Mezcal, Sin and Jesus... connecting the Gospel to the real world...

My friend Alberto and me walking in a maguey field in Oaxaca

The children all gathered around.

It was Christmas time and many of their parents, out of any real work for months, if not years, had few resources for food, let alone a few gifts of clothes.  The shoes and the jackets would keep some of the kids warm when the temperature dropped as the season moved deeper into winter.  Others might be lucky enough to find a new dress, shirt, or even a pair of pants to wear after school.

And thus it went for hours as Alberto and his team of friends and relatives tended to the needs of the people of his community.

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Today teams of kids are getting the opportunity to learn and play basketball because again, Alberto and his team, have decided to reach out to their community and tend to the needs of the people.  

Sponsoring an entire league, upwards of 50 children in the town where Alberto grew up are getting a chance to play organized basketball, complete with uniforms, coaches, rules, referees and for the winners, trophies.  Young boys with names like Jorge, Epifanio and Jesus are passing the ball around this citywide league, imagining one day they too may play for the Heat, the Bulls, or even the Lakers.

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She bent down, almost kneeling on the ground to talk with the old man outside the market.  He was selling herbs and a few chiles.  I was struck by the fact that she knew his name and was willing to get down to his level... saying in effect, she was no better than he was.  She bought all six of his chiles.

As we entered the market the chicken vendor called out to her by name and Pilar waved, stopped to chat and explained to us how good the the chickens at this market were.

And so it went through the entire tour.  Pilar knew the vendors, many by their names.  As we passed one stall, she asked the young boy where his mom was... running errands he replied.  “Tell her I said hello!”

This was Pilar’s community and like Alberto in his, she was determined to make a difference, to be part of the life of the community where God had planted her.

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About now you are probably waiting for me to tell you how Alberto and Pilar are part of one of the ministries with whom I work, and I wish I could.  Sadly however,  that is not possible because of what these two do for a living.  Alberto makes mezcal, the most popular type of alcohol in Oaxaca.  Pilar is a chef in Oaxaca and her restaurant sells, among other spirits, mezcal.  In the eyes of many evangelical pastors and leaders in Mexico, neither Alberto or Pilar can ever be Christian because of their work.  

Many of the ministries I know in Mexico, and in the US for that matter, have no real interest in building bridges into their communities and meeting people where they are at, especially if they work in certain businesses deemed almost super sinful, as the church views what both Alberto and Pilar are doing.  

It is this attitude that has many Christians and ministries today, in the name of purity, content to work on strengthening the body of Christ, almost exclusively for her own sake, refusing to engage the world.  It is as if we are building up spiritual muscle mass not for the hard work of engaging our communities with the redemptive life changing message of Jesus, but so that we can have better bible studies, better worship experiences and better balance sheets.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love a good bible study and believe a strong understanding of the scriptures is vital to the health and well being of a church.  But churches that pour a majority of their resources into Sunday services and bible study groups to such an extent that there is little or no organized church based community engagement will fail.  

They may grow and have hundreds of people in the seats, but they will become, in the words of one of my closest friends, “a cult of biblical knowledge” unwilling or unable to be the healing hands and feet of Jesus in a hurting and broken world.  What kind of mission is that?  

After a few days recently with a pastor in Mexico, he stopped me in mid sentence and said to me, somewhat exasperated, “Dave, it’s as if you believe that a church that is not working in the community is not a church!”  “No”, I told him, “that is not true.  I just do not believe it is a very good church and is not fulfilling its’ call to be gathered to go out. [ecclesia]”

Why, I asked, are people like Alberto and Pilar, people with whom the evangelical church in Mexico would normally never associate, more interested in helping their people and extending a loving hand than many Christians and their churches?

Why is it that many churches mourn over a few missing people at our Sunday worship time, yet do not take steps to alleviate pain, poverty and suffering in peoples lives that we see daily around our church buildings and facilities?

And why is it that the evangelical church looks scornfully at people like Alberto and Pilar when they serve their communities while at the same time refusing to lock arms with them in order to gain the credibility to share about Jesus and his redemptive story in those very communities?  

I am still waiting for the answers.

Missional Living... is it time to cut the ties that bind?

The house looked like any other pastor’s house you’ve been in.

Neat, clean and comfortable.  Lots of books on the shelves, a computer desk; blender and coffee grinder in the kitchen.

The walls had pictures of the kids and the houses the family had lived in over the years.  There were a few plaques saying thank you from the various churches the family had served over the years.  Crosses adorned the walls in a few spots.

Underneath the television was a pile of Disney videos, an X-Box and a bible or two.

It was as if you were looking at some sort of Norman Rockwell painting of vintage pastoral Americana.

Except this house was not in America.  It was in Mexico, Romania, China, and Russia.  It was in Kenya, Brazil, Japan, and France.  And that is the problem.

US Missionaries living outside our country are increasingly choosing to live apart from the local communities whom they are called to serve.

Out of fear for their safety, both real and imagined, many missionaries who call on others to rely on God and preach a message of God’s provision are living as huddled masses cut off from the reality of the local life and people they are called to serve.

It should not be like this.

Last year I was speaking at a small bible college in Montana and during lunch one of the students decided to share her dreams with me.  Recently married, she told me she and her new husband were going to Latin American to be missionaries. 

When I asked her where, she said their plans were still not final, but that where ever it was, a major airport had to be close by.  I asked her why and she shared that she had diabetes and in case she had an emergency, she wanted to be able to get back to the US quickly for good medical care.  

She was not happy when I suggested she stay home because we do not need more missionaries in foreign lands inexplicably tethered to the US.

Contrast this example with a story shared with me recently about an American missionary serving in Turkey.  He has a serious illness and has decided to stay in Turkey and get treatment.  Will he survive?  Not unless God intervenes and changes the trajectory of his illness.

Yet this missionary, along with his wife and kids have made the decision that there is more to be gained for the Kingdom by staying put in Turkey during the illness and after he dies.  He will even be buried there and his wife will carry on the ministry they built, staying connected to the community they have served.

Which family will have the greater Christian witness over the long term?  The family that gets on the plane back to the US when something difficult crops up, or the family that is so vested in their new country and incarnational living that they cannot conceive of leaving their ministry, friends and the country to where God sent them, even in the face of tragedy?

Jeremy Parks of the Southern Baptist Convention in his excellent blog on this very subject calls it “Living Where You Live” and even connects it to ministry here in the US.

The bottom line is this.  Missionary effectiveness is compromised when those we serve can sense that our hearts reside not with them, but to our home countries and communities.  Effective long term cross cultural ministry cannot happen when we are inextricably bound to our home cultures and lands.

Sadly these tethers often lead to more harm than good.

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