Wow, am I behind!
The last blogpost here was a month ago, and the last Facebook post almost as long . . . an eternity on social media!
And the most unforgiveable sin, I even found unpublished blog comments that have been waiting moderation for weeks! Sorry folks, didn't know they were there. I was so used to not having any that my expectations were set way too low!
Just a little introduction for now--first of all, what's been keeping me was primarily a research project for our agency on Global South Partnering--in other words, how do we best interact and integrate our brothers and sisters from the less 'developed' countries (well, they may be poorer in terms of $, but read Rev. 3:17 some time and tell me which countries are really the developed ones!) into our existing teams. Kind of a dumb question, in a way, because they are already there, in fact, they've been there for years. But we want to include them more, and we need to think more about how to best do that.
One way to do it is to just let them be who they are, which is often to be the most effective evangelists among their own people--or at least until some key leaders really make the Gospel their own, it seems to remain a foreign 'religion' instead of an indispensable Life. But one thing our research told us is that there aren't really any set 'roles' for any of us to play. It just seems to boil down to being what God made us to be, and doing it where He leads us to go.
To say that our 'Global South Partners' are the best evangelists, and us Global North people should be trainers seems to me to be a whole lot of hubris (at least on the part of the latter). Do we really know that much about what we're training for? Or maybe I'm speaking out of my own brief experience last year in India, but I have this idea that what is often needed most is simply being there.
Not building anything, not necessarily running something, and not even necessarily training anyone. I really wanted our partners to get the sense that they are 'somebody', and they don't need Western money, Western education, or Western anything to do something significant, they just need the Holy Spirit--and the community of God's Spirit that He calls together.
Let me think some more about it, and I'll let you know if I have any more bits of 'wisdom' from the 100 page+ paper that the four of us (there were three colleagues helping me) spent the last four months working on. What I'm curious about is whether our field practitioners find anything helpful in it. Right now we're waiting on their feedback to finish it, and then we're supposed to have a document we can use in discussing the subject for a good part of this year.
It's a subject we can't afford to get wrong, because the Good News is about people from everywhere going to everywhere.
In the meantime, speaking of everywhere, could you please pray for 'Raymond' -- my friend reaching out to Muslims in a US prison. I haven't heard anything from him in more than four weeks, and he normally contacts me at least twice a week by phone--and an e-mail or two in between. Anything could have happened--US prisons are not nice places, but I can only leave him in His Hands. I can't contact him--it only works from his end, so in the meantime, I pray for him often every day.
See you here again soon . . . .
By the way--what is the next step up from 'Global'? I was just reflecting on that with one of the above-mentioned colleagues today. We were (well, I guess it was just me) wondering that, if a team of astronauts does go to Mars, what will be the next phase above 'Global'? 'Solar systemical'? Any ideas?
U.S. Director
The last blogpost here was a month ago, and the last Facebook post almost as long . . . an eternity on social media!And the most unforgiveable sin, I even found unpublished blog comments that have been waiting moderation for weeks! Sorry folks, didn't know they were there. I was so used to not having any that my expectations were set way too low!
Just a little introduction for now--first of all, what's been keeping me was primarily a research project for our agency on Global South Partnering--in other words, how do we best interact and integrate our brothers and sisters from the less 'developed' countries (well, they may be poorer in terms of $, but read Rev. 3:17 some time and tell me which countries are really the developed ones!) into our existing teams. Kind of a dumb question, in a way, because they are already there, in fact, they've been there for years. But we want to include them more, and we need to think more about how to best do that.
One way to do it is to just let them be who they are, which is often to be the most effective evangelists among their own people--or at least until some key leaders really make the Gospel their own, it seems to remain a foreign 'religion' instead of an indispensable Life. But one thing our research told us is that there aren't really any set 'roles' for any of us to play. It just seems to boil down to being what God made us to be, and doing it where He leads us to go.
To say that our 'Global South Partners' are the best evangelists, and us Global North people should be trainers seems to me to be a whole lot of hubris (at least on the part of the latter). Do we really know that much about what we're training for? Or maybe I'm speaking out of my own brief experience last year in India, but I have this idea that what is often needed most is simply being there.
Not building anything, not necessarily running something, and not even necessarily training anyone. I really wanted our partners to get the sense that they are 'somebody', and they don't need Western money, Western education, or Western anything to do something significant, they just need the Holy Spirit--and the community of God's Spirit that He calls together.
Let me think some more about it, and I'll let you know if I have any more bits of 'wisdom' from the 100 page+ paper that the four of us (there were three colleagues helping me) spent the last four months working on. What I'm curious about is whether our field practitioners find anything helpful in it. Right now we're waiting on their feedback to finish it, and then we're supposed to have a document we can use in discussing the subject for a good part of this year.
It's a subject we can't afford to get wrong, because the Good News is about people from everywhere going to everywhere.
In the meantime, speaking of everywhere, could you please pray for 'Raymond' -- my friend reaching out to Muslims in a US prison. I haven't heard anything from him in more than four weeks, and he normally contacts me at least twice a week by phone--and an e-mail or two in between. Anything could have happened--US prisons are not nice places, but I can only leave him in His Hands. I can't contact him--it only works from his end, so in the meantime, I pray for him often every day.
See you here again soon . . . .
By the way--what is the next step up from 'Global'? I was just reflecting on that with one of the above-mentioned colleagues today. We were (well, I guess it was just me) wondering that, if a team of astronauts does go to Mars, what will be the next phase above 'Global'? 'Solar systemical'? Any ideas?
U.S. Director
No comments:
Post a Comment