What's Love Got To Do With it... Everything if we really want to see changed lives...

Justin Martyr, a Samarian Christian, burned at the stake in Rome by order of the Prefect Rusticus  

Ask the martyrs.

You cannot force someone to believe otherwise if they have chosen to remain firm in their convictions.

No amount of yelling, demonizing, cajoling or even isolation will bring someone over to your side if they are adamantly opposed to what you believe.

So why try?

Yet that is exactly what Christians have been doing since Jerry Falwell founded the Moral Majority with Paul Weyrich in the late 1970’s.

The Moral Majority, making common cause with millions of evangelical believers, decided that the great moral failings of the American people could be righted through the political process and the passage of laws designed to police immoral behavior.

It all sounded too good to be true, and as it turns out, it was.

Albert Mohler, longtime head of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary has called the election results from last week a “moral catastrophe.”

They are only a catastrophe if you believe the church ought to be in the business of trying legislate our views, instead of lovingly trying to persuade people that Jesus offers them a better path, not just temporally, but eternally.

I wonder if we Christians, tired of seeing people reject our worldview, have decided that the best way to bring people to our point of view is through the force of the ballot box.

Is it possible, because we have been unable to get people to see the world as we do, that rather than reconsider our methods, we have unwittingly outsourced Jesus to the politicians?

Have we decided that since we cannot persuade dissenters to our side, we are instead no different from the Roman Empire that wrote them off through execution?

Whatever happened to humbly considering others “as better than ourselves,” as the Apostle Paul called us to do in Chapter 2 of his Epistle to the Philippians?  How about having the same mindset as Jesus?

As followers of Jesus, we have an incredible message of love, redemption and acceptance.  The message of Jesus is not one of contempt, hate and disgust.  Yet for many, who disagree with our views, that is how we treat them.

As Christians, we celebrate the martyrs of our faith.  We marvel at how they stood up against the power of the state, bravely accepting death.  They are our heros... men like Thomas, Paul, Peter... women like Perpetua, Felicity and Joan of Arc... and of course, Justin, Ignatius and Origen.

Yet we have forgotten the lessons those great men and women of faith taught us.  Force will never win out in the battle for the hearts and minds of the committed.

If we want to convince others of the truth of Christ, and expect to see life change in people on a daily basis, we can’t force it, as the Pharisees found out.

Maybe, just maybe, if we looked to Paul’s admonition, we would not need the power of the ballot box, or any other kind of force to convince people, because they would see it in our lives.

Now that would be a powerful antidote to a moral catastrophe.

Culture & Mission... Putting culture back in cross-cultural missions...

I was in the 450 year old Cathedral of Guadalajara a number of years ago when one of the people on a short-term mission I was leading asked me a question.

Looking at the hand carved confessionals and artwork that had been there hundreds of years, he wanted to know why we were wasting our time looking at that stuff when we could be outside “saving souls.”

I have thought a lot about that statement in my work in Mexico with Adventures in Life Ministry.

Most Christians would agree that the reason for mission is to help people know Jesus. 

However, few seem to agree that even a rudimentary understanding of the local culture is an important part of a successful mission.

There is a sense that time spent learning about the culture, history, and beliefs of the people you are serving is time wasted, because it takes away from the whatever is the central task of your mission.  

Whether it is outreach, construction, or even medical work, many short-term missionaries, out of great motives, are reluctant to spend part of their in country time to experience the life of those they are serving.

With a majority of short-term mission pre-field training focusng on logistics, health, food and bathroom issues, people leaving our shores to serve are getting on planes woefully unprepared to really understand the complexity of life abroad.  

Even taking the approach suggested by long time missionary to Honduras, Kurt Ver Beek, of using the first day or two after a team arrives to orient and expose them to the culture becomes a challenge to US based teams dreaming of high production and instant results from their mission work.  They want to get started on the “real” work.

This attitude of choosing to ignore the culture where we serve in favor of “the more important” work is one of the major shortcomings of short-term mission.  With limited time, participants want to be as productive as possible, but at what expense?

My Co-founder of Adventures in Life Ministry, Grady Martine was a long time worker with Young Life.  He always spoke of “earning the right to be heard.”  This was the idea that when you invest personally with people where they live, he would say you earn the right to have that important Gospel conversation.

It is too bad that for much of short-term mission, we see that value as only being useful in the United States, choosing to ignore its important ramifications when we leave our shores.

Successful cross-cultural mission, with long term lasting transformation only happens, when we truly understand the people whom we are called to serve.   Because as we get to know the people and their heart culture, we gain the respect and cultural insight necessary to take part in God’s work of “saving souls.”  

The Apostle Paul inherently understood this.  The only way he could become all things to all people was to understand who they were and what they were about.  And he did it all for the sake of the Gospel. 

For us, it is a lesson we must learn and practice if we are to truly realize the promise of cross cultural mission, both long and short-term.

“Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone to win as many as possible. To the Jews I became a Jew to win the Jews.  To those under the law, I became like one under the law.... I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means, I might save some...” 

1 Corinthians 9:19-23