Christmas Greetings

The birth of Jesus is about promises God kept.

God continues to keep His promises to provide a way out for people, like each of us, who have trouble keeping ours.

Humankind is in kind of a mess right now, but God keeps on fulfilling His promises.

During this year, we have seen him keep promises to our family, and we look expectantly to him to see how He will make good on his promise to bless all of mankind.

May Christmas be a time in which you see God at work, actively fulfilling promises to do good to all those who need and depend on Him.

Tim & Lois

Greetings from New Zealand where we are visiting Emily and Erlo right now.

2011 Family News at Christmas

Lois and I are in New Zealand for Christmas.  We will spend Christmas with our daughter Emily who lives in Auckland.












Emily met Erlo Jones when they were both teaching English in Korea, and they got married this last April in Koh Samui, Thailand.

Erlo is a Kiwi (a New Zealand citizen, born in South Africa), and they both found jobs here in New Zealand.  Our first few days here with them have been a wonderful time for us to learn about their lives, and to discover some of the beauty of this lovely country.  We will spend Christmas with them, and with Erlo's parents in Rotorua.

Before we left, we celebrated Christmas with our daughter Angela, son-in-law Shaun and little Parker.  They live close by in San Jose, California and we enjoy visiting them regularly and getting grandparent time with Parker.




We will miss spending Christmas with Marian, this year.  She will be coming to California from Madison, WI, where she is working on her dissertation, but we will only catch one day with her.   She leaves just one day after we get home.

But we did have a great time with her at Thanksgiving.  Some friends loaned us their cabin in Arnold, CA, for us to spend a week with the family.  Lois' mom, Eleanore Holderman, joined us for the whole week.
Tim's mom, Pat Halls, continues living at Plymouth Village in Redlands, CA.  He gets down to visit her every month or so.  Just before we left for New Zealand he went there to deliver a gift that Lois made, and that made her very happy!

One more very important thing.  We celebrated 35 years of marriage this last summer, with a visit to Montana.  In addition to Glacier, Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, we visited four universities in Montana.

We are grateful for God's incredible and abundant generosity and mercy toward us.

And we are grateful to all of you who are part of our lives and for your prayers and support.

WEA Mission Commission conducts 11th Global Consultation

The first two weeks of November I was in Germany.  Take a look at the pictures on my Facebook site.  I really enjoyed spending time with colleagues, and long-time friends from various parts of the world.  I also enjoyed thinking with them and others about the way God works in our world, and how he gets some people to live for the good of the World, and encourage people to follow Jesus.

Perhaps I will get a moment to blog about that.  But I didn't want to put off any longer what I could have done in this last week or so:  give you the press release from the consultation.

From: World Evangelical Alliance

Sent: Friday, November 18, 2011

Subject: WEA Mission Commission conducts 11th Global Consultation

News Release

November 18, 2011

The Mission Commission of the WEA, conducted its 11th Global Consultation, from November 6 to 11, with 203 mission practitioners from 42 countries at Schönblick Conference Center near Stuttgart, Germany.  The theme, God’s Disturbing Mission, emphasized the developing complexity and diversity in the practice of global mission today.  At the same time it recognized that mission belongs to God (Missio Dei).  The thought that God himself might be behind disturbances in the mission agenda proved to be an invitation to seek God, read His word, strengthen relationships across diversity, and bow in worship

The reality of constantly renewing leadership was enacted as younger leaders led the Consultation from the platform.  Their perspective drew attention to what is next.  Speakers from India, Lithuania, Russia, Brazil, USA, Sri Lanka, Rwanda, Kenya, S. Korea, Sri Lanka, South Africa and the UK took part, reflecting the broad range of global perspectives.

Table groups met all week to discuss, pray and commit to paths of obedience as God spoke a fresh to move forward in mission. Afternoon “post-it” sessions identified and focused on shared concerns and explored ways of cooperation in mission practice.  The event ended around the Lord’s Table, an enactment of the global missional community gathered by Jesus from every nation, generation by generation, and sent out as the fruit of His sacrifice.  

Certain themes emerged: the challenge of developing adequate mission practice in and from contexts of complexity, uncertainty and change; and the reality of multiple approaches to mission and its practice.  

A palpable sense of mutuality and interdependence reminded all that any redefinition of ourselves and our mission must take place in a context of discipleship--of following Christ together.

The consultation was designed to shape the future of the MC itself.  The MC is governed by the Global Leadership Council (GLC), formed from its constituency.  Peter Tarantal of South Africa was elected as the new Chair. The GLC will meet in May 2012 and consider implications from the consultation for what comes next. Whatever the outcome, the consultation stands as a reminder that mission depends on God’s initiative and that he will use new and old senders to shape the future of Christian mission.  Bertil Ekström, Executive Director of the MC, looks to the future in this way: “We are on a journey together.”  

================

The WEA Mission Commission responds to the needs of national and regional mission movements around the globe. For the past 24 years, the MC has dedicated its energies to strengthening these continental and national entities, and promoting movements in nations that currently are not a significant part taking the Gospel from every nation to every nation. The MC is the only global platform that serves this important function.

The WEA is the most comprehensive and representative Evangelical body in the world today.  Established in 1846, the WEA is a movement of growing influence in the early 21st century by equipping, connecting and speaking on behalf of its global constituency.  WEA serves 129 national evangelical alliances, hundreds of associate member alliances, totaling over 600 million evangelical Christians, uniting all to transform the nations.

Novermber 2011: I am not a very good blogger!

So, I started blogging again in October, and now it is December, and no posts!

Well, it's not like I have been sitting around on my hands during November and December.   I will try to put some things up here for you to see: about COMHINA, WEA Missions Commission in Germany, Perspectives Class at Trinity Pres in Santa Ana, Thanksgiving with the Family, working on my research project, and now, Christmas and our family.

Blessings!

Moneyball: "you are solving the wrong problem".

Last Saturday, Lois and I went to see the movie Moneyball.  We highly recommend it.  We went mainly because we are Oakland A's fans who happened to be at the Oakland Coliseum the night that the A's won their 20th consecutive game.   We can still recall the exciting emotions of that night.  The A's record winning streak was at the center of the story that the movie.

The most unprecedented thing about this movie might be that I am thinking of going to see it again.  I can't remember when I watched a movie twice (my ADD won't tolerate it).

If I do go to see it again, it will be to learn more from how Billy Bean confronts a broken system. His managers are stuck.  They try, over and over again, to solve the wrong problem.  It doesn't help that, in the past, they actually had been successful.  They don't recognize that the world in which the A's must compete is no longer the same and the old strategies will no longer produce wins.

Over and over, I have found myself in broken systems, much like the one that leads Beane to quote Thomas Paine "a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right."

Billy Beane changes the A's strategy only after coming up with a new understanding the problem.   The painful and emotionally shocking language he uses to deliver it to his managers doesn't change the managers, but it frees him to begin to make the changes that transform the strategy and produce wins:
"The problem we're trying to solve is that there are rich teams, and there are poor teams. Then there's 50 feet of crap. And then there's us. It's an unfair game."


I am linked to 3 or 4 organizations and movements whose successful and fruitful histories of serving God and others show that they can produce good things.   But right now, they need to change how they are doing what they do.  The playing field has changed and they need to change their strategy.  How to see the problem in new light?

My thoughts about being a missionary

Over the last 35 years, I have been a missionary. During that time, I have learned not to lead from my missionary identity!  “Missionary” has always seemed full of possibilities for being misunderstood. 

This is why I like what we will be doing at the WEA Mission Commission (MC) Global Consultation in Swäbisch Gmünd, Germany, November 6-11. There, we will think about the missionary task while, at the same time, recognizing that missionaries ourselves might not fully understand God’s mission.  The name of the consultation--God’s Disturbing Mission--imagines God himself surprising missionaries, as we go about our business, with the question “Am I disturbing you?”  As God goes about His mission, it should be no surprise that he disrupts us and “our mission.”

This global consultation is a good place to recognize God behind the disruptions.  In part, the nature of the Mission Commission (MC) itself makes this possible. It is a global network of networks that focuses on “mission from” perhaps more than “missions to”. 

In the popular imagination, European and European-American missionaries have been the ones who go “overseas” to promote Christianity as a tool of the civilizational project.  But the MC’s “mission from” perspective informs a different imagining. It is a perspective that cannot ignore the huge shift in the geography of Christian belief during the twentieth century.  To Europeans, Christianity may seems like a religion of the past with prospects of further decline.  But, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, Christianity is a young and growing faith, made up primarily of Africans, Latin Americans and Asians who look forward to a vital future.  

This simple fact means that Christianity is starting to spread from new sites, with different agendas. This is a huge disturbance to traditional missionary practice and thinking.  Now missionaries come from multiple sites and show a remarkable diversity in their way of imagining what missionaries do.  The shift is so radical that even the most creative new missionary initiatives, if they draw from the traditional sources of personnel and finances may prove to be of marginal importance. The same practices, if done with new technologies, better promotion and broader mobilization to more places are simply ploys to mask the bankruptcy of the where the practices come from.  

The “missions to” perspective is the one I started out from 35 years ago. On the one hand we thought of missions as from just a few places, to many.  The practices, programmes and ideas that we implemented were often produced around an image of a world that was guided from the “Global North.” That image placed people like me at the center of global power and influence, not just geopolitically, but in our missionary efforts as well.  Missions was about where we could go, and changes we could produce.  A kind of arrogance was hidden behind the thought that we already knew what other people needed and that all we needed was better methods to deliver it. 

Since God wants to call attention to Jesus, rather than to us, it makes sense that he would to disturb what we thought we were doing.  He would want us to “get over” the idea that we in the global north should shape how missions is done and decide what fruit it should produce.  

Don’t get me wrong.  We are not reaching the end of the missionary responsibility of Christians in the global north.  It just means that those of us who are from the north can now learn to follow others just as we have attempted to lead them.  As we discover, in practical ways, that it is God’s Mission we can also learn about following him from people and sites other than our own.  

A consultation like this might help me get over the complications of my own missionary identity.  I think it would be great if, at this consultation, some of us can adjust to the disturbance of being pushed aside.  And if the consultation results in new definitions of “missionary” shaped in new alliances between leaders far from so-called center, I think it will open many new paths for service in which all of us can follow, for the good of the world.  Then maybe all of us would misunderstand God--himself a missionary--a little less. 

The MC Consultation is a time and space to think about how God is disturbing our traditional ways of doing mission so that His mission can be fulfilled. 

Jeremiah 14:14  The prophets (missionaries) are prophesying lies (promoting failed mission programs) in my name. I did not send them, nor did I command them or speak to them. They are prophesying (promoting) to you a lying vision, worthless divination, and the deceit of their own minds. 

What kind of place is Oakland?

Oakland has a reputation as a violent place.   It is interesting to stop to think about how Oakland has become associated with violence.  The label covers over lot's of other realities about that place.  There are lots of Oakland residents who are peaceable people.   The "bad" neighborhoods are also full of peacemakers, like my student whose story I tell below.  In Oakland, as in so many places and times the lives of the poor are threatened by the violence.  At the same time the well-to-do in the hills see themselves as the victims of the violence of the flatlands.  Even though some neighborhoods seem calm, the "good" neighborhoods also have their share of people who live off the violence.

Last month I taught a class in an Oakland church, in the part where people are identified as poor (and "illegal") and where the streets are identified as violent.  We studied together about Evangelism (good news) and Missions (reaching out, with God to change the world).  When we got to the practical part, my students helped me remember what I keep forgetting.  They amazed me! Most of them did not have much stuff, but they were rich in grace.  Their spirituality is shaped by a place that is labeled violent.   I would not have been surprised if their prayers were for God to help them survive there.  But every one of my students went beyond that simple prayer and eagerly looked for God to help them bring bring real and lasting change that would save others.  Oakland should deserve a reputation as a place of grace, courage and love!

I was particularly moved today when I read what one of my students wrote.  This version is translated from Spanish--an important language to know in Oakland--and shortened:

"I moved here 12 years ago from Central America.  At first I lived full of fear because I had heard about the crime.  I told my husband we would only stay here a short time until we could move somewhere less violent.  That all changed as I got to know my neighbors.  I have African-American, Arab, Korean, Anglo and Hispanic friends with whom I share life.

"When I looked at my city, I did see many homeless and abandoned people on the streets, gangs killing each other over colors that people wear or neighborhoods where they don't belong, young people injecting drugs on the street, single parents trying to raise their kids as best they can while working extra hours to provide them food, kids who observe daily domestic violence, and parents who drink irresponsibly and fail in their responsibilities to their kids.

"I began to ask myself, if there are so many churches here why have they not done anything to stop this?  Why don't the people look for help in the churches?

"Then I asked myself what was I doing for my community.  Was my comfort more important to me?  So I asked God to guide me and one day my pastor asked me if I would work with the young people.  So I started working with 8 in a Bible Study.  Now there are 30.  It was a challenge, but their enthusiasm, and God's help, have kept me going.

"This year I want to reach more, so I am planning to recruit 5 young people to help me by being mentors to the others, and grow the group.

"I see the need daily when I see how many kids die each day.  Almost everyday little memorials, with candles, appear on a street corner to memorialize another young person who has died.  I was greatly impacted by something I saw two months ago.  On the corner by my house, they killed a 13 year old boy, and the next week they shot two young boys--12 and 13 years old.

"These scenes are in my memory, and all that week I thought of my own boy, who is the same age, and of all the young people who are trying to survive on the streets.  Many of them think that if they get to 18 years old, they have made it.  This is the reality our neighbors live.

"God will be with me when I share the good news with these people about God's power and love.  The Bible says, "the harvest is great and the workers are few.  Pray to the Lord of the harvest that he would send out workers into the harvest" (Mt. 9:37-38)

They will be called oaks of righteousness,
   a planting of the LORD
   for the display of his splendor 

So I say, is Oakland a violent place or a place of grace.  Violence may be growing in our land, but so is grace, and people like this student of mine, come from places like Central America to and face the violence in creative ways and depending on God to make it possible and successful.

She also wrote,

"There are lots of needs, and true Christians should be people of action, not just words.  My dream is to see Christians re-establish themselves in urban areas where so many have abandoned needy people.  Those of us who already live here need to stay, no matter how difficult it might seem.  Our people need us.  They are made by God just as we are.

"On that day when we stand before God, He will ask us to give account about what we have done for our fellow man and how we have used the gifts He has given."

When I think about it, I realize that nearly all my students came to Oakland from some other country.  Though some of them don't even have the legal papers they need to be able to drive and get jobs here, they all face the violence they found here with grace, for the good of those of us who were here before them.  Someday, I would like to think more deeply about where Oakland's violence comes from and where Oakland's grace comes from.  What kind of change is is God invested in when it comes to America's (and the world's) violence?  How does he do it?

Eid holidays

This week is a special time for your Muslim neighbors.  If you get a chance, it is a great time to learn about their heritage.

http://myemail.constantcontact.com/Bay-Area-Muslims-to-Mark-End-of-Ramadan-with-Prayers.html?soid=1101295800375&aid=KXnPOet0t34

My last two blog posts: there is a connection

I forgot to mention a connection between my last two blogs--one about Emily and Erlo and the other in which I try to notice some of the global connections in a small one block radius of Mi Oficina Computer Café I often go for meetings or to do other work.

The most concrete connection is this.  The bakery at Mi Oficina made the Tres Leches cake that we served at Emily and Erlo's Wedding Reception in Oakland California.  And it was delicious!  I am posting pictures of the cake here so you can admire it.  But you can also see it on Mi Oficina's Facebook page, or if you have a meeting with me at Mi Oficina, you will notice the picture of my daughter's cake cycles up every few minutes on their digital displays of their products.



  We decided on this cake the day that Emily and Erlo took us to Korean BBQ Plus, right across the street from Mi Oficina. It gets great reviews, and it did not disappoint.  Emily and Erlo were able to introduce us to some of their favorite Korean dishes.  When we were done, we walked out of a Korean space, across a California street and into a very Latino space at Mi Oficina.    I was amazed to see how the next generation of my family felt at home in both spaces.






Before I get off the topic of connections, I think it is interesting that Mi Oficina is both active and passive in its facilitation of connections.

Regarding the active facilitation of connections this linked article recalls how someone at Mi Oficina was able to help Juan connect through chat with his mother whom he had not seen for a year.   Whenever I go there, I see how the computers they have set up there are used by their clients to connected with family and friends, many of whom presumably are somewhere in Latin America.  Those connections cross borders between nation-states, the conflicts around some of which are in the news nearly daily.

But the passive connections are interesting to watch, too.  I see friends reconnect there.  Meetings take place that bring people together with common political, social, and business interests and usually the language of the connection is Spanish, and it is over a cup of coffee.  I believe that it is without entirely realizing it, but Mi Oficina facilitates passively some interesting connections between Christians of different persuasions.  Since it is not their own place, Christians there are free to focus on following Christ.  It is not a place to promote their own programs and ministries, though there is a bulletin board and a literature table where religious and non-religious alike promote their wares.  What I especially have liked to notice has been when Catholics and Evangelicals meet each other there in the space between the tables where they have their own meetings.   Often the introductions don't need to identify each other according to party lines.  They can talk instead about serving the community.  Some do their service in secular agencies, motivated by the love of Christ, others are part of specific movements or organizations.  It is cool is to watch them notice each other and eventually meet and share stories.  I expect that the next step might be that they will make plans together.

Emily and Erlo

Our youngest daughter, Emily, lives in New Zealand with her husband, Erlo.   Here is my version of their story.

For the last two years I have watched as my daughter met, fell in love with and married the man of her dreams.  We first heard of Erlo, practically on the day they met in Seoul, Korea, while we were on vacation in Alaska.  Interestingly, we met a couple from New Zealand on that trip, and I remember how the fact that Emily had met and liked a young man from New Zealand came up often as we spent time with our new friends.  

Later that summer, Emily came home to California on her way to her best friend Bethany’s wedding in Mexico.  She told us then that she had met, in Erlo, someone very special.   And he was waiting for her  at the airport when she returned.  In December, when Emily came home from Korea for Christmas, she brought Erlo with her, and we learned to love him from the very start.  We took this picture when we took a family hike on January 1, 2010. 

Emily came to our family vacation in Hawaii, in summer 2010 without Erlo.  But the vacation was marked by talk of an upcoming wedding.  Erlo and Emily came back to California when their contracts were over in Korea and lived with us for several weeks as they prepared to go to Thailand for their wedding.  Technically, though, they got married in our living room, in our presence and in the presence of Erlo’s parents who joined us from New Zealand via Skype on March 25, 2011.   It was a very special occasion in which we and Erlo’s parents told stories to Emily and Erlo about how and when we first recognized their love for each other and we toasted to their future. 

While Erlo was here he helped me with several important landscaping tasks on our property.   Since we were blessed only with daughters, it was pretty special to me to have a son around the house for several weeks.  We all traveled to Koh Samui, Thailand during the first week of April for their wedding on the beach.  That is where we met our new extended family and developed new friendships that will last the rest of our lives.  

Emily and Erlo came back with us to California, to get their things, and for a reception for their US friends in Oakland, California on April 30.  We said goodbye as they moved to New Zealand on May 5.  We miss them very much, but we have enjoyed visiting with them by Skype and we plan to travel to New Zealand to spend their first Christmas as a married couple with them and with Erlo’s parents.  

We are looking forward to that!  Like I said above, we have learned to love Erlo and consider him just as much a part of our family as we do Emily.

Globally connected

I have been using Mi Oficina as, well, "mi oficina." It's a great place to study, stay connected with part of the Latino community in Concord, and to have meetings with people.

Mi Oficina is in a strip mall that may be only a few miles from Walnut Creek, but life here could not be more different. The food is obviously different. Lots of corn meal, and the cokes come from Mexico. More rice. Less potatoes. Lots of beans and pork. Well, no pork at the Afghan grocery store. But the freshly baked Afghan bread is to die for. The Korean Restaurant across the street arguably has spicier food than the Mexicans on this side. But it is all good!

The people and what they eat is definitely one clear indication of the international connections active in this place. In Mi Oficina, the row of computers against the back wall is often filled with people who are making video calls to all parts of Mexico and to other parts of Latin America.

On the back side of Mi Oficina there is a store that just ships packages, or remits money orders, to international destinations. The list of banks and countries that is posted on the window indicates some of the banks and where you can send money or stuff. It must have over 100 entries in two columns. I always thought that the banks on the list were banks in Latin America. Today, I noticed that two of the banks are in the Philippines. The destination bank in some Latin American countries included HSBC which once stood for Hong Kong and Singapore Bank Corporation. Today it markets itself at the "World's Local Bank." No use trying to untangle those links!

Next door to that store, they sell Ice Cream from Mexico. And next to that, they sell cheap household and party goods from China. Many of the customers are day laborers from Mexico and Central America. If you happen to have a cell phone from Mexico, you can recharge the SIM card there and pay in U$. And you can mail your purchases (of Chinese goods) to friends and family in any country of the world.

Down the way there is a Latino grocery store that sells local milk, vegetables and meat, but many of the products on the shelves are from Mexico, Central America and other parts of the world. It's not so surprising that we can get our favorite canned black beans from Guatemala, or enchilada sauce from Mexico. More surprising is that the local laundry detergent that we used to avoid when we lived in Guatemala, preferring imported Tide or All, is for sale here.

The Latino grocery store has a bakery and, clearly, the recipes are imported! Next door is the Afghan grocery store and bakery that also has imported recipes, but from the other side of the globe! Do you think they might buy their flour from the same local vendor? Does the same delivery truck stop for both shops? What language does the driver speak?

More surprising is that the Afghan grocery store, alongside the freshly baked bread, has a freezer offering "Helados Guadalajara" -- some of the best popsicles from Mexico, with flavors you probably would never find at Safeway (I might have said, "you won't find them in the United States", but this is the United States!). But the connection between the Afghan grocery store and the surrounding Latino community produced an even more interesting offer. A stand of books in Spanish. Not simply in Spanish, but books by evangelical and pentecostal authors, some Latin Americans and some Anglo Americans translated into Spanish. And published by Editorial Betania Caribe, the Latin American publisher acquired by a Bible publisher in the US. Many of the books are actually printed in Colombia by missionaries originally sent by CLC to print evangelistic literature for South America.  And they are being sold by Muslims from Afghanistan!

There are global religious connections here, too. One Mexican shopkeeper was recently converted in the Iglesia Universal del Reino de Dios, a major Brazilian church that promotes practices that many of the more established churches and denominations consider to be more pagan than Christian. A young man who walked across the border from Mexico found Jesus here, and works in a shop where you can often hear English praise music. When he is off work, you might find him studying the Bible in Spanish with people who are not from his country. Perhaps they met through a Guatemalan pastor who is employed by an Anglo church. Is this American Christianity or Latin American?

Speaking of "displaced" religious practice. When I visited Turkey, for the first time it was during the month of Ramadán, when Muslims are expected to fast all day long, and only eat after sundown and before sunrise. Now I am more aware that Ramadán is practiced by Muslim in the United States. Since this year Ramadan corresponds more or less directly with our month of August, Afghans and other Muslims in this shopping center selling and buying food and gifts for Iftar (fast-breaking after sundown). There are also Arabs here who who sell beer to the Mexican day laborers. I think they are fasting--not even drinking water--during the day. One of them is married to a Mexican. Would she also be fasting? I don't know how they manage to fast without water when the day is so hot and long and the door to their liquor store is open all day. But I suppose they know how to resist, since they sell alcohol all day every day, and they seem to resist drinking it themselves.  I suppose they would not have this problem if they were in a Muslim majority  country.

What is the influence of all this connectedness on the future of this community? What interactions take place and produce new ways of living? How do you observe connections with God?