Targeting in Missions

As part of a team at World Harvest Mission called the "Emerging Generations" team, I've always felt a small amount of discomfort. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but I was never quite comfortable with the idea that we were going to London to "reach the emerging generations." I think Doug Pagitt put his finger on my discomfort. Sorry for being on a Pagitt kick tonight, but he's really speakin' to me.
Again, it's from Reimagining Spiritual Formation. He says "targeting is done by tobacco companies and snipers, and the one who is targeted is rarely appreciative."
That's it! I want to be able to talk freely about why I'm in London - not in code, not giving only half the story, but freely and openly, to the very people I'm "targeting". If I can't do that, maybe I need to rethink why I'm there!
I'm especially interested in feedback from my sisters and brothers in WHM. What do you guys think? How do you think about church-planting in a way that doesn't make us like snipers or tobacco companies?

Learning the Christian Language

I realize this title might turn some of you off - don't let it stop you from reading further. I'm not referring to learning a special subset of the english language for use in Christian settings. I'm talking about an approach to church that views the entire Christian life as analogous to learning a foreign language. I ran accross this paragraph in "Reimagining Spiritual Formation" by Doug Pagitt pastor at Solomon's Porch in Minneapolis. I'll quote the whole paragraph, then comment further. I'm not really sure of the etiquett for quoting and linking on blogs, if anyone has any input, I'm open.
Doug writes: "In many ways, becoming Christian is much like learning our native language; we pick it up when we are immersed in it. I would guess that nearly all of us spoke and communicated long before we started our formal education. What we then learned in school was not the beginning of language use, but the refining of it. In educational settings, the theory of language acquisition through immersion is by far the most successful means of learning. So it is with Christian faith. Rather than seeing Christianity as belief we acquire in a completed form, we ought to enter into it with the understanding that we are at the beginning of a life-long process of discovery and change. Ours is a faith that is lived, from beginning to end."
I like this comparison of Christianity to language learning for a couple reasons. First, when learning a new language, the worst possible way to do it is to learn a set of facts about the language. Some of the interns that were with me this past summer in Spain learned that even though they were getting "A"s in their spanish classes, they really weren't all that comfortable actually speaking the language. Training people in a set of truths about God, Jesus, and Humanity may not be the best way to help them actually live in the way of Jesus. Much better to immerse both ourselves and newcomers to the community of faith in life together.
Second, knowing facts about a language isn't the best test of how well a person knows the language. My best friend in high-school was Uruguayan. He also almost failed spanish class. Did he know Spanish? Sure. He spent most of the time correcting our teacher. But when it came to the rules of grammar and how to conjugate verbs, he was often at a loss. Many times in the church we measure how well someone is progressing in the faith (or whether or not they are even part of the faith) by how well they can explain the faith and their experience of it. Somer and I find it difficult sometimes to explain what we implicitly understand and do and experience with relationship to God. This caused us problems when we were evaluated by World Harvest Mission two years ago - making them wonder about our intimacy with God. I mention that not to criticize WHM, but to say that I've experienced first-hand the misunderstanding and frustration that comes from forgetting the language-like nature of our faith.
What if we viewed church as one long experiment in learning the Christian language? I think I want to ponder this some more and come back to it in a few months. I'd love to hear how some of you see these ideas playing out in your specific context.

Ilford

For those of you who are interested in where we're moving to, here's a map of London. Ilford is in the north-east part of the city. (Geography not your strong suit? Look in the upper-right section of the map.)

Party

Never lacking an excuse to throw a party and get together with people. That should be one of the marks of the church.
So, in that spirit, we are throwing ourselves a party before we leave for London. It'll be at Jim & Steph's house, where we've been living for the past few months. Sunday, January 9 at 7 PM.
It's hard (especially for me) to say good-bye to people. My wife has learned that when I say "it's time to leave", I really mean "it's time for me to say good-bye to people, and I'll be ready to leave in 45 minutes." So I'm hoping this party will allow us to see many of the people we care about in the Philadelphia area. We'd love to see you there - drop me an e-mail or post a comment if you're interested in coming and need directions.

Holidays

We're off to Baltimore tomorrow. Hoping to see some of you while we're down there.
Please ask God to help us enjoy time with family - really enjoy them for who they are, not for how they make us feel.
I'll have on and off internet access, so may update things a little less frequently for the next week.
Dan

Money

so i spent part of today filling out paperwork for my pension plan with world harvest. it's something that i've struggled with on several levels. first, i've heard all the stuff about being responsible with our money, planning for the future, making sure we take care of our families, being good stewards, etc. but it still gnaws at me: "why do i need a pension?" i feel like i'm just saving for the sake of saving. building up more wealth for the sake of building it up. the second reason i struggle with it is because i LOVE money. i like to think about it. i like to look at account balances because there's something alluring there. i felt the desire to be served by money sinking its hooks into my heart - beginning to force me to serve it instead. that's the way it always is with the things our hearts love. we think they will serve us, but in the end, we serve them. we think they'll bring life, but instead they suck it from us.
so, i finish the day feeling like a little life has been sucked out of me, right onto the page where i made my pension allocation instructions.

Rest

a friend recently said that she thinks busyness is a main manifestation of spiritual warfare in the u.s. given what i just said in my last post about being busy, this is personally relevant.

busyness
it's subtle. it feels good to accomplish something. who ever felt guilty for getting something done?

what does my enemy want? separation, barrenness, destruction, death. all easily accomplished through the forgetfulness brought on by my busyness.

how do i avoid it?

God says STOP IT and remember that it is I who am God - Psalm 46

this has echos in the book of Hebrews, where he says "There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who *enters God's rest also rests from his own work,* just as God did from his. Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will fall by following their example of disobedience." Heb 4:9-10.
How does one enter that rest? the author of hebrews says it's by fixing all their attention on Jesus - all their hopes, all their dreams, all their faith.

The rythm of the original "Sabbath" - taking one day in seven to rest, is expanded in Jesus. it becomes the daily rythm for all who connect to God through Jesus. life in Jesus is life in God's rest. every day is an opportunity to stop MY work, and enter his REST.
that's what i'm going to do right now - take some time to meditate on Jesus, and so cease from my busyness, and enter God's rest.

Drained

activity is going on at a furious pace in our house. monday and tuesday i helped assess new missionaries for world harvest. i told my father-in-law this weekend that i'm not sure what value i bring to the process. i feel like i'm so inexperienced, and so eager to take risks, that i'll approve anyone who loves jesus and still has a pulse (even if it's weak and erratic). but be that as it may, they let me sit and talk to some prospects for an hour at a time. not exactly my idea of the best way to get to know someone (not really even among the top ten best ways to get to know someone), but nonetheless it's the only way we know.
then tuesday evening I came home and made support calls. today we worked all day getting our visa applications together. please pray for favor (favour, in my new home city) from the authorities reviewing our application, and pray God's blessing on them. then it was on to more calls tonight.
last night i was a bundle of energy (I'm on of those people who gets more energized the more people we talk to). tonight, i'm writing, hoping to tire myself out.

Party in Baltimore

heading to London on 2-months notice means we have to raise a whole lot of money in a small amount of time. it's way too much for us to raise unless God shows up in a huge way.
however, one of the exciting implications for me is that i am forced to contact lots of people to see if God wants to provide some of our need through them. so we've been getting to connect to people we wouldn't ordinarily see. This past saturday we had a party at mom and dad's house in b'more. about 25 people there - some of whom have known me my whole life, and prayed consistently for me over the past 26 years. it's humbling and encouraging and energizing to experience the love of God's family in that way.
thanks to all who were there.
we found out about a few more gifts this weekend, and need only $328/mo in new pledges of support.

Barack Obama

Anybody know anything about Barack Obama? I mean, besides that he's this amazing speaker, a 'rising star' in the Democratic party? I caught a snipet of a book signing he was doing at B&N in NYC. Someone asked him how he reconciles his religion with politics. He had this very insightful response (I'm paraphrasing from memory):

Religious belief by its very nature is absolute. If I believe that Allah is God, then Allah is the only God - not Buddha or anyone else. If I believe that Jesus is my savior, then he is my savior, and no one else is my savior. But we live in a pluralistic world, and our political system is a pluralistic one in which people with opposing ideas and worldviews can come together in dialogue. This means there's a tension between the absolute of faith and the pluralism of American politics. Here's how I personally live with that tension: when I read scripture, my interpretation is subject to my own error, my own sinfulness. So I always approach it with an understanding that I could be wrong. I bring a sort of skepticism, like saying 'this is my interpretation, but what do you think about it?' That skepticism allows me to disagree with other politicians while at the same time listening to them to see if maybe I am wrong. It prevents me from preemptively shutting down all dialogue.

I've got to chew on what he said for a while. i'm interested in what his religious persuasion is.

Beyond the Postmodern

It has been fashionable of late in the circles where I find myself to discuss postmodernity. It’s hard to carry on a conversation without someone dropping the word “Pomo” in hopes of sounding hip. ‘the pomo church…’ ‘pomos want community, authenticity, blah, blah blah…’ there’s also the flip-side of the conversation, those in my church community who are trying to stem the tide as the culture flows downhill into the perceived abyss that postmodernity creates. several sermons in the past year have railed against postmodernity. ‘it denies all absolute truth.’ ‘it tells our young people that everything is relative.’ and on and on the criticism goes.
problem is, postmodernity as a project has come and gone.
Jeremy Rifkin writes “What we end up with at the end of the post-modern deconstruction process are modernity reduced to intellectual rubble and an anarchic world where everyone’s story is equally compelling and valid and worthy of recognition.
“If the post-modernists razed the ideological walls of modernity and freed the prisoners, they left them with no particular place to go. We became existential nomads…forced to find our own paths in a chaotic and fragmented world that is even more dangerous than the all encompassing one we left behind.”
pardon the long quote, but Rifkin beautifully captures what some in the church are saying about post-modernity. surprisingly, his purpose is not to destroy post-modernity. Rifkin argues that Europeans have already done that. Europe has moved beyond post-modernity in favor of a global quest for human rights and sustainable quality of life (according to Rifkin). meanwhile, many Americans are still stuck in modernist assumptions about the world.
so, who are we (my church community) speaking to when we engage ‘the post-modern’. Europeans? no, they’ve moved beyond us. Our fellow Americans? well, maybe the few who are ‘hip’ enough to cling to an ideology that the rest of the world has exposed as inadequate.
and we wonder why the rest of the world views us the way they do. they don’t hate us. they just kind of hold us in bemused contempt.