Category Archives: Observations

Thoughts and ideas that you might find interesting or stimulating.

Unmuzzled Oxen

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Over the years that I’ve worked in mission leadership, I’ve faced some difficult situations. Like any leader, I have to deal with tough decisions, conflict and criticism; they go with the job. Sometimes when faced with a difficult situation I’ll say; “this is what I get paid the big bucks for.”

Of course, the point of the comment is that I don’t get paid big bucks. I have a grandiose title, but Wycliffe don’t actually pay me a salary. (Read more about how we are funded here.)

So, if I don’t get paid a salary for doing my job, what do I get paid for? Well, another slightly cynical saying of mine is that I don’t get paid for doing a job, I get paid for writing letters (or emails and blog posts, to bring it up to date).

Let me unpack this a little.

Those who generously support us in or work very rarely get to see what we actually do. This is just as true here in England as it was when we lived in Africa. Our work is carried out at a distance from those who pray for us and who provide the finances to keep the mortgage paid. The only way that people know what we are doing and what we are accomplishing is by reading the letters, emails and blog posts that we produce.

This means that there is a huge temptation to put a positive spin on things in our communication. We want people to support us and we want them to be encouraged by what is being achieved through their support. It is very easy and very tempting to make things sound just a little more exciting or encouraging than they really are. I picked up on this in a little booklet about praying for missionaries which you can find here (share it with your friends). We try and make our letters as honest as we possibly can – but the temptation to spin is a hard one to avoid.

I was prompted to write this post by reading this from Jamie. It’s funnier, blunter and better written than mine, so you’ll probably want to read it! It will be all over Facebook in the next couple of days, anyway!

It’s kinda scary when you think about it, but Christian Missions is a billion (that’s BILLION, like, with a B!) dollar industry – with virtually no oversight, no standards of practice, and no hiring requirements. To top it off, it’s shrouded in a cloud of overly spiritualized language, easily manipulated to allow people to believe that more good is coming from their missions dollars than is necessarily true.

By the way, if you would like to test the accuracy of our newsletters, you can sign up to read them on the sidebar of this blog.

Oh, and if the title of the post makes no sense to you, then take a look here.

Doing Risky Things for Jesus

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Yesterday on Twitter, lots of people were tweeting from a conference where one of the speakers said that we need to do “risky things for Jesus”. This got me thinking; have I ever  done anything risky?

Well, I took my family to live in an isolated African village without mains electricity or running water. That was tough; physically and emotionally demanding. Perhaps the hardest thing was our family’s constant struggle with malaria. We all went had repeated attacks and we all had to be treated in hospital on at least one occasional. Sue suffered years of chronic malaria and really wasn’t well for years. I reckon that the most difficult few hours of my life were when our two week old baby got malaria and then went into a coma because of the treatment he was given. Tough times.

However, none of that seemed risky at the time. We just followed where God was leading and did what we had to do. It was hard going and at times it got us down, but in the end, you just get on with things.

The real risky bit happened years earlier, when in our early twenties we both gave up jobs and careers and headed off to Bible College. We had no regular income and just enough savings to pay two terms’ tuition fees – that felt risky.

However, once we had taken that step, the rest just flowed from it; moving to France with a six week old baby, heading off to Africa a year or so later, moving to live in the village and then – just when we felt settled and the translation was going well – leaving the village to take up a leadership role in the capital.

It’s been a fun ride. Hard at times, but exhilarating. At times, it has felt very risky, but in truth, there was no risk at all. Joshua 1:9 says:

Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.

Disobeying God and staying in comfortable jobs in the UK – that would have been risky!

93David Sam and Gouabafla kids

Life in Gouabafla 1993

Genesis and the Human Condition

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Genesis tells the story of the creation from two angles, each one emphasising different aspects of the relationship between God, mankind and creation.

The first story (Genesis 1:26) highlights something about the nature and purpose of human beings. This story says that human beings, all of them, are made in the image of God. On one level, this means that we have the same capacity for freedom of thought, creativity and morals as God himself. Like God we can think for ourselves, we can imagine things that don’t exist and then bring them into existence, and we can make moral and intellectual choices. Being made in God’s image is a real privilege, but that isn’t all there is to it.

Why do people put photographs on Facebook? For most of us the idea isn’t to show off the photograph itself; the point of the photograph is to show off a place or an event. This is what our family reunion looked like; this is me on the beach in Spain and so on. Photographs are images and they exist to demonstrate the reality that lies behind them. God made us in his image, for just that purpose. Our role is to bear God’s image in the world and to demonstrate to the whole of creation how good, wonderful and caring God is. God doesn’t need a Facebook page – his image is all over the earth, every human being shows something about God.

The second creation story, in Genesis chapter 2 adds to our understanding of human beings. In this account, God first creates the man, Adam. He then looks at the man and says ‘it is not good for man to be alone’ before going on to create Eve. In this little story, we see how, at the most basic level, human beings reflect the nature of God. Like God, we are relational beings; we weren’t created to be on our own and God creates a partner for Adam. Like Adam, Eve is human and shares much of his character and form, but there are subtle differences too.

By the way, in writing about Genesis this way, I’m not staking out a position in the endless creation v evolution debate. If that’s something you want to argue about or comment about, there are plenty of blogs to keep you happy!

Blogging: What’s the Point?

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Recently, a couple of bloggers whose work I enjoy have been having a little bit of a blogging crisis. Phil Ritchie wrote:

As the discussion on Twitter developed some of us switched to discussing the merits of blogging as Christians. I mentioned that I was ambivalent about continuing to blog and had ‘sort of lost heart’. In part this is because of what I have mentioned earlier in this post. I recognise in myself the danger of firing off self righteous and intemperate posts which do neither myself and those I am writing about much good. I shudder to think about some of what I have written and then deleted before hitting the publish button.

As it happens I have only published one post on my blog since Christmas and to be honest I haven’t missed it as much as I thought I would.

While Doug Chaplin chipped in with a very personal post covering similar territory.

Meanwhile, a popular Christian blog has just shut up shop prompting a commentator to write:

A good decision. As I said to you recently, I think the halcyon days of blogging are long over and now many are just a vehicle for crackpots and the politically disenfranchised who can’t get their odious (and often dangerous) political and social views broadcast by any other medium. What’s more, I’ve noted that few of my friends have ever heard of blogs! I think only a tiny proportion of the internet using public actually read them – and if you notice, on many blogs, over time the people commenting actually change with fairly rapid regularity – and many of those are just as weird as authors of the blogs.

I sometimes think the nasty adage ‘Those who can do, those who can’t teach…’ can be applied to much in the blogging sphere: ‘Those who can, lead their lives in all its richness and with all its challenges – happey to live and let live; those who don’t and can’t, write blogs…’. I don’t think that would have been true a few years ago, but I think it is becoming true now…

Whoa – that’s me put in my place!

With this in mind, I must admit that I’ve been wondering about the future of Kouyanet. This blog is around eight years old, which in the scheme of things is pretty good going and we still manage to post most days.

However, Kouyanet has a fairly distinct niche and it is getting harder to find new and interesting things to say. While I try to avoid getting fixated on statistics (especially that my blog is more popular than yours – blog ranking stuff), I have noticed that we are generally getting fewer readers than we did a year or so ago. Is that significant?

I suspect that Kouyanet will keep on going, partly because I enjoy writing (though it can be a chore trying to think up a subject for a blog post), but also because I still don’t see many blogs occupying the same niche that we do. In the end, I really believe that the work we are involved in is one of the most important things happening in the Christian world today. It doesn’t get the same press as major Christian conferences or the latest initiative from some celebrity or other, but it matters and we have to keep talking about it!

 

Why I’m Not Quoting John 3:16

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Over the last few days, I’ve noticed that lots of people have posted the words of John 3:16 on Twitter or on Facebook. Without wishing to sound heretical, I do find myself wondering what the point of this is.

I’m more than happy to acknowledge that John 3:16 is a wonderful verse of Scripture and it captures a central theme of the Gospel very well. Then again, Colossians 1:21 also captures the central theme of the Gospel as does Romans 1:16 and a number of other verses. I often wonder why John seems to get a better press than other writers – but that’s a question for another time.

My problem is that I’m not convinced that the words of John 3:16 (or the other verses I’ve mentioned) actually mean very much to most people today. Christians may understand this passage and find it very simple and straightforward, but it relies on a back-story which is simply not shared by most people in our culture today.

It could be that reading this verse might prompt people to ask some questions of it: Why are people perishing? How does God sending his Son give people eternal life? What is eternal life anyway and why would anyone want it?

However, I suspect that it just comes across to most people as something weird that Christians do.

As I wrote in another context:

Witnessing to Jesus is pointing people to a person so that they can come to know him for themselves. It isn’t about simple slogans – even if they are taken from the Bible. Holding up a placard saying “John 3:16″ at a sporting event is not witness; it just blocks the view for the guy behind you.

 

Women and Leadership in the Church

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The question of the role of women in Church leadership is one which gets a lot of airing both in Christian circles and in the wider press. However, it’s one that we rarely touch on here at Kouyanet. This is mainly because it isn’t an issue which impinges directly onto our areas of interest. However, when I came across this piece by Onesimus, I decided that I had to post a link to it. There are a couple of points of interest: it is written by an Orthodox scholar based in Kenya (though with an evangelical background), but most importantly it takes a slant on the question that I’ve never seen before.

A few thoughts on Church ‘leadership’ as we find it in the New Testament.  First we must understand that ‘leadership’ is not a New Testament word; it’s a modern word.  Leadership implies authority, initiative, direction, management and control.  In many ways, leadership is a power word, and assumes a perspective on the world around us and takes on a certain posture and demands a certain course of action.  Leadership is a man’s word and its context describes a man’s context.  Today churches of all kinds have seminars on ‘leadership’. We give our shepherds three easy steps on being a more effective leader.  So many of our churches are so large that we need our ‘leaders’ to become more effective managers.  All of this is intended to enable our churches to function as effective institutions.  But none of this is found in our New Testament.  In fact, the emphasis throughout, indeed the direct teaching of Jesus himself and the apostles takes us in the exact opposite direction.

Jesus’ followers were to be different.  They were not to be like certain Gentiles, who lived to lord it over people.  Nor were they to be like certain Jews who were keen to maintain the perks of position and power.  Instead, Jesus’ followers were to be different, known for putting the needs of others before their own, known for being like slaves in their readiness to do whatever for whoever was needy, known for being like Jesus himself.  ‘If I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.  For I have set you an example that you also should do as I have done to you.’ (John 13:14-15)  In this Jesus leads by example.  He takes on the posture of a slave, and for those homes too humble for a slave, the posture of a woman.
Immediately after Jesus offers the disciples the bread of his body and the cup of his blood, a quarrel breaks out as to which one of them should be the one in charge over the rest of them. ‘Jesus said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those who exercise authority over them call themselves Benefactors.  But you are not to be like that.  Instead, the greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves.  For who is greater, the one is at the table or the one who serves?  Is it not the one who is at the table?  But I am among you as one who serves.’ (Luke 22:25-27)  This is only one of several examples that I could point to where the disciples import their cultural understanding of leadership into what Jesus is calling them to do and be, only to have Jesus present them with an alternative vision of what it means to be his people that is so radical and unexpected that his disciples simply cannot fathom it.
I wish to suggest that it isn’t just the disciples who had trouble fathoming Jesus’ vision for discipleship and for the community of disciples that would be known by his name.  Every generation of Christian church has struggled with the profound temptation to import the surrounding culture’s understanding of leadership and authority into the church.  I want to suggest that when one looks at the historical record, one finds that the Church has repeatedly taken the easier road and abandoned Jesus’ blueprint in favor of the way it’s always been done.  The evidence for this can be seen everywhere throughout the history of the Church to the present day.  At almost every point, the church and her ministers look nothing like what Jesus was talking about and calling his followers to be and do.  The discrepancy is simply shocking.

If you wan’t to know how this is applied to the question of women’s ministry, read the whole article.

Mission in Today’s World

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This quote comes from a lecture by the ever excellent David Smith.

However, it is important to notice that while the position just described may appear anachronistic, it is attractive to many Christians who find themselves confused and bewildered by the tensions and contradictions that exist in a time of transition. It is not easy to live between paradigms at a point when the old model no longer works and the new one has not yet emerged. A strategy of mission that assures anxious Christians that nothing has really changed, that Christian conquest of the world remains assured, and that with one final push we can actually precipitate the end of all things and the return of the Lord, obviously has power to reassure the troubled. Thus, when a highly respected missionary strategist writes that the ‘tide of the gospel has risen and flowed over two thirds of the earth, and is lapping at the one third where the final bastions and citadels of Satan’s kingdom have yet to be broken down’, it is tempting to accept such an analysis since it confirms that nothing has really changed in the world and the inherited paradigm of mission can be retained. Sadly, analyses of this kind rest upon nineteenth-century assumptions that involve the presupposition that the contemporary West is an area immersed in the gospel tide, while peoples in the so-called 10/40 window are under satanic domination to a degree found nowhere else on the planet. The cities of Accra, Delhi and Beijing are thus classified as ‘citadels of Satan’; London, Berlin, even Las Vegas, are not viewed as legitimate missionary territory since they are located in areas that have been ‘evangelised’. Whatever else may be said about such an approach, it is difficult to see how it connects with the real world we know from daily experience at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Read the lecture and then buy the book.

Time to Sponsor Me!

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Eddie marathon 250

I’m a somewhat overweight bloke in my mid fifties who is planning to run the London marathon in 2013. I’ll be honest, a slice of this is because I want to see if I can actually do it, but it also gives me the opportunity to raise some money for a cause I believe passionately in.

Samaritan’s Purse is an international reliefe and development organisation that works through local churches to proclaim and demonstrate the love of God amongst communities in need in 18 countries across Africa, Eastern Europe and Central Africa.

My aim is to raise £3,000 towards providing drinking water and sanitation for some of the world’s neediest people through the Turn on the Tap campaign. A few basic facts might help you understand why I see this as so important:

  • The weight of water that women in Africa and Asia carry on their heads is commonly 20kg, the same as the average UK airport luggage allowance.
  • The average person in the developing world uses 10 litres of water every day, less than what we use to flush the toilet with just once.
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  • Diarrhoea kills more children every year than AIDS, malaria and measles combined. 
  • In developing nations, approximately 90 percent of sewage systems are being emptied into rivers, lakes, and nearby streams that communities use for drinking water.
  • 1.8 million people die every year from diarrhoeal diseases (including cholera); 90% are children under 5, mostly in developing countries.

Those who know me, know that I’ve spent my adult life working to provide the marginalised people of the world access to the Scriptures and education in their mother tongue. These same people are very often the ones who don’t have clean water or basic sanitation – I hope my pounding the footpaths of High Wycombe and London will inpsire you to help me to help them.

Please donate generously.

Tolkien, Shakespeare and the Bible

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I’m a great fan of Lord of the Rings. It’s a phenomenal book and I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve read right through it. I thoroughly enjoy dipping into Middle Earth, immersing myself in the world of elves, ents and hobbits. However, much I enjoy Tolkien’s creation, I never actually mistake it for reality. I sit by the fire and visit Middle Earth for a wee while, but when I put the book back I am quickly back into the reality of my life. Fiction is smaller than we are. It is a subset of our lives, something we can dip into and then quickly come out of it again. One of the reasons that fiction is so limited is that the stories are finished. Many people have wanted to write a follow up to Lord of the Rings, but in truth, the stories were finished forever when Tolkienn died. The story of the Bible is not like that, it isn’t finished yet. Don’t get me wrong, the Bible itself is written and can’t be added to, but the story it tells is still going on.

Imagine that you have gone to watch a Shakespeare play and have got really immersed in the story. Suddenly, about half an hour before the end, William Shakespeare himself strides onto the stage and tells the actors to stop. Then he addresses the audience, you, and says; “now it’s your turn. I want you to write and act out the next part of the play. When you have done that, the ending will be played out”. In many ways, this is what the Bible is like, because we are still living in the story.  God hasn’t stopped doing the things he did in the Bible and as we get to grips with the story, the story grows.  The Book of Acts ends Paul in prison in Rome but the growth of the church and the work of the Spirit didn’t stop there. We are still living in the Book of Acts. When you read The Lord of the Rings, you never actually get to meet Gandalf.  However, when you read the Bible, you encounter the central character and you start to learn that the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob is also your God.  The experiences that Abraham and Isaac and Jacob lived through are repeated in our lives as we grow to know, love and serve God.  The Bible story goes on with us as participants.

A Kenyan Pastor Reflects on America Mission Practice

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You have an amazing capacity to resolve problems. Now it’s a great thing about Americans; the ability to innovate and to resolve problems. The downside of that is that when you come to our context, you don’t know how to live with our problems. you see our poverty. You see our need. You see the places we’re hurting. And you have a great compassion to come and solve us, but life can’t be solved that way. Many times well-intentioned Americans will come into our context and they try to fix my life. You can’t fix my life! What I need is a brother who comes and gives me a shoulder to cry on and gives me a space to express my pain, but doesn’t try to fix me. When Jesus comes into the world he does not try to fix all the poverty, all the sickness, all the need, the political situation. He allows that to be, but he speaks grace and he speaks salvation and redemption within that context because there is a greater hope than this life itself. Now this tendency to fix it has become a real issue so that some of the reserve we feel as Africans or as two-third worlders is so many people have come to fix us that O’ Lord, please don’t bring another person to fix us. We have been fixed so many times we are in a real mess now. Please allow us to be us. Allow us to find God and to find faith in the reality of our need.

Pastor Oscar Muriu from Mission’s Dilemma, quoted in We Are Not the Hero by Jean Johnson (p.12).

I suspect that these remarks are true of Western mission practice in general, not just Americans.

Don’t Just Listen

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Here is my sermon from Christ Church Flackwell Heath on James 1:22-25.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 19:12 — 2.7MB) | Embed

A Gross Generalisation about Denominations

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Free Church people sing better than Anglicans, but Anglicans do responsive readings and prayers better than Free Church people.

This is not a value judgement, just a simple observation from spending the last few years visiting a many, many different churches. There are some exceptions to the rule, but not many.