I won!
At the Christmas party for the CRM office, we split into teams to produce (in 15 minutes out of wrapping paper) the best Christmas runway model and yours truly beat the competition …hands down. I think it all had to do with the walk and haughty glare although the design of the apparel was exceptional.
It was not how expected to spend Monday evening.
Jon Moore, CRM’s Executive VP, and I were getting a quick bite to eat at a sports bar at the Sacramento, CA airport, waiting to catch a flight home from a day spent in Northern California seeing a financial partner. I was downing some great spicy fries that came with the burger when the itching began almost immediately …first my hands, then my feet, scalp, ears, and within minutes welts were appearing on my arms and neck. Eventually, my whole body was turning red.
Having been down this route before, I knew it was an allergic reaction. Something in those fries was deadly for me, ether in the oil in which they were fried or the spicy dressing. So it became quite the scene in the airport. A cop, paramedics, ambulance drivers, and lots of curious onlookers as they wheeled me down the concourse on a gurney and off to the nearest hospital.
I carry an epinephrine injection with me at all times for such a situation but didn’t use it on the advice of the paramedics who wanted me at the ER and not self-medicating. Besides, that needle looks like something you shoot into an elephant. Jabbing that spear into my leg is not my idea of fun if it can be avoided.
By the time we reached the ER, the medicine given in the IV on the way had begun to work and slowly, the reaction subsided. More meds and the doc released me later in the evening.
The highlight of the experience? As paramedic struggled to get the IV started in my arm, they pulled over to the side of the freeway so he could getter a better jab, and he commented: “Sorry that hurt so much, but you have unusually thick skin!” “It’s a prerequisite for my job” I replied.
So much for spicy fries.
I’m not a car fan.
A car for me has always been essentially a convenience that gets me from one point to another and is a means of transportation. But that was NOT the prevailing opinion of the thousands that surrounded me this past week when Tom Middleton, my ministry assistant, and I took in the Los Angeles Auto Show.
This event is one of the largest in the world and it was an amazing educational experience. I came away with two conflicting emotions:
1. It’s incredibly difficult to understand and justify such conspicuous consumption. In a world where half of the people alive have never even used a telephone, here I was seeing and even sitting in some of the most exquisite (and expensive) vehicles ever produced. I experienced considerable emotional whiplash being surrounded by such luxury and extravagance while having been in places in the world where people are wondering where their next meal will come from. The mental juxtaposition of such extremes was jarring.
2. At the same time, the design, engineering, and creativity represented at this event was staggering. For those who are really into it, such an experience is like going to a Paris fashion show, an art gallery, or an opera. What is so amazing is that humankind—endowed with creativity as a result of the Imago Dei—could produce such machines which are, in reality, works of art.
So how do I put it all together? I don’t know. I’m thinking about it. Regardless, thanks, Tom. It was a fascinating experience!
The morning started early as I left home about 5:30 am to catch a flight to Portland for a day of planning with Paul Rhoads, CRM’s Ex. VP.
When I got to the Orange County airport, to my dismay the flight had been cancelled. The best Alaska Airlines could do was put me in a taxi to pick up a later flight from Los Angeles International. The next hour I had a fascinating ride with a Somali cab driver—a college student who had immigrated two years ago and was moonlighting as a taxi driver. He was also a practicing Muslim. The conversation turned to Jesus which ended with a commitment on his part to look at the Bible and see firsthand who Jesus claimed to be.
When I settled into a seat at the gate to await the flight, the folks around me were speaking Russian. So, I chimed in with my rudimentary Russian and began interacting with a group who had immigrated from Ukraine back in the 90s and had not been back since. We ended up looking together on my computer at pictures from Kiev and Cherkassy where I had been in September. As the conversation drifted to religion, they were not Orthodox, rather admittedly secular but “who had God in their hearts.”
At the end of the day on the 2-hour flight back from the Northeast, my traveling companion in the next seat on the plane was a Dutch virologist who had worked for the WHO in a variety of trouble spots around the world. We traded stories about cross-cultural venues.
All in a days work.
All fascinating opportunities to let God steer events and conversations.
All marvelous possibilities to simply see what Jesus may be trying to do in people’s lives and how he would want me to cooperate in helping them move one step closer to Him. Domine Dirige Nos.
In the next two weeks, I will be completely immersed in CRM’s budget process for 2007. For me, this is a both a positive and very negative experience.
It’s positive because it gives us an opportunity to put our resources where our priorities are. As Jim Wallis writes in God’s Politics:
“Budgets are moral documents. They clearly reveal the priorities of a family, a church, an organization, a city or a nation. A budget shows what we most care about and how that compares to others things we care about.”
God, give us the grace and wisdom of Solomon in these several days. And I wouldn’t mind a little of his physical resources to ease the difficulty of painful choices.
“God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It (Plus)” (Jim Wallis)
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“If you want to make enemies, try to change something.” —Woodrow Wilson,
“It is not merely that changes in our world demand new responses from us. The very foundations of society have changed.” —Craig Van Gelder
“A church which pitches its tents without constantly looking out for new horizons, which does not continually strike camp, is being untrue to its calling… (we must) play down our longing for certainty, accept what is risky, and live by improvisation and experiment.” —Hans Kung
“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” —Alvin Toffler
“Uncertainty is the only thing to be sure of.”—Anthony Muh
“If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.” —General Eric Shinseki
“If things seem under control, you’re just not going fast enough.” —Mario Andretti
“It is generally much easier to kill an organization than change it substantially.” —Kevin Kelly
“There will be more confusion in the business world in the next decade than in any decade in history. And the current pace of change will only accelerate. —Steve Case
Sayyid Qutb is considered the father off modern Islamic radicalism. An Egyptian writer and poet, he was executed by Gamal Nasser in 1966. Yet what he wrote still reverberates throughout the Islamic world and profoundly affects Muslim perceptions of Western culture. About the U.S. (where he studied as an exchange student), he wrote in a famous polemic, The America I have Seen:
“This great America: What is it worth in the scale of human values? And what does it add to the moral account of humanity? And, by the journey’s end, what will its contribution be? I fear that a balance may not exist between American’s material greatness and the quality of its people. And I fear that the wheel of life will have turned and the book of life will have closed and America will have added nothing, or next to nothing, to the account of morals that distinguishes man from object, and indeed, mankind from animals.”
“The good and the moral no longer count, it seems, but only what one can do. The measure of a human being is what he can do, and not what he is, not what is good or bad. What he can do, he may do . . . And that means that he is destroying himeslf and the world . . . [The question] ‘What can we do?’ will be false and pernicious while we refrain from asking ‘who are we?’ The question of being and the question of our hopes are inseparable.”
While intellectually understanding such critiques, the emotional impact was driven home to me on my first visit to Beirut several years ago. Particularly jarring was the visual displays of wealth, materialism, sex and sensuality that were everywhere in the so called “Christian” enclaves. I saw, and actually felt, for the first time what devout Muslims must see and feel when confronted with the decadence of Western culture. It is a decadence that I suspect I have become numb to because it is the social and moral ocean in which I swim.
Perhaps it takes a Benedict, a Guinness, or a Solzenitzen to jar us to reality. Or a Sayyid who helps give us insight into the passions that motivate devout young Arabs to strap explosives around their waists and blow up soldiers from Western nations.
(The comparison between Sayyid and Benedict are based on an article by John L. Allen Jr. in the 11/16/06 Op Ed section of the Los Angeles Times).
OK. I need to come clean.
I need to explain why much of the focus on this blog (and in what I do with my time, energy, and passion) is on apostolic people and apostolic movements. In my personal calling statement, there are three pivotal elements that shape my role, ministry assignments, and ultimate contribution …all things that CRM works with leaders to help them understand. Simply stated, my personal calling from God is:
1. To challenge, recruit, sponsor and empower growing numbers of godly, high-potential leaders into apostolic ministry2. To pioneer, nurture and grow apostolic structures which will multiply leadership for the Church in every nation.
3. To prophetically challenge the Church to holistic obedience and the giving our our sons and daughters to a missional life.
Comedy Central host, Stephen Colbert, recently did what I thought was a well-deserved number on a politician.
Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, (R-Ga) appeared on his show and Colbert asked him about a bill he sponsored in Congress to require the Ten Commandments to be displayed in the U.S. Capitol. Colbert’s question: “What are the Ten Commandments?”
Flustered, the Congressman replied “All of them? You want me to name them all?” He struggled to name three.
Honestly, I’m not sure I could accurately get them all right and in order if I was put in a similar spot. But then again, I’m not sponsoring such legislation.
Thirty-two years ago this evening, Patty and I tied the the knot at Briarwood Presbyterian Church in Birmingham, AL.
It’s been a great ride! Never in my wildest imagination did I ever presume God would give me a life-time companion of such grace, inner beauty and elegance. It has been an enormous privilege to enjoy 32 years of her presence.
In recent years, she’s weathered severe illness and limitations that neither of us would have anticipated. While it has not been the script we would have written or chosen, it’s obviously been the script divinely and uniquely designed for us. We would wish these events on no one but regret none of them in what they have taught us about ourselves, each other, and the all-sufficiency of God.
Through it all, Patty has grown deep in a relationship with Jesus that is marked by a contemplative even mystical life of prayer and a ministry of inner/emotional healing for those wounded in soul and spirit. God flows through her with gifts of mercy and compassion that are uniquely coupled with strong leadership skills and a heart for loving and mentoring younger women.
Because of what we’ve been through, we consider each day a gift. With more of life behind us than lies ahead, we are committed to making the most of the future and most excitedly, doing it together, much more in love than when we said “I do” 32 years ago.
We have been in Denver for Patty’s regular check-up and evaluation at the National Jewish Medical Center.
Four years ago, Patty was diagnosed with a lung disease called MAI (Mycobacteium Avian Intercellulare) and we go to National Jewish because it’s the leading respiratory hospital in the nation with doctors who specialize in this type of infectious disease. This bacteria is a cousin to TB and especially difficult to treat. Three years ago, Patty had a lobe of her left lung surgically removed and she’s been through several years of grueling regimes of multiple, potent antibiotics.
This visit was encouraging. Her lungs appear stable and no further indication of damage was seen on the CAT scan nor indication of the MAI in cultures. While no doc will ever use the world “cure” for this disease in women, this visit was probably the best check-up we’ve had.
TIME magazine ran an article several years ago on this bug. One of the physicians referred to in the article—Gwen Huitt—is Patty’s doc. We are immensely grateful for the professionalism and the quality of care we’ve received at National Jewish.
Compared to where she was three years ago, this is a remarkable recovery for Patty. While it has been slow and arduous, she’s about 80% back and functional. We are both grateful. In many respects we believe that God has graciously given us our lives back to a degree that we had not anticipated possible three years ago.
This experience has also given us a whole new perspective on people with disabilities and physical suffering. And the implications for our understanding of God, his presence and purposes in our lives have been profound. While we wouldn’t wish this affliction on anyone, we wouldn’t trade the lessons learned.
I had the privilege of speaking the opening night of the CRM Conference.
As I had prayed and thought for months in advance about the content of this important evening, what evolved was an illustration from my own life of what it means to be a “sent one” in an apostolic, missionary vocation. Hence, this message from Isaiah 6:1-8.
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We arrived today at Westmont College for CRM’s World Wide Conference in Santa Barbara, CA. This unique, every-four-year event brings together all of those serving with CRM around the world and their families for five days. Close to 700 people will participate.
So why are we doing this? Why go to all this effort and expense?
In May of 1997, during a discussion prior to the first such event in Hungary, those of us in CRM leadership were wrestling with this very issue. John Hayes (who leads InnerCHANGE, CRM’s order among the poor) eloquently articulated (as only John Hayes can) the importance of such a gathering and why InnerCHANGE staff – who probably have the least amount of money available to apply toward such an event – were committed to attend.
I was so impressed by his arguments, that I asked him to put those words into writing. What resulted is a timeless explanation of why getting people together like this is an essential in an apostolic movement such as CRM. John’s words today are as timely as when they were written almost a decade ago when he said:
“Years ago, I ransacked the gospels for practical insights into sustaining dynamic community over the long haul since that was important for InnerCHANGE (and CRM as our larger apostolic community) if we were to survive in our ministry.In the short term, I sensed community would come naturally and easily. . . as we were all pioneers thrown excitedly together in some difficult, challenging contexts. But I was concerned that we would fall prey to the deterioration of relationships that seems to mark so many movements or organizations with the passage of time.
Luke 4:24, in which Christ references the proverb, “A prophet is without honor in his home town” seemed to speak a warning to our hope of maintaining a close, relational atmosphere for the long haul. What we wanted was more than “team,” more than “organization,” it was family. (more…)
Spotlighting the Best of Local Music: Bodies of Water
by Evan George
(Review appeared in the Los Angeles Alternative, June 2, 2006)
The best time to get into a band is, generally, not when you’re famished on a street corner waiting for a man named José to finish baking the extra large pizza that a dozen stoned college kids have sent you out to fetch for a birthday party. Which may be the reason that the first time I heard Bodies of Water diligently bashing out some earnest four-part harmonies from their garage—which happened to be not a hundred feet away from the pizza parlor that I was sitting in front of—I muttered the kind of things under my breath that only a man intent on eating deep fried eggplant would mutter.
Since that day nearly two years ago, the L.A. transplants that make up this gospel-pop four piece have honed their vocal chops, their hand-wringing melodies and their spunky instrumental acrobatics, but more importantly, I am no longer waiting for José’s pizza. I am ready to receive their message of “Love All.”
According to the band itself, three of the four members had no experience on their chosen instruments at all and all four were acquaintances through various degrees of luck and happenstance. David (guitar/vocals) and Meredith (keyboard/vocals) had been writing songs in the comfort of their own home for a while when they decided they’d like to perform them for an audience bigger than a street corner pizza joint crowd. Meredith knew Kyle (bass) from high school where he played the violin quite competently. And their recent friend Jessie said she’d love to try playing drums… for the first time ever.
Their simple beginnings as a band stay with them today. Bodies of Water prides itself on being as natural in its aesthetic and sound as its name portrays. Songs of joy, songs of pain, but mostly just good old fashioned testimonial songwriting. And if there’s a religiosity to the band’s songs it seems to be more than just the trappings of a bunch of indie rock kids trying to play gospel. When they say that a divine hand moves us in ways we can’t understand, it ain’t ironic. And when they squeal together in upward spiraling melody mountains, it sounds like truth seeking, not posturing.
The Highland Park foursome have released an E.P. to little fanfare but are in the process of recording a full-length that will be released later this year. In the meantime they’re playing more than a few shows that—even if not technically—will land them on a street corner near you.
Tim Schmidt, came to see my daughter today as she is recuperating from a week in the hospital.
He is a very cool doc and deserving of praise. And not just because he came to see Christine.
Tim has served on the CRM Board for over a decade and has done a couple of terms as chair. He’s also affectionately known as “Compudoc” to hundreds of CRM staff serving throughout the world. An excellent physician, he is always available to them on email and accessible 24-7 if there’s an emergency. He’s been a virtual godsend for everything from life-thretening illnesses to pre-natal exams and spider bites.
He’s also very much in the know about things missional and astute as they come in understanding the type of ministry to which God has called CRM. Couple that with a deep, abiding and mature walk with Jesus and we’ve got a package for whom all of us are grateful.
We brought Christine home form the hospital today.
We got a call this evening with the definitive diagnosis …an acute attack of Epstein Baar virus (infectious mononucleosis) aggravated by a bacterial infection. Quite a cocktail. We are relieved that it is nothing more serious in the long haul and are glad to have her under our roof as she begins what will be a gradual recovery.
We’re appreciative for the many who prayed. We began the week with considerable anxiety. But as I wrote to CRM folks in an email on Tuesday: “It seems obvious that folks have been praying. There is a settledness that has rested on us, and even in the hospital room, that was not there yesterday. We’re grateful.”
As I write, I am in a hospital room in Pasadena, California where our daughter, Christine has been admitted for a severe infection, the source of which is puzzling the docs. There is apparently something going on with her that has them stumped, according to the CAT scan and other tests, and we are awaiting an array of consultations today with specialists.
Of course, anytime a parent hears the team “oncologist” or “surgeon,” your knees get a little weak and the inevitable knot begins to form in your stomach. That’s what yesterday felt like.
But when I had a chance to walk and pray, God brought to mind again a decision we made when Christy was less than a year old. It was when we had her “dedicated to the Lord.” In some traditions, it carries similar meaning to the baptism of a infant (as it was with our oldest, David). From God she came. And to God, we entrust her.
She is 23 now. But when she was 2, we almost lost her to a severe allergic reaction. And back then, when words failed, God brought the same event of consecration to mind and reminded me “I thought you gave her to me. My care for her exceeds yours.”
We wait today for more information from tests and the doctors’ evaluations.
In the early years of my spiritual growth, there were two Anglicans that God used to make a rich contribution to my development. First was John Stott, (left above) rector of All Souls Church, Langham Place, London. In that generation, no one could rival him for his clear, articulate, and gracious exposition of the bible applied to the pressing issues of the era. John Stott represented everything that was the best in the Anglican tradition. His writings did much to shape and form my convictions as a young follower of Jesus and the several times I was privileged to hear him speak were highlights.
David Watson (above middle) was his charismatic contemporary and the rector of St. Michael-le-Belfrey in York. I had the privilege of studying under him during my doctoral studies at Fuller Seminary in the early 80s. He was an Anglican and a charismatic which, at the time, was an oxymoron to me. I had a tough time putting the two together. Exposure to David Watson did much to open me to the reality and power of the Holy Spirit.
And now in this decade, I am growing to appreciate the writings of N.T. Wright, prolific New Testament scholar and the present Bishop of Durham. As the Church struggles to navigate the transition from modernity to postmodernity, I suspect N.T. Wright may make an immeasurable contribution in keeping us grounded in historic biblical orthodoxy yet engaged with our culture as effective ambassadors of the living Christ.
Influences like these could almost persuade to become an Anglican.
“The most extensive, pervasive strategic error in the Christian tradition lies squarely in our coveted and generously supported, but unquestioned, concept of years of “schooling” as the way for leaders to develop and be trained ….In this country and abroad, every church movement which has come to depend solely upon residential school products for its ministry is dying.” – Ralph Winter in “Mission Frontiers”, March-April 2003
While accurate information about God is certainly necessary, it’s relating to God in a deep and personal way that actually produces substantive change. And if I want to see genuine transformation in the lives of others, it’s most effective through the power of a relationship, not through the passing on of facts or concepts regardless of how true they may be.
Truth becomes most powerful when it is embodied in a person and made manifest in a relationship. It’s called the incarnation.
Why a blog?
I’m not an outstanding speaker. There are many who have real gifts in public rhetoric: Tony Campolo is astonishingly capable; John Stott (in my parent’s generation) is one of the best of an era when it comes to biblical exposition; and John Piper has studied and emulated the great preachers and combines solid theological insight with superb rhetorical ability. The list could go on.
But that’s not me. I’ll probably never be on the public speaking circuit and such public notoriety and visibility is not what I have ever aspired to. When I do speak, it is usually “one-night-stands.” My prophetic edge is not exactly endearing and few find me entertaining or humorous. I’m not a popular repeat performer for institutionalized American Christianity. So I’m rarely asked back.
However, part of God’s clear calling on my life is “to challenge the Church to holistic obedience and giving of our sons and daughters to a missional life.” That’s what I do in the warp and woof of daily life and relationships. And through a blog, I hope to utilize the pen (or actually the keyboard) to stimulate, influence and perhaps provoke on a broader level.
So welcome to Under the Iceberg where one discovers that reality is rarely as it seems on the surface.
