Experience Needed

“Experience is what you get when things don’t go the way you planned!” This statement is potentially one of the most powerful ones I have digested in a long time. It keeps coming back to me, but I will always remember the day that Gwen used it on me for the first time…

We were trying to figure out how to get from Singapore to Malacca, Malaysia by bus. We knew it was possible, we just didn’t know all the details. But we were game to figure it out and so we set off on a little adventure. The first bus took us across the causeway between Singapore and Malaysia. We went through Singapore immigrations, and then through Malaysian immigrations. That went well, but then we had to find the correct bus to get us to the regional bus terminal. We weren’t sure of several key points and in the end took the wrong bus to the wrong terminal. I was getting a bit frustrated, but Gwen pointed out that the whole reason we were taking this little adventure was so that we would know the correct way for future use. Then she pulled out the quote: “experience is what you get when things don’t go the way you planned…”

It’s a significant truth, and one that we now often use when we find ourselves in such appropriate circumstances. Have to say though; we still hate to find ourselves in those appropriate times!  Life is so much easier when we don’t need to gain additional experience

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A Calm Confidence

"A life of grace is characterized by a calm confidence in a sovereign God whose love and wisdom always causes Him to do what He wants when He wants to do it. Inestimable damage may be done when we consciously or unconsciously try to move things forward, because God isn't moving fast enough for us."

Steve McVey; Grace Walk

A Quiet & Holy People

"This seems a cheerful world, Donatus, when I view it from this fair garden under the shadow of the vines. But if I climbed some great mountain and looked out over the wide lands you know very well what I would see; brigands on the high road, pirates on the seas, in the ampitheaters men murdered to please the applauding crowds, under all roofs misery and selfishness. Its a really bad world Donatus, an incredibly bad world. Yet in the midst of it I found a quiet and holy people. They have discovered a joy which is a thousand times better than this sinful life. They are despised and persecuted but they care not. These people Donatus are the Christians, and I am one of them."

Cyprian; 3rd century

Having watched the news over lunch, I note that today we still have news of brigands on the road "shaking down" moterists in Texas. We still have pirates off the coast of Somalia. There may not be many ampitheaters at the moment where men are being murdered for the pleasure of the crowds, but  there are some in the international courts - and some who should be - who have murdered many for pleasure. There is no doubt misery and selfishness under most roofs. I guess it would be safe to say that after 17 centuries man has not progressed very far.

What about those quiet and holy people? Are they still out there?

Not all who are called Christians today can be described with these words.

I would like to be.

"Since God chose you to be the holy people he loves, you must clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds us all together in perfect harmony."  (Col 3:12-14 NLT)

Community

Community

When you see that word up there... yep that one, what comes to mind? This is a question we usually ask at the beginning of a Sharpening Your Interpersonal Skills workshop. We can have quite a good discussion around that word and the ideas that it fosters.

There are so many elements that can come into play when we start to think about community: the people involved; the purpose or mission; the parameters or boundaries that keep people in or out; the rules & regulations that govern the community and even the motivation that forms the community in the first place. Besides these major issues that I have listed there are many other thoughts and details that come out in each discussion we have. The fun thing is that while we are defining and becoming more intentionally aware of community we are also starting to form our own community which will last through the week-long workshop.

We have been in a number of discussion lately about community and one issue that sometimes gets overlooked for a while when we theorize about community, but is always one of the main issues in real life: the problems that exist between the people involved! Whether it is a family, a mission, a company, and yes even a church, there are almost always problems, difficulties, frustrations, grievances, grudges, troubles and tribulations! Of course I mean with the other people, not you.... Right, you get the picture!

A friend in ministry tells us that his family is trying to get him “home” from the mission field with the threat that he will be taken out of the parent’s will if he doesn’t. Other friends have shared with us their private struggles with close family and friends, and how it affects their ministry and lives. Another acquaintance tells of how frustrating it is to be in a ministry where the leadership doesn’t seem to have any passion for reaching people for Christ, but only seems concerned about finances, procedures and rules. A pastor shares with us that a number of key leaders in their church are at odds, and he is being caught in the middle. A classmate lets out that she has been deeply wounded by others in her previous church and now cannot commit to staying involved in any given church for very long because she knows that she will get hurt again if she does. The list could go on, and we guess that you too could put together a similar list from your own interactions with others.

As we all know in any community situation we can usually find ourselves choosing to ignore the problems, isolate ourselves from them as much as possible, or simply fight on. (Hopefully that doesn’t become a literal fight!) On occasion we choose to take the extreme measure of removing ourselves from the community hoping that the next community we join will be better, or like our classmate, not joining another community to avoid the certainty of more pain.

Jesus said that the world around us would know that we are His disciples by the way we love one another and treat each member in our community. Is it possible that we have gotten something wrong in the way we live this out? We can easily accept that we cannot save ourselves in the first place. We can agree with the statement that Jesus Christ made that He is the Way, the Truth and the ife, and that no one can come to the Father except through Him. We know that there is no salvation except by believing on the Lord Jesus Christ. I wonder if we take as seriously Jesus’ statement that He is the vine and we are the branches and that we can not bear fruit on our own – that in fact we can do absolutely nothing unless it is His life flowing through us that does it. Would it impact our communities if we focused more on being totally connected with Christ; being filled with His Spirit; and being in constant communication with the Father? It seems simplistic to think that all our interpersonal problems in community would be solved if we got these priorities right, but it seems to us that this is what the Word says will start to happen.

It would be really neat to try, wouldn’t it?

World Changers

The cool breeze is blowing in through the open window and as I write this I can look out across the sprawling metropolis of Hsinchu, Taiwan from the seventh floor apartment we are staying in at the seminary. The hum of cars and trucks going by on the freeway nearby is punctuated occasionally by the sharp blast from an air horn. Today is a beautiful day, sunny and cool, but the first days we were here were a bit colder and rainy. This evening we head back to Singapore, and back to the tropics, so we will enjoy these last few hours in a temperate climate. When one lives in a place where the temperature never varies much from 30 degrees Celsius, one does truly enjoy a change in the weather once in a while.

Our meetings here have gone exceptionally well. We have been able to build significant relationships with the team of partners here in Taiwan, and we are excited to see what God is doing – and will do – with these two dozen or so Mandarin language facilitators. As we shared together yesterday, we pointed out that one in six people in the world today speak Mandarin as their mother language. That means that this group has the very real potential of impacting the entire world as they continue to facilitate others toward living out Christ and being His witnesses in their own spheres of influence. Each of us present agreed that the reason that we are involved in training God’s people to live out His life through their interpersonal relationships is because God has called us and chosen us to do this. And we have all seen the impact of this intentional process in our own lives.

The SYIS workbook is for all intents and purposes completed in Mandarin and we also have the facilitator notes almost completed. There are a few other documents that still need translating, and there will likely be some further adaptations and revisions as we use the material, but with a solid group of facilitators trained now, and with the workbook and notes ready for use, we look forward to seeing how God will use this tool in His church. Already there are plans for workshops in other parts of the world, and we believe that there will be many more requests for workshops in days ahead.

Sometimes we may not see how a small group of one or two dozen people can really make that big a difference in this world. Certainly we struggle against the stream of current events and culture. Yet the fact that the world continues on a downward spiral is no reason for us to give up hope and not try. From the very beginning Jesus told His followers that the world would hate them. In fact the early church made choices many times that cost them their lives. We can look back at those early days just after Christ returned to heaven and say to ourselves that those people were different than we are today. Things were obviously different. There is no way that God’s people today could even think of selling all they have and sharing equally with each other, is there? Our world would not easily allow for that type of community. We live in a world where we need to prove our ethics by making our own way, and by standing on our own two feet. The early church had a lot of their leaders in jail – for good reasons, not bad! That would never be a good idea today, would it? It seems more efficient to try to impact the laws that would criminalize Christian behavior so that we can avoid wasting time in jail. But when the time comes – and it surely will – when it is a crime to live out our Christian beliefs, how long will it be before we end up paying the price?

The world has moved on several thousand years from that time when Jesus Christ stood on a hill and told His disciples to go into all the world and preach His Gospel; to be His ambassadors, His witnesses. But Jesus Christ is still the same, and His promise still stands that He will be with us to the end. Can a handful of people change the world? Probably not on their own. But when those people are filled with His Holy Spirit and allow Him to use them in whatever way He wants to, there can be significant change in the world around them. The world will acknowledge that they are His disciples; that they love one another. Some will hear and have faith and be saved. And their world will forever be changed.