Relationships are everything!

I spent the last couple of days being with a great group of Koreans who are part of Journey of Life Church. The pastor had invited me to do a mini-mission conference and talk about urban missions. This is a relatively new church that is mostly young families with little kids and a few teens. They are very organized and capable of ‘diving in’ and helping. They chose to join New City last weekend to help with doing an Easter Outreach to our homeless friends in the downtown area. I was so impressed with them coming and being willing workers.

I have lived around different culture groups most of my life. I married into a hybrid family that was British, Scottish, Pakistani and quasi Muslim in their traditions. I was the longhaired Jesus Freak that reflected a very different American culture when I initially met my wife. My younger brother married Veronica who is a first generation Guatemalan. I share all of this to help highlight the need to be open to making genuine relationships with those that are in some ways very different from me but also share very similar passions.

I had a Chinese roommate in college who became a great friend during our tenure at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. He taught me much about his own family culture by allowing me to visit his family often on the weekends because they lived close to our college town. It was amazing to see his mom, dad and grandparents live in their first generation context. This has helped me understand the blending of different cultures in a relationships that becomes a marriage when it comes to the necessity to be sensitive to what it takes to build relationships where good communication is the norm and relationships have the potential of happening over time.

I was blessed to be with my Koreans friends on Saturday and most of Sunday. I was able to interact with them in some great discussion on how to think outside the box or consider shifting their present paradigm for doing church and their view of their own life context. It was so awesome having a few of them be keenly interested in helping with doing New City – Barrio work with our youth and seniors. I know that the lifestyle expectations between the culture in South Phoenix is worlds away from most of my new Korean friends who have attend Ivy league schools on the East Coast. Yet, Pastor Don shared with me how he grew up in a single parent home and how his mom worked all of the time.

I have done many presentations or mini-conferences talking about urban or neighborhood missions. My initial point is to say that poverty is more a byproduct of broken relationships than anything else. The path to wholeness is always about building new relationships and being opening to going back and seeking reconciliation with those that are at odds with you. I was impressed with the quickness of most of my new friends to understand that the path to impact a person’s life isn’t in telling them what to do but in choosing to be a friend and form a long-term relationship.

As we were finishing dinner with some great family friends we ended up dropping off of couple of bus passes to one of our teens. She hasn’t had the easiest life but is turning the corner in spite of circumstances around her. She recently has gotten a job and decided to make school happen. We listened to her for about an hour tell us what was happening in a way that was totally refreshing. It would have been easy for her to fall into the blame game and be mad at the world for her situation. She is growing in the right direction because of a few who have had healthy relationships with her over the last 5 years.

I believe that healthy relationships become key in all of life’s endeavors. The challenge is that it is so easy to form a relationship that is totally based upon selfish means where I need to know someone in order to get something. My hope is help cast a vision of seeing relationships formed between people that are very different culturally that can birth a movement that see people being more open to judging less and choosing not to walk away from people that are different.