Quote for today

Standing Under the Cross

Standing erect, holding our heads high, is the attitude of spiritually mature people in face of the calamities of our world. The facts of everyday life are a rich source for doomsday thinking and feeling. But it is possible for us to resist this temptation and to stand with self-confidence in this world, never losing our spiritual ground, always aware that “sky and earth will pass away” but the words of Jesus will never pass away (see Luke 21:33).

Let us be like Mary, the mother of Jesus, who stood under the cross, trusting in God’s faithfulness notwithstanding the death of his beloved Child.

~ Henri J.M. Nouwen in Bread for the Journey

received through “Daily Meditation” from HenriNouwen.org

The Celtic way of evangelism

Book review

Hunter, George G. 2000. The Celtic way of evangelism : how Christianity can reach the West — again. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press.

I have already quoted once from this book (here). As many people celebrated St. Patrick’s Day this week, it seems appropriate to write a book review.

The title of this book might give the impression that when you read this book you will finally know how to evangelize successfully. I am always a little bit hesitant if somebody thinks he has “found it.” However, the content of the book does not fall in this trap. It is an interesting analysis of what might have made St. Patrick’s mission to Ireland so successful and which of these factors might be useful for today.

The aspects that the author underlines are in itself nothing new, and there are certainly many other books on the market who say the same thing. Nevertheless, I found it interesting, especially the comparison between the Celtic and Roman Christianity and their approach to evangelism. Hunter, similar to J. Philip Newell (whom I have quoted recently), are not claiming that one is better than the other, but that both are poorer without the other. In this sense it is unfortunate that the Roman church fought and suppressed Celtic spirituality.

So, what can we learn from St. Patrick?

The basis of his mission was laid during a time of enslavement. He was a Briton from NE England, coming from an “aristocratic family [that] had gone “Roman” during the Roman occupation of England.” During his enslavement by Celtic pirates as a teenager, several changes happened:

• a personal experience of God’s presence when he was herding cattle in the wilderness, a growing faith;
• a deeper understanding of the Irish Celtic people, their language and culture, as you can only learn it from the ‘underside’;
• a love for and an identification with his captors to the point of feeling they are his people.

Through divine intervention he was able to board a ship and regain freedom after six years of enslavement. He trained for the priesthood and served as a parish priest in England until his “Macedonian call’ to become a missionary to the Celtic people in Ireland at age 48. This calling went totally against the general opinion of the Roman church of his time, because the Celts were regarded as ‘barbarians’ and as not enough ‘civilized’ to receive the Gospel. It was considered impossible to evangelize them.

St. Patrick’s approach to evangelism was made possible by his earlier experience:

The fact that Patrick understood the people and their language, their issues, and their ways, serves as the most strategically significant single insight that was to drive the wider expansion of Celtic Christianity, and stands as perhaps our greatest single learning from this move­ment. There is no shortcut to understanding the people. When you understand the people, you will often know what to say and do, and how. When the people know that the Christians understand them, they infer that maybe the High God understands them too.

He worked with a team of people who would set up a temporary camp near a tribal settlement. They would contact the king or leader of this settlement, ask for their permission, and then stay for several weeks or even months, engaging people in conversations, pray for sick and possessed people, counsel and mediate conflicts, ministering to all who appeared receptive. The social dimension of their ministry included crusading against slavery – successfully!

Hunter underlines five aspects of the Celtic way of ‘being and doing church’ that contributed to the evangelization of Europe, a kind of “missionary ecclesiology” of the ancient Celtic Christian movement from which we could learn today:

• Team approach – in contrast to the contemporary approaches of “Lone Ranger” one-to-one evangelism, or confrontational evangelism, or the public preaching crusade, the Celtic mission worked as a team, including oldtimers and newbies.
• Modeling – this community provided a setting that prepared people to “live with depth, compassion, and power in mission.”  This included the discipline of solitude, spending time with a ‘soul friend’, being part of a fellowship group, participate and contribute to communal life, experiencing and learning ministry by observing and doing.
• Imaginative prayer – St. Patrick’s team would use parable, story, poetry, song, visual symbols, visual arts and drama to engage the Celtic people’s imaginations. They took people’s ‘right brains’ seriously and made the gospel’s meaning vivid.
• Hospitality – the monastic community was open for everybody and their highest com­mitment was hospitality to strangers, seekers, pilgrims, and refugees. It was seen as a ministry to seekers, without any strings attached.
• Process conversion – they saw conversion as a process.

I found the comparison between the Irish and the Roman model of evangelization conversion very enlightening.

The Roman model for reaching people (who are “civilized” enough) was:

Present the Christian message;

Invite them to decide to believe in Christ and become Christians; and

If they decide positively, welcome them into the church and its fellowship.

The Celtic model in contrast starts where the Roman model ends – with fellowship:

You first establish community with people, or bring them into the fellowship of your community of faith.

Within fellowship, you engage in conversation, ministry, prayer, and worship.

In time, as they discover that they now believe, you invite them to commit.

In case you have not noticed – the Roman model is still pervasive today.

The Roman model seems very logical to us because most American evangelicals are scripted by it! We explain the gospel, they accept Christ, we welcome them into the church! Presentation, Decision, Assimilation.

I would add, not only American evangelicals, but also many European evangelicals follow the Roman approach. This comparison appears to be all the more relevant for today, as several researchers have pointed out that today’s postmodern people often need to first belong, before they can believe.

[John] Finney reports that most people experience the faith through relation­ships, that they encounter the gospel through a community of faith, that becoming a Christian involves a process that takes time. In his later book, Recovering the Past, Finney summarizes their chief finding in four words. For most people, “belonging comes before believing.”

In one of the chapters Hunter analyzes the missionary perspective of Celtic Christianity, which included among other things an optimism and affirmation of God’s presence in nature, a belief in the goodness of creation and human nature, even though both are infected, but not destroyed, by sin and evil.

This is in stark contrast to the emphasis of the Roman church who under the impact of St. Augustine’s teaching insisted on the absolute depravity of humans. The latter often contributed to the complete rejection of other people’s cultures, while the Celtic attitude provides “an outstanding example of a Christian mission moving into a culture and affirming, and building upon, what it can.”

This allowed them to evangelize ‘uncivilized barbarians’ and become a ‘religion- and culture-friendly’ movement. They used critical contextualization; on the one hand, integrating and ‘Christianizing’ places, symbols and festivals whenever possible, by dedicating them to the Triune God, but on the other hand, clearly challenging anything that was idolatry [cf. Boniface felling Thor's Oak] and not shying away from power encounters.

Celtic Christianity preferred continuity rather than discontinuity, inclusion rather than exclusion.

In summary, I found this book well written and very thought provoking. It is balanced in its arguments and does not give the impression that the Celtic way is the only possible approach to evangelism today, but I believe that there is lots we could learn from them.

Relational circuits

This week’s revised Belonging class of the Life Model taught by Dr. Jim Wilder was again very insightful. (Post about the last class can be found here.)

The topic was Relational Circuits. These are things in our brain that can be on or off (or degrees of on and off). When they are on, there is no problem that is bigger than our relationships.  When they are off, our brain does not work well, our relationships don’t work well and we are not creating belonging and Shalom around us. We lose our peace and problems seem bigger than they are.

This was a real Aha-moment for me, when Jim Wilder mentioned the correlation between problems and relationships. For example, when a father yells at his daughter, the problem has become bigger than his relationship to his daughter. At this moment he no longer cares if he hurts her but completely focuses on the problem and his need to express his emotions.

When we suspend our relational functions, we treat people like objects. Expressing our feelings and emotions become deadly weapons. We lose objectivity and perspective. Our communication hurts others instead of creating Shalom. We become as dangerous to others as drunken drivers because our relational capacities are incapacitated.

Right away I remembered situations where problems had become bigger than the relationships and things did not go well. Just recently I had to talk with somebody about a problem. And as much as I tried I could not put myself in the other person’s situation in order to be less judgmental. I knew it was not OK, but I was unable to change it. Now I basically got the explanation of what happened in this situation. (Next time we will hear about what to do then.)

We receive a long checklist of indicators for when our relational circuits are off. Here are some examples that I found very telling:

• I just want to make a problem, a person or feeling stop or go away.
• I become aggressive in the way I interrogate, judge or fix others.
• I don’t want to listen to what others are saying.
• When others are talking, I already know what they are going to say.

All over the world people are drawn to those that consider relationships as more important than problems, who value relationships over problems. I certainly noticed that in different African cultures, that relationship are so extremely valuable – because they are their “social safety net” – and that they would not allow anything, things or problems to disrupt these relationships. My rationalization was that we in the West have social security, health insurance, retirement insurance, etc. and are therefore less depending on our relationships, and don’t care as much how our behavior might damage our relationships. But maybe there is more to it. Our ability to create belonging and whether our relational circuits are on most of the time, are related to our level of maturity. Maybe people in other parts of the world have a higher level of maturity.

So remember: “Our relationship work better when our brain (relational circuits) is running, and not just our emotions and our mouth.” (Jim Wilder) 

Problems reconsidered

Based on what I wrote in the last two posts (Eyes to see and Good or evil?), I decided to look at some past events and reevaluate them in the light of this new perspective. What if the criterion for something being good or bad, is not depending on my subjective feeling or likening of it, but on God’s presence or absence? This really does change things.

• Looking back I realized that I have experienced a very good example two years ago: I had a really bad car accident but because of God’s obvious presence at every turn I never perceived it as traumatic. Of course, it was not fun that the car was badly damaged and that I arrived at my destination three months later than planned. But there were so many details during this day where I could see God’s hand that I felt at peace in the midst of it all. There were no bad dreams, no problems starting to drive again, no trauma despite it being a traumatic event. Some people could not even believe me and thought it will come later, but it did not. This was really amazing and cannot be explained except through God’s protection.

• This car accident was only the most obvious problem I had. There were so many other problems that I can’t even count them. All these happened during the course of not even two years which became what I later labeled as the most difficult time on the field. It was such an accumulation of problems that those few who knew all the details could only say, “no wonder!” that I ended up being emotionally exhausted.
  What about them? Are they good or evil according to these criteria? None of them felt ‘good’ to me, non fit in my plans, or matched my ideas of what should have happened. There was a lot of pain and powerlessness. Despite all of this, at one point I realized that I had been secure in God’s love during the whole time. None of the problems brought me to the point where I questioned God’s love for me. For me this was a huge step forward and a result of God’s healing during the previous year. Combining this experience and the latest reflections, I have to reconsider my labels for this time and the individual situations. OK, they were difficult. That does not change. I am not yet there to call them ‘good’ but it seems that I am slowly moving in this direction. I know God was there with me, and many situations brought me into more dependence on the Lord. So, I guess, this is a good thing.

• A last small example of how this perspective can be helpful: On my recent vacation I went with a Swiss colleague and a German family to a reservoir south of Bamako. We all were really looking forward to swimming. To our great disappointment, we discovered early the first morning that the swimming pool was out of order. What a bummer! Most of us were really upset and we considered cutting our stay short, trying to find another place with a working swimming pool. In the middle of this disappointment I was reminded of what I had been reading about good and bad. This helped me to hold back any angry judgment (the owner should have told us, why does God bring us here for nothing?, etc) but trust that God has good plans for his children. This helped me to have peace, a positive outlook, a quiet expectation, thinking – I wonder what are God’s good plans in this and how he will use it for good? Even before lunch time we discovered that it is safe to swim in the lake because the water quality is regularly checked (so no danger of getting bilharzia). And this we did to our heart’s content for the rest of the time. It was so much nicer to swim in the lake but we would not have dared had we not been forced to consider this option.

God’s plans are good even if they are painful and not always what we would prefer! And I am so thankful that I am learning to see things from a different perspective.

What is normal?

I am reading in 2 Corinthians at the moment. There are all kinds of things that speak to me and seem to be relevant to my situation. Possibly the most important insight happened this week, when I meditated on 2 Cor 6:4.

I patiently endure troubles and hardships and calamities of every kind.

This sentence is prefaced with the remark that Paul shows in everything that he is a true minister of God. Following this, Paul writes about several kinds of problems which he endured and through it proofed that he is a minister of God. But is this normal?

It nearly sounds as if Paul considers it normal to have problems!

This is in stark contrast to what I want to experience – a more or less stress-free and unproblematic life, or at least low stress and less affected by problems than what I experienced, e.g., during the last two years. Already two chapters earlier Paul mentions a whole list of unpleasant adversities that he experienced (2 Cor 4:8-12), and in the first chapter he mentions problems that were really beyond his ability to endure (2 Cor 1:8).

I am wondering how anybody can endure that? I guess the answer is given in 2 Cor 6:7 – “God’s power is working in me”. This is one of the marks of and a recommendation for a minister of God that Paul mentioned – not to live in our human strength but in the inner strength that comes from God (2 Cor 4:16). Again and again he states – that is why he never gives up (2 Cor 4:1, 16). Wow!

I still find this hard to stomach - does this really mean that we are to consider problems as something normal? I don’t like this. I am light-years away from this attitude.

Slowly I am realizing that I was off base and made things more difficult for myself when I rebelled inwardly against difficulties. I did this more often than not during the last two years. This has probably only resulted in wasting my energy where I could not accept problems and resisted them. Slowly it dawns on me – some things might have developed differently if I had accepted problems as a normal part of my life.

Especially in one case (I am slowly realizing) did I really waste my energy, when God seemed to speak to me about something unpleasant, incomprehensible. I just could not imagine this really being God’s will, and accordingly I refused to accept it. Looking back, I can see that I really burnt myself out over it and how this has probably contributed to my general exhaustion.

Of course, nobody enjoys problems, but there seems to be a difference if I accept them with a weary smile, or if I am getting upset about them and rebelling against them.

How often during the lat two years have I waited for my life to become “normal” again. Under “normal” I meant no or at least less difficulties. However, if I consider as “normal” a life with problems (such as Paul does), I will encounter them with a different attitude. Even if I don’t know what lays around the next corner, problems won’t hit me with their full force and catch me completely flat-footed. I am more likely to endure them and they won’t unsettle me as much. If my strength is not sufficient, then I can still trust that Jesus lives in me and gives me his strength. When I don’t see a purpose in the negative things, it is also helpful to remember that God promised to “work all things out for good”, that he will use even negative things for our good (Ro 8:28). [By the way, I don't know if you ever noticed, it does not say that God takes away negative things or that he will turn negative things into positive things, but that he will use them for our good.]

Along these lines, I hope that in the future I will encounter problems with a new attitude. I am already curious what God will make out of it.

God speaks through pain

When I wrote the last entry, I was reminded of a quote that has become very important to me about 10 years ago. Since then I have often quoted it and reflected upon it.

“a significant question, that one of our pastoral advisers placed before us (…) will you concentrate on the pain of this broken world experience and resist it, OR will you permit the pain to become an environment in which God can clearly speak to you about matters he deems of ultimate importance? The choice is yours.

(…) It was not a one-timer choice. We made it again and again as time passed. (…) Would we fight the pain or permit it to be the environment in which God speaks? Usually, we chose the latter.”

(from “Rebuilding Your Broken World” by Gordon MacDonald)

In view of my last entry, I am wondering if this not a similar principle. Only when we face the pain, God can work on the deeper issues, things that we usually try to fight and medicate with addictive behavior, because we don’t like to face them.