Picture This

These are a couple more from my recent trip to Spain.

The candles were in Esglesia de Santa Maria del Mar (The Church of St. Mary of the Sea)

The arch is one of the oldest parts of Barcelona Cathedral.  There are two arch ways which were originally built by the Romans as a part of an aqueduct running through Barcelona.  They are the only two arch ways from that aqueduct that have survived to today.

The Victor File

This week has been a pretty busy week and I really haven’t had the opportunity to settle down and write out any further thoughts on the church, though there is more to come.

I was recently asked how things are going in the process of our adopting Victor, so I thought I’d give an update on that front.

We told DHS last July that we were interested in adopting him and we heard nothing back for months.  In fact, we didn’t hear anything until somewhere around the end of November.  Since he has been with us throughout that time we didn’t see any pressing need to badger them.  We’re fairly confident that a court date in November is what got the ball rolling.  I imagine the judge asked where the process was and when they had to answer "nowhere" he probably gave them a few motivational words in that regard.  At least that’s how I picture it in my mind, and it’s kind-of a fun little picture, so it’s the one I’m going with.

Since that time, however, DHS has been all over us doing home studies, sending us for physicals and finger prints.  All the stuff we’d already done to become certified as foster parents we have gotten to do all over again because our certification is not directly through DHS.  Fun stuff.  (At least my doctor told me that it is not customary to do anal probes until you’ve hit 50.  I thought it was 40 and scenes from Fletch kept going through my head - "Hey, you using the whole fist, there, Doc?"  I apologize for any emotional scarring you have now received as a result of reading this.  Welcome to my world.)

Well, they were wanting the finger prints right away.  We tried to get them to accept the one’s we’d already done, but they wouldn’t.  Sapulpa isn’t fully equipped right now for the electronic kind - at least not such that DHS can get them from them - so we’re going to have to go to Tulsa for that.

But the long and short of it is that the process is now under way.  It will likely take around 6-8 weeks for them to get the finger print info processed from the Tulsa police department and past that I’m not sure what else they are going to need.  If there isn’t anything beyond that then it looks like things might be finalized around the end of April.  Once that happens we’ll probably throw a big party and you’ll all be invited.

The Church - A Diverse Body 3

In this last issue in this little series on church diversity I want to ask: “What would a diverse church look like?” Read more

The Church - A Diverse Body 2

I think it should be assumed that a denominational body should strive for diversity among its members immediately. Of course, I’m talking about cultural, ethnic, social and economic diversity. Read more

The Church - A Diverse Body

I remember being introduced to Donald McGavran’s “homogeneous unit principle” while in a class on world missions in seminary. In layman’s terms, the homogeneous unit principle states that evangelism and church growth most naturally occur within the context of groups that are socially alike. In other words, it’s easier and more natural for an auto mechanic to share the gospel without barriers to another auto mechanic than it is for a doctor to share the gospel with that same auto mechanic. With the doctor and the auto mechanic there are too many social barriers standing in the way.

There is no doubt that the majority of our churches reflect the homogeneous unit principle (HUP). Some churches are more “white collar” while others are more “blue collar.” “Contemporary” churches do a better job reaching people who prefer a “contemporary” style of worship than do “traditional” churches. There is no doubt that the HUP is descriptive. McGavran believed it should also be prescriptive - not just how things are, but how they ought to be.

This principle is also reflected in modern missions and church planting movements. The neighborhood where I grew up in Oklahoma City is becoming increasingly Hispanic in make-up. My home church, seeking to reach the Hispanic population around them, started a “Hispanic” mission of the church. More specifically, it is a Guatemalan mission. Functionally there are two separate churches that share the same facilities, meeting separately within the same building. One factor is the language barrier. The rest have to do with other “cultural” aspects.

One author calls this “religious apartheid.”

Jurgen Moltmann has written “The church of the crucified Christ cannot consist of an assembly of like persons who mutually affirm each other, but must be constituted of unlike persons… For the crucified Christ, the principle of fellowship is fellowship with those who are different, and solidarity with those who
have become alien and have been made different. Its power is not friendship, the love for what is similar and beautiful (’philia’), but creative love for what is different, alien and ugly (’agape’)” (in The Crucified God, p. 28).

The question becomes, what shape does diversity in the church take? Do we recognize that our white collar church and the blue collar church down the street are sister churches, and in recognizing and affirming our brotherhood/sisterhood we are recognizing our diversity? Does the fact that our denominations reflect some racial diversity in having ethnic churches signal our diversity (if, in fact, our denominations are racially diverse)? Does joining with other churches outside of our particular HU in community worship events, religious celebrations and so forth count toward diversity within the body? Or must we take more “radical” steps (as the Lausanne Occasional Paper on the HUP terms it) to integrate local bodies of believers across racial and socio-economic lines?

Can we answer “yes” to all of the above? I think we both can and should.

I believe most would agree that cultural, ethnic and economic diversity within a congregation would be the ideal. The question generally centers around the timing - when should that happen in the local church and for individual believers? Is it realistic to expect a new believer to immediately put aside all of his/her cultural, ethnic and/or economic differences with others? In churches that are generally culturally, ethnically, socially and/or economically segregated, is it reasonable for us to expect them to integrate without going through a process of maturing?

It is important that we look to the descriptions of church found in the New Testament (and looking to the Old Testament wouldn’t hurt either). In the New Testament we do not find segregated congregations. In Romans and Ephesians as well as the church at Corinth the apostle Paul deals with internal matters of church life that centered squarely around issues that were prominent because of a mixture of Jews and Gentiles, slave and free, rich and poor worshiping together in one local congregation. James touches on similar issues. In Galatians we find the apostle Paul publicly calling out Peter for his hypocrisy concerning his relationship with Gentile believers in the churches.

In addition to the historic churches of the New Testament, we are also given a picture of the heavenly church gathered around the throne of God by the apostle John in the book of Revelation. There, people from every nation, tribe and language are gathered in one place in worship. If this is where the church is headed then surely the earthly version should be striving toward that goal.

In the Old Testament one of Israel’s great repeated failures is that she is not living up to what she has been called to be: a light to the nations. Jonah is found pouting on a hillside because Gentiles did, in fact, repent and turn to God. Isaiah says that Israel is to be a light to the nations. Jeremiah envisions a temple into which all of the nations of the earth stream to worship the one, true God. Abraham is called the father of “many nations” and the promise to him is not a tract of land in the Middle East, but the world (see, for example, Romans 4:13).

Indeed, the apostle Paul regularly states that in Christ all of the distinctions we make among ourselves have been obliterated. There is no longer slave and free, Jew and Gentile, male and female. And if God no longer recognizes those distinctions then why would the church? The apostle Paul also uses a metaphor of the human body to describe the church to demonstrate that, though there are a diversity of members with a diversity of gifts, there is but one body. Yet the modern church seems to be more than ready to amputate its own limbs.

I didn’t anticipate going this long, so let me pause here and continue this in another post to come, though you are quite welcome and encouraged to interact with what I’ve written so far.

How May I Help You?

Yesterday I barely scratched the surface of what missions/ministry in a post-Christian/postmodern western European context looks like.  Heck, in a week I only got a little scratching of the surface myself.  I’ve tried to think of my time over there in terms of the similarities/dissimilarities to ministry here in an American context that is, itself, becoming increasingly post-Christian and postmodern.  Churches in America are not growing.  Those that are are almost exclusively growing at the expense of other existing churches.  The American culture of today is much different from the one we knew even yesterday.  As Chris Erdman writes in his book Countdown To Sunday,

This world in recent years has entered a dizzying period of change, or, more accurately, a period of radical upheaval, which has made us much less certain that we know what we are doing and how to adequately prepare you for the mission of Jesus Christ.  We in the North American church are recognizing that the stable world of Christendom, in which the church knew its role as chaplain to society, is crumbling.  The church is no longer the center of Western culture, and the gospel that was once so influential is, at best, no longer interesting and, at worst, viewed as archaic and sometimes hostile to people wanting to build a new world.  There is little doubt that we are now living through a period of unprecedented global change.

The American church will soon face the same questions that are daily on the minds of those in western Europe.  Indeed, if we do not begin to ask those questions now we will likely wake up in 15 or 20 years and ask, "What happened??"

If you live near Stafford, Virginia or Atlanta, Georgia, or even if you don’t and you can make the trip out, head out to one of The Gathering events coming up in March.  As they say on their website (telleurope.org): "Learn how you and your church can make a lasting impact in Western Europe."  In doing so you may well learn how you and your church can make a lasting impact in your own home town.  Check the website for dates and details.  One detail I must share is that you can register for the ridiculously low price of $15 and lunch both days is included.

España

[Esglesia de Santa Maria del Mar, Barcelona, Spain]

I spent last week in Barcelona, Spain visiting with about 50 of our denomination’s missionary personnel who serve in western Europe.  I don’t think we Americans quite get what ministry in such a post-Christian/postmodern context is really like (and I include myself here).  Things that we do here in the states simply don’t work in many other contexts.  A backyard Bible club won’t work in France because non-Catholic groups are viewed as cult members (non-Catholics have had a rough history in France).  Who wants to send their children to be indoctrinated by a cult for a week?

In addition, western Europeans often view Americans as rude, obnoxious bullies.  It’s a reputation often well earned.  If you, as an American, go to many places in Asia you will immediately be a rock star.  People will flock to be your friends.  Not so much in western Europe.

In addition, most Europeans are postmodern.  They laugh at Ray Comfort’s banana, and probably at Ray Comfort.  OK.  So they’re not the only ones.

They can’t even sell out to the Creflo Dollar/Benny Hinn way to Your Most Successful Mission Work Now.  Go ahead.  Buy the Olympic stadium and put on your best Joel Osteenized version of spiritual self-help and fulfillment.  You still won’t fill the stadium.

All of that makes missionary work very difficult.  Add on top of that the sense of isolation from home, family, friends and the difficulty of making new friends and you have what one of our workers referred to as a "missionary graveyard."

But they’re being faithful to God’s call and that’s all that matters.  I already had such a high level of respect for what missionaries do before the trip that it’s hard to imagine that going up any, but it did.  I don’t mean to set them on a pedestal from which it would be too easy to fall.  I just have great admiration for their perseverance to work in circumstances that are so often terribly discouraging, all the while trusting God and keeping on.  I want them to know that they’re not alone.  I’m rooting for them.

Picture This

This week we got snow again in the Tulsa area and in memory of that powdery white stuff I’m offering this re-run from last winter.

I don’t remember how I heard about it, but back in November (I think) I saw something promoting an online photo contest at Picture.com and just for the heck of it I submitted this one.  I’d forgotten all about it until today when I noticed that I had some e-mail in my spam folder that I hadn’t checked and it was all from Picture.com telling me that my picture had been selected for an Editor’s Choice Award and that I’m 10 votes away from being a finalist in the reader’s choice vote taking place online.  Now, they tell me that only 12% of the photos selected receive an Editor’s Choice Award, so that’s pretty cool, but as far as I know everyone who submits a photo gets that e-mail.  But they did say that my photo would be published in a book titled Endless Journeys.  Of course, they want me to buy the book, so as far as I know all of this is a marketing gimmick to sell their stuff.  Nevertheless, if you like this photo and would like to vote for it in the reader’s poll you can do so by following this link.