.  For more times than not, we’ve consistently connected around 7:15AM each morning for prayer.

 It’s a time that builds a close relationship.  As we’ve gotten to know each other through this process, we’ve learned to be more honest with each other, and he’s become one of my closest friends.

 It’s builds expectations of seeing God work.  There’s always a prayer of wanting to see God simply show up and move in our hearts, lives, community, and culture.  As we talk and pray our attitudes and eyes are moved to looking for and seeing God at work.

 It holds us both accountable.  We talk about the struggles in our lives, how we handle them, and how Scripture tells us to handle them.  We talk about the stresses we go through in work, marriage, ministry, and life.

 It helps us understand our world and God’s mission.  It’s not unusual to bounce sermon ideas of one another, and as we do this and talk about what we’re studying, we see the restoration that comes from God a little more closely.

 It builds a disciplined spiritual life.  I don’t want to be the one coming without having studied or prayed on my own, and neither does he.  This is experience has been a catalyst for both of us for better practice of spiritual disciplines.

 It’s helped me be a better leader in my family.  As I’ve prayed with this man consistently, it’s caused me to have the same discipline with my wife every morning.  This me and her the opportunity to really hear each other and from God.

If you aren’t doing this, I strongly encourage you to do it.  It’s been a transformational experience for me.  I’ve learned to hear God more closely, learned to be better disciplined, and gained a really good friend in the process, and it all started with risk.  Funny, but the most significant aspects of our lives tend to start with a risk.

A true freestyle theologian does not merely observe Good Friday and Ressurection Sunday, but rather they also seek to find out what practical implications there are from these biblical principles for their communities.  Freestyle with me, are there areas of despair in your life and in society that just seem hopeless?  How can Sunday invade those areas of life and community?  How might Sunday be coming for you?

Earlier this month I attended the Asian Pacific Baptist Fellowship meeting in Singapore. Much of my time was spent in dialogue around missional practices and how they are being lived out in Asia.

One presenter, Dr. F. Hrangkhuma of India, began his presentation with the following introduction:

“After almost two millenniums of Christian missions starting from Jerusalem, the majority of people in today’s world still do not name Jesus as their Lord and savior. Asia, the birth place of Jesus and where Christianity has its beginning, still post the greatest need of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Many people groups are still to be reached with the Gospel. For example, the gospel reached India in the first century, China around 635 AD, Japan in 1549, and most of the Asia Pacific countries received the Gospel in the 19^th Century. Some areas received the Gospel in the early parts of the 20^th century. But as a whole the entire Christian population in Asia is about 3% only. Has something gone wrong? Why, especially the people of Asia, are so hard to convince that Jesus Christ is the only Savior? Has something gone wrong with our missionary communication? Or is it not God’s intention to save all? Or is God’s intention only to preach the good news to every nation before the end for a witness (Mt. 24:14)? and leave the rest to God? What constitutes successful Christian mission? We need to ask relevant missional questions for every age and every situation. What is the nature and characteristics of our age in our particular context? How should we share and communicate the Gospel of the Kingdom most effectively to people today?”

Follow this introduction a discussion to the posed questions began with a listing of lessons learned (positive and negative) from the Western Missionary Movement of the last two centuries: Negatives included:

• The missionaries had a superiority complex
• They took a dim view of the “pagan” religions
• They failed to differentiate between Christianity and western cultures
• They exported denominationalism along with the gospel
• They failed to indigenize Christianity
• They were guilty of short sighted paternalism
• They were unwise in their use of western funds
• They were too closely identified with the colonial system

Positives included:

• The missionaries loved the people
• They developed a genuine appreciation for the indigenous cultures
• They learned the indigenous language and reduced many of them into written form for the first time
• They translated the Scriptures
• They provided modern scientific education for the people of the Third World
• They were the first to believe in the potential of the ‘natives”
• They opened hospitals, clinics and medical schools
• They introduced social and political reforms
• They formed a bridge between the West and the East
• They planted the church in nearly every country in the world

 Two Mission Principles were identified and discussed. One is contextualization or inculturation. These terms, though having different origins, were treated as synonymous. Contextualization/inculturation is the outcome of the interaction between the Gospel and human culture. For the benefitual and meaningful interaction between Christianity with human culture, Gospel presentation or transmission must be meaningful to the people in their own cultural context. For this to occur the communicators must use symbols that are familiar and understandable by the receptors. The outcome of a meaningful communication and sharing of the Gospel is the birth of the church, a formation of the people of God in Christ Jesus by the Holy Spirit. And if this church is to be dynamic and maturing, it should continue to meaningfully interact with the entire context in which the church exists and functions. The second is the concept of holism in mission. God’s mission is holistic in nature and our participation can not but be holistic as well. In holistic mission, evangelism, social and ecological concerns are integral parts of the totality of mission and even depend on each other. In other words, saving souls, discipling and church planting are parts of the whole that consciously include social and ecological transformation.

If the purpose of mission is the spread of the Kingdom of God on earth, where its righteousness and values leaven the nations and God’s will is done increasingly among believers and among the nations of the world, then there are lessons (positive and negative) which must be learned from the past. There is also the need to make every effort that missions is done will with a focus on the proper result. When this is done the signs of the kingdom will be seen in the increase of justice, equality, and peace among the nations as well as the maintenance of the integrity of the creation.

Harry Rowland

I was having a conversation last night with a man that just recently graduated the discipleship program at the church.  Alcohol abuse had caused him to be homeless until our church found him and got him into our discipleship program.  Through the program, he became a follower of Christ.  Now he is a new creation, and he’s beginning to really understand what that means for him and his culture.

He and I were just catching up as we hadn’t talked in a while, and he told me some things that surprised me and depressed me at the same time.

He isn’t a piece of trash after all.  All his life, he had been abused, demeaned, and treated with complete disrespect.  After so many years of being beaten down, he began to see himself as a piece of trash and started acting like one.

Jesus counts him as worthy.  Although no one thought much of him or expected him to be a productive member of society, the fact that Jesus would come to earth, die, and be resurrected for him causes him to crumble in humility.

His life is a gift.  He’s spent years drinking, gambling, and drugging it away, and now, through Jesus, he sees a huge opportunity to share his story to keep other people from falling into the same trap of bad choices.

He’s excited about tithing.  He hasn’t had a job in years because of his former addictions, and now he has one with a local food-bank.  He’s excited to give back to God just the small portion of tithes from his pay because of all God’s restored to him over the past few months.

He’s learned to read better.  When he came into the discipleship program, he was reading at probably a first grade level, but through his discipleship program and constant Bible study, he’s greatly improved in reading and comprehension, which helps him witness and tell his story.

He’s excited about this “new creation” that Jesus has made him into.  The old, former self doesn’t have that strangle-hold it has on many of us, and his former addictions aren’t issues because, as he said, “Jesus made me a new creation…without addictions.”

Imagine you’re a leader in a church that is growing monthly by hundreds, has an overwhelming number of poor and needy people, whose leaders (that’s you) are being persecuted by local authorities, is recovering from moral scandal, and is on the brink of division.

As a leader, what would you tackle first?  Well, that’s the situation the leaders of the Jerusalem Church found themselves in at the point of time recorded in Acts 6:1.

Though the issues of our lives may be different, all of us are faced with decisions about where we’ll give our time, attention, and resources.  Maybe we can learn something from the early church leaders.

When overwhelmed with all the challenges and opportunities, they decided that the ministry of God’s word and prayer needed to be their priority. At least one commentator disagrees: it’s a crime, she believes, for church leaders to spend their time praying and teaching the Bible when there are hungry people in the community. But were the apostles neglecting the hungry in favor of small group Bible studies?

Here’s what I see: Central to the life of the church and the function of leadership were the spiritual ministries of prayer and communicating God’s truth. The fruit that grew from this prioritizing included caring for the hungry (6:5-6), building community (6:2, 5), multiplying leaders (6:5-6), evangelism (6:7), and miraculous signs and wonders (6:8).

I have a hunch that when we make feeding the hungry, building community, multiplying leaders, evangelism, or signs and wonders central we eventually lose the plot. But when we make God’s word and prayer central functions of leadership, these other things happen in increasing measure. Of course  the book of Acts is descriptive rather than prescriptive, but I think they were on to something.

If this is true, why is it so?

A phrase I heard a bit back is ‘helping to build the kingdom’.  This of course, I think,  assumes that as christians our goal is to help bring heaven on earth.   Also known as eternal life, or even salvation.

Anyways, this phrase came to my mind the other night as I laid in bed.  I wondered what I had done that day to ‘help build the kingdom’.  It made me think for a while, instead of sleeping.  But not only did I have to try to come up with some items, it made me wonder if we should be asking ourselves this everyday.  At the end of each day can we say that our actions throughout that day helped to build the kingdom?  Of course what that looks like may depend on the person.  But then maybe thats something each of us needs to define.  For me it has many meanings.  But I think the if I were to generalize it, it would go like this.  Love you neighbor as yourself.

And why not be able to ask this question each day?  I think of the bible verse ’seize the day’, and ‘don’t worry about tomorrow for today has enough troubles of its own’.  I think both of these are keys to this kind of thinking.  Seizing each day as an opportunity, even small ones, is helping to build the kingdom.  And if that is our mindset on each day, then how much more rewarding it will be when we lay down in bed at night and can say that we helped build the kingdom this day.

How did you help build the kingdom today?

bg

If you’re like me, this is the time of year that you start thinking about the coming year and the changes you want to make in your life.  New Year’s resolutions have always sort of amazed me but not that most of us don’t achieve them but because most resolutions are limited in scope.

• Most of our resolutions focus on our actions during the holiday season.  Did we eat too much or spend too much during the holiday season?  If we did, we’ll probably make a general resolution for the New Year.
• Most of our resolutions focus on us.  When was the last time you made a resolution to help those in poverty, not focus so much on your career to spend more time at home, or focus more on helping your community?
• Most of our resolutions have no plan and lack accountability.  When was the last time you made a resolution, created an action plan, and built an accountability system with others? 
• Most of our resolutions do not include Jesus.  What would happen if our resolutions included growing in our relationship with Him and learning to be Christ-centered?
• Most of our resolutions lack real vision.  Do we take the time to determine how God’s wired us, where He’s placed us, and what He’s given us to bring about real change, transformation, and restoration to our society? 
• Most of our resolutions are focused on negatives rather than positives.  How many of your resolutions are prohibitions of things you want to eliminate rather than freedoms for things God wants for you? 

January 8 and 9

A collaborative day for missional/organic/emerging churches to exchange ideas, support, and encouragement about how to incarnate the gospel in their respective contexts.

This year’s theme will be:
Deeper Church: Churches as Whole Communities

As always, the conference is free, and should be a great opportunity to connect, grow, and learn.

You can learn more by checking out their website: http://www.missionalcommons.org