Yesterday I had an incredible day of seeing God work in some amazing ways. I’m taking a group of high school and college students on a leadership trip to San Diego. I won’t argue about the rationale of what does leadership training have to do with going to San Diego. The reality for me is that I ‘m an under funded, but thankful, church in the hood and non-profit that lives by God touching the hearts of a few to help. I knew that taking 20 on a trip to San Diego would cost around $1600. I had asked one of my partner churches to help and got turned down. It had something to do with schedules or something.
This week we had our first training meeting for our leadership trip. We talk about what it means to be a leader and a follower. We talked about the impact you can have on someone, a family or a community when you step up and choose to be a servant leader. After our discussion on of my interns, who isn’t a Christian, asked about whether I would be open to have someone who had helped her family with their transition of being refugees help with the cost of our trip. I was thrilled to hear that someone might help out significantly but seriously doubted this would happen. Yesterday morning I get an e-mail asking for the costs and logistics of the trip I quickly send the required info. I was knocked out when I get this e-mail stating that they would cover the whole trip. What made this exciting was that this intern was concerned about how I would treat her because of her personal convictions about God.
Last night I was invited to a discussion dinner with a close pastor friend along with a few of his ‘guys’ from his church. A well-respected seminary professor was asked to come and talk about missions. I was excited but also knew that being in a totally ‘Dutch Reformed’ context might be difficult for this Jesus Freak and neighborhood activist to handle. I love talking and more so doing something about missions. Yes, I attended Westminster Seminary and did receive an incredible education that was totally head driven and clearly lacked practical application. It’s not to say that my profs didn’t have an interest in being missional but it wasn’t a natural outflow of what we studied or the DNA of the seminary.
My close pastor friend, who has gotten his ‘feet dirty’ with me, had an agenda of questions to ask his close prof friend. I did appreciate his questions and the response was what I expected good Kyperian discussion about Christ being Lord over all areas of life with our calling to be a light to the nations. This was awesome response that continued with the prof explaining his next phase in life was to birth a missional seminary campus in Phoenix to help train up a group of 20 something guys who have a passion for Calvinism and being missional. Again, I am excited about this prospect.
The remainder of what I am going to say is an ongoing reaction I have to those who love to talk, theologize or more so be critical of another theological flavor. After my pastor friend lost the control of the group, which is to be expected with guys who love to listen but would much rather be the talkers. I was surprised to hear some questions about two-kingdom thought versus transformational thought. I didn’t have anything against explaining a certain position if it eventually came back to practical down to earth explanation of what does it mean to be missional, incarnational in your home, neighborhood, workplace or school. What I heard instead was a critique of another theological position, which does disturb me, but again no hands on discussion of someone sharing their faith, making plans to become embedded in a neighborhood.
The conversation ended with a truncated discussion on economics and politics and how the church has screwed up by allowing the right and left in the extremists sense. I again felt frustrated when my simple statement was that it would seem that theology in the Reformed camp has become its idol that supplants any sense of call to be missional. We spent our 2 hours at the dinner table discussing everything but the HOW of doing missions. I know that I can be accused of one who is a doer but my doing is shallow and not laden with theological depth.
As I go back to John’s prologue I’m struck by the simple statement that Jesus, the Word of God, came from heaven and choose to be in our neighborhood. (Thanks Eugene Peterson.) I am so thankful for my Jesus freak birth into the faith and then my 4 years of IVCF that helped me get God’s heart that is seen in sending Christ as the incarnate Word that left behind the glory, power and position to be a servant leader that lived out the essence of being missional. He went to the people and didn’t expect them to come to him or wait for some e-mail, text, internet post or a viral YouTube clip.
I do love to bug my close Dutch Reformed Pastor friend. He has chosen to befriend me and walk with me in my world. So I do want to reciprocate and be part of his world. My real hope, which isn’t unrealistic, is to see his guys choose to both dialogue about missions and actual choose to do something hands on that becomes part of their church DNA. Yeah, I enjoy listening to what are perceived as the experts but my real hero or role model in this context is the pastor in a church, that isn’t rushing to do missions, but he chooses to get his feet dirty for Jesus.
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