Pam I Am's blog
Here we are three days into CPx and all of our wonderful students are sitting next door while I am baby sitting. I have to say that they are a wonderful bunch of folks and seem so mature. I feel so blessed to be allowed to form a community with them and to invest in them. I feel like I am getting as much out of it all as they are - perhaps more.
I was so blessed today when little K's baby stroller finally arrived. It had been expected for more than a week and was becoming quite a burden to Mom and Dad. They really needed a way to transport the baby. I was running around like my usual half-maniacal self when I noticed that the stroller had arrived. I stopped my car and hopped out to tell everyone. Well, I never saw a group of adults who weren't Mom and Dad get so excited about a baby stroller before! I was so happy to see three men pounce on the thing and clamor to put it together and then to see everyone in the front yard admiring it. I knew then that these people had made a decision to love another - to make another's burden their burden.
I knew right then that I had seen community in its most basic and wonderful form. That makes for a pretty good day, I'd say.
Right now it seems like everything at All Nations and in my own life is new. Firstly, we are getting a new roof put on our classroom as we speak. We have a new classroom with a new floor, which we are cleaning up and arranging as we speak. I am in the process of buying a new house as we speak. I'm sitting in my new office space (as yet still not totally arranged) as we speak. There's lots of upheaval, but it's all good upheaval. Over the past month or so, All Nations has really been moving ahead in the Spirit and that is beginning to show in our surroundings as well. It's exciting.
Today, our first CPx students arrive as well. So, we will currently have 10 new friends in our midst on top of everything else. It's times like these when there seems to be a need for a great burst of energy to keep it all moving, but it also takes on a life of itself. I'm optimistic and looking forward to what the Lord has planned for all of us here in our community over the next few months.
I read recently that John of Damascus, an Arab Christian born in 655, wrote the first Christian analysis of Islam. What is interesting is that he did not consider Islam to be a separate religion from Christianity but merely a kind of Christian heresy.
I heard recently of a group of people who take this same approach to sharing Jesus with Muslims. They do not try to convince them that they need to leave Islam. They merely ask them to believe in a loving Jesus that died on the cross for them. They merely ask them to believe in the Jesus contained in the Injil (what we call the New Testament), a book Islam claims to believe in but is normally rarely studied by Muslims. This is also an approach I have taken (with some success) with some Muslims.
How would our approach to the Muslim world changed if we thought of them merely a heretical Christians rather than holders of another religion? Would be any kinder or more patient? What if we thought of them in the same way we think of Mormons or Jehovah's witnesses? Would it make any difference in how we approached relationships with them? Is adding the Koran to the Biblical books all that different from believing the Book of Mormon and the Bible to be inspired? Maybe not.
I honestly don't know, but it's a question I'm pondering.
One of the criticisms of missions is that it destroys cultures. I will admit that this has sometimes been the case, but this need not necessarily be so. When carried out in the proper way, missions can positively transform two cultures - both the culture bringing Jesus and the culture receiving Jesus.
I recently ran across this quote from Albert Lutuli, a Nobel Peace Prize recipient in the 1960s. When commenting on how he felt about European missionaries in Africa, he said, "Two cultures met, and both Africans and Europeans were affected by the meeting. Both profited, and both survived enriched."
I'd say that this should be one of the main goals of any cross-cultural missionary work. BOTH of the cultures should be enriched and changed by the engagement. This is critical for the church planter to remember. The church planters culture ought to change (for the better) by having contact with new brothers and sisters in Christ and their culture. That doesn't mean that either culture disappears, but both cultures are enhanced not only by Christ, who supercedes culture, but also by Christ's messengers, who always bring culture with them. The Gospel seems to be designed in such a way that the Lord not only wants to influence people and change their lives, but He also wants people in community to bump into each other and change each other - hopefully for the better.
For a few weeks now we have been working on transforming our previous small classroom space into a larger space. We knocked down walls, put up new doors to block a noisy furnace, and ripped up carpet. We weren't sure how it was all going to turn out when we began since the house is old and old houses are full of surprises. Yesterday I saw the newly stained and now partially restored hard wood floor that was under the carpet and stood in the middle of a much bigger space. I was pleasantly surprised and happy. Previous CPxers will be delighted to know that this group will not have to fight a noisy furnace and won't be crowded into a teeny room. I'm grateful for Mary and John who had the idea and the folks who have basically carried it off without any work from me. Now to get the finishing touches done - some whiteboards, some tables, and an area rug for little Kezia (at less than one year old, she is our youngest student this time around) to play on when she gets here! Hey, we may be a school, but we are a family first and even the littlest students need to have their needs met.
I must confess that I often find the poor really frustrating. This is because I want to help people who genuinely need help, but I also don't want to be taken advantage of. And then, the more I think about it, the more I realize that I am not always sure what "taken advantage of" really means. In addition, the needs of the poor often seem so overwhelming that I am not sure if my contribution really makes that much of a difference. Rarely do I see someone who is not poor who is not also struggling with a host of other issues: alcoholism, drug abuse, abusive family relationships, etc.
So, why don't I give up and just go make lots of money and lead the good life? I came across this article recently that I thought expressed it well:
"That's what happens when you open your mind and heart to God and the world. You end up with a huge family. You can't possibly meet the needs of every family member, but you can never again dismiss their needs thoughtlessly. They're family. And they haunt you.....
Yes, you'll end up haunted. Even more, you will end up in despair. There's no way around it. I can't remember who wrote that "God's heart is an open wound of love," but I believe it. And I believe our hearts become open wounds too, when we dare to love this damaged world God loves.
There are two antidotes to despair. One is denial. Pretending you didn't see that picture. Didn't hear those screams. Didn't read that story. Or maybe you acknowledge the horror of what you saw or read, but you pretend it's not your responsibility. There's nothing you can do. What difference can one person make? And where would you start anyway?
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Christian who challenged Hitler to the point of joining a plot to assassinate him, is one of the most respected Christians of all time. Yet, his theology is not without some difficult points. I was reading an article about him this week and was reminded of some things about him:
Bonhoeffer said, "The ultimate question for a responsible man to ask is not how he is to extricate himself himself heroically from the affair, but how the coming generation is to live."
The writer of the article states: "If getting God's will done in the world means one must engage in conspiracy, deceit, and assassination, then Bonhoeffer was prepared to incure whatever guilt those evil actions entailed. Indeed, he did not want to call evil good, and thus he speaks of guilt that one would obtain if these actions were undertaken."
It is precisely these kinds of issues that cross-cultural workers often have to confront. What actions are justified to free victims of slavery and oppression or to confront evil leaders in the world? Since these are the kinds of issues All Nations folks have to confront on a regular basis as they go into some of the toughest places on earth, we grapple with these issues during CPx, but there are never any really good answers.
I recently read an interview with Phil Vischer, the founder of Veggie Tales, in
Leadership. I thought that this section of his interview was right on.
How has your understanding of success changed?
I used to think people like Mother Teresa and Henri Nouwen were guilty of poor stewardship. God has given us limited time and resources and we have to help as many people as possible—not just one or two at a time. Mother Teresa should have franchised a system for feeding the poor on a massive scale. She needed an MBA.
Now I understand God has a unique journey for each of us with unique measures of success. Now I ask myself, Have I done what God has asked me to do? Am I walking with him daily? Success has very little to do with where I end up. It's not about measurable impact.
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I took over the job of director of CPx last December, but until now I am not sure that I really believed we would have students coming! I know I must seem like someone of little faith, but that's where I am. People told me that God somehow arranges just the right people to come in the end, but I had to see it to believe it. Now that they are coming (and more seem to find us every day), I am beginning to realize just how hard it is for people to make that decision to persue missions training.
To give up a "normal" life and persue missions training takes a leap of faith that few are willing to take. People have to be willing to give up steady income, family (they usually move away from them), and stability (it involves constant transition and moving). This gives me great awe for a God who can get people to make that step despite the odds and it gives me respect for people who choose to make that step.
Now, I am looking forward to seeing what God will accomplish through our community of people seeking to learn to serve the nations together. We have people from India, England, Kirghizstan, the Philippines, and the United States all coming to live together and go on a journey together for 3 months. Sounds both exciting and scary to me. I am sure I will learn just as much as the students themselves as I shepherd them through this experience. The teacher always learns the most.
CPx starts in a couple of months and things are now in full swing around here - at least for me they are! We are busy finding a good meeting place for classes, finding places for students to live, and praying with students so that they can get their visas and their money and all that good stuff together.
This will be my first time to take a group of students through the program from start to finish, so there is a lot that I don't know about how to organize the details. Luckily, we have our All Nations family here in Kansas City to help me get everything together.
As you prepare to come to CPx or help to get things together for others to come, please blog about your experience here. This way, we can get to know each other even before we meet face to face. Remember that these entries are public, so you will probably not want to put anything too deep here. Remember that you can respond to people's posts too.
Kathy B., All Nations Church Planter to France, is coming to prayer meeting tomorrow. Looking forward to that.
Pray for
- finances for incoming students
- visas for those coming from overseas
- our computer network to work
- a sense of community begin to develop among us - even before classes begin.
