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On The First Day of School

Posted in Other, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on August 23, 2010| 2 Comments »

During my morning walk today, I saw two different mini-vans loading kids with new book bags, new clothes, and big smiles on their faces. At the first house at least, both Mom and Dad were getting in the mini-van, and at the second house, the Mom was saying loudly as Dad closed the door, “And have just a wonderful day,” her voice breaking just a bit on wonderful.

It’s the first day of school for three super gkids here in North Texas.  It is also the first day of school in Escondido, California, because we have one granddaughter starting second grade today and the other starting first grade.

I don’t know if I really remember the first day of first grade in the fall of 1953. I do remember some things about first grade though! I went to first grade at Springdale Elementary School in Fort Worth, starting when I was five and turning six in late October. I didn’t go to kindergarten; it wasn’t required, and I think it cost money.

I was trying to think this morning of what was different on my first day of school from this day for my grandkids. Here are just a few things you might find interesting.

  • There was nothing electronic in our school supply list! The one piece of equipment that I remember owning for the first time was a #1 pencil. They were big and red with very soft lead that wrote very large and very dark lines.  That’s what all kids learned to print with.  They did not have erasers on the end. You had a separate eraser–usually red or green.  I searched for a picture of a #1 pencil and didn’t find any that matched my memory. One more thing to look for in the antique stores.
  • My classmates all had regular names like Ed, Larry, Janice, Betty, Mary—a few double names: Linda Jo, Billy Mac, and one boy’s name was just initials—H.L. –I don’t know if he put periods after them or not.  And I think they were all spelled like you would expect, not in ways that will require life-long explanations.
  • The school was not air-conditioned, which is one of the reasons Texas schools always started after Labor Day. We also stayed until at least 2:30, maybe 3:30. Then we were picked up by my Mom who drove carpool that year and taken home in our air-conditionless Chevrolet. Today, it is supposed to be 105 degrees here in Fort Worth. I’m glad the gkids have air-conditioning.
  • War stamps were sold in our classroom. The Korean War was almost over, but one way the federal government funded the war was by selling war bonds to adults and war stamps to kids at school. I don’t think they cost much and you put them in a stamp book like green stamps and cashed them in later.  I know I bought some. That was back when people always supported the wars that the country was in. Pretty big changes since then!
  • My first grade class learned the 23rd Psalm by memory and recited it to the whole school over the public address system for the regular morning pray. I do regret the disappearance of Christianity from our common life together—but I am not worried about prayer in public schools. As long as we teach our children to pray at home, there will be plenty of prayer at school.

I loved school from the beginning.  It is important to love learning, to learn to read and write well, to learn history, to learn how things work, but as I have thought about it, maybe the most important thing that our children learn in school is how to live in a community with others.

Do you remember the book by Robert Fulghum that came out about 1986 called All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten? I’m finishing today with just a little excerpt from his book that reminds us of what is really important about school.  This is what you want your child to learn, isn’t it?

Share everything.
Play fair.
Don’t hit people.
Put things back where you found them.
Clean up your own mess.
Don’t take things that aren’t yours.
Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.
Wash your hands before you eat.

Flush.
Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
Live a balanced life – learn some and think some
and draw and paint and sing and dance and play
and work every day some.

Take a nap every afternoon.
When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic,
hold hands, and stick together.

Be aware of wonder.
Remember the little seed in the styrofoam cup:
The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody
really knows how or why, but we are all like that.

Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even
the little seed in the Styrofoam cup – they all die.
So do we.

And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books
and the first word you learned – the biggest
word of all – LOOK.

I would just add, “God loves you and God is with you, so make Him happy with everything you do and say.”

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Part Two: Turning Pain Into Pleasure

Posted in Christian Missions, Other, tagged , , , , on August 20, 2010| 1 Comment »

I dreaded Tuesday night! It was the night the LST staff committed to start telephoning our alumni to ask them to donate during our annual Harvest Call drive. I don’t really like talking on phones, I don’t like calling people I don’t really know, and I don’t like talking about money with people I didn’t want to call in the first place!  Most of you know how I feel!

I dialed 22 numbers in about an hour: nine were bad, six were not at home, and I had seven WONDERFUL conversations with people who had done Let’s Start Talking Projects as long as ten years ago. I had to be pried away from my phone at the end of the session.

I’m telling you this because I believe it bears on our conversation about the distress many Christians feel because they can’t bring themselves to share their faith actively as they really want to.  Personal evangelism and fund-raising belong to the same group of bad words.

In the last blog, I listed a number of rationalizations for not personally sharing your faith, so now I’d like to offer you some practical suggestions about how to avoid those excuses and allow yourself to do what you really want to do!

  1. You must make a decision about Jesus. If you don’t really feel like other people need to hear the Gospel story and that they must decide to put on Christ in order to participate in His redemption of the world, then consider yourself off the hook—you don’t have anything to say to anyone that will make a difference.  If, however, you do believe that Jesus is the resurrected Son of God and that only through Him does anyone have the promise of eternal salvation, then you are back on the hook—but you are more highly motivated.  So decide!  You will feel better instantly.
  2. Overcome your fears by focusing on others. No one wants to be embarrassed or rejected or belittled or even awkward.  Think about the times when you were willing to take big personal risks, however, for someone you love. If your child needs help, what door would you not knock on regardless of awkwardness or possibility of rejection? If your spouse had an emergency, what personal risk would you not take to ensure his/her safety? Love conquers fear—it’s a cliché, I know, but it is true.
  3. Don’t assume you know what others think or feel. If you assume that because someone does not go to church on Sunday that they are not a believer, you could be very wrong. If someone told you three years ago that they weren’t interested in knowing about your faith, things could have happened to open them up.  If people know that you love them, they will not be offended or react badly to almost anything you might say to them in love—even if they disagree.
  4. Start with people you are around! A friend of mine just decided to start speaking to the people she met each morning during her walk around her neighborhood. Then she started praying for the people she met. Next she decided to invite them to join her in a conversational Bible study in her home.   Another friend just decided to invite her colleagues at the surgery center where she works to join her in a conversational Bible study during their lunch hour.
  5. Make a plan for moving from casual conversation to spiritual. This is very important—and where many starting efforts fail! Starting a small group Bible study is an easy way because the purpose for your invitation is specific.  One can learn, however, how to listen for opportunities to open faith conversations, even in the most informal settings.  Asking someone who has shared a problem or concern with you if they would mind if you included them in your prayers. This is a good, honest way to start. You can offer to pray for almost anyone, including people of non-Christian faiths. I have never heard of anyone refusing such a gracious offer. And it might lead to a faith conversation. 
  6. Just start. That’s what I decided to do on Tuesday during the fund-raising call out! Even just dialing the first number made me antsy. Just like you in your first attempt at a faith conversation, I was glad when it turned out to be a bad number.  But I know that after the first genuine conversation you experience with someone who is glad that you talked with them about Jesus, you will be exhilarated and will experience the joy of sharing Jesus.

Of the seven phone conversations I had on Tuesday night, six promised to make a donation and only one said they could not! Almost no one becomes a Christian without someone they know (a family member or friend) telling them their story.  Talk to the people in your class at church who became followers as adults and my guess is that virtually ALL of them will say that they came to Christ because someone who loved them took the time to talk to them.

If you have the fire in your bones (Jeremiah 20:9), then give up trying to hold it in; you can’t. God is too good and you love Him too much!

P.S. The conversational Bible study material published by Let’s Start Talking in its Sycamore Series would be a great tool for you to use as you begin. (www.sycamoreseries.org)

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Are You Looking For Pain Relief?

Posted in Christian Missions, Other, tagged , , , on August 17, 2010| 3 Comments »

Many Christians feel the painful tension between knowing in their hearts that other people in their circles need Jesus, and recognizing in themselves the overwhelming reluctance to do anything actively about it.

Motivational sermons make us feel even guiltier, instructional sermons don’t speak to our fears. Most of what is offered in our churches just makes us feel worse.  Typical churches today, probably concerned mostly with retaining their members, no longer talk about personal evangelism because it just makes people feel bad.

(Even as I write this, I find myself hesitating to use words like evangelism or personal work because they are not only outmoded, but also out of favor! Even the word mission hangs on a similar cliff of unpopularity.)

The Gospel story is so much about sharing, however, that this pain is still there, so we look for relief through less painful means.  For instance, tell me that you haven’t heard—perhaps even used—the following to relieve the pain:

  • Invite people to church, better to a social event at the building, and best, to something for their children.  That’s all you have to do.
  • Just live a Christian life in front of people, that’s enough.
  • Contribute to—at least pray for–someone else going somewhere else to share your faith.
  • Just do some good service in the community.

Don’t hear me wrong. These are all excellent activities for Christians, but if you are burdened with the passionate desire to share the story of Jesus with those who don’t know Him, these good deeds can all be unsatisfactory replacements.

What then would be required for you to find true relief from the painful tension of your heartfelt desire to share Jesus and the overwhelming reluctance to do so? What really keeps you from doing what you know to do and want to do?

Of course, I don’t know about you personally, but here are some ideas that I have thought myself and/or have heard from others attempting to describe what would free them to tell the Story:

  • I would be eager to share if I thought they really wanted to hear the story. I really don’t think they want to hear it, so I feel like my initiative is not welcome.
  • I would be eager to share if I thought I could share in a meaningful way. My fear is that I don’t know enough, or that they will ask me something that I can’t answer.
  • If they would just come to me and ask me, I would tell them. I just don’t know how to find out if they are even interested.
  • If I knew how to get from our daily conversation to a spiritual topic, I could probably do it, but I don’t know how to jump from one to the other in a way that doesn’t feel artificial.
  • I wish I had time to talk to people, but with all my (kids, activities, work, school), I never have a block of time to devote to it.  And doesn’t it take a long time to convert someone??
  • Isn’t this really the job of the ministers? I’m not really trained for it.
  • Isn’t everyone kinda already a Christian?
  • I know I should, but do you really think God is going to send anyone to Hell?  I don’t know if I believe in a God like that.
  • Politics and religion you don’t talk about with your friends or in polite company. That’s what I was taught.
  • I don’t want anyone telling me what to think, so how can I tell other people what to think?

Well, I’ve used all my allotted words listing our rationalizations—and probably could have used more. Search your own heart and add your words to this list, if you want.

With the next posting, I’ll offer you some better words, better options, and what, I believe, are true pain relievers for Christians who want to talk—but can’t.

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Mark 5: Who Are You In This Story?

Posted in Bible Study, Other, tagged , , , on August 14, 2010| 2 Comments »

They went across the lake to the region of the Gerasenes. 2When Jesus got out of the boat, a man with an evil spirit came from the tombs to meet him. 3This man lived in the tombs, and no one could bind him any more, not even with a chain. 4For he had often been chained hand and foot, but he tore the chains apart and broke the irons on his feet. No one was strong enough to subdue him. 5Night and day among the tombs and in the hills he would cry out and cut himself with stones.

In modern terms, how would you describe this man?  Try staying away from psychological/pathological terms and try finding normal words for how someone in your circle with these symptoms might be described.  Here’s my attempt:

There was a Guy who had a pretty normal childhood, but somewhere along the way, he got into bad stuff—made really bad choices. It cost him everything!  First, he lost his family and friends; he had no one who could deal with his demons, so he ended up by himself.  Then he just went out of control—no boundaries, abusive, into stuff that damaged his body and soul. Sure, some people tried to help with interventions and rehab, but he could not be contained. He broke away from all of that, deeply depressed, and continuing to do destructive things.  No one saw any real hope or future for this Guy.

6When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and fell on his knees in front of him. 7He shouted at the top of his voice, “What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? Swear to God that you won’t torture me!” 8For Jesus had said to him, “Come out of this man, you evil spirit!”

One day this Guy is confronted on the streets by a random Jesus-person and it scares him to death! He first yells at this Jesus-person to get away, he threatens him and tries to intimidate him, but the Jesus-person just won’t go away. The guy says, “What do you want with me, man? You are killing me! I’m not like you. I used to be, but I don’t even remember what it is like to be like you—and it is too painful to even try!  Do you have any idea who I am?”

The Jesus-person says, “This is not who you are. You are full of the wrong stuff. Are you happy? Are you who you want to be?”

The Guy says, “I am who I am! I am nothing. I don’t know you, but you are killing me! Even if I tried, I can’t get back to where you are . . . . “

The Jesus-person replies, “You are right. Even if you tried, you couldn’t get back. But just listen to my story for a minute.” Then he covers the person with the love of God and the blood of Christ, destroying the old Guy and watching the creation of the New Guy.

As Jesus was getting into the boat, the man who had been demon-possessed begged to go with him. 19Jesus did not let him, but said, “Go home to your family and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.” 20So the man went away and began to tell in the Decapolis[c]how much Jesus had done for him. And all the people were amazed.

After a time, the Jesus-person needed to leave. The New Guy says, “I want to go with you! You are the best thing that ever happened to me—and I need you!”

The Jesus-Person replied, “I love you, brother, but you have a new task and a new message. You need to go home!”

The New Guy says, “There is nothing for me at home. Don’t send me away. I don’t have anyone!  I’ve hurt my family so badly, I can’t go back. They hate me!”

“You are not the same person. Go just introduce yourself to them again slowly. They probably won’t believe that it is you, but give them time. Tell them what God did for you!  Better yet, show them what God did for you. ”

“They will never believe me!  They’ll never love me again. They will never change”

Jesus-Person says, “That’s what you told me when I first met you. It is not you who will convince them. It’s the Story you are going to tell. If it can change you, it can change them too.”

So, of course, the New Guy went home—and what do you know—everything the Jesus-Person said happened. People were amazed.

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God Is Behind Immigration!

Posted in Christian Missions, Other, tagged , , , , , , , , , on August 6, 2010| 1 Comment »

I can’t tell you how many times in my life I have heard someone say the equivalent of, “Don’t we have enough to do at home? Why do we need to go overseas? Shouldn’t we take care of our neighborhood first?”

When Sherrylee and I were newly married and committed to going to Germany with our newly-formed mission team, I asked a very prominent preacher whom I knew for help raising support. Without thinking about what the implications were, he said, “Man, if only you weren’t going overseas!” I mistakenly took this as criticism back then, but I know now that what he really was saying was that American Christians prefer to support local over foreign outreach.  Bad decision!

Remember how God allowed persecution on the earliest church in Jerusalem and “scattered” people, forcing them into other countries, even to the Gentiles (Acts 8:1,4,19-20). I don’t think He used the same technique with American Christians—although WWII was the real beginning (not the earliest) of foreign outreach in churches of Christ—but I do believe that He has worked in time and space in our day to wipe away our tepid excuses for not sharing the Good News with people different from us.

Look at this snippet from Wikipedia about U.S. Immigration:

As of 2006, the United States accepts more legal immigrants as permanent residents than all other countries in the world combined. Since the liberalization of immigration policy in 1965, the number of first-generation immigrants living in the United States has quadrupled, from 9.6 million in 1970 to about 38 million in 2007. 1,046,539 persons were naturalized as U.S. citizens in 2008.

If Christians hesitate to “go into all the world,” then why shouldn’t God bring all the world into our neighborhood?  It’s not punishment—it’s who we are and what we are about!!

Let’s Start Talking is best known probably for its short-term, overseas mission programs, but as early as 1990, LST was also training Americans to reach out to international students, immigrants, and non-English speakers in our universities and neighborhoods.  FriendSpeak is LST’s program for training churches to reach out cross-culturally in their own communities—and it is huge!

Rather than tell you about it, I want to give you a link to the Christian Chronicle which just ran an online article and asked for feedback from those who might have used FriendSpeak in their churches. Just click this link and you will see firsthand what can be done here at home for the whole world:

http://www.christianchronicle.org/blog/2010/08/reader-feedback-tell-us-about-your-friendspeak-experience/

Local versus Foreign—not even a legitimate argument anymore—if it ever was. There is only, “Who can I talk to today—and who can I talk to tomorrow—and who will talk with those people over there?  Sure, I will.”

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Is Your Church Slipping Towards Unitarian Universalism?

Posted in Christian Culture, Other, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on July 29, 2010| 7 Comments »

While we were in Vermont and Massachusetts last week, I saw a large number of Unitarian Universalist congregations, mostly meeting in buildings that were at one time Congregationalist churches.  I did some work on the Puritans a few years back, so I began thinking about the history of these churches—and I started to get a bad feeling.  Here’s the super-zipped history, so you can see why.

Although historically tied to the Presbyterian church, this new movement eventually separated themselves from that denomination. As they pursued their independent study of the Bible, they became convinced that the only true path to reform was to return to the practices of the first century church, including adult conversion and the pattern of congregational autonomy.

This new movement flourished, but with time, because there was no higher authority than the local congregation, the movement splintered into Arminianism (legalism), Deism (social gospel), transcendentalism (spirit-filled), and Unitarianism (liberal)—parentheses are my translation into 21st century labels.

I thought this could have been a description of Restoration Movement history to this point in time. If you feel that way too, then read on to see where the future might lie!

Within two hundred years of its beginnings in America, many of the most influential Congregationalist ministers were Unitarians (a belief in the singleness of God and a rejection of a trinitarian understanding, including a rejection of the exclusive claims of Jesus because He is the Son of God).

During this same historical period, the doctrine of universal salvation was at its zenith in America. Universalism teaches that a loving God would not create humans, then send them to hell or eternal punishment.  It is no surprise that after rejecting the divinity of Jesus and opening the doctrinal door to acceptance of everything under God, Unitarians quite easily moved into universal salvation as well. It would be the natural step following their move to a more syncretic understanding of God.

Today, these beautiful old church buildings in New England are no longer Christian churches; rather, they are filled with the great grandchildren of those early Restorationists.  Unitarian Universalists profess the following in their own words (http://www.uua.org/visitors/6798.shtml ):

There are seven principles which Unitarian Universalist congregations affirm and promote:

  • The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
  • Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
  • Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;
  • A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;
  • The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;
  • The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;
  • Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

Unitarian Universalism (UU) draws from many sources:

  • Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life;
  • Words and deeds of prophetic women and men which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love;
  • Wisdom from the world’s religions which inspires us in our ethical and spiritual life;
  • Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God’s love by loving our neighbors as ourselves;
  • Humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science, and warn us against idolatries of the mind and spirit.
  • Spiritual teachings of earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature.

I want to think that my church could never slide down this path, but I do recognize some of these footprints in the road we are traveling.  I do believe that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” (G. Santayana).

And if this is not what I want for my grandchildren, what must I do today?

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The Karate Kid: Talking To Kids About Movies

Posted in Christian Culture, Other, Talking To Kids About Movies, tagged , , , , , , , on June 28, 2010| 1 Comment »

Not many remakes really stand well against the original, but the 2010 version of The Karate Kid is so true to the original that it holds its own.  Jaden Smith has a great screen presence, but is so small—even for the 12-year-old he is portraying–that it makes the physical punishment, the teacher-student relationship, and especially the little romantic involvement a little unbelievable for me. It is easier to imagine this particular story with an older teen like Daniel (Ralph Macchio) was in the 1984 version.

With younger actors, this movie feels more like a young kids movie, probably for 10-14 year-old boys. I wish they had left out the 12 year-olds kissing, and I thought the beatings and hitting were too harsh for this film’s intended audience—or maybe it was just the parents of the kids watching who were closing gasping.

I also found myself wishing they had not set up the Chinese as villains. Maybe I’ve seen too many Asian mob movies, but I’m not much for any film that encourages negative ethnic or nationalistic stereotypes to children, who might internalize a negative response to certain nations, much like kids did about Germany and Japan after WWII because of constant exposure to war movies and cartoons that were used as propaganda during and long after the end of the war.

I did love the beautiful photographic tour of China, although the narrative relationship of those trips was pretty thin.  I don’t know if the kids will even notice the scenery, but perhaps it will stick as somewhere they would like to go someday—to see the lady standing on one leg with the big snake in front of her!!

Here are some topics for talking to your kids after you’ve seen this movie together.

  1. Are the Chinese people mean? I’d love to know what your kids say if you ask them this question. Can they differentiate between the bullies and the Mr. Han—who is also Chinese? This conversation goes to my statement above about helping our children recognize good and bad are not national or ethnic characteristics.
  2. What would you do if kids tried to bully you like those boys did? Dre could have walked away from even the first fight, but he didn’t. He did not have to throw the bucket of liquid stuff on the boys to antagonize them. Most of the time, we have a choice about fighting. That’s the first lesson kids need to learn. Secondly, fighting generally leads to more fighting.  What finally won the respect of the bullies was not beating them up; it was achievement, excellence, competency, and courage—with integrity.
  3. “No weakness. No pain. No mercy.” This motto of the bad Kung Fu master is a great teaching moment to show that Jesus was the exact opposite. He gave Himself up, He suffered pain for us, and He is full of mercy!    Even our children will likely meet those coaches/instructors/mentors who think that there is one ethical standard for church and another for “real life,” where you do whatever it takes to win.
  4. You don’t get good at something without a lot of hard work. This fits in with our children learning delayed gratification.  If you haven’t read Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, you should.  He argues that the great successes of people are a result of a minimum of 10,000 hours of practice for which other people either don’t have the opportunity or the patience.
  5. Was it more important for Dre to win or to continue in the match? It wouldn’t have been as good a movie for sure if he had lost, but it might have been truer to life for most people. We should acknowledge to our kids that life is not fair. Sometimes people cheat, and they hit us hard, and it hurts.  Our first choice—and maybe the only choice—is to either get up and continue, or to stay down and quit.  Even if you get up, you may not win—ask the US Soccer team about that! But you have greater self-respect and respect from others, if you choose to get up!

Good movies create real emotions. The Karate Kid is a good film, which is why audiences have clapped and cheered at the end of the film. You will have fun checking your own emotional responses against the ones your kids have. That will be the stuff of great conversation.

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World Culture for World Christians

Posted in Christian Culture, Christian Missions, Other, tagged , , , , , , , on June 24, 2010| 4 Comments »

Unless you knew me when I was 16 or 17 years old, you probably don’t know that I was a pretty decent young baseball player. I pitched and hit well, although “Barber” Cobb—whose barbershop was where the action was in Smithfield, Texas, always thought I was a better catcher.

When we moved to Germany to do mission work, baseball was one of those things I was keenly aware of sacrificing, not so much playing baseball, but specifically, I knew I would not be coaching my yet unborn sons’ little league teams in Germany. What I didn’t know was that I was about to fall in love with a whole new sport Fuβball.

I remember going down to the TV lounge at language school in Prien, Germany, every Wednesday night to watch the little black-and-white TV when a Fuβball or soccer game was on. Now I had played some version of soccer in elementary YMCA sports, but not nearly the organized version that children today play, so I knew almost nothing about it. Not only was I learning vocabulary–little words like Tor (goal), Ecke (Corner), and big, German words like Schiedsrichter (referee) and Abseitsposition (offsides position), but I was also learning something central to German culture. It wasn’t a question of whether I liked soccer or not, it had to be learned, just like the German language.

There were no Germans in language school—obviously–so when I watched, it was with classmates from countries like Japan, Romania, Italy, Venezuela, Greece. They did not know the vocabulary either—but they knew the game! I remember the night it dawned on me that I was the only real soccer illiterate in the room.

The historical cultural isolation of the United States throughout our history has had some positive results, but one of the negatives is that when we go out into the world beyond our borders, we have trouble with the languages that other people speak—and I’m talking not only about their verbal language, but also their cultural languages. In the best case scenarios, this has led to simple misunderstandings, but in worst cases, it has led to what the rest of the world calls American imperialism.  For us Americans, it just feels like the American way!

Sidestepping the political potholes, I want to suggest to you that to be a World Christian, you as an American have to learn to speak the language of world culture.  Here are just a few examples of what I am talking about

  1. The World Cup – This tournament is the largest followed sporting event in the world. Over one billion people will watch the final game, which is at least 10 times the number that watch the Super Bowl in a good year. If you want to have a conversation with someone in Ghana or Ukraine or Brazil or Japan, soccer is a world topic of conversation.
  2. Metrics – Most Americans are exposed to the metric system sometime in school. A few scientific disciplines even use it regularly, but most of us are helpless when we go to other countries and need to cook in a metric oven or to know if 20 degrees is coat weather or shorts.
  3. Exchange – How often have I seen LST team members walk up to an exchange window, hand the man a handful of money and walk away with whatever they receive back, totally clueless as to what just happened or how much they have. Yesterday, I had a desperate email from a team that had exchanged dollars into Euros, which are one of the currencies that are stronger than the US dollar, so for 100 USD, they had received 70 Euro. To them, this meant that they had lost 30% of their money by exchanging. This is a good example of how Americans can be either victimized or made fearful by their own inability to speak the language of world culture.
  4. Major world cultural events – The example that I want to use for you is one that only a few will have ever heard of, yet just this year the Eurovision Song Contest, in its 55th year, was shown around the world and live-streamed on the Internet. Thirty-nine countries entered songs and artists, vying for the best song in the world! It’s like American Idol on steroids!

So why should Americans care about any of these kinds of things? Well, maybe Americans can get by with being culturally isolated, but World Christians cannot! If we want to connect with people, speak to their hearts, share their lives, then we have to know where they live and learn their languages.

We Americans must resist the temptation to exchange the “Go into all the world” command for “Come meet me in my comfortable building or home and speak my language if you want to know about Jesus.” And we should start becoming such a people with those in our own country who don’t speak our cultural languages.

Question: What other world events should World Christians know about?

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From Pecos to Escondido: The Road Trip Continued

Posted in Other, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on June 12, 2010| 2 Comments »

American highways are remarkably free from roadkill! Yesterday we drove 934 miles and I don’t remember seeing anything dead on the road at all. Did you know that most of the roadkill in Australia are kangaroos! And you see a  lot. In fact, many people have those big cowcatchers—I don’t know what else to call them—on the front of their vehicles because hitting roos on the roads is so common.

You’ll remember from yesterday that Sherrylee and I decided at the last minute to drive to California to help with an LST YoungFriends project at the North County Church of Christ in Escondido, just north of San Diego. You can read about the first 446 miles in yesterday’s posting—but you can start here also. The great thing about journeys is that they have an official starting place, of course, but today’s start is just as much of a start as yesterday’s start.  There must be a sermon there somewhere!

After a quick stop at the ubiquitous Wal-Mart in Pecos, Texas, we got on the road again. Sherry enjoys reading aloud while I drive, so she suggested reading the Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church. Yes, we are pretty weird, but don’t worry, we balanced it with a Robert Ludlum novel later in the day.

We have been reading and talking about Roman Catholicism for some time, since her brother recently became a Catholic priest.  Yesterday, most of our reading and conversation was on sacramentalism, but that is a topic for another blog.

The amazing thing about driving in Texas is that when you get to El Paso, your halfway to California. Of course you have to speed past the sand dunes in Monahans, the Davis Mountains and Fort Davis, McDonald Observatory near Alpine, and the many great Tex-Mex restaurants along the way or you will just turn around and say, “Why would I ever want to leave Texas!!”

The only thing I really found interesting in New Mexico was driving through Lordsburg.  Who knows what classic journey film has Lordsburg as the stagecoach’s final destination?

Now Arizona has Tombstone and Yuma, but we missed the 3:10 train. I forgot about the time zone change! We didn’t stop, but if we go back that way, I’m planning to try to stop and sightsee.

At some stop, we balanced our morning catechesis with an audiobook from Cracker Barrel (where else?) called The Bourne Deception—the full 17.5 hour/15 disc version. Pretty good deal for $3.50!  It was so good that we skipped supper. Our only interruptions were the Border Patrol control points—something we had never seen before.

The Board Patrol check Points reminded me of the Arizona controversy. We were waved through easily, but I couldn’t help but think about it being a different story if we had been Latino—either of us.  I’m all for controlling our borders better to prevent illegal aliens from entering, but if you have ever been a foreigner in a foreign country (stranger in a strange land is the biblical phrase) and been discriminated against, you would know how humiliating and offensive any form of profiling or discrimination is.

When Sherrylee and I lived in Germany and were looking for an apartment, we would occasionally call about one that looked great to us, only to be hung up on because we were aliens with an accent. That was almost as bad as the people who used the less formal language forms when talking to us as if we were either children or stupid. Well, you can see that I am sympathetic with aliens from my own experience of being one.

You have time to think about many things on a road trip!

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Roadtrips

Posted in Other, Uncategorized, tagged , , , on June 11, 2010| 1 Comment »

Sherrylee and I love road trips!  I’m talking about where you throw stuff in the car, take off, and drive for hours and hours.  In this day of instant gratification, which includes getting to places quickly from wherever we are, road trips seem a thing of the past, but since I’m writing this in the breakfast room of a Holiday Inn Express in Pecos, Texas—8 hours from Fort Worth and 12 hours from Escondido, CA.—I want to tell you about ours, so you can see what you think.

Yesterday about 11am, we decided that I needed to go to Escondido, where LST is sending a YoungFriends group from Dallas for a week-long mission trip. We sometimes do this to simply provide a little help to both the group sponsor and the hosting church. Since our daughter Emily and her family are in Escondido, Sherry wanted to go too, but have you looked at last minute ticket prices lately! She suggested that we leave right away and drive—1394 miles—19+hours!  In less than 10 minutes, we had decided to do it—so we agreed to leave at 2pm.

She went to the Hair Cabin for whatever, and I tied up stuff at the office, then stopped the mail for 10 days, ate lunch with the staff, and went home to pack.  Packing for road trips is soooooo easy because you don’t have to worry about weight, you don’t have to worry about how many ounces of liquid, you can take your good shoes, your running shoes, AND your flipflops—and they don’t even have to go in the suitcase. The best of all is being able to hang your clothes in the backseat. What a luxury!

We were almost giddy as we drove out of the city right before rush-hour traffic—about 3:30, not 2pm—but that’s OK.  The first thing we did was play the alphabet game. What—you’ve never played. You have to find all the letters in proper sequence, call out the word that contains the letter—which means your opponent can’t use that letter in that word—and you can’t look backwards!  Oh, yes, and it has to be on a sign, not anything moving.  Sherry and I are fierce competitors, so I will confess to one tense moment when we both saw the J in Justin Boots at the same time. I think I really beat her, but it was so early in the trip, we agreed to both claim it as a tie—any sacrifice for matrimonial harmony!  Ultimately my generosity paid off because I found the Z in pizza just outside of Abilene and won.  We’ll see what happens today!

And we always stop at Crackerbarrel restaurants on road trips—mostly because of all the fun things you can do there!  First, you can walk around and say, “Who do you think would buy something like that?” Then we look at the pictures on the wall and see if any of our forefathers are memorialized in their antique pictures—well, those pictures are of somebody’s people!! Don’t laugh.  Then we always try to beat the little triangle peg game that they put on each table.  Sherry was obsessed yesterday, so I cheated and found a clue on the internet about where to start that let both of us beat it once—but then we couldn’t repeat, so I bought her one to bring on the trip as we left. Oops, now I know who buys that stuff!!

Don’t forget to go to the bathroom at Crackerbarrel—except be careful. In nine out of ten Crackerbarrels, the men’s room is on the left and the women’s on the right, which only sets us Stammkunden up for an embarrassing moment if we ever walk into the exception! I’ve done it several times, I confess.

Next we listened to 4-5 episodes of Garrison Keillor’s Stories from Lake Wobegon podcasts off the ITouch that my kids gave me several years ago! What great kids. We tried listening to Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, which I had downloaded for free a couple of months ago. It was a little heavy for the mood yesterday, but it might work today.  If not, we’ll stop at the next Crackerbarrel and rent an audiobook on CD—see why we always go there!

We pulled into Pecos, Texas about 11:15 last night, couldn’t find the hotel, drove around until we found something open where we could ask. Soon we were in our room—but the toilet was broken—so then we were in another room, tired, but glad we were on the road—together!

I wonder what today will bring?

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