Hospitality and an Upside Down Community

When we arrive at a meeting, or just whenever we see our farming Kenyan friends, a typical greeting is "Mimea yako inaendelea?" ("How are your crops continuing?"). Until recently we would get hopeful but discouraging responses about how they were still looking for the rains that just didn't seem to be coming. But in the last few weeks, all of that has changed.

Michael and I are now frequently going to bed to the sound of rain pounding on our roof, we are overwhelmed at the beauty of the renewed green rolling hills of the Kenyan countryside, and some of our farmers are saying that these are the best long rains they've received in years! Bwana Safiwe!! (Praise the Lord!!)

We had a particularly encouraging experience with our Kirinyaga group just this past week. Out of the group of 50 farmers, 30 of these are landless, so CCS is letting each of these use a small plot on their demonstration farm to plant their 80 aloe vera plants. So there are 2,400 aloe vera plants growing very well, and the farmers are delighted about having a space and a crop of their own to care for (that's me being so excited about the growing aloe vera plants). After the meeting (which many were not able to attend because of the rain and mud issues), Michael and I got a tour of the nearby village where these landless farmers live. Most of them are renters in very small, closely spaced rooms, but they were so excited about showing us where they lived and worked, and were so hospitable to us.

I know we keep saying this in our blog posts, but it's just such a powerful example to us - Kenyans are so hospitable. The chairman of this subgroup of farmers, Florence (the one in the middle, between Michael and Priscilla, the secretary of the group), had us come into her home and served us avacado, arraroot (kind of like potato), and cokes, Veronica offered us chai in her home, Joseph bought ground nuts for us, John let us hold his newborn baby, and each one of them introduced us to their families and made us promise to return to take a full meal with them the next time we come.

So our work "inaendelea” (it is continuing). We are meeting with the Meru groups every two weeks to continue the PBB (Prepare a Better Business) trainings, and we’re going once a month to Embu, Kirinyaga, and Embeere to do the same trainings. So far we’ve had sessions about examining a good business idea, talking with customers to test ideas, and planning our production. Michael and I usually teach the lessons together but a few times we have split the groups up into men and women and that has been great.

When I am with just women they tend to be more vocal, they have great ideas and many questions, and they seem to latch onto the concepts really well. One of the lessons goes through all the character traits of the woman of noble character in Proverbs 31, and it was a very encouraging time to discuss and learn together.

I think we've mentioned this before, but we are so blessed and amazed by the New City Fellowship church body that we are a part of here. Last Sunday both Michael and I were almost brought to tears as we saw these lovers of Jesus show us what it means to be the body of Jesus. As usual we sang in four different languages (Kiswahili, English, Hindi and another Indian language).

Shafkat, our assistant pastor, really brought the Word in his message, talking about the truth of God's promises - His love and His grace - so powerfully, and then after the service we had a potluck feast consisting of foods from all around the world. But what really got Michael and me that day was that we had brought our Kenyan neighbors, Josh and Emma, with us, and I think just about every single person in the church came up to them, greeted them by name, asked them about themselves, and were just so kind. As Michael pointed out, possibly our most powerful form of evangelism as Christians is simply how we love one another ("They will know us by our love," check out 1 John), and I think New City Fellowship was a powerful witness to that love to our friends last week.

There are many things we love about New City Fellowship, but something that stands out the most is this church body's obvious belief in 2 Corinthians 12:9 where it says that God's power is made most perfect in our weaknesses. Right now our pastor is recovering from major eye surgery after a freak accident, and he has been coming to church on painkillers and with a patch, but he's still there, shepherding and leading the people (and also regularly making jokes like, "I've always wanted to be a pirate.") Our assistant pastor, Shafkat, is a compassionate and passionate pastor who happens to be in a wheelchair. Mimi, the young woman in charge of slides during singing, has a physical handicap that makes it hard for her to communicate. We have Indian Kenyans and African Kenyans who typically don't get along who are worshipping together as members of the same family, and a bunch of Congolose refugee folks who don't know a lick of English but come with huge smiles and big hearts to be an intricate part of this body. And even though they can't understand much of the sermon (which is in English), the Congolose (28 of them) get up and sing a song almost every week, which sounds like it must be a taste of heaven. All this to say, New City Fellowship is made up of so many different kinds of people from so many different places (nationally, ethnically, and socio-economically), and it just doesn't seem like it should work. What in the world are we all doing together? The answer is simple. Jesus, our Redeemer and our Brother, has called us to each other by calling all of us to Himself.

Just this past Sunday we got to go visit our Congolese friends' homes. They are two families who have been here in Kenya for 5 months after long years of living in their war-torn country and seeing many family members and friends suffer and die at the hands of inexplicable violence. First we went to the home of Donata and his wife who have their seven children, one sister-in-law, two nieces and two nephews staying with them, and then we visited Victor and his wife who have 12 children, five of their own and seven adopted (I think most of those adoptions happened as a result of many being orphaned by the war in Congo). Again, we were overwhelmed by their generosity to us, serving us lunch and practicing their English with us, and letting us practice our Kiswahili with them.

Obviously I'm still regularly amazed at the hospitality and kindness of the people here, but maybe I shouldn't be. I think the source of my continual amazement is my basic assumption that happiness is necessarily linked to a person's financial status, but according to Jesus - that's totally wrong! I can't believe how often I forget the backwards and upside down things that Jesus promised, things like blessed are the poor, and blessed are those who hunger and weep now, and blessed are those who are hated and excluded. He says to those people to rejoice and leap for joy. And then he goes on: he says woe to the rich, woe to those who are well fed, woe to those who laugh now, and woe to those who all men speak well of, for that is how the false prophets were treated (Luke 6). I don't understand all of what that means, but I do know that we are getting to see a glimpse of the fulfillment of that in the lives of the poor here.

This group of ragtag followers of Jesus who make up New City Fellowship (the Indians, Germans, Kenyans, Americans, Congolose, and others) do not have it all together, but the difference between them and many other Christians are that they do not pretend to have it all together. Maybe that makes them more “put together” than those of us who are always trying to put on a good face and trying never to appear like we are hurt or angry or sad about things. Jesus says that all who are weary can come to Him, and He will be our rest. His promises are bigger and better than the emptiness of more wealth, more things, or more power; He promises His presence to us, He promises to be our Peace, and He promises to be our Rest. For now, New City Fellowship is showing us glimpses of the fulfillment of those great promises. May we continue to learn with them and continue to be challenged and changed to conform evermore to the radical calling of Christ on our lives.

Resurrection Hope: Try, Try, and Try Again

You know, when we think about the church in the world today, and what we’re doing in God’s kingdom both collectively and as individuals, it’s easy to get discouraged. Satan roars around like a lion waiting to devour us, often by using our good intentions and misguided battlefronts “to lead us like lambs to the slaughter.” Living on another continent and listening to the news and noise from back home often makes me grieve rather than rejoice. As an example, seeking to own Christ as the Risen Lord and King who claims our allegiance over all earthly commitments and communities, Rebecca and I have tried to think about politics in ways that are difficult to define and that are nonconformist to either of our two parties (neither of which reflects God’s dream for the world). And so whether in the NY Times, Christian social justice blogs, or in chain mail, we’re constantly discouraged! Whether it’s the Christian activist who writes about Obama’s presidency as if it is the sign and seal of God’s kingdom coming for the poor, or the chain mail that tells us that “Christ died to save your soul, and the American soldier for your freedom,” we feel sometimes that the kingdom might be stumbling.

But the temptation to feel failure is even greater here in our own lives and work! Many of us have grown up with so many commercials that say things like, “For just 7 cents a decade, you can save an entire community from starvation, and build three churches, and convert the entire country,” that we’ve started to believe that God’s kingdom work among the poor is simple or easy, that all it takes is good intentions and cold hard cash. But that certainly doesn’t reflect our experience. Community development work is hard, and there are plenty of setbacks, failures, false starts, and all the rest.

And as opposed to some other areas of missions or development, where the field seems to have reached a fairly defined set of “best practices” or rules for success, in promoting market-based agricultural business, we sometimes find ourselves in what might be called “half-charted territory:” not untried, not without guidelines, but with a whole lot of really smart folks saying, “Now how exactly do we make this work?”

And this is even more discouraging than biased blogs and misguided (or dishonest!) chain mails. Discouraging enough to sometimes make you wonder if it’s worth it.

And then we remember the little parable of the mustard seed. In Matthew, Jesus begins his ministry by declaring the kingdom of heaven, the rule and reign of God that will set all things to right, that will be the jubilee year for the poor, the day of healing for the sick, the blind, and the lame, and a reversal of the fallen world’s order. And how does Jesus say that this great overturning of the world will happen? How will this mighty work for the outcast, the beggar, and the poor break onto the scene, this revolution that unseats the powerful and lifts up the lowly? Like a tiny insignificant seed, that hides in the soil quietly, and then slowly by slowly becomes the enormous tree that attracts all the birds of the air to its branches. In other words: the Risen Lord’s kingdom is coming, and if we want to see it, we’ll look to the small things, the quiet efforts, the little by little steps of His followers seeking His way in the world. In a society where our worth is determined by the bigness of our actions, whether inside the church or outside of it, Christ tells us His kingdom is coming, whether we see it or not, coming in the small things, the hidden things, the stopping, starting, halting efforts of His people to do His work.

What that means is that as community development workers, a good bit of what we’re doing is experimenting, trying this and that, seeing what works, and believing in God’s kingdom coming for the poor at every step despite the inadequacy of our efforts. I know that this isn’t as comfortable as saving a city for 7 cents, either for us or for the folks back home. The kingdom isn’t ever comfortable, but it is beautiful and good, the dream hidden deep in our hearts fulfilled by Christ in His death and resurrection.

So practically what does this mean for us? A whole lot actually. After four months of studying Planting Faith’s groups, learning from our partner organization and our bosses Horace and Ann Tipton, and thinking long and hard through everything we learned back at Covenant, we have proposed to try a new pilot project that would keep the best of what PF has been doing, to learn from our mistakes, and to adopt new techniques that will be more community-based, more empowering, and more sustainable.

So instead of lending to the farmers, we’ll partner with a local microbank that has proven that they are experts at making sustainable loans to farmers groups. Doing this will help us as the church and the “wazungu” to distance ourselves from the financial portion of our program (thus eliminating some of the negative incentives in our current model), and will save us a good deal of headache in terms of staff time and fundraising. Instead of forming a new big group of 50 farmers, we’ll work with a smaller group that has already been functioning for some time before we ever get to them. Instead of researching the markets and crop possibilities ourselves and then presenting them to the farmers, we’ll use a series of participatory activities and trainings to help the farmers analyze the market for various crops, their potential to produce those crops, and to develop a business plan to collectively conduct that plan. This will be more empowering and developmental, putting the future and success of the group totally in the hands of the group themselves, and equipping them to follow this exact same model over and over again without our help in the future.

And we’ll still be doing all of the other Christian business and agricultural training and research, the marketing assistance, and oversight that seem to have been successful in the good work PF has already been attempting.

This all may seem quite technical, but for us, it’s just another way we’re seeing the kingdom of God affect not only the type of work we do, but the way we do it: by starting small, by trying new things and learning from our successes and mistakes, and by building all of our work on the absolutely rock solid foundation of the resurrection, which means that “our work in the Lord will not be in vain.” Hallelujah, that Christ allows us to participate in the work He’s doing, accepting and using our faltering, stumbling efforts to build His kingdom.

Will our project work? We hope so, but we can’t be sure. But we know this: Christ has died, Christ is Risen, Christ is coming again, and in the meantime, the mustard seed sized work of the kingdom is coming in our world, giving us glimpses and hints of what He will do in full in those last days.

Peace,
Michael Rhodes

P.S.- Sorry for all these digressions! I hope you find them interesting, but regardless, look for a regular, "so what again have ya'll been doing?" post early next week!

Learning Stuff, Kenyan Style

So, as it turns out, we’re learning stuff. Here are some summaries:

Nyama Choma: Learning To Feast Together

Nyama Choma. The truly Kenyan feast. Direct translation: burnt meat.

Eating choma challenges all sorts of theories about eating that Becca and I have acquired over the years. For starters, it’s almost always goat. I’ve never eaten goat before, didn’t really know you did. Second, when you eat choma, everybody’s food comes out on one plate, and there are no utensils. And third, those of us who live in the barbeque capital of the world are used to eating food that looks like animal parts (i.e. ribs), but we ain’t got nothing on choma. And Kenyans eat every last bit of it. The last time Bec and I had choma, one of our friends actually took a bone and tapped it on his plate until the bone marrow came out . . . which he then ate.

Nyama choma is a truly carnivorous feast, a huge celebration of grilled meat with little added flavor or side dishes. Everybody loves choma, and advertisements for it at restaurants are everywhere. And on holidays, families and friends get together to slaughter the goat and grill it themselves.

So what have we learned from choma? Several things, actually. For starters, feasting, celebrating, shoveling loads of meat into your mouth with other people, is a beautiful manifestation of community. Choma is great because people love it, and sometimes when we’re eating it, I feel like we’re getting a taste of the great banquet to come.

Second of all, whether it’s Kenyans here, African-Americans in Memphis, or backwoods mountain folks near Covenant, one excuse for me to not cross boundaries is just “the otherness” of others. But here’s the thing: daily life offers us a million opportunities to suck it up, and dive into cultural experiences that, while maybe strange or even gross to us, are incredibly dear to those other folks who we think are weird and who also happen to be made in God’s image. It happens to us all the time here: tea made with raw milk that develops film on the top if it’s not kept constantly moving, meat that looks just a little too much like living animals, flies in kitchens, Lord-knows-what-in-the-water . . .”

But here’s the deal: now, Becca and I freakin’ love nyama choma. Like choose to eat it whenever we can. And that’s the way that it is with all sorts of things. When we dive in, when we cross boundaries, we make friends, and we have beautiful, incredible experiences.

Last Thursday, after a full day of work, Becca and I went to get choma with two of our Mang’u farmers and one CCS worker. And in that simple sharing of what looks to be a pretty gross dinner, and actually tastes delicious, we realized that we are making friends. Real friends, who love us enough to tell us how much it means to them that we eat what they eat, that we’re constantly trying to speak to the farmers in Kiswahili, and that we spend time with them. That’s what we’ve learned from nyama choma.

Hospitality
It’s short and simple: God tells us explicitly in His word to bring strangers into our homes, and Kenyans are awesome at it. When we walked through Ngare Ndare a week ago, people were calling out from their huts, telling our farmers that they were “doing bad” because they hadn’t brought us to meet them and to get tea from them. Another farmer practically forces us to come into their home, take tea, and carry away a ten pound bag of tomatoes, which is a main source of livelihood. In Mang’u, we go around to follow up with our group’s farmers, and every single one gives us mangos, or avocados, or a pumpkin. Or the incredible Jedidah and John, who have absolutely insisted that we sleep in their house every time we come anywhere near Ngare Ndare, and that we bring every single visitor we have to greet them.

Hospitality doesn’t mean big planned parties to entertain people from our same socio-economic class who will pay us back in kind in the near future. It means inviting the stranger, the other, the sojourner into our homes, allowing them to interrupt our lives and families and daily rhythms of life. As one person put it, “whenever we show up, it’s almost like they’ve been waiting for us.” I spend most of my American life trying to make sure that other people don’t interrupt what I’m doing. Kenyans are quickly killing that impulse, and teaching us that hospitality is a beautiful, fun way to serve God’s kingdom.

God’s Presence
Rebecca and I are currently reading through the entire Bible, and we recently finished reading the books known as the “minor prophets;” quite a euphemism considering how much they shake us up and challenge all of our presuppositions. But one thing that has struck me this time around, and particularly in the prophets, is the emphasis on God’s presence.

It seems to me that presence is one of the biggest themes in the Bible. The beauty of the garden is founded on God’s presence with humans. The Abrahamic story is absolutely filled with God’s promises “to be with” Abraham and his descendants. God speaks to Moses by presenting Himself in the burning bush, and follows that initial crazy meeting with many other personal encounters, talking to Abraham “like a man speaks to his friend.” In the Exodus, as promised, God’s presence is absolutely on the Israelites in an incredible way: through pillars of cloud and fire, the cloud over the tabernacle, supernatural storms and trumpets over Mt. Sinai. In the Promised Land, God establishes the Davidic kingdom, and the Psalms are filled with David’s recognition of God’s presence, and when his son Solomon built the temple, “the glory of the Lord” descends on the place. After Israel rejects their God, the prophets are absolutely filled with promises of a return of God’s presence: Ezekiel envisioning God’s Spirit departing from the temple only to return later on, the promise that “I will be their God, and they will be my people,” the promise that “I will be with them, and I will be their peace” or elsewhere “their righteousness,” and the incredible prophecies of Immanuel, “God with Us” fulfilled in the Incarnation. And then the story of God walking among us through the cross and resurrection, and His departure with the words “Lo, I am with you even unto the end of the age.” After Jesus goes back to the Father, the next thing we here about is God’s Spirit coming down at Pentecost (which is better than if Jesus were with us according to Him), and finally in Revelation the promise that Zion will descend from heaven prepared like a bride and the declaration that “behold the dwelling of God is with man.” The promise of presence is one of the most frequent, powerful, and hope inspiring in all of Scripture.

And I think Kenyans get it. One of our hosts always prays, “Lord, you have been with us today, as we have done all of these things. Be with us now and tonight.” The Anglicans frequently pray, “Be with us, and keep us from the dangers of night,” and end their prayers with “now may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Spirit, be with us now and forevermore.” And you know what? Many of those promises of presence are specifically directed to those on the margins, the excluded, the poor, the downcast. And if God’s word is true, that means that those on the margins have something to teach us about knowing God’s presence. And I think they are.

Cry, The Beloved Country: A Short Book Review

I studied English in college, so the phrase "you have to read this book" is one I've heard and used frequently (for the record, I think I said those exact words about N.T. Wright's Surprised By Hope on this blog, and I still stand by it). But rarely do I find that books that people recommend to me with such an expression live up to the hype, and furthermore, even when I use the phrase it's not clear exactly what I mean. Why must a person read any given book, besides the Bible of course?

Given all this skepticism, when Jason Hood said "you have to read "Cry, the Beloved Country," I ignored him for 2 and half years. But he was right. I had to read it, and so do you. And here's why:

First and foremost, it is an incredible novel in its own right, a work which held me literally on the verge of tears from start to finish as I read all 200+ pages in one marathon sitting. Second, it is a book that dramatically confronts the issues of race, community, separation, and reconciliation, issues which are imperative for the church to grapel with today. Set in apartheid S. Africa, the book follows the journey of an elderly pastor from the rural part of the country as he journeys to Johannesberg to try to rescue those members of his family who have been sucked into the city by a lack of economic opportunity outside of it. This helped me understand the relationship between the families we work with and the city of Nairobi in which we live. Third, it will help all of us understand the realities of the modern "city," with all of its beauty amidst ugliness and decay, all of its hope amidst despair and degradation. The story of one pastor struggling with the destruction of historical family life and morality in the midst of Johannesberg gives a window into the world in which the majority of the globe's poor currently live. Finally, you must read this book because it is a story that grapples with all of these issues from the perspective of the resurrection hope that only comes through the Risen Christ, because this book will reignite your hope in Christ's church, and because it will remind you powerfully of God's amazing grace. Books as diverse as Planet of Slums and To Live In Peace have radically shaped my understanding of the cities today and their place in the kingdom of God, but this novel has filled in the gap in a way that only a great work of art can do.

I know its not a new novel, and this is supposed to be a missionary blog. But I just read this book. And you've got read it.

Peace,
Michael

P.S.- Someone once said that the only real thing that changes from year to year are the people you meet and the books you read. Our blog has tried to introduce you to some of the people; check the new side bar addition to find out about some of the books.