FOR BIBLICAL REASONS, TOO

I have written often in this space about an organization I support called Christian Aid, which serves as a conduit of money and information in support of indigenous ministries in Third World countries. I have given to this cause for almost ten years, and have raved about the effectiveness of the women and men this agency supports – missionaries who need no language or cultural training, require no furlough, and can live on a fraction of the cost of Western missionaries, all the while penetrating areas for the gospel that no Westerner could dare set foot.

My justification for supporting Christian Aid has been mostly financial and practical, though. I’d like now to share some of the political and Biblical reasons why I like this agency. When I attended their conference a couple of months ago, they gave me a 50th anniversary video, which I just now got around to watching. It tells the story of agency founder Bob Finley, who was in China as a missionary in 1953 when Communism came to that country.

Two things happened as a result. One was that Finley saw how all the propagators of the Communist philosophy were themselves Chinese. He asked around as to how those Chinese had originally converted to Communism, speculating that it was some ambitious Russians who had seeded the doctrine in China. To his surprise, he found that the vast majority of early Chinese Communists had learned such ways when they were attending school in Europe and the US. He was told that if a Russian had come into China to win converts, Communism would’ve been known as a Russian philosophy and wouldn’t have had nearly the attractiveness than if it was Chinese people doing the converting.

Another thing that happened as a result of the spread of Communism in China was that the Western missionaries were kicked out of the country. 150 years of Western evangelizing in China had yielded about 1 million converts, in a nation of several hundreds of billions at the time. Thankfully, they were a hearty and prayerful group. And they were joined by new Chinese Christians, who, like their Communist counterparts, converted while they were students in Europe and the US. And while the nation was devoid of Western missionaries for several decades in the second half of the twentieth century, the Christian population grew from 1 million to 100 million.

Finley was convinced that reaching foreign students in Western universities and supporting indigenous missionaries in poorer countries was the way to go. And he found ample support in the Bible. For example, many Western Christians reference the Great Commission to justify sending missionaries to faraway lands. But what Jesus tells us is to reach the nations. He doesn’t tell us to necessarily go to the nations. In fact, those who physically heard the Great Commission from the mouth of Jesus were sent to a place they knew quite well, but that gave them the opportunity to reach the nations: their home city of Jerusalem, where several times a year upwards of a million pilgrims from all over the world gathered.

Acts 2 records the birth of the modern church, and references the national diversity that is taken up in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. It is this group that is re-sent out to all the nations in Acts 8, as a result of a great persecution of Christians in Jerusalem. But the original apostles, themselves from Jerusalem, are not sent out of their home city; they remain in Jerusalem. It is likely Jesus never directly sent any of His followers to a nation different from his or her own. Even the great traveler Paul was reached in a manner similar to Christian Aid’s focus: originally from Tarsus, he was studying with Gamaliel in Jerusalem when he was converted. And he plays a role similar to Christian Aid’s: distributing financial resources and passing along words of encouragement and camaraderie from one region to another.

So far from just seeing indigenous missions as worth supporting just because they are more effective in their homelands than Western equivalents, and at a tiny fraction of the cost, I ought also to know I can back Christian Aid fully because their approach has political, historical, and Biblical roots. And so I do.

I HATE THE MALL

On-line shopping has totally spoiled me.

Today, I took the train out to my wife's work, so we could hit the mall in the afternoon. Having done all my Christmas shopping online, I was dreading everything about this experience. Accordingly, I was a cauldron of impatience.

For one, we had to fight traffic -- on the way to the mall, in the parking lot, and on the way home. Why not shop in your flannel PJ's without leaving the house? Plus I got hungry and had to pee several times while we were walking around; isn't it better to pause from your web surfing and head down the hall for a snack or to use the facilities?

Then, as always, I got lost in the department store. With all the mirrors and the mindless in-store displays, every direction looks the same; how am I supposed to remember which entrance we came in from? This happens on-line, too, of course, but at least when you head down the wrong path you can just go "back," "back," and "back," rather than physically having to retrace your steps while dodging strollers, fragile displays, and the family of five whoisallholdinghandswhiletheywalkaroundthemall.

By the way, I went to a wireless phone store to buy a new phone for my wife earlier in the day. I was already pissed off having to go to the store -- I tried to do this by Internet and then phone, but they said it was best to physically go into a retail location -- so I sauntered in hoping to get in, look around, pick something, and get out.

Except that that's not how things are done in that store. No, you have to sign in, and then they call you. I signed in, and noticed eight people ahead of me on the sheet. Eight people! I have to wait, just to do business with you! I'm incredulous at this point.

Back to the mall. I got in line with my wife's gifts, and then right as I'm about to put them on the counter, the woman working the register says, "Would you mind paying over there; I have to use the restroom?" Again, I say to myself: I have to wait just to do business with you! What a snob I am. I'm just used to picking my stuff, typing in my credit card number, and knowing that my stuff was already en route.

The whole scene was so overwhelming for my wife that she ended up buying all her gifts in the first store we walked into, all the while wondering if she was missing better bargains further into the mall. Again, I thought of my point-and-click ways: open multiple windows, look at multiple stores, pick the best one, and close every other window. Not so easy to do in the land of the real.

I regret I was such a jerk -- to the guy at the wireless store, to the woman who had to use the bathroom, and to my wife. I guess on-line shopping has spoiled me to common decencies like waiting in line, finding a parking space, and walking around.

BLOG BLOG EVERYWHERE AND NOT A MOMENT TO BLOG

Everywhere I turn there's been a blogging opportunity, and yet I've been so busy I haven't had an entry in almost three weeks. So consider this entry a series of one-sentence summaries of all the things I could've written about during that time.

Holidays: I heard a great sermon on saying no to the busyness of this season so as to make room for beholding the wonder that is the advent season, and I haven't come close to putting that kind of peaceful thinking into action this year.

Marriage: My wife and I both got home the other night around 7ish from our jobs, looked at each other, and said, "We're always going to be workaholics, aren't we?"

Work: I've decided to respond to the distress in our organization as a whole, not by leaving or by bunkering down in my program, but by getting involved at an organization-wide level; so I am overwhelmed and yet energized by the challenge of going from running two departments to managing twelve.

Family: My parents don't seem to understand why I should treat work as anything more than a place to get a paycheck and benefits; important aspects of vocations like making a difference in the world, growing professionally, and taking a stand for virtue and integrity in the workplace are lost on them.

Books: I'm 99% done with my book manuscript, and only now realizing how much writing is required beyond the actual manuscript -- query letters, book outlines, marketing plans, writer's credential sheets, and the list goes on and on, if you want to get your book to market.

Church: Watching our eclectic church lurch forward in its congregational effort to write a mission plan has been a touchingly beautiful thing, given how little glitz and much heart can be found in our midst.

House: While it's old and rundown, and decorating and maintenance projects abound, our house is truly becoming a home; I spent last week at my parents' house in California, where I grew up, and that house felt foreign to me, while my house felt like home.

Current events: Saddam's capture, Strom Thurmond's daughter, Mayor Street's ongoing investigation, Pennsylvania's budget impasse . . . and no time to blog; how frustrating!