Pilot Project Progress Part 6: To The Market And Beyond

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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.