All Rhodes Lead To Kenya

The Journey Begins Again . . . With A New Blog To Boot

2011-02-17T11:52:00.000-08:00

Hey Everybody!

It's the moment you've all been waiting for: a new blog! Rebecca and I are back in Memphis, moved into our apartment less than a mile from Advance and right in the middle of the neighborhood, and are already diving in to life, work, and worship in the inner-city. ALREADY we can see how Jesus used our time in Kenya to get us here; thus far the Lord has brought us, and we're confident that He's got good plans for us ahead.

So here's what you need to know: the new blog is a collaborative effort between our family and our great friends Brandon and Lily Russell (neighbors and coworkers as well!). You can follow us at www.theunrememberedgate.wordpress.com Make sure you RSS us, put us on your Google Reader, sign up for email reminders, or SOMETHING so that you can remember to keep up with us.

Thank you so much for your support, love, prayers, and encouragement!

Other ways to stay in touch:
Phone- 901-849-6345
Twitter- Follow @michaeljrhodes
Or just come visit the office at 769 Vance Avenue, Memphis, TN 38126

Set A Stone In Nairobi

2010-12-09T07:23:00.003-08:00

Becca receiving the traditional Kenyan farewell gift

Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen. He named it Ebenezer,saying, “Thus far the LORD has helped us,” –I Samuel 7:12-

This is it. This is the last blog post to be written from this side of the pond. In a little over 72 hours, Rebecca and I will be on a plane that will take us away from Kenya for all of the foreseeable future.

Amidst all of the chaos of mixed-emotions and packing fever, I can’t help but wonder what the real missionaries feel like at this point, what someone who has spent 10, 15, 20, or even 30 years feels like when they realize that they’re about to leave behind friends they may not meet again, their second home, and a huge portion of their life’s work. I can hardly imagine that. But what I can say is that for us the strongest emotion now is one of deep, deep gratitude to Jesus.

In our blog, updates, meet and greets, prayer letters, and conversations, Rebecca and I have tried our best to be honest about the struggles we’ve faced living here. The work with the farmers has been taxing and overwhelming, and even now it’s often difficult to see whether or not we’ve had much of an impact. We’ve experienced severe road rage in the daily life-risking activity of driving in Nairobi, we’ve been overwhelmed by myriad cultural differences that can grate on you like nails on a chalk board (particularly in terms of being asked for money), and we’ve been irate and undone by the stories of deep injustice we hear daily about so many of the politicians, schools, churches, NGOs, and businesses. And yet, the last two weeks leave all of this covered by a deep sense of thanksgiving.

Govind teaching Michael how to do Koroga Bonga: Stir and Talk

Each of our farmers groups gathered specifically to send us off Kenyan style. Each group lavished us with gifts from hand woven bags, to banana leaf canvas paintings and hand-carved gourds. And then, each and every group told us how much they loved us, how we had become good friends, and how they would continue to pray for us. One of the goals we had from the beginning was to be people who connected with folks on the ground, who ate the food our friends served us and slept in the guest beds they offered us. At each meeting I was amazed by how clear it was that this had happened. God honored our efforts and the Kenyan people are among the most hospitable and gracious on earth. We truly feel like we have mamas, babas, ndugus, na dadas in the faith all over Central Kenya (mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters in Kiswahili). At our pilot project send-off, one of the leaders stood up and thanked us for helping them see the resources they had that they hadn’t recognized, and helping them to work together to use those resources. Creating that kind of experience was a full half of what we hoped for with that group, and by God’s grace it seems to have happened. We made so many mistakes! We can be nothing but be thankful that God used us all the same.

Our experience in Nairobi has been more of the same. Last Saturday I was in an accident which was not my fault. Under the weight of culture stress, car stress, leaving stress, and all-round sinfulness I succumbed to the temptation to be pretty completely unChrist-like to the lady who hit me (who claimed it was my fault). Followers of the blog: this should sound familiar (remember the police incident). I went to church the next day ashamed of myself, feeling like I had failed Jesus and wondering how I ever expected to represent him well in all my lousiness. I girded up my loins and led worship for the last time at NCF all the same, and received the body and blood of Christ through communion afterwards. And then the church gathered around Rebecca and I, gave us incredible gifts, and spoke of the great maturity, love, and passion with which we have served at NCF. Afterwards every demographic of our extremely diverse church came up and thanked us for serving, expressed their love for us, and told us how grateful they were for our friendship. Over and over again people said, “From the very beginning, you were reaching out and befriending people from every group in the church.” And finally a close friend came up to me and said, “I’ve seen lots of people come and go here at NCF, but I’ve never seen two people showered with love as much as you guys.”

Rebecca and Michael wearing our gifts with Pastor Joe and his wife Elfi

And in that moment I realized: the good I do is not my own, it is Christ who lives in me. But for Christ uniting Himself with me through the power of the Holy Spirit, I am nothing but that angry jerk on the side of the road. All of our righteousness before the Lord is like filthy road-rage rags; but Christ has shone through Rebecca and me in ways we did not even recognize with a light that is not our own. Let the Lord be praised! And we are so grateful.

Later that evening all of our friends from Nairobi came to a good-bye party thrown for us by the church. We have slept at the homes of 5 different families in the last 9 days. We have feasted, partied, remembered our time here, and grieved our departure with dozens and dozens of brothers and sisters in the Lord who showed hospitality to these two American aliens and strangers on our sojourn through this foreign land. We have seen Christ in the hands and feet of our brothers and sisters, and seen how Christ has worked through our grubby hands and feet to do the good works he prepared from the beginning of time for us to do. And we are grateful.


Two farmers and Beth, who will continue working on the pilot project

“Here I raise my Ebenezer, hither by Thy help I’ve come.” So says the great hymn. The story comes from the Old Testament when Samuel rallies the Israelites to return to the Lord. They gather together and fast and pray and repent of all their idol worship. While they’re there the Philistines come after them, but Samuel says that the LORD their God will fight for them. And so they cry out to God, and God answers with loud thunder and sends their enemies into confusion, and Israel wins the day. Afterwards Samuel raises a stone at Mizpah and tells the Israelites to remember “thus far has the Lord brought us” when they see it in later days. Samuel had been around faithless Israel long enough to know that they would be tempted to forget God’s goodness when things got rough in the future; so he gave them a stone to help them remember Yahweh’s everlasting faithfulness.

Us with the Khans, who run a ministry for people with handicaps

As many of you know, Rebecca and I are coming home with a vision for our next several years. Rebecca is applying to programs that would qualify her to teach in one of Memphis’s struggling inner-city schools. I will be returning to work at Advance Memphis, where I will be trying to “do justice and love mercy” by helping low-income African-American adults in the 38126 zip code develop economically through the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We’re hoping to find a place to live in or near that neighborhood. Having seen racial, tribal, and socio-economic reconciliation among Africans and Asians, we feel called to enter into that work in a place where our own tribe is involved in the problem. We’re excited and very, very nervous. The work will not be easy, and because of our time here we’re more aware than ever of the complexities of poverty and injustice, and the depths of our own inadequacy and sin.

So here we raise our Ebenezer. With thanksgiving and hope we’ll remember the long drives through the thousand tiny farms filled to overflowing with electric green life. We’ll remember the friendship of hundreds of farmers, some of the world’s poorest of the poor from the slums in Nairobi, and Christian brothers and sisters from some of the world’s least reached places (like Pakistan and India). We’ll remember that despite our great personal failure and sin, Christ nevertheless baptized our half-hearted efforts and turned them into stones built into the kingdom of God. We’ll remember the power of His presence to us day in and day out through His word, prayer, the Eucharist, and the faces of brothers and sisters from every corner of the globe. Come what may, we call ourselves to remember and each of you to remind us, “Thus far has God brought us. And we have confidence that He who has brought us here shall bring us home.”

Having climbed Mt Kenya, about to head down. Cue the symbolism.

Thanks be to the Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit! The LORD has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy!

Thanks for following us in this journey. Keep checking the blog for a few State-side reflections and eventually a link to our new blog (location TBD). Pray for us, write us (michaelandrebeccarhodes@gmail.com), visit us (Memphis), and call us (901-849-6345 from December 27 onward). Your encouragement, financial support, prayer, friendship and love have helped make all of this possible. When we look back at all we’ve learned and what God has done in us and through us, we believe it has been worth it. But more importantly than anything else, let each of us now, when we celebrate the time of Christ’s visiting us on Earth during Advent, remember the great things the Lord has done for us with great gratitude and full joy:

No more let sin and sorrows grow

Nor thorns infest the ground!

He comes to make His blessings known

Far as the curse is found!

Peace,

Michael

Lesson #7- The Body and the Bride

2010-12-06T08:30:00.000-08:00

Finally, Rebecca and I have been overwhelmed by the power of the church. In our individualized, ultra-mobile American culture, the church can seem on the surface to be little more than a voluntary-society. In Kenya, we have seen glimpses of how the church as the community of God can change the world.

Kenya is one of those countries that has had a long history of all sorts of organizations of every stripe trying to create positive change within the society. Billions of dollars and probably millions of people have tried to make Kenya a better place. But only one oft-overlooked community in Kenya has the specific promise of the Creator God that they will be the hands and feet of the King in His world, and that community is the church. If we look at the metaphors the New Testament uses for the church, metaphors like “people,” “family,” “bride,” and “body,” all of them are incredibly intimate and personal. The church is less like an association you join than it is like a community you inherit as a birth-right, a community which demands your highest allegiance. Our first births bring us into the world heavily committed to our biological families, to the nation we live in, and to our ethnic group. But our new birth in Christ brings us into a community that Christ says claims a greater allegiance even than these. And that is the church.

We have seen the best and the worst of the church here. We have seen pastors abuse their spiritual authority in despicable ways, and we have also seen pastors and parishioners alike literally lay down their lives for the gospel. Whether with our friend Julias, who has taken a massive pay cut to pastor a small church in the village and yet finds a way to take care of 30 orphans in an orphanage that the church (whose total tithe is probably around 300 dollars a month) somehow manages to support, or the entire fellowship at New City Nairobi, which has stood together as a witness to the love of Jesus that reconciles enemies together before God and takes care of the needs of its congregants at the deepest levels, we have seen Christ changing the world through the hands and feet of his church.

There are some things that now, in the middle of packing and saying goodbye and all the emotions of leaving, I simply cannot find words to express or explain. The experience of church here in all of its body-of-Christ fullness is one of them. I can only say that after two years of seeing the poor and vulnerable be abused by churches that failed them on the one hand, and seeing new life and hope springing forth among the poor and spiritually broken in churches that embody the kingdom on the other, that we are more committed to the church than ever before. The church in our minds and hearts can no longer simply be the place where our family chooses to go and worship on Sunday mornings; it is the community that demands our highest allegiance at every level of life. We have been given the task of embodying the kingdom: to demonstrate in word, deed, and sign what it looks like for a people pulled from every corner of the globe and from every economic status to recognize the reign of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ. We are the hands and feet of the Creator. As Tim Keller said, we are the aliens and strangers in the world who nevertheless are radically for the world in our love for our enemies, our generosity to the poor and broken, our moral purity, our love for each other, our fervency for the Lord, and our proclamation of good news that is found in no other place but in Christ and in his church.

We live in a time in which more and more people are looking around at their lives and seeing the fragmentation and isolation that comes from our Western culture’s rampant pursuit of individual choice and total rejection of outside authority. People feel alone. Maybe one of the reasons why the old methods of evangelism seem to become less and less effective is that they address one’s connection with God but ignore one’s connection to the world. But the blood of Jesus not only reconciles humans with God but humans with humans. The blood of Jesus brings us together, and the feast of communion anticipates that great feast in the new heavens and the new earth in which every tear will be wiped away and people from every tongue and tribe and nation will worship the Lamb. It is in the church that we come to the Table, and take the bread and the cup, and proclaim the Christ’s saving blood “until he comes.” And it is in the church that Jesus gives the world glimpses of what his rule and reign will look like. We in the church have an immense challenge, and an incredible opportunity. And it will cost us all of who we are. But one thing we’ve learned in Kenya is that it’s worth it.

May Jesus Christ make us His hands and feet through the power of the Holy Spirit for the glory of the Father.

Michael

Lesson #6- Citizens In The Kingdom Under The King

2010-12-01T06:20:00.000-08:00

So if Christ is the King who is coming to reclaim His world, what about us? What do we do? What's our role?

We all know the simple (but not easy) answer: Jesus calls us to follow after him. To take up our crosses. To wash each others' feet. To go and make disciples. After the resurrection, Jesus breathes on the disciples and says "as the Father sent me so send I you." That, coupled with Paul's insistence that the church is the body of Jesus makes it pretty clear that we're to go about living like Jesus is Lord, telling others about Jesus, and embodying the Kingdom of God in our local contexts.

And of course a huge part of this is serving the poor. Moreover, an even more difficult part of living in the shadow of the kingdom is to treat the poor as contributors, even especially valued members of the kingdom community ("for theirs is the kingdom of heaven") rather than as passive needy recipients.

I think the thing that has struck Rebecca and I over the past two years, though, is how often we confess with our mouths that we are servants of the King of kings who has come to make His blessings known throughout the cosmos, and then we deny it with our lives by going about our work half-heartedly or without careful thought. It is so easy, especially when we're working with the poor, to think that just because we showed up, we've done enough. After all, our intentions are so good, and a whole bunch of other folks just stayed home . . . right?

The nugget of truth here is what John Calvin meant when he talked about how Jesus' work not only cleanses us from sin but even makes our shoddy works great in his kingdom. Jesus takes our filthy-rags righteousness and makes it into something beautiful. But this mentality can become an excuse to neglect careful thinking or hard work.

We almost titled this post "The Importance of Professionalism." While at the end of the day I don't think that language captures the fullness of what we're talking about, I think it's crucial for each of us to realize that Christ doesn't want our leftover moments and half-baked thoughts; He wants our biggest dreams and greatest efforts. If we start a business we probably do all sorts of feasibility studies and serious research; if we want to do medicine we go to nine years of school. But somehow when it comes to working with the poor, we can fall into the lie that all we need are good intentions.

In her memoir about her conversion from orthodox Judaism to Christianity, Lauren Winner writes about how a Jewish mentor of hers would always use sparkling water to make the bread for Passover. Initially Winner wonders why, considering how it costs more and makes no difference in the taste. But eventually her mentor tells her that the bread is an offering, that it is consecrated to the Lord, and that no expense is to be spared. I think that that's a good metaphor for what God wants for us when we serve Him; He wants us to quit bringing those sickly lame lambs and go find the biggest snow-white sheep we can find.

Again and again we have been challenged to read more, ask more questions, talk to wiser counselors, and to work harder. There is so much that we can learn about how to serve in whatever capacity we find ourselves in simply by taking the time to do some research and by hanging out with the more experienced folks around us. Listening is one of my weakest skills in general, but a number of counselors have surrounded me in our work, and we have witnessed real improvement as a result.

The question for all of us as we look at our lives of service is, "Are we offering the first fruits, or the mealy rotting left-overs?" How can we grow in our ability to serve the poor and the marginalized, to work for justice, to do mercy, to care for the widows, orphans, and aliens in our own communities? Who is doing these things well around us that we can learn from?

I've never lived under an earthly king. As an American, I tend to hold fast and loose to authority, and to consider charity and service volunteer activities that I enter into out of my own beneficence. The problem is that my real citizenship isn't in a democratic republic founded on individual freedom. My real citizenship is in a kingdom under the King of kings, who demands my allegiance and service, and who is calling me to get on board with some projects He's working on. I think if I really pondered this and took it to heart, it would radically increase the level of seriousness and energy I'd put towards the work. Maybe that's true for many of us; regardless, it's something Jesus has really hammered home to Rebecca and me these last two years.

May we all grow in our zeal for the Lord's work, and in our willingness to shape our lives around service to Him.

Michael

Lesson #5- Jesus Is The Risen King

2010-11-26T07:27:00.000-08:00

It has not been easy for Rebecca and me to begin learning the lessons which we've highlighted in the last four posts. I expect that many of you might be discouraged simply by reading how two folks who've spent two years trying to help the poor are heading home with the sneaking suspicion that it's all more complicated than they ever imagined. And in the face of our own sin-sick hearts, the sin-sick hearts of the poor folks we want to help, and the sin-sick cultural, political, family, and economic systems in which we live, we need more than the slice of humble pie we blogged about in the last post.

And in the face of all of this each of us has essentially three options. We can give up in the face of the difficulty. Or we can learn more, work harder, give more, try our darndest to love more, and simply seek to live better lives in the face of the pain and brokenness. Both of these are long roads that lead to nowhere, and every world religion basically walks one or the other of them: escape from the world, or become a good enough person to fix it.

Every religion save one. Only in the Christian faith do we find a third answer, the answer to which Rebecca and I find ourselves driven to over and over again. And that answer is simply this: Jesus is the Risen King.

The Biblical narrative tells us mostly what we already sense in our hearts to be true: that though we were made for greatness and glory we ourselves have done something so horrible that at times we can barely find anything good among the wreckage of what we should be. And though God spoke in many times and in many ways to our forefathers, yet all of them fell short of the glory; none were able to save. So God Himself took on the flesh of fallen humanity, overcame the temption of the Satan who had lured Adam and Eve out from under the Father's protection, took on hell face-to-face at the cross, and overcame all the power of sin and death at the Resurrection. Jesus has won the victory against the sin that hides in our hearts, in the hearts of our neighbors, in all of our human structures and systems, and in all the principalities and powers of darkness.

So often we talk about the cross and the resurrection as Christ's saving work on our behalf, that we might have eternal life with him. And oh how true that is! But that glorious truth only makes sense in a larger story, the story of the God whose world ran away from Him, and who suffered death to bring it back. God walked among us in the person of Jesus, declaring the good news of the kingdom of God, the good news that though the world had rebelled, God Himself was bringing it back into its proper obedient place under His feet.

And this is the solution also to so many of the squabbles the church has gotten into lately. Should we do social justice work? Is evangelism more important? What about the environment? Is the gospel directed primarily to me as an individual, or is it a community thing? One side accuses the other of following an other-worldly faith that's no earthly good; the other side responds that eternity matters more, and that it is the saving of souls that matters most. But either one without the other is a half truth! The Christ has come! And as Paul so powerfully declares in Colossians, through Jesus all things are being brought back under the rule of Jesus! All things! He comes to make His blessings known far as the curse is found! This is the solution to all of our broken marriages, to the lusts of our hearts, to the injustice of our political systems, to the brokenness of our cultures, to the sinful hearts of rich and poor alike, and to the groaning created world that cries out around us. Jesus created it all for His glory, and though sin has marred it for a moment, He is bringing it all back to Himself for eternity.

In the cross and the resurrection Jesus won the victory over death, hell, sin, and all the powers of darkness. So where do we run when feel beaten down by our own inadequacy, or by the brokenness of the cultures or political systems in which we live, or when we're overwhelmed by the sinfulness of the folks we work with, or when we're broken by the blackness in our own hearts? We run to the King. He is reconciling and restoring all of it. And He calls us to work alongside Him.

Robert Webber talked about how the early church fathers saw the Biblical narrative as being creation-incarnation-recreation; they believed that the entire cosmos would be recapitulated, that it would be restored to its former glory under the reign of Jesus. And it is this idea, this belief in Christ as King of the cosmos, reconciling and restoring all things, that has comforted us in our weakness, challenged us in our sinfulness, encouraged us in our efforts, and called us to greater striving alongside our Lord.

And the angels will cry "Hail the Lamb," who was slain for the world, "Rule in power!" And the earth shall reply, "You shall reign, as the King of all Kings and the Lord of all Lords!" Sunday is the first day of Advent, the beginning of the Christian year, and the kick-off for a season of reflection on how our Old Testament fathers waited for the coming of the Messiah, and how we ourselves await his coming again. This Jesus, who traded "sapphire-paved courts for stable floors" is the only hope for creation. And in the face of all the struggle and suffering in the world, our answer is now and ever shall be: the King has died. The King is risen. The King will come again.

May we all acknowledge the rule and reign of Christ in our hearts more and more every day of our lives.

Peace,
Michael

Lesson #4- Humble Thyself In The Sight of the Lord (and the farmers, and your neighbors, and your work, and . . .)

2010-11-22T06:54:00.000-08:00

One More Farewell Party

The last three posts of this series will focus on the power of the gospel, both through individuals and through the church. But before we get there, Rebecca and I can’t help but mention what must be one of the most dramatic lessons of our time here in our own lives. It could be summed up this way: we know less than we think we know, we can do less than we think we can, and we’ve messed it up more than we thought we did. Or in our oft-repeated phrase, “(Fill in the blank) is just really, really complicated.” But in light of the previous posts on what the poor have to offer us, and about how complex the culture and structures are, if we want to use Biblical language, I think what we’re really talking about is the importance of humility.

So you show up thinking, “Hey, I’m educated, I’m a “doer,” Jesus is on my team! Let’s help some poor folk!” And then you actually meet some of those people, and their authentic faithful dependence on God shines light on your own materialism, and shames you in your spiritual whininess. And then you see how hard they work, and how the system is stacked against them so that your projects and plans somehow seem very small. And then you find out that your thoughts, your attitudes, your involvement in the world is actually part of the problem, that you’re part of the system, that you’re “the man!” And suddenly you find yourself feasting on a fat ‘ole slice of humble pie.

And the complexity of it all becomes overwhelming! And you begin seeing that all your simple solutions don’t work, mainly because you don’t understand as much as you thought you did, nor are you as smart as you thought you were. At least that's our story. And I think for us, and for lots of fairly well-intentioned folks like us, you come to an almost existential crisis.

So what do you do? For starters, you take off the Superman outfit, put away your Messiah complex, and start afresh. And as far as we can tell, the only place to start is where the earliest Christians started: “Jesus Christ is the Risen Lord.”

And that’s what the next post is all about.

Peace,
Michael

Lesson #3- Culture: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

2010-11-12T06:17:00.003-08:00


Cross-cultural bible story telling with our missionary friend George Mixon

Every missionary everywhere deals with culture. While sometimes in our home countries we can remain so blind to our own cultural assumptions as to forget that we have any, the moment you get off the plane in any other place you’re smacked in the face with the reality that groups of people think differently from other groups of people.

Broadly speaking, missionaries tend towards one of two poles in dealing with cultural differences: either you tend to see the cultural differences positively, as unique expressions of other image bearers from whom you can learn a great deal, or negatively, as a unique set of sin patterns and habits which a given group of people has.

Or, in case that sounds real technical, you either say: “Wow, these Kenyans are so hospitable and kind, I can really learn from that!” Or you say, “Why don’t these crazy Kenyans learn how to drive?”

Rebecca rocking some cross-cultural garb with friends Hash, Deepa, and Aman

Rebecca and I have trekked from one pole to the other and back on this spectrum (and many other missionaries do as well), and our conclusion is this: People are fallen. People are made in God’s image. Culture reflects both of these theological points in powerful, visible and hidden ways. In other words, love it or hate it, culture is a big stinkin’ deal. Ignore it, embrace it completely, or reject it totally, only at your own peril.

My marriage counselor Robby Holt predicted two historic days that I should expect in my marriage, but he made it very clear that there’s no way to predict which day will come first. One day is the day when I would say “Oh my goodness, I never knew Rebecca was such a HUGE SINNER!” And the other day would be when I would wake up and say “OH my goodness I never knew I was such a HUGE SINNER!” In a sense this is what happens to people who spend time in a foreign culture as well. For a while, maybe, you just see all these sin patterns and habits ingrained in a culture. Then one day you wake up and see new, equally horrible, sin patterns in your own.

For instance:

(1) Abusive authority, corruption, and haughty attitudes toward the poor reign supreme in this culture sometimes. (2) A cultural aversion to shame keeps what I would call Biblical confrontation from happening very often, and also often keeps parents and pastors from preaching about Biblical sexual standards. (3) The cultural practice of dowry makes it nearly impossible for poor folk to get married, which means that parental commitment to tradition encourages promiscuity and co-habitation: take marriage as an option off the table, and sexual fidelity becomes mighty difficult. (4) And a cultural complacency about asking for money means I get hit up for cash by people from the wealthiest to the poorest on a regular basis.

On the other hand (picture Tevyan from Fiddler on the Roof now), (1) my culture doesn’t even know the poor anymore. White flight, zoning, suburbanization, segregated churches, and just downright personal effort make sure that the rich hardly ever even see poor people; oh, we’re more politically correct most of the time, but Kenyans almost across the board live among and help support the poor in their midst way more than we do. Which is worse? To be friends and family with the poor and occasionally let pride get the better of you, or to escape pride over the poor by making sure you never see them? (2) Compared to the rest of the world our “upfrontness” and “forthrightness” is just a code word for being a jerk; we’re ruder, meaner, and downright crueler on average for all of our “openness.” We leave churches, families, friends, whatever, at the drop of a hat because of our constant quarreling. (3) Dowry may be outdated but it was meant originally to bind families together for their mutual benefit. Compare that to our own totally individualized, “me-oriented” society in everything from family to church. See above: we leave churches, spouses, whoever, assoon as it doesn’t fit us, and, as a young person I can say confessionally we don’t hardly give any respect to anyone older than us or other than us unless they happen to agree with us, whereas here, a greater sense of respect and admiration for the old means that wisdom gets passed down more effectively. And (4) I don’t like people asking me for money because I live in a society built on greed! Kenyan culture lives by this crazy idea that “to whom much is given much is required” (who said that again?) and everything in me hates it! Why? Because my culture idolizes money to such an extent that it tells me I have money because of my hard work and I get to do what I want with it! Which is more Biblical? Give to those who ask? Or make sure you’re totally financially self-sufficient and learn how to get rid of beggars and borrowers who want to take what’s rightfully yours?

And these are just a few examples.

Cross-cultural fire instructions (Appliances? Tackling?)

Culture makes communication, relationships, worship, and everything else that matters much more difficult. But cross-cultural involvement also makes all these things richer as well, by reminding us that some of the things we assume are Biblical aren’t. At best, a cross-cultural community allows each culture to bring its strengths to balance another culture’s weaknesses and to have the reverse done to them in their turn. And, when this happens, it’s beautiful.

Which leads me to one of the most prevalent sins worldwide, a sin that crops up in every corner of the globe, and goes oh-so-often-unnoticed even in the church. I’m talking about racism.

See, as soon as we think about culture as both a danger and blessing, then we realize how damning it is to look at another culture or ethnic group with disdain. And one thing that’s obvious in Kenya is the power of doing just this; racial stereotypes are so powerful here. “Kikuyus are thieves,” “Luos are just violent,” “Indians steal our jobs.” And I shouldn’t have to remind any American reader that we do the same thing to each other back home all the time. You can’t have the body of Christ without having cultural collision. And so racism not only leads to violence and hate and injustice, but it deprives us of the very person of Jesus, who reaches out to us through his church.

And, honestly, that’s one of the number one reasons we’re coming home. Being in Kenya has given us the opportunity to see the devastation of racism, and also to see the incredible resurrection power released through Biblical racial reconciliation in the context of our time at New City Fellowship Nairobi. But it has not given us an opportunity to participate fully in that reconciliation. We’re outsiders. Kikuyus don’t like Luos, and none of ‘em like Indians, and maybe a few folks are still ticked at the Brits, but nobody’s got any problems with us. But that’s not true everywhere. There are places where confessing with Nehemiah our sins and the sins of our forefathers takes us right into the heart of racial conflict. And having seen where the Spirit of God leads His church in the context of racism here, we want to be led into new places back in the neighborhoods where we are participants in real and living racial tension and strife.

The story of Babel teaches us that culture has at least some of its roots in sin. But both Isaiah and John’s apocalyptic vision remind us that at the end of the ages the kings of the earth will bring their best gifts to Yahweh and to the Lamb. Culture is a double-edged sword, a spring mixed with salt water and fresh, but that’s not where the story ends. Jesus isn’t content with life as we know it. He has traded the one ethnic people of God for the plurality of the kingdom, and yet he also rejects all “melting pots” as well. Christ is redeeming culture, claiming culture, overcoming culture, creating a symphony of praise out of a cacophony of voices. And it’s time that all of us open our eyes . . . and start singing.

Peace,

Michael

Lesson #2- Poverty Is More Complex Than We Thought It Was

2010-11-06T03:01:00.000-07:00

What does it mean to be poor? Why are people poor? Most people would say that to be poor means you lack material possessions. Others might say a lack of knowledge, or maybe even values. Some people might say that poverty is a result of spiritual, moral, or value deficits: bad choices, as a result of bad morals or values, lead to poverty.

If, like me, you take some time to read up on poverty, maybe even study it at school, you come across increasingly complex explanations. For instance some have suggested that poverty is being trapped in a web of various systems, such as cultural, religious, political, family, and economic systems. Others point to history as the cause of poverty. The Chalmers Center at Covenant emphasizes poverty as broken relationships between God, one's community, one's self, with the created world, and with people outside your community ("the other").

But even after all of the books I've read, all the conversations I've had, all the projects I've studied, I have routinely been shocked during my time in Kenya by just how complicated poverty really is! And in this post I don't want to argue for one or other understanding of poverty so much as to show how the causes and effects of poverty are complicated beyond our wildest imaginings.

What caused the poverty of our friend "Magdalene," and what does being poor mean for her? "Magdalene" grew up in a remote Kenyan village that survived through raising small amounts of food on a small piece of land. Because of a patriarchal cultural system, enforced by Kenyan law at the time, she could not inherit land as a woman, so when her mom no longer had money for school fees for her education, she married her off to an older man in her village who she hardly knew.

This husband immediately moved to Nairobi and left her back home. He would come home every Christmas; she got pregnant almost every year, until she had 8 children. Somewhere along the way she began brewing illegal beer to try to pay for her children's needs. Later, she decided to go move in with her husband. When she arrived in the Kibera slum, she found he had, like so many of the migrant workers here, started a new family. She chased away the new wife; her husband beat her, drank a lot, provided nothing for the family. Eventually he tried to kill her, and she ran away to another house with her children. In the new house, her landlord routinely raised the rent double what it had been; she could not keep him from doing so, because he might have the thugs kill her. Later on this same woman got a job with some white friends of ours. She did excellent work, and they trusted her for several years. One day they found out she had been stealing from them.

When her children get sick she goes to the hospital, but the staff are rude, and do not explain anything to her. She thinks they charge too much or want a bribe, but she can't understand because it is too technical for her. In church on Sundays, "Magdalene's" pastor preaches about giving every week, but never about sexual purity, because, as Magdalene says "he is the worst of all." He regularly calls her for big donations, because she works for white people. When the husband spoke to the pastor, the pastor told Magdalene that God was mad at her for leaving her husband, and that if she got back together with him, she could be a part of the leadership team. Even though she explained that her husband had tried to kill her and had never given anything to the family's income, the pastor said divorce was wrong so they had to get back together. Another time the pastor preached on how black people are cursed because they are descended from Ham, but white people are blessed because they have descended from Shem. This pastor is a part of a large church with generally well-educated preachers, but because this is a slum, the worst pastors, sometimes even pastors who have done bad things like embezzle money or sexually harass church members, are sent there.

What caused Magdalene's poverty? Bad decisions? Occasionally. She shouldn't have stolen from her employers, and if she loses her job this will increase her poverty. But bad decisions don't really explain most of it. Is it a lack of knowledge? Sometimes. If she understood medicine more she could get better care, or if she were more educated about the Bible she'd know that her pastor is a wolf in sheep's clothing and wouldn't believe his lies. But even still, would knowledge have solved all her problems? Not by half. Does a lack of material possessions cause her poverty? Again, the answer is sort of, but not really.

What does poverty mean for Magdalene? It means constant fear for her physical safety and the safety of her children. It means she is vulnerable to the Wild Wild West of a Kenyan slum, where gangs run the streets, people are kicked out of their homes, the police beat and rape and take bribes, and where the worst of all services, from electricity, to plumbing, to education, to health are all crammed into one place. It means that her children sometimes go hungry, that she sometimes feels forced to do things she knows are wrong, like stealing.

But more than all of this, being poor for Magdalene means having a perpetually marred identity. Being poor means that everyday she is taught in a thousand different ways that she is not an image bearer of God, that she is less valuable, less important than people who are not poor. Her religious system tells her lies that say she is cursed, and that if she gives money to a corrupt pastor God will give her health and wealth. Her political system tells her she is worthless by "pay-to-play" politics, where justice is bought and sold. Her cultural system tells her she is worth less than men, and should be subject to the whims of a violent husband, and also that she is worthless because she has to do menial labor. This marred identity, this feeling of shame and worthlessness, is at the back of many of the decisions that Magdalene does get to make: being told time and again that she has no value, she begins to believe it and eventually act like it.

Poverty is not mud walls and dirt floors. I have been on small farms with people who I believe live lives closer to the prophetic vision of everyone sitting under their own vine and fig tree than I do in my materialistic affluent life. I have seen people that we would think were "destitute" who are active leaders in their church, who provide for their family with the literal fruit of their labor. No, poverty is not mud walls, but broken identities, it is powerlessness, and entrapment. It is being oppressed, kicked around, constantly taught implicitly and explicitly that you are less. This ain't your Papa's view of poverty, but it's the one we've found here.

And all of this means that solutions to poverty that are one-sided don't work! If we think people are poor simply because they don't have stuff, and we give it to them, often we only increase their sense of worthlessness. We leave feeling like gods, and they leave feeling less than human. If we think the issue is just a job, so we provide a job, but don't address a political system that robs and steals, or an oppressive religious system that curses and embezzles, than we're just feeding the beast. If we address knowledge, or values, without addressing cultural systems that take all decisions about child birth out of the woman's hands, or that turn a blind eye to sexual harassment and adultery, we're sending people out to simply be more aware of how everyone treats them like nothing.

Take a look at the poor in your community and the "reasons they're poor" that you've accepted in your own mind. Take a look at the projects that you're involved in to try to help the poor, and ask yourself: Have we thought about the system? Is the culture, or the church, or the political system somehow contributing to their poverty in some way that we haven't seen? What is the implicit message of our charity? Are we giving people material things while reinforcing the lies they believe about themselves??

This has been a constant theme on this blog, because it has been a constant theme of our lives here. The system is real, if we have but eyes to see! The Bible teaches us that the powers are at work and that they corrupt every human institution! And our charities really do often reinforce lies the poor believe; we put a bandaid on a hand, and then chain feet to the floor.

I'm tempted to end on this fairly dismal note, because I think every Christian and every church needs to take another look at what we believe about poverty. But I won't leave it here for one reason: Jesus is the Risen King. The kingdom is coming. Aslan is on the move, and winter's bite is ended. And when Christ comes he makes his blessings known wherever the curse is found. The kingdom of God brings solutions bigger than Satan's snares. Sin's hidden complexity is over-matched by the kingdom's all-encompassing healing and redemption. And as we draw near to Christ, as we join in the Biblical story as the story of our lives, as we learn to look with His eyes at the poor as image bearers and the systems as corrupt and unjust, we will begin to live out of this kingdom and find ways to really engage with the poor in life-giving ways. And as a reminder of this, we've included a whole bunch of really joyful pictures from celebrations we had with members of our farmers groups this past week. So let's all ask Christ to guide us into true understanding and merciful and just living.

Peace,
Michael

*Most of my understanding of these models comes from Bryant Myer's life-changing but very technical book Walking With The Poor. For a lighter, also life-changing read, try When Helping Hurts, by Brian Fikkert and Steve Corbett.

Lessons Learned #1- Walking Among the Oaks, Rebuilding the Ancient Ruins

2010-10-28T07:17:00.000-07:00

Well, Rebecca and I are wrapping up our time in Kenya, and sadly, probably wrapping up this blog as well. So as we wind up nearly 2 years worth of blogging about our time here we wanted to take some time to discuss some of the ways we've grown in our understanding of God and His world through this experience. As with many shorter-term missionaries, when we look back at our time it can be difficult to see how little we've accomplished, but we're blown away by how much Jesus has taught us. We want to share some of that with you over the next several weeks, starting today:

Friends from NCF, Magadalene (Right) is a Sudanese refugee
who runs a small craft business that employs other refugees

If anybody had asked me why I spent my senior year looking for a way to get over to Africa as a missionary, my answer would have been immediate: read Luke 4. Jesus, quoting Isaiah 61, declares that the Spirit of God has anointed Him "to preach good news to the poor . . . to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." Jesus' kingdom, I would have said, is inextricably bound up with the prophetic vision of radical justice, mercy, and blessing for the poor. If we want to follow Jesus, we'll embrace his kingdom vision and serve the poor like he did. If the gospel ain't good news for the material poor, it ain't Jesus' gospel.

It's a good question to ask ourselves from time to time, particularly in so-called vocational ministry: why are we doing what we're doing? Why are you going on a short-term missions trip to Africa? Why do you volunteer at the soup kitchen? Why are you on the deacons board or the outreach committee at your local church? Maybe like me, your primary answer would be something like, "Jesus loves these people. They have needs that I can help them with. This is part of God's kingdom."

If so, then I think you've got fully half of the reason why God calls us, the affluent, the "haves," to ministry to the poor, the "have-nots." Because it is 100% Biblical to say "Jesus loves the poor and so should I. I can help." But if I've learned one thing about ministry among the poor over the last year it's that this is only half the story.

Our friend Agnes and her (huge!) family

The other half comes from the rest of the Isaiah passage that Jesus' quoted.* "They (the formerly poor, brokenhearted, captives, and debtors) will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor. They will rebuild the ancient ruins . . . they will renew the ruined cities." You see, Jesus rescues the poor for a reason: he wants to use them to change the world. It's a theme that runs the course of the Bible from beginning to end, from Yahweh's choosing of pagan-and-as-good-as-dead-Abraham to found His chosen people and stuttering-hesitant-murdering-Moses to lead His people out of bondage, to the early church era, when God in all His foolishness chose the weak things to shame the strong, the lowly and despised things to overcome the things that are.

Now where does that lead us, the materially strong, the intellectually educated, the confident and young children of privelege who go out into the world to "help those poor people?" It leads us to realize that Jesus Christ has chosen the outside of the camp as the center of His kingdom work. He chose a 13-year old pauper for his mother, podunk Nazareth for his home, blue-collar labor for his occupation, and 12 uneducated commoners for his leadership team. And therefore if we really understand the upside down nature of the kingdom, if we get God's special care and concern for the poor not just as projects but as fellow employees in His kingdom work, then we will run to the poor because that's where we'll find Jesus doing his most amazing kingdom work! It's a mystery difficult to explain, but I've come to believe that God calls people like me to serve the poor because that's the only way in today's society that I'm ever going to meet any of them, and He knows that without relationships with the poor and broken I'll never really get Him or what He's doing with the world.

One of our best group leader's with his father

Lesson 1 is simply this: if you want to understand the Jesus who spoke those words in Luke 4, you not only have to help the poor, you have to enter into real relationships with them. And through these relationships we'll find that the poor, as oaks of righteousness and rebuilders of walls, have a whole lot to teach us about Jesus. I have come to believe over here that living a Chrisitan life without relationships with the poor leaves you looking at Jesus with only one eye open. Because you miss a great deal of his ransomed-poor-transformed-to-oaks-of-righteousness work.

So why are relationships with the poor so important (besides the fact that Jesus calls us to them)? The answers are endless, but here are a few:

1. We learn what it looks like to really follow after Jesus. Truth is, for most of us, it's easy to follow Jesus, or at least to think we're following him. Not so for the poor. A few stories will illustrate the point. We have Indian friends here who are unemployed and unmarried, at least partly because by becoming Christians they lost their entire web of cultural and familial connections which would normally provide them will all sorts of support (jobs and a spouse for sure). Or what about our friend Iris, who comes to church week after week, teaches the children in Sunday School, loves and greets everybody with the love of Jesus, but goes home to a slum, to a home where her grown children (and thus grandchildren) still depend on her financially, and as often as not can't find work to put food on the table? What about our pastor friend, who takes in about 300 bucks a month, and with that runs an orphanage for 20 some-odd kids, leads the church, runs a small neighborhood school, does high intensity evangelism and discipleship? And then who has gotten car-jacked at gunpoint twice in the last 18 months for his pains? What about our young friends who live in the slums, who have no decent living anywhere on the horizon, who live in a culture where you cannot marry until you have become wealthier than they can imagine, and are trying to follow Christ's sexual ethic in their lives in a culture absolutely ravaged by infidelity and promiscuity? What, for heaven's sake, about Gabriel, the farmer that taught me to plant rice, who has ten kids of his own and takes care of five others who've been orphaned? There are stories at home as well: my friends I met through Advance Memphis, who have risked their lives to leave the gangs, or given up on all the money they could easily be making by selling drugs. Regardless, relationships with the poor force us to realize that following Jesus is costly. They shake us out of our apathy.

Rebecca chatting it up in the rice paddy

2. They help us see the deadly lies we believe. The rich young ruler walked away from helping the poor because he couldn't do without his riches. You and I justify our extravagant lifestyles by making "needs" of everything from car-per-person families, to private school education from 3 yrs to 30, to flat screen TVs. Furthermore, we often secretly believe that a) God blesses us financially if we really follow Him, and b) wealth creates happiness. If you don't think you believe those last two, here's a test: when you've visited poor families, have you ever thought, a) "Wow, these people really need Jesus. They probably have a lot to learn about Him," or b) "How can these people be so happy with so little?" Because if you have, you, like me, have bought into the health-wealth-gospel through the back door syndrome so typical of our culture. But when I think of Ezekiel or Joyce, two farmers who live on less than an acre of land in wooden or mud huts and yet who are two of the happiest, most faithful Christians I have ever met, all of these lies fade away. God does not necessarily bless the faithful financially; sometimes they suffer financially more than anybody else. But neither do riches bring happiness! Because if they did, why are so many Americans struggling with a lack of fulfilment and feeling miserable amidst all the stuff, and so many Kenyan Christians rejoicing daily in the very little the Lord has provided?

3. We participate in the body of Christ. Plain and simple, I have rarely been as challenged in my walk by the physical presence of a church community as I have been at New City Fellowship Nairobi. Why? Because both culturally and economically we're worshiping together in a much more diverse group of people than any I have encountered before. Paul says that we're the body of Christ, but too often our lives are so homogenous that we hands forget about how much we need the feet. Relationships with the poor preclude this.

4. And finally, we meet Jesus in the face of the poor. Jesus said that "whatever you do to the least of these, my brothers, you have done unto me." Mother Teresa regularly talked about meeting Jesus in the face of the poor. Of course this always sounded like garbage to me . . . until I really found myself among the poor and in relationships with them. And then I realized there is a divine mystery here, that to the poor belongs the kingdom of heaven, and for those of us who are not poor, we encounter Jesus in a special way in our relationships with them.

Rebecca with two farmer friends. We regularly sleep in their
village in one of the homes of a group member.

In all these ways and many others our relationships with poor farmers in the rural areas and poor city-dwellers at church have forced us to rethink our reason for wanting to be a part of "incarnational" ministry. Yes, we want to help those who Christ loves. Yes, we want to serve the way he served. But we also desperately long for relationships with the poor, we long to walk among the oaks of righteousness and work alongside the builders of walls. We have so much to learn about God and His kingdom through relationships with all the people that we typically treat as ministry projects, or as total resource-deficits. May God give us His eyes! May God give us His heart! May God knit together His church, founded by the blood of Jesus, and held together by the Spirit, that all people from every corner under heaven, every race and tribe, and every economic class on the planet would find themselves drawn into the great body of Christ, and so meet the Head of All Things, Jesus Himself.

Peace,

Michael

*Richard Hays has written about "echos" of the Old Testament in the New Testament, and my guess is that many who heard what Jesus read from Isaiah 61 knew how the rest of the chapter went. Besides all of this, the whole idea of Jubilee was to give back to the poor resources that would allow them to provide. This was not a soup kitchen jubilee, but a resource/capital jubilee as farmers got back their land. So regardless, I think Jesus claimed the full Isaiah 61 prophetic vision for his own ministry.

Hospitality in the Hinterland

2010-10-15T01:57:00.000-07:00

This past week Rebecca and I made the 4.5 hr trek up to our Meru group a little bit earlier than usual. One of our farmers, Samuel, had just insisted that we come and visit him at his home for a meal before the meeting started and we'd decided to do it.

We just happened to run into the group chairman when we arrived in the village after an hour and a half of bumpy, dusty, dirt roads. This was a real God-send since we didn't know where Samuel lived, nor had we any game plan for finding out..

I realized when we arrived that these farmers live in the most remote area of any in which we work. This is the "real Africa" that we all seem to have embedded in our subconscious: sun-scorched brown soil, tough, scrubby and sparsely scattered vegetation everywhere, an unimaginable amount of dust. And Samuel's farm and family is equally typical: he lives with his wife and children in one mud hut among many that scatter a large compound on which his father and mother and the vast majority of his siblings and their wives still live. The farm is 17 acres (which is enormous by the standards of some Kenyan regions), but there are four brothers who will divide the land when their father dies; the scads of small grandchildren who ran in and out of the shadows of trees and huts, laughing and pointing at the "mzungus," and munching on the leftover chappatis that we couldn't finish are a fitting reminder that that 17 acres will get real small real fast.

Samuel's wife beamed when we walked into the small hut where they'd set a small wooden table and chairs up for our meal. We ate delicious food, and lots of it. The children love visitors because it means that the "best foods" are prepared, and everything was cooked with obvious concern: the tea had lots of milk in it, there was plenty of chicken, and lots of chapatis (the tortilla-like food that people give to visitors and cook at Christmas). And by now we've been around long enough to read the signs and see that this family had gone well beyond what they had to do to welcome us, strangers from far away.

Halfway through the meal, Samuel leaned back and said, "You know in our African culture, we love visitors. We say they are blessings."

Those words shook me from my slumbers as it were; these Kenyans had saved to be able to serve us meat, had spent the morning preparing. They had given us costly food for them, their favorites for sure. They had washed our hands before the meal, and made sure we were comfortable at every moment through the entire affair. I know nothing of hospitality like this. I can't even imagine what it would be like to welcome someone with half of the lavishness with which they welcomed us. And then, when we have finished, this man and his beaming wife thank us for coming. "Visitors are a blessing."

When we come to a new place our home culture gives us the lens by which we evaluate what we encounter. But stick around long enough, and their culture will become a lens with which to look back at where we came from. And Kenya has taught us the beauty and joy of lavish hospitality, and more importantly taught us that hospitality is a gift that the poorest can give, and find great delight in the giving. And if that is true for Samuel of Meru, how much more for us, who have material wealth beyond the comprehension of these villagers?

The author of Hebrews tells us to be hospitable because in so doing some have entertained angels without knowing it. Well, if an angel is essentially a messenger of God, I can say confidently that some visitors have received hospitality from angels as well, and that the lavish hospitality of Kenyans has been refreshing, challenging, and a powerful ministry of God in our lives.

Peace,
Michael

Under The Vine and Fig Tree

2010-10-04T04:29:00.000-07:00

Every man will sit under his own vine and under his own fig tree,

and no one will make them afraid . . .

Micah 4:4

Last week I went down to the village in Murang'a where our Pilot group meets, even though we didn't have a meeting scheduled for that day. The road to the village rambles through a hilly countryside along the Sagana river, with small farms crammed with tobacco and vegetables crowding the river banks on one side of the road, and dry scrub land rising up into dusty hills on the other. And then the road suddenly spills out onto a broad plain. This too was once as dry and dusty as the surrounding hills, but the community irrigation project has turned the dry lands into a vast flood-filled plain separated into countless small rice-paddies. And a good number of those paddies belong to members of our group. The electric green of the rice creates a stark contrast with the brown shabbiness that covers most of Kenya just before the October rains, and amidst the green you can see spots of orange, purple, red . . . farmers in imported American t-shirts and traditional congas hard at work in the fields, as they have been since early morning and will be till after the sun sets. On clear days you can see Mt. Kenya rising up some 14,000 feet above the village, but on Tuesday it was totally hidden behind hot hazy clouds.

Mzee Gabriel

I went to Murang'a to learn how to plant rice from the oldest member of our group, Mzee Gabriel (mzee is a respectful Swahili title meaning "old man"). Gabriel shouted a greeting to me as I got out of my car, and I tiptoed my way along the walls of the rice paddies to get to him. In order to grow rice, farmers have to build mud walls about two and a half feet high around the paddies to keep the irrigation water in place, and these double as "sidewalks" of sorts to get around without wading knee deep in water.

Yet while it's difficult to get to Gabriel's farm because of all the mud and water, when we get there the problem is that there isn't enough of either. Farmers have to plow the land thoroughly and then to level it before planting. The leveling happens after the paddy has been flooded, and then it has to be flooded again for planting. But because the group is still waiting for new pipes, because it's difficult to regulate water rationing in the group leaving the members further down the system vulnerable to shortages caused by those upstream, because so many people are planting rice and the river's water has sunk down in anticipation of the rains, Gabriel hasn't gotten enough water for the last 2 weeks to plant. He had hoped Tuesday would be different, but at least by 10 a.m. when I arrived, it was still too dry.

Gabriel speaks almost no English, so it takes a few minutes for me to realize that he wants to try to rearrange some piping to try to get more water to his rice paddy. But I finally get it, and we spend the next 25 minutes hauling around plastic piping, trying several different combinations to get the water, which is powered only by gravity, to come flowing into his field. But to no avail.

The farmer's life here is shaped by water: almost never enough, and then suddenly and surprisingly so much that her crops rot in the fields, and the rivers become impassable. Even after irrigation infrastructure arrives there are issues of water management, of rising and falling river levels, of maintenance. And you wonder: how does anyone survive in a business where the biggest factor is totally unpredictable and totally out of the business owner's control?

Lucky for me, Gabriel's farm is pretty close to his sister's. She is also a member of the group, and she's got just enough water to allow for a little planting. And so Gabriel grabs his nephew and the three of us begin. While the nephew jogs over to the rice nursery to pick the seedlings we'll plant, Gabriel and I wade into mud up almost to our knees, and begin leveling the surface of the paddy to prepare for planting. The mud is deep, and I sometimes sink up to my knees, but the sun is hot overhead and the cool water which continues to pour into the field mixes with the soil and keeps me surprisingly cool.

Plant seedlings are amazingly tough. If you're new to gardening like me, you tend to treat your seedlings like fragile pieces of glass or china that might break at any moment. But the farmers rip them up by the bunch full and toss them around almost carelessly. They know that God's immense creativity has brought forth unmeasurable strength hidden within those bright green shoots, that if He hadn't few would ever make it to the table. And so I grab a fistful and, following Gabriel's lead, begin planting the seedlings deep in the muddy soil in tight rows. When you plant rice you're bent down to the ground almost the entire time, and you walk backwards, and I do neither of these with anything approaching either the speed or grace of my two teachers.

And as I bend over in that muddy rice paddy and shove fistfuls of rice into the dark sticky soil, we begin to talk and laugh and hear each other's stories afresh. I learn that Gabriel has 10 kids of his own, and takes care of 5 orphans besides, that he used to sell vegetables in Nairobi and that he rented this land when the water came and his business started to lose money. He asked me about America, about our farming, asked me to greet Rebecca. After about an hour we take a break when Gabriel's wife bring us mugs of hot uji, a porridge made from millet and sorghum. We hide under the shade of some nearby maize stalks and I drink two mugs. Throughout the day the exotic birds brought here by the sudden appearance of great quantities of water flit back and forth over our heads, nesting in the trees and resting on stalks of maize still standing in the fields.

And then, after another go at it, we finish planting the small section which has received enough water, and hide in the shade of a small solitary tree in the middle of the rice paddies. We eat heaping bowls of rice and beans. I say my good-byes, Gabriel thanks me for coming. I will go home to Nairobi, but he'll stay behind and work in the fields till after dark . . . till enough water comes for him to finish his field.

And I am struck again by the kindness and strength of these people, who know the land and get their daily bread by it, who welcome strangers like me into their homes, their work, their meals, their lives. Amazed by men and women old enough to be the parents of my parents who work from sunup till sundown, and yet who fill their working hours with happy Swahili chatter and often spend their lives working beside their siblings, their nephews and nieces, their own children. Amazed by all of this, and what's more by God's good creation, by His gifts mysteriously given and received. For is not all of this planting and harvesting just a more complicated gathering of manna in the wilderness? For who can explain how it is that the rice which we eat under that solitary tree comes from the small seeds planted in muddy soil four months previously? No, it is all grace and gift from start to finish, divine and mysterious. And my brief participation in this particular mystery is also a gift, a gift given last Tuesday and in nearly 700 other days spent in this country which is just different enough from my own to make God's great grandeuer unmistakeable. And for all of it, I am truly grateful.

Michael

Praying Through The Process

2010-09-23T01:03:00.001-07:00

Ok, now it’s time for a work update. A lot has happened, and as we approach the rains there is a lot of work that needs to be done. I want to invite you to pray through this update, asking for God’s grace to be given to us and to these farmers.

The farmers who have gone for loans through Equity Bank in our Pilot have hit a snag in the process, and are frustrated by long delays and broken promises on the part of the bank. I think by now everybody has their rice crop in the ground and is doing ok, but everything was delayed because cows got sick and then the loans didn’t come through in time. This was a classic case of “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is;” the farmers were given a timeline by the bank, they followed through, the bank hasn’t (yet). There are a lot of reasons for this, some valid and some not so valid, but the exciting thing is that our farmers are really looking at this as a learning opportunity; all of the hiccups and bumps along the way turn into ideas and improvements for the future when these farmers see the whole process as a learning experience. And if they carry that mentality into all their work on the farm, that’s a very good thing. In the meantime, keep praying for them, for their rice, and for the market come Nov-Dec!

Our farmers in Ngare Ndare sold a bunch of onions considering El Nino rains flooded the fields and kept them from getting a truly great harvest. About half of the group repaid what they took from the group plus interest (although some of them still have balances from previous projects), and so when we visited them this past month we expected a great report. Unfortunately, things ain’t so simple. The group had used their loan repayments to buy onion seeds for their members, and they went with a new seed company this time. The problem? Only about 30% of the seeds germinated. Again, this is a major disappointment for them, but they’ve been figuring out how to deal with these issues on their own for over a year now, and we feel confident that this is a setback that they will overcome. Those folks up there are smart, hardworking farmers; let’s pray God would bless them in their efforts (and that they will get a refund for the seeds from the company)!

Embu farmers sold all of their sunflower oil and the byproduct with a lot of marketing help from our Anglican partners. That means that a good number of them should be able to get new loans from the group for the next season. That’s a huge success for the project if so, even if there were major issues along the way. Meru farmers didn’t do quite so well, but a number of them will get new loans if the logistics can work out. It’s amazing how many projects get sidetracked because of simple logistical failures (remember the bad seeds and slow banks?), so please pray that they would get through this.

We continue to look for markets for the aloe vera farmers. They’ve sold some, and they’re working hard, but this market is a new and complicated one, so pray that God would give us wisdom in how to search it out and connect farmers with it.

And last but not least, in Kibete we finished our training on Table Banking. It only took us, oh what, like 14 months? But we did it. For those of you who have forgotten, this training will help the group use their group savings like a mini-credit union, allowing members access to loans for investments, emergency loans for death or illness or heavy property loss, and for savings with interest. For a brilliant explanation of what this looks like, check out our friend Trey Nation’s blog on savings groups in Cambodia at http://myfatherwasawanderingaramean.blogspot.com/. Please pray that these farmers would get a good start on this project, that they would have the wisdom necessary to take care of their group’s money, and that this table bank would be a blessing to them and their community.

In our earlier blog post this week, we talked about systems of injustice working against the poor. Here again in our work life, you can catch hints of similar issues at play. Why has the bank gone so slowly? Why would a seed company sell such bad seeds? The loan officer for the bank has routinely not only made promises that he has then left unfulfilled, he has also made mistakes in the process, and then asked farmers to take responsibility for fixing them (come to town again, wait another week till I come, fill this form out now that I’ve fixed it, etc).

We have seen this same thing happening in both the church and among a number of other organizations we’ve run into. Our farmers tell us that the government ministers involved in getting irrigation to their community will call them at 11 a.m., when they are in the middle of work in the fields, and say, ‘drop what you’re doing, I need you right now.’ And so they do it. Church leaders will show up at poor churches and expect them to make special donations as signs of gratitude for their pastoral work. When development organizations make mistakes, often instead of fixing them themselves, they push responsibility for the clean up onto the poor members their projects are supposed to help. Why did this project fail? Certainly not because the development workers didn’t do their job right. Must have been the poor folks.

In other words, one of the systemic issues in Kenya and in the U.S. is the way that perceptions about the poor fuel demeaning attitudes and actions towards the poor. Most cultures have a handful of myths that explain why the rich are and should be rich, and the poor are and should be poor, and neither of the countries we’ve lived in are any different. Maybe it’s the American idea that everybody gets an equal opportunity, that both wealth and poverty are simply the result of a set of individual decisions made by people who could all do equally well, or poorly, if they only made the right decisions. Or maybe, and more common here, is the heretical health wealth gospel, which subverts Jesus blood given ‘not for works we had done,’ and turns it into, ‘hey, if you just have faith, your cows won’t get sick and your kids won’t die.’ Not surprisingly, this anti-Christian doctrine is preached predominately by the rich to the poor, whether that looks like the wealthy Western world televangelists who are broadcast daily on every T.V. station here, or the wealthier Kenyan purveyors of this doctrine who, having learned the script well from the American televangelists, preach the message: ‘if you just ‘plant a seed’ by giving money, maybe one day you can live rich like me.’ These aren’t the only myths, either. There are all sorts of myths that justify the rich man’s riches and the poor man’s poverty.

The result is a callous lack of concern at best, and a straightforward abuse of the poor at worst. We have heard horror stories of the big institutional churches here “punishing” pastors who offended their bishop by “relocating” them to the slums or a poor rural area. The poor get worse service, receive worse advice, and are constantly forced to wait on the wealthy churches, governments, schools, or development organizations to do things in their own, precious time. In short, the myth that the rich simply earned their riches and the poor their poverty gives the rich an excuse to treat the poor as unimportant second class citizens, and the poor every reason to accept and believe this categorization about themselves.

So as you pray through this report about all our various endeavors here in Kenya, join with us also in praying that our hearts and attitudes about the poor would change. Pray that God’s Word would challenge our own arrogance and the arrogance of the wealthy and powerful here, that we would remember that God has a special place in His heart for the poor, that they are equally valuable bearers of His divine image in the sight of Jesus who died for us all. Pray that heart changes would lead to dramatic changes in attitudes and actions, that we would begin to treat the poor as God does, and to recognize that many of them would have done better than we have if they had been given the lavish opportunities we have received . . . and that many of us would have done far worse if we had received the opportunities that they have been given.

All of this is very close to our hearts; we long to see the wealthy, including ourselves, grow in our ability to see the poor as God does, and to refuse to buy into the myths that allow us to look down upon them. None of this negates the very Biblical message of individual responsibility, which is a tremendous factor in the success and failings of all people everywhere, but it is a reminder that the world is a complicated place, and that we’re called to have mercy oozing from our hearts, and eyes sharp enough to see the unjust systems, beliefs, and practices that hurt the poor among us.

May God’s kingdom come in our hearts, that we might truly live the prayer: “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

Michael

A Long Overdue Update (Or At Least A Start At One)

2010-09-21T10:43:00.001-07:00

Well, I’m actually embarrassed by how long it has been since I’ve written anything. So this week I’m going to play catch-up. Check out what has been happening in our lives at church and what we’ve been learning there in this post, and then check back in mid-week for an update on work. And, if all goes according to plan, we’ll sum up how our ever-growing love for and understanding of the Scriptures dovetails with all of the dust of daily living before you go home for the weekend on Friday.

Jesus knows what he’s doing; the past 8 months at NCF have turned into an unexpected pastoral internship of sorts that has been an incredibly powerful, challenging, and growing experience for me. Since Januaryish, I have met every Tuesday with our two pastors to help plan and evaluate worship services and to discuss and pray through the pain and joy of our congregational life together. I’ve gotten a chance as the interim worship leader to really think deeply about worship that glorifies God in the context of an extremely diverse group of folks, and then to try to actually live a theology of diverse worship in a world of broken mics, busted speakers, cross-cultural conflicts, and busy schedules. And because our pastor has had to go down to S Africa for a couple months to finish some studies, I’ve gotten the incredible experience of preaching to an audience that has seminary professors and Hindus who have never heard the gospel sitting side-by-side.

Both Rebecca and I have also gotten the chance to learn a bit more about what it means to be present to suffering, particularly among the poor. Just this past weekend we spent the night at the hospital with a friend with very painful pneumonia and pelvic inflammatory disease, we encountered a situation of grave injustice committed in a “Christian” workplace against a dear friend of ours, and one of our closest friends from the slums lost her mother.

On the surface, each of these stories could be very similar to the experiences of families in our own home churches. But the reality of life lived on the margins economically creates a deeper, darker reality that our affluent American lifestyle has kept us from seeing. In each of these experiences poverty created a void, a gap, a situation of powerlessness filled by injustice. A friend endures sexual harassment because she’s afraid to lose her job in a culture where masochistic tendencies protect powerful men and leave vulnerable women defenseless. A sick woman enters a hospital environment where staff are stumbling drunk and where apathetic doctors give second-rate service at first-rate prices because those who (like me) don’t understand medicine can’t understand the issues. And a mother of seven, who cannot find regular work and lives in a one room mud hut in the largest slum on the continent, faces a culture which requires her to provide hundreds of dollars worth of meat to greedy relatives who will come to her mother’s funeral in order to feed themselves. The consequence if she does not? As one of our friends told us, “If she does not follow the culture and feed them well, they will call her names for the rest of her life, say she is the one who shamed her mother, and even curse her using witchcraft.” And in this case, which is really the worst of the three, these greedy relatives probably won’t stop eating off our friend’s tab the day they lay her mother in the ground; our friend fears that they will probably steal her farm there as well because she, as a poor woman, cannot defend herself against the land-grabbing of her cousins and uncles.

If your brother becomes poor and cannot maintain himself with you, you shall support him as though he were a stranger and a sojourner, and he shall live with you. Take no interest from him or profit, but fear your God, that your brother may live beside you. (Leviticus 25:35-36)

The law of Leviticus, as well as other parts of the Old Testament, reflect the belief that poverty at its worst has the ability to exclude individuals and families from the community. And in a month where we have seen injustice of Old Testament proportions, with the wealthy oppressing the poor, with men taking advantage of the women in their midst, with witchcraft being used to backup greed, we hear these words and realize once again that the Biblical story provides the most powerful exposition of injustice the world has ever known, and at the same time the only hope for a world wracked by injustice: the rule and reign of Yahweh God, who hears the orphan and the widow, who protects the stranger, who brings His wrath in power against all of those who use their position, influence, culture, and even demonic involvement to abuse and oppress any of God’s treasured children.

Because the system is against the poor and the powerless, whether it’s the hospital system which provides decent care for the rich and negligent extortionate care for the poor, or the cultural system which leaves widows vulnerable to land theft and abusive cultural practices even in the midst of their deepest grief, or masochistic systems of authority that protect men who abuse women. The threat of demonic curses, and our friend’s stories of seeing and experiencing the power of witchcraft in the past, has forced us spiritually confused Prebyterians to re-evaluate our laissez-faire stance towards the demonic world and to ask ourselves hard questions. But one thing we do know: Satan works some of his most deadly deeds in the nebulous and difficult-to-define systems of our world; that the truth of sin is that the systems we create are worse than the sum of our sinful parts, that the structures that oppress and push down the poor are exponentially more evil than the evilest individuals, and that their deadly effects are more easily hidden because we cannot point to simple individualistic violations. Who do you blame for cultural evils? Whose fault is it that the courts don’t do justice? Whose fault is it that only the rich hospitals can afford decent doctors? The answer must be all of ours, but in our individualistic American mindset that is an answer we all too often ignore.

But the God of the Bible does not. The God of the Bible provides an answer to the demonic forces that affect our structures. The answer is the rule and reign of God, the Kingdom of Christ. And we are called to prayerfully work for the poor and against injustice wherever the curse is found! So pray for our friends, and pray for us, that justice would roll down like rivers, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
Peace,

Michael

Pilot Project: Small Struggles, Small Victories

2010-08-20T03:26:00.000-07:00

Quick update on the Pilot group for those who are interested. We went there yesterday, and it looks like about half the group has begun planting in earnest (from the nursery to the field), and the other half is getting ready to do the land preparation. What this means is that everybody is a little behind. We've had a series of small obstacles, starting with hoof and mouth disease among the cows (less bulls for plowing, less cash for paying people to plant or help with preparation). Some farmers went to the bank we've been working with for an emergency loan, but it has been slow in coming, also causing delay. Also the weather probably made the germination a little poorer than could've been hoped for.

On the other hand, farmers tend to be a pretty negative bunch and as best I can tell, there have been no serious issues that will follow us to harvest. What's more they've worked together to figure it out, and have been persistent, without throwing up their hands and waiting for us to come up with solutions. Best of all, at this past meeting we got a "market survey report." Becca and I were wondering why they were talking about that thing we did way back in January until we realized that the group had, on their own, found out about a large buyer, raised the money to send somebody to investigate, and will be sending somebody again with a sample today. If the price is good, this buyer will be a basically inexhaustible market, but he only buys in bulk: in other words, this group would do exactly what it meant to do, to allow a group of farmers to better producers and find better markets than they could on their own. AND it indicates that the process we brought to them, which is the heart of the whole project, has at least to a minor extent been carried on. We taught them the value of market research, showed them how to do it, they bought it, and at least this time, carried it out on their own. Praise the Lord! Pray that the bank would move faster, that the buyer would come through, and that the group would keep on trucking!
Peace,
rhodes

Some Thoughts On (Almost) Being Arrested

2010-08-11T06:32:00.000-07:00

On a regular basis I am stopped by the Kenyan Police Department. Often I am asked for bribes. Amost always they mention an obscure "offense" pertaining to my 20 year old car (your passenger window doesn't roll down, etc). Sunday I had a different experience altogether.

The first thing you need to know, though, is that I had the opportunity to preach on being the body of Christ on Sunday morning. It went pretty well, and I was pretty pleased with my challenge to the congregation to put off the old self and live like new creation people for Christ.

On the way home I was pulled by a police officer who promptly told me that I had committed an offense because one of my tires was too worn. "Seriously?" I thought. "That doesn't even sound like a real ticket." And so I somewhat politely I told the guy that I didn't believe that was really a ticket but if he wanted to write me a ticket I would take it. Which he did.

Now you should know that in my probably dozens of times of being stopped I have never seen anyone ever receive a ticket. I assumed this was part of the bribe rigamarole. So I sat there smug and calm, waiting to give him my self-righteous answer about bribes when he asked. Except he never did. Just handed me a ticket and told me to come to court the next day at 8 a.m.

This post is part public confession.

I lost my temper. I was rude. I asked the guy why he was bothering, why he wanted to waste my time with a garbage ticket when we both had better things to do. By the time I drove off I was shouting at the guy, making a fool of myself, and effectively doing the worst demonstration of putting off the old self I could possibly come up with considering I'd been eloquently preaching on the matter like 27 minutes previously.

Three things happened that evening. First, I called a local, well-connected friend to ask him what I should do, because I didn't know what to expect at court or even where it was. Second, I researched on the internet and quickly found that this officer was fully within his rights; driving with a worn tire is a ticketable offense. And third, Jesus convicted my socks off that I had chewed out one of the few officers I'd run into in the last year and a half who wasn't trying to rip me off. One in a hundred had actually been doing his job; and I yelled at him.

My friend knew the head of the traffic department at the police station. The officer told me to just bring the ticket in and he'd throw out the offense. By the time I got there I was so riddled with guilt that I asked to see the officer who had given me the ticket, prompting the two officers I was with to ask me why and forcing me to explain that I had been very rude and needed to apologize. And then the guy who is currently throwing out this ticket for me, says "Ah, that is very bad. And were you coming from church?"

"Actually I was preaching." Yikes.

In the end I apologized by letter to the officer I had spoken with and apologized to his immediate supervisor. I promised to try to treat each individual officer by their own actions, to not judge them by the actions of other officers I'd encountered. And I left.

Why am I writing all of this? Public confession, I suppose. We're studying Jonah right now at church, and I read somewhere that one interpretation of that whole story is the tale of missionaries who need converting. Clearly my hard heart falls in that category. And because sometimes I have a soft heart towards those the world finds less loveable (the poor, people from other cultures), it's easy for me to get all puffed up and make a fool of myself with my lack of love to somebody else (say by preaching on love and then yelling at a police officer).

But also it demonstrates a powerful point about the difference in the lives between the wealthy and the poor as well. Wealth and education come with a whole basket of benefits that we don't always recognize, not least the benefit of social capital with people who are connected, in power, in the know. I didn't do anything illegal, nor did my friend. But because I "knew somebody who knew somebody," I was able to get the info I needed. Here and at home systems of all sorts can be like nets that the poor among us get caught up in, and often times their social capital doesn't include people who have influence or knowledge to help them get out. What a blessing it has been in my life to have an uncle who does my taxes, a dad who helped me buy my first health insurance policy, lawyer friends who helped me get out of more than one ticket. I got my last two jobs largely through being recommended by people who were connected.

And so often these are the exact things that the poor don't have. Ever since we helped our househelp get a bank account she has saved faithfully. But among her own peers that wasn't something anybody really knew a whole lot about. And so maybe another lesson in all of us is that by building relationships with the poor, by simply letting them into our lives, we will let them into our networks and be able to help them in real and empowering ways. Meanwhile we will be blessed by their social-networks as we learn more about a different culture, about the hospitality that is nearly always best demonstrated by the poor, and about the depth of relationships forged on the margins.

Peace,
Michael

Crescents and A Cross: Some Thoughts And A Book Rec

2010-08-10T08:34:00.000-07:00

Let's face it: whether you live in Kenya, North America, or Europe, the crescent and the cross have been making major headlines in the news. A Dutch lawmaker is working to outlaw immigration from Islamic countries, there is a political battle waging in New York over a proposed Islamic community center complete with prayer room two blocks from Ground Zero, and some church down in Florida (called the Dove World Outreach Center for heaven's sake!) is holding Koran burnings.

But what has hit closest to home for me has been the coverage of "the church" in Kenya. "The church" in Kenya has been one of, if not the leading voice against the new constitution that got passed this week. Why? One of the primary reasons cited was the inclusion in the constitution of a number of legal courts set up to allow Muslims to settle family disputes (these courts have been around since Independence as a way of uniting the country politically).

Large numbers of churches and church-goers over here really did embrace the sort of inflammatory, unlistening, unthoughtful, "us/them" rhetoric that they probably learned from listening to U.S. politicians and Christians (like Pat Robertson, who poured thousands of dollars into the country to fight the constitution). In case anyone has forgotten to read the life of Jesus lately, let me throw out a thought: the way of Jesus is the way of weakness, it is the way of suffering as the path to life. In case anyone has forgotten, Jesus' strongest words were not for the religions actively engaged in persecuting his own, but for his own self-absorbed religious leaders. In case we've forgotten, the Jews had plenty of violent revolutionaries, many supported by "religious conservatives," and yet Jesus rejected both their method and their aims. And in case any of us are tempted to forget, let's remember the message of Easter: Jesus Christ is the Cosmic King. He has won. He has conquered death. His kingdom is unshakeable in its foundation and in its coming. We have nothing to fear. Period.

As Christians Christ calls us to reject this "us/them" zero-sum war. If we are in a war, it is a war to see who will be the greatest demonstrators of love to those we disagree with, who will be willing to use their life and voice to love, honor, listen to, and befriend the religious "other." Some of you will say, "well the Muslims started it." Maybe. But there is a whole lot of history out there going way back that most of us haven't listened to, a history that shames us as much as anything. And anybody in Christendom who wants to be judged by their most fanatical members maybe needs to get back to that history.

Because you know who loses in all of this? The church. And by that I don't mean the National Association of Evangelicals or the PCA or the National Council of Churches in Kenya. I mean the body of Christ. Because Muslims throughout Kenya (and in the US now) are reading the opinions of our most radical, angry members, and they are lumping all of us together with them. Countless Christians here voted yes for the constitution because they believed that it provides the best shot at real reform in their country. But as far as the media is concerned, as far as what will be put on the doorsteps and dinner tables of millions of Muslims in this country, the church lost. And that hurts the body in the one cause we should be really concerned about: loving our neighbors so much in every area of their lives that they joyfully embrace the Savior. We're not to be defined by what we don't do, aren't like, don't believe, and certainly are not to be defined by what we hate. We are to be the love letter from Christ to the world, the one body of Christ, defined by our self-giving, long-suffering, cross-shaped love. Where do Koran burnings fit in?

This pastor from Florida who is propogating hatred in the name of the King who wilfully died for us "while we were yet sinners" asked the question: when you look at Muslims, how can you even think they're happy? Have you ever seen a Muslim look happy?

The reason he can ask that question is because he doesn't have any Muslim neighbors. I do. My neighbors on both sides are Somali Muslims. They are wonderful people. They have helped us with water when our tank runs out, given us leftovers from their Ramadan fast meals, watered our garden when we were away, invited us into their homes, worried over us when were gone for long periods of time, helped us get our power back on. Last week even as the headlines were winding down about "the church" making their final push "against" Muslims, the same papers were running stories about the prayer rallies for peace whatever the outcome . . . sponsored by the Muslims. And even now in my own country, where a Muslim leader who has declared that he wants to "outwork" radical Muslims like Osama bin Laden by promoting peace and helping Muslims work to understand other faiths, Christians are making news burning Korans and campaigning against one of the most important parts of our Constitution: the freedom of religion that means that we can have, if we took the time to, more opportunity for honest and open and loving conversations about Christ with Muslims than almost any other country in the world.

In light of all of this, I'd like to recommend a book published by the Navigators by Dr. Nabeel T. Jabbour: The Crescent Through The Eyes of the Cross. Dr. Jabour is an Arab from a traditionally Christian family who gave his life to Christ and lived and worked in Egypt for 15 years. He helps us understand the "state of Islam" today in a way that transcends the two normal options of either ignoring the real dark sides of Islam or stereotyping the entire religion into radical homogeneity. I got this book from my cousin David Jemison, who has been serving as an independent translator for the U.S. army in Iraq for two years now, a Christian whose life has been threatened on repeated occasions by Muslims through his involvement in the war . . . and yet who still works tirelessly among his family and peers to help Christians understand that this is only a miniscule part of the story, to help us see the Crescent through the eyes of the God who gave Himself on the Cross for us . . . and for them.

Until we try to understand the people we disagree with, including Muslims, we will continue to, in my opinion, shame the cross of Christ horribly in public. The best way, of course, is friendships, and some of us have incredible opportunities to be neighbors with Muslims. But for those of us who don't, or for increased understanding on how to relate to the Muslims in our midst, this is an incredibly helpful book.

May Jesus Christ who died to bring us peace teach us how to walk in His light through our difficult and complicated world.

Michael

Praise God for Peace!

2010-08-06T03:57:00.000-07:00

Well the official statement hasn't been made, but it seems that the new constitution passed with flying colors, and that the process has remained peaceful. What a blessing!

Pray Today For Kenya

2010-08-04T03:55:00.000-07:00

Kenyans are voting on whether to accept a new constitution to replace the colonial one designed by the British. Please pray for peace and for God's will in the outcome. The new draft purports to help reform broken, unjust, and ineffective systems surrounding land, legislation, the judiciary, and government ethics.

Cutlure and the Body of Christ: Reflections on Work Part 2(b)

2010-08-02T01:22:00.000-07:00

More than a month ago, I wrote about how part of our call as missionaries is to help the body stay connected. One aspect of this that I didn't discuss then is the idea of cultural exchange as a way of learning about Christ.

In the Bible we get several significant hints that culture will outlast the current era and enter into eternity. In Revelation we read that God will be worshipped in every tongue by every tribe; when John sees Zion he tells us that 'nations will walk by its light,' that the 'kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it,' and that the glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it.' God created man in His image, but later created woman also; one gender alone apparently could not contain all the giftedness of God. I think the same could be true of culture.

And if this is true it means that different cultures have different strengths in seeing Jesus. Nothing radical so far; Paul calls his racially diverse churches the body of Christ made up of people with diverse gifts for the building up of the whole. I think given his context we can assume that part of what he meant was that cultural differences are given to us because we reflect Christ better together than we do apart. Our cultural worldviews and assumptions and commonalities, in other words, are too small to reflect God's imaging glory. So he made tribes and nations and races and peoples to reflect, mosaic-like, His glory to the world.

So missionaries have a rare opportunity of learning how another people group thinks. And I believe that if we keep our eyes and ears open, God will show us new things about Himself through the way "the other" looks at Him, and will convict us of our own culture's particular sins in light of another culture's. Because whether Kenyan hospitality and community solidarity convicts me of my own culture's individualism and greed, or whether my anger or frustration at Kenyan culture's seemingly lacking concepts of sexual morality remind me of my own culture's blindspots in the same area, living here is constant conviction through the new eyes of another culture.

My boss Horace Tipton is currently taking seminary classes at St. Paul in order to be ordained in the Anglican Church here one day. I recently asked him about his experience, and what he said really struck me: "I'm so glad I'm doing my studies here, because I couldn't learn this much about the way Kenyan Christians think anywhere else." In other words, Horace is seeing first hand that Kenyans envision and formulate their faith with nuances different from our own, and that knowing them is valuable for all of us!

It is far too easy for someone as arrogant and prideful as myself, coming from a culture as arrogant and prideful as our own, to walk through the world with my eyes squeezed tightly shut to legitimate differences of perspective to the Bible, to faith, to family, to finances. It is far too easy for me to believe that the narrow theological tradition where I find my roots contains the full counsel of what God has given to the world. Perhaps it is far too easy for us as American Christians, with the italics and word order all wrong, to view all things through our own red white and blue tinted cultural glasses, and to pretend that nobody wears glasses with any other hue. But being here has challenged Rebecca and I in that, and that is surely a gift from Jesus.

Peace,

Michael

Pilot Project 13: And The Cycle Continues

2010-07-23T04:15:00.000-07:00

Progress continues in the pilot group, and our meeting on Thursday was really exciting. It looks like everybody from the first planting group will begin moving seedlings from the nursery into their now-prepared fields this week, and everybody from the second group has planted in the nursery. And as far as we can tell every single person bought certified quality seed, instead of spending money on questionable seeds to save cash and potentially losing their crop (as they have in the past). And I can't even say how great I think that is.

Even more exciting, though, was the farm records training we did. One of the issues that we wanted to address in the group was the lack of record keeping among small-scale farmers. Without good records, farmers don't have the ability to compare their profits between crops or their productivity between different years and farm techniques. In other words, they aren't learning year to year what they can learn about their own farms. And this seems to be where the most important learning happens: not on demonstration farms or from government ministries but on an individual's farm year to year through hands on experience.

So we had this great training for the farmers on how to keep records of what they spend on inputs (including the opportunity cost of their labor), what they do in terms of work on the farm, and what they get when they sell. The best part? The entire training was done by one of the farmers within the group.

We began with this group by explaining that we believe God has given these poor communities resources to manage and steward in such a way that they can improve their lives and overcome problems by working together. This is part of what it means to be made in the image of God and given the task of stewardship over the creation. And this training of the farmers by the farmers gave us the chance to remind them that they really do have resources and abilities, gifts and strengths, and that God has given them all of it to use for His glory and for their families and their community.

We began by talking about this group's special resources and abilities, and now here right in the middle of planning we're seeing new gifts and abilities coming up from the group. And so the cycle continues.

Peace,
Michael

A Little Bit Of Everything

2010-07-15T07:23:00.000-07:00

Sunflower and Aloe Vera Projects

The farmers continue to sell sunflower oil, and both groups have now gotten their first pay outs! This only happened because Rebecca has God-given gifts in both basic accounting/budgetting and teaching. So she's spent a couple hours with the leadership of both sunflower groups in order to help them figure out how to record their sales and distribute money to the individual farmers and their loans in an equitable fashion. She's so good at it that both of them have now gone through the fairly complicated process on their own. Please pray that they keep selling and that the farmers are empowered to gain some entrepreneurial skill by getting out there and selling the stuff.

One of our aloe vera groups has also sold some seedlings, and looks like will sell some more really soon. We also have a potential buyer for the leaves (the real harvest) coming soon. There have been a lot of complications with all of this, though, so keep praying for wisdom and time for us to help the farmers get it together to meet these marketing options.

Mt Kenya

So last week Rebecca, my sister Katie, our good Kenyan friend David Khisa and I summitted the Lenana Peak of Mt Kenya! Considering that the summit is over 16,000 feet (read "higher than anything in the lower 48" here), we felt pretty darn proud of ourselves. It was a gorgeous 4 day adventure to the place where the Kikuyu people, who make up the majority of the farmers in our groups, traditionally believed that the creator god lived. And for us it was a pilgrimage of sorts, I guess. On summit day we started hiking at 3 a.m. beneath an enormous star-filled sky with the rugged sillhouette of Mt Kenya rising up before us, and I couldn't help but be filled with gratitude, not just for the hike but for the gift of this season God has given us in Kenya, and for the friends and family who have participated in it in both big and small ways.

More At New City

I recently got all excited on this blog about getting to lead once a month at NCF. While we were in South Africa, however, our worship leader got called to another church, and I suppose, noting my enthusiasm, the church decided to elect me the interim guy for the time being. This is an awesome opportunity for me in myriad ways that I'm sure will come out in conversations and blog posts soon enough, but for now please just pray for our church and for me as we seek to understand what Jesus would have for us in this family of faith. Also, the young adults group asked me to preach on August 8th for a "youth service" (10-35 year olds), so I'd appreciate your prayers there too.

One particularly cool part of the new responsibility was getting to do some songs with Katie last week! We realized afterward that we've never really sung together publicly before, so that was awesome, especially since Katie's got a great voice and an ear for harmony which eludes yours truly.

The Garden Revisited

When we got back, our land lady had taken out some container tomatos Rebecca and I had planted and consequently felt so bad that she gave us small patch out back to practice on. And so this morning, Katie, Rebecca and I went to work in the garden. Beans, onions, cilantro, radishes, lettuce, carrots, cucumbers, and broccoli seeds all went in, as well as tomato, hot pepper, pepper mint, basil, and rosemary seedlings. We also set up a few bucket irrigation lines, just like the ones we're promoting with the farmers, that will help us save water, cut down on disease, and give us a little bit more info on just what it is we're telling our farmers to use.

Writers and speakers like Wendell Berry, Rusty Pritchard, Annie Dillard, and Matthew Sleathe have convinced me that God cares deeply for our Earth, and that part of our kingdom call is to take care of it. Our work here, which has kept us constantly on small farms exploding with horticultural diversity, has changed not only my diet but my interest in the miracle that brings food up out of the ground and the systems which put food on our tables. And finally, as we've felt on previous occasions, gardening for us is an act of solidarity with our farmers, a tangible reminder to long for rain and wrestle with agricultural diseases. It isn't much, but it's something. At any rate, look out for more musings and updates on our 110 sq foot reclamation of our original pre-Fall calling.

Peace,

Michael

Pilot Project Part 12: Planting

2010-07-05T02:27:00.000-07:00

Hey folks, sorry it has been a while. If you've been watching the World Cup you may have seen our blogs on ESPN, aka us painted from head to foot on the front row at the USA games. We had a blast and our time with long time close friends Abby Wismer, Jonathan Wilson, and Mike Shaw was incredibly refreshing and encouraging on all levels.

The Pilot Group farmers have begun planting! Against all of our fears about what would happen during our two week absence (full proof that we haven't fully embraced our best principles yet!) about 1/3 of our farmers got together to buy inputs according to the plans we made together, and then planted those seeds in the nursery about a week and a half ago. If you look at the picture, that's a week old rice nursery for a two acre farm. I'm hoping to get out there and help plant when they transfer from the nursery to the farm.

I really got excited hearing the groups' feedback about buying the farm inputs together. When we first started discussing the idea of sending a representative to buy all of the grousp inputs for them it seemed pretty overly complicated, and a number of farmers sort of said "ah well, let's just do it every man for himself." Afterword however, they were all very encouraged and excited because buying in bulk allowed them to save significant amounts of money and time. This gave me a chance to draw out the lesson with them that working together is almost always better than working separately, yet another example of how the Bible's version of what we're designed for in terms of community actually works.

Our work now is watching, helping the farmers troubleshoot issues, and preparing for selling. There have been some revelations with the micro-credit situation as well, but I'll save that for later.

In other news, please pray for my father, Mike, as he is having serious open heart surgery tomorrow. This is as unexpected as it is unpleasant: Dad is a pretty fit guy who still can fit in the pants he got married in. Please pray for my mom as well as she nurses him back to health. Also, sister Katie is here for her last hurrah before dental hygiene school, so we're climbing Mt Kenya together this week! It'll be a four day hike up to the second highest summit (17,000 feet) on the second highest mountain in Africa. Pray we make it, don't freeze, and get good weather for the summit . . . sometimes you can see Kilimanjaro!

Peace,

rhodes

"Contextualizing Learning Experiences from Rhodes' Blog," Or "What to Do With All Your Spare Time When We're Not Blogging Because We're At the World Cup," Or Maybe Even "Holler for the Home Town Boys"

2010-06-06T11:10:00.000-07:00

So Wednesday Rebecca and I will head to South Africa to watch the U.S. of A. beat the tar out of England, Slovenia, and Algeria at the World Cup. We're traveling with our good friends Abby Wismer and Michael Shaw, and will meet the indominatable Jonathan Wilson down there for games 2 and 3.

Among other things, this blog has been an attempt at community learning across continents, an invitation to join in on the conversation that we're having about God's kingdom, and its intersection with economies, race relations, etc. So while we're AWOL down South, check out some of these podcasts from folks who are applying kingdom theology to life lived in urban America. Maybe you'll find these helpful, as we have, as we try to learn just what Micah meant when he said that what is required of us is to do justice and love mercy and walk with God.

First and foremost, check out two sermons from two pastors from my hometown church. I love tuning in and finding out that Second Pres is preaching the gospel for the poor back home in ways that challenge and encourage us here!

Richard Rieves: Richard is planting a church in the neighborhood near Advance where Rebecca and I used to work. This is an incredible sermon on how God calls us to diversity . . . for our own sake! http://www.2pc.org/media/amen.xml

Sandy Wilson: Warning! This will knock your socks off. Here's an excerpt-“Most in this city are simply trying to figure out where they can get their half-acre, 500,000 dollar home, with their wall, and their gate, locked, so that nobody can get in and steal their stuff. They’re not thinking about, “How do I get down there where people don’t even have a half of a half of an acre, and don’t have anything to put in their house and give something to them?!” I’m telling you, that is WICKED! IT’S MORE WICKED THAN THE STRIP JOINTS IN OUR CITY! “And most of the rest of the people are just complicit partners, who want to claim that by being passive, they haven’t done anything evil. If you are passive, you WILL do evil! Because we’re seeing here [in this passage], with this light shed on the world order, IT IS EVIL! IT’S ALWAYS BEEN EVIL! http://www.2pc.org/resources/audio/?customshow=1&find=series&series=revelation&series_name=Revelation

Now for one not so close to home: Tim Keller on Jonah. This is probably one of the best sermons I've ever heard about our responsibility to the city . . . any city! http://sermons2.redeemer.com/sites/sermons2.redeemer.com/files/RSS_Feeds/Timothy_Keller_Podcasts.xml

Finally, here's extra credit. One of the most damaging theological errors of our recent history is the fundamentalist Zionist belief that the nation state of Israel is the literal fulfillment of the Bible's prophesies about God fulfilling His covenant. This misguided belief has led Christians to support violence, violation of human rights, and an increased racial divide between Israelis and Palestinians. Moreover, it has damaged the gospel work in Palestine amongst Palestinians, as proved by the large Christian population present at the time of the initial Israeli war, a popluation that has been decreasing dangerously and dramatically ever since. If you don't believe me, or want to learn more, why not listen to the opening talk from a conference put on by evangelicals from Palestine (by Rev. Alex Awad)? And if that whets your appetite, why not listen to the rest? I'm working my way through right now! http://www.christatthecheckpoint.com/lectures.html

Peace,
Michael

One Lord, One Faith, One Birth: Reflections on Work Part 2(a)

2010-06-02T04:52:00.000-07:00

My previous post on work brought up questions about our efforts to create small anticipatory pictures of the kingdom through helping the poor to get more money for themselves and their families. When Rebecca and I accepted this opportunity through Planting Faith it was this that we primarily considered, and it is this work that dominates much of our thoughts. But lately I’ve been thinking about a different and much less discussed part of the missionary call.

Rebecca and I have been studying the Pauline Epistles together, and we have been amazed by what these very first “missionary updates” have to say about the call to “go.” And while much of the theological meat comes in the middle of these brilliant letters, what has struck me recently mainly shows up in the greetings and the good-byes. I’m talking about the names. Paul’s letters ooze with personal references: Priscilla and Aquilla who risked their lives for him, Stachys, the dear friend, Apliatus and Apelles whose names indicate they were probably slaves, Rufus and his mother who had become a mother to the apostle, Fortunatus who refreshed his spirit, Epaphras the dear fellow servant, to name just a few.

Two points I’ve missed in the past: first, almost all of these names are Gentile names. These are non-Jewish converts to Christ. In the very earliest days of the church, the gospel called formerly racially defined Jews out into a world of mutual relationships with the “unclean Gentiles.” In fact although we can try to ignore it, a huge amount of the New Testament and particularly Paul specifically addresses a racial question: how do we, who once were enemies, now live as the new people of God defined primarily by our union with King Jesus the Christ?

Second, and infinitely more challenging for the western missionary, Paul, the most prolific author of the New Testament, the authoritative and almost borderline arrogant apostle to the Gentiles, clearly loves and depends on these Gentiles. These are not paternalistic one-sided relationships in which the “man of God” comes and helps the spiritually bereft Gentiles. No, these are his mothers and brothers in the faith, people whose death would cause sorrow upon sorrow, who supply his needs!

And so we get this crazy picture of members of this new, persecuted and poor movement traveling great distances through dangerous waters (remember Paul’s shipwrecks) and spending great sums of money all in order to be together, to share in what God has taught them in the faith, to support their brothers and sisters in their need, or to receive help in their own times of need. And suddenly it occurs to me that part of the missionary call is to make sure that we who are the body of Christ stay connected, that we remember our common Lord and King, that we learn about each other’s strengths and struggles. Maybe the phrase “missionary” can almost hide one of our most important callings: to really live as the unique people and family and body of God Himself simply by getting out and getting to know each other.

Whenever either Rebecca or I are about to come back to the States, our farmers say a very funny thing: “Tell those Christians there that we love them.” In the context of Paul, I think that I have begun to see how this, this sharing of needs and abilities, this brief intersection of Christians on the road with Christ from different tribes and tongues, this fellowship with “all the saints” that mirrors the saint filled party going on above, is part of the whole point. Maybe we are a little like Epaphras, and this blog is a way for us to tell you how the Paul and Barnabas’s of Kenya are doing, and of how they love us and are praying for us. And I think Jesus delights in all of it, as He looks down and sees His church learning just a little more about their brothers and sisters on different sides of His beautiful world.

Maybe also God knows that when the hands and eyes meet they learn a bit more about the head. But that will have to wait for Part 2(b) . . .

Peace,
Michael

Check out the brief call for thanksgiving over the farmer's recent sale just below!

Hallelujah!

2010-06-02T04:16:00.000-07:00

The Lord answers prayer: our farmers sold around 440 dollars worth of aloe vera seedlings this week! I know that many of you have been praying for this, and yesterday a buyer came! This is great for our farmers on multiple levels: of course it means some cash in their pocket and that they will be able to begin to pay off their loans, but it also will be a great encouragement to them. Thanks for your prayers, and please, please, please keep praying for these and all our groups!

Peace,
Michael
We’ve been blogging a lot lately! Scroll down and make sure you don’t miss anything!

On Sunflower Oil and the Writing of Good Blog Posts: Reflection on Work Part 1

2010-05-31T05:31:00.000-07:00

I recently grabbed Indian food with a new friend who works for an agricultural development organization similar to Planting Faith. Talk invariably turned to work, and equally invariably lead to questions about the real impact of missional development, of what works and what doesn’t, and of how much bad work seems to get done despite the best intentions. “Yeah,” he said, “but we sure do write great blog posts.”
2 groups of 50 farmers that we helped start recently began selling over 1,000 liters of sunflower oil using a machine that we bought for them. Sounds great, doesn’t it? Check out these pictures: look amazing, don’t they? Surely that’s the golden glow of success.

Maybe. But even if it is, that’s not the whole story. Getting the machines required over a year of work, and they arrived over 8 months late. To understand how terrible that misstep is you have to think like a small scale third world farmer: you are almost always paid immediately for what you harvest, and you use the profit for basic necessities like school fees and food . . . and for planting in the next season. But our farmers took up land planting sunflower that they still, almost a year later, haven’t seen a shilling from. I helped with some of the planning right when we arrived, and based on the planning that we did before we ever met these farmers, we were going to include the machines as a part of the loan-in-kind: these groups would own the machines themselves. Midway through, for a whole host of reasons, plans changed and we had to go back and say, actually, no, these machines will be owned by our partner, and next year, you’ll have to pay to use them. Meanwhile, the market for sunflower remains uncertain in the villages where they live, meaning that they may try to rely on our partners to do the selling for them, because locals are unwilling to buy sunflower oil if it is more expensive than alternatives (and it usually is). We are increasingly concerned that the initial idea to produce the oil was not so much the result of careful research but of government “promotion” . . . not exactly a recipe for finding a good market, given this and most other government’s abysmal track record on such things. Much of the necessary work for these projects was done by staff whose contracts end later this year, work like getting the packaging bottles, getting people to fix the machines when they break, getting inputs. Who will do that when their contract expires? We have now realized that there are numerous other sunflower oil processing machines near both of the stations where ours are now housed, and at least one of them, given as part of another agricultural non-profit effort, has fallen totally idle and broken down through a lack of community ownership; it seems people are waiting for the folks who brought it to come back and pay to have “their machine” fixed. Even if they sell all the oil, many farmers will still owe the group money on the loan either because of low rainfall or because they didn’t take the loan seriously; and while we aren’t looking for repayment, anything less than near perfect performance on the loan means that soon all of that money will have “leaked” out of the group’s hands. Not only did the farmers not participate in the planning, over and over again we have realized that these groups did not initially understand the plan when it was presented to them; crucial details apparently lost in translation between us, our partners, and the group.

On the other hand, the machines are there now (and we hope that by July both will be fully operational). Farmers seem pleased to have the sunflower oil in hand, and excited to try to sell it. Through the process they may be gaining new skills in trying to think through marketing and value addition and their viability as methods to bring more money into their households. If they manage to sell all the oil a significant minority will repay their loans and get profit on top from the oil, and the others might be able to pay out of pocket to finish the loans and succeed in the future because they have seen the viability of the business. Sunflower oil is significantly healthier than other major alternatives, meaning that an increase in consumption in these areas could improve health and livelihood. Planting Faith, led by Horace and Anne Tipton, worked hard to raise the money for these projects, to monitor their implementation, and to provide the knowledge necessary to make all of this possible, and there are real successes that seem to be at hand because of those efforts.

There are two reasons I’m airing these questions: first, because for us this entire endeavor has been a huge learning experience mixed with our best efforts to have a positive impact. Getting to work alongside our long term missionary coworkers for Planting Faith as well as the local developers from the church has given us the chance to be a part of something bigger than ourselves, and to learn things alongside more experienced practitioners. But also the people back home who have loved us, prayed for us, given to us, taught us, in short who are an integral part of this whole journey, deserve to get an accurate picture of the real complexity of these issues and to join in this learning process with us. A missions pastor at a supporting church once told me a story about a mother who said her kid wanted to be a missionary, ‘but she knew he could do better;’ well I don’t know what she meant by that, but if she meant that all that’s required out here is good intentions from mediocre churchy types, it doesn’t seem to fit the bill. We have spent countless hours studying these issues to try to be able to bring professionalism and best practices to these projects, and I find that thousands and thousands of expatriates from around the world, many of them from institutions like Harvard and Yale, are also here giving it their best. Our coworkers left lucrative and successful careers in the States to relocate their family to Kenya and to use their agricultural expertise to help farmers, and there are countless other similar stories. And yet these issues crop up, these projects stumble along like rambling drunks, and we wonder whether they end up at home or in the gutter.

Second, and more importantly, I think that as Christians we have a responsibility to do a better job of discussing our goals, our methods, and our short-term results. Let’s think through each of these in turn in light of these recent events (which I’ve picked because they represent our most frustrating experiences on the field, and also some recent short term success). In terms of goals, too often we’ve agreed on the what but not on the why. For us the what is profitable business, but what is the why? If the answer is just profit to help poor farmers get more money for their families, well then there are a whole host of implications. First and foremost, with profit as the sole indicator of success, as long as these farmers sell the oil, most of the problems I’ve mentioned disappear. Who cares who owns the machine? Who cares who came up with the program? And that of course will affect our methods. If it’s just about profit, the methods are whatever works best and biggest fastest. You can apply this to all sorts of development. If the goal is drilling wells, full stop, the method will be to find the best drillers to dig the best wells lickety-split style. If the goal is getting orphans to go to school, full stop, the method will be to find the most money we can and the best administrators to make sure that the most kids go to school as fast and for as long as possible. And in these cases, short term results will look at the bottom line. If the bottom line hasn’t been reached (we dug 5 wells instead of 10, we haven’t processed the oil yet), we’ll tell the folks back home, “we haven’t reached it yet, but we’re working on it.”

Here’s my problem: profit, whether in the form of money or even in terms of simple physical output as the sole measure of success is theologically questionable at best. Of course there are all sorts of physical needs and Christ is addressing them through his kingdom, but there are also deeper spiritual, emotional, and psychological needs that are under and often behind the physical needs. We’ve blogged about our friend who thinks she’s cursed because she’s black, about the endless bribes and injustice that tell the poor ‘you don’t matter, you don’t count.’ What I’m saying is, what if the problem isn’t just that our farmers need profit? What if they need the confidence that comes from making a profit? What if they also need to have their status as humans made in God’s image affirmed in the face of injustice and the demoralizing effects of poverty in a society where the breach between rich and poor is currently sky rocketing? What if they also need to be affirmed in their ability to take risks, and step out, to think creatively and to work together? What if the problem isn’t as simple as “I need more money,” something almost every American would say, but lies somewhere in the realm of “I need to believe what God says about me and my family,” something that’s true about all of those Americans and almost all Kenyans as well? What if communities don’t just need clean water, they need to know that God has given them natural water resources and the ability to get water and distribute water as a community? What if kids don’t just need to go to school, but communities need to be affirmed in their ability to educate their children? What if children don’t just need to be healed of malaria? What if mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers need to be reminded that they have a God-given ability to help cure their children of malaria?

If we look at this sunflower deal from this perspective we find tremendous concerns: our method of designing a program and putting it on top of farmers was not only inefficient for cross-cultural communication; it cut off the branch we should have been sitting on by implicitly telling our farmers that their plans and goals didn’t matter. Our decision to take ownership out of their hands and put it into the hands of the organization didn’t just break trust and transparency, it reinforced the feeling that they the poor are the powerless, the ones left out of the conversation, the ones who are acted on. Our decision to inject outside money into the community in the form of “loans” not only created all the havoc that comes in poor communities when big money flows in from outside, it stole an opportunity from the community to pull together their real and existent resources to finance projects they actually felt were worth investing in. Who knows if next time they have a need they will be more likely to wait around for donors to fund something, rather than to chip in and pull together to do it themselves? And to whatever extent the project succeeds mostly because “we” made it work, through selling the oil ourselves, or coming up with all the ideas, or whatever, we will give these farmers more money and a deep sense that what was really missing in their lives all along were some white folks and a few educated wealthy Kenyans to come and rescue them.

I am writing passionately and openly about this because I believe that this kind of analysis is terribly lacking from much of the work done overseas, faith-based and otherwise. This blog post could have been a happy tale of golden sunflower oil and delighted farmers, and I’m afraid that sometimes the folks on both sides of the pond are happier with that. But it isn’t the whole story and we the workers know it! And so we go back and forth between letting the folks back home in on the complicated messy reality and the easier alternative of skipping the struggle and heading straight for the optimistic ending. Too often we just don’t think that the folks back home will support us if they know how hard it is, how complicated it all is. "For seven cents a day you can save a village" is almost always a lie, but it sure does sell. And because it has sold for so long, now it’s even harder to tell the much less simple story that most of us are living. But if it’s the kingdom we’re seeking we have got to start asking different and more difficult questions about the goals, methods, and outcomes of our work. This isn’t about useless quantifying; it’s about running in the right direction.

And all is not lost! As Rebecca and I drove away from our last meeting with the sunflower group I got really excited by the fact that they had actually carried 100 liters to their home villages to try to see how much they can sell from their own shops, to their own local primary schools and small restaurants. I realized that despite everything else, if they can have the experience of searching out markets and making sales, they may not only make some money but develop skills in business, be encouraged in analyzing and taking smart business risks, and most importantly be a part of a project where they say “we did this, we worked hard, and we saw the benefit” . . . and that would be a movement towards a fuller recognition of God’s image in themselves and their fellow group members that would make all of the sweat worthwhile. Moreover, Horace also helped the farmers negotiate a contract with our partners so that they will be able to take a more active role in the use of the machine, softening the blow of not owning it, and helping develop a more trusting and safer relationship between these farmers and our church partners. Now that’s a step in the right direction!

Furthermore, all of this indicates that none of us who are trying to help the poor “have arrived.” It’s ok to not know everything, the problem is that many organizations act like they do (back to the seven cents a day deal). Here again the Lord has given us a huge blessing, because Planting Faith is committed to the learning process. The Tiptons began experimenting the moment they got here six years ago, and they haven’t stopped. Slowly but surely our team is trying to take what we learn and turn it into a better model. When we arrived Horace was asking questions about whether or not partnering with a bank would be better than making loans, and taking that idea and running with it we together designed and launched the pilot project in Murang’a, which seeks to take into account these foundational goals, methods, and short term outcomes at a deeper level. No matter how long a team or organization has been doing what they do, we can all continue to learn and grow in our understanding of Christ’s kingdom ways and kingdom ends.

Amidst the long history of cooperative failures stands a gigantic landmark of unprecedented success: the Mondragon complex. Started over thirty years ago, the Mondragon network of cooperatives has grown from humble beginnings into a group of international corporations that has routinely beaten private corporations in the region in both profit and sustainability, all while maintaining the goals of worker owned cooperatives and laying off almost nobody in all of its operations over the last several decades. In the conclusion to a lengthy study on the cooperative in the late 80’s, author William Whyte concludes with a few principles and practices that helped make this cooperative succeed where the vast majority failed. And on that small list of factors necessary for success was one that I found very odd: self-criticism. Whyte wrote that he was shocked by the humble and self-critical way that the founders and leaders of the movement, looking back on huge successes, talked freely and regularly about what they did wrong, and how they could have done better. Intrinsic in the management of the cooperatives was an attitude of constantly asking, “What can we do better? Where are we really? What did we do wrong this time around?”

I think that most of us out here need a strong dose of kingdom self-criticism. We need to look with the most objective eyes we can muster at our goals, our methods, and our short-term outcomes. We need to enter into conversation with other workers and ministries and churches and friends around the world to try to bring the best minds to the biggest table to try to figure out how we can improve what we’re doing. Maybe that’s part of what being the body means.

So thanks for being part of that process. Many of you are the people who have prayed and supported and encouraged and emailed and taught and discipled us into being where we are, and during this journey of learning and struggling and thinking and re-thinking again, many of you have entered in with a love and grace that is overwhelming. We have felt a freedom to be open about our struggles, because we have felt a love that is based on our common kinship in Christ and common calling to His work. So keep on coming with us in this conversation and these questions. I truly believe that if every missionary couple trying to help the poor overseas had the supporters that we do, who graciously allow and encourage and enter in to the more difficult questions, the church would be doing much better work. So ask good questions. Get real answers. And let’s give God’s kingdom work the best we’ve got together.

Peace,

Michael

The Week(s) In Review: Some Ideas for Prayer

2010-05-23T23:53:00.000-07:00

If you're here for the first time in a while, don't miss the recent post on church in Kenya below:

For those of you who are praying regularly for our projects, here’s a quick update from the last two weeks of travel that can guide your prayers:

1. Ngare Ndare: We visited these folks for the first time since November this past week. They are doing well, and should harvest onions within the month! If they manage to repay their loans and give out new ones with their crops, they will have gone farther than any of our other groups. There is, however, a new and at least for me totally unexpected problem: too much rain. The el nino effect has caused flooding and unexpectedly large rains that have the potential to damage the crop seriously. Please pray fervently these next few days for the rain to stop!

2. Sunflower Groups: We also visited our group in Meru where, after a year of trying to get a sunflower processing machine up there, we found out that the station wasn’t set up to run it. That issue got so complicated that I finally told our coworkers that we wouldn’t go to the group again until they had gotten their seed processed and returned as pure sunflower oil. This past week that happened, and we had our annual general meeting with them. Their counterparts in Embu have also processed now. Please pray that these groups, which have just been tremendously encouraged by the arrival of the oil after enormous delays that were totally not their fault, will mobilize quickly, sell the oil, and make well informed decisions about how to go forward with oil production as a business in future.

3. Pilot Project: We had a great field trip with these guys to a government run research center devoted to rice production and to another cooperative style group that has been running for almost 30 years. This was very encouraging and informative for everybody, but complications with the lending institution mean that these guys need to mobilize and act fast in order to get the capital they need for planting. This also means that they will have to self-fund planting in the nursery. Please pray for energy, efficiency, and good communication among Planting Faith, CCS, the bank, and the ministry of agriculture as we try to get these seeds in the ground in order to harvest before the nearest other rice scheme floods the market.

4. Aloe Vera: We had an order that some of you have prayed about for over 2000 aloe vera seedlings. The buyer has delayed, which is common here, and also could easily mean he’s backing out. This would be a real loss for a group both financially and in terms of morale. Please pray that this guy would commit and buy the seedlings, giving our farmers the opportunity to experience some long awaited success!

Peace,

Michael

New Opportunities at New City Fellowship

2010-05-21T13:01:00.000-07:00

Work is a gift, and one of the greatest and most unexpected gifts God has given us in Kenya has been the opportunity to get more involved with our church fellowship at New City Nairobi. Because all of our Planting Faith work takes place in villages and towns in rural areas far from our Nairobi home, we have taken on some responsibilities at New City that have opened up incredible chances for us to serve and be served through ministry at our church. Here are a few of the ways we’ve been involved this year:

Worship

I have been involved in leading worship since 7th grade chapel, but leading worship at New City has been rewarding and challenging in ways that none of the college groups, youth groups, chapel services, or church meetings prepared me for. New City’s vision for racial and tribal reconciliation between Asian Kenyans (majority from India) and African Kenyans, and the church’s efforts to reach out evangelistically to the largely unreached Indian communities in Nairobi, requires a level of stylistic, linguistic, and participant diversity beyond anything I’ve ever experienced. Since Thanksgiving, I’ve been leading at least once a month (3 times coming up in May), and in all of those services we sing in at least four different languages with a worship team composed of people from at least five different ethnic backgrounds. During the fast paced Indian songs, complete with the tambala (the traditional Indian bongo looking drums that can sound like drops of water), we often have Indian congregants come up front and dance, and some of our Kiswahili call and response songs get the whole congregation, black, white, brown, and everything else, clapping and dancing wildly before the Lord. But we also sing English praise choruses, old hymns translated into Hindi or Kiswahili, and a few real fun ones that combine all three. Last week we sang “How Great Thou Art” in two languages at the same time. And through it all I’m up there trying to remember how to pronounce words from two or three different languages I don’t speak!

Ben Witherington argues that worship should be fundamentally eschatological: “We worship in the shadow of the kingdom . . . with one eye on the horizon.” And one of the primary signs of the “end times” in the New Testament is the bringing together of every tongue, tribe, and nation before the throne of Jesus. Ephesians tells us that in His resurrected body Christ tore down the wall of hostility and united all peoples in his own new creation second Adam self. So when all of the bizarre, what-the-heck-is-going-on stuff hits the fan (turning around to begin the service and seeing a dude on the drums I’ve never laid eyes on, much less practiced with, or the power going out and turning our worship band into an acapella choir backed by an acoustic guitar and two Indians on really loud traditional drums), and I start hankering for three music majors from Covenant and the Trinity hymnal, I remember that we are supposed t o present our bodies as sacrifices of worship, that our existence together as a radically united community is worship to God, that just by showing up and shouting and crying aloud to Jesus in all of our diversity and brokenness is worship. In my tradition we labor endlessly over the theological accuracy of our songs. But what about the theological accuracy of our style? Shouldn’t our styles in worship reflect the diversity of our personalities and cultural traditions? Shouldn’t we search out and try to include all the gifts of culture and taste that reflect His image? Shouldn’t it sound a bit like the kingdom? Or what about the theological accuracy of our choir? Shouldn’t we look like the people of God in worship?

Some of you can’t even begin to answer those questions because you’re too distracted by imagining me trying to sing in Hindi in front of 100 people. But to my credit, I’ve had some practice by now. In addition to leading worship on Sundays, I’ve also gotten the privilege of leading the singing in our small group that meets every other week, and even to lead at a few Asian outreach events known as Satsangs. A satsang is a traditional Indian fellowship meeting that often has a discussion on spiritual things afterwards. So for instance two weeks ago, I got asked to help lead music for a satsang at an Asian couple’s home because an Indian preacher with a healing ministry was coming to visit (as another missionary friend put it, “wow, that’s like cross-cultural squared). And it was amazing! We got a taste of what the gospel looks like when it’s planted in the rich Indian soil, and to be a part of understanding and replicating it. This is mind bogglingly cool, and when I found out just after we finished that almost none of the Asians there (probably 20-30) were Christians, but were all either Hindu or Muslim I just felt overwhelmed by God’s grace to us.

Hanging with the 20 Somethings

Because I’m an American I went to youth group from ages 12 to 18. I thought that that break down was probably hidden somewhere in the Old Testament, but as it turns out it’s totally cultural. In Kenya, “youth group” means everyone from age 10-35, unless they get married! So at NCF, we have one youth pastor who is responsible for like 50-60 people across a 25 year age range from at least 5 different “tribes and nations.” Small wonder he has started looking for some volunteers to help and asked us to help with the 20-35 age group, with the goal of helping them become a sort of self-sufficient Bible Study group within the church.

So for the last 2.5 months, Becca and I have been meeting regularly with our peers at New City to try to “consider how we can spur one another on towards love and good deeds,” both as a group of age mates and as a group serving within the church. This sounds pretty basic; it’s anything but. You see, at New City we have what can feel like a bipolar social disorder. It goes like this: the predominately poorer Christian African Kenyans don’t get along with the predominately Muslim/Hindu wealthier Asian Kenyans and vice versa, but reconciliation and outreach to unbelievers is the heart of our church’s ministry. This is a bit difficult for us to get our minds around at first because we tend to think of wealthier people being the ones to reach out to poorer ones (probably because we don’t really believe the Sermon on the Mount. Whose is the kingdom again?), but that’s the way it is here. So in our church of Asian converts and African believers, things can be very, very tricky. Add to that the fact that the young adults group is made up almost completely of African Kenyan brothers and sisters, and the complications go even further. So we have had the fun task of trying to listen to these guys’ experiences to date, positive and negative, within the church, and to make a plan for going forward that includes traditional activities like studying God’s word, and less traditional ones, like learning more about Asian culture.

Two things that have emerged powerfully for me: first, that the Biblically rooted vision for reconciliation between different socio-economic groups is attractive; the world really does know us (or not know us) by our love, and these young Christians who could go to churches that preach and sing only in their home languages and that are just less complicated in general, come and stay at New City because the gospel is doing things they haven’t seen done before. How beautiful is that? Second, we’ve learned that reconciliation is long and hard and difficult . . . and very worth doing. Nobody at our church, and least of all us outsiders, has “arrived;” but for Rebecca and I it has been a big step forward in our journey towards understanding what Desmond Tutu called “the rainbow people of God.”

And The Rest

And then there’s all the other stuff: I got to preach on John 15 a couple of weeks ago, Rebecca ran a bake sale to raise money for a women’s retreat and then led some great games at the retreat, and both of us have gotten to lead our Friday night discussion group on occasion.

More and more we’re seeing that the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed planted in soil that varies dramatically from place to place, culture to culture, economic class to economic class. It makes the Christian life lived among people who don’t look like you painful and problematic. It also creates a garden full of all the diversity of the flowers of the field. We’ve gotten a taste of what the gospel looks like planted in the Hindu soil, in the Muslim soil, in the African soil. This has been among the richest of our experiences here; we hope God is using us at New City, but more than that the church has been an incubator for kingdom growth in our life and marriage. I want to challenge all of us to pursue times of worship and fellowship with people whose lives are dramatically different from ours, not as some sort of “let’s outreach to those people over there” movement, but as a way to get a bigger look at the kingdom of God.

Peace,

Michael

The Fish, Mountains, and Elephants Declare the Glory of God (Wherever They Are)

2010-05-05T12:18:00.000-07:00

This past week Rebecca and I drove up to Castle Forest Lodge on the lower slopes of Mt Kenya for a rainy couple days of camping. We went there to fish, get some good views of the mountain, and hopefully scope out a few elephants . . . from a safe distance.

In actual fact we not only failed to catch fish, views of the mountain, or pictures of elephants . . . we failed to see any of them, thanks to a) my total lack of skill in angling, b) an unbelievably persistent fog, and c) the fact that most of the elephants have continued on around the mountain for the year. What we did get was two great days relaxing, enjoying creation, and eating enormous quantities of unhealthy camp food.

T.S. Eliot wrote that "we shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to return to the place we started from and to know it for the first time." Hiking down game trails made by elephants through thick, cool mountain forests was one part totally new and exciting, and another part delightful reminder of the Smoky Mountains that I love so much. That's a good picture of most of my trips into the wilderness: going out into God's grandeur and remembering the long trek the Spirit has led Rebecca and I on through the great riches of His world and His work. It turns out that fishing on frigid mountain streams below huge waterfalls in the middle of a murky forest is fun even if you don't catch fish, and hiking around on game trails made by elephants gives one an incredible sense of expectation and excitement . . . even if you don't see any. And the Kikuyu people believed that God himself lived on the summit of Mt Kenya; what could be more fitting than to spend a couple of days enjoying the lower slopes but never being granted a view of the top?

In short, we enjoyed an incredibly refreshing few days together at the end of Becca's almost three weeks of teaching at Rosslyn. And this is probably as good an opportunity as any to say thank-you to all of you who have not only prayed for our work but for our relationship, and to let you know that God's leading during the past year and a half has been challenging and beautiful, difficult and good.

Peace,

Michael

Pilot Project Part 10 (or is it 11?): Tunakimbia

2010-04-30T03:26:00.000-07:00

We've met with the Pilot Project group the last two weeks, and looks like lots more meetings to come in the near future! A couple weeks ago our group decided to try to plant a little bit earlier than the nearest large scale rice growing region in order to try to get the best of both worlds in terms of the season and also in terms of hopefully harvesting and selling their rice just before their competitors do.

Two weeks ago we invited a local bank that does microfinance with farmers to come and try to sell their loan products to our group. Just yesterday we discussed the pros and cons of taking a loan, and Beth, who holds a MA degree in microfinance, made sure that everyone understood that there were real risks involved. Thankfully, because of a lot of outside grants from the Kenyan government and a host of foreign aid types including Bill Gates, the bank the farmers have basically decided to take loans from has fairly low interest rates and works hard to reduce the risk for the farmers (they don't take land as collateral for instance, and allow repayment terms to be set by crop cycles). And while all of that outside money will one day dry up, for the time being, it seems that the farmers may really be able to take advantage of a relatively less-risky business investment through the use of these loans. If they can, that in and of itself will be an accomplishment: we will have helped a group of farmers who have the land and irrigation to really improve their lives through agriculture to connect to a local credit provider who can help them long after we're gone.

The group decided to plant the seeds in the nursery by late June, meaning that tunakimbia haraka haraka (we are running fast) to get everything ready before then. The farmers came up with a list of things that need to happen before planting, including an exposure visit to a research center and another irrigation group, accessing the loans (not exactly a simple or straightforward process), and getting seeds and fertilizer and the like.

Pray for our farmers this week through all of this, because they've committed to a pretty aggressive plan for getting everything together, and we're going to really begin to see how serious these folks are! Also, please pray for our aloe vera farmers, who are hosting a potential buyer tomorrow who, if he goes through with the deal, would put something like 700 bucks in the group's bank account. Especially since these farmers have been working hard for a long time without really knowing if this was going to work out, this would be a huge blessing. Kenyan business is notoriously tricky; there's every likelihood that this guy will back out. So pray!!

This morning I read through parts of Hosea and Psalm 51 as part of my morning devotional readings. Reading through Hosea is like walking into the middle of a house where the wife has just told her husband she's been sleeping with somebody else. And as blasphemous as it sounds, that seems to be exactly how Yahweh characterizes his relationship with his people through the word spoken to Hosea. "Your love is like the morning mist," the Father groans. "Here one moment and gone the next." For all of our theological talk about the immutability of God's character, in this book at least God seems to be wrestling with his hatred of Israel's idolatry, and his literal inability to let them go because of His love for them. "My heart is changed within me; all my compassion is aroused. For I am God, and not man . . . I will not come in wrath."

To think that our sin and rebellion wounds the heart of our creator! Can we really grasp it, can we really believe that the Triune God loves us like a husband, grieves over our prostitution like a jilted lover, calls us back even in the midst of his anger because of his inextinguishable love for us?

After reading this I turned to Psalm 51, David's prayer of repentance, and the two passages dove-tailed in my mind powerfully. Here the Israelite king is repenting, but at every turn he calls on God to act; even the acknoweldgement and knowledge of his sin comes only from God. "Have mercy . . . wash away . . cleanse . . . wash . . . let me hear . . . hide your face . . . create . . . renew . . . restore . . . save . . . open my lips!" The verbs pour poetically out of David's mouth, with nearly all the action dependent on God's own divine initiative. We like faithless Israel and lustful David have cursed our creator, have cheated on our divine husband. But it is God alone who can act, He alone who can speak the words of power that will turn the tables and invites us back to the wedding feast. We can do nothing! Not even praise; it is God who must open our lips and allow us to worship Him.

As you pray for our farmers and for us this week, please also pray for the church worldwide, that we would feel Christ's overwhelming love and that we would be able to remain in it, to live in it, to swim in the ocean of that divine love, and to let that love shine out into the world, drawing folks from every tribe and nation to its light.

Peace,
Michael

Some Happenings

2010-04-21T02:05:00.000-07:00

Over the last few weeks, we've had some cool opportunities to travel, both for fun and for work. Here's what we've been up to:

Easter in Bungoma

Followers of the "Dude Goes to Africa" blog will remember that in 2007 I had the privelege of living and working in western Kenya for 3 months. During that time I stayed at the home of Kistos and Petrinilla Khisa and worked for Western Region Christian Community Services, a sister organization to our current partner in ministry through Planting Faith. Kistos and Petrinilla's son David now works for Toyota in Nairobi and he and his sisters have been some of our best friends here in Nairobi. Over Easter, David took us on the over-night bus to Bungoma to visit his family and reconnect with old friends.

The Khisas consider me to be their African son, so this was something of a homecoming for me. But it was even more weighty for Rebecca, something along the lines of "Meet the Parents: Africa" (see the picture of the daughter-in-law bearing gifts above). Kenyans are really great as a people, but the Khisas are really special. As we walked up to St. Crispins Anglican Church for the Good Friday service, having arrived only an hour before after a 10 hour bus ride, I could hear Kistos preaching inside, and immediately remembered the power and sincerity that he brings to the pulpit. But more astounding, especially when pastors everywhere and maybe particularly in places like Kenya can easily fall into the temptation of acting like "big men" or the boss, was the way that Kistos humbly and graciously loves his family and his congregation. We were so encouraged by this incredible family, and praise God for their work.

It was also really fun to get to run into the neighborhood children and families along the dirt road that leads to their home, the road that I walked up and down every day for three months. White folks are an anomaly everywhere in this country, but particularly in places like Bungoma, and it was really beautiful to have people constantly coming up and saying, 'oh I remember you, the Kisha's American son has come back to visit!"

David took us on a hike that Brandon and Lily Russell, David, and I had done in 2007. The trail goes up this huge rock that rises out of the western landscape and gives you a great view of the miles upon miles of small farms receding off into the distance in every direction that make that part of the world so beautiful. This was also a pretty sweet time for David and I, who had stood in that same place three years ago and who have really grown together through our somewhat strange and unlikely friendship. Jesus has given Rebecca and I the opportunity to travel all over the world and make many lasting memories. But perhaps at the end of the day we haven't made quite so many lasting friendships on our travels, and the Khisas stand out as a noteable and God-given exception.

I also got a chance to catch up with my old coworker Joseph (if you remember the story about me on the back of the motorbike carrying a chicken, he was the primary player in that tale). His wife served us chicken, and his kids had gotten so big, and he told me news of all the groups I used to visit. He also gave me phone numbers so that I could catch up with a few other folks in CCS who I had hoped to meet.

And most importantly, Rebecca got a chance to have her first boda boda ride (public transportation on the back of a bicycle. Only 15 cents). Check out the pic.

In short, it was a beautiful way to celebrate the resurrection with old friends. Drinking chai under an avocado tree, I couldn't help but be overwhelmed by the gift God has given me through Kenya, both now and through that trip in 2007 where my life was changed in profound ways that I am still now discovering. There is something beautiful and strange about being in a place you love that you may never be in again, something that reminds us somehow of the kingdom to come. If you pray for us this week, take a minute to thank God for the Khisas, and to ask for His blessing on St. Crispins church and on their life and ministry in Bungoma.

Work Stuff

I’ve had the chance to visit most of our groups over the past couple of weeks as well. In the sunflower groups, we have finally begun processing sunflower oil, and I actually brought home a liter of the finished product last week! This has been a long, often painful process, so please pray that we keep moving steadily forward and that after a long wait this sunflower oil will help the members of our community groups get some income for their families.

In Murang’a with the Pilot Project we’ve begun discussing how to go about this rice planting. In our last meeting, the group committed to planting by late June in order to try to hit the ideal growing season but also to time their harvest so as to be able to sell their product before the large rice growing region nearby begins to harvest theirs. We also discussed ways of getting less active members more involved, and developed guidelines for rice production. Soon we are hoping to be able to visit the government’s nearby research center specifically devoted to rice, as well as to visit another group of farmers that is using an irrigation scheme as the foundation for group agricultural business. Tomorrow (Thursday), our coworker Beth is bringing a representative from Equity Bank to discuss potential loan options for the group.

Our aloe vera farmers continue to battle disease problems, but the aloe vera seems to be nearing maturity in some areas. A new coworker, Peter Durito, has been furiously working to develop a marketing plan, and it looks like we might be able to sell some soon if everything goes well. Please pray for this, as marketing a new product is always difficult, and our goal is not just to help the farmers sell the crop but to connect them to the market in such a way that they can do it on their own. This will be difficult!

And although I haven’t been up there in months, I got a good report over the phone on the farmers from Ngare Ndare. Apparently they are still busy growing onions, and the group is still meeting regularly. I’m hoping to head up there with Rebecca sometime in May.

Teaching

There are times when you can tell Jesus has got it covered. Rebecca and I recently experienced this through a new cool opportunity for her. For a whole host of reasons, Rebecca has been feeling like she may want to teach in the future. Rebecca studied Philosophy at Covenant, and never really thought much about teaching, but she was a substitute in Memphis and has lately felt like that might be something she’d like to do one day. We’ve been praying about that, and lo and behold, Rosslyn International School, the Christian missionary school 10 minutes from our house where Rebecca has coached, asked her to start subbing. She enjoyed it, and began to think more seriously about this teaching thing. “Well, what do you think you might want to teach?” I asked. After some thought, she began to think that English in middle school or high school might be a good fit. And so (of course) she got asked to sub for three weeks as a middle school English teacher. So right now I’m flying solo at work and she’s flying solo with 4 classes of middle schoolers every day. So far it has been really fun, and you can pray that this would be a good experience for her.

There’s a lot more going on, particularly with some new opportunities to serve at New City Fellowship. But this post is long, so we’ll save those for another day. Keep praying for us, for the work, and for the people of Kenya.

Peace,

Michael

Easter Reflections: Resurrection Hope

2010-04-10T00:59:00.000-07:00

And if Christ has not been raised our preaching is useless and so is your faith . . . But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in his own turn, Christ the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. (I Corinthians 15: 14, 20-23)

Oh, the depths of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! . . . For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen. (Romas 11:33, 36)

This then is the conclusion of the matter: without the resurrection of the Christ, we are all lost and hopeless. We languish in a good created world gone horribly and permanently wrong, we kill and curse our fellow image-bearers for lack of the good and gracious King we had dared dream might return to claim his kingdom, we fight and fret in our small, racially bound families for lack of the freedom to be members of the greater kingdom family we cannot dare dream might really exist. In short, without the resurrection, we have neither a world to live in, nor a king to kneel to, nor a family to love, nor any hope for the future at all. We are hopeless.

But oh the depths and riches of God! What no eye could see nor ear could hear nor mind could perceive he has done for us through Jesus. He has given his perfect Son on the cross to be killed by our last and greatest enemy death, and he has raised that same Jesus from the dead that, through the Holy Spirit, he might be the salvation of the world, the firstfruits of the new creation, the king over all things, and the first-born son of a new and truly human family comprised of all the nations of the world. The resurrection salvation we have in Christ is not fire-insurance; it is the hope of the promise of a new life in a new creation world in a new creation kingdom with a new elder brother at the head of a new family and a glorious king to rule all of it in righteousness and joy. It is the promise that death doesn't have the last word. The Risen Christ does. He has gone before us, paving the way for us to follow him in sharing in his sufferings . . . and so somehow to attain the resurrection of the dead.

The Scriptures give us one gigantic and gloriously true fairytale that begins with a world wrecked and shattered to the very core by the rebellious sin of humanity, and ends with a Lamb returning to that wrecked order with the new heavens and the new earth coming behind to make His blessings known as far as the curse is found. And standing at the center, the axis around which this cosmic story spins, is the risen Jesus calling our name in the garden on Easter. The risen Christ calls us to look back to creation and forward to the second coming and find the downpayment for all the glorious promises paid for on Easter Sunday morning at daybreak.

We are all of us as dead as doornails from the day of our conception, and the day we're born we find ourselves born into a tomb. But praise the LORD it is the tomb of Jesus, and on the first day of a new week in April Jesus burst open that tomb and led us wretched captives out into the glorious Sunday morning Easter light of a new life in Him. If any of us are in Christ, we stand blinking in the sunlight of the second garden, the Easter garden, the beginning of a new beginning in which "every morning is Easter, every day." And like Thomas we fall at the feet of the risen Jesus and say "my lord and my God." King, Creator, elder-brother . . . our first and last and only hope.

Peace,
Michael

Easter Reflections: Resurrection Community

2010-04-09T00:22:00.000-07:00

Babel came before the blessing. The moment Moses finishes telling us about the tongue-tied workers at Babel he begins telling us about the genealogy of Abraham. Before Babel humanity was one nation, one people, one tribe. And somewhat contrary to our modern sensibilities, this wasn't all peaches and cream, or even advantageous for city planning. The men and women of the world merely used their linguistic homogeneity as an excuse to go to new heights in defying their Creator. So out of the nations, God calls Abraham to become the father of a new nation, a father of a new faith, the father of a new beginning as God's holy people.

But the promise was never for Abraham's ethnic descendants alone. From the very beginning, God declared that he would give Abraham a land, a nation, a people . . . and that through him, all the nations of the world would be blessed. That's right. As soon as God got done scattering the wicked rebelious people of the world to the winds, he started working on a plan to bless them and bring them back.

Of course for most of their history the Israelite nation seemed happy to end with the "you'll be a great nation," and "I'll curse those who curse you," and just kind of forget about the "all peoples" part. But God didn't, and neither did His faithful prophets. Just listen to Isaiah in the final chapter of his prophecy:

"And I, because of their actions and their imaginations, am about to come and gather all nations and tongues, and they will come and see my glory . . . I will set a sign among them, and I will send some of those who survive to the nations . . . to the distant lands that have not heard of my fame or seen my glory. They will proclaim my glory among the nations. And they will bring all your brothers, from all the nations, to my holy mountain . . . And I will select some of them also to be priests and Levites," says the LORD. As the new heavens and the new earth that I make will endure before me," declares the LORD, "so will your name and descenants endure . . . all mankind will come and bow down before me." (Isaiah 66)

Isaiah prophesied that God would raise up Israel as a light to the nations, and that the nations would stream to that light. But Israel fell short. Their sin kept them from being God's ambassadors to the world, just as the world's sin had kept the rest of humanity from responding to God's call. They far too often chose to reinforce the divisions between "the chosen" and the rest, rather than boldly going to the nations as Isaiah had prophesied. So since God didn't fulfill this promise through "faithful Israel," how did he fulfill it? As N.T. Wright puts it, when Israel failed in faithfulness, God fulfilled His covenant throught "the faithful Israelite," Jesus the Christ.

The Risen Christ is the beginning of the end of the fulfillment of the promise to Abraham that through him, all nations would be blessed. At Babel God had scattered the nations, and at Sinai God had separated His people from all the other nations of the world. But through the resurrection Christ called all the nations back unto Himself. He became our inter-ethnic peace, by making the two one and [destroying] the barrier the dividing wall of hostility . . . His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility (Ephesians 2). In the context of Paul's other teaching in the resurrection, I am convinced that this language about the "one man out of the two" is a direct reference to the resurrection. Whereas at the cross Jesus put to death our hostility, in the resurrection he united all flesh in himself, by becoming the first fruits of the new heavens and the new earth, the older brother of a new human family for the glory of God. The faithful Israelite has fulfilled Isaiah's vision: He has survived the wrath of God, He has gone to the nations, He has brought them to his father, and He has found them through His resurrection to be His brothers before the Father.

When the Spirit came in power at Pentecost, it was this blessing to the nations that gave Peter the opportunity to declare that through the resurrection and ascension of the Christ, Jesus had received the Spirit and poured it out on them in power. Are not all these men Galileans? Then how is it that each of us hears them in his own native language? Parthians, Medes and Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Capadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome, both Jews and converts to Judaism; Cretans and Arabs- we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues! Amazed and perplexed they asked one another, 'What does this mean?' Luke is practically shouting at us now. Here are all the nations of the world saying 'what can it mean? what can it mean?" I'll tell you what it means, Luke shouts. It means that because the Risen King has given His Spirit the promise to Abraham is fulfilled! The blessing is given for all nations! Babel is reversed! Men gathered around a monument to their own power, and God scattered them to the four corners of the earth, but now every tongue and tribe and nation is gathering around the risen Christ, the sign and seal of God's power poured out for the salvation of humanity. He is indeed our older brother!

And of course what was begun at Pentecost was carried out in the missionary journeys of the apostles, and will be fulfilled on that glorious day when every knee shall bow and tongue confess that Jesus is Lord, and when the river that flows from the throne of the Lamb will send forth the trees whose leaves are for the healing of the nations.

The most shocking part of the story, though, is the way that God's blessing comes about, the strange twist on God's reversal of Babel. Because at Babel they spoke one language and were cursed by being forced to speak all sorts of strange languages. But at Pentecost and even in the new heavens and the new earth, the babbling praise of the nations becomes the glory of the risen Lamb. God doesn't reverse the curse by allowing humanity to return to one language; he reverses the curse by bringing as many bizarre and strange tongues and tribes from the furthest and farthest places of the world as He can find, and allowing them to create a symphonic chorus of praise to His own glorious name. God doesn't give us understanding and a new humanity by making us all the same, he gives us a new humanity by keeping us all different and allowing us to understand one another! In Tolkien's powerful creation narrative he describes the songs of the gods, beautiful and strong, but corrupted by the foul, dischordant singing of the Satanic figure. But the creator god does not silence the evil singer; he changes the song, so that it becomes more beautiful still. That is what the risen Jesus did through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost; that is what He promises for every nation under heaven at the end of all things.

This is why Paul clings to the metaphor of the body: you are the body of Christ, with each member playing a different part. God doesn't heal Babel by creating a nation of hands. He heals Babel by making the risen Christ the head of a host of diverse and different arms, legs, hands, feet, eyes, ears, and toes, who through their diversity bring great and glorious honor to the Father. That's why John didn't hear Americans and Mexicans speaking Hebrew in his great vision; he heard Americans saying 'ya'll come back now' and 'como esta usted' and yet he understood it all.

Jesus Christ is the elder brother of a new family, a new humanity, filled with little tiny toddlers who look as different as do the nations of the earth, and yet who hear their Father delightfully crying each new day, 'Ahh, I can see the family resemblance now! And how similar to their older brother they are becoming!'

There are a million implications here, as there are with all of the truly divine and beautiful mysteries. In the same way that we have worshipped other kings, we have far too often lived in other families besides the one new and truly human family founded at the resurrection. But I will leave all of that to our imaginations and prayers in the days ahead. Instead I will say only this: I have found first hand, through Bible Studies with African-Americans in Memphis, worship with Asians and Malagasies, fellowship meals with the many tribes and nations of Kenya, and church services from Belize to Ukraine and back, that coming together as the younger brothers and sisters of the risen Jesus is the absolute hardest and most difficult thing imaginable. Racial reconciliation may be the least talked about theme of the New Testament, and for good reason: it makes all of us miserable. Read Paul again, and remember that one of the biggest issues facing the early church was how would Jews and Gentiles ever be able to live and work and worship together. Take off the spiritual blinders that make everything in Scripture about "spiritual truths" and hear the ethnic clashing and chaos of the early church and hear Paul say he destroyed the dividing wall of hostility, making the two one, bringing peace. Because at the same time I am totally and utterly convinced that worship and life in the diverse church is the most rewarding and God honoring thing I've ever experienced. As one author put it, the injunctions to love one another spread through the New Testament are there because the church was and always has been a community made up of natural enemies. But when we submit, when we come together, when we listen to the African-American spirituals and Kiswahili praise songs, and Mandarin house church hymns and claim them for our own and as an equal part of God's great movement in Jesus, we find our brother better and more beautiful than we ever rememberd. It is this worship, the worship that transcends the Jewish temple and the Samaritan mountain (and the Presbyterian organ, and the Church of Christ's choir, and the Baptist's rock band) that is truly in Spirit and Truth, and that therefore truly brings glory to our Father. And I'm convinced that if you or I really mean what we so often say about wanting to know Jesus and be like him and to follow him and all of that, we'd go sprinting for the church located among the ethnic people group we have the absolute hardest time not hating.

Ben Witherington has written that New Testament worship is worship with "one eye on the horizon;" that we pray and sing and study "in the shadow of the kingdom." In other words we don't just look back. We look forward. And when we look forward we find the Risen Lamb glorified by the body of Christ called from every tongue and tribe, the body of Christ comprised of all of the worst ethnic and tribal enemies in the history of the world gloriously brought into loving unity, falling on their faces before the LORD.

If we truly believe this message, it will change our lives, and not least our missions. Because if we really grasp this message, we will stop paternalistically going out into the world in order to rescue "those poor backwards people," and will start joyfully looking for new worshipers, new enemies turned fellow brothers and sisters, more people with stranger tongues singing stranger songs that are becoming the one song of this crazy, cantankerous, messed up family . . . with the Risen Christ at its head.

Peace,
Michael

Easter Reflections: The Resurrection Crown

2010-04-08T09:28:00.000-07:00

Jesus is the Risen Lord! Many scholars believe that this explosive statement was the earliest Christian creed. Peter preached at Pentecost that through the resurrection God the Father made the risen Jesus the king of the whole world:

God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of the fact. Exalted to the right hand of God, he has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear . . . Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ (Acts 2:33, 36)

The Israelites between the Exodus and Saul seem to have believed that Yahweh Himself was their king (1 Sam 12:12), but they demanded for an earthly king and were given, with the exception of David and the few who followed in his footsteps, a long line of idolatrous, unjust, and downright foolish kings. And eventually exile was the result. Humanity as represented in Adam had been chosen by God at creation to be His agents in the world; humanity rejected this call, so God called for Himself a people who would be His representatives in the world. But they too rejected their call, and so just as Adam and Eve were kicked out of the garden, the Israelites were kicked out of the Promised Land (and even when they returned to it, it was almost always as slaves, colonies, second class citizens in a long line of pagan empires).

But the prophets promised that God would finally send a king who would put all things to right, not just for Israel but for the whole world. "Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem! See your king comes to you,” And who is this king? How shall we know him? He comes “righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey (Zephaniah 9).” And so Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, the anointed by the Spirit of the Lord to fulfill the promises of God (Luke 4), Israel and the world’s rightful king.

But if on Palm Sunday King Jesus came to the capital of his kingdom, it was on Easter Sunday that the Risen Christ was crowned king of a new creation kingdom that He himself inaugurated through His death and resurrection. And it is this same risen Lord, given a new creation body by the Holy Spirit that nevertheless still bears the scars of his suffering, that John saw returning at the end of all things with KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS written in blood red across His thigh and on His robe, with the new heavens and the new earth coming out of heaven like a jewel behind him (Revelation 19-21). Hallelujah for our Lord God Almighty reigns!

Jesus is the Risen Lord and King, we cry with the church across the ages. But for those of us whose ancestors haven’t lived under a monarchy for several centuries, for those of us like myself whose cultural, historical, social, and even philosophical story shares few obvious roots with the story of God’s people in the Old Testament, I think it’s easy for us to cry “Christ is King” with our lips . . . and deny it with our lives.

You see the early Christians knew full well that to declare “Christ is King” was to shout “And Cesar Isn’t.” They knew it, and they died for it. And everyone in the Roman Empire knew it. When the jealous Jews of Acts 17 really wanted to get Paul in trouble, they just dragged him to the officials and declared a half-truth: “[Paul is] defying Caesar’s decrees, saying that there is another king, one called Jesus.” And while we have no evidence that the first half of this claim was true, the entire New Testament testifies that the church lived and died proclaiming the second half.

Many have asked why the persecution of Christians under Rome was so severe when the official Roman policy was to tolerate religions of all kinds, especially since, unlike the Jews, the Christians led no armed revolts. But the answer is clear: Rome tolerated all sorts of religious beliefs, just so long as it was Roman citizenship that came first. You could worship whoever you wanted, so long as you worshipped the Caesar as well. And this was exactly the thing that Paul and the early church refused to do: they refused to let Jesus be a religious leader. They insisted on crying out to Him as a King.

Because of our distance from monarchs of any kind and particularly of that kind who declared themselves to actually be gods, it is difficult to recognize the extent of all this. So to help us out, author and activist Shane Claiborne quotes extensively from a Roman letter about the Caesar:

The most divine Caesar . . . we should consider equal to the Beginning of all things . . . for when everything was falling (into disorder) and tending toward dissolution, he restored it once more and gave the whole world a new aura; Caesar . . . the common good Fortune of all . . . the beginning of life and vitality . . .whereas the Providence which has regulated our whole existence . . . has brought our life to the climax of perfection in giving to us the (emperor) Augustus . . . who being sent to us and our descendents as Savior, has put an end to war and has set all things in order; and (whereas,) having become (god) manifest, Caesar has fulfilled all the hopes of earlier times . . . the birthday of god (Augustus) has been for the whole world the beginning of the gospel concerning him (Jesus for President, p. 70).

Replace Caesar’s name with Christ’s and most of this could be Biblical. The early Christians weren’t doing a write-in for a new candidate for the king in the upcoming election. They were declaring that above and over and against the claims of kingship and deity for the Caesar, in total opposition to the demand for ultimate authority and allegiance to Rome and its ruler, stood the Risen Christ, King of the World and the Coming Kingdom.

The Christians died with Jesus is the Risen King on their lips. They suffered abuse at every side because they refused to let any claim of culture, ethnicity, state religion, or political power trump their allegiance to the Christ who had become for them all in all. Given the hubris of the Roman empire cult, Christ’s resurrection crown was one of the most subversive and controversial claims going. Lucky for us we don’t live in an age like that!

Or do we? Isn’t it true that our culture and our nation constantly seek to demand our total allegiance? Do not the household gods of comfort, financial security, and affluence claim our allegiances in the economic sphere? Are we not constantly if subtly told that ‘yes, it’s all well and good to follow Christ, but it really just won’t do when it comes to national security, or family loyalty, or economic practice’? Here’s a test: when was the last time we thought about the Christians in the countries we’re currently at war with (or those in nations that our self-serving economic policy might be decimating). Because according to the Bible, we share a greater allegiance with them than we do with our nation. How about another one: when was the last time that the Sermon on the Mount was the driving force behind your financial decisions? When was the last time that we were part of a church budget discussion that made “blessed are the poor” the first question for every line item? I can’t avoid asking one more: how do you talk about brothers and sisters in Christ who happen to be communists? Or Socialists? Or Democrats (or Republicans)? Which came first in that last discussion? The person’s secondary political identity? Or their membership in the true and lasting kingdom with the Risen Christ as its King?

All of us everywhere have in subtle and sinister ways become traitors to our King. We have given our allegiance to the temporary powers of the world, whom Christ made a spectacle of at the cross (Colossians 1). Looking at those litmus tests, I find that my allegiance to the world is acid as anyone I know. I worship Jesus as King every Sunday, but as I’ve been thinking about this blog post I’ve realized just how often the worship that goes on Monday through Saturday is at the altar of the household gods of economic security, political theory, personal achievement, and maybe worst of all, of general respectability and acceptance in my own community of friends and family.

The resurrection shatters the kingdoms of the world, whether physical, emotional, or spiritual. The resurrection reminds all world orders, be they nations, philosophies, or religions, that their days are numbered, that their power is limited, that they must kneel to the Christ or perish. If we look at the way the early church read the Old Testament, the way they treated their Jewish or Greek heritage, the way they interacted and engaged with their nation and the larger world, we see at every turn that they recognized Christ as King of the cosmos, and therefore gave their allegiance to Him as such. This Easter week, let’s pray that the Spirit would open our eyes to the ways we’ve traded Christ as King for the much more visible, much more expedient, but nevertheless deadly kings of our culture, nation, and community. Let’s fall on our knees again as subjects of the king who, like Aslan in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, is “on the move,” coming to Narnia, gunning for the White Witch, and bringing the eternal summer kingdom that drives out the tyrant’s long winter.

Peace,
Michael

Easter Reflections: Resurrection New Creation

2010-04-07T07:04:00.000-07:00

The Resurrection of Jesus was not the after-thought “happy-ending” that made the real truth of the crucifixion more bearable. Nor was that first Easter, at least in the minds of those early Christians who recorded it for us, a metaphor or story explaining how Jesus died and went to heaven. Nor is it again the means by which Jesus came back and said “see, I won after all, and though death is tough the good news is that like me, one day you’ll escape from this horrible world and get to go away to a cloud-filled heaven.”
The Resurrection for the early Christians was both the means of a new creation that would culminate in the kingdom of God, and the first fruits of that new creation kingdom. To begin to meditate on this, and grasp its meaning for ourselves, we have to see the resurrection new creation in light of the first creation that preceded it.

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together (Colossians 1:15-17)

Paul saw Jesus as the one through whom and for whom God the Creator had spoken the universe into glorious existence. Paul looks back to the original Genesis account, and sees Jesus as the source, sustainer, and receiver of the entire cosmos which God declared was “very good.” And while sin wrecked both humanity and the physical world, the Jews still believed that God continued to hold that basically good world together. They believed that God “so loved the world” that he would come and redeem it. Paul grew up singing the Psalms, and in his New Testament writings we see the same basic delight in the physical world combined with the new revelation that it was Jesus Himself who was the Word that God spoke to create all things, and Jesus Himself who kept the world together for His good pleasure in spite of all that sin had done. Ever since Plato many if not most of us have deep down believed that the physical world is bad, dirty, or at best irrelevant in comparison to “spiritual” things. But not so for the Jews nor for the early Christians. The created world is the work of God, and if it is broken, God’s promises are not to abandon it but to fix it. And it is this that leads Paul further and farther out, to a place where no other religion or worldview has ever dared go:

And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross (Colossians 1:18-20)

This same Jesus who was before all things and the creator of the first world, is now the first born, the first fruits of the new world that is being born out of the old. A careful study of Genesis shows that while the creation was perfect in the sense of “without sin,” this does not mean that it was perfect in terms of being a finished work. God wanted people to be his stewards and representatives in the world, stewarding and ruling the created order towards “bigger and better things.” But sin put that plan off track, it threw a wrench in the system. So on the cross, Jesus cried “it is finished,” and he was right. The sin and death of the first creation brought on by the first Adam were dealt with at the cross. But in John’s gospel we find the risen Lord, the second Adam, standing in a second garden on the first day of a new week, putting the physical world back on track, back in line with God’s original intentions. “Behold I am making all things new!” That is the cry of Easter, because at the incarnation Jesus took on the body of the first creation, a body that suffered at the hands of sinful humanity and bore the full brunt of the final enemy that is death. But notice what happens next: God doesn’t whisk Jesus’ soul away to an immortal heaven. Nor does he give him a ghostly body that will allow him to leave behind the dirty created body he took at the incarnation. No! God takes the broken, marred, twisted, old creation body, and raises it up in the power of the Spirit into a new body. And Romans 8 makes it clear that what God did with Jesus’ body on that Easter Sunday he will do to our broken bodies and to the entire world. Jesus’ resurrection is the breaking in of a new world, a new creation that we taste in the present and will receive fully at the second coming!

And if this is true, what a difference it makes! Martin Luther apparently once said that if we knew Christ was coming again tomorrow, we’d plant a tree today. That’s resurrection talk right there! Because through the resurrection we can participate in the new creation that is coming fully at Christ’s second coming. The world is not a hotel we temporarily live in that’s going to be demolished next month, but the fixer-upper project of the Risen Lamb.

But it’s not just a renewed care for the Earth that comes on Easter. It’s a renewed calling to creation and care of all kinds. Art, music, literature, architecture . . . if Christ is renewing and restoring the cosmos through the resurrection, then every single human thing we do has value as a way for us to anticipate that new creation in the here and now. Paul tells us both that because of the resurrection “we are new creation” and that we are still “groaning” for the hope that we haven’t yet received . . . the redemption of our bodies. In the same way, our calling in the here and now involves living out the resurrection hope we have for the future in the present, aka loving the earth, creating beautiful works of art, building brilliant buildings . . . heck, maybe even farming?

Which is of course a beautiful reminder. Our task is not just to make it through this life, but to build upon, steward, and care for the physical world and the cultural gifts we’ve been given. This is at least one part of what it means to live in light of Easter, to join Jesus in that second garden in Jerusalem, which is really the whole world.

Next up, The Resurrection Crown.

Peace,

Michael

Authors Note: This and the following blogposts are the result of countless books, articles, discussions, sermons, prayers, etc. etc. But most recently, credit should be given to Colin Gunton’s The Triune Creator, Ben Witherington’s We Have Seen His Glory, Christopher J.H. Wright’s Knowing the Holy Spirit through the Old Testament, and least recently but most importantly, N.T. Wright’s Surprised by Hope and The Resurrection and the Son of God.

Easter Reflections: Resurrection Changes Everything

2010-04-06T02:45:00.000-07:00

Christ is Risen! He is Risen Indeed! And with the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church we cry out together what appears to be the earliest Christian confession: Jesus is the Risen Lord!
“It is finished!” That was the cry of the Christ on the cross on Good Friday. Death, sin, our shame and guilt, God’s wrath against us, our failure to be the people of God that Yahweh had called us to be . . . all finished at the cross. For the One who knew no sin became sin for our sakes, taking the punishment that should have been ours, and buying us our peace with the Father and with each other by his freely-given blood.

But when the Incarnate God in Jesus lays down His life, He is free to pick it back up again, and the great ending, the history shattering finishing of the cross is answered by the Easter new beginning of the resurrection. Christ paid for the disciples’ sins on Good Friday, but on Saturday they locked themselves up and hid for fear. But on Easter Sunday, when the risen Lord appeared before them and breathed the Holy Spirit on them, that same Holy Spirit through whom the Father gave life back to the crucified Son, they became the founders of the Church, the authors of the New Testament, the martyrs who became one with Christ in his sufferings so somehow to become like him in his resurrection. Easter and the empty tomb are the turning points of the world, the foundation of our new life in Christ, the first day of a new creation week that can only come after the finishing work of Jesus on the Cross.

There is no greater source for Christian evangelism, for Christian social action, for Christian callings and community, than the resurrection of our Lord and King Jesus the Christ. If Christ has not been raised than our faith is useless and we are still dead in our sins; Good Friday’s “it is finished” is no good news without Easter Sunday’s “behold I am making all things new!” So this week, we want to reflect on several aspects of Christ’s resurrection, and a few of the ways that Rebecca and I have had our faith and calling renewed and reinvigorated by meditation on Easter and our Risen Lord. Over the next few days, we’ll blog about The Resurrection New Creation, The Resurrection Crown, The Resurrection Family, and finally The Resurrection Hope. We hope that you’ll follow us through these reflections and find yourself delighted again to behold this Jesus whom God has made both Lord and Christ.

Christ is Risen! He is Risen Indeed!

Peace,

Michael

Pilot Project Part 9: The Decision

2010-03-29T03:34:00.000-07:00

And the crop will be . . . drumroll please . . . rice!

After 2.5 hrs of reviewing all of our survey results and discussing all of the issues, our group voted to grow rice together, probably planning to begin in July. This is a huge step for us, and introduces a whole new host of issues/opportunities/objectives into the project (working with ag extension officers, giving the group information about loan opportunities, discussing marketing strategy, visiting other groups who do similar things, etc).

One interesting thing that come up was that the farmers seemed to act just as the research and observation indicates that they might: as long as the presence of the white man doesn't create too much expectation for free stuff, small scale farmers tend to be risk adverse, and to choose high levels of diversification to protect against risk rather than investing more heavily into a few apparently more profitable options. So while tomatos and mellons have a higher income potential than rice, the farmers unanimously decided against growing them as a group. Several of the members indicated that they will be growing them on their own on a smaller scale, but the risk in terms of both markets and pests and diseases just was too high in their estimation for a group project.

This is a good reminder for anybody concerned with helping the poor anywhere. If people are really taking initiative and ownership over projects, they should and normally will prefer opportunities that are smaller, more sure, and less risky. Some people talk as if farmers need outside help to understand risk, but this seems to me to deny the observable fact that farmers survive year after year by managing risk. All too often development projects focus on the "big opportunities," which give huge promises of "transforming" an individual or a community's life nearly overnight ('with your support we can purchase piece of equipment x that will automatically allow a farmer currently living hand-to-mouth to become affluent in three weeks' and that sort of thing). My gut instinct on these kinds of projects is that either a) the truly poor involve themselves in them because they're confident that they will get the rewards if it succeeds and be spared the risks if they fail because of the presence of the church, or the NGO, or whatever, or that b) these projects primarily attract people who aren't really all that poor. The beauty of small projects that take seriously the idea of keeping farmers from taking unnecessary risks is that they not only succeed more often, but that they attract the type of people who fit in the target group for the project. The big projects with the huge goals more often than not seem to encourage the wealthier members of the community to crowd out the needier in terms of participation.

The Thursday after Easter we begin our third step: kupanga biashara, or "to plan the business." Please pray for wisdom and guidance as we go forward with this, that we would continue to allow the farmers to take the initiative, and that we would be advocates for safer investments in slower, longer lasting changes for them and their families.

Peace,
Michael

Pilot Project Part 8: Slow And Steady

2010-03-19T01:21:00.000-07:00

Thanks to everybody who prayed for our meeting yesterday. I think it was a real success.

Yesterday, Rebecca came with large posters that showed the results of the market survey. Rebecca designed these posters so that you could look at Tomatoes, for instance, and compare the results in each market for that particular crop (one poster for each crop: tomatoes, melons, green grams, and rice).

What was particularly cool was the way that group members got to basically do everything that mattered in the meeting. I sort of coordinated and introduced the agendas, but different members of the marketing team actually presented each poster, explained the results to the rest of the group, and took questions afterwards. We've said this so many times that it's becoming cliche, but again, this really allowed the group members to take ownership of the process, and to feel proud of the work they had done for the group. And at the end, members were able to share insights from the survey, and even debate a little about what they meant, which markets would be best for which crops, etc. None of this would be possible unless we had such a great group of really intelligent and talented farmers.

Another thing that stood out: at various points in preparing this meeting and in sifting through the survey results, many of which were incomplete or less clear or came from fewer traders than would have been the case if it had been professionally done, I thought, 'gosh, why didn't we just do this ourselves? The results might be better, and it could be more thorough.' But what I kept coming back to, and had confirmed yesterday, was the importance of people being given the opportunity to learn and gain new skills and experiences, and the importance of putting the process even above the result in community work. Who cares if they make scads of money if they go home thinking 'we succeeded because Michael and Rebecca were so great?' Is this the great promise that the poor will become Oaks of Righteousness? I think not.

A huge issue in community work is being willing to go at the community's pace. Jesus always met people where they were, even though He was Word made flesh! How much more should we, who have so much to learn from low income communities be willing to set aside our idols of efficiency for the sake of walking together rather than running ahead?

For whatever reason, I was particularly struck by the beauty of Kenyan meetings yesterday, from the flowing KiKikuy language, to the warmth of the mud-walled church where we met yesterday, to the constant sounds of cows and goats outside and of playing, screaming, and occasionally crying children inside. In Kenya, it apparently really does "take a village to raise a child;" I couldn't ever really figure out who the three running around yesterday belonged to, because they were so warmly received and taken care of by every member.

Next week we're going to discuss the production components of each crop, which come from a survey that I did with two of the members where we went and talked to some different ag experts about how to produce these crops, what yields we might expect, and what they would cost. Please keep this project in your prayers

Peace,

Michael

P.S.- Of course they haven't decided, but I think it will come down to rice or water melons!

Prayer Request

2010-03-15T01:55:00.000-07:00

Hey folks,

We got a big meeting for the Pilot on thursday, where we will try to discuss the results of the survey with the whole group and decide on a crop/crops to begin with for the project. Not only is this a big important meeting, but it will also give us crucial info about the project's time line and give us a good way forward in terms of financing, etc. In short, we need lots of prayer for Thursday! Thanks!

Michael

Reflections: Social Justice and the Cause of Christ

2010-03-15T01:51:00.000-07:00

Two things happened last week back where most of you live that resonated strongly with what we’re living here. First, Glen Beck equated a Christian concern with social or economic justice with communism and Nazism, told “other Christians” that social justice is a perversion of the gospel, and then told Christians to leave churches that talked about it. This was, as is typical of extremist entertainers with neither sense nor integrity on both sides of the political spectrum from Michael Moore to Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh, accompanied by a series of fear-mongering statements about how your religious beliefs would soon be under attack because of liberal concepts like these.

One commentator I read said that statements like these put Glen Beck right up there with Howard Stern in the “not-for-Christian-consumption-category.” I guess that’s for each of us to decide on our own. But I’ll tell you what, it makes me pretty upset to hear my Jesus, who cited Isaiah 61 in a declaration of the Year of Jubilee as his foundational programmatic statement in Luke 4, spit upon by the likes of Beck. Because let’s be honest, that’s what’s happening here. But since I already put Pat Robertson through the ringer earlier this year, maybe now is a good time to look at the bigger picture: God’s Word is being constantly perverted on every side in our public discourse, at least as often among our “political allies” as among our “political enemies.”

My church home back in Memphis is fairly conservative politically. I’m guessing we’re a majority Republican bunch. We have orthodox views of Scripture and of economics. But I’ll tell you what, we preach social justice. I grew up learning about social justice in the pulpit and in the youth lounge. And even a cursory reading of the Bible proves that Beck isn’t just a little skewed . . . he’s actually striking at the heart of the Biblical narrative. Which is what is so scary. Because here’s a political figure, appealing to you and me as believers from the political perspective that most of us maintain, to say utterly sinful, ridiculous, unbiblical things about our God. Here’s a guy on what is for most of us traditionally “our side” appealing to our religious values in a way that our Biblical churches would decry as horribly unbiblical. How about this: if your church does not talk about social and economic justice, you should change it (not leave it, that’s only more pseudo-Christianity of the worst kind), because your church is blatantly and objectively unbiblical.

So point one: I don’t think all of our political or social commentators have to be believers to be listened to. But we’ve got to hold those who do claim Christ accountable to represent Jesus as He comes to us in the Scriptures. Too many of our so called “conservative” spokespeople are ravaging the gospel in public discourse, hiding all the while behind the guise of “family values.” As if social and economic justice isn’t at the heart of family values.

So the discourse needs to change. But now I’m going to really turn up the heat: so does the political action. This past week, one of my U.S. Senators and the former mayor of Chattanooga, Bob Corker used his position as one of the Senators working on financial regulation to push for looser standards for payday lending companies like Check Into Cash. Let me say that again: Corker is working on a bill to put tougher regulation on lending companies, but now, he’s pushing for a special exemption for payday loan groups. In college, I spent a great deal of time researching this industry and even raising awareness about its evils among local communities. Payday lending makes loans with annual interest rates of around 400% to over 12 million Americans nation wide every year. They open around poor minority communities and military bases en masse, targeting those most likely to be in need of a crisis loan. They are also tremendously powerful lobbyists, and the owner of Check Into Cash, who is a friend of Senator Corker has given money regularly to his campaigns from the mayoral election to the present.

In college and afterwards, my friends and I talked to inner-city pastors and community members in both Memphis and Chattanooga (constituents in other words) who said that payday lending was a major threat to many of their members. I talked to politicians who told me that despite increased regulation at that time, it was still a dangerous industry for the poor. But those folks don’t have the money or political capital to lobby Mr. Corker’s office, I suppose.

Bob Corker was a regular attendee at my home church in Chattanooga. Bob Corker ran on a platform of family values and is well liked. I’m sure we agree on numerous issues, and that he is a brother in Christ who has done much good for the world. But that rhetoric from Beck, that overly-individualized, unbiblical, unChrist-like theology that we might be tempted to write off as over-the-top has gone deeper than we might think. I’m guessing Bob Corker has done what so much of so called Christian America has done: put the Bible and all it says behind the doors of our home and tried to figure out how to live “in the real world” on our own steam. Because here’s a politician elected partially because of his religious values taking a stand against legislation that would objectively help the poor, and claiming the Christ who came “to preach good news to the poor” as his guide and God.

What are religious values? What would Jesus do? I would suggest that many of our politicians, even ones with authentic faith relationships with Christ, have horribly unbiblical answers to this very question. The political debates of our day are using and abusing the person of Jesus, they are making idols after our Lord’s own image to be the false gods for a whole host of various political platforms that often have no relation or even an antithetical relation to the real agenda of our Savior. This week I wrote Senator Corker and told him that as a brother in Christ and a member of his constituency that I would do everything in my power to let other members of his constituency know about this anti-poor legislation and encourage all of them to call in, write in, and vote differently if necessary to get the point across (thus, this blog post).

Because the truth is, if Beck is right, all community development workers, all pastors concerned with helping the poor, every social activist pursuing moral and just society, and every person convicted about the need for both racial and socio-economic reconciliation is out of a job and a calling. But then again, if Beck is right, Yahweh God at Sinai, all of the Biblical Prophets, and Jesus are all out of a job as well. Because our pursuit of social or economic justice is derived from the words and actions of God’s prophets and of God’s own actions in the Old and New Testament and in the life of Jesus Himself. And to close in such as a way to prove that at the end of the day we “social justice” Christians really do believe in the real gospel, how about us? How about me? Have I really let the poor into my life? Have I carried my poor brothers and sisters’ burdens as my own? Are we mourning with those who mourn? Are we crying out with Amos that justice would roll down like waters . . . in our own hearts and lives and actions? There’s a lie out there: that Christ may save my soul, but he doesn’t have much to say about society, justice, peace, and the rest of the things that the Bible’s pages are filled with. To worship a Jesus like that is to worship a Jesus that is an idol, and nowhere to be found in the Christian Scriptures or in the church, a Jesus who saves my soul from hell in the afterlife, and leaves my life in society to be lived however I see fit. Let’s beat that lie and reject that idol. Let’s live the truth of Jubilee, the truth of the gleaning laws, the truth of Jesus. And maybe that might include turning Beck off and writing Bob.

Peace,
Michael Rhodes

See for details on Corker's involvement and the state of the bill currently: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/10/business/10regulate.html?hp

Pilot Project Progress Part 7: The Survey Begins

2010-03-01T03:12:00.000-08:00

During the past two weeks, eight of the farmers from the Pilot group have gone to four different markets and two different agricultural offices to study the production and marketing factors for green grams, tomatoes, melons, and rice. This survey will become the foundation for discussions next week about which crops have the best potential for group businesses, and to guide the group in selecting one for this project.

That paragraph, quite frankly, is amazing to me. For the past 14 months we have been thinking, praying, discussing, and yes blogging about how our belief that every person is made in God’s image forces us to do what we do in a certain way. We have explained how despite our best efforts, previous attempts to “do for” the farmers (by telling them what to grow and how to grow and sell it, or by providing outside money for production) have caused tremendous problems and given us mixed results. Although we still have numerous farmers that we are working with under our previous model who we are still hoping and praying will succeed, there is no doubt that the “doing for” aspects of those programs have undermined our theology and our results.

But what we are seeing now is a project that has gone slowly and surely because we are walking a road the farmers have chosen and at the pace that they have chosen to walk it. By forcing our farmers to do the survey themselves, we are empowering them to recognize their own gifts and abilities, and giving them an opportunity to learn new skills and ways of thinking through the survey exercise. Moreover, the farmers seem to be taking responsibility for the project at a much higher level than our other groups, which is so vital, because if we are the ones who are responsible for the project’s success, when we leave the implicit message for the group will be ‘oh that worked because of the white folks. Wasn’t that nice.” And that will be the end of it.

Best of all, we’ve given the group the opportunities to win small victories, and to proceed in such a way that nothing has been lost yet. Eventually there will be risk and struggle and all of that. But we are helping the farmers take on the risk only after careful analytical thought and discussion together. So while we still have no idea if this will work (and remember, in agriculture there are numerous uncontrolled ‘x factors’), we just really feel like we’re on the right track.

One of the market centers the farmers studied was in Nairobi. While the farmers group pitched in to buy lunch for the members of the marketing team in the other centers, we thought that this would be a great opportunity to welcome members of the group into our home. Rebecca donned her apron and became a Kenyan cooking fiend all morning, and by the time the farmers arrived we had heaping hot plates of Kenyan food to share together. We laughed and joked about the latest Nairobi news, and chatted about the rain and how intimidating it is to talk to the traders in the market. And through it all I kept thinking, ‘hey, this is what it’s all about.’ Sharing food together. Swapping stories. Learning new things like how to survey markets and how to cook Kenyan food. In short, learning and walking and growing as equals in a task that goes beyond any individual gain.

One of our frustrations here is that we don’t get that as often as we’d like. Our farmers live far away, and when we’re traveling we are so often in a hurry to get home before dark. But this Pilot has been a constant encouragement, a taste of what it can look like when we really work with each other. Which reminds me of that great spiritual truth spoken by so many that the Gospel never ever preaches independence¸ but rather the interdependence on one another across all racial and socio-economic lines that is part and parcel of being a member of this rag tag body of Christ called the church. Please pray for our farmers and us this next week, as we discuss the results of the survey. Ask God that he would guide us towards success through His wisdom.

Peace,

Michael

P.S.- Don’t miss the post below! We posted twice today.

Reflections: Corporate Sin and Redemption

2010-03-01T02:54:00.001-08:00

As anyone who has ever glanced at the “What We’re Reading” bar knows, Rebecca and I have both been challenged and encouraged greatly through the writings of Anglican theologian N.T. Wright. Bishop Wright has recently come under fire for his highly complex and nuanced views on justification by faith, and the role of that phrase in Paul’s writing (none of which will be discussed here). Because his work has been so influential on us (I consider Surprised by Hope one of the most important books I have ever read), I have tried to understand the basic issue under consideration. I recently ran across a Boyce College panel discussion on “N.T. Wright and the Doctrine of Justification.”
During the debate, some of the Boyce panelists accused Wright of diminishing or reducing the doctrine of sin. Coming from the theological tradition that I do, I take this accusation quite seriously. To diminish our sinfulness is to diminish Christ’s work, as far as I’m concerned, and if indeed Wright does this I think he’s in dangerous water. So I began listening very carefully, and was deeply disconcerted by what I heard . . . from the Boyce panelists.

How does Wright diminish sin according to these good traditional folks? He does so by elevating the importance of cosmic sin and our individual sins as existing within this larger framework. “Wright takes the focus off of sin,” says one panelist, “focusing instead on these sort of corporate indiscretions.” Do you see what’s happening here? Wright doesn’t talk about sex, drugs, and rock and roll, which of course are “real sins.” What he talks about about systems of oppression, about injustice, about our participation in a system of violence, and about our disregard for the command to care for the Earth. And, well, if you focus on those indiscretions then of course people won’t hardly know what to repent of now will they?

This is a constant theme in current conservative Christian discussion. In discussing his signing of the Manhattan Declaration which declares the church’s stand against abortion, homosexuality, and stem cell research, Chuck Colson spoke directly to “younger evangelicals” who are concerned about things like “global poverty and the environment:” ““We argue that there is a hierarchy of issues. A lot of the younger evangelicals say they’re all alike. We’re hoping to educate them that these are the three most important issues.” Although Colson doesn’t say whether our role in global poverty or crimes against the environment are mere “indiscretions” or whether they are actually sin, he does clearly see them as being secondary to the “big sins” connected to sexual morality and abortion.

I understand what the Boyce guys are saying. It’s true that emphasizing our corporate responsibility to the world, and the ways that our “society” has done so much evil at home and around the world in and through us may leave people confused about how to respond. It’s easier to hear “Go and sin no more” if you’re sleeping with your girlfriend, maybe, than if you are, say, part of a society that is racist and oppresses the poor. There’s only one problem. Corporate and cosmic sin is at the heart of the Biblical story. When I read these things, about how Colson wants to educate me out of my concern for “global poverty,” I just want to say, “Sorry, Chuck, the Bible speaks more often and more strongly about poverty than it does about homosexuality or abortion.” It’s a numerical fact, as well as an issue of the very heart of the Biblical narrative. I want to say to those Boyce guys, “Sorry, folks. In Genesis 3 it doesn’t say you ate the apple and so you’re going to lust after women and drink too much. No, what it says is cursed is the ground because of you. Work will be difficult and pregnancy will be dangerous.”

The idea that sin is primarily individual is not just unbiblical, it’s an unnecessary either/or. If sin and the curse is indeed often corporate, we maintain the conviction that our individual sins are also a part. We do lust. We do get drunk. We do commit atrocities against the unborn. And we need forgiveness for it. But those sins are part of the cosmic story of a world, a system, a cosmos wrecked by sin and all of its effects. And when you ignore this absolutely Biblical theme, as Colson and the Boyce profs do in the examples above, you begin to act like the big picture sins, like systemic injustice and oppression . . . well, those are mere indiscretions . . . not really that important . . . not the work of the church . . . not part of Jesus’ redemption.

I think these issues explain so much of why our impact on politics and society at large has been such an abysmal failure. When people who have seen the rampant racism and classism that is such an enormous part of everyday American life, when people see Enron and Jim Crowe and banks run into the ground by believers and anti-poor policies voted in by believers, and then hear that Jesus is dealing with sin . . . by making sure you don’t sleep with your girlfriend . . . that is a type of “dealing with sin” that just doesn’t make sense. Or, to put it more strongly, when the world sees our staunch angry defense of the unborn alongside our callous indifference for the single mothers of the world, they see a hypocrisy that is simply unbearable. Maybe if we embraced the cosmic, maybe if we took our stand against the systems of sin and our role in them, the world would be more open to hearing our deeply important contributions to personal sexual ethics as well.

Because, at least in my experience, cosmic and corporate sin is a HUGE PART OF THE STORY! Kenya struggles with sexual ethics, but they also struggle with systemic injustice, and a corporate culture of bribery that keeps our friend Agnes in a constant state of suspense at the hands of “powerful Christians” who are oppressing the poor. The story of South African apartheid was one of individual racists, but it was also a story of greedy international predominately Christian nations that complied with that racism because it was self-serving to do so. Walking around the neighborhood I worked in back in Memphis, I saw rampant sexual misconduct . . . right alongside the systems of sin in which I and my family and my church have participated in that have given that same neighborhood lousy underfunded schools, an economic system that doesn’t work, housing that is undignified, and a legal system that discriminates against the poor and ethnic minorities. You can’t tell the story of what’s wrong without telling the story of corporate sin . . . which implicates us all.

Because corporate sins like injustice, oppression, etc, are at the heart of a Biblical view of sin (if you still disagree, just read the prophets), I think we see several huge losses in our life within the church when we diminish these corporate sins from our corporate repentance and consciousness. First, in total opposition to what the Boyce scholars think, a diminishment of corporate sin actually weakens our confessional life. If sin can be reduced to sex, drugs, and rock and roll, I can avoid that more easily than we sometimes pretend. Oh sure, Jesus talks about the heart, but it’s a whole lot easier to get self-righteous and confident when you rule out our corporate and systemic sinful involvement. But when we know that we are all part of the problem of the world, that my sin and yours make up a vast network of injustice that we can hardly even see, we are driven to our knees, not just in repentance, but in longing cries for Christ’s kingdom. And that, of course, is the second tremendous loss of a belief in corporate sin. If we diminish the role of systemic and corporate sin, we diminish the work of Jesus Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. Romans, that classic text on justification by faith, declares that the creation is groaning in anticipation for the Sons of God to be revealed! Jesus came to heal the whole thing! And when we forget all the ways we’ve contributed to evil systems, we lose sight of the myriad ways that Christ has healed those sins, the small mustard seeds of systemic change that his kingdom brings, and the ways in which participating with Christ in redeeming these systems of oppression and injustice is a huge part of the gospel!! Take away systemic and corporate sin, and there’s no sense that Christ is calling us to fight for justice and an end to poverty as an explicit part of his kingdom work!

We have said that we want this blog to be a place where you, the community of people who love and support us in our work, can join with us in all that God is teaching us and doing in our lives. More and more every day, I see just how important this concept is: that we are embedded in networks of sin and evil that go far deeper than we realize, and that therefore Christ’s saving work is all the more amazing and beautiful . . . because he is going all the way down to heal the world and the cosmos itself, and calling us to be a part of that work with him. It’s worse than we thought, but Christ is doing far more than we could ever ask or even imagine. And that is truly good news.

Peace,

Michael

Praxis

2010-02-09T01:58:00.000-08:00

Life has been a bit strange since being back in Kenya. For whatever reason work is just now starting to pick up, and we're struggling with how to think about the sustainability and feasibility of our projects, especially in light of the fact that we're in the second year of our two year contract. With our old projects, we're trying to figure out how to improve the way we work with our Anglican Church partners and the community groups, while also recognizing that these groups should be running themselves more than us running them this year.

On Friday, we had a meeting with Horace Tipton (PF Director), Gitari (our field staff partner), and three other CCS staff members who are specifically engaged on our sunflower projects in Meru and Embu. As I believe we've explained, this project has caused us tremendous problems, most of which hinge on the fact that we have been trying to empower farmers to process their seeds for oil using oil press machines that CCS and PF purchased for the two demonstration stations in the area. These machines were supposed to be up and running last July; they are now at the CCS stations, but neither are functioning, and farmers are approaching their third season without having processed anything. This delay has been caused by all sorts of internal and external factors, but regardless, we've come to a stand still.

This meeting in some ways was the result of the way I have grown to think about community devlopment over the last 6 years of study and work in the field: we began with our convictions, our principles, with theory. You can't get anywhere without a foundation. In our discussion on Friday, we talked about a theoretical foundation of people as image bearers of God, as stewards of His creation; of organizations that value professionalism, accountability, and transparency between the organization and the community; and empowered communities and community owned projects as both the means and the ends. But we then moved to discussing how we can practically stand on that foundation while pursuing our more tangible goals of economic development, etc.

The difficulty in community development work, and really in all kingdom efforts, is that it is so darn easy to quote the principles and pursue your goals and 'never the two shall meet.' Everybody and anybody can and is talking about "empowerment," "sustainability," "participation." Or, to use a different set of buzz words, how about "mercy ministry," or "word and deed ministry?" As we discussed with our partners on Friday, we realized that in several significant ways, we had quoted the principles in our proposals and trainings, and then ran the actual program in ways that bulldozed those same principals. As one of our partner staff said, "You know, we have participation and community ownership up there as principals. But in this project, we went to the groups and told them what they should do. That's a top down approach, and it doesn't fit with our stated principals."

This sums up a great deal of the learning that Bec and I feel that we have gathered at Advance in Memphis and with Planting Faith in Kenya. When the principals shape the program, both the community and the organization experience the kingdom in powerful ways. When the principals exist alongside the program, and separate from it, whether intentionally or unitentionally, you are building with your right hand and tearing down with your left. When a pastor teaches about Jesus washing His disciples feet, and then acts like a dictator, he undermines the ground he claims to stand on. When a community development worker tells a community group that they are all made in God's image and given the skills and abilities necessary to improve their lives, and then implements a program that makes the community dependent on the organization, or that leaves all the hard work and decision making to the white folk, or rich folk, or church folk, or whoever, we are lying with our lives. When "mercy ministry" means creating as many hoops as possible for the poor in our midst to have to jump through, we're establishing a ministry model that's the exact opposite of the mercy we claim we're sharing. Words must mean something.

As the founder of the Mondragon worker cooperative movement said so beautifully, "we have learned that theory is necessary but not sufficient." We have to live what we say we believe.

By the end of our meeting on Friday, we came up with concrete objectives that centered on achieving our goals by following our principals. On Monday, we again met with the pilot project group. As we've repeatedly said, planning for this pilot centered around trying to design a model that flowed out of our convictions and principles. Our task for Monday's meeting was to design a survey together with the "marketing team" to be used in the market survey. The marketing team (8 people) will be visiting 4 markets over the next three weeks to attempt to gather information about the demand fluctuations, profitability, quality demands, etc., of the 4 crops they picked at the end of last year to help them decide on what crop to produce and sell together. We emphasized that the survey would only require them to do something they do regularly (go to market, talk with traders, etc.), but this time in a systematic way. We asked them to discuss and decide what they needed to know to make a good decision, and then asked them to formulate questions that would give them that information. They decided when to do the survey, where to do the survey, and how many traders to talk to. Along the way we gave some advice, and talked a bit about the best way to engage with the traders and to record the information.

When we left yesterday, we promised to take the material the farmers had given us and put it into a printable form. On our way home, I couldn't help feel really great about the day. At every step, we have given decision making power to the farmers, we have encouraged them to consider their own resources, and to plan for new ways to use those resources to improve their lives. The principles are shaping the project. We still don't know if it will work, of course. But it certainly feels like we're on the right track.

Jane Vella, author of Learning to Listen, Learning to Teach, defines praxis as action followed by reflection. Both of these two meetings involved this reflection on previous actions as preparation for future actions. And I think that this is a pretty good way for the community of faith to pursue God’s kingdom; we cannot be hearers of the Word only, constantly pondering and preparing but never engaging. But when we take a step of faith, God’s Word calls us to reflect on that action, to consider what we learned, where we succeeded, where we failed, how we can do better in the future. This is, I think, what it means to live Biblical lives, to constantly let our convictions, the experiences of others, and the Holy Spirit shape us and call us to reflection on what we’ve done and what we will do in the future.

Community work is difficult. We often feel like we're going forward into the dark. But I'm confident that Jesus is walking with us as we try to engage with our coworkers and our farmers groups in this process of action followed by reflection on that action, that the Holy Spirit will guide us in our efforts to be constantly learning and growing and moving toward His kingdom vision for our lives and our work.

Please pray for our farmers, particularly those who will be doing the survey this next week, and for Beth who will be with them in the market!

Peace,

Michael

P.S.- The birds are Crowned Cranes. They're some of my favorites, and are rarely seen in groups larger than 2. But on this particular day we saw a whole flock!

Cricket, Krishna, and Crates of Onions

2010-02-03T05:45:00.000-08:00

In reverse order:

Onions

Just before we came home at the end of the year, we reported that our farmers in Ngare Ndare had successfully sold several tons of squash. During our last meeting with that group of the year, the farmers still had some left to sell, but were beginning to look ahead towards the future in terms of new crops and new ways to manage their revolving loan fund.

There are many issues facing the group at this stage. Because the money for the fund initially comes from white people within a church organization, farmers have a hard time treating the loan with due gravity. Research shows that community managed credit schemes that use “cold money” (money that comes from outside of the community) fail the vast majority of the time. This is why we’re exploring the possibility of working with a local microfinance bank in our pilot project. But needless to say, we were anticipating the group’s decisions about how to give out new loans with some trepidation. I had some informal conversation with the decision makers about the importance of designing a program with good incentives (reward those who repaid, don’t give loans to people until they’ve finished paying, etc), but I couldn’t tell if it stuck.

At the end of last week, we got the report from our Director that 9 farmers had fully repaid their loans, 6 had paid most but not all, and 6 had paid little to nothing (due to crop failure). Within two months, the leadership had collected loan payments, decided to grow onions for their next season (planning on rotating squash and onions in the future), and redistributed loans to all the members using the following criteria: those who repaid fully got large loans that would cover the cost of production for onions using the best ag methods. Those who repaid the majority were given about half as much as the others (allowing them to produce a lower quantity), and those who didn’t repay anything were given just enough for a packet of onion seeds. The second two categories had to put up collateral, and agreed to try to repay the previous loan as well as the current one.

Will it work? I have no idea, but I think they have done a good job of trying to keep incentives steady while also considering how to keep all of the group members involved. We’ll give updates on how the onions go! It’s also exciting that they did all of this with very little guidance from us. That alone is a positive sign that, against the odds, this group might find a way to make it work sustainably. Praise the Lord!

Krishna

On Sunday, Rebecca and I had the opportunity to visit the Hare Krishna temple with a new friend, Mukund. I met Mukund at a grocery store where he was selling literature written by the guru who established the Hare Krishna beliefs in the West. I talked to him a little bit about my faith, listened a little to him talk about his, and bought a book. After we got back from the States, I contacted Mukund, and he invited us to visit.

If you’ve ever seen Wes Anderson’s Darjeeling Limited, you’ll have a pretty good idea of what we experienced. Because Sunday is their big day of worship, we entered the temple to see the incredibly ornate altar decked with the marble painted carvings of the deity while some several hundred worshippers were chanting in unison to the sound of five or ten Indian drums and other instruments. The temple has a live-in facility, and huge kitchens which they use to feed their many followers as well as 2,000 kids in the slums . . . every day. During all of our tour, Mukund answered our questions about the Hare Krishna beliefs. Finally, he introduced us to an African follower of the movement who heads up the temple’s interfaith outreach programs. Karuna asked us what we thought about the book, and we got to spend about an hour talking about Christianity in contrast to the Hare Krishna movement. Because the movement is very inclusive (we’re all on different paths to the same God), we spent most of the conversation discussing whether there really were differences between the Bible and their ancient eastern scriptures.

I felt like we had several real “a-ha” moments with Karuna and Mukund: the difference between a theology that makes the material world an evil to be escaped through an end to the cycle of reincarnation versus a Christian theology that promises that God will do to the creation and to us what He did through Jesus’ body: resurrect us to new redemption life in the new heavens and the new earth; and the difference between a theology that focuses on attaining “God consciousness”, which will give the adherent the power to stop sinning, and the Christian view that Christ died for all of our sins, that He took on the “bad karma” of the world because we could never do enough good things to balance out the bad. But probably the greatest paradigm shifter occurred when Rebecca explained that we really believe our Scriptures to say that Jesus is the only way: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life,” Jesus said, “Nobody comes to the Father but through me,” she quoted. For a few seconds nobody spoke, and then, two guys dressed in full length robes, with paint on their faces and their chanting beads around their necks said: that makes you a fanatic.

And you know what? They’re right! We are fanatics! We believe that the whole key to the salvation of the cosmos comes in the story of one man who lived 2,000 years ago and who spent the majority of his life in a little no-name village! What a great reminder that we believe the most radical thing in the whole world, that most cults and religions have nothing on us in terms of the extremity of our conviction! What a convenient thing to believe that Jesus is one road among many that lead to God! What a world changing thing to believe he is he only one! We’re thankful for Mukund and Karuna’s hospitality, and hope to invite both to a Christian celebration that seeks to create a missional response to the Hindu festival of Diwali.

Cricket

And last but not least, I fulfilled one of my long-term goals for life on Monday: I watched, and understood, an entire cricket match. Thankfully it was one of the ones that only lasts an afternoon, but our friend Hash took Rebecca and I, as well as our Kenyan friend Anne, to an international match between Scotland and Kenya. It’s a pretty neat game once you get it, every bit as lazy and relaxed as baseball, and Kenya demolished the Scots, so all and all it was a great afternoon.

Peace,
Michael

Pilot Project Progress Part 6: To The Market And Beyond

2010-01-25T07:19:00.000-08:00

We're moving forward with the pilot project again! Just before we left Kenya in December we met with the pilot group to synthesize all the information that had been collected and organized during the previous meetings. We compiled the knowledge they shared about crops, about markets, and about production factors (things like suitability of certain crops, quality and quantity demanded at the market, perishability and other risk factors, etc.) to enable the group to select 5 crops they would like to study in the market. After a good discussion, the group voted on watermelons, green grams (legumes), rice, tomatoes, and corn. So last week in our first meeting of the new year, we began working with the farmers to make plans for studying the market and getting more information on the production costs of each of those crops.

First Michael reviewed the overall plan of the project by explaining the "Five Footsteps" in the process. The first step is to Discover what the farmers already know about their land, about their community, about farming, and about business (that's what we've been doing up until now). The second step (where we are now) is to Study the Market. Third is to Make a Business Plan, fourth is to Link the farmers with the needed agricultural experts, farming suppliers, and financial institutions in order for them to carry out their business plan, and fifth and last is, of course, to Do the Work: to actually plant, harvest, market, and sell a crop collectively.

We've hinted at this in previous blog posts, but we really are trying to do something different with this pilot project. The "something different" is explored and explained well in The Nazareth Manifesto by Duke University professor Sam Wells. He describes 3 "Styles of Engagement" when working with people of a different racial or socio-economic class. We as an organization are trying to transition out of the first of these tiered styles, the "doing for" style. Sometimes this style is necessary; Wells gives the example of doctors, firefighters, attorneys, and other professionals who have skills, education, and resources that other people need, and thus they are able to provide a service for those that do not have those same resources (anyone who is sick, or who is stuck in a burning building, or who needs legal counsel). Though it may be a necessary style of engagement at times, however, Wells points out that the "'working for' model perpetuates relationships of inequality." The "doing for" style is the mentality that there are "have" people in the world, and there are "have not" people, and the "haves" are responsible to identify and rectify the deficiencies of the "have nots."

We are trying in this pilot project, to move towards Wells' second style of engagement, the "doing with" model. This model says, "You know and understand certain things about the world. I know and understand certain things about the world. If we work together and both bring our experiences and knowledge, then we can do more and go further than if we just did it on our own." It's a way of doing development work that makes relationships necessary, because only when we are in relationships can we really begin to think and plan and dream together about what God has for us and our communities. "It involves. . . surrendering some of one's own autonomy and sense of power in being able to identify what needs to be done and take steps to make a difference." It's a way of doing life that reflects the belief that every person is an image bearer of God, and that each of us has skills, abilities and creativity to steward the world that God has given us to care for.

At Thursday's meeting, and at all of our meetings, it would be easier, more convenient, maybe more efficient, to make a plan and share with the farmers what we've already decided to do. But there are lots of reasons why we don't want to do it that way. For the principled reasons that we believe that each person has something to bring to the table by virtue of them being image bearers, and also for the very practical reason that when people decide to do something and they know that they are able and responsible to make it happen, they are more likely to think through all the logistics and actually carry out their intended plan. We want this group's project to be their project, going in the direction they believe their community should go, and we want to walk with them in all of it.

After Michael spoke about the overall project plan, Beth led the discussion by raising a series of topics that needed to be addressed before the farmers can begin conducting the market survey. They decided that six elected members of the group will serve as the "marketing team," and will go with Beth to visit 4 different markets that they think will give them the best information, and they will use a uniform market survey to interview various brokers and retailers. They also formed a budget that included cost of transport to the markets, lunch for marketing team members on the days they are doing the survey, and the cost of printing and copying the survey. This coming Thursday they will vote for the six marketing team members, and then we will establish the questions that should be on the survey and begin scheduling days to go the different markets, hopefully starting next week. In this past meeting, it was so obvious that the group making the plan was so much better than us making the plan for them. They thought of things we hadn't thought of, they decided on the numbers and timing in ways that are doable for them, and they got excited about carrying out the plan that they made for themselves.

Doing the marketing survey will hopefully accomplish several tasks: meeting and getting contact information for possible buyers, learning about market demand and price fluctuations of the different crops, and observing the pros and cons of each specific marketplace that the group is studying. While the marketing team is working from that end, 2 other farmers will be working with Michael and I on figuring out the production costs of each of the 5 possible crops. We will be visiting the local branch of the Ministry of Agriculture to get information on best practices for growing all 5 crops so that the group has a good idea of what each crop will cost to produce. With those two sets of information (from the market survey and from the Ministry of Agriculture), the marketing team will then come together, share and organize the data, determine the approximate profitability for each crop, and report their findings back to the entire group.

The group (and of course we as well) want to be able to do all of this - the marketing surveys, the production cost study, the synthesizing of the information, and the reporting back to the group - by the end of February. This, we believe, is a doable though difficult target. Please pray for the marketing team, for Beth, and for us that we would do diligent and good work as we are in a critical stage of the project. Pray that we would get accurate information from many resources so that the group is able to make a good decision on what, how, when, and how much they should grow. And pray that we as an organization really will continue to learn and live the "doing with" model.

The third style of engagement, as you may have guessed, is yet another challenge to us as an organization, and also to Michael and I personally. Wells calls it the "being with" model, which is not just about bringing everyone's skills and abilities and knowledge to the table, but it's actually about being with people, not just when needs are there, or when work is there. It's about living life together, "hanging out," living in intentional community with others who are different from us. Wells asks the question, "What would we do if there was no fixing that had to happen? If everything was alright?" The answer: we'd probably hang out! We'd be together. But why would we wait till everything is done? Why would we wait to live life with people fully and completely, vulnerably and openly, until the hard stuff is finished? This is a difficult challenge that Wells poses, and one that Michael and I are working through what it means in our own life. We would love you to be praying for us in this, and we'd love to interact with all of you about it. It makes me uncomfortable and nervous, but it also excites me, because I think the "being with" model might be hitting on God's call for us to show the world who, and whose, we are by loving each other.

Another prayer request: this Saturday, Michael and I will be meeting with a Krishna follower (one tradition of Hinduism) to talk about our faith. This young man was giving away Krishna literature in a grocery store one day, Michael talked to him for a while and read the book that the man gave him. Now we get to see him again, and he seems very excited about talking with us. So please be praying for this young man, and for us, that we would have proper sensitivity and boldness in talking with him about Jesus.

Love,
Rebecca

Back In The Saddle Again

2010-01-18T05:37:00.000-08:00

We had so much to say we posted twice today! Don’t miss the second one!

Well, we made it back to Kenya! Our month in the States was crazy and exhausting: we taught Sunday Schools, spoke in services, met with boards, got great time with our family, were both in a wedding, and hung out over coffee. Thanks to everyone for coming, meeting, sharing, listening, and praying for us along the way.

Sharing about our work in Kenya helped remind us why we’re here. We truly feel blessed to be a part of the work of empowering Christ’s church to pursue His kingdom by working with the poor. And we feel so supported by all of you. Your prayers, words of encouragement, and acts of kindness towards us are overwhelming; our trip home reminded us that we work as part of a team that includes literally hundreds of folks thousands of miles away. We’ve only been back four days, and already there are new issues and hurdles to try to deal with, so we covet your prayers in the days ahead. We really believe that through it all Christ is teaching us amazing things about Himself and His kingdom, and we hope that many of you will follow along with us on that by reading the blog. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Praying that Christ would call you further and farther out into His love than ever before,

The Rhodes

Pat Robertson and Haiti: Standing Against Christ

2010-01-18T05:35:00.000-08:00

Several months ago, Rebecca and I blogged about how the poor are held captive in poverty in part by believing the lies the rich and powerful tell them. We told the story of our friend “Mary,” who was taught in church that black people have been cursed since Noah. In Walking with the Poor, Bryant Myers makes the case that the powerful tell stories to the poor that teach them that their failure is their own fault, the result of their own inferiority, or even because God hates them. The poor often believe these lies, which become like shackles on their feet: if you believe you’re inferior, less valuable, rejected by God, well, then you tend to act like it. Whereas I grew up in a family and a society where everyone told me that I could be anything I wanted to be, many of the poor are living in a very different story: that they deserve poverty, that they were designed for it, that it is their lot to suffer.

What’s so blasphemous (yes , blasphemous) about these myths is that they stand in total and utter opposition to the story that God tells through the Bible. Isaiah 61 tells us that God will rebuild the broken and abandoned cities through the poor, who will be called Oaks of Righteousness and a display for the Lord’s splendor. “Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven,” Jesus says in Luke.

Almost all of you have heard about the earthquake in Haiti that recently killed as many as 200,000 people. What you may not have heard is that Pat Robertson, a would-be ‘minister of the gospel,’ has stated on national television that this earthquake is God’s punishment for a pact with the devil that he claims the Haitians made nearly 200 years ago.

To a watching world we declare: this is not our Jesus.

What Mr. Robertson has done this past week, and has done regularly throughout his long career, is to reject Christ’s life giving message of hope amidst despair to one of the poorest nations on earth, and instead whispered Satan’s lies into their ears . . . all the while claiming to be talking about Jesus of Nazareth. He has told a nation filled with Christians that the reason their children have died in mass, that their businesses, homes, and hospitals have been destroyed, that literally thousands have died violent untimely deaths, is that their great-great-great-grandfathers (so he’s heard) made a pact with the devil. In our Christian business trainings we tell our farmers they don’t have to fear the witch doctor because “having disarmed the powers and authorities, [Christ has] made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.” But Mr. Robertson has told my young Haitian friend, who studied with me at Covenant College, that the reason his family remains missing in the devastation is that Satan still holds his nation captive based on the rumor of a Satanic pact between some Haitians 200 years ago!

Some of you may think that this type of discussion isn’t appropriate for a missionary blog. Rebecca and I prayerfully and thoughtfully disagree. When someone who represents the body of Christ blasphemes our God, it is our responsibility to stand up using whatever public and private channels we have to say, “World, this is not our Jesus.” Mr. Robertson has been in ministry a long time, and I would be foolish to infer that he has not made a positive impact on the world in some areas. But when Mr. Robertson made those statements the other day, he made a stand: against Christ and His kingdom. When Mr. Robertson said that the late Ariel Sharon suffered a stroke because, as an Israeli PM he gave back land to the Palestinians and made a small step towards relieving the worst refugee crisis in the world, Mr. Robertson stood against Christ and His kingdom. When Mr. Robertson said on his show that we should assassinate foreign leaders like Hugo Chavez, he stood against Christ and His kingdom. Has it ever occurred to Mr. Robertson that there are believers living in Palestinian refugee camps, working in Venezuela, or crawling out of the wreckage in Haiti? And that he has exchanged the only message of hope for them, choosing instead a violent, demonic theology that belongs more to animism than the gospel? Mr. Robertson has attempted to wade into admittedly complicated political issues that believers around the world have a variety of opinions on; but this anti-poor, anti-global church, health wealth theology certainly has no place in Christ’s kingdom or legitimate political debate.

The stories we tell, the things we say, the worldview that we present to the world matters. It’s time for Christians to stop ignoring this unChristian lunacy so prevalent among would be bearers of Christian morality in America. It’s time we recognize that the myths of the rich stand in the way of the story of Jesus. To my Haitian brothers and sisters, we declare that Christ loves you and grieves with you in this crisis and will be with you no matter what lies ahead. We declare that every one of you is made in His image, designed to be servants in His kingdom and called for a purpose.

We work and live among the poor every day here in Kenya. Time and time again we have seen that Christ’s gospel is the good news for the poor. Let’s declare with our lives and hearts and words that Christ uses the things that “are not” to shame the things that “are,” that the poor are being raised up through His word to carry His kingdom message into the world. If we want to be a part of what God is doing, it’s time to stop trying to cut down the oaks, and start rebuilding the walls right alongside them. Then we can stop being televangelists preaching health wealth and blasphemy and become the “priesthood of the Lord” that Isaiah promises.

Hallelujah!

2009-11-25T00:27:00.000-08:00

Hallelujah! Praise the Lord! For squash and farmers and the power of the poor working together, for oaks of righteousness and rebuilders of walls!

This past week our farmers in Ngare Ndare harvested almost 4 tons of squash, and are working on harvesting another ton this week. While we sweated and fretted and lost sleep at night over how they would market them, they found a buyer to purchase them at a relatively good price, and to buy all of them at a go in Ngare Ndare! This is a huge victory for us, the result of a group of committed hard working farmers with strong leaders looking for ways to use what God has given them to provide better lives for themselves and for their communities! Hallelujah!

Michael

P.S.- This is the second post in three days! Don't miss Monday's update on the Pilot Project!

Pilot Project Progress Part 5: More Rocks, More Decisions

2009-11-22T23:27:00.000-08:00

Last Thursday we had our third general meeting in Murang'a. Sitting under the eucalyptus trees and watching rain clouds coming quickly towards us, we again brought out the rocks and tried to dig deeper into the agricultural minds of the farmers.

A word on method: some of you may think all of this stuff about notecards and voting stones is a bunch of garbage. Why not just ask the questions and get answers? But there are several reasons why this particular tool seems to give great results.

First of all, it removes the white folks from the conversation almost completely. We give a task, and then watch as the farmers complete it. In the process, they organize, arrange, and discuss what they already know, and we learn in the process. Secondly, it's visual, requires few if any abstract categories or ideas, and because it inevitably leads to everybody squatting around a bunch of notecards on the ground and counting rocks, it's about as unintimidating an excercise as you could possibly wish for. And what all this means is that everybody participates. In the Kenyan culture, it can be difficult to get people to speak before the "leader" has spoken, and once he has spoken, even harder to get people to disagree, regardless of their own opinons. These excercises allow everyone to have a voice without disrupting important cultural dynamics.

So on Thursday we laid out the cards with the crops for cash written on them, and then asked the farmers to come up with all the different issues that needed to be considered when trying to decide on a crop for agricultural business. Farmers came up with things like input costs, gross profit, perishability of the product, distance to markets, suitability to the area, susceptibility to disease, and several more. We then had them use the stones to rank the crops in each of these categories, i.e. to show how maize compares to tomatoes and mellons in terms of perishability, or how beans, mangos, and pidgeon peas compare in terms of distance to markets.

Rebecca led this section and was absolutely brilliant. The farmers took the idea and ran with it, and by the end we had come up with a great visual chart to help us think systematically about how to compare the crops with one another.

Best of all was the farmers reaction to the whole process. Although we can't understand Kikikuyu at all (the language they inevitably use amongst themselves), Beth can. And she explained to us afterwards that during the excercise, people expressed surprise and delight at how much they knew, and also about how new an idea it was to take what they knew and put it into an easily accesible format. They also clearly enjoyed the discussions, and said so. One guy went so far as to say, "When I come here to these meetings, I feel so relaxed." This may seem surprising, but I think the key is again in the fact that the poor really do deal strongly with a marred identity, that they tend to believe the lies the wealthy and even missionary culture tells them: You need us, you're ignorant, you can't handle your own business. But with these tools, over and over again we're asking them to tell us about what they know. And they're beginning to see that what they know, not what the white people, the outsiders, the rich know, but what they know will be the key to their plan. And when, as the authors of When Helping Hurts argue so powerfully, we the rich outsiders open our eyes and ears to what the poor are good at, to what they know, when we ask their advice instead of constantly giving our own, then Christ works His healing power for the poor . . . and for us!

This point was brought home powerfully with our Mang'u farmers this past week. We mentioned in a few posts that we've started some "urban gardening," trying to grow different things in tires to learn a bit more about agriculture. When Hezekiah, one of our heros from the Mang'u group, learned that we were trying this, he decided to help. I mentioned that I wanted to grow tomatos, and maybe he had some advice? Pretty soon, Hezekiah had brought sacks to plant seedlings in, had brought us seedlings he had grown for his own crop (12!), had brought us to his home to send us back with soil to fill the sacks with (because 'if you go in Nairobi, they will charge you a very high price'), had started swinging by our house every two weeks when he's selling passion fruit to counsel us on potential pests, and promised to show us how to build a small trellis to train the vines to grow up next week. And somewhere in the midst of this, it dawned on me that our relationship had totally transformed, becoming something much more wonderful, healing, and in every since of the word "Christian," than it had been before. For once maybe in his whole life, Hezekiah was coming and giving much needed advice to a "rich" white couple. And for one of the few times in our life, we were listening, and learning, and finding that our friend who we had tried so hard to help was in a reality a great storehouse of knowledge about things that we desperately needed to know.

By coming to read this blog, each of you has already proven that you care deeply about us and about the poor around the world. I know that many of you are involved with ministry or work among the poor vocationally, as volunteers, or just in day to day relationships. Here's a challenge that we're trying to take up: the next time you're with someone that you consider poor, that you feel God calling you to help, begin by asking their advice about something. Ask them to teach you something. Ask them to talk about something that they know a lot about. And just see what happens.

Isaiah tells us that when the Messiah comes he will bind up the brokenhearted, declare the year of Jubilee, and preach good news to the poor. And then he tells us that those rescued, healed, liberated poor will be called "Oaks of Righteousness . . . that they will be called Rebuilder of Walls." This is the good news of the gospel: that those God heals, He also calls to be a part of His huge saving the world project. And when we open our eyes to the ways God is making the poor and destitute, the things that are not, into Oaks of Righteousness, Christ's kingdom will come just a little bit more in our own hearts and lives.

Please pray for our continued work, especially as we have year end meetings with all of our groups, and specifically for our last pilot meeting on December 3rd. We're ecstatic about the meetings we have had, but discouraged by the numbers of farmers participating so far. There are plenty of good external factors for this (people forget, there is a lot of seasonally related work right now, etc), but Beth and the farmers who came last time are making a big push to make sure that the last meeting of the year is well attended. Please labor in prayer for that with us.

Peace,
Michael

Pilot Project Progress Part 4: What To Grow and Where To Go

2009-11-17T05:23:00.001-08:00

Typically I don’t think of rain or weeds as obstacles to attendance at meetings. We made several attempts at meeting with our pilot group the past month, and after cancellations several weeks in a row due to weeding season and then to heavy downpours on our outdoor meeting place, we finally successfully met last week and it was brilliant.

We didn’t start immediately when we arrived; in fact we even had enough time for some manual labor in a farm immediately next to the grove of trees where we meet. Phyllis (the one wearing lavender), only 17 years old but a faithful member of the group, was good enough to invite us to experience the joy of weeding in her family's rice field.

Weeding has always been one of my favorite things to do. Yeah. After only a few minutes of bending over at the waist, being confused as to what was rice and what was weed, and having the equatorial sun beat down mercilessly on my back, I was delighted that the meeting under the trees would begin soon.

We sat together in a semi-circle as Michael began by leading a discussion about what we did last meeting, and then Beth jumped right into the first activity. The goal by the end of the meeting was for us and the group members to have a more organized understanding of what crops they grow in their area and for what purposes (for consumption versus for profit), and then to understand what markets their community uses, what markets are the best markets for profit, and what some of the barriers are for the community in getting their products to those good markets.

So Beth started with the crops. She asked the group to think of all the crops that their community has grown in the past 2 years and to write each of those crops on a note card. The 23 crops identified were then laid out on the ground to analyze. The group was given 20 small stones to rank the crops in 3 different categories.

First, they ranked the crops according to how much each crop is grown in the community, so they took 20 stones and placed them on the note cards to indicate how much or how little it is grown. Then they picked up the stones and rearranged them, ranking the crops according to importance for consumption. Last, they ranked the crops according to importance for profit; the group identified 11 of the 23 crops as for profit crops.

Having identified all the local crops grown for profit, we transitioned from crop analysis to market analysis. Michael passed out blank note cards again, this time having the group write down all the markets that they used in the past 2 years.

Ten markets were identified, including markets as close as the “Broker that comes to the farm” and “Neighbors,” and as far away as Nairobi (a two hour drive). The 10 note cards were laid out on the ground and the group members did two more rankings. They ranked each crop to identify where they actually sold that product. And finally they ranked each crop according to where the best market was to sell that product.

After finishing the analysis and making notes, the group talked together about the results. They were excited about having organized their knowledge as farmers and business people to understand better where they have been and what they have done in the past.

They saw huge discrepancies between where they generally go to sell their goods as opposed to where they should go for the best profit. Transportation, time, safety, brokers, and limited production (not having economies of scale) were all identified as struggles and obstacles to getting better profit and going to better markets. How could they afford to hire a pick up truck to take their produce? How would they get to Nairobi, sell their goods and return home before nightfall since the roads are so dangerous after dark? How do they deal with the broker cartels that force small scale farmers to sell at excruciatingly low prices? These and many more issues surfaced during the discussion. Yet the group also seemed to be excited about moving forward with this knowledge and these challenges to work through how to do better business in the future.

Like Michael was saying in “Part 2" (you should read it if you haven't yet!), we really are trying to begin at the beginning with this group, to walk with them to help both us and them to recognize and then to build on their abilities, talents and strengths as image bearers of God, and more specifically as savvy farmers and significant members of their community and economy. We have five steps that we are working through pole pole (slowly slowly) to eventually lead to this group doing collective farming as business. The first step, kuvumbua, “discovery,” is where we are now. It's about the group members talking about, remembering, realizing, and organizing all the things that they have and all the things they know about the assets of their community, and also about farming, marketing, and business.

What we did today was part of this first step, and by the end of it the group will have a narrowed down list of 3-4 crops that the group is interested in growing and selling together. Step 2 is when the group’s marketing team will study the market and report their results to the group. The third step is where the group will decide on the 1 crop they want to grow collectively and from that they will form a business plan. Kushirikiana, “Linking,” is next (step 4) and very important since this will be the point where the group will work to get connected with the appropriate agricultural and/or financial advisors and suppliers. And finally, step 5 is putting it all into action – using their own knowledge and resources to do collective agrobusiness.

Please continue to pray for us as we continue to develop relationships and walk along side this group of talented and intelligent people. Pray for Beth. And pray also for the farmers themselves. They have done so much and will do so much in the future, and pray that they will see that God is at work in their community and in their lives, and that Jesus is using them to help to bring His kingdom to the world.

Love,

Rebecca

Christ's Corpse Bride: Poverty of Being and the Mzungu Legacy

2009-11-03T00:16:00.000-08:00

For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and the bride has made herself ready.

During my years at Covenant, I read a great deal about how poverty is fundamentally relational, a result of broken relationships that no longer work for life. At the heart of this idea is the observation that the poor are held back by the lies that they believe about themselves, lies that are often told by the rich in order to keep the poor “in their place.” This is worlds different from the “boot strap” perspective that the poor are poor because they’re lazy or unmotivated; but it does recognize that the poor are literally trapped in a web of lies about their value, their ability, their very personhood. Until recently, I believed this in theory. Now I know it as fact.

One of our friends, who currently lives in the largest slum in Africa, had come for a meal at our place. Let’s call her Mary. Talk turned to the post-election violence that ravaged Kenya in 2008, with our friend relating stories of how she had partnered with a friend from another tribe to sneak out and get food: if a Luo greeted them, the Luo friend would reply; if a Kikuyu, the Kikuyu would reply. This way both friends were protected from the other’s tribe mates. Rebecca and I were explaining our belief that Jesus gives a clear answer to tribalism, for in him there is “neither Jew nor Greek.” “The answer to tribalism,” I said, “is rooted in the Bible.”

“And why are the mzungus so rich? Is that in the Bible, too?”

“What?” I replied laughing. “Of course not . . .”

And then it came tumbling out, like a river breaking its banks after a hard rain. “They are teaching in Sunday School that black people are cursed, because we come from Ham,” “I have heard that you are rich because you had the Word of God first,” “But Jesus, wasn’t he an American?” “But your people are so smart, so good. Our people, most of us are not very smart. And we are very bad.”

This didn’t come from a textbook, a liberal psychological journal, or a rant about “the man;” it came from my dining room table. And before that, it came from the church.

The final scenes of Revelation present a picture of Jesus coming to reunite himself finally and ultimately with his bride, the church of his elect. This is our destiny: marital union with the resurrected Lord and Christ. But what happens when the bride plays the whore, when the church seems more like Burton’s corpse bride than Shakespeare’s Juliet?

And we have indeed played the whore. Oh yes, our churches in Kenya and America have stood on the solid rock of the Scriptures as the inerrant Word of God, at least the parts that make us feel comfortable. Oh yes, we know that homosexuality and abortion are terrible sins, and we know that no amount of good works can save us. But we have played the whore none the less.

How else do we explain the pastor in Nairobi who tells another friend of ours that she is outside of God’s will because she isn’t ready to move back in with her husband who beat her, never had a job, left her for another woman, and threatened her with a knife the last time they met? How else do we explain the emails that fill up our inboxes about how Barack Obama is the anti-christ? How else do we explain our thunderous noise about abortion and our callous hearts towards African American single moms and our resolute opposition to any kind of health care reform? How else do we explain the way that so many Kenyan pastors have used their position as shepherd to bully and oppress, or the American pastor who preaches that the Bible is only about a “personal relationship with Jesus” and that if we only follow Him we’ll get “our best life now?”

Power, wealth, security and control have blinded the bride in America and exposed her to the beast. And we have exported our idolatry around the world. Where did our friend learn that she was cursed from Noah because of the color of her skin? Old propaganda from the South, it seems, dies hard in the rest of the world. Where did she learn that she is poor because she is stupid and bad, but white people are rich because they are good and clever, if not from the wealthy stream of white folks running around her country from the colonialists to the missionaries to the United Nations and World Bank? And where did so many Kenyan pastors learn to lord their power and money over their congregations, if not at least partially from the televangelists on the airwaves and the wealthy missionaries in their midst?

We have but one option: resurrection. If we are a bride, we are the corpse bride. But in the same way that Christ took on a mortal body and the Father raised it immortal and imperishable, Christ will take our rotting, corpse of a church and raise it to be the beautiful bride prepared for the groom. We catch resurrection glimpses in our Kiswahili teacher who walks the muddy streets of his rural village ministering to the poor despite his high level of education and access to much greater economic situations, in the Mennonite missionaries who have worked in drought regions for thirty years, and in the relationships that we see beginning, broken as we are, across racial, ethnic, and socio-economic lines in our own work. But the first step in the process is not the triumphalism, arrogance, or patronizing posturing so common to our career; it is repentance. Down on our knees. No, down on our faces, for the ghettoes and inner-cities in America and the slums of Africa and South America which our idolatry has been a part of building whether we like it or not. If the poor believe lies about themselves it is because, we the rich, have been such talented tellers of lies. “Forgive us for our sins and the sins of our fathers,” Nehemiah prayed. And so must we. This is the first step in walking with Mary into the life-giving reality of God, where every person is made in His image, and every believer given a place of honor at his wedding table. And it is the beginning of taking us off God’s throne where we’ve put ourselves, and getting back on our faces before the King of kings.

Pilot Project Progress Part 3: Meet Beth

2009-10-27T01:13:00.000-07:00

Thursday afternoon we’ll be having our second general meeting with the pilot project group, but before we do that we’d like to introduce you to Beth Muthoni Kabathi, our new CCS partner in the work!

Beth was born and raised within the Murang’a district where our project is located. She received her degree from Daystar University, a very well respected Christian university near Nairobi committed to raising up Christian servant leaders in every area of life. Beth studied business and accounting, and after graduation went to work for CCS for six years as the Mount Kenya regional accountant. During that time, she not only did great accounting, she also learned more and more about what CCS does in the field. Along the way she took part in a distance course through the Chalmers Center at Covenant College on community development, and later decided she wanted to be involved in something more directly related to helping the poor.

So, get this, she went and got her Masters in Micro-finance! Just last week, Beth defended and presented the research she did on insurance among poor Kenyans, and now we’ve got a real master on the team!

Best of all, Beth is passionate about the work, and about the community. She has brought tremendous insight to our work, helping the two dumb wazungu (white people) figure out what the heck is going on. Beth is a tremendous example of a highly educated Kenyan woman on the front lines of serving the poor, making great sacrifices to do so (including having to learn how to ride a motorbike). Please pray for Beth as we continue to sail into uncharted waters together, and that God would help her to build real rapport and community within the village where we’re working.

Peace,
Michael

Missionary Stuff

2009-10-27T01:07:00.000-07:00

So occasionally, very very occasionally, we act like “real” missionaries. Some recent examples:

Rebecca has been involved in several women’s outreach events, using them as an opportunity to try to help some of our Kenyan friends from town get plugged into a church (ours, preferably). Two of our former neighbors have been really good friends to us, and have come to church events with us on a couple of occasions.

Rebecca drove a car load of Kenyans and Congolese refugees out into the Rift Valley last Sunday to be a part of a soccer match between our church’s youth (18-35) and a group of IDPs (internally displaced persons) living in a refugee area because of the violence after the last election.

Rebecca actually gets asked to play a lot, not surprisingly, and both of us played with a team of Congolese refugees one Saturday morning a few weeks ago. The refugees we know come from two families who attend New City Fellowship. Despite being “aliens in a foreign land,” they have been incredibly hospitable to us, and Rebecca and I have enjoyed playing soccer with them, making a visit to their home, and watching the dance group they’ve put together for the young folks. They’ve got a lot of free time on their hands but they’re making the best of it, and Rebecca and I have been brainstorming about how to be more involved in their lives (see below).

Rebecca and I got to do a “follow-up” lunch with a couple of deacons at our church, New City Fellowship. You may recall that we got a chance to lead two Sunday schools on working with the poor with the new deacons in June, and now they’re working hard to come up with a set of policies that will guide them in their work among the poor. Because New City is a small, highly inter-racial church, with a high number of very poor families from the slums, we can say that they have their work cut out for them! It was awesome to get to kick around ideas with a few of them, and to simply be a part of the conversation about what it means for a church to holistically care for the poor. In the next few weeks, we’re hoping to visit a few of the folks the deacons have worked with (particularly the Congolese refugees) to begin trying to do with them what we talked about in our last blog post: discussing what God has done for them, what gifts and abilities He’s given them, and how they can better use those gifts to provide for their families.

Rebecca lead our small group Bible study last Friday. We talked about Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead, with Rebecca helping us to look carefully at Mary, Martha, and Jesus’ characters specifically. The small group has been awesome for us, giving us a real base for making friends and real encouragement in our own lives with Jesus.

I got to lead worship the past two weeks at New City because our normal worship leader was sick. Although I’ve participated before, these were my first opportunities to actually lead. And while I’ve lead music for years in numerous different venues, this was, to put it mildly, a completely different thing altogether. The team consisted of about eight people with six different national ethnicities represented (India, Pakistan, Madagascar, Kenya, Korea and the US). We sang in English, Hindi, Kiswahili, and some language from Zimbabwe for good measure. I had lots of help, to say the least. But as someone who has been thinking and convicted about the importance of racial and stylistic diversity in all worship everywhere this is like a dream come true. And because the worship leader’s doctor asked her to stay away from singing for a month, I’m on the schedule twice more in November.

Moreover, Jesus has put us in relationships with several different individuals or families who are either Muslim or openly nominal Christians. Please pray that Jesus would use us to bring some of these folks to himself!

All of this is very exciting for us, not only because we’re passionate about Jesus and His church, but also because it allows us to bring our heart for his kingdom into our lives in Nairobi itself, instead of leaving all of that to our actual job descriptions. And things are happening all the time. I visited a Teen Challenge residential facility recently that is literally three doors down, and have been asked to preach at New City in November. So please pray for all of it.

Peace,
Michael

Pilot Project Progress Part 2: Appreciating Assets

2009-10-05T03:44:00.000-07:00

Had any of you magically been whisked away to Nairobi last Wednesday night to visit the Rhodes household you might have been surprised at what you would have found. Two very stressed 20-somethings scribbling on poster boards, bickering about whose job it was to figure out how to say "values" in Swahili, and generally running around like chickens recently departed from their heads. Preparing for the first day with a new pilot project turned out to be a bit like getting ready for the first day of school. And we both slept just as poorly.

"Not with bang, but with a whimper." That's what T.S. Eliot said about the world's ending, but it fit quite well with our pilot beginning. When we arrived with our new coworker Beth at the beautifully shady grove of trees where the meeting was to be held, we found literally nobody (we were a bit early). But slowly and surely people streamed in, walking or on bikes, clearly having just left their farms or cows or other morning work. By the end of the day, 13 of 17 people made it, which isn't bad for the first day!

More importantly than the turn up, though, was the meeting itself, which was a complete success. The overall goal of the pilot project is to help a group of farmers to be able to collectively produce and sell a crop with a good market, while also learning the skills to know how to read the market and respond to its changes and fluctuations. But we didn't start with marketing trainings, or giving the group a crop to grow and a lesson on how to grow it. In fact we didn't really do any training at all.

That's because in this project we're trying to begin where the Bible itself begins: the story of God making human beings in His own image. If we really believe that incredible truth, then we have to treat every single human being as if they have value, skills, abilities . . . in short, that they have assets that God has given them to be managed and stewarded in His world. And while almost every Christian would agree, most of the time the way we think about the poor comes from the implicit idea that the poor simply lack things, whether money, knowledge, character . . . whatever. And when that's our implicit idea, whether we like it or not, that's what gets communicated to the poor people we try to work with.

But don't people really need knowledge, capital, food? Of course we all have needs. But, as Brian Fikkert and Steve Corbett have explained in their excellent new book When Helping Hurts (everyone should read it!), a Biblical view of poverty centers around broken relationships with God, with ones self, with others, and with creation. And whether it's inner-city Memphis or rural Kenya, one thing that all poor communities face is the consistent implicit message from the non-poor world that they're messed up, worthless, powerless, vulnerable, stupid, and incapable of change. The government, many NGOs, sometimes even the church, as well as the Primary School of Everyday Experience all teach poor people that they matter less than the rich, that their problems are their fault, and there really isn't much they can do about it. And when outsiders come in with programs that treat the poor as people lacking resources, it simply reinforces the lies they've been told, inadvertently reducing that individual or community's ability to really make changes in their own lives.

But the truth of the Scriptures that conquers the lie is that God has given every person His image! And that means that every one of us has assets and skills that we can use. And so in this pilot project, our primary objective is to help community members use their own assets and resources to study the market, to design a business plan, and to execute that plan to gain a profit.

So on Thursday, we started the whole process with two funny things: drawing maps and telling stories. You see, if we really want this project to be about helping the poor recognize their assets and empowering them to use it to address the problems and opportunities they themselve identify, we wanted to start with activities that would help us do just that. So Rebecca opened up the entire meeting by explaining that we believe that every person has God-given assets and abilities, and that we wanted to begin by learning about what assets God had given this community. She did an excellent job of explaining how every stage of the project would flow out of this foundational idea: God has given you the ability to make changes for the good in your community.

We then began with a Participatory Learning and Action (PLA) activity. PLA is a set of tools that community workers have used for a number of years to help a community process its own resources, opportunities, and problems. The foundational assumption is that community members are the experts on their communities, and that by getting them talking and thinking, an NGO can empower them to begin using their resources and abilities to address their own needs, all while affirming the Biblical message of being made in God's image.

Our first PLA activity, led by our coworker Beth, was a simple community map. The idea is remarkably simple: Beth merely asked the group to create a map of their community, emphasizing local physical resources. But what followed was extraordinary to watch. All 13 community members began scratching and drawing in the dust, gathering sheaves of corn to make crosses to represent churches and rocks for schools, and discussing in great detail all of the physical resources in their community. These included the irrigation project that they began, and also highlighted some limiting infrastructure issues, including far off markets, and a ferry that doesn't operate year round. Not only was this incredibly fun to watch, not only did it encourage every person to be involved, but it got all of them thinking about how resource rich their community really is, and it taught us a whole lot about the area where we're working.

Our second activity comes from a set of methods known as Appreciative Inquiry. The foundational assumption behind Appreciative Inquiry is that every functioning community is a miracle. The fact that people exist in community is a sign that God is working, that people have found a way to overcome obstacles, to work together. Appreciative Inquiry allows a facilitator to help community members form action plans based on their analysis of their own assets and strengths. And AI begins with something everybody loves: stories.

So after the mapping, I explained to the group that before we could begin to think about where we are going, we had to remember where we were, where we had come from. I told them that our project was all about them using their strengths, abilities, and successes to come up with a plan on how to keep moving towards their dreams. And then, I just started asking for people to tell stories. "Tell me a story about a time when you were proud of your community?" "About a time when you tried something new on your farm and succeeded?" "About a time when you faced an obstacle and overcame it?" As people would tell stories, I asked one of the young women in the group to write a few words about the story, and then I would walk through the process of analyzing the strengths, values, and enabling conditions present in the story. For instance, when one man told the story of how he had wanted to get married in a church, and the community pulled together to help him be able to pay for it, we said that the story showed the community was strong in unity, friendship, and love, that they obviously valued family, marriage, and following God's laws, and that in order to have had that experience, they had to have jobs, money, the willingness to help one another, etc. We did the same process with the stories about the man who started selling watermelons as soon as they arrived in the area, and sold them in a far away market, or for the person who told the story about traveling far away to learn how to grow rice, and taking the risk to try it in their own home place.

At the end of the day, the community had spent several hours talking only about their successes, only about their resources, only about the encouraging moments and powerful aspects of their community. Maybe some people think all of this is silly, but after years of development in the 2/3rds World and increasing Welfare states in the West, we believe it is something to begin where God does: that people matter, and that He's given all of us skills, abilities, and assets to manage and use for His glory. This is the beginning and heart of community development, and it was absolutely amazing to see it in action. And maybe, just maybe, it gave us the foundation, the starting point, to walk together with these farmers all the way towards sustainable agricultural business. We'll see.

Peace,
Michael

Pilot Project Progress Part 1: Man's Work

2009-09-29T12:37:00.000-07:00

Authors Note: This post is the first in a series about the newly started Pilot Project. Look for regular updates as the project is just now beginning!

The first general meeting with the new group isn’t for two more days, and yet the real work has already begun. As many of you will remember, Planting Faith is conducting a Pilot Project in the Murang’a District to try some new techniques and strategies based on keeping the best of what PF has done before while also improving and addressing issues and challenges we’ve had with other groups.

One of the first issues we wanted to address was the issue of group size and formation. At a simple level, it’s really hard to have meetings where everyone’s voice is heard if there are 50 people. At a much more complex level, we’ve found that if you ask people “hey do you want to do x,” they basically always say yes, whether you’re talking about promoting agricultural business or about underwater basket weaving. Which makes it really hard to make sure you have people in a group who are really interested in what it is you actually want to do!

Of course, these are some of the things that make international development so difficult, right? I mean, cross-cultural communication is hard, often times what the NGO thinks the community needs and what the community thinks they need are quite different, and it certainly seems so much more efficient to work with 50! And yet, often times it seems that these simple decisions made at the outset really do set the stage for the entire shebang.

So with this project we asked CCS to help us find a group that already existed, that had expressed an interest in agricultural business before hearing about our project, and that was already involved in their own projects. And what a group they found!

The Githuri Water Project group consists of 100 farmers who have mobilized themselves to access gov’t funds in order to get irrigation for their farms. Previously a total drought region, their group has now managed to get irrigation water for 50 households (and counting) using gravity, a nearby river, funds from the gov’t, and a whole heckuva lot of work. And after discussing with our CCS partners, they’ve agreed to mobilize 25 of those 50 households who are specifically interested in agricultural business for our project.

So, having met the leadership, Rebecca, Beth (our new CCS coworker), and I decided that it would be a good idea to invest a little time in the community to learn more about what’s going on, to begin some relationships, and to communicate how excited we are about what they’ve already accomplished. And so, just yesterday, we picked up hoes, pick axes, and shovels, took of our shoes, and joined the group in digging the main trench where they will put the next section of irrigation piping.

Let me be clear about two things: this pipe is a big pipe. And this ditch they put it in . . . it’s a big ditch. And so, what we had dreamily contemplated as a relational building time became (in addition to that) probably one of the hardest days work of this city slickers life. We’re talking digging 6 feet down into the earth, removing enormous boulders, and shoveling out tons of dirt in the excruciatingly hot Kenyan sun. And we’re also talking about watching women old enough to be your grandma totally making your 23 yr old self look like a complete pansy. I mean, these folks can work! So of course, Bec and I got blisters in all of thirty seconds, and did our best to not make total fools or ourselves. And while we’ll be feeling the effects for a few days, the relationships begun, the message conveyed, and the sheer joy of feeling in your bones a hard days work done together was well worth the effort.

Actually, most of my hardest days of labor have been on missions trips: mixing cement in Mexico, gutting houses in New Orleans, etc. But I’ve never, on any trip, really worked under local leaders who are already providing all the supplies, labor, and planning that the project required. There had to be 30 people who showed up to work all day in the hot sun with no pay and no food. If there’s ever been a time when you might have generalized the poor as lazy, incapable of managing or leading, or at least not very driven, it’s time to think again.

What a great opportunity for us! Hopefully, it was the start that we needed in the community (in addition to meetings with the leaders and a walk through the village as well). Please pray for us these next couple days, because our first meeting is on Thursday (check the blog on Friday for the next update!), and we’re all going to be out of our comfort zones!

Peace,

Michael

Long Time Gone

2009-09-15T00:50:00.000-07:00

Well, there’s nowhere to begin but by apologizing: sorry it has been so long! But despite the long silence on our end, there’s plenty to tell . . . we just haven’t had time to tell it. To dive right in . . .

Visitors
Since the World Freedom Day party we’ve hosted numerous folks at our home in Nairobi, including Marian, Mark, Christen, and Stephen Sasscer (Rebecca’s Mom, Dad, and two of her siblings), Dr. Russell Mask (one of my profs from Covenant), and Mom and Dad from Memphis. All in all, that’s more than 30 days of visitors since July!

Former professors and new in-laws sound like a recipe for major stress, but we can honestly say that all our visitors were an incredible encouragement to us, and that everybody weathered the various small storms of international travel (running out of water, no power, bumpy roads, multiple day car breakdowns, food poisoning, and one really mean jellyfish) with incredible graciousness! I’d like to publicly thank Dr. Mask for interacting with us and giving guidance on all sorts of work and cultural issues (he worked in Nairobi for several years), Christen and Stephen for spending the last few days of their break running around with us, and all of the parents for being incredible role models for us newlyweds, for giving us great advice and encouragement, and for being willing to roll with the punches during their stay. Plus, ya’ll were a great excuse to do some great vacationing!

Work
Based on our guest schedule, you might assume that we’ve hit a lull in our work schedule. Not so! In fact, and maybe I always say this but really this time, I don’t think we’ve ever been busier. To take it group by group:

Our farmers in Ngare Ndare have planted butternut squash! Back in August we visited the group and took a tour of about 7 farms with the entire group, which was really fun. They had just germinated at that time, but they looked good, and the reports over the phone line sound like they’re coming along well. This is great news! Please pray that we’d be able to get up there in October before harvest, and that we’d be able to help the group to put together a marketing plan in time to really turn a good profit. This would be a major success.

In Mang’u farmers continue to grow passion fruit, but the truth is, many of the farmer’s crops failed due to neglect or disease, and we’ve spent most of our time since arriving trying to help the group find its feet again and decide on a way forward. After the leaders sent letters to all defaulting members (on their own initiative), we got a good portion of the group together for a meeting. The group decided they want to plant a new crop together using their own funds, to get on loan repayment schedules that would allow them to repay their loans slowly, and to start a community managed loan fund referred to locally as a Table Bank.

Table Banks are basically small-scale, informal credit unions that, using only the members contributed savings, make small loans and allow members to save with the potential for annual dividend payments. Table Banks have several distinct advantages over traditional microfinance banks and loan schemes. First, and most importantly, Table Banking is an initiative that begins in the right place: with the community’s own assets and resources. So many well-intentioned community development programs implicitly enter a community with the message that “You need help. You have problems. And we can fix them for you.” Nothing could be more disempowering and hurtful to the vulnerable poor, who already feel powerless and destitute than to bring a message that says, "You can't solve your problems without our help." But Table Banking begins with the message that “You have resources! You have opportunities! You have money! If you work together, you can help each other achieve your goals!” Second, using the community’s own savings for the loan capital means that loans are smaller, safer, and more appropriate. Whereas an outsider might over-estimate a poor person’s debt capacity, and mistakenly give them more debt than they can possibly manage, Table Banking begins at the right level, as determined and managed by the community. Third, whereas microbanks and lending programs tend to be totally based around credit, Table Banks reward people who do nothing but save by giving them dividends or interest payments on their savings at the end of the year!

Our group in Kabete has also decided to begin Table Banking, so we’ve agreed to lead both groups through a training on forming Table Banking produced by the Chalmers Center at Covenant College. This is a totally new step for us, and we’re trying to equip our coworker, James Njeru, to be able to do the training on his own by the time we finish, so pray for us in all of that.

Our sunflower and aloe vera groups are continuing. We finished our Prepare a Better Business training in one of the groups, and the training continues to go well in all the groups. Two groups have harvested their sunflower, but low production because of the drought here and complications with getting the machine for processing have made the process more complicated. Our aloe vera farmers are implementing some new irrigation techniques, and production seems to be good, but we’re continuing to work on the marketing side of things. Please pray for wisdom and encouragement for both us and the farmers.

Finally, we’ve begun meetings with members of our new Pilot Project group! I posted something about the project several months ago, and more updates will be coming out soon, but for now I’ll just say that CCS hired an excellent new staff person for us to work with, and after meeting with some of the farmers and even visiting some farms we’re more excited than ever. Stay tuned to see how all of this new stuff unfolds!

Etcetera, Etcetera, Etcetera
And of course, there’s always the rest of everything. Rebecca and I celebrated our 1 year anniversary on August 23rd. Not many people graduate from college, move out of their parent’s houses, get married, and move overseas all in the space of a single year, and both friends and family have covered us with prayers because of the potential stress and strain that all that change can put on a marriage. We praise Jesus for giving us an incredibly happy and joyful first year, and for leading us to a job and country that have given us such a huge opportunity to learn more about each other and our future lives together.

We also are continuing our adventures with urban gardening. Having successfully harvested a heckuva lot of lettuce from one tire and some very small carrots from another, we’re ready to expand our operation to five tires for the October rains. And while you might be thinking that we’ve got bigger concerns than learning how to make salads grow up out of our driveway, I’ve got to admit that there’s been something significant about getting into the rhythms of growth and harvest, of participating in just a minute way with what our farmer’s do every day, and in remembering what our farmer’s have always known: that food doesn’t come from a restaurant or in a box, it comes from the earth, and it comes with care.

And we’re continuing to try to find ways to engage relationally with our farmers and other friends here in Nairobi. Our New City Fellowship small group continues to be a blessing, as does our relationship with my good friend from Bungoma, David Khisa. Alvin Mbola, a local community development professor and field worker here, has given us priceless guidance and direction in everything from our pilot project to how to help our friend who is trying to decide how to care for her orphaned, HIV-positive niece. And even as I write this, our three farmer friends from Mang’u, Lucy, (another) Lucy, and Mary, are busy in our kitchen learning how to make pumpkin pie.

Jesus has been good to us. The work is hard, and we’re always looking for better ways to do what we’re doing. Please pray specifically for the work, that our farmers would see success and that these projects would benefit their lives, that Jesus would guide us through this pilot project, and that he would guide us in our daily life as we seek to understand how best to walk through the many trials and struggles that our friends face here. Pray also for our Muslim neighbors who are celebrating Ramadan now (and who occasionally bring us tasty leftovers), that we would be good neighbors to them.

We would love to hear from any and all of you any time.

Peace,
Michael

A Different Spin On Independence

2009-07-15T10:50:00.000-07:00

Ten days ago, on the day that Americans traditionally celebrate independence from Britain, we decided to do things a little different here in Kenya. Instead of American Independence Day, we celebrated "World Freedom Day," complete with tasty Kenyan "nyama choma" (fried goat) and ugali, Indian curry, and American deviled eggs, potato salad and burgers. Many people from church came, as well as 25 children from a nearby Children's Home, neighbors, co-workers, and other friends. In other words, we had a PAR-TAY!

The day was both amazingly busy and unexpectedly delightful. Some of my favorite parts of the day. . . 2 women from church coming to spend the night just so that they could help us in preparing for everything. All the men helping Michael grill hamburgers, cheeseburgers, chicken and goat by the truck load (okay, maybe not a truck load, but almost). Kids running around everywhere, playing various forms of soccer, rugby and wiffle ball. Youth from the church lounging on blankets in the grass and eating popcorn (lots of popcorn). 15 women all packed in the kitchen, all rapidly chopping, cooking, spreading, filling - whatever needed to be done in order to serve the 80 or so people who showed up over the course of eight hours - and along with all the preparation, lots of chatting and laughing. Seeing different people from different places, cultures, ethnic groups, economic backgrounds, and communities being together, eating together, and playing together.

When we gathered together to pray before eating, Michael explained why we decided to celebrate the 4th of July like this. First, he explained that we knew this 4th of July would be different for us simply because we are here in Kenya and not in the States. But more than that, he shared that we really wanted to celebrate our true freedom, as believers in Jesus Christ, instead of merely celebrating America's independence from Great Britain. Instead of celebrating the country of America and being exclusive by definition (as many people know, a person cannot simply be an American by wanting to be an American), we wanted to be inclusive by definition, because as Jesus followers (from anywhere in the world) we get to celebrate our freedom together every day, and also as believers we get to invite others into the joy of knowing Jesus and finding their true freedom as well.

I know this might sound hokey, or like I'm trying to over-spiritualize something that we shouldn't be so worried about. But I don't think I am. If living here in Kenya has taught me anything, it has taught me that I should never take for granted the freedom I have in Jesus, and the constancy of His love and His peace. As an American, it's true that I have noteable "freedoms," freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom to buy assault rifles, etc. But all of these freedoms are temporary, incomplete, and unfulfilling. American freedoms don't get at or solve the problems that I have. . . the problems that I have with God, with myself, and with other people. American freedoms don't make me a better person, and they don't make other people better people. American freedoms can't promise lasting peace, security, or love. American freedoms are not what make me free. And they do not and will never make anyone free. When we look at all the different horrible sins nations, including ours, have committed in the name of preserving "freedom," it seems like at least sometimes, national freedom really means slavery, whether for ourselves, or for those people that get rolled over in the process.

But Jesus changes everything. Jesus does promise, has brought, and will fully bring eternal, complete, and fulfilling freedom. Freedom in Jesus chases away sin "far as the curse is found," and brings me back to a right relationship with God, with myself, and with other people. He is the only way that any of my relationships will ever be good and right and just. Freedom in Jesus doesn't just make me a better person; He makes me a new person, and has actually given me Himself by dying on the cross and defeating death by His resurrection. Freedom in Jesus promises peace, security, and eternal love. God has so loved the world by giving His Son, Jesus. He is our Peace. He is our Freedom. Happy World Freedom Day.

Rebecca

Beginnings and Continuings

2009-06-29T11:32:00.000-07:00

The problem with getting bogged down and forgetting to update the blog is that when you finally get to it, it’s hard to even begin to sum up all the things you’ve been doing. But here goes nothing:

Rachael’s Visit
For the past two weeks we’ve hosted Rebecca’s older sister Rachael, who came all the way to Africa just to say hi. Expecting, as we all do when we first arrive, the “slower pace of African life,” I’m not sure Rachael was prepared for the jam packed two weeks we prepared for her. It’s been awesome to catch up, to get her perspective on our work, and to have an excuse for doing a bunch of touristy stuff that we haven’t done yet.

We began with a trip to Nakuru National Park (home of the famous Nat’l Geographic shots of a lake filled with like a kabagillion flamingoes). Rachael arrived at 6:30 a.m. on a Thursday, and by 5:30 p.m. that evening we were looking at rhinos and water buffalo in the park. Karibu Kenya! During this two night camping excursion, we also ended up at Naivasha again, and finally took the boat ride to see the hippos. Very cool, and because Rachael is a fanatical photographer with a new camera, our lives are better documented than they’ve been since our wedding.

The next week we went on a 4 day work trip that included visits to Nyeri, Ngare Ndare, and Mitunguu. We got to stay with Rebecca’s co-coach at Rosslyn Middle School for a night, followed by another night with Jedida and John in the Ngare Ndare group, and were once again amazed by the extraordinary hospitality of pretty much every Kenyan we know. Mitunguu was also fun, and by the time we got back, we were all completely exhausted.

This week we also visited the elephant orphanage (probably the “cutest” experience on the planet), where you get to see, and touch, numerous baby elephants and even a baby rhino that apparently thinks it’s a dog. None of them are more than three feet tall, so you can imagine the googooing that occurred between my wife and her sister. It’s a good thing you can only be there an hour.

All in all, we cherished our last few days with Rachael, and were really sad to see her go. She’s been an encouragement and a reminder that what we do for work is also, as it turns out, quite a bit of fun.

Work
On the surface, our projects are continuing as they have been for some time. We’re still doing the Prepare a Better Business trainings (and getting better at them all the time), the groups are still meeting monthly, making savings, and growing their crops. Under the surface, however, there’s a lot going on.

In Ngare Ndare, we have at last agreed to grow the butternut squash, and have been working with the group to try to be ready to plant by mid-July. This will require a whole lot of finagling on our part in terms of getting them the inputs that will constitute the loan in-kind, and probably more trips up that way than usual these days. But we’re excited about it all the same.

With our CCS coworkers, we have recently visited the farms in both Embu and Mitunguu (sunflower groups). The rains, as feared, have gone away as quickly as they came. In parts of Mitunguu, the flowers are, frankly, looking pretty bad, although still harvestable. Elsewhere in the region, our farmers have great sunflower, so that’s going to create some interesting group dynamics as it comes to processing and selling. We’ve also been working on actually getting the processing machines that the groups will use to process the sunflower seeds to create and sell the sunflower oil. This has been a trying process, requiring a lot of difficult discussion with our coworkers and the farmers, trying to figure out the best way to go about all of this. I spent all of yesterday actually driving around Nairobi looking for the machines, and yet we still haven’t completely sorted out how all of this is going to work. Please pray for guidance on this issue, and also that we would remember that the way we deal with the farmers is as important in development as the final product. Development is as concerned with empowering means as it is with financially empowered ends.

In Embeere and Kirinyaga, we are working to get simple, cost-effective irrigation systems installed, while also beginning the trainings. The Embeere group, which is in a drought-prone region, is working really hard, hoping that aloe vera’s drought resistance will make it a good source of income for them. Pray for them as they continue to learn how to take care of this new crop, and for us as we continue to try to understand the marketing aspects of the crop.

In Mang’u, the group continues to sell passion fruit, which is a huge blessing. Several of the farmers have almost paid off their loans, and they sold 70 kilos just yesterday! But many of the farmers’ crops have failed, and the group is struggling to find its way. Rebecca and I recently lead the group in a discussion to try to understand what has worked, what hasn’t, and what could be added to the group to make it stronger. This was all, of course, a great excuse for me to play with beans and rankings again like I did in Bungoma (check out thedudegoestoafrica.blogspot.com for pictures of what it looked like last time). The long and short of it is that we used participatory activities to make sure that everyone’s voice was heard, and that the group will be able to plan how to go forward. One thing we learned in classes back at CC that we’re seeing in real life now is that participation by the community is the most important element of community development. Designing good programs is much less important than empowering the community to design their own. This is a first step in shifting the focus away from us and back to the group.*

Other Stuff
To begin with, we’ve started a garden. Most of you are probably imagining us with a nice little plot outside of our grass thatched hut. In reality, it currently consists of two used tires and a seedling tray in our concrete driveway. Urban gardening is definitely in with the Rhodes family. This is our first effort at growing something from start to finish, and we’ve begun with tomatoes, carrots, and lettuce. We have absolutely no clue what we’re doing, and I honestly never expected anything to come up whatsoever. But about a week ago, on day five, we saw some green! And now, our little tires are just full of little veggies (that will, because of our ignorance, probably never make it out of the tire, but nonetheless)! I have to admit, seeing a bit of the process in our own backyard (tires), got us both pretty fired up.

We’ve also been introduced to some great new opportunities recently, both in terms of work and otherwise. I (Michael) recently got asked to lead a two part Sunday School class with the new deacons at New City Fellowship. The pastors heard that Bec and I are involved in microenterprise development, and wanted us to talk to the deacons about ministry among the poor. This was an incredible opportunity for us, because we love our church, and had prayed and thought about how God might use us to participate in the conversation about how the church can continue its life-giving, kingdom ministry with and among the urban poor. I spent the entire first session talking about God’s heart for the poor from Genesis to Revelation, and preparing for it was a good way for me to open my eyes again to the radical nature of God’s Word. Whenever I feel like I’ve got a good grip on my economic or political theory, the Scriptures quickly put me in my place.

Rebecca has also been introduced to some new opportunities, and is currently considering committing one day a week to a CRWRC/CCS project targeting high school age girls with programs to help keep them from being vulnerable to HIV/AIDS. This would include health training, as well as informal counseling and community building activities (cottage ministries, and most importantly for my athletic counterpart, SOCCER!). It would also require about a week’s worth of training, and could expand even into some basic economic training similar to what we’re already doing. We think this would be a great way for Bec to continue to use her gifts and abilities to really be a part of God’s kingdom work here. Pray for us as we think through all the ins and outs of this.

We went to our Kiswahili teacher’s children’s home to lead a soccer workshop with kids ages 8-17 last Saturday. We had a blast, I scored my first goal in any soccer game ever anywhere, and Rebecca wowed everybody who participated. Julius, our teacher who runs the children’s home, really is an incredible man of God who is doing really great community work for the kingdom.

We’re also diving more and more into a network or relationships here in Nairobi. Our neighbors, Josh and Emma, continue to be awesome guides around the city, and have also visited our church with us occasionally. This yielded practical returns when Josh came to our rescue after we broke down in downtown Nairobi at 11:00 p.m. (he’s a mechanic). We are growing more and more in our relationships with our predominately Indian-Kenyan Bible Study group, which has also grown into a Tuesday night badminton/Indian food event. And we’ve continued to enjoy playing soccer occasionally with the young Kenyans in the NCF youth group, and getting to know Agnus, our friend and house helper who lives in one of the poorer areas in Nairobi.

Agnus in particular has really helped us to understand the beauty of God’s image bearers who are living in Nairobi slums, and also the vast network of oppressive forces that they face in their daily lives. Just as a recent example, when Agnus got pneumonia recently, she had to get a “loan” from her neighbors . . . at 30% interest per month, while still not really being able to take care of her 8 kids and one adopted addition. Rebecca has led the charge in us trying to help Agnus plan financially, to begin saving with us (because she doesn’t have access to a bank), and to try to make the income she gets support her life.** Now Agnus is putting away her rent money every month with us, and only going home with a portion of her pay from us after working, letting us keep the rest in a “savings account” for a rainy day. This has reminded us that some of the most important work we do among the poor isn’t with big programs or based on education and specialized skills. It is the person-to-person, “walking with” our friends who find themselves in bad economic straits, and trying to apply God’s word to both of our lives together. And that’s something we can all be a part of in our lives.

Peace,
Michael

*Our explanation of our work on the blog is technical because we assume that people that go to the blog want to know more than those who just read our update emails. If you ever have questions or want to know more, please drop us an email at michaelandrebeccarhodes@gmail.com

**Agnus is also part of a cottage ministry that makes beautiful greeting cards. These have authentic Kenyan artwork on the front, and are made out of recycled materials. The proceeds go directly to benefit people who are doing honest work to provide for themselves instead of turning to all sorts of immoral alternatives or giving in to the despair that surrounds them. If you are interested in placing an order, we’d love to facilitate that. And seriously, they’re really cool.

Kanisa Linajengwa Na Kina Nani?

2009-06-14T07:27:00.000-07:00

"God's church is being built by who?"

That's the question the congregation of New City Fellowship sang with great joy this past Sunday morning, followed by the exuberant response: "God's church is being built by old men, by mamas and papas, by children and youth, by all people from everywhere."

The worship debates rage as strongly as ever in the US, as far as I can tell. Pentecostals perpetuate a theology of power, based on teachings of the Holy Spirit and the Apostles' miraculous signs and wonders that marked the ministry of the early church. Many Catholics might counter with a worshipful theology based on brokenness, centered around the crucifixion and echoed in the humility and suffering Paul and the others experienced in the early church. Presbyterians love to quote the passage about "orderliness" in worship, while members of all traditions turn instead towards the Psalms which call God's people to dance and sing, to bang on tambourines and drums and whatever else we can find in mad joy over God's presence. My Easter and Christmas services were marked by the overwhelming mystery of the Incarnation and Resurrection, a mystery symbolized in the high church worship of 2nd Pres, but we never talked much about Paul's command to the church to make sure they have an interpreter when, as part of corporate worship, people were to speak in tongues and heavenly languages. Probably a similar oversight among charismatic churches would be neglecting the passage where Paul makes it clear that tongues are not to be considered among the higher gifts.

Paradox marks our faith at every turn. Funny thing is, most of our churches are based on theologies that make their stand on only one side of the Bible's many apparent conflicts. "Your worship doesn't reflect the joy of the lord, it's so bound by tradition, it's so dead," says one side. "Your worship is too focused on people, it's distracting, it doesn't show God enough respect or reflect the majesty of the King," says the other. And with a total lack of self-awareness, we shout scriptures at each other, using God's Word to fight God's Word.

While the worship team cried out, "Who will build God's church?" I noticed that one of the Kenyan singers was wearing a traditional Indian outfit, while an Indian percussionist was wearing a traditional African shirt. The singer is a young girl who has been pseudo adopted by an Indian family in town while she goes to school, the percussionist an Indian elder who has learned how to serve God amidst a congregation that breaks all the rules. Kenyans and Indians don't get along. Not in Nairobi, anyway. But in this church, they share clothes.

In fact, sharing clothes, food, and other cultural activities is simply part of what it means to be a Christian at NCF. And maybe a survey of what the Bible says about worship would reveal one stunning, overwhelming truth: the biggest mistake a church could make in worship is to do it all one way. Maybe the idea that God allows his people to pick their favorite worship type, and more tellingly, their favorite social demographic to worship with, is a lie from Satan. Maybe God created culture because we're His image bearers, and He's too big to be captured by any one group. That's the way New City sees it. That's what our church is teaching us. And when Paul talks about sacrificial worship, we know a bit more of what he means. From not understanding every third song (we sing in 5 different languages), to sacrificing "excellence for God" to stylistic diversity and all the chaos that results, to dealing with the much deeper issues that result from embracing the "ministry of reconciliation" in a community that actually physically demonstrates why reconciliation is needed, worshiping at NCF is neither easy nor simple. But neither is God. And neither is the worship that He calls us to, worship that includes rich and poor, black and white, young and old, liberal and conservative, every tongue, tribe and nation, not because "they" need it, but because He demands it. Maybe it's time to put on someone else's clothes for a change.

Peace,
Michael

*Sorry about another post that focuses on our church! The truth is, our experience at NCF has been one of the most amazing experiences of our lives (much as our time at ICF in Memphis!), and we just want to talk about it! Look for a general update later this week!