Cultural Awareness... the key to effective mission and connection in todays world

You should "Read the Bible in one hand, and the newspaper in the other".

That quote has been attributed for years to the great German theologian Karl Barth. While the Barth Center has been unable to authenticate that he actually said it, the quote lives on in theological mythology, t-shirts and numerous quote books.

Perhaps because authorship does not matter. What matters is the reality of what is being said.

Stop and think about that statement for a moment. We are to have an awareness of what is happening around us. For the sake of the Gospel!

The Mexican Chupacabra

Years ago I was in Baja California talking to a family I'd known for years. They had made me breakfast at their very "rural house." As we talked, Gloria told me a few of their chickens had been killed recently, probably by the Chupacabra. The Chupacabra is a legend in the rural areas of Mexico. It's famous for killing animals, babies and causing all sorts of general mayhem. Think of it as the Mexican version of the Loch Ness Monster or Bigfoot.

The truth of the legend did not, and does not matter. What mattered is that Gloria, and indeed, millions of Mexicans across the country were aware of the Chupacabra. 

Later that week I was walking with another missionary who knew Gloria and who had also served in her village for years. I shared with him her concerns about her missing chickens and that she felt it was the Chupacabra. I expected that we'd be able to share a little laugh together. What ensued has stayed with me to this day.

That missionary, after spending almost 20 years serving in Mexico, had no idea what the Chupacabra was. He said he tried to keep his focus on God and did not involve himself much with locals events, news or culture.

If I could've sued that missionary for malpractice I would have do so. How is it possible that a person serving a specific group of people for any length of time could be so willfully unaware of the things that animate, or matter, to that community? 

Recently we have faced a significant level of unrest in Oaxaca, primarily as a result of massive ongoing protests from the teachers union in that state. In response to a ton of questions about those protests, I decided to write an article providing some detail and background. You can read it here.

Thousands of people across the US and Mexico read that article, shared it and commented. But two specific Facebook comments stopped me cold. One said as he shared, "read this article, it is the ABC's of what is going on." I appreciated that a local thought I had a good understanding of the facts. But it was the second comment that really hit me... another person asked how it was possible an outsider like me could understand the issues and culture of Oaxaca as well as I did.

The answer is simple... it's my job! 

As a missionary, I need to know and understand the culture where I am serving. It makes me a better communicator of the Gospel and enables me to better love and understand my neighbor. I spend hours on this. Reading, thinking, studying. Because I believe effective mission demands it.

If the church is going to have a prophetic witness in the world today, I believe this approach can not just be relegated to missions work "over there." It must be part of how we act and live everyday in our local worlds too.

Being unaware of the happenings of the day, needing to catch up with happened last week, or choosing to ignore cultural events make us woefully unprepared to effectively communicate the Gospel in a rapidly changing world. 

Most of you will never be called to "the ends of the earth." But you are called to be a prophetic witness for Jesus in your local worlds. That means understanding the culture, knowing what is going on and being able to not just see both sides of an issue, but figure how Jesus fits into some difficult situations. 

If we really want to change the world around us for Jesus, the words ascribed to Barth are as relevant here in the US today as they are in my missions work in Mexico... 

Read the bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other!

Avoiding Self Absorbed Short-Term Mission... why you shouldn't just paint the fence!

Imagine you are sitting in your church one day thinking about ministry when you hear some noise going on outside.  Getting up from your chair, you decide to head out and have a look.

As you come around the corner of the building, that’s when you see them, 12 smiling faces of kids, many of them with paint on their clothes out in front of your church facility.  But it isn’t the fact that they are there that surprises you.  What really catches you off guard is what they are doing.

Those 12 young people, along with their leaders, are painting the fence in front of your church.  That’s right.  In front of your church, there are 12 people, all with paint brushes and rollers having a great time painting your church’s fence.

As you struggle to maintain your composure, you ask the leader for a moment to talk. When he comes over you ask him what exactly his group of kids are doing.  He explains that they are a mission team from another part of the country and that they have been teaching the kids to think about random acts of kindness and how they can be serve people in the name of Christ.

One of the ideas the kids came up with after driving around the city was to come to your church and paint your fence, because it “looked like it needed some work.”  And so here they were, just trying to bless you as the pastor and your congregation.

Like many pastors, you were stunned.  How could a group of people from another city, presume to know how they could serve you and your congregation without ever having had a conversation with anyone in your church?  As you shared your struggle with the leaders of the group, they were unable to understand.  As they explained to you, they were just trying to serve you, believed God had led them to your church, and were only trying to be a blessing.

Sound far fetched?  Maybe, if you live here in the United States.  But every year thousands of people leave the US on mission trips to every corner of the globe convinced that they know best what the local church over there needs, and involving themselves in mission work just like this.

How does this type of self absorbed mission happen?  I am convinced there are three main factors that are contributing to this dilemma.

Arrogance

Incredibly, it is very hard for many of us to believe that people in another country might know more about God, the Bible, Christianity, or even evangelism within their culture than we do.  I recently sat down with a few 20 somethings to talk about mission in Oaxaca.  They were convinced that they could open a training institute in that diverse area to teach pastors how to reach into indigenous villages and evangelize people and plant churches.

These well intentioned young people had never lived in the area, spoke little or no Spanish, did not speak any of the indigenous languages and understood nothing of the local culture.  Yet they were ready to get on a plane, head out to a few local villages and begin to teach locals everything they needed to know about church planting.  When I pushed them, they responded that “biblical values” would trump any cultural differences.  I could almost hear David Livermore screaming “No!” in his widely read book, Serving with Eyes Wide Open.

Like the kids above who were painting the fence, the group that wanted to serve in Oaxaca was simply assuming that they knew best what the local church needed.  It was if they believed the local leaders and pastors were just sitting around doing nothing because they did not know how to reach their people.

You see, this group of young people had the idea that if they did not get to Oaxaca and teach those local leaders, they would never know how to evangelize their unreached brethren.

Their belief in the importance of their upcoming mission was rooted in an arrogance that discounted the already ongoing work of thousands of Oaxacan Christians in sharing the Gospel under intensely difficult conditions.  Everyday Oaxacan leaders were praying for and sharing Jesus in villages across the state.  A belief that only we, as Americans know the best way to reach people for Christ is, simply stated, rooted in missiological arrogance that gets it’s expression from American Exceptionalism.

Money

Following closely on the heels of arrogance is money.  Perhaps nothing impacts current mission work and leads to the types of problems I presented above more than money.

Robert Guerrero, the Church Planting Catalyst for City to City in New York City and formerly of The Red del Camino in Latin America has worked extensively with short-term teams in his church planting ministry in the Dominican Republic.  Guerrero says that one of the most important things leaders of short-term mission teams can do is visit the field and their perspective mission partner well ahead of time.

It is this visit that gives the potential goer guest a chance to see the mission, envision what his or her team will be doing, establish a communication link and relationship with the field missionary and hear how the short term team can best serve the local mission.

With his type of personal connection, and the first hand knowledge of the mission that comes with it, it is hard to imagine a scenario where a team shows up unannounced and starts working on your facility.

Unfortunately many leaders and churches, struggling to make ends meet in an era of declining budgets, frequently eschew this vital step.  It is a penny wise and pound foolish decision.

Last spring a local church here in Las Vegas where I have my office, contacted me about sending a team to support our ministry in Oaxaca.  After a few telephone calls and a couple of face to face meetings, I suggested they come and visit our ministry in Oaxaca so they could get a real personal feel for what I was telling them.

We had a great few days last August as I was able to show them first hand how their church could get involved.  They met our partners, and perhaps most important, saw first hand what their church members could do to support the Missio Dei where we were serving.

Did it cost money?  Yes it did.  Was it worth it?  Of course, unless you believe that showing up at a strangers church and painting their fence is good mission.

The bottom line is this... good mission costs money and there are no short cuts, and that includes the final factor that leads to inefficient self absorbed mission.

Lack of Training

Perhaps more than anything else, lack of training, for both leaders and participants, leads to sub par, self absorbed missions.  That’s because the attitudes that lead to missional arrogance and a desire to do mission on the cheap have their basis in a lack of effective training.

An effective training program that crosses all phases of your mission, from pre-field orientation to post-field debriefing will catch many potential mission errors long before they become on field disasters.

When you are guided in your training and preparation by a person knowledgeable in where you will be serving and the pitfalls of short-term mission, your effectiveness in mission increases exponentially.

Effective training makes sure that participants are culturally prepared, understand the needs of the field, know that partnership is important and provide a strong biblical foundation upon which to base your mission.

Just the other day I received a telephone call from John, a Youth Pastor in the Pacific Northwest.  When he was younger, he served on numerous teams with me in Mexico. Clearly he had an idea about what he wanted his group of students to do, but then as he was sharing those ideas, he stopped.  He stopped because he wanted to share something else.  He wanted to make sure that I knew he really wanted his group to serve us, and our mission.

John grew up in a program that had been prepared for short-term mission by a first class training organization, DELTA Ministries.  His youth pastor when he was young believed in preparing his students and modeled the value of a relationship with the field through frequent non mission visits to the field and conversations with his missionary partners.

This type of experience only comes from good preparation and training.  But here’s the rub... good training costs money and unfortunately, if a group or team is looking to cut expenses, professional training and preparation is often the first to go.

Conclusion

The story I shared above is 100% true.  I was sitting in a church I had served for many years in Northern Mexico when a group of kids and their leaders from a major US Mission agency showed up and started painting.  When I heard them I went outside and asked their leaders what they were doing and if they had asked permission or had talked to anyone at the church.

They were stunned that I would even question them.  After all, they were missionaries serving God in Mexico.  Arrogance.

They were unhappy when I asked them why they had done no prep on the fence they were now painting and they said each team had a budget for these projects around the city.  Money.

And when I asked them if they were aware that they were using the wrong type of paint for the job, they explained that they just figured any white paint would work.  Lack of training.

Missions work, particularly across cultures, is hard.  It requires, in spite of what many articles and short term mission advocates may tell you, lots of time, money and preparation to get it right.

It also requires a relationship with local leaders, pastors and missionaries on the field. Almost every problem a short-term team might encounter in the field could be alleviated if only they were working alongside someone who knew the ins and outs of the culture and area where they were serving.

But this perspective comes from taking a long view of ministry and a willingness to invest mightily for effective mission.

Is Your Mission Too Short? Decide to be Different and Stay Connected...

Summer is almost over.  The thought of short-term mission will soon be put away as Americans turn to back to school sales, football, turkey and Christmas shopping. 

And yet, the ministry goes on!

As people across America turn to other pursuits, those they have served the last few months will still be on the front lines of their mission, doing what they believe God has called them to.

For me and AIL Ministry, that means raising the funds necessary to help our partners in Mexico reach their ministry dreams.  Day camps, overnight camps in both Ensenada and Oaxaca, outreach in Guadalajara, a solar well in Oaxaca, fish farms, personal greenhouses... the list goes on.

For our partners, that means back to the day to day grind of ministry.  The kind of things that don’t lend themselves well to big pictures.  Smaller Sunday services because there are no gringos.  Bible studies for 5 or 6 people.  Little outside help for the worship teams and few visitors to break up the monotony of ministry.

In short, it is back to life.

I’ve always said that one of the weaknesses of short-term mission is that they are, by definition, short.  But they do not have to be.  We could make a decision to intentionally live differently and continue to impact those with whom we served for that one or two week stretch sometime over the last few months.

Think about it.

What if, as a result of your time in Mexico, China, India or where ever else you served, you made a concrete commitment to pray regularly for that country and her people?  How about instead of a huge Thanksgiving meal, complete with turkey and all the trimmings, you and your family decided to eschew the gluttony of that weekend here in the US and made a few meals like what you had while on mission?  Maybe that means a meal of just rice, or tortillas and beans, while thanking God for giving you that mission experience.

One person I know set up an account so he could help a pastor he knows get some books he needed.  That pastor mentioned to me the other day how much that meant to him.  I think it cost less than $20.00.

Even baby steps like these can help keep your mind focused outside of your bubble and more inclined to the people you connected with over the summer.

As short-term people, while our travels and ministries over there end, or are put on hold, our connection with people does not, and should not, have to come to an end... even if we never return.

We can, and should, continue to stay connected, and it has never been easier.

Yes, short-term missions are short, but they do not have to be.  All you have to do is make a decision to stay connected to the people just a few weeks ago said changed your life.

Will you do it?

Practical Love in a Suspicious World... living Paul's words out loud!

Dios es Amor Summer Camp 2013

“If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.”

Apostle Paul, 1 Cor. 13:1

Thank you Paul, those are great words, but just what exactly do they mean in the real world?

That is the question many in the mission community are struggling to deal with as churches work to better connect with people in their communities, be they in Las Vegas, China or Mexico, where I serve.

It used to be that evangelism and showing love was understood as knocking on someone’s door and sharing the Gospel with them.  Whether that was through a program like Evangelism Explosion and their 2 important questions or a sharing of one of the famous Chick Tracts, saving someone from hell was seen as the ultimate expression of love.

Now we are seeing a different view as people strive to give their love a practical expression that was often missing in the types of encounters mentioned above.  One of the churches I work with, Dios es Amor [God is Love Church] in Ensenada is doing a good job with this.

8 years ago we helped this church, known locally as IDBEA, realize a dream of having an overnight camp for the children of the community around their church.  I remember the staff feeling overwhelmed at the thought of taking care of meals and programming for the 15 kids we had back then.

Now that little idea has morphed into a month long day camp that has almost 100 kids in attendance from 7:30 in the morning until 4:00 in the afternoon.  And this year we kicked off the month with a 2-night camp that was attended by over 75 kids from the local community.

You want to talk about love?  Hugs, games, exercise, good food, field trips, laughing, crying, caring adults and young people helping all contribute to an atmosphere that oozes love and compassion for the families of this little corner of God’s world in Ensenada.

What is even better is that everything that happens at this day camp is a result of the family of God saying to the community that we love you and we want to be a part of your lives.

Critics call it a social Gospel approach that seldom yields people praying the prayer, as if that is our sole hoped for response.

I call this approach, especially in a society that is wary of Christianity, earning the right to be heard.

You see, where I serve, the evangelical church does not have a very good reputation.  People are suspicious of us, sometimes rightfully so.  Communities have been split, families destroyed and relationships abandoned.  What’s worse, these results are somehow celebrated in the evangelical church as evidence of a “true” relationship with a loving God.

I’ll admit, this approach is not for everyone.  IBDEA has lost some members because they are not more aggressive in trying to get kids to pray the prayer to accept Jesus.  And like a lot of churches that try this type of ministry, the change into a fully devoted follower of Jesus can at times, be painstakingly slow.

But it is happening. 

I’ve watched some of those kids who came to our first camp take leadership positions as they’ve grown and we are seeing families get connected to IBDEA because of this vital ministry.  I’ve also seen the community respond and offer to help in ways unimaginable just a few years ago because they see the church as a valuable asset to the colonia.

There is still much to be done. 

IBDEA has to think strategically about how to better integrate camp participants into the daily life of the church and they need to continue their work towards financial self-sufficiency, but those will come.

Right now they are focused on living out the love of Jesus in real and practical ways here in Ensenada... just as the Apostle Paul would have wanted.

Missionary Ink... are tattoos a line in the sand for missionary service?

I am sitting in a Starbucks in Las Vegas enjoying a hot cup of coffee on another hundred degree day.  As I look out the window, there's a couple sitting at one of the outside tables.

Both of them are fully tatted up with almost all exposed skin real estate below the neck covered in ink.

As someone who thinks almost constantly about how the church can reach out to new generations of people, the tattoo culture has intrigued me for a while.  How does the local church, not the hip, niche ones in urban centers around the country, reach out to people who have made their bodies a work in progress art project?

This is not an issue that is going away any time soon, and it impacts more than just the local church.

Let’s leave behind the local question and think globally... to the “ends of the earth” if you will.

In my role as a missionary in Mexico, I get a number of chances to speak to churches and groups around the US.  Receiving short-term teams and providing mission direction for churches is a big part of what I do.  One of the first things that hits me when I meet a group for the first time is how many people have tattoos.  

Years ago, tattoos were the exception, sported by only a few people, and rarely exposed in public.  Now, they are everywhere and we are confronted with them daily.  With this reality has come a new issue for those of us in the field serving people who might not share US sensibilities about freedom in Christ.

The apostle Paul famously said, and I’m paraphrasing here, “all things are lawful, but not everything is beneficial.”  Sadly, I think many are only taking the first part of his statement to heart.

I get asked all the time whether or not a Christian can get a tattoo.  To me, it almost seems like a trick question.  Sometimes a youth pastor has told his or her charges to ask the missionary, as if I have some sort of divine knowledge that they do not have access to.  Even parents send their kids to me, hoping I guess that I will deliver the bad news so they don’t have to say no themselves.

But for me, there is no easy answer on this.  Tattoos are not a black and white, or even a color issue in spite of the desire by many conservatives to stand on a specific line in Levitican Law.  

So what do we do?

I have no answers for how our church culture welcomes people covered in tattoos.  Just look around at your members and you’ll understand what I mean.  If your church is like a majority of churches in America today, I am guessing when that person walks in covered in tattoos, he going to get a few stares.  Okay a lot of stares.  Yet unless we are willing to write off an entire generation of young people, we must address this issue.

On the mission front I can only look back 19 years to a young man named Brian who served with me in Guadalajara for two weeks.  Brian came to know Jesus after he had been tatted up.  So as we talked about his options to serve, Brian came to realize that he should keep his tattoos covered while he was in Mexico.  That became part of Brian’s mission, or his offering to us and our partners in Mexico.  Fortunately, Brian was able to cover all of his tattoos.  Many people today are unable to do that.

So here’s my answer to all of you who have asked me whether a Christian can have a tattoo.  Sure you can.  But understand this... getting a tattoo may forever make it impossible for you to fulfill God’s calling on your life to go to the “ends of the earth.”

Let me put it another way.  

Your body is not your own once you give your life to Jesus and your decision on whether or not to get a tattoo could profoundly affect your ability to serve God on the mission field.  

I fear that even as we are seeing increased interest from young people in the mission field, whether it be long or short term, we may have to leave some of our most talented people at home.  Many of the places the church is serving, and the places with the biggest need of a Gospel witness are going to struggle with, or outright ban missionaries with tattoos.  

Why would someone choose to do something that could limit their ability to serve God in these areas?

Thinking about it like this, doesn’t it just seem a little selfish?

I’m just askin...

It's Friday but Sunday's Comin...

I think I was 19 years old when it happened.

I was up at a Christian Camp in the mountains, with my soon to be wife and hundreds of my closest friends.  The place was packed because that particular year, we had someone speaking to us who was unlike anyone else we had ever heard way back in 1978.

His name was Tony Campolo and he was to become a larger than life figure for me.

Throughout the weekend Tony weaved a call to serve the poor with Jesus call on our lives, admonishing us to do something great for God with our lives.

I remember one person shared with him that she wanted to be a doctor in the nice suburban area where she had grown up.  Tony looked right at her and asked why she would want to do that when she could serve the poor and make a real difference.  "There will always be plenty of doctors to serve the haves" he said, "why not help those who can't get to a doctor?"

She was devastated by his challenge.

I was stunned.

For the first time in my young life, the Gospel made practical sense and I made the decision that weekend to give my life to missions and serving the poor.

Almost 15 years later, in 1992, along with a friend, I founded Adventures in Life Ministry to do mission work in Mexico.  Add another 20 years on that, and today, the majority of our work in Mexico is centered in the state of Oaxaca, the second poorest state in the country.

There is no other way to say this... I am a missionary because God used Tony that weekend and over the years to touch and call me in ways I never expected.

At the end of that conference where I first met Tony, he shared his now famous "It's Friday, but Sunday's Comin'" sermon.

I think it's appropriate today on Good Friday to take a listen and reflect...