Paul Hobbs

I was introduced last week to the work of an artist that others might be interested in. His name is Paul Hobbs, and he lives in England. My favourite piece is called "Between the Image and the Flame", as seen on the right. I would encourage you to take some time to view some more of his work. Many of his pieces are available as very affordable prints. His website is: http://www.arthobbs.com/index.php

Discipleship Thoughts

For a long time now, Trevor and I have felt very passionate about the importance of discipleship - seeking to be discipled, and actively being a discipler have characterized a lot of the spiritually verdant places in my life over the past 15 years. I was recently told by a pastor at a numerically thriving church here in England that as far as he's concerned, although Alpha is great for 'first stage discipleship', "they" have yet to produce an effective 'second stage discipleship' program. Two verse sets I've been thinking of over the past few weeks on the subject are:

Romans 14:17 (New International Version)

17For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit,

and:

2 Peter 1:3-11 (New International Version)

Making One's Calling and Election Sure

3His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. 4Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.

5For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; 6and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; 7and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. 8For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9But if anyone does not have them, he is nearsighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins.

10Therefore, my brothers, be all the more eager to make your calling and election sure. For if you do these things, you will never fall, 11and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

We got talking over the holidays about the difference between that which is God's job (first passage - see also The Armour of God, and the Fruit of the Spirit on this subject), and what is our job as Christians to both pursue ourselves and lead others towards (see second passage).

We noticed that the order of things to attain to was different from that which we ordinarily see encouraged by our churches:

• to faith - this is the starting point. The starting point is not moral perfection; heterosexual orientation; wife, two kids and a dog; enough money to support the church's latest building fund. No, the starting point is faith. And I would argue that as knowledge doesn't come for a long time down the list, it is the faith to believe that Christ might be worth following. Its the equivalent of the people who tagged along on the day of the Feeding of the 5000 - just enough inkling of the importance of this backwoods teacher to think it might be worth giving up a day's work and hiking a couple of miles into the countryside to hear him preach. When we expect more than this, are we making barriers to people's ability to approach God?
• add goodness - again, not where we would usually go next. We tend towards either knowledge (come to Alpha, come to our New Believer's Sunday School class, attend confirmation classes), or self-control (stop drinking, stop being promiscuous, stop wearing the wrong clothes, hanging around with the wrong people, etc.) But no, this is goodness. This isn't choosing not to do the things you know are wrong (or rather, have been taught are wrong), but instead is choosing to do the little things that are good.
• to goodness, add knowledge - whew, we finally made it to the important thing if you're an evangelical. We can finally give you knowledge. But its still important to realize where that knowledge is resting on - its resting on a pre-existing foundation (or at least beginnings of a foundation) built on faith and goodness. And I would argue that as Jesus is not terribly into "the law" that this is not the time to lay down lots of laws. Instead, I think this is the opportunity to introduce people to the person of Jesus - who He is, what He has said, what He has done. To let them get to know Him. And subsequently, to read (carefully and thoroughly!!!) what the epistles have to say about Christian life.
• to knowledge, add self-control - this is the point at which the list of "do-nots" finally have a place, and yet I find it terribly interesting that self-control is meant to come out of knowledge. It isn't me screwing up my eyes and trying really hard, or me telling someone else to, for that matter. Its a person being introduced to the person of Christ, and out of the knowledge of that Person, responding with self-control to the prompting of the Holy Spirit. My guess is, this would be far more life-changing than what I have often seen.
• to self-control, perseverance - are you a seed that fell among the weeds and got chocked and died, or a seed which fell on good soil and grew. Its not enough to learn to listen and obey today; not enough to learn to be patient and wait today - if faith is going to produce fruit, then we have to learn to persevere through good times and bad. And I don't think its possible to do that if the discipler isn't candid and open about at least some of their own personal struggles and their own need to persevere - it just doesn't seem plausible to the person being discipled without a real-life example.
• to perseverance, godliness - we are told throughout the gospels, and Matthew in particular, to "Seek the Kingdom". I wonder whether part of learning perseverance is building the toolkit to seek godliness (or the Kingdom?)
• to godliness, brotherly kindness; to brotherly kindness, love - the NLT renders this "Godliness leads to love for other Christians, and finally you will grow to have genuine love for everyone." The greatest commandment is "love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind; the second is like it - love your neighbour as yourself." This is not, intriguingly, where it starts. This is where it ends. This is the ultimate goal. And the NLT translation suggests that if we cannot love our Christian brothers and sisters, we're going to have a really hard time trying to go outside of our self-imposed walls to breathe love into the lives of hurting people.

I want to see the gospel change lives. And I'd love to see the face of Christ's love light up the world with His presence, through His Body. What will it take for us to get to the point in our churches, in our "evangelism", where we are "go[ing] into all the world and mak[ing] disciples of all nations"?

Where did December Go???

Well, after almost a full month of not posting, the answer is simple - a house full of people taking it in turns to come down with nasty bugs and getting ready for Christmas!

We are now about to be invaded by the entire in-law clan for New Year's Eve, so this looks like about the last opportunity for some peace and quiet before 2007 comes to an end.

As such, here are some updates, and also some previews to things I'm hoping to come back in 2008:

1. Our house has been delayed - probably by approximately 6 weeks. If you are reading this and live in Barrie or know anyone who does, we're going to need a place to stay for about six weeks. We do our best to be small and inconspicuous, but lets face it - two adults and two little girls who are homeschooled just isn't the same as a quiet female student who spends all her time at the university library or her boyfriend's house!
   
2. If you don't live in Barrie or know someone who does but are reading this, please pray for God's provision.
3. In spite of delays, the house has begun to emerge:
4. Trevor gave me "The Irresistible Revolution" for Christmas, and I'm hoping to go through and post some comments in the next couple of weeks.
   
5. The previous point, and indeed any other posting I hope to do in the next couple of months, is dependent on our computer being healed. We are having issues with the fan, and if it a) dies; or b) is not easily replaceable, we may be out of the communication loop for a while. I will do my best.
6. 2008 looks like a very exciting time for us. After years of struggling with where we're meant to be, we are feeling very excited about moving to Barrie. Are we "called" to Barrie? I don't know about that - I think we're called to go into all the world and make disciples. Barrie just happens to be one place in the world. But I am tentatively hoping and even beginning to risk the terror of praying that God would work through our home and our lives in this new place. If I get the guts, I will try to share some of what is beginning to emerge in terms of a plan (on the strictest of understandings that as with any plan it is only the place to begin from - I refuse to be held to it!)

Blessings to you all as 2007 draws to a close, and may 2008 bring righteousness, joy and peace. (See Romans 14:17-18)

17For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, 18because anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and approved by men.

Theology of Suffering

I think the following (by Trevor) provides an interesting counter-point to the Radio 4 broadcast I posted earlier:

Have you ever considered that the book of Job is a study in theologians getting it dead wrong? Job asks the eternal question "why is there pain and suffering? How can this be the work of a just God?" and his friends try to answer. They don't just trot out cheap aphorisms and continue on their way- they sit with Job for 7 days before speaking, if I recall correctly. And then they take a lot of chapters to construct a theodicy, a theology of suffering. But unfortunately, it basically boils down to 'it must be your fault.'

I'm wondering if the book is basically a warning about the dangers of acting as God's spokesman. Job's friends are not thanked for their efforts to teach theology to Job or for defending God's actions. God, it seems, does not need apologists.

Is it O.K. for Job to ask the questions, but not for his friends to answer them?

I suspect we need to be very careful in rushing to answer this type of question. Maybe it's important for each individual to wrestle with God and the problems of pain and injustice, and in our hurry to tie up theological loose ends we truncate this process.

I suspect that God is less interested in what we think about these questions, than in how we react to them. But it's probably easier to explain suffering than try to alleviate it.

An interesting radio piece

Yesterday evening I listened to "From Calvary to Lambeth" on BBC Radio 4. It was discussing the ever-persistent question of what the church should do with the issue of homosexuality, but it was also interesting because of the fact that each "side" of the issue came from a different "side" of the conservative/liberal divide. So their comments give voice to more than simply opinions on this always testy subject.

Anyways, I found it very interesting ...

Theology by Terry Pratchett

I love the Terry Pratchett books. I was first introduced to them by my husband and his family, and thoroughly enjoy the plot, characterisations and generally vivid and page-turning narratives. But one of the things I like the most about Pratchett is that he often makes me think.

This week the real world and Pratchett intersected with some surprising results.

I heard of an incident with a local Christian charity, who had been preparing toiletry bags for distribution at a local hospital. An entire car-load of toiletry bags was delivered with much effort on the part of many volunteers to the hospital's chaplaincy department for distribution, and the chaplaincy rang up the charity to complain ... because they had labeled the bags, "With love from [insert charity branch name here]" This apparently has the potential to cause great offense to the persons in the hospital receiving this charity - they cannot deliver anything which carries the faintest whiff of being connected with Christianity, or apparently the chaplaincy may not have leave from the hospital trustees to retain their position. Or so I was told.

The same night I heard of this, I read the following:

"This Om ... anyone seen him?"

"It is said three thousand people witnessed his manifestation at the Great Temple when he made the Covenant with the prophet Brutha and saved him from death by torture on the iron turtle--"

"But I bet that now they're arguing about what they actually saw, eh?"

"Well, indeed, yes, there are many opinions--"

"Right. Right. That's people for you. Now if I'd seen him, really there, really alive, it'd be in me like a fever. If I thought there was some god who really did care two hoots about people, who watched 'em like a father and cared for 'em like a mother ... well, you wouldn't catch me sayin' things like "There are two sides to every question," and "We must respect other people's beliefs." You wouldn't find me just being gen'rally nice in the hope that it'd all turn out right in the end, not if that flame was burning in me like an unforgivin' sword. And I did say burnin', Mister Oats, 'cos that's what it'd be. You say that you people don't burn folk and sacrifice people any more, but that's what true faith would mean, y'see? Sacrificin' your own life, one day at a time, to the flame, declarin' the truth of it, workin' for it, breathin' the soul of it. That's religion. Anything else is just ... is just bein' nice. And a way of keepin' in touch with the neighbours.'

She relaxed slightly, and went on in a quieter voice: "Anyway, that's what I'd be, if I really believed. And I don't think that's fashionable right now, 'cos it seems that if you sees evil now you have to wring your hands and say, "Oh deary me, we must debate this." That's my two penn'orth, Mister Oats. You be happy to let things lie. Don't chase faith, 'cos you'll never catch it." She added, almost as an aside, "But, perhaps, you can live faithfully."

Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum

Hmmm.

“Who Is My Neighbour?” - Kin-selective altruism and the radical gospel

One day an expert in religious law stood up to test Jesus by asking him this question: “Teacher, what must I do to receive eternal life?”

Jesus replied, “What does the law of Moses say? How do you read it?”

The man answered, “'You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind.' And, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'”

“Right!” Jesus told him. “Do this and you will live!”

The man wanted to justify his actions, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

Luke 10:25 – 29

Jesus answered with the parable of the good Samaritan. The question that triggers the story is 'who is my neighbour?' The command, 'love your neighbour' isn't, of itself, a new and radical teaching. That is, if my neighbour is a member of my tribe, someone genetically similar to me, who keeps my accepted code of laws, and knows the secret handshakes of my group, then it makes total sense for me to behave altruistically towards them – indeed millenia of cultural conditioning have predisposed me to do just that. But the parable of the Good Samaritan says something different than that – it suggests that our neighbour is much farther away from our tribe than we may feel comfortable with. If we are to understand why Christians have such a difficult time 'loving their neighbours' perhaps an understanding of the role of tribal identity may be helpful.

There is a concept called kin-selected altruism which is defined as 'behaviour that benefits close relatives'. Humans, like many other organisms, have survived for millenia because of their defense of the tribe. A hunter-gatherer tribe, which lives very close to the edge of its resources at all times and in all seasons, must defend the livelihood of their own tribe over the tribes of those around them. A competing tribe who comes too close to scarce food resources puts both you and your tribe at risk of hunger, starvation and ultimately death. To secure access to the resources that do exist, power is necessary within the tribe, and therefore it is valuable to fight to gain power. This is true both for males who will seek the role of chief, and females who will seek the role of chief's wife (regardless of how many wives the chief may already have!) But ultimately the fight for power within the group will be superceeded by the necessity of defense of the tribe.

The purpose of life as human beings is not simply to survive ourselves, but to “be fruitful and multiply”. There is, therefore, a God-inspired direction toward having children. Interestingly, however, this desire for children often falls under the reality of kin-selected altruism, through intra-tribal marriage, carefully controlled inter-tribal marriage and conqueror's rights. Tribal intramarriage is something that goes back to the very earliest time period, and it is not unusual in ancient tribes to see cousins and even half-siblings being married to each other. Even in those tribes which do not believe in marriage within the tribe, you will find there are definitive limits on which (very closely genetically similar) tribes are acceptable for potential marriage partners. And when one tribe is victorious over another, they will very frequently kill the men and rape the women, thereby establishing their genetic makeup in the offspring of even this previous enemy.¹ In each case, the goal of procreation is bounded by the need to protect tribal identity, which has as its outcome a situation whereby the next generation is as genetically similar to your own as possible. This 'intentional breeding' strategy has obvious value in a clan and tribal-based society. In a world where 'social security' in old age comes from your children and your children's children – and their allegiance towards you, the closer you are to your offspring – the more they can see themselves in you – the more likely they are to care for you when you are at your most vulnerable.²

To 'benefit our close relatives' above those from another tribe – whether as a means of establishing land borders, determining acceptable marriage partners or protecting other societal interests – requires a clear set of guidelines to ensure that we know who is 'in' and who is 'out'. All the while you live in a small hunter-gatherer society of 100 – 150, it is relatively simple to distinguish between those who are relatives and those who aren't – the human brain can track them all. Just to be on the safe side, however, (and especially as humans have expanded their sphere of relationship beyond 150³) humans have developed a fascinating array of machinery to provide this distinction. When we look at tribal groups that have maintained their isolation from the rest of the world, we see that they have distinctive language, clothing (or lack there-of), jewellery and piercing practices.⁴ They have established methods for determining leadership and pride of place is given to the tribal story-teller. The chief and story-teller work together to maintain a continuance of the shared stories, customs, superstitions and behaviour of the tribe. Coming-of-age rituals bring children into the heart of the tribe, ensure their commitment to the ways of the tribe, and leave the imprint of the tribal beliefs upon them for the rest of their lives.

With this as our historical reality, it is interesting to see what has happened as our societal groupings have enlarged into towns, villages and cities. The move to larger centres of civilisation has pushed our potential social interactions far beyond the natural limit of 150 people with whom we are capable of maintaining a social relationship. We cannot know just by virtue of a person being in 'our place' whether they are 'us' or 'them'. We cannot necessarily identify someone visually as 'us' or 'them', even. And although it may not be politically correct to say so, human beings by enlarge continue to strive to make this distinction. Because if, as we have done as humans since the very beginning, we are to propagate our genetic material over that of the 'other', or even to know who qualifies as 'those closely related to us' toward whom we should engage in relationships of reciprocal benefit, we need to work very hard at both maintaining our tribal markers and analysing those of the people around us. And even if 'us' versus 'them' cannot be linked to genetic similarity, we strive to categorise the people around us in an attempt to bring the infinite number of human relationships available down to a manageable number – a process which still requires markers of distinction.

Hence the pervasive human tendency to form subgroups – complete with distinctive clothing, distinctive language, and distinctive cultural mannerisms. A random high-school might well include a Goth, Skater, Stoner, Jock, and Nerd sub-culture, just to name a few, but this activity is not limited to those of the 'angsty-teenage-rebellion' stage. In general, whether the distinctions are race, class, religion or sub-culture, teens and adults⁵ seek to define the boundaries upon which to determine who they will behave better towards, be more willing to help out, or more willing to engage in acts of procreation with. These people will be those who appear to belong to their 'tribe'.

This may seem terribly foreign, but it is true in the church, as well. We divide ourselves into tribes, although we call them denominations, and we divide ourselves into clans – the Chinese Baptist Church, for example, as opposed to simply the Baptist Church. Its very easy to spot someone from your own tribe, just by observing for a few minutes the language they use (do they say 'Lord's supper', 'Eucharist', or 'Communion', just as an obvious example), the issues that they concern themselves with, and the language in which all things 'official' are conducted. Even in the very newest, 'post-modern' streams of the church, there are flags of distinction, in-phrases, and emphases which are used like a swipe-card in the office to let in those with the secret password, and keep all others out.

Against this background, the parable Jesus tells becomes incredibly radical, even to our 21^st century Christian ears. Jesus' story tells us that our neighbour may well be a Samaritan – someone from a different tribe! In fact, not only were the Samaritans an enemy tribe – they were distant cousins to the Israelites, who sold out their cultural distinctiveness when the Assyrians overran Israel. Instead of being taken away as captives, they agreed to the Assyrian resettlement terms and intermarried with the Assyrians. They still maintained their place as Abraham's descendents, still claimed to worship YHWH, and still lived in the Holy Land. But their intermarriage had, to the returned exiles who kept their cultural laws of only ever marrying a Jew, turned them into the lowest form of scum – a people and region of Israel so despised that people would travel far out of their way, with much personal risk, to avoid contact with them. These are the 'neighbours' that Jesus would have us love!

So if Jesus is truly saying 'act to the benefit of those that are not closely related to you', or to those who, even worse, have broken the code of the tribe, then he is challenging every societal norm back to the beginning of time.

Like the Pharisees of old, we cling to the security of a list of do's and don'ts to distinguish 'us' from 'them'. Our distinctions span both questions of tribal identity and clan, pulling us into ever shrinking spheres of influence and interaction. Perhaps the question of 'who is my neighbour?' could be rephrased as 'who is my tribe?' and the answer Jesus gives, to one of the 'teachers of religious law' is, 'the one who has broken the rules'. Over the course of Jesus' teaching and throughout the remainder of the New Testatment, this concept is expanded upon time and again, until the answer to 'who is my neighbour?' is answerable in one word – everyone.⁶

At the heart of the gospel is this incredibly new idea – that everyone is a part of my tribe. In Christ alone can this idea take shape – can the chasms that have separated us throughout human history be dissolved, not for the purpose of building a new tribal identity, but for the awe-inspiring experience of transcending tribal identity until there is room for everyone.

Into the room walked four goths. They found space for themselves amongst the overturned desks of the crowded classroom – their presence bringing the total number of students to over 40. I looked around in amazement to see catholics, mainline and evangelical protestants; chinese, european and african; christian, neo-pagan and atheist; goths, skaters, nerds, artsies and locals all gathered together to wrestle with the person and message of Jesus Christ.

Heather – remembering her high school Christian Club, Dustkickers for Christ

When this is our reality, we will catch a foretaste of heaven.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the old heaven and the old earth had disappeared. And the sea was also gone. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven like a beautiful bride prepared for her husband. ... No temple could be seen in the city, for the Lord God Almight and the Lamb are its temple. And the city has no need of sun or moon, for the glory of God illuminates the city, and the Lamb is its light. The nations of the earth will walk in its light, and the rulers of the world will come and bring their glory to it. Its gates never close at the end of the day because there is no night. And all the nations will bring their glory and honor into the city.

Revelation 21: 1-2; 22-26

1Of course, although the children of these unions will outwardly be taught only that of their father's culture, challenges have often come about when the mother has sereptitiously passed on her own tribal stories, religion and markers.

2This is also a fairly obvious explanation as to why those with genetic disabilities have for so long been left to die – they are genetically dissimilar, they would cause undue hardship to the entire community, and they put the entire community at risk by their very existence. Its not a very 'nice' view to us today, but similar arguments are still used in 2007: “I can't possibly look after a disabled child – it would hurt my marriage; I don't have enough money; it would rob my other children of the right to grow up in a 'normal' household.” Although all true, I suspect the parable of the Good Samaritan would have something to say about this as well ....

3Dunbar's Number. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number

4I personally would not necessarily enjoy having a stretched lip, an elongated neck or stretched earlobe, but these are just a handfull of the piercing practices used by African tribes to this day as tribal marks of distinction.

5Although children will sometimes make these distinctions, below the age of eight they are unlikely to come to the distinctive conclusions on their own – it is far more likely that if they do so it will be at the behest or suggestion of someone older than them.

6Paul asserts that There is neither Jew nor Greek,”; Peter experiences the vision of the sheet; the Jerusalem council determines that circumcision is not necessary for the gentiles who have become believers; Paul interacts with the Ethiopian official; John's vision recorded in Revelation includes a place full of all the nations.

Perhaps I'm a "Been-to"

I was talking to my mother-in-law this afternoon, and saying that its sometimes difficult to explain who I am and how I think to people from "my tribe" - by which I mean the evangelical Christian world I grew up in and around. I never really fit in this "tribe" completely anyway - I'm far too much of a boundary-pusher, and grew up with parents who were as well, but in the last five years I've become further and further removed from it!

Anyways, my mother-in-law said, "I know what you are - you're a Been-to". I asked for clarification - I wasn't sure what this meant, but she said, "A Been-to is a person in Nigeria who grew up in Nigeria, but has 'been-to' somewhere else (usually Europe or North America). They come back to Africa, but they're never really the same - part of them is always different. And even though they grew up in their tribe, and know how the tribe works, they don't always do what you'd expect them to do. They are different. They are a Been-to."

I just loved the description!

Homeless ...

What does it mean to be truly hospitable? This is one of the things I'm thinking about at the moment. Last week I had two primary inputs on the subject - the first was the following passage, read aloud at church on Tuesday:

Matthew 22:1 - 14

Parable of the Great Feast

Jesus also told them other parables. He said, 2 “The Kingdom of Heaven can be illustrated by the story of a king who prepared a great wedding feast for his son. 3 When the banquet was ready, he sent his servants to notify those who were invited. But they all refused to come!

4 “So he sent other servants to tell them, ‘The feast has been prepared. The bulls and fattened cattle have been killed, and everything is ready. Come to the banquet!’ 5 But the guests he had invited ignored them and went their own way, one to his farm, another to his business. 6 Others seized his messengers and insulted them and killed them.

7 “The king was furious, and he sent out his army to destroy the murderers and burn their town. 8 And he said to his servants, ‘The wedding feast is ready, and the guests I invited aren’t worthy of the honor. 9 Now go out to the street corners and invite everyone you see.’ 10 So the servants brought in everyone they could find, good and bad alike, and the banquet hall was filled with guests.

11 “But when the king came in to meet the guests, he noticed a man who wasn’t wearing the proper clothes for a wedding. 12 ‘Friend,’ he asked, ‘how is it that you are here without wedding clothes?’ But the man had no reply. 13 Then the king said to his aides, ‘Bind his hands and feet and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

14 “For many are called, but few are chosen.”

The second input was on Friday morning when I met these two gentlemen on a frosty morning in Cambridge:

They are homeless. One was still quite drunk. The other may or may not have been at the time. They were both cold. They were both hungry. Neither was doing a heck of a lot to make their situations any better. A warm "full english" in a local cafe isn't much of an improvement, but it probably helped some. If I had had the guts to sit with them and eat with them, and if I had had the networked connections to be able to plug them into something useful, and if I lived in Cambridge and would see them again, maybe it would have been of a bit more use. But I didn't, and I couldn't, and I won't. The point is - this Kingdom business is both a lot simpler and a lot more complicated than we let on at our Sunday morning services ...

"Redeeming Mess"

I found the following poem at the back of my dad's book last night, and just wanted to post it. It was written by David Witt, a man I've known since I was about eight or nine. He and his wife lived and worked in the slums of Manilla for a number of years - they even had their two sons while they were on the field. They now live and work in Hamilton, in some of the rougher parts. They remind me of all of the men and women who I have had the privilege to come to know throughout my life - people who, when I think about it, remind me that there are still incredible Christians hiding in and around evangelical churches.

Redeeming Mess
by David Witt

Weaving tapestry out of discarded thread
faded, tattered, in colours no one wants
Pegs in shapes that fit no known holes
gouged, broken, scraped from improper use
Fields of harvest with grain ignored
people God loves, disfigured by our sin, as well as theirs.
Who will reach the dehumanized
those society discards by labeling--
Unwed mothers
Drunken bums
Welfare cheats
Ethnic minorities
Dropouts
Unemployed
Homeless.
Where will we find skins to hold such unconventional wine?
Can we live to welcome them,
rather than change them for our comfort?
Can we see them through His eyes rather than the world's,
perceive pearls of greater worth than our GNP?
He redeems our tidy huddles with messy grace
if only we are willing to embrace them and learn.

The Tapestry

I've been musing lately on the concept of denominations, and movements, etc., especially in relation to the whole 'emergent' conversation. I've spent the last two months being encouraged and built-up and strengthened by the discussion on Resonate as well as the Taize service at our local anglo-catholic parish church (Anglo-Catholic = bells-and-smells Anglican).

It makes me realize that there is still value in places I do not necessarily expect to find value in. And it makes me realize that we, as the Body of Christ, are being woven by Christ into a beautiful tapestry, proclaiming His love to the world around us. That tapestry will only tell the story of Christ's love effectively, however, if it is woven of many multi-coloured threads. Like the beautiful tapestries in the art gallery, some of these colours will be used and reused in various places - in fact, if you look carefully, they will be the dominant colour - but will be so normal and ordinary that we won't notice them. Without these threads, the whole tapestry would fall apart, but they are nothing special in and of themselves. Then there are other threads which stand out from the rest - crimson reds, vibrant blues, even a bit of gold thread here and there. These colours aren't as common - they don't cover great huge sections of the tapestry, for the dyes they are made from are too costly to use very much of them - but they add something to the tapestry, to the image of Christ's love, that is not otherwise there.

I want to see Christ's love displayed for all the world to see, but first, I suspect, we will have to come to see the value in one another's 'colours' ourselves.

Here's an example. I read recently a list of the top ten Christian worship songs (?!?). The list contained primarily songs English in origin (as opposed to American, or Australian), that came almost exclusively from musicians from one or two major charismatic churches. After enjoying the Taize service this week, I spent half an hour at the piano at the back of the church. I tried playing some of these 'top ten' choruses, but none of them seemed to 'fit' the place. This is a place that is teeming with symbolism - a place where the sermons are in the stained glass windows, the statues, the icons, the colours of the altar cloths and robs and the liturgy, as much or more than the homily itself. When I began to focus on this, the music started flowing out of my fingers - a plainsong chant/three-chord-chorus in one. When I sang it to an older (65-year-old) parishioner who isn't overly keen on music she didn't sing when she was in school, she immediately understood the symbolism, and felt comfortable with the words and music. What is more, the words were a challenge to my heart - a challenge that so often is lost when we sing songs that are too comfortable and too familiar too many times.

What would happen if we were able to experience the taste of Christ's love that so many other denominations and cultures have to offer us? What would that do to our concept of what it means to be a Christ-one?

I worry that whatever the denominational heading, if we regard ourselves as a given "brand" of Christian, without regard for the teaching or symbolism or focus or experience of our fellow Christians around the world, what we will present to the world will not be the lusciously rich-coloured tapestry described above, but rather a fuzzy water-colour painting done by a three-year-old -- have you seen these recently? I've got one on my shelf, and although made with love, they contain shapeless blobs of unrecognizable colours ... that essentially resemble sludge-brown. Although I am pleased with the attempts of my three-year-old, my seven-year-old will now produce recognizable images, and by the time the girls are fully grown, if properly trained, they will be capable of producing real art.

Praying for the Neighbourhood

This is the site plan for our new neighbourhood:

On the day they begin to dig, I thought I would post this, along with my commitment to begin to pray daily for the streets that make up our new neighbourhood.

Musing on Missional Life in Suburbia

Various things I've been reading recently have played into my thoughts on what it means for us to be moving into a new development for the purpose of living a missional life. First of all, Alan Roxburgh, in his 'Conversations and reflections on the Missional Order' (www.allelon.org/roxburgh July2) calls those who wish to engage in a missional life to "pitch their tent in one place and dwell in it." He talks about the concept of intentionally moving (back) into a neighbourhood for the sake of the people and place, and in that place, living out a missional rule of life. This seems like a relatively simple call to me - we are already in the process of moving into a neighbourhood that by definition will require that we 'pitch our tent' and live there for an extended period of time. And we certainly want to be living out a life of hospitality from this place. But what might the specifics of this "living out" look like?

Several people are currently talking about what it looks like to live in the ordinary - Kath Atkins and John Davies in particular have been filling my imagination with the possibilities of the ordinary.

John Davies, in his article 'Reading the Everyday' says:

"My suggestion is that the Christian project must involve us affirming these ordinary things very deeply, doing our church and our theology and our praying whilst deeply engaging with these basic building blocks of life."

Kath Atkins, in conversation with Allelon, mentioned one of the keys to ministry in the ordinary - the fact that we so frequently miss all of the issues hiding behind the 'nice little facades'. Her comments came just after Trevor and I had been thinking together about the story of Zacchaeus. We were asking the question, 'What does unconditional love look like in suburbia?' Trevor brought up the story of Zacchaeus, a man who on the outside seemed to have all of the material wealth and success that was possible, but was actually living a self-destructive life, and although he might be able to one day give the impression of success, he was never going to achieve true success - it was beyond his ability. And we both know that for many in suburbia, the self-destruction of their lives is hiding just under the surface of an impression of success.

Into this situation steps Jesus, who looks beyond the facade, but interestingly enough doesn't call out the truth. He doesn't stand below the tree and accuse Zacchaeus for leading a duplicitous or sinful life. Instead he answers the unspoken need for love in Zacchaeus' life by inviting himself to Zacchaeus' house, and the results are remarkable! Like so many stories in the gospels, there is a prophetic nature to this story - Jesus doesn't approach just anyone to go to for supper, and when he approaches Zacchaeus up the tree, he calls him by name and immediately knows how to minister to him. Furthermore, the timing is perfect, as Zacchaeus is desperate enough to see Jesus that he's willing to make a fool of himself by climbing a tree to do so.

Which links back to Alan's comments about living out a missional rule of life rooted in our place - because it is out of the spiritual disciplines of prayer, fasting, hospitality, welcoming of the stranger and worship that we prepare ourselves to minister in this way. Ministry in suburbia won't necessarily be obvious - there won't be a bum on the street pan-handling that we can simply take home with us to 'minister to'. And I'm a sucker for the obvious - I like to know that if I follow this set list of tasks, then God will be happy, Trevor will be happy, the children will be happy - basically, I will have gotten it right. But I'm not sure its that simple. I suspect that we will need to get to know well the people in our neighbourhood, pray frequently for them, and live our lives beside them through the ordinariness of everyday life, waiting for the opportunity to minister prophetically to those for whom the timing is right. And accept the fact that it will come at its own time, in its own way, and our job is to be available for it.

This is where I think some of John Davies' suggestions might be valuable - namely that we take time to 'read' a community by talking and listening with neighbours, reading, reflecting, walking and observing - when married with the obvious step of praying along each street of houses, may well have a place.

Aside from that, we've been musing about how we can be incubator's of community in a place that is not only suburbia, but brand-new development - a place where many people will be, like us, brand new not only to the subdivision but to the city as well? Here are my beginning thoughts, please feel free to comment and add yours:

• Put a chair on the front porch. Then sit on it regularly.
• Plant a garden in the front - this will encourage us to tend it regularly, and thereby be out front and available. Choose the best time to go out, based on when others are likely to be there.
• Go for evening walks in the summer - 7:00pm is usually the best time of day.
• Find out when the park will be finished and start using it!
• Organize with the city (if possible) to build a community ice rink on the grass of the park in the winter, and keep using it. Bring around a thermos or three of hot chocolate to share when the kids are playing shinny hockey and cheer them on.
  
• Share food with people.
• Keep a prayer map.
• Bike around garage sales during the summer.

Finally, we must remember that God is already in Barrie -- He's bringing us there to participate in what He is already busy and active in, and we will be foolhardy to approach our new home, our new street, our new subdivision with anything other than a God-inspired humility. It can take years - even decades - for the effects of faithful prayer to be borne out in tangible results. We may never 'see' the results of our life, but it must still be a life lived out in faith. It must still be a life true to that which the Lord our God has called us to. That is, "to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God." (Micah 6:8)

The Last Ten Years

Last week I took some time to write about the elements of my life, up to 18, that had prepared me for this new missional world. I think there are also some very relevant experiences in the last ten years, and I want to take a little bit of time to dissect those as well.

Community 24/7
My one amazing taste of intentional community came in the eight months I spent at Mount Carmel Bible College in Edmonton, Alberta. I remember Trevor pointing out that in one of Brian McLaren's earlier books he discusses what a 'new' style of Christian education would look like - that it would have an educational component, a service component and a discipleship component. Well, in a Brethren church in Edmonton, Alberta, a little school was started forty years ago this year that provides just that. By limiting its student body to no more than 40 students per year; by providing between 10 - 12 staff members; by limiting the length of the course to just eight months; by partnering with local community organizations, including L'Arche, Open Door and YWAM; and by providing regular small group and one-on-one points of discipleship, students who participate in Mount Carmel's Advanced Diploma receive a 'life-in-the-real-world' Christian education.

I lived in a house with four other girls in a townhouse complex about a mile from the school. Within our complex was another house with six guys living in it, and a third and fourth house, both of which housed Mount Carmel alumni. Together, we learned how to live in community - how to share household finances, dishes and cooking; how to laugh together and learn together and worship together and pray together.

Having had a fairly good biblical grounding as a child, the class that stuck out to me the most at Carmel was Christian Life. Many of the lessons from that class opened my eyes to the fact that God's vision for the world was far bigger than any I could possibly have for it. Reading Stanley Grenz's 'Created for Community' for our introduction to Theology class wasn't a bad idea, either.

In our service component I taught ESL to a woman who ... may have been a legal immigrant. Her 'husband', who had secured her the visa, had left, and her status was precarious at best. I also spent five hours a week at L'Arche, time which I have been forever grateful for. Finally, I traveled with most of the rest of our 26-strong student body around Alberta visiting the school's supporting churches, joining in with their services by bringing worship, enjoying their potluck lunches and being put up in their homes. We also traveled up to Key-Way-Tin Bible College - a Native American bible college on reserve land about four hours north of Edmonton - and to Vancouver to work on the Lower East Side for ten days.

When I look back on that time I am amazed at how much God taught me - how much I was privileged to experience and learn from, both at the time, and ever since. But as much as I loved Carmel, the people, and Alberta as a whole, I always knew it was not for me to stay.

Back to Mississauga
Well, back via four months in England. I left Carmel in April, went and spent four months in England meeting my soon-to-be-in-laws, bumping forward our wedding date by a year ('cos we were too impatient to wait!) and experiencing a healthy dose of culture shock. Its a worthwhile experience to have, especially if you're going to minister to refugees and new immigrants!

I got back to Mississauga in September and began my degree at the University of Toronto at Mississauga (I eventually graduated with a BA in History). Trevor came out the following June, and we were married July 10, 1999. By Christmas of 1999 my dad was dropping hints that perhaps I might like to find a pregnancy test ... and although the ones I'd done before Christmas were all negative, he was correct and I was indeed pregnant! While this made life more ... challenging, shall we say, I did have a baby (Kaitlyn Joy) in September of 2000, and finished my degree in May of the following year.

The first year and a half we were married we lived on married student residence at the U of T. When we first moved in, I decided I wanted to know the people we lived nearby, so I made up masses of baking and took it around to people as an excuse to knock on their doors and find out what their names were. When one couple moved in about a month after us, I went and knocked with the requisite goodies and found out that they were painting. So I went and put on some paint clothes so that I could help them. It always seemed natural - I wanted to be a part of people's lives, and have relationship with them, regardless of whether it caused any of them to want to be Christian's or not.

The second winter we were there I became very close friends with a fellow student who had found out that she was pregnant just a couple of weeks after her husband was put into jail. She already had a daughter from a teen pregnancy, and had been looking forward so much to having children together with someone, and now she was alone. In the end, I was able to be there with her through the pregnancy and the birth, and eventually was also able to be there with her as she gave her testimony and was baptized.

Along the College's Way
When I graduated in May of 2001, we didn't move very far away - we had a traditional evangelical church that we were quite happy with, and my family was close by, as was Trevor's work, so when a house became available in our price range (a miracle in and of itself!) we jumped at the chance. We began to settle in, again, trying to build strong relationships in a transitional neighbourhood - never an easy task. We found there were many challenges in relating to our neighbours, many of whom hadn't finished high school, much less university - but also many things which made it easier - namely that they had a tendency to sit on their front steps and chat for hours at a time in the evenings and on weekends, whilst watching (or ignoring) the children playing all around.

The Long, Dark Night of the Soul
In November of 2001, Trevor lost his job, and I became pregnant again. Trevor was out of work for 3 1/2 months, and it was by the grace of God and the generosity of our church family - who brought meals, boxes of food, offered rides, and left anonymous gifts in our mail box - that we got through. It was also through their network of contacts that Trevor eventually did find another job.

Two weeks after Trevor started work, I had my 18-week ultrasound. I saw immediately in the scan that the baby had club foot, just like I had. When I pointed it out to the ultrasonographer, she tightened her lips and turned the screen away, and I cried. The scan was a lot longer than usual, and I wasn't in the slightest bit surprised when my midwife called me that evening to chat. What did surprise me was just how serious everyone was. They rushed me down to the High Risk clinic at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto early the following week, where we heard the most devastating words of our life ... "The baby has Trisomy 18" ... "its a condition which is 'incompatible with life'". We eventually found out that this wasn't entirely true. Through hours of research, and the support of the Trisomy 18 Foundation's then-fledgling community, we began to come to terms with the fact that our son's life may be fragile and very brief.

Jeremiah Edward Morgan was born by emergency cesarean section at 3:06am on Saturday, August 17th, 2002. After four days in the hospital, he was sent home with a partially completed death certificate and an inoperable heart defect. At 1:22am on Saturday, September 7th, 2002, Jeremiah Edward Morgan went to be with Jesus.

And our world was shattered.

Just five months later, our pastor, who we loved dearly, died of pancreatic cancer at just 50.

*****

When I think back on that time I am amazed at the ability of the human mind and body to cope with so much anger, and so much grief and so much pain. Because I have lived through it, there are no trite answers. There are no easy fixes. The pain is too deep, the scars too fragile, to ever feel whole - and yet five years later I feel I can function again, I can breathe again, I can hope again. And after last week, I know I can hold a little tiny baby again. That is the grace of God.

"Blessed are those who mourn ... for they will be comforted." ~ Matthew 5:4

Putting the Pieces back together
From the day Jeremiah died till May of 2003, Kaitlyn (our then-two-year-old) prayed each and every night that God would send her a baby brother or sister who would stay. Then one night (right around the time that I was told that medically my body wasn't likely to conceive) she said she didn't need to pray that anymore. A few weeks later I discovered that I was a few weeks pregnant. God had answered the prayers of a two-year-old, and I, who hadn't even the faith to ask, was blessed to hold the answer in my womb.

Meanwhile things at church were getting challenging. Trevor and I were frustrated by the fact that we were very limited in what we could do to use our gifts or participate in the life of the church. They were always happy to have nursery workers, but given that there had been a recent run on little boys in the church, we were hard-pressed to feel we could cope. They finally suggested that we might run a small group for the 20-somethings. So Trevor and I spent the summer planning what material we wanted to cover. We decided there were two things we wanted to focus on: community and spiritual gifts. To focus on community, we decided to incorporate a meal into each of our weekly gatherings. These gatherings were taking place at our home, so we simply made dinner for the twenty-or-so people who came each week. The assistant pastor and his wife, who were our age, were meant to be part of this group. When we told them that we would start with a meal, they asked us "what time would it start?" We answered, "At 5:30, with the meal." They said, "No, when will the discussion start?" It was another indication that we weren't quite on the same page.

To focus on spiritual gifts, we spent the autumn learning about each of the different spiritual gifts, about how each person carries a set of gifts, and has strengths and weaknesses in ministry because of them, and that the body of Christ needs everyone to exercise their gifts together in community. We then did a gift analysis, and compiled the results for our group. Finally we decided that if we were to continue to grow on this subject, that we needed to start to put these gifts into practice. We had been gradually building over the term towards each person ministering with their gifts - encouraging those with worship gifts to lead us in worship, those with teaching gifts to help to teach the material, etc. So by the end of December, we basically had a functional small church meeting in our living room.

The problem came when we went back to the elders and said, "Our living room is getting full, please could we use the sanctuary on Saturday nights to continue to do what we are already doing, and open it up to others." They said no. The group gradually dissolved as the members felt there was no point in continuing if their gifts couldn't be recognized by the broader Body.

Hannah was born at the end of January 2004, and by May of the same year my frustrations with the church had grown to the point where I couldn't sit through a service and pretty much stopped going. We tried over the summer to sit down with the leadership and sort out our differences, but their answer was always, "just wait". And the one thing we couldn't do, was wait any more.

The Journey
Meanwhile, we had begun to hear quiet whispers about 'emergent' style church. We read Dan Kimball's "Emergent Church" and were amazed at the idea that other people were doing what we were only able to talk about - but equally amazed that other people were thinking about it, as we had thought we were the only ones. We began to try to seek out others, and eventually found a very small, very new attempt at 'emergent' in Mississauga in September (we also found the on-line community of Resonate). We joined in with gusto, thrilled to be able to give with all of our gifts. It took an hour and a half and two buses, with two small children, a guitar, sometimes a djembe, and often supper in hand to travel a distance that by car would have taken about 12 minutes, but we did it. We were involved in the worship, involved in the creative worship stations, involved in the food preparation and involved in the community. And we loved it. So it was probably the hardest element for us to leave when in June of 2005 we felt God miraculously open the doors for us to take a nine-month sabbatical to England.

Journeying
While in England we traveled extensively - we visited the ancient Christian community of Iona and the charismatic church down the road; we visited the village Kirk in Seim Farm, Norway, where my great-grandfather was baptist, and the pentecostal church in Sweden where a high school friend then lived. We visited numerous 'fresh expressions' communities. And after almost all of them we came away frustrated, feeling like we were missing the pieces we were meant to find. ... (If you're interested in this bit, feel free to go back to the 2005 and 2006 posts!)


As you can see, I can tell the story of the last ten years, but do not necessarily know how to unravel the meaning or importance of it. I do know that without the experience of Mount Carmel; without the challenges of coming to wrestle with the traditional church, or the experiences we had at The Journey; without the realities of each of our previous neighbourhoods, or of living with Trevor's family in England; and without loosing Jeremiah; we would not have the depth of experience to minister from that I know we have today. There has been much hurt over the past ten years - probably at least as much as the first eighteen - but I still hold strong to what I knew by faith as a child: that God has a purpose for my life, and that to see His purpose through, I must experience and understand so that I can empathize, and express the love of God to others.

Looking across the Ocean

Trevor and I were musing over the weekend about the creativity of Soul Survivor (which this year has teamed up with TearFund and renamed one wing of itself SoulAction and is encouraging groups around England to engage with 'Slum Survivor' - see the pictures to the right).

Anyways, Trevor and I came over here to England two years ago looking for 'success' that we could 'copy' in the emergent post-modern church environment of North America. This is not quite so daffy as it sounds. We North Americans like our formulas (even the more emergent of us often do) and we are all excited by the ideas that have been referred to in various emergent books as having come from England. So over we came. And frustrated we got. Nothing seemed nearly as big or exciting in person as it had come across as on paper. We became extremely frustrated towards the end of our stay, and pretty much were useless to the small church we had left nine months earlier when we came back.

What I am noticing this time around (probably because I didn't come over here looking for a clear fix) is that the most exciting thing about the 'Fresh Expressions' movement of the church in England is that it is creative. It doesn't/hasn't sat still. What they were doing that was cutting edge and exciting fifteen years ago is not still stagnating at the church Trevor went to youth group at. Instead, there is a new, fresh, alive group, that is defining its own vision for itself and its culture, and it is full of community and God's presence from what we can see.

I know that the folks at the Allelon conference two weeks ago didn't leave with a clear vision or a plan. I think that is wonderful. The commitment to pray the daily office and meditate on Luke 10:1 - 12 is even better. But I think there is a danger as we all move forward as thinkers on this subject of how we offer up missional lives to want to come up with a formula that we can readily transport to others to reproduce. And I think there is a real danger of trying to replicate in Canada and the US what has worked in the UK.

As we reflected on all of this together this weekend our conclusion was that perhaps the most valuable thing we could take from the church in the UK is their commitment to being creative - to being unwilling to rest on the previous success of an event or service or experience, but to be continually pushing the boundaries of their relationship with God, each other and the greater world.

New Life

I had the most incredible experience on Thursday night. I had the privilege to share with my brother-in-law and his wife the labour and birth of their fourth child - a son. Weighing in at just 5 lbs 14 oz (after feeding for an hour!) he was born at 4:10am BST.

There is much about the experience that is obviously just too personal to share with the entire world. However, the idea of being there for women in labour - particularly those who have no one else to stand beside them - has been on my heart for more than a decade. I feel like Thursday night's experience was a confirmation that this was indeed something that would be part of my life from time to time in the future.

I pray I will be so honoured and blessed.

Growing Up Missional

There’s a lot of discussion among certain parts of the church at the moment about ‘becoming’ missional. And in the process of reading these discussions I’ve been learning a ton, which I'm hoping to blog about in the next few days and weeks. But the more I think on it and reflect on it, I realize I am very fortunate – I’ve grown up missional to a certain extent, and I was also prepared to be missional by the experiences life threw at me from a very early age.

Let me explain.

B.H. - Before Heather
Some 30+ years ago, my parents – two wet-behind-the-ears, just-out-of-college kids had just moved up to Edmonton, Alberta, from Spokane, Washington. They had been married for a couple of years, and my dad was working part time at two different schools as a music teacher to try to make ends meet. After about a year-and-a-half of teaching grade seven and eight band (!) to what were largely new immigrant-filled schools, my parents were asked by their church to attend a missions conference being held in Edmonton. Which they duly did. There they decided that they were called to missions, so they went seeking after the right missions agency. Out of the available choices, my two musically minded parents saw two options:

1. Travel to Africa and translate hymns into Swahili (or some such assignment); or:
2. Join Campus Crusade for Christ’s Music Ministry.

My parents chose the later, and went off for training. Their first team was based in the Vancouver area, which is where I was born. A few months before I was born, their team traveled to the Toronto area, where my mother made the fateful error of telling God that she would live ‘anywhere but here’. Well, let’s just say that I was only nine months old when we moved to Toronto!

A Miraculous Existence
In between having their first baby and moving halfway across the country, my parents spent much of their waking moments with a very sick baby. I was born with clubfoot, a congenital birth defect. Shortly after birth, while my father was in Korea with Campus Crusade, I developed intestinal bleeding. By the time he returned, I was hospitalized and pronounced in danger of death, as the doctors could not trace the source of my problems. My parents went out into the hospital grounds and prayed for three hours. When they returned, my fever was gone, my bleeding was gone, and I have never had such problems since. I remember hearing this story in full when I was about 13, and realizing then that God had a plan for my life – that He was in control, and writing a story to suit Himself and His purposes.

At four months of age, I was readmitted to hospital for surgery to correct the clubfoot. This time things went anything but right, and an operation meant to cure only injured, resulting in a childhood and adolescence full of pain and operations. Again, I always had a very keen sense that there was a greater purpose to all of this – even as a very small child – a knowledge that somehow this was part of God’s plan.

Moving Around
In transferring to Toronto, my parents also transferred from the music ministry to the campus ministry, and began working at the University of Toronto – the most multi-cultural university on the planet.

When I was three we moved again – this time to work at McMaster University, in Hamilton, Ontario. My little brother was born three weeks after we moved, and I had my second set of operations six months later. I’m really not sure how my mother coped, as her family was still out in Washington State, but we managed somehow.

Nascent Understandings of Christian Community
Some of my earliest memories are from this time – events that have shaped me to this day. Memories of sitting in the middle of Campus Crusade staff meetings, weekly ‘S.A.L.T.’ groups and retreats; learning to eat all sorts of ethnic foods as my parents welcomed international students back to their home, took them to buy the ingredients for their favourite national dishes, and had the students teach my parents how to ‘do it right’; and attending Urbana 82. Through all of these experiences I came to attach a relationship with Christ with a relationship with others – with being a part of a welcoming, hospitable community. And so when my Sunday School teacher told us when I was about three that Christ had died on the cross for my sins, and that I could be His friend if only I asked, the answer was simple – of course I wanted to be Christ’s friend, and to be welcomed into this community of love and light and welcome. There really wasn’t any question about it in my mind. To this day, often buried deep down under the layers of skepticism, I carry this childlike faith, and when I think of Jesus saying we should come like little children, I stand in awe of how easy it was to ‘just believe’. I had met Jesus in the hands and feet and faces and smiles of the people I knew and loved, and it was a very, very simple decision to want to be connected to Him.

We lived just outside Hamilton, in a small town called Dundas, for five years. I started school there, had friends there, shared my first tracts there (!) and finished the time there as I had started - with a significant spiritual experience (baptism) and an operation. I was baptized on February 1st, 1987, at a little brethren bible chapel in Hamilton by my dad. I remember sitting between the knees of one of our elders, being asked why I wanted to be baptized, and being told the responsibilities I would undertake if I did so. And I remember making my dad promise that he would let me plug my nose before dunking me under!

The next day I went into hospital for my third set of operations. Nowadays no hospital wants a child left unattended for any length of time, but in those days even parents were only allowed during visiting hours, and there was certainly no place for a parent to sleep beside their child. So I was left alone in a ward with four other children, each of us in pain and scared. These were also the days when they admitted people a day early for pre-operative procedures, so the first night I spent there I was actually able to get in and out of bed on my own. I distinctly remember waking up in the night to the cries of the big twelve-year-old across the room from me. She had been in a skiing accident and had broken her leg very badly, so was in traction. Her call button had somehow fell out of her bed, and she was laying there, having wet the bed, unable to call for help. I remember getting up and calling the nurse myself, and then tiptoeing across the floor to stand next to her to tell her that she wasn’t alone, that someone would be there shortly. I remember how clearly I felt I understood what it felt to be alone, and how very clearly I was convinced, even at seven, that there was something wrong with this picture.

Back to Toronto
The day I came home from the hospital, my parents got a phone call from Campus Crusade. They were to transfer back to the University of Toronto, and we were to move again.

The process wasn’t easy on any of us, but I know I had a really hard time with it. I didn’t want to leave my friends, my little town where I could play with freedom, or our beautiful (my mother would add, small) house. My parents had finally had the chance to redecorate, and my room was a beautiful deep red with white wallpaper covered in small delicate primary-colour tulips. I loved it, and didn’t want to move.

All Alone
This unfortunately came with its consequences. I did not make friends easily in my new school in Mississauga. At best, I ostracized myself. At worst, I made enemies. I grew frustrated by my teachers and my peers, frustrated by school work that always seemed too easy or too hard, and frustrated and angry at my family for ‘making’ me feel this way. My poor parents.

Church wasn’t exactly easier. I didn’t really make friends their either, and always felt on the outside. This flew in the face of the concept of Christian community, that I intuitively felt was ‘right’, leaving me confused about what the reality was truly supposed to be. My experience of Christian Camps was regrettably no better, although at least then I was out in God's creation - a place I always felt it was easier to connect with Him than in suburbia. I am now quite sure that I had quite a big part to play in my inability to fit easily into this community, but at the time I simply felt hurt and left out.

Interestingly enough, this didn’t drive me away from God – it drove me closer. I would walk to school on my own almost every day, and on my way, decided it was better to walk to school with my friend Jesus than alone. So I began to sing and pray all the way there and back. I was a strange child.

Living Out God's Vision
The one thing that stayed the same through all of this was the fact that my parents continued to minister – particularly, and with a rapidly deepening calling, to the immigrant and refugee. In fact, my dad’s vision for what God wanted him to do – to mobilize the church to love across racial and cultural divisions – was so strong that when Campus Crusade asked him to move again, he said no, and they parted company. So for a couple of years we were without mission agency, and therefore mostly without support. And my dad was in the midst of pioneering a brand new ministry for which God had given him a vision, but not necessarily a whole lot of specifics.

I am extraordinarily grateful to God to have been able to witness this faithfulness, and the results of this faithfulness over the past twenty years. As I look forward to an equally uncertain process of following God's call, I am encouraged by the knowledge, learned on the front lines, that if God has called you to minister, He will provide for your physical needs, your emotional needs, the needs of your spouse and your children, not to mention fulfill the vision He has given you. Because its never really yours - its His. And He'll do it whether you participate or not - its just a question of whether you want to come along for the ride.

Pain
When I was thirteen I had another series of four operations. These were to prove more invasive, more extensive, and more painful than anything I had previously experienced. I was forced to be off school for three months and in a wheelchair, then on crutches for another six months, and eventually walking with a cane for my four years of high school. The three months I spent off school, I spent basically on my own during the day. My mom worked – with little support coming in, what choice did she have? – and my dad was off doing ministry, which left me on the couch in our grey living room through a very cold and grey winter of 1993.

During that time I made friends with a girl I met in the hospital named Nikki, who was a year older than me and had been diagnosed with osteosarcoma – cancer of the bone. With her, I learned a little of the immensely challenging experience of fighting cancer. And while she survived, we both watched other children from our floor die of cancer that year.

I also discovered that year that I could earn the respect of my peers, that I could build relationships, and finished grade eight with a group of friends – the first in five years.

Healing and Growing
I will be forever grateful to my parents for choosing to send me to an alternative Arts high school, for at least three reasons:
1. At this arts school, although I might be weird or different from the other kids, I was only one weird one among 1300!
2. I was fortunate enough to come along at a time when there was a thriving Christian Fellowship. I became very involved – indeed, I became a junior and then senior leader there. It was within this group that I regained my conviction that Christian community could transcend differences (as noted by the fact that our group transcended cultural, denominational, and even welcomed those of other religious persuasions). I learned that sharing a meal together was often the most valuable thing we could do – we met at lunch time and as our time was limited to 1 hour and 15 minutes precisely, we always ate lunch together to begin with. And finally, I learned that prayer – daily, communal prayer – was vital to the health of the group, as we saw between 10 and 30 high school students meet every morning to pray before our school day started.
3. Because of cutbacks in school funding which meant school buses were unavailable, and because of the fact that I walked with a cane throughout high school, my parents drove me across Mississauga every morning and every afternoon to take me to and from school. This meant that I spent 25 – 30 minutes every morning with my dad, often discussing Christianity, ministry or music, and 25 – 30 minutes every afternoon dissecting the challenges and joys of the day with my mom.

I reached my teen years in the 1990's - at a time when the church was railing against abortions, particularly amongst teen girls. I also had a couple of friends who got pregnant during high school and chose not to abort. (Who knows how many friends I had who did have abortions). I remember thinking at the time that you could only ask someone to carry a pregnancy to term if you were willing to open your home to that woman, provide for her physical and emotional needs and assist her in completing her high school diploma and moving forward with her life - even if she put the child up for adoption. And if she didn't, then you would also need to be prepared to lend whatever assistance she would need in raising the child until she had grown up enough to do it on her own. It was a vision of hospitality far bigger than any I had seen at the time, but one that has stuck with me for more than twelve years!

Having spent an unusually large portion of my formative years attending missions conferences, it probably wasn’t surprising that I decided to go to Belgium with Operation Mobilization the summer I turned seventeen. The experience itself left me frustrated by what we were and were not able to accomplish within the ministry model provided – but it also left me with a couple of very good friendships … one of which is now my husband of eight years! In fact, by the time my eighteenth birthday hit, I was finished high school, engaged, and moving back to Edmonton for eight months to attend Bible School.

To many people in this world I grew up in a cushy environment and lead a cushy life. I always had food in my stomach, a roof over my head, parents who loved me and each other, an excellent education and a knowledge of God buried deep into the roots of my life. But it would be a disservice to God not to acknowledge the fact that I grew up knowing what it meant to be a stranger, to feel alone and unwanted, to suffer pain or to know fear, all in small but memorable ways. The incredible thing to me is that I always knew that this was for a purpose that was yet to be revealed – a purpose greater than any of these things, but impossible without them.

And so, without even traveling into the period of my early adult life, I would say that the themes of being missional have been woven through the fabric of my life since before I was born. What is still odd to me is hearing these themes being expressed from other people's mouths after years of assuming that it was just me. I thank God for allowing me the privilege of growing up missional, and eagerly await just what He will do with this incredible heritage.

Choosing the ordinary - choosing to be available

Like many women of my generation, I grew up with the assumption that women worked - it was what feminism had fought for, and I had both a right and a responsibility to contribute to the economics of whatever household I lived in as an adult by working a paid wage.

Unlike many women of my generation, I ended up pregnant five months after getting married (no, birth control does NOT always work!) and only part of the way through my second year of university. I did manage to finish my degree, but only just, and only a month after Kaitlyn learned how to crawl. It wasn't the time to go out and get my first job.

By the time Kaitlyn was two (a point when many women would have gone back to work, at least part time), I had been pregnant a second time and lost a baby at three weeks of age, and was in no fit state to go looking for work. Neither was it the time a year later, pregnant for a third time in three years, and desperate for some mental stimulation, but I did it for a little while, remotely, anyways.

I tried again last year, and I think was finally able to give it the try I had always assumed I was capable of. What I realized last year was that I was capable at it - especially if I found the right job - but that it really wasn't for me. God was calling me to be at home - to be at home with my children, at home for my husband, and indeed, at home to offer hospitality to whomever God might see fit to bring along.

For the first time in seven years, I can say that I am doing this because I've chosen it. I've chosen to live in the ordinary. I've chosen to give up the guarantee of adult conversation every day, a paycheque at the end of each month, and a list of things to do. I've exchanged it for whining and poo and all things both nasty and glorious about the world of young children. I've also exchanged it for the privilege of teaching my children, and of exploring the world together, and of being there to answer their questions and of interacting with people in shops and at market stalls and outside Brownies meetings, because I have the time to stop and chat. I've exchanged it for the privilege of making meals and sitting down with people and watching them fill their bellies and their minds and their spirits.

I think that Kath Atkins could be onto something pretty deep and profound when she talks about the importance of the Ordinary in spreading the message of hope that is the Good News. I was greatly encouraged by the stories she tells of the exciting things that are happening in Lincolnshire, England, and I especially noticed that her stories all focused around children who were finding a safe place to come and be listened to.

As we begin to explore very intentionally what ministry in suburbia looks like, this is one of the threads that is central to me - that of choosing the ordinary, or choosing to be available. Its not terribly showy. Very few people will take notice - and if they do, it probably won't be for a very long time. But having toyed with the alternatives, I am convinced that anything less would fall short of the possibilities.

Back on the Journey

Well, after over a year in Canada, thinking we had found our place, God has again shaken us from the (un)comfortable, and told us to put all of our belongings into storage again and sent us off to England again ...

The story behind all this goes something like this:

We arrived back in Canada in May of 2006. While we were in England we kept thinking God was going to reveal some wonderful big writing-across-the-sky explanation to us of what we were meant to do with the rest of our lives. Instead we came back with two concepts in our head - grace and forgiveness - and not a lot else.

Grasping at straws, both of us, I continued to homeschool, Trevor went to find a job in the banking industry in downtown Toronto, and we started to unpack boxes. When we went to return to our tiny post-modern/emergent/tiny church plant, we found that it was more or less an extremely tired, warn-out group, and what with feeling tired and warn-out ourselves, there wasn't a lot of good we could do each other.

The summer was a blur of Trevor working a job he hated (but continually trying to like it) and me home with the children, teaching a nine-year-old neighbour girl how to read. By the middle of the autumn we were in full-swing with homeschooling, I was doodling with my photography hobby on the side, and Trevor was feeling more and more wretched by the day. In the middle of November, we made the decision for Trevor to quit his job. In his place, I attempted the (enormous) responsibility of being the breadwinner by (yes, you can laugh, but keep it to a snigger) starting my own business. Upon mature reflection, this may not have been the wisest thing anybody did, but what did we know? I still think I can take a pretty decent photograph, but I now know I am an appalling saleswoman, and not a whole lot of good at marketing, so you live and you learn.

Round about the end of June I had had completely and entirely enough (and the bank account was starting to show the worse for ware as well). The children were also not doing great, and neither was Trevor. We took a couple of days off and went camping (the only thing we could afford!) and while we were away, Trevor suggested we renew our on-again-off-again search for a house, by looking in the city of Barrie. We recommenced our search on Canada Day (July 1), and although unsuccessful, decided it was worth another go. So we took July 4th off as well, and headed up to Barrie again.

By this point we had looked at somewhere in the neighbourhood of 40 houses, all of them too expensive or too run down or both. We had slowly developed a list of things we felt we really needed in a home to be able to homeschool and do hospitality ministry and work from home and not go batty in the process. We had more or less ordered these priorities, so we had a fairly clear idea of what the most important was (a breakfast bar) and what was further down the line (a separate bathroom for us!) We also had an idea of the square footage (about 2000 - 2400) and number of bedrooms (4 - 5, depending on whether there was another space that could be used as a study). We did not expect to find ourselves walking into a home that not only met but exceeded all of our expectations, but The Havens did so on every single point.

The funny thing, looking back on all of this, is that after months of very actively seeking after God and what He was interested, I think we'd both gotten pretty hacked off with the whole thing (I know I had) and had decided to just try to fumble along on our own as best as we could. It turns out though, as the last three months have unfolded, that God was truly very active in the midst of all of this, and seems to have been very much in control of what He wanted us to be doing and where He wanted us to be going.

First case in point - within a month of first seeing the house we had prepped our house in Mississauga to sell, Trevor had flown to England to find an interim job (to prop up the sagging family economy - he's far better at it than me, you know!), the house had sold, and Trevor had started working a 30 week contract -- leaving less than two weeks between completing the contract and our expected moving date for the new house.

Secondly, when I finally got my brain screwed on, I realized that the sermon series we had been listening to (and getting very excited by) at our church, was on the subject of "The God of the Table", discussing the importance of the meal in the life of the Christian. I began to remember all of the visions of hospitality that God had buried so very deeply inside of me, and realized just how many of them there would be room for in this new house of ours.

Thirdly, when I got my act in gear and started praying, I was incredible just how quickly God answered our prayers.

And finally, because we're back in England, staying in the same back bedroom of Trevor's parents' house (who have been gracious enough to put us up ... again! ... for another six months) it is even more apparent than it might have been the contrast between the last time we were here and this time - we have been able to see that as much as a lot of the last couple of years hasn't made too much sense, we are beginning to find answers and vision and direction -- and also realizing that we are not alone, that God is prompting thoughts in us that mimic and mirror so much of what we are hearing on other blogs and books and eLists.

So we're back on the journey. I'm going to try to start posting some of the thoughts we've been thinking and books and websites we've been inspired and challenged by over the next few days and weeks, in between the still endless tasks of being a mom ...