Wait, why am I doing this?

I may be mistaken, but it seems to me that New Year's resolutions have gone a bit out of fashion.  My perception may be due to the fact that I haven't made one in years,* and not because there is no room for improvement in my life or character.  Going barreling along from one calendar year to another, one hardly takes a breath to consider what, if anything, might benefit some adjustment.

But that is the great value of a New Year or a new season of anything.  It can provide us an opportunity to stop and rethink what we are doing and why we are doing it.  Just such a rethinking came my way a few days ago, and not because I was looking for it.  It was something I read in Isaiah 12 that got me thinking.

With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.  And you will say in that day:
Give thanks to the Lord, call upon his name
make known his deeds among the peoples
proclaim that his name is exalted.
(Isaiah 12:3-4)

The prophet Isaiah speaks a word of promise to a people facing challenge and exile, people living in a time bereft of joy.  And he promises that God will save and that they will draw on that salvation with joy.  And that they will respond with thankfulness, turning afresh to him (calling on his name), making his deeds known among the peoples and proclaiming his name as exalted.  Now it is these last two that got me thinking and reconsidering.

"Make known his deeds among the peoples, proclaim that his name is exalted."  That is to say, when you experience the saving power of God, make it known, honor his name.  Judaism is not a faith that seeks converts, like Christians or Muslims, but nonetheless the Jews of Isaiah's day are encouraged to let the peoples know, to proclaim the name of the Lord.

But the question is, why?  As a Christian I would immediately think of evangelism, or the great commission given by Jesus to make disciples of all nations.  As a pastor and church planter I would immediately think of strategies for church growth and bringing more people into the fold.  But again, why?

Going barreling on from one calendar year to another, I hardly take a breath to consider why evangelism is important or why I want the church to grow.  And barreling along, I am afraid my reasons may not be the best ones, nor yet the one that is alluded to in Isaiah 12.  Our efforts of outreach, evangelism and church growth are often staged to serve ourselves.  If there are more people in church we will feel better and it will be more comfortable and "successful".

We may not be quite so self-serving in our evangelism in that we may have a real concern for others who are lost and estranged from God.  This is good.  But it still isn't what drives the proclamation in Isaiah 12.

In Isaiah all these actions - the thanksgiving, the calling upon his name, the making his deeds know, the exalting of his name - are driven by a desire that God and his name, his reputation, his work and salvation is lifted up and known.  Those who experience his salvation want Him to be known and honored because of it.

That is what made me stop and say, "Wait, why am I doing this?"  (and by "this" I mean all the works of the church). It needs not to be for the purposes of "church growth" or swelling the ranks, but rather driven out of a desire that the deeds and the name of the God of Love be made known and exalted.  Jesus taught us this when he taught us to pray.  The first petition of the Lord's Prayer is "Hallowed be thy Name".  Its placement at the outset of the prayer underlines the point.  Why am I doing this?  Because He is indescribable and honor is due his name.


*I did think a few weeks ago that I'd like to train for a triathlon this year, and not one of the "TinfoilMan" sprint ones, but at least an Olympic distance.  But I can assure you that it is not a resolution because I am far from resolved to do it.

Sentimental Machiavellians

I was listening to a story on the BBC World Service this morning about the recycling of used pacemakers for use in the developing world.  There are laws and regulations in most developing countries that prevent the re-use of these devices.  There is a charitable organization in the U.K. which is working to facilitate this recylcing.  It involves working with families of people who have died and asking them to donate this small device.  It is a great idea making this life-extending technology available in places where the cost would make it prohibitive.  The human interest in this story was a older man in Mumbai, India who would likely have died some years ago had it not been for this effort.  At the end of the story it is noted that this man is now playing with his 8-month old granddaughter.  It is wonderful.

But then the reporter makes a statement that sounds lovely and heartwarming but disturbed me deeply.  Something like this: From the perspecitve of this man who had the joy and privilege of enjoying his granddaughter, the reporter said, "the complex logistics of ethics are unimportant."  Loved the story until this point.  Then I was disturbed.

First it is disturbing because I'm not sure it is true.  I am not convinced that her research into his history and convictions was enough to allow her to draw the conclusion that he felt the "complex logistics of ethics" unimportant.  What was clear, however, was that the reporter certainly held this view.  It would have been more truthful and journalistically transparent for her to say that, upon seeing this lovely family scene, to HER the "complex logistics of ethics are unimortant."  So first, own your own convictions and don't project them onto someone else.

Second, it is distrubing because, for many, I am sure it IS true. It is the cry "Don't confuse me with notions of right and wrong when something makes me feel warm and comforted inside."  As a grandfather myself I am delighted that this man had the joy of knowing his granddaughter.    However good and desirable a thing might be, it does not give us license to avoid the hard work of considering the moral and ethical implications of how we get to that good.  We have become, I am afraid, Machiavellians. But with a twist.  No one would accuse the author of "The Prince" of being sentimental.  The end justifies the means he said, however brutal or costly those means are.

We are Sentimental Machiavellians. The end (feeling a cheering and warm sentiment about something) justifies the means.  The "complex logistics" of right and wrong don't matter.  But they do. 

The pacemaker story is perhaps a bad example.  There is nothing in the practice of respectfully asking families if they are willing to donate a device that their loved one needs no longer to help prolong lives in developing countries.  And that's why the "complex logistics" comment is even more disturbing.  Slipped into a very good an reasonable story of people finding ways to help others in need is a bald and dangerous philosophical statement that encourages us to turn our attention from the consideration of what is right and wrong to the experience of having our heart warmed.

It is immaterial what altar we sacrifice the very real need for ethical consideration, be it political expediency or sentimental heart-warming or something else.  Ethics - right and wrong - matter and should not be so lightly dismissed.  Machiavellians, whether hard-hearted or sentimental, have it wrong.

Lost in wonder

Why is it that dancing while singing in church seems so natural here in Africa and so awkward at home? (Apologies to my daughter who is not awkward about it at all.)  We sang this morning some African songs in praise to God.  Nigerian bishops moved to the front  of the auditorium and danced, exuberantly, as they sang.  Here's the great thing.  They were joined by equally exuberant bishops from the West.  Let me say that the Right Reverend Martin Minns plays a mean tambourine.

Part of this, of course, is cultural.  When in Rome...  But it is also instructional.

The worship we do when we are gathered (as opposed to the worship we give in our lives at home, at work and in the community) is meant to be a foretaste of the great wedding feast of the Lamb.  Yet sometimes it feels like we are at a shotgun wedding and no one is very happy.  But why?

First, it is the Spirit Himself  who brings our hearts to worship when we gather.  It is the Lord who leads us to true repentance and the joy which brings praise and thanksgiving to Him. I don't want to whip up emotional response or advocate that people force exuberant worship.  Both of those flow from us and not from God.  But we need to be open to Him and to worship in Spirit and in truth. (John 4:23)

It is an image of being set free, from our sins and all else that binds us, like the spirit of the age, or even of Western secularism.  Two great hymns allude to this:

As he died to make men holy

Let us die to make men free. ( Battle Hymn of the Republic)*

Long my imprisoned spirit lay

Fast bound in sin and nature's night

Thine eye diffused a quick'ning ray

I woke the dungeon flamed with light

My chains fell off, my heart was free

I rose, went forth and followed thee (And can it be?)

I long to be free from all that binds me, my sin, my unforgiveness and resentments.  From all that stills the praise of God on my lips.

And here is another reason.  The Spirit will not descend to us for worship unless He has first descended to us convicting us of our sin and inviting us to repentance.  If you are anything like me you want to skip to the happy, joyful bit without stopping at the humbling experience of repentance.  Perhaps our gathered worship of God is comparatively lifeless because we our comparatively unrepentant.  The natural fruit of true, Holy Spirit inspired repentance is thankfulness, joy and praise.

Dancing in the aisles in praise is not the only expression of the joy of liberation in Christ Jesus.  I do not expect that when I get home I will find my congregation dancing in the aisles - although I would not be distressed by it.  But there are other expressions of that praise that are equally valid.  But it does rather need to be expressed.  I pray that we would be open to and waiting on the Holy Spirit to lead us first to  repentance and then to the expression ofpraise.

Charles Wesley paints the picture well:

Till we cast our crowns before thee

Lost in wonder, love and praise

*Which republic? Dreadful name for a hymn about the judgement and grace of God which brings us to praise His glory.  Makes it sound like a nationalist anthem. 

Little white lies

This is All Saints Cathedral in Nairobi, where the GAFCON meeting is being hosted and therefore where we hang out from 8 until 8 daily.  

Last night we heard about the East African Revival, a movement which began in the 1930s and has continued to shape the Church and the broader societies since.  One great example which was given to the whole conference was the story told by Bishop Samson Mwaluda with whom we worked just last week on our mission.  The family in which he grew up was transformed by his father's conversion to faith in Jesus thorough the revival.  It was a good story and great to see a familiar face speaking to the whole conference.

The theme which speaker after speaker repeated last night was the need for repentance in our lives for revival to come.  One thing that struck me was a short sentence, "There is no sin too small to confess".  I often think that repentance is hard with the "big" ones, but easier with the small ones.  That is not the case, and I had an experience of it this week while on mission.

You see, one night at the table I told a little white lie.  It was a small fabrication that was unnecessary but made me feel included in the conversation.  I was saying my prayers before bed when the memory of that small fib came back to me.  At the table of gracious hosts, in the company of my friends and brothers and sisters in the faith, I cheapened the truth and sincerity of that table just to feel more included in a conversation.  A little white lie, but I saw suddenly what I had done for what it was, a violence to that fellowship.  But why not just forget it?  It's really not that big a deal.

I slept poorly and was quiet at breakfast.  We went off to our last day of the mission and I remained uncomfortable.  Part way through the teaching on the work of the Holy Spirit it became clear to me that He, the same Holy Spirit, was impressing on me the need to confess and repent.  But it was not enough to confess and repent in my heart.  I needed to confess to another whom I had sinned against. I was humiliated.  For to confess this to another was to show him or her my weakness and insecurity.  What would be thought of me?

By this time it was simply a matter of obedience to the Holy Spirit.  I could not continue the work without coming clean.  It was incredibly difficult and hard on my pride, but I sought out one of my colleagues and told the truth.  I was graciously received, and, I am happy to say, not just excused with a "don't worry about it" but was forgiven.

There is no sin too small to confess and the little ones are frankly easy to gloss over.  Had I not said something, no one would ever have known, and I would have preserved my pride and the esteem of my friend.  As it turns out, I only had to sacrifice the former, not the latter.

Walking with God means walking in real integrity, even in the smallest things.  This was one of the marks of the East African Revival, and it has begun to make a mark on me.

You in your small corner

This Little Light of Mine was a Sunday School favorite when I was a boy.  It has continued to be as an adult because we sing it frequently at Isaiah 40 Foundation conferences.  Everybody knows it and seems to love it.  The verses end with this: You in your small corner and I in mine.  The excellent point made is that we should be salt and light wherever we are.

But this morning it has made me think of something else - the ubiquity of small-corner ecclesiology.  In the US and Canada, congregations, even if they are a part of a larger denomination, think in terms of my church, my congregation - my small corner.  There tends to be very little sense of the wider church.

Yesterday we had the opening worship for the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) in Nairobi, Kenya.  I have never attended a gathering of the Church which has been more than national.  This conference has gathered Anglicans from 41 nations around the globe.  It is not a small corner.

I was moved to tears, one of several times last evening, when the gathered host sang the hymn, Revive Us Again.  It was heartfelt and vibrant in expression and the prayer of the assembled.  To think, the Anglican Church globally was praying in song:

Alleluia, thine the glory, alleluia, amen!

Alleluia, thine the glory

Revive us again.

The other remarkable bit is that the prayer is revive us again.  The powerful preaching of our African Anglican hosts reminded us that revival is not for the Church or for nations but for individuals.  In impacting individuals, it transforms the church and whole communities and nations.  And most critically it begins with us, with me.  

Alleluia, thine the glory

Revive us again.

Light to them who sit in darkness

"Karibu" is perhaps the word I have heard most in the past week.  It is Swahili for "welcome" and that is what we have been in Kenya.  We have been preaching, teaching and ministering in the Anglican Diocese of Taita Taveta whose principal town is Voi.  This town is in southern Kenya, about a third of the way between Mombassa and Nairobi.  It is also at the crossroad of the road to Tanzania.  With the added feature of being tucked up between Tsavo Game Park East and West, it is growing fast.

As I think of mission, two things come to mind, preaching the gospel to the "heathen" and community development.  The Anglicans of Taita Taveta are doing just that.  They are on mission in their own community. Voi is not a big place.  It has perhaps 100,000 people now.  But from the top of the hill behind the town center you can see the roofs of four Anglican churches, not to mention the many others.  You can't swing a cat without hitting one - not that I tried.

The humble churches are filled on Sunday and many parishes have had to add more services on a Sunday.  People are coming to know Jesus, and the Lord is adding to their number almost daily.  

They are also committed to the growth and development of the whole community, not just their churches.  The mission statement of the church that meets in a temporary shelter at the site of the cathedral which is being built, speaks specifically of this.  The Church invests itself - both money and effort - into the infrastructure of the town.  They have built two office buildings that house local shops and businesses.  The building of them provides employment and the space they give allows businesses to operate and further develop the town.  The other plus is that it is a revenue stream for the mission.  Being salt and light by building and owning office space has never even occurred to me.

I have never seen a body of Christians who hold together so well those two aspects of mission, preaching the Gospel and community development.

And all of this makes me think about how we in North America could learn from this.  Our tendency, I think is to hold to one of these two in our exercise of mission.  If we are outwardly focussed at all, either we focus on evangelism and bringing people to know Jesus, or we engage in community development in assisting the poor and working for justice.  The Gospel proclaimers are often suspicious about the "social gospel" people.  They, in turn, tend to be uncomfortable with the overt proclaimation of the Gospel.  There isn't a polarization here.

Not that there are no problems here.  People are very poor, and therefore very desperate.  This makes crime an issue.  Despite, or perhaps because of, the growth in Voi there is a lot of unemployment.  As people who in generations past have been subsistence farmers become better educated, they move to the towns looking for work, of which there is not enough.  Young men, in particular, become depressed and as a result alcoholism is a growing issue.  As we prayed for people this week, one of the most common requests was for sons and husbands who have become alcoholic.

And we did pray a lot for people and they were eager to receive.  The Lord did much healing.  It has almost been cliché - improving eyesight and making the lame walk.  It was exciting to see.  And He also blessed His people with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, filling them and gifting them for the work of ministry and the building up of the Church.

I come back to what I think of as mission.  It is summed up in the words of Zechariah at the birth of John the Baptist.  To be a missionary is to be a prophet of the Most High who will "give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death." (Luke 2:79)

We go on mission to give that light.  But I have rather been receiving it.

Grace and peace to you,

Alex+

We're on a mission from God

I have the remarkable privilege in the next few weeks to spend some time in Kenya, first on a short-term mission to the Anglican Diocese of Taita Taveta and then to a global Anglican conference in Nairobi.  And it makes me think, naturally, of mission.

The only things I remember from the film, The Blues Brothers, are its title, its stars (John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd) and their iconic phrase, "We're on a mission from God."  I did not even remember what the mission was until I looked it up on IMDB this morning - they were trying to save a Catholic orphanage.  Their mission, although not what we classically think of as such - no unreached masses except perhaps Jake and Elwood themselves - but it was connected to the ministry of the Church.  It remind me that mission is a word whose roots are fundamentally Christian. Etymologically is is rooted in the Latin word that means "to send."  From the beginning Christians have sent people out to tell others about God's love and saving work in Jesus Christ.

The word, being a good one, has been taken for use in business and other sectors.  Everybody these days has a mission statement.  It is a distillation, as concise as possible, of what a business or organization is about - what they are trying to accomplish.

So as I go on mission, what am I trying to accomplish?  What is my mission statement?  Frankly, I don't know.  (This approach, by the way, is a recipe for business failure).  But there is a reason I am in the dark on this.  Like Jake and Elwood it is not the classical sort of mission - at least from my perspective.

We (the team of my bishop, two fellow priests and me) are ostensibly in Taita Teveta to preach and teach on God's healing power through Jesus and in the Holy Spirit.  And in that sense it is typical. We are going with something to proclaim.  We are going to give something we have and know.

But here's where it is not.  Paul expresses in his letter to the Colossians exactly what I feel about the East African Church:

We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all the saints.
(Colossians 1:3-4, ESV)

I have heard of the faith of the African Church and particularly of the Anglican Church in Kenya, of which I was for a time a North American missionary priest.  And I am in awe of their faith and courage.      And of the rate at which the Church is growing there.  It puts us in the West to shame.  Would that I had that kind of faith in Jesus Christ.*

So I go on mission feeling that those to whom I am supposed to proclaim something have rather more to proclaim to me.  So I don't really know what I am trying to accomplish.

But here is where we hit something else significant about mission.  MY mission statement is of secondary importance.  Because the mission is God's.  So I go on mission seeking to understand what God is trying to accomplish.  And I have confidence that it is to bring us all into a new or deeper knowledge of Jesus.

Grace and peace,
Alex



* I am reminded, however, that Jesus tells us that we need faith only the size of a mustard seed (Luke 17:5-6)