Broken Bodies, Better Infrastructure

We just traveled back to the US for a medical leave. Once again, when crossing worlds from Central Asia to the States I was struck by a peculiar flipping of the condition of bodies and infrastructure. I wanted to write about it while the contrast is still fresh to my eyes, knowing that sometime in these first weeks I will lose that ability to notice the stark contrasts as my immediate surroundings register in my brain as the new normal.

For an interesting experiment, ask those who are newly visiting or moved to your area what jumps out at them, what their senses and mind can’t help noticing. It’s a reliable way to get fresh perspective on your immediate surroundings – surroundings your mind has already lost some ability to “see” as they have become the proverbial water the fish is surrounded by.

In short, when traveling from Central Asia to the West, the bodies get more broken, while the infrastructure gets less so.

The shift in infrastructure happens quickly. Most of the building supplies and goods available in our corner of Central Asia are a lower level of goods made in Asia for export to the developing world. You have goods made in China for the West. Then you have goods made in China for places like Central Asia. These are not the same. Disposable plates crumble into your kebab, headphones bought in the bazaar last a week and zap your ears with electric current, playground equipment cracks and warps. While Central Asian culture cares more for a certain sheen when it comes to its infrastructure – such as shiny door knobs and fancy ceiling panels – shortcuts in quality mean things fall apart remarkably quickly. One starts longing for solid everyday things – like toilet seats – that would actually last for decades. Yes, the quality of toilet seats does indeed have serious implications, and is one area where you very much want to get the Made-in-China-for-the-West variety.

Essentially, the infrastructure gets firmer as you transit through the Middle East to the West, getting broader, thicker, and simply less easily broken, culminating upon arrival in the US where even the luggage carts look like they have been working out, compared to their frail foreign cousins. You may catch yourself admiring a metal fence and wondering about the foresight of those willing to spend so much money on something so solid. Buy once, cry once, as a wise American deacon once said to me.

The human bodies seem to move in the opposite direction. In general, the population of Central Asia is on the younger side. The “baby boom” peak of our local area are those born in 1990. The diet is also significantly healthier. Fresh fruits and veggies are cheap and a central part of the local diet. As are fresh yogurt and pickled veggies, full of good probiotics. This seems to balance out all the bread, oily rice, and sugary chai locals consume on a daily basis. While some of the younger generation is being raised on fast food and beginning to develop obesity, most of the population would be in healthier weight ranges. Fathers and Grandpas typically have a bit of a stomach, good for resting their chai saucer on. Mothers and grandmas end up naturally a little heavier as they age, bearing children and caring tirelessly for the household. In short, bodies develop and age in a way that has been typical for much of human history.

However, moving Westward means moving into a world where the bodies are significantly more broken. Weight and diet are a big part of this (why are fresh veggies so crazy expensive in Western societies?), but are not the only one. It seems like a strange disrespect for the body accompanies the West’s public infatuation with model-standard physicality. When you’ve lived outside North America and reenter, it’s not unusual to be hit with a sense that something is deeply wrong with our body culture when getting on that first plane with other Americans, or when being hollered at by that first wave of TSA agents. It’s as if in the West we either worship our bodies and fight to preserve their youth for as long as we can, or we come to neglect and hate them. I myself have struggled with a spiritual form of this neglect, believing for many years that I could ignore the body if I was sacrificing it for ministry. My struggle is easier to hide than many of my fellow Westerners, since I atrophy when I neglect my health, rather than putting on weight. But we share in the same root malady. Something about the Western experience has caused us to believe we are no longer actually embodied.

Along with this, the West is also aging. The average traveler in American airports is at least middle-aged, if not older. There are very few children in Western airports. And those that you see are usually those of immigrant families from other parts of the globe. Even flight attendants and airport staff have a different posture toward children, with those of Central Asian or Middle Eastern culture being far more likely to happily accommodate the needs of those with little ones, whereas Western staff are not unlikely to find such families an inconvenience. It goes without saying that older bodies are more broken bodies, although this is a more natural brokenness, as opposed to that caused by the Western lifestyle.

The bodies get more broken, while the infrastructure gets less so. I notice these things not really knowing what they fully mean. But for a student of culture, the path toward understanding significance starts with observation, and then a long-term chewing on those observations until clarity suddenly drops. At the very least, noticing these weaknesses of culture keep us from an unhealthy pride in either one. Every watered valley has its jackal, as one of our local proverbs wisely says. Post-fall, our brokenness will manifest not only on the individual level, but also on a scale culture-wide. This should sober us and keep us from both culture despising and culture worship.

There may be cultures that have the moral capacity in this age to care for the physical body as well as well as the quality of the things we build around us to serve the body. Unfortunately, these things seem to currently be a trade-off of sorts. For now, it’s for the Church to seek to model this kind of stewardship, strangers and exiles though we are. For though the temporary physical things of this world will pass away, we are still to plant gardens in our Babylon. We do this freely, knowing that we have a city, and bodies, that are coming and that will last forever. Long after the finest body – or luggage cart – has turned to dust.

Photo by Grimur Grimsson on Unsplash

Autumn Instincts and the Power of Mothers

A couple weeks ago the fall rains began. Overnight, the bazaar was transformed. Out came the carts selling cool weather snacks – large reddish beans seasoned with sour spice, turnips boiled in pomegranate molasses, fried flat bread with green onion mixed in. Suddenly, umbrellas, puffy coats, and space heaters appeared everywhere, bursting from shops which only a few weeks ago had been hanging up canvases to protect from the sun’s heat.

The high desert climate of our corner of Central Asia shifts quickly every year from too hot to quite chilly. We joke that we live in a four season climate of sorts – if you can say that an Autumn that lasts three weeks actually counts. It’s the return of the rain and the moisture in the air that accounts for this sudden drop in temperature and change of atmosphere. In the six months of sunny skies you almost forget what a cloudy day feels like. Then suddenly, mid October with its pregnant clouds comes upon you like a friend you had almost forgotten about, but whose reappearance brings with them almost a sense of waking from a dream. In the words of Theoden king of Rohan, delivered from Saruman’s spells, “I know your face…” The smell of the rain on the dusty stones is particularly potent in this regard.

The locals still live much more connected to the rhythms of the seasons and the skies than we do in the West. Thus, it’s the shift in the weather, not a date on the calendar, that seems to create the societal cues that everyone knows how to interpret. The rains have come. So harvest the pomegranates, prune the shade trees, make the cold weather stews, get out the kerosene heaters.

This past week I was driving around the cloudy city with Mr. Talent*, attempting to pay my various bills before we left for our medical leave. I remarked that the roads and the city itself were much calmer than usual, especially for a Thursday, the last work day of the week. I asked Mr. Talent why that might be. He thought for a minute before answering.

“I have five different friends who were unavailable today because their mothers commandeered them to help lay out the carpeting.”

Every year locals lay out a thin tan wall-to-wall carpet in their homes when the weather is cold, putting it away again when it gets hot again so that they can walk on the cooler tile.

“I bet that’s why the city is so quiet,” he continued. “The mothers knew today was the day to lay out the carpet.”

“That is fascinating,” I responded. “Look at the power of mothers. When they want to, they can change the atmosphere of an entire city.”

Mr. Talent laughed, and nodded his head.

If our theory was correct, it’s even more remarkable in that none of these mothers would have coordinated with one another to set a date for this big annual project. They would have independently intuited that it needed to be this Thursday.

“It is time, my son. No going out with your buddies to waste time smoking hookah this Thursday. I feel it in my bones. Time to do the carpets.”

The dutiful Central Asian sons of course comply, knowing the futility of protesting when mom is sensing the seasonal cues.

*Names changed for security

Photo by Mohammad Mahdi Samei on Unsplash

The Esthetic of Alphabets

From its earliest manifestations literacy had a decorative aspect. How could it be otherwise, since implicit in all pictograms, hieroglyphics, and letters is some cultural esthetic, some answer to the question, What is most beautiful? The Meso-american answer lies in looped and bulbous rock carvings, the Chinese answer in vibrantly minimalist brush strokes, the ancient Egyptian answer in stately picture puzzles. Even alphabets, those most abstract and frozen forms of communication, embody an esthetic, which changes depending on the the culture of its user. How unlike one another the carved, unyielding Roman alphabet of Augustus’s triumphal arches and the idiosyncratically homely Romano-Germanic alphabet of Gutenberg’s Bible.

For their part, the Irish combined the stately letters of the Greek and Roman alphabets with the talismanic, spellbinding simplicity of Ogham to produce initial capitals and headings that rivet one’s eyes to the page and hold the reader in awe.
Cahill, How the Irish Saved Civilization, p. 165

Here is an interesting thought. Our alphabets and scripts are actually clues to what we find beautiful.

Photo by Boudewijn Huysmans on Unsplash

Not Coming Nor Leaving as Christian Individualists

We don’t need anyone coming to the mission field – nor leaving – as Christian individualists. By Christian individualists, I mean those who decide on massive life/ministry decisions without a healthy involvement of their church, mentors, family, and believing community. The problem with Christian individualism – especially when it comes to missions or ministry – is that it baptizes lone ranger decisions with the nigh-untouchable “God is calling me to…”

Thankfully, many sending churches and organizations have realized the danger of Christian individualists going to the mission field. The occasional Bruschko may end up working out, but the more likely scenario is a missionary who goes abroad while still unqualified, unfit, or at least woefully unprepared. This can cause untold damage to missionary teams, local believers, and the reputation of the gospel itself.

There is a trend of missionary-sending processes that increase the involvement of the local church. This is a very healthy development, one which pushes back against a previous tendency to outsource the assessment process to missions agencies. In fact, a healthy local church should be the primary place where a prospective missionary is assessed, affirmed, and sent. The church members and the leadership should be able to wholeheartedly vouch that the candidate’s character, knowledge, skills, and affections align with that of a qualified missionary-in-training. Individuals who do not meet these standards should be kindly redirected toward a different timeline or a different vocation.

Praise God, there is somewhat of a consensus – in reformed evangelicalism at least – on the need to not go to the field as individualists. This is a remarkably good thing given the militant individualism of Western culture. The difficulty of someone actually getting to the mission field without some degree of church and pastoral backing testifies to how the Western sending church is pushing back against its own culture with biblical wisdom.

However, we seem to have a blindspot when it comes to those who leave the field. Often this decision to leave is made with barely a fraction of the counsel, input, and testing that went into the decision to go in the first place. Sadly, many who come to the field, sent by their community, leave the field as Christian individualists. When wresting with leaving, they think and pray in private and then unexpectedly drop the bomb that God is calling them to leave the field, much to the dismay of their local friends and colleagues. Often, even if counsel is sought, the decision has already been made.

Several things make these dynamics understandable. Sometimes missionaries are simply too beat up or too burnt out to feel like they can handle the inevitable disappointment and pushback that comes when they float the idea of leaving. It can feel safer, or at least more bearable, to process privately and then try to go out quickly and quietly.

Leaving the mission field also means moving from a vocation that requires higher qualification, back to a lifestyle that does not require that same level of assessment. Leaving the role of a cross-cultural church planter to return to that of a church member in one’s native culture is a step back in terms of the leadership standards one must be held to – though basic standards of Christian faithfulness remain the same. So it makes sense that leaving would not naturally result in the same kind of robust processes and conversations.

Yet there’s also a lot of shame attached to the thought and reality of leaving the field. Does this mean failure? Are we leaving when just a little more pushing would have resulted in things changing? How can we let our colleagues down when they are already overwhelmed with life and ministry? How can I make sense of this to the local believers? I’m convinced that this sense of shame keeps the conversations from happening as openly as they might otherwise.

So the pattern repeats itself. Family after family announce their departure, rather than allowing it to be a decision which is not made until robust counsel has been sought and weighed. We revert to our enculturated individualism, and in our Christianese we tell ourselves and others that God has called us to a new chapter. Perhaps he has. But why have we not confirmed that calling in the same manner as we have in the past? What does that discrepancy mean? What have we been so afraid of?

I write this post in a season where we are very much wrestling with our family’s future on the field. Medical conditions have continued to pile up for our family, and in several weeks we will be returning to the US for yet another medical leave – one which may last quite a while. Will we be able to find the diagnoses and healing we need in order to be back on the field in a healthy place in six months? Or ever? We’ve not yet experienced this level of uncertainty regarding our future ministry in Central Asia. And it’s very sobering.

We are, however, trying to live out our convictions on this point of not living like Christian individualists. We have attempted to invite many into this process with us, so that they might pray for us and give us their counsel. If there is anything we are missing, we want to hear it. We will wait to make any big decisions until we can do so in the light and wisdom of many counselors. At the same time, I feel more than ever the pull of wanting to privately make a decision on our own, to protect myself from the uncertainty and the emotions of my friends’ responses. It is a very strong pull, even with my cross-cultural upbringing that slightly tempers my individualism.

Practically, I do have the spur of having advocated publicly for healthier departures from the mission field – and that means I now have the chance to eat my own words. This is a gracious thing on the hard days.

Our coworkers, leadership, local friends, and family have all been very kind counselors as we’ve tried to process this upcoming leave and its possible implications. Similar to confession of sin, I’m so glad we’ve been open about this. Whatever God wants us to do, we are hopeful that when clarity comes, it will come with the assurance that God’s people are actively speaking into the hard decision to leave, or the hard decision to stay.

Perhaps this is an area where churches and organizations can develop helpful structures and processes. Given the rate of attrition from the mission field, I wonder if an intentional and robust process which helps struggling workers wrestle with their desires to leave the field might not help clarify those who should indeed leave, and those whose calling has not changed, worn out though they are – some kind of a track that is the inverse of those used for mobilization, i.e. “So You Wanna Stop Being a Missionary?” I wonder if something like this could offer some protection from the dangers of subjectivism that come from being prone toward Christian individualism. Even after years of discipleship, we can be so adept at reverting to our human culture and playing cards that make our decisions almost unapproachable.

I believe we need to continue strengthening our commitment to not have any come to the mission field as Christian individualists, but rather with the backing of a healthy sending church and sending org. I also believe we need to awaken a commitment to not leave the field like Christian individualists, but as those with a spiritual family – churches, colleagues, and local brothers and sisters.

If leave we must, this won’t make it necessarily easier. But it will make it healthier. We would still grieve, but it would be good grieving, with less regret and less shame.

Pray for families like ours facing uncertainty on the field. Even in the midst of the strangeness of these conversations, pray that we would honor Jesus – and also honor his bride.

Photo by frank mckenna on Unsplash

A Proverb on Mustaches and Backwards Hospitality

Do you put my own oil on my own mustache?
Local Oral Tradition

This proverb appeared last week as Darius* was over at our place, helping me with sermon checking, right around the time where I tried to make a point saying “that doesn’t mean it’s destiny!” and instead said, “That doesn’t mean it’s a nut!”

Yes, if you ever preach in another language, I highly recommend checking your sermons beforehand to catch these foot-in-mouth sentences. It just may save your life – or at least your face.

Anyway, around this point Darius offered me some of the cookies my wife had set out for him. Then he started laughing and told me that he was offering me my own oil for my own mustache. As is usually the case when I hear a local proverb for the first time, I responded with a “What?”

This proverb is apparently used when a guest offers the host food or drink that actually belong to the host. Or other similar situations where a person is offered assistance by means of his own resources. It’s the sort of ironic hospitality situation that locals get a kick out of because usually such grandiose and over the top offers of hospitality are made. Another equivalent saying is, “I would like to invite you… for falafel!” Falafel being the very cheapest sandwich you can purchase in the bazaar. Delicious, yes, but costing the host practically nothing. Hence the joke.

Mustaches are a traditional sign of manhood in this culture that carry a respect of their own. And apparently oiling your mustache was/is a thing, though I have not gone deep enough yet into the local facial hair culture – or my Western peers’ for that matter – to know much about mustache oil. I either need to spend some more time with some old men in the tea houses or do more reading on the Art of Manliness website.

Some proverbs are used for tactful rebukes. And this one may be useful in that way, given the right situation. But I anticipate it being much more useful for the art of relationship building and the kind of banter that communicates friendship and trust are indeed growing – growing as surely as a Central Asian man’s mustache.

*names changed for security

Photo by Shoeib Abolhassani on Unsplash

Why We Go Light on Polemics

“You don’t have to point out what’s wrong with our religion. Deep down, we know more than you ever could regarding the dark things in Islam.”

This comment years ago from a Middle Eastern friend has always stuck with me. Over time, it has proven to be sound advice, wisdom that has been borne out in countless relationships with Muslims who are coming from honor-shame cultures.

I’ve never had a personality that naturally goes hard after polemics, which is the practice of highlighting the weaknesses and errors of other religions and worldviews as a method of thereby getting to the gospel. But when locals outright deny, brush under the rug, or just plain don’t know about the the scandalous or dark parts of their holy books or prophet’s life, it is awfully tempting to start attacking these foundations of their belief, even for me.

I am not saying there is never a time to do polemics. After all, Paul says that we “destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God” (2 Cor 10:5). There will be times when we follow the Spirit’s leading into saying something true that makes our hearers very angry – let’s not forget about the example of Stephen in Acts 7. And sometimes a direct assault will land home and result in further questions. But let’s also remember the story of the Samaritan woman in John 4, where Jesus doesn’t take the bait of entering into religious controversy in order that he might more effectively speak to the heart of his hearer. Many times, arguments about controversies are mere talking points or smokescreens meant to deflect from the real heart issues going on.

The main issue I’ve faced with polemical approaches is that they risk triggering a defensive response, where someone is overtaken by the sense that they are duty-bound to protect their community’s honor from the attacks of an outsider, whether they internally side with their community or not. Westerners might feel this way if the attacks aren’t perceived to be fair and balanced. Those coming from honor-shame cultures often feel this fire to defend simply because there is an attack at all – fair or not. This means that someone who might otherwise listen to the gospel can go into fight mode if I start “dishonoring” the creed and traditions of his people – and then the chance to get to the gospel can be lost.

This is where my friend’s comment has proved to be so helpful. By sharing what he did, he let me know that things in Islam’s sources and history like child brides, slavery, wife-beating, the killing of Jews and infidels, the hypocrisy of the religious establishment, and the jihad-gained wealth of Muhammad and his companions are not only known to many locals, but can even keep them up at night. Many Muslims are already wrestling with these things, albeit quietly.

Since this is the case, I don’t have to go to these risky places of conversation early on in my relationship with my Muslim friend. When I share with him about Jesus or we study the Bible together, often he is automatically comparing what he hears with what Islam has taught him. And our conversation can keep on going since no open attacks on honor have yet taken place. Instead, a thousand indirect attacks are taking place and are mounting through the simple explanation and illustration of gospel truth.

Taking a look at how husbands are called to love their wives in Ephesians 5 or how Jesus calls us to love our enemies in Matthew 5 holds up a powerful contrast for a Muslim friend. He must then wrestle with this contrast that his mind is now faced with, the stark difference between texts like these and his own. In this way, polemics are in a sense happening, but indirectly, as a kind of open secret. We both know what is going on, but without verbally acknowledging it we have room in an honor-shame culture to skip the usually-required defense.

In fact, it’s not uncommon for this kind of beginning to eventually lead to an explicit discussion of Muhammad, the Qur’an, or those seventy virgins promised in the Islamic conception of paradise. But the respectful long approach to these topics and the relational credibility established by that point often mean a very different kind of conversation – one where my friend lets me know he’s ready by asking my thoughts on these topics, where he is free to share his own doubts and questions, and where I can say direct things, knowing that they will be heard in love.

There is also a big difference in this area between ourselves and local believers. We’ve found that local believers are able to engage in helpful polemics much more quickly than we are, because they are not viewed as outsiders. This seems to mean that the honor-shame defense mechanism doesn’t trigger in quite the same way for them as it does for us foreigners. This can go too far as new believers from a Muslim background do tend to go overboard with polemics – and at times forget to talk about Jesus. But it generally holds true that they have more of a chance than we do of having their attacks actually heard.

Now, when we’re on a visit and someone publicly goes after the reliability of the Bible, I want to still be ready to respond back with a defense and questions of my own. The door to a kind of “challenge-riposte” conversation has been opened by a local, and to not defend and counter would be viewed as dishonorable. However, even in this kind of context I will hold back on the most controversial topics, knowing that, unfortunately, those from honor-shame cultures can dish the attacks out, but they struggle to take it back without losing their heads. Alas, every culture has its weaknesses.

However, our usual approach to polemics is to go light and indirect, the equivalent of giving a man some roast lamb before we try to take his poorly-cooked rice away. Once faced with the choice, he will want to choose the lamb. But if rice is all he has, he will fight for that bowl of starch with all that he has. Instead, set the lamb down, let him smell and taste it, and then attempt the rice away. This kind of contrast – and timing – can make all the difference.

Photo by Hans Ripa on Unsplash

A Verse on the Uselessness of Proud Pilgrims

A wish for the days of homemade naan
In a thousand homes, a pilgrim only one
Now for all, "Pilgrimmy pilgrim" is claimed
But pilgrims they're not, nor their bread e'en homemade

-Local Oral Tradition

This local poet’s verse takes aim at the many in his day who went on pilgrimage, hajj, to Mecca, only to return proud and useless. His logic is that at least back in the day they were useful and contributed something! But now they all claim the respect due to one who has gone on pilgrimage, the deference due to a Hajji, but none of them actually live like true spiritual pilgrims. And in their pride they have lost even the practical good they used to contribute to the community, here represented by making homemade bread.

I’ve heard many stories of locals known as crooks and swindlers who have made the expensive trip to Mecca only to return twice the sons of hell that they already were. Now they could wrap their corruption in the veneer of a false penitent who has supposedly pleased God. Locals tell these stories and frown, sensing in their conscience the way their society is being played by this monopoly of the religious establishment, wondering aloud why all this money spent on this required pilgrimage to the land of their conquerors does not instead go toward serving the local poor. Would this not be a more true and just way to honor God?

They are not wrong.

Go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.
Matthew 9:13

A Central Asian Church Covenant

This summer our church plant began a process of adopting a church covenant. This is a brand new concept for this culture, so we spent many weeks teaching about the characteristics of a healthy church, church membership, and how a covenant can help us do these things more faithfully. We tried to write one from scratch together, but quickly realized we’d do much better to take an existing Baptist church covenant from one of the international churches in our region and to seek to adapt it. We spent a good amount of time with the local believers tweaking it according to the local language and supplementing the good historical statements that were there with some key areas of need in this particular time and place.

What were the items that were added? Many of them corresponded to our top Central Asian church killers: domineering leadership, money issues, lack of interpersonal reconciliation, and persecution. A line on the reputation of the gospel and our church also made it in there – a key concern both biblically and also in an honor/shame culture like this one. We added a paragraph on a faithful posture towards our cultures, since intercultural issues are a regular occurrence, not just between us and the locals, but also between the locals themselves, given their diverse backgrounds. Our hope is that this article on culture will set them up well to redeem, reject, and redefine their local culture, creating in this church a local and context-specific biblical culture with clear lines to both the Word and to its own region.

Hopefully in the next few weeks we will be ready to officially covenant together and move from informal membership to formal. This will be the first time this has happened in a church that worships in our local language. Then we hope to read and pray for one article of this covenant every week as we gather, in hopes that this steady exposure will make it a spiritual tool that will truly shape who we are as a church and how we live together. May God grant that to be the case.

Here is the text, translated back into English.

Having been brought by God’s grace and glory to repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, having been baptized and having agreed to the statement of faith, and by his Holy Spirit having given ourselves to Jesus Christ, we do now joyfully covenant with one another.

We will work and pray for the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. (Eph 4:3)

We will conduct ourselves together in the love of a spiritual family, exercising care and watchfulness over each other and faithfully encouraging and warning one another when necessary. We will be faithful and submissive in carrying out the process of confronting sin and making reconciliation. (John 13:34-35, Rom 12:10, Heb 3:12-13, 1 Thess 5:11, Lk 17:3, Col 3:16, Matt 18:15-20)

We will commit to appoint and support the leaders of our church according to the commands of the Holy Scriptures. Our leaders must meet the qualifications of the New Testament and like the good shepherd, seek to serve the church and not domineer over it. (1 Pet 5:1-4, Titus 1:6-9, 1 Tim 3:1-13, 2, Cor 1:24, 1 Thes 2:7-8)

We will prioritize our church’s gathering and not neglect to regularly gather together. (Heb 10:25)

We will not neglect to pray for ourselves and others. (Col 4:2, James 5:16)

Although we are sure that all power for salvation is in God’s hand, we will earnestly work to bring up any who may be under our care in the training and instruction of the Lord, and by a loving example and speaking the gospel, through the gospel seek the salvation of our family, friends and neighbors. (Titus 2:1-6; Deut 6:4-7, Mt 5:16, 1 Pet 3:15, Lk 5:19)

We will rejoice with those of us who rejoice and weep with those who weep, endeavoring with tenderness and sympathy to bear each other’s burdens and sorrows, even in times of suffering and persecution. (Rom 12:15,Gal 6:2; James 2:14-17, Hebrews 10:32-34)

For the reputation of the gospel and our church, we will seek God’s help to live carefully in the world, denying ungodliness and worldly passions, remembering that we bear the name of Christ and now have a special obligation to lead a new and holy life. (Eph 5:15-21; Titus 2:12; 1 Pet 2:11-12; 1 John 2:15-17)

We will work together to maintain a ministry in this church that is faithful to the word of God and the gospel, the preaching of God’s Word, the administration of baptism and the Lord’s supper, and the exercise of church discipline. (Phil 1:27; 2 Tim 4:2; Acts 2:38; 1 Cor 11:26; Matt 18:17; 1 Cor 5:13)

Although each person has a unique culture, the kingdom of heaven is universal. Therefore we commit to build a gospel culture with one another. In this way, the positive aspects of our cultures will be redeemed and the negative aspects will fade away. We will seek to live in our cultures with humility, peace, grace, respect, and courage. (John 4:9, 27; 2 Cor 5:17; 1 Cor 9:19-23; Revelation 7:9)

We will contribute cheerfully and regularly to the support of the ministry, the expenses of the church, the relief of the poor, and the spread of the gospel to all nations. We will resist the love of money and will use the church’s finances transparently. (Matt 28:19; Luke 12:33; 2 Cor 9:7, Hebrews 13:5(

If we leave this church, we will leave lovingly and faithfully, and as soon as possible unite with some other Biblical church. (Heb 10:25)

In order to be most faithful to this covenant, we will read it regularly together. (1 Tim 4:16)

May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all. Amen. (2 Cor 13:14)

Photo by Mick Haupt on Unsplash

A Question Very Few Are Asking

Today a colleague asked me a very good question.

“Assuming that the worldview of the West is more youth and future-oriented, how do you think that influences missionaries?”

I responded that two effects come to mind right away. The first is the preference for new and novel methods over those that are old more traditional. These older methods, “Grandpa’s tools” as it were, are dismissed out of hand simply because they feel traditional or old-fashioned to us. Very few Westerners would even ask if these older methods are contextual (Since the assumption is that they were mindlessly imported and therefore are not). And even if they turned out to be, few would be without some kind of emotional resistance to employing them. Why is this? Because our future-oriented worldview biases us to the new, the exciting, and the ground-breaking. These novel approaches scratch a very powerful cultural itch that has to do with what we find to be convincing and compelling. Add to this Westerners’ ever-present underlying fear of being paternalistic or of even being perceived as colonial-lite, and we have one powerful combination. Out with the old, in with the new. And very few asking what is actually contextual for a specific foreign people group – meaning what method is the most effective for living and communicating clearly within the locals’ culture? That should be the rubric, not some emotional new-always-better-than-old bias I brought with me that grew from the soil of my passport country.

What of Western culture being youth-oriented? Here I believe there is a connection with our obsession with movements. If you think of the life cycle of a group of churches, the beginning is incremental, steady growth. This could be compared to birth and early childhood. Then comes the movement stage, when growth and multiplication take off at breakneck speed. You could compare this stage to adolescence and young adulthood. After this comes stabilization and institutionalization, which corresponds to mature adulthood. Finally comes decline and possible disappearance, which could correlate to old age and death. What part of the life cycle of a group of churches is missiology obsessed with? The movement phase. Adolescence and young adulthood – just as our culture is obsessed with this very same stage of our individual physical lives. Westerners dream (and sing) of being forever young. So does our missiology*.

I have sat through missions and church planting trainings where this life cycle of churches is graphed out and the goal of the session is to show how bad institutionalizing is and how good the movement phase is. The goal of said trainings is to keep churches forever in the movement stage, always multiplying and growing at remarkable speed. As if a 40-year-old should be expected to grow six inches and three shoe sizes in a year just like he were an adolescent. The implication is that one stage of church life is where the Spirit is really at work, and childhood and mature adulthood are well, just not really where it’s at. And God forbid we ever get old and start to decline. Young, sexy, and multiplying is evidence that we are truly doing ministry like the book of Acts, while stabilizing and forming healthy systems might even be evidence of compromise.

The problem with cultural blind-spots like these is just that – we often can’t see them. Missionaries are very good at seeing the blind-spots of the church back home, but we need help finding our own. I’m convinced that this future and youth-orientation seep into our methods and missiology often unexamined, priming us to leap at the novel, the exciting, and the informal, and to prematurely dismiss the traditional, the slow, and the formal. Thankfully, we do have some wonderful allies for exposing these blind-spots: the global church and church history. There is a reason I post excerpts from the stories of the ancient church in Ireland and Central Asia. They provide me a welcome and very different draught to the ever-present kool-aid of the present age. I don’t always agree with everything they did, but these long-dead saints have many things to teach us as they poke at our blind-spots from beyond the grave. Local believers can also be wonderful allies on this front, as they see through some of our cultural assumptions so well.

The key thing is to recognize that our Western worldview really does influence us, and to humbly and courageously admit this, without falling into any silly cultural self-deprecation that forgets that all Christians in every era and culture have to deal with their own version of this very same thing. Once we’ve owned this and developed a healthy curiosity for where this might be happening, then we’re in a good place to begin the difficult task of recognizing our biases. We may end up keeping them, but at least then they will be intentional biases, and not those that exist by mere cultural default.

Missionaries are very good at studying other cultures. May we become just as good at studying our own.

*for some good data on this, see the book “No Shortcut to Success” by Matt Rhodes

Photo by Nicholas Green on Unsplash

A Proverb On The Power of the Tongue

A word gone to a mouth goes to a mountain.
Local Oral Tradition

This Central Asian proverb speaks to the power of the tongue, specifically how seemingly private speech can all too quickly spread like wildfire. It agrees with the warnings of scripture regarding the dangers of the tongue. “So also the tongue is a small member, but it boasts of great things. How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire!” (James 3:5).

I can’t tell you how many times locals have prefaced a sentence with the disclaimers “Just between me and you,” or “Let no one else know this.” Yet in spite of these common agreements of confidentiality, word almost always spreads anyway. This represents a major problem in our local culture, one which constantly undermines trust and breaks relationships. Gossip is very deeply rooted, one of those parts of the culture so ingrained that local believers despair of ever driving it out. We trust that it can be driven out, however, and a redeemed tongue will be one of the astonishing markers of the redeemed community.

On the other hand, this proverb could be turned on its head and applied in a counterintuitive way to sharing the gospel -“good gossip” as it’s been called. If the Central Asian loose tongue could be harnessed for the sake of evangelism, now that would be a mighty force to be reckoned with.

Photo by Abbas Tehrani on Unsplash