For all my urban missions folks out there, what does it mean to live incarnationally? What parts of our lives have to match those of the people around us? Just our mailing address? We all know (and probably like me, loathe) the old school missionary-compound style. That doesn’t match what Jesus did with us. He came and dwelled among us. He tabernacled here. He made this His home. Our problems were His problems. Of course, whereas we see little shallow problems, He knew the real problem that we were facing, and He took it on headfirst.
I’ve moved into a beautiful apartment. Apartments like this don’t exist here in Chile. It’s an old building, which is actually a good thing, because it means that the rooms are generally bigger, the ceilings higher, and the structure of the building is as solid as a rock.
But the area I live in isn’t quite what I would call “good”. In fact, there are a lot of adjectives that I wouldn’t really use to describe my block: “clean”, “quiet”, or even “safe”. But it’s a few blocks from my church. It’s right in the heart of downtown, which is in the center of Santiago, which is in the middle of Chile. So you could say, I’m right at the center of this country I’ve come to love.
Let me explain. Here in Chile, there is a large prostitution market. And evidently, if you are looking for a prostitute from another country, my block is the place to come. Don’t get me wrong, I’m the ONLY American person who lives on this block. But there are plenty of women from all over the world. Columbia, Dominican Republic, Peru. You can have your pick. The building across from mine evidently houses a major whorehouse. And while I'm not sure if the ladies in my building are quite as organized, I know that there are plenty of them waiting outside in short skirts at night.
And then there is me. My friends here seem surprised that I live here. I guess they expect me to live in the richer suburbs of Santiago. Or maybe it’s the fact that it’s not safe… or so they tell me. But I keep thinking about how Jesus spent so much time hanging out with the bottom of society. How He wasn't afraid what would happen if He hung out with prostitutes or tax collectors (which were even worse than drug dealers!) Jesus wasn't afraid of what would happen if He did hang out with these bottom dwellers, He knew the harsh reality of what would happen if He didn't. He said He had come to heal the sick. We are all sick, just some of us show more symptoms than others.
So here is my dilemma. Do I live in this building, full of drug dealers and whores, and just keep my eyes down, look the other direction, all the while patting myself on the back for how great I am for living here? Do I ride the elevator with a guy, who is obviously coming back from a visit to one of my neighbors and silently judge him for his sin?
I think we know that the answers are no. But what does it mean to live here incarnationally? What does it mean to dwell with these people? What does it mean to make their problems my own? I don’t know how to make friends with them. I think they aren’t really sure what to do with me. Maybe they think I’m also selling my body. I can tell you one thing, if they knew that I’m a 27 year old virgin who doesn’t do drugs, they probably wouldn’t believe it.
So what does it mean for this fairly “clean” girl to enter their world? How can I? Well, for one it means that I live in a building where the crappy to start with elevator often breaks down, leaving me to walk the 8 flights of stairs. It’s not much, but I guess it’s a start. Who knows, maybe I can make friends as we climb up the stairs and complain.
Monday, March 7, 2011
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Goals in leadership
I was recently telling one of my friends (you know who you are!) about the awesome things that God is doing here in Santiago. We were talking about how amazing it is that God provided all these things in my life, especially this church plant. That He brought me to this group who are excited for me to be a part of what they are doing here in the city. That my gifts and talents, and seminary training, can all be put to use here. And logically, she commented that I should be the women’s pastor. It makes sense on the outside. But my pastor, while very excited to get me involved, on a leadership level, hasn’t mentioned anything of the sorts. And I have a feeling that a title like that isn’t really something we’ll be doing in our church. It doesn’t feel organic enough. I was thinking about this whole debacle today as I ate breakfast. I would love the title women’s pastor. Part of that is that I would love to have the work of a women’s pastor. To care for the women in the church. To pour my energy into pastoring them. That’s great. That desire is from the Lord and by His grace, I am doing that even now. But there is definitely part of my desire for the title so I can have my own glory. I want to be called the women’s pastor because I want to be praised and admired.
When I realized the pathetic motives of my heart in this, it reminded me of something that we learned in seminary. One of the goals of a leader is to make his or her job obsolete. To raise up new leaders who can take over. We aren’t here to make people dependent on us. We are here to raise up new leaders who can take our work from us. So I was thinking about the women in our little church. These are women I want to serve, but not in a way that they become dependent. I want to raise them up, help them grow strong so that they can lead other women. At least, this is what I should want.
Alas, leading is hard. It’s not just the outside forces that you have to fight against. You also have to work against your own desires. Lord, be our fierce leader. Be our wisdom and our strength.
When I realized the pathetic motives of my heart in this, it reminded me of something that we learned in seminary. One of the goals of a leader is to make his or her job obsolete. To raise up new leaders who can take over. We aren’t here to make people dependent on us. We are here to raise up new leaders who can take our work from us. So I was thinking about the women in our little church. These are women I want to serve, but not in a way that they become dependent. I want to raise them up, help them grow strong so that they can lead other women. At least, this is what I should want.
Alas, leading is hard. It’s not just the outside forces that you have to fight against. You also have to work against your own desires. Lord, be our fierce leader. Be our wisdom and our strength.
Thoughts on grace and community
(This is reposted from a blogpost on my other blog: heartoflippy.blogspot.com)
I’ve been listening to a bunch of sermons on unity in the church and they have been reminding me of a topic that Ashlee and I discussed recently. We were talking about the need to be in community in order to experience grace. If you’re a Christian, you believe that you have received the grace of God. You believe that His grace has some power in your life, and maybe you even feel at peace in your soul. This is good, and I need to be careful not to diminish the true experience of the grace of God.
But I am not writing this blog post to just affirm our supernatural experience of grace. I am writing to call us to live courageously in community. It is in the community of the Church, among those who have received the eternal grace of Jesus Christ, that you can experience grace here on earth.
There is a movement of people my age that believe that they can be Christ followers on their own. While I will agree that it is possible, I also argue that it is not normative. It is not how God wants His people to live. He has called us into a very chaotic mess that we call the Church. I know, the Church is messy and more often than not, she’s just plain ugly. And yet somehow, we are supposed to live in this body of believers that God has constructed on the chief cornerstone of Jesus Christ (Eph 2:20-22).
Our natural tendency is self protection, self preservation. But if have been hidden in Christ, if we have been crucified and it is no longer we who live, but Christ who lives in us, we have freedom to love deeply and self sacrificially (Gal 2:20). We read in Ephesians 4 that we are supposed to grow up in Him, putting on our new selves, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of truth. And this whole process of growing up isn’t just so we can benefit alone. The verses that immediately follow the command to grow up in Christ, tell us how to live in community. We are supposed to be little christs to each other. We are supposed to speak the truth in love. To forsake bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander (vs.31). In other words, to extend grace to each other. We have been forgiven much, so we can forgive. Remember the story of the servants who had been forgiven by the king? And one of them, who had been forgiven a huge debt, then went and demanded a small debt from his fellow servant. When the fellow servant couldn’t pay it, he was thrown into jail. When the king found out, he took the greedy servant and condemned him. We have received mercy for much, so we should extend mercy.
You might say, ok, sure, I can extend mercy. But what I have learned over the past year is that while we often think we are ready to extend mercy and grace to each other, we rarely put ourselves in situations that demand this of us. We might have one or two relationships that are close enough that demand grace on a regular basis. Family, spouses, maybe a best friend. But we keep this to a limited number so our need to exercise the spiritual disciple of grace extending is rare.
But back to the Church. Jesus calls us into community. A really messy community filled with sinners. Heck, I’m one of the worst. And you know what happens in a community of sinners? People sin against each other. A lot. When we think of sin, we usually think of “big” ones like murder and adultery. But the closer you get to someone, the more you realize that those “little” sins can really hurt too. When people cheat, lie, or steal. Sure, we know that kind of stuff can hurt. But I don’t do those really obvious sins too often (or do I?) What about selfishness and pride? Philippians 2:3-5 says, “Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves. Do not merely look out for your own personal interest, but also for the interests of others. Have this same attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus”. We don’t realize how big these “little” sins are until they are being done against us.
Last year, at my church in Seoul, our community was really tight. We were a few dozen people, living life together. And we sinned against each other a lot. I can’t even tell you how many times I put myself before others, how many times I considered myself better than others. And they did it to me too. We put our own needs before the needs of others. We were unloving, unkind, and self centered. But one of the beautiful outcomes of this situation was that we were constantly needing to extend grace to each other. Sometimes it was easier than others. But extending grace to someone who has sinned against you is usually just hard. It forces you to look back at the gospel, to the cross, to see the display of God’s grace to you. It’s only then that you can truly and freely give grace to your brother.
And so there is deep blessing in community. It’s there, in a cross centered community, that you actually experience grace here on earth. Not some abstract grace that you know is there, but you can’t see. The grace that comes from living in community is a tangible and poignant grace. It hits you like a wave. It’s hard to give, and incredible to receive. But this is the Gospel. By the blood of Jesus on the cross, we get to taste the reality of heaven now. Things like forgiveness and restoration aren’t just for some distant future. They are part of our lives today. They aren’t easy to get, living in community is hard work. It can be frustrating and discouraging. But we live in the reality that we are hidden in Jesus and that in Him we have all things.
I’ve been listening to a bunch of sermons on unity in the church and they have been reminding me of a topic that Ashlee and I discussed recently. We were talking about the need to be in community in order to experience grace. If you’re a Christian, you believe that you have received the grace of God. You believe that His grace has some power in your life, and maybe you even feel at peace in your soul. This is good, and I need to be careful not to diminish the true experience of the grace of God.
But I am not writing this blog post to just affirm our supernatural experience of grace. I am writing to call us to live courageously in community. It is in the community of the Church, among those who have received the eternal grace of Jesus Christ, that you can experience grace here on earth.
There is a movement of people my age that believe that they can be Christ followers on their own. While I will agree that it is possible, I also argue that it is not normative. It is not how God wants His people to live. He has called us into a very chaotic mess that we call the Church. I know, the Church is messy and more often than not, she’s just plain ugly. And yet somehow, we are supposed to live in this body of believers that God has constructed on the chief cornerstone of Jesus Christ (Eph 2:20-22).
Our natural tendency is self protection, self preservation. But if have been hidden in Christ, if we have been crucified and it is no longer we who live, but Christ who lives in us, we have freedom to love deeply and self sacrificially (Gal 2:20). We read in Ephesians 4 that we are supposed to grow up in Him, putting on our new selves, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of truth. And this whole process of growing up isn’t just so we can benefit alone. The verses that immediately follow the command to grow up in Christ, tell us how to live in community. We are supposed to be little christs to each other. We are supposed to speak the truth in love. To forsake bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander (vs.31). In other words, to extend grace to each other. We have been forgiven much, so we can forgive. Remember the story of the servants who had been forgiven by the king? And one of them, who had been forgiven a huge debt, then went and demanded a small debt from his fellow servant. When the fellow servant couldn’t pay it, he was thrown into jail. When the king found out, he took the greedy servant and condemned him. We have received mercy for much, so we should extend mercy.
You might say, ok, sure, I can extend mercy. But what I have learned over the past year is that while we often think we are ready to extend mercy and grace to each other, we rarely put ourselves in situations that demand this of us. We might have one or two relationships that are close enough that demand grace on a regular basis. Family, spouses, maybe a best friend. But we keep this to a limited number so our need to exercise the spiritual disciple of grace extending is rare.
But back to the Church. Jesus calls us into community. A really messy community filled with sinners. Heck, I’m one of the worst. And you know what happens in a community of sinners? People sin against each other. A lot. When we think of sin, we usually think of “big” ones like murder and adultery. But the closer you get to someone, the more you realize that those “little” sins can really hurt too. When people cheat, lie, or steal. Sure, we know that kind of stuff can hurt. But I don’t do those really obvious sins too often (or do I?) What about selfishness and pride? Philippians 2:3-5 says, “Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves. Do not merely look out for your own personal interest, but also for the interests of others. Have this same attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus”. We don’t realize how big these “little” sins are until they are being done against us.
Last year, at my church in Seoul, our community was really tight. We were a few dozen people, living life together. And we sinned against each other a lot. I can’t even tell you how many times I put myself before others, how many times I considered myself better than others. And they did it to me too. We put our own needs before the needs of others. We were unloving, unkind, and self centered. But one of the beautiful outcomes of this situation was that we were constantly needing to extend grace to each other. Sometimes it was easier than others. But extending grace to someone who has sinned against you is usually just hard. It forces you to look back at the gospel, to the cross, to see the display of God’s grace to you. It’s only then that you can truly and freely give grace to your brother.
And so there is deep blessing in community. It’s there, in a cross centered community, that you actually experience grace here on earth. Not some abstract grace that you know is there, but you can’t see. The grace that comes from living in community is a tangible and poignant grace. It hits you like a wave. It’s hard to give, and incredible to receive. But this is the Gospel. By the blood of Jesus on the cross, we get to taste the reality of heaven now. Things like forgiveness and restoration aren’t just for some distant future. They are part of our lives today. They aren’t easy to get, living in community is hard work. It can be frustrating and discouraging. But we live in the reality that we are hidden in Jesus and that in Him we have all things.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
the beginnings
I begin this blog in a similar fashion to the way I began my life as a church planter. I feel compelled to do it, but I am also overwhelmed by the sense that I am not old enough, wise enough, or ready enough to move ahead in this adventure. And yet, here I am. Actually, at the moment, I am sitting at one of my favorite cafes. It has some great sidewalk seating along a street that runs into a small hill with a castle surrounded by beautiful gardens. It's in a neighborhood called Bellas Artes. A block away is the art museum, Bellas Artes. People in this neighborhood tend to be more artsy, more liberal, more independent of the greater Chilean culture. And yet, it is on the edge of the center of this grand city. And as all good urban missions people know, life and culture come from the city. It's in the city that the culture is formed and moved forth to affect the rest of the society. So even as this neighborhood feels more secular and liberal than the rest of chilean culture, I have a suspicion that it is indeed the direction of the culture.
Everyone, both in the States and in Chile, keeps asking me about why I am here. Why did I come to Chile? What am I doing here. I wish there were an easy answer. A job. A university. A man. Ha, if only. Instead I am left to scramble for words. I have a job here. I am an English teacher. I work full time in a company teaching the executives conversation English. But I didn't come across the world to do this. It's merely a means to pay for my life. My passion lies in bringing the gospel to this neighborhood. Gospel means good news. And I have witnessed first hand in my life the marvelous reality that is a living relationship with God. I have also seen a bit of the brokeness that permeates life, every life in every culture. So my heart is filled with the desire to live here in Bellas Artes, to love deeply and to share this good news that there is hope.
This undertaking seems beyond anything I can ever accomplish, and indeed it is. But I have a great God who has been paving the path before me. I hope this blog serves as a record of the challenges and joys that will arise over the next few years. Since 2005, I haven't lived in the same country for more than 2 years, the same house for more than one year. It's been a long season of transition after transition. But I can feel the Lord planting me deeper here. May this season be full of His blessing and His guidance. And may this blog be full of tales of His goodness.
Everyone, both in the States and in Chile, keeps asking me about why I am here. Why did I come to Chile? What am I doing here. I wish there were an easy answer. A job. A university. A man. Ha, if only. Instead I am left to scramble for words. I have a job here. I am an English teacher. I work full time in a company teaching the executives conversation English. But I didn't come across the world to do this. It's merely a means to pay for my life. My passion lies in bringing the gospel to this neighborhood. Gospel means good news. And I have witnessed first hand in my life the marvelous reality that is a living relationship with God. I have also seen a bit of the brokeness that permeates life, every life in every culture. So my heart is filled with the desire to live here in Bellas Artes, to love deeply and to share this good news that there is hope.
This undertaking seems beyond anything I can ever accomplish, and indeed it is. But I have a great God who has been paving the path before me. I hope this blog serves as a record of the challenges and joys that will arise over the next few years. Since 2005, I haven't lived in the same country for more than 2 years, the same house for more than one year. It's been a long season of transition after transition. But I can feel the Lord planting me deeper here. May this season be full of His blessing and His guidance. And may this blog be full of tales of His goodness.
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