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An invitation to The Justice Conference – Phoenix Simulcast

December 26, 2012 — 3 Comments

justice-sign

One of the highlights of 2012 for Katie and me was the opportunity to attend The Justice Conference in Portland in February. We loved the chance to hear from provocative and thoughtful speakers (my notes are here), to participate in the topical pre-conference breakouts, to mill around in the exhibit hall, to catch up with friends new and old, and simply to experience Portland’s weirdness.

In 2013 (February 22 and 23, to be precise), the conference is moving across the country to Philadelphia, and once again the lineup is top-notch. For those who can make the trek – and for those already near the Philly area – it’ll be well worth your time to be there in person.

But for many others who don’t have the time, the money, or the inclination to travel, there’s great news: the conference will also be simulcast to cities across North America, including Phoenix! I happen to be coordinating the Phoenix simulcast, so if you live in this neck of the woods, I’d like to invite you to come (and to help us spread the word).

When? The simulcast will be live, corresponding to the main conference’s schedule, with two sessions Friday evening (the 22nd) and seven more on Saturday (the 23rd).

Who? The jaw-dropping list of speakers includes:

Where? The Phoenix simulcast will be held at New City Church (4331 N. Central Ave), conveniently located in Phoenix along the light rail and, as a matter of utmost importance, just a stone’s throw from Lux Coffee.

TJC_Simulcast_NoYear_Pos_RGBHow Much? All the basic info is available at the conference’s simulcast page, including pricing and the registration form. If you can, I’d recommend taking advantage of the Holiday Rate available through the end of the year (that’s next Monday!). We don’t know how quickly it’ll sell out, but space is somewhat limited, so please do register sooner than later.

If you have any questions, feel free to email me, tweet me, message me, or call me (if you’re privy to my number, that is).

All registration will happen through the conference’s site (here’s that link again), but we’ve also created a Facebook event page to help us (and you) spread the word. Please join us!

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Repaso: October 5, 2012

October 5, 2012 — Leave a comment

1. Thinking as Christians in an election year
Stephanie Summers and Steve Monsma write this timely essay for Q Ideas:

Great are the dangers of dishonoring our Lord and being used by political operatives more worldly wise and cynical than we are. Instead, we must practice slow politics: renewing our minds and making every thought obedient to Christ by careful study and deliberate thinking about our aims before we act. In this essay we focus on two basic, underlying, biblically grounded truths and how they lead to what we term “principled pluralism.” Together, these truths lay what we are convinced is the foundation for a thoughtful, God-honoring approach to the political realm.

2. Creating places where people can flourish
The architect David Greusel was interviewed for the Faith & Leadership blog from the Duke Divinity School:

From ballparks to churches, architecture has a significant impact on people’s lives and should therefore be about the creation of places where people can flourish, said David Greusel, an architect who specializes in the design of public buildings. Unfortunately, much architecture today, both sacred and secular, has not been about human flourishing, Greusel said. Instead, architecture in general has been about originality at the expense of tradition, while church architecture has been marked by mediocrity born of pragmatism.

3. Discipleship for faithful service in the city
David Kim of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York explores how the church can best disciple her people for faithful service in the city:

One quickly discovers that there are, in the geographic space of this one city, two realities representing two very different loves—eloquently stated by Augustine as the “City of God” and the “City of Man.” There is common grace and antithesis in New York City, and it is critical for the church in fulfilling the great commission to prepare her people to engage this fearfully and wonderfully made city. Discipleship, rooted and flowing out of the gospel of Jesus Christ, must find its mature expression in the engagement of our world, taking seriously the sin and grace that pervades every inch of our world.

4. Monkey bars of the kingdom
Kyle Bennett invites us to spend more time at the park:

Parks force us to truly interact with others in and as a community. Those we meet at the park are created in the image of God. We were created and called to interact with them and live with them. Sin doesn’t change anything in this regard. We must learn to live with them as creatures of our God, even if they are morally bankrupt individuals, incompetent parents, obnoxious neighbors, unfaithful friends, or irresponsible citizens. This can be the space for us to practice what we preach. It can be the place for testing, implementing, and applying love of our neighbor or enemy.

5. FLW and PHX in the NYT
Off and on over the past couple months, Katie and I have been doing a Frank Lloyd Wright architecture tour, checking out the many homes and other buildings he created iaround Phoenix. It all began when we learned that one of the homes he designed was in danger of demolition, and we wanted to see it while it lasted. The story got picked up by the New York Times this week:

It’s hard to say which is more startling. That a developer in Phoenix could threaten — by Thursday, no less — to knock down a 1952 house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Or that the house has until now slipped under the radar, escaping the attention of most architectural historians, even though it is one of Wright’s great works, a spiral home for his son David.

6. Skateistan
This is a fascinating nine-minute short film called Skateistan: To Live And Skate Kabul, following the lives of young skateboarders in Kabul (thanks to @talaazar for the link).

SKATEISTAN: TO LIVE AND SKATE KABUL from Diesel New Voices on Vimeo.

Repaso is intended as a thought-provoking compilation of news and commentary from the past week related to the intersections of faith, development, justice and peace. As always, I welcome your thoughts on any of the links and ideas in this roundup!

[Photo credit: The David and Gladys Wright House in Phoenix, by Scott Jarson via nytimes.com]

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The debated merits of short-term mission trips and one-time service projects

July 3, 2012 — 1 Comment

In the past couple of weekly roundups, I’ve included links to a recent three-part series by Darren Carlson of Training Leaders International on the pros and cons of the short-term mission trip phenomenon, as well as some hints at a better way forward. As it happens, Christianity Today took up the topic in June as well, devoting its Village Green opinion section to three different perspectives.

Those who have read When Helping Hurts (my thoughts on the revised edition soon) or Toxic Charity (thoughts here) have been forced to consider the sometimes less-than-wonderful outcomes of well-intended service projects and mission trips. Some come away from those kinds of books feeling paralyzed, afraid to do anything at all. Others dig in their heels, stubbornly refusing to change course. Neither, obviously, is the right way to go, as the authors of those books do make fairly clear.

So, what did CT’s three guest columnists have to say? Here are my summaries:

  • Wheaton anthropology professor Brian Howell says churches “should abandon most travel-intensive ‘projects.’” He’s concerned with travel that emphasizes relationships and learning, and urges us not to forget needs closer to home.
  • David Livermore, a “cultural intelligence” guru, says the key to good short-term trips is for leaders to set clear objectives that make sense for everyone involved.
  • Finally, Trinity’s Robert Priest argues that international trips and local service projects don’t need to be mutually exclusive.

The fact of the matter is that the number of short-term mission participants continues to rise (confirmed both by actual studies and by perusing Facebook photos this time of year), and increasing numbers of evangelicals are getting involved locally in service projects. As far as I’m concerned, these are positive developments, taken overall. Despite the potential of both to do harm if not done well, they can also be mutually enriching experiences for everyone involved. But they need to be done wisely. I agree with Howell, who emphasizes relationships and learning. I agree with Livermore on the importance of having clear objectives. And I agree with Priest that we shouldn’t have to choose between local projects and international trips.

If I were to add my two cautionary cents, I’d say it’s important to be realistic about what we can actually expect to come out of a short-term trip. In the economy of the kingdom, there is very little that can be accomplished during a two-week trip or during an afternoon at the local park. Real change takes time. Lots of time. Often, the one who goes to serve is the one who is impacted most positively. We need to be honest about that.

We also need to be honest about the fact that a short-term trip is a largely artificial experience. What happens in the weeks, months, and years ahead is the true measure of impact. And we should examine our motivations for participating: is it for the accolades we’ll receive at church? Is it for the spiritual buzz we’ll feel? Is it mostly to get a new profile pic with an orphan? Is it because of a resident god-complex (to borrow Jayakumar Christian‘s incisive and helpful term)?

Our motivations may never be 100% pure, and we may never be completely sure of the results of our participation. That’s reality. While all of this should give us pause and lead us to listen better, and to think and pray more deeply, we shouldn’t use it as justification for our apathy and selfishness. Following Jesus is about faithfulness, which is ultimately impossible when we play it safe and bury our treasure in the sand.

[Image credit: managedministries.com]

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Christian faithfulness in a context of violence, poverty, and injustice

July 2, 2012 — Leave a comment

Nearly 25 years ago, Samuel Escobar and John Driver co-authored a now-out-of-print book called Christian Mission and Social Justice (Herald). Both authors are part of the Anabaptist tradition, and both, not surprisingly, have spent a lot of time serving in Latin America at the crossroads of Christian mission and social justice. The book presents a bit of an overview of different Christian traditions in Latin America while offering a distinctly Mennonite perspective on events in the region. It’s a fairly quick read, and I found it really interesting. The authors write:

It is strange that ‘mission and social justice’ should be a subject of contention and that the two words should now so widely be considered as unreconcilable [sic] opposites. The curse of Protestant world mission in the past quarter-century has been polarization.

I think there’s a lot of merit to that critique, and I’m sympathetic to their claim that Mennonites “are in a key position to reconcile the conflicting forces.” I’m not part of the Mennonite tradition, but I have friends who are, and I have a lot of respect for the ways they are serving around the world, often inconspicuously but certainly no less meaningfully than the rest of us. Especially inspiring to me is the great work they’re doing in the western highlands of Guatemala.

Last year I read a book about Christian citizenship in postwar Guatemala, which raised some really important questions about what it means to be a faithful Christian in a violent, poor, unjust context. Escobar and Driver touch on these themes as well, summarizing some of the key contemporary social justice approaches adopted by Christians in Latin America. They’re writing in the late 1970s, mind you, but I think this survey is still instructive for us today. For the purposes of this overview I’ve given each option a short name along with a very brief summary of it.

  1. The just revolution option. Some liberation theologians took this view, going so far as to advocate violence in extreme situations, roughly akin to just war theory.
  2. The guerrilla option. Taking the first option a bit further, this one takes up arms with a near “holy war” mentality, disregarding any ethical or pragmatic scrutiny.
  3. The nonviolent struggle option. Without taking up arms, this option emphasizes nonviolence as the means to social change, but refusing to sit idly by in the face of violent oppression.
  4. The sociopolitical collaboration option. Some, especially Protestants, were focused exclusively on church growth and evangelism, and for the sake of stability, aligned themselves with those in power — regardless of government-sponsored abuses.
  5. The gradual change option. Protestants and Catholics alike took this view, emphasizing “family values” as a means of transforming the country slowly, without endangering the power structure.

Escobar and Driver go on to describe three main ways Mennonites in Latin America had been responding to these events in actual practice: (1) resorting to violence despite official pacifist views; (2) a privatizing/spiritualizing approach; and (3) active nonviolent social protest. They then propose general principles for a “strategy of struggle for social justice consistent with the Anabaptist vision of the church.” This vision emphasizes the church as a messianic community that itself bears witness to the coming kingdom, together living lives modeled after the life and teaching of Jesus, whose primary posture was that of a servant. Again, while I’m not part of the Mennonite tradition, I think there’s a lot of merit to this vision.

I know that for many evangelicals Christian mission and social justice are two very different things, and it would be considered very dangerous to conflate the two. I agree that distinguishing between evangelism and social justice is important (they’re related, in my view, but not identical). When you consider a region like Latin America or a country like Guatemala, however, you simply can’t focus on mission alone without also taking a stance on the justice issues among your neighbors. Seeking to do so after all, is itself a stance, probably in the vicinity of option #4 or #5. We should at least be able to articulate why the option we’re taking in practice is in fact the most faithful approach as we understand it.

None of this is easy to figure out, and I have no interest in prescribing how anyone should approach the very weighty issues they’ll encounter in particular violent, poor, unjust contexts. But it seems to me our churches and seminaries and Christian universities and mission agencies and development organizations need to make room for these kinds of conversations, seeing these not as distractions from the real work, but as matters of urgent importance if we’re to be faithful to the God we serve and to be good neighbors where he has placed us.

If you were living in a country with death squads and bombings, with mistrust and pervasive fear, how would you respond as a Christian? How do those five options sit with you? What about the Mennonite vision? What does your own tradition have to say about the relationship between mission and social justice?

[Photo credit: "Jocotenango, Guatemala A Holy Week processions passes village walls marked with 18th Street gang graffiti. Copyright © Donna DeCesare, 2001" via destinyschildren.org]

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Radical discipleship: John Stott’s final charge

June 12, 2012 — 2 Comments

I think rather highly of the late John Stott for a number of reasons. First, there’s his longtime involvement with The Lausanne Movement, including his role as “chief architect” of the Lausanne Covenant. I think we can all still learn a great deal from his understanding of the relationship between evangelism and social action. And I’m grateful for the way he devoted so much of his life work to the church in the Global South through Langham Partnership. Then again, maybe my interest is really just a case of American Evangelical Anglophilia.

The Radical Disciple: Some Neglected Aspects of Our Calling (IVP) was Stott’s final book, as he said it would be, calling it a “valedictory message” to his readers. He explains the choice of words in the title by emphasizing that being a disciple of Christ has to do with being under discipline and “implies the relationship of pupil to teacher.” Disciple, then, is a stronger word than Christian. And radical, which comes from the Latin word for root, emphasizes that our commitment isn’t haphazard, flimsy, or temporary. Radical disciples are rooted ones, under the discipline of Christ. And this book challenges us on our tendency to want nothing to do with that kind of life:

Our common way of avoiding radical discipleship is to be selective: choosing those areas in which commitment suits us and staying away from those areas in which it will be costly.

While many of Stott’s readers have certainly been following Christ for decades, others — like the 18,000 or so who’ll attend Urbana 12 later this year (which always features a great selection of Stott’s work) — are much younger in their faith. One way or another, I think all of us are prone to the sort of selective discipleship Stott is concerned about.

Some — particularly older readers — may be a bit uncomfortable about the chapter on creation care as an essential aspect of discipleship, dealing with questions of population, depletion of resources, waste disposal, and climate change. Based on the biblical teaching that the earth is created by God and has been entrusted to us as its stewards, Stott urges us to avoid the twin errors of either deifying the earth or exploiting it. Rather, he says, we’re called to cooperate with God to conserve the good creation and to develop its resources for the common good.

Younger evangelicals (like myself) are probably more likely to affirm the importance of creation care, but I have a hunch that many of us haven’t really considered how creation care fits into God’s cosmic mission to redeem all things. So even those who are already inclined to “go green” could learn a lot from Stott on this. If creation care truly is part of discipleship, it can’t be reduced to a passing fad. Remember, discipleship is costly; that’s something those who have been Christians for a while know very well.

If the environmental chapter seems to border on the trendy, the other “neglected aspects of our calling,” it seems to me, are anything but popular. They are, however, all essential to biblical teaching, to Christ’s radical call to follow him:

He calls us to nonconformity under his Lordship, ruling out escapism and conformism as available options.

He calls us to Christlikeness in his incarnation, his service, his love, his endurance, and his mission.

He calls us to grow, but to be far more concerned with depth and than with impressive numbers.

He calls us to simplicity as a community and in our personal lifestyles, allowing us to better respond to the needs of the poor and giving credibility to our evangelistic witness.

He calls us to a way of life that holds in balance “our comprehensive identity” as followers of Christ: both individual discipleship and corporate fellowship, both worship and work, and both pilgrimage and citizenship. 

He calls us to dependence instead of rugged individualism, recognizing that we’re intended to belong to a family and to a church, both characterized by “mutual burdensomeness.”

Finally, he calls us to a Christian understanding of death, not as something to be ignored or feared, but as the road to life — “one of the profoundest paradoxes” we’ll ever encounter.

I think it’s clear that the multifaceted calling of discipleship doesn’t come easy to any of us, just as I’m sure it didn’t come easy to John Stott. But it’s our common calling, and it’s attainable. We’re called to follow Christ, and we’re given the grace to follow. Fortunately, grace takes many shapes and sizes, and I’m convinced the help we need is often found at least partially in those around us and in those who see the world from a different vantage point.

I for one hope my generation will do better at setting an example in speech, in conduct,  in love, in faith, and in purity – beginning with myself. And I pray we’ll humbly, eagerly and intentionally seek to learn from those Christians who have been at it longer than we have — even if they drive a gas-guzzling Buick instead of a Prius.

[Photo credit: John Yates via digdeep1962.blogspot.com]

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