Friendship Trip ...

As a parent, when my children face a problem my greatest temptation is to simply solve the problem - apply energy, resources, elbow grease and make things better. I know, however, that there is a better way. The better way is to enter into the lives of my children, to wonder with them about possible solutions, to share the journey, to struggle together, to rejoice together. Of course, with my children I am still 'the parent'. We are not equals - I bear the burden of power and responsibility.

In the relationships between the church in North America and churches in developing countries there is often an imbalance of power. What do we do about it? Do we treat it the same as the imbalance between parents and children? For far too long the church in the West did not carefully consider equal partnership with the church in developing countries. We have fixed. We have solved. We have exercised power. We have been paternalistic. Thanks be to God for the winds of His Spirit: In recent years there have been warming chinooks of change in how Christians in the West think and act in relation to churches in developing countries.

For a long time, the group travelling to Sierra Leone (in 10 days!) has been considering these dynmics: What does it mean to really be the church in this relationship? How do we avoid some of our Western and personal imbalance-of-power pitfalls? Will we be able to go to Sierra Leone without a fixed agenda and really listen? Will we be able to both give AND receive in this relationship? Will we fall into the trap of treating those in the church in the developing world like immature children or will we thank God for our brothers and sisters in Christ?

We are not the first to wrestle with these issues. We have been reading, watching, thinking, conversing and praying in the midst of a 'great cloud of witnesses.' We have seen God working in a mighty way already. We watched the following video early on in this process. If you have 4 minutes, you might find it enlightening:

http://www.theworkofthepeople.com/index.php?ct=store.details&pid=V00474

Quick Fix

This is Joel here.
I came across a poem that I wrote 17 years ago this month, when I was a student at The King's College exploring poetry and my own 'voice' in a Creative Writing class. Originally, it was accompanied by a photograph. You'll have to use your imagination.

You may - or may not - know that the multinational corporation Nestle was slaughtered in public opinion polls (and a boycott continues by some to this day) for marketing breast milk substitutes in less economically developed countries. Campaigners against Nestle claimed this strategy, which deprived babies of their mother's breast milk, lined Nestle's pockets and contributed to the unnecessary death and suffering of countless babies, largely among the poor.

You may - or may not - know that chocolate milk has long been my drink of choice.

I was struck by the poem because it invites me to consider my 'western', problem-solving propensity as I plan to go, meet and listen to Christians in Sierra Leone.

Quick Fix

your stomach distended; i cry out in pain
more out of my own agony
than yours
i am a westerner

i want to help you compete with the fly
on the corner of your mouth
looking a lot healthier
than you

your mother looks at me, wondering whether
my kind of help
is the quick-fix
Nestles type

i fly home, pictures of flies in my mind
giving me the same bug appetite
i step inside
fixing myself a large glass of Quick

Edmonton, January 1992

Just Courage

I have been reading this exciting new book by Gary Haugen called Just Courage: God's Expedition for the Restless Christian. I think I am bit restless. Haugen believes that for many, especially young Christians, the feeling is there that, “our Christian life would be more than this—somehow larger, more significant, more vivid, more glorious. But it is not….It had seemed like following Christ was supposed to be a bold adventure of power and beauty and singular importance, but the reality that keeps emerging appears to be something very different. And in very deep ways, it’s disappointing.”

I’m anticipating that one of the responses to that line will be that not everyday can be a Christian-mountaintop-experience. And in some ways that’s true. And not everyone can or should go on a third world mission trip experience. And that is true also. But Haugen would maintain that those things should not keep us from experiencing and practicing God’s call toward the margins where He is working. That is where we get to experience God in all His power, ourselves in all our weakness, in fact ourselves in our true humanity as children totally dependent on God.

We are born to this. Haugen says, “By divine hardwiring, we desperately want our lives to count—really, significantly count—for God’s rescuing work in the world. And nothing else fills up the void.” I believe that part of what we are engaged with here in exploring this partnership with the CRC of SL is exactly this. We want each one of the Christ followers in our fellowships to be truly alive to the work of God. I sense that it is happening here in Sierra Leone. I want to share that with people in BC. It requires courage and restlessness.