I am writing from an air mattress at my coworkers’ house late at night. I just ate some fabulous fajitas around a table filled with laughter and shared stories after watching the sun set slowly from someone else’s backyard.
I drove home from work last Thursday night jovially saying goodnight to everyone, knowing we would probably be “hunkered down” for the next few days to ride out Hurricane Harvey and his aftermath. It felt a little exciting at first, like anticipating a snow day when I was younger and growing up in West Virginia. But over the next days, which has now turned into a week, the excitement drained away with every tornado warning, every flood warning, every flash of tragedy that unfolded from the news reports and social media.
I am back in the place of being the recipient of others’ generosity and overwhelming support. This is a familiar place for me, after living many years in Zimbabwe as a missionary and knowing that both my programs and personal finances depended on the kindness of others. When I could no longer renew my work visa and had to leave Zimbabwe, I somehow ended up at Chapelwood UMC, a large church community in Houston, Texas, as a Missions Director.
All of a sudden, the tables were turned and I was now in charge, along with my committee, of dispensing funds to hopeful missionaries and programs around the world who were just as eager as I had once been to be good stewards of what they were given. When disasters happened around the world and closer to home, Chapelwood generously donated funds and manpower in whatever way was most needed.
Over the last three years working here in Houston, I have been privileged to have other staff and members become my family. My family has also grown to include people from Haiti and Kenya and other parts of Texas. My family now includes people from Estonia and Louisiana and Costa Rica. When our family in Haiti was suffering from Hurricane Matthew, we were there. When flooding devastated Louisiana, we were there. When Kenya experienced famine from drought we were there.
Now we are the ones who are in devastation. We look out our windows and see swimming pools where parking lots should be and boats where cars used to drive.
And the emails and phone calls and social media posts pour in: from Stanley in Kenya, from Meeli in Estonia, Pastor Carlos in Weslaco, Texas and Paul in Haiti. And all over the U.S. they assure us: We are praying for you. We are sending support. We are coming.
I had to evacuate my home this morning, to join the tens of thousands of others who are now displaced. But we will be okay again one day soon because of your prayers and your presence and your gifts, service, and witness.
And because of the beautiful, compassionate, resilient people of Houston who have rallied around each other. We represent every tribe, tongue and nation here in Houston. Although we are in the midst of deep waters this week, we have also experienced a hint of heaven.
What does your church do with people who are differently abled, disabled, mentally handicapped, handicapped, or crippled? (All of those terms have been used in my thirty-odd trips around the sun.)
Do you have someone in your church who comes in a wheelchair? Do you have training for teachers and nursery workers, preschool workers and children’s ministers on how to engage kids with autism? Do you know a person with Down’s Syndrome? Are you equipped to recognize mental illness? When you offer communion, do you comment on how someone who is differently abled may access the Body and Blood of Christ?
I have two children. So far, to my knowledge, neither one is differently abled. The youngest can’t yet read; it’s possible we’ll learn she has dyslexia later on. Both are what strangers would call, “healthy.” For now, of course. A disease or tumor or accident could hit, leaving one with impaired cognition or missing an arm or with burn scars. When I was expecting my first child, I attempted to mentally prepare myself for various possibilities – miscarriage, birth defects, a disabled child. After all, there are a few pregnancy screenings most expectant mothers go through.
Growing up in North America at the end of the twentieth century during a constantly shifting linguistic atmosphere that aimed for more sensitivity, however imperfectly, meant changes in popular dialogue.
Recently a news story emerged about the drastic reduction of Down’s Syndrome in Iceland, ostensibly nearly “eliminated.” Actress Patricia Heaton stepped up and publicly challenged the portrayal of the reality: you’re not eradicating it, she said. You’re eradicating people with it. Because Iceland’s supposed “progress” wasn’t through some medical breakthrough: it was through abortion.
All those people went into camps and didn’t come out.
Life is life.
Jesus said, “let the little kids come to me.”
When someone talked about a guy born blind (in front of the man, mind you) and asked Jesus, “who sinned, this man or his parents?” Jesus challenged the notion that there was something wrong with parents of a child who was different than other children, and Jesus challenged the notion that there was something to be avoided about a person who was born with a physical limitation.
In fact, Jesus went on to clarify that the differently abled man was part of God’s inbreaking Kingdom, a specially chosen revelation of the power and love of God.
Around the same time that I read the word “fit” on the Neo-Nazi website, around the same time I saw the news out of Iceland about the approaching “eradication” of Down’s Syndrome, I happened across the video below.
Sometimes Wesleyan Methodists use the word “perfect” or “perfection.” We use it to mean, “complete in love,” “fullness of love,” “free of the desire to separate ourselves from God.” We use it to mean the kind of perfection alluded to in the Greek language of the New Testament – perfect, having met a full goal: whole, complete.
We never, ever use it to mean superior, or “fit,” or more worthy than another. All through the New Testament, Jesus encounters people whose minds or bodies work differently than other peoples’, Jesus encounters people whose minds or bodies don’t work “right,” but Jesus always sees them. Jesus makes eye contact. Jesus extends dignity. Jesus acknowledges personhood.
Zaccheus, we read, was a man “short in stature.” He may have been a little person, a human with dwarfism. Zaccheus was small, and for whatever reason, he was in a very unpopular profession. He risked ridicule by climbing up a tree to see Jesus. In the middle of the shoving crowds, Jesus looked up and made eye contact. He saw Zaccheus, he didn’t see through him. He didn’t avoid him. While Jesus is the star of the day, the big news in town, whose house does Jesus decide to go to? “Zaccheus, get down from there. I’d like to come to your house for dinner, is that okay?” The small man’s life was changed.
There is no “life unworthy of life” in the Kingdom of God. In the Gospel of Matthew we read about Jesus saying, “If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea.”
One of the sisters of Mother Teresa’s Order commented on the value of disabled children a few years ago. “Each life ought to be lived,” Sr M. Infanta said, even if it does not meet utilitarian criteria or is not “productive” according to today’s models. “These children have been created to love and be loved. They are a unique source of blessing for us, society and the whole world,” she said.
What a diametrically opposed view Christians are called to embrace in contrast to the concept that there is, “life unworthy of life.” But more than a viewpoint or a concept is the challenge of practice.
In a subsection editors titled “The Judgment of the Nations,” we read these words from Matthew 25:
“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left.Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’ Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink,I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
An Icelandic mother of a child with Down’s Syndrome posed this question in the news story referenced earlier: “what kind of a society do you want to live in?”
I don’t know about you, but I want to live in one that looks more and more like a place that welcomes people Jesus loves. I want to live in one that looks more and more like the Kingdom of God, where we make eye contact, where we smile, where we kneel down, where we reach out and touch, where we embrace, where we see what we have to learn from people who are different than us.
Churches can become beacons of this merry, determined band of disciples that doesn’t leave anyone behind. The question is whether you will.
Picking up mentally handicapped adults in a church van for Sunday services isn’t glamorous. Pushing a heavy person in a wheelchair uphill with an oxygen tank banging into your shins doesn’t readily come with an apt hashtag. Learning how to serve a family with special needs kids might not headline any popular ministry conferences.
Today is the day after. The day after a young black man got beat up in a parking garage, the scene caught by a quick photojournalist (I can’t imagine how sore he is). The day after a stunned mom learned from reporters that her son had been arrested for plowing his car into a crowd of pedestrians (she was in complete shock). The day after someone drove up to deliver a death notification to the family of Heather Heyer (I’m sorry to inform you…).
In 2016 a high school student had petitioned Charlottesville City Council to remove a Confederate statue. A city councilmember was also suggesting the removal. Heated debate ensued.
A year earlier, a Caucasian young man named Dylann Roof had entered a Bible study at the historic Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, opening fire on the black Christians gathered there, later confessing to police that they were so welcoming he almost changed his mind, but in the end, he did what he went there to do, killing nine people. His motive, he said, was to start a race war. His website displayed his values, showing Roof with white supremacist symbols and the Confederate flag.
In the wake of the deaths of the Charleston nine, which included the pastor of Mother Emanuel AME Church, cities and states began discussing the role of Confederate imagery on city, county, state property. Somehow the Civil War came to dominate daily discussion. In February, the Charlottesville City Council voted to remove the statue. A lawsuit quickly followed, so for the time being it remains. However, in June the Council renamed Lee Park, one of the locations that regularly popped up in ongoing news updates yesterday, calling it Emancipation Park instead.
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Today a friend sent me a message. It had been a long day on social media. While pastors, churches and denominations crafted powerful statements condemning white supremacy, it was dismaying to see some of the reactions from people who genuinely do not see racism as a major ongoing problem in the United States. Who lump in violent counter-protesters with peaceful clergy. Who believe counter-protesters just shouldn’t have been there in the first place.
“Do they really not see what we do? Or are they ignoring Christ’s teachings or somehow think they don’t apply in this instance?”
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Faith easily gets mixed with culture, wherever and whenever Christian faith exists. Sometimes – particularly for people who grow up in the church – faith grows up alongside culture in ways that tangle and diverge, until it’s difficult to tell what is distinctly Christian and what is a cultural value. A Christian growing up in the Pacific Northwest may automatically assume that air quality is a basic concern for people of faith. A Catholic Christian growing up in South America may have folk religion tied closely with the images of saints propped on a table. A Christian missionary may assume an African man with four wives should divorce three of them – until the missionary discovers that this has pushed three women into prostitution. Then, the missionary says, when you become a Christian, keep your wives – but don’t add more.
Values come from many places, often automatically translated in culture without ever questioning them. Sometimes, our values come from places other than our faith.
Where do your most deeply held values come from?
Everyone holds values they aren’t even aware of holding until at some point, whether you’re eight or 80, they’re called into question. You may not be able to explain where they came from or why they matter to you. Sometimes marriage brings these questions to the fore: of course we’ll go visit family, we’ll just put it on a credit card, seeing family is paramount. Really? Of course we’ll never use the credit card, family is important but staying out of debt is paramount.
I may say that your faith should shape your values, not the other way around. And I do believe your Christian faith should shape all your other values.
The question is, what are your other values? Equality? Patriotism? Pacifism? Justice? There are many ways that the Body of Christ lives out our calling to be like Jesus, but as individuals and faith communities, we must examine what values we hold that we don’t even know we’re holding.
Some pastors and professors I know refuse to ever allow an American flag to be displayed in worship space. Some Christians I know would say, but of course an American flag should be in worship space. Aren’t you grateful for your country? Don’t you take pride in being a patriot? Aren’t you thankful for the sacrifices of people in uniform?
But the reason some pastors and professors I know refuse to ever allow an American flag to be displayed in worship space is because of a principle springing from a vivid example: some Lutheran churches in WWII Germany allowed swastikas to be spread over their weekly communion tables. The Body of Christ, broken for you, covered with a Nazi emblem. And so they say, of course no flag representing any nation should be front and center in a Christian worship space, visually equating the rightness of that country with the centrality of Christ on the cross. Do you agree with everything your nation does? Do you want Christians in other countries mixing their nationalism with their practice of faith? Should pastors ever place their vocation and calling in subjection to a government that may turn against them?
This one example shows the difficulties in what is known as contextualization. In other words, what, culturally, do we couch our faith in, what values do we equate with our faith, that we don’t even realize are cultural and not unique to the way of Jesus Christ?
And what we must, must ask Christians in America right now is, are you willing to put any loyalty to any group above Jesus Christ? No statue is worth taking a life over – right? No political allegiance is worth alienating people made in the image of God – right? No Confederate heritage is worth making two helicopter pilots work for public safety, only to die in a tragic crash – right?
In fact, Christians are to value other people extravagantly. Not just their lives – most “nice” people don’t want to see a young woman die. We’re also to, “look out not only for your own interests, but also for the interests of others.”
A statue may not cause me pain, but what if it shows something as normal that ought not to be – the old goal of perpetuating a culture in which humans were bought and sold as slaves? What if it portrays a person willing to preside over a culture in which the economy was dependent upon slavery? What if it communicates – “your great-great-grandma was brought here chained up, she was owned by other people, and that’s what you deserve to be, too – a person with no worth other than what I’m willing to pay. And now you’re just an inconvenient reminder of an embarrassing part of our past.”
Where do your values come from?
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Growing up, I usually experienced kindness from the people in my town. At church, at the library, the humans around me were white. But I loved Sesame Street, and Luis, and Maria, and Gordon. My little town was surrounded by farms, and I didn’t know why there weren’t people like Gordon down my street. Apparently they had settled somewhere else. Maybe they didn’t like farming.
Even as a child, I had heard that a town far down the highway (ten miles was far to me) had, at some unknown eon before I was born, been a place where racists lived. A lot of people who looked like Gordon knew it wasn’t safe to go through there.
Once, a visiting evangelist and his wife from the Caribbean came to my church with their children. My mom showed particular respect to them. Their dark skin gleamed in the sanctuary light. The evangelist’s wife played the piano beautifully – a goal of my little childhood heart. I admired her. Be especially nice, my mom said. They have probably been through a lot.
Mom also got a bit grim when the summer camp meeting had the “color choir” from Indianapolis come to sing. I liked the “color choir,” the music, the difference. She seemed to think it was less than nice to ask them to come as performers for one evening when no one talked to them much after the service. I wished they would come every night.
A couple of years ago a professor friend shared a resource listing historic sundown towns that Black Americans knew to avoid when traveling (“don’t come through here after sundown or you’ll be in danger”).
My childhood town was one of them.
The place where I had grown up was a place people like my beloved Gordon had had to avoid.
Do we really not see? Or do we just not want to?
What shapes your values? What do you skip your eyes over, ignore, glance away from? What do you need to see?
Sometimes this is code for what my Scottish pastor friend calls “butts and bucks” – rear ends in pews and a bountiful offering plate. While some good things grew from the church growth movement, weeds sprang up as well. One of the most tenacious tendencies that took root was the habit of equating attendance numbers with ministerial success.
Plenty of ink has been spilled critiquing the downsides of the church growth movement and positing alternative ministerial models and visions for the future.
The danger of fruitfulness and the danger of the church growth movement are two different things, however, if you’re not equating them in the first place. Models aside, how do you handle sudden fruitfulness? How do you handle a surge of involvement, engagement, and growth? Maybe you’ve worked and labored in the shadows for long, tedious months and years, to stumble into a situation where you’re unprepared for what feels like a Niagara Falls of ping pong balls you’re attempting to catch in a laundry basket.
The disciples encountered that after a long, weary night of pointless (profitless) fishing. They had used all their skills, experience, and materials to do what they did best: go fishing. And sometimes even seasoned practitioners haul up empty nets. Sometimes you faithfully practice what you know you need to do, and there is no immediate, tangible result. You question if your investment of time was wasted, you recalculate what resources you have on hand to get through the day, to feed yourself and others. You check your best sources of the most recent data on where the fish are biting, what weather looks like. In short, you do your best, and best yields dripping water from an empty net.
And then, Jesus. And somehow, around your well-earned experience and knowledge of the waters and migration patterns, around irritated, sullen fatigue, around your personal hunger, for seemingly no reason, Jesus comes. And Jesus says something counterintuitive to everything you’ve known and witnessed and accumulated over the years. But when you choose to follow, the nets lurch, sway, and fill, so heavy that they begin to break, so heavy you have to call in backup, so heavy that the haul itself becomes a problem as boats groan and equipment fails.
No expert was able to forecast it, just like no Ted Talk speaker could’ve predicted the moment the Holy Spirit would whoosh through the upper room where over a hundred women and men were crowded in prayer, wondering if today would be the day, or if they would come back, again, tomorrow on a seeming fool’s errand.How do you respond when – from your perspective – all of a sudden, the floodgates open?
First, rapid growth sometimes needs reshaped and redirected.Organic fruitfulness will fill whatever space it can find, and with limited time and resources, you may not see the crooked shape it’s taking that you need to redirect early, before it becomes a problem.
This past spring I planted seedlings in a garden, the first time I’d successfully grown tomato plants from seeds (often, you buy small plants in a package from a greenhouse or box store). I didn’t expect the seeds to germinate overly successfully. I didn’t expect the seedlings to harden off successfully, anticipating some loss when they moved from their cushy indoor lives to the outdoor elements. I had healthy expectations.
But they survived. Even after being absent for ten days in their early lives, leaving them unwatered. Now, twenty plants had sprawled over the garden area, and their day to day growth was so sudden that branches hadn’t been caught in metal tomato cages. They sprawled, tangled together, growing outward.
The organic growth followed whatever path it found, meaning that branches of the plant itself, while thriving, took crooked, awkward shape. This only became apparent during the process of driving stakes next to the thick green stalks to stake up the sprawling growth.
Intercepting the branches to stake them, reshaping their direction and form, prevented loss. Branches against the ground were more apt to be yellowed, overly moist; sometimes they blocked the view of bunches of young green tomatoes that could’ve been exposed to too much damp and not enough sunlight.
In the midst of facing twenty tomato plants creating a three-foot-tall jungle, stopping to take stock and assess the shape of the growth was vital to intervene in a shape of growth that would be additionally problematic later. It’s not a time to micromanage, but it is a time to glance at the big picture and identify potential trouble spots and retrain the growth to expand in the direction you’re aiming for.
If your growth is taking a shape that could be unhealthy, go ahead and go to the trouble of redirecting as early as possible, because the cost could be more than tomatoes exposed to slugs or wet soil, it could be souls who begin to grow and then get choked out.
Second, be ruthless in your pursuit to grow good fruit, not just lots of fruit.The idea of pruning is nothing new, but it feels odd to snap off smaller branches on a tomato plant so that those nutrients will go to tomatoes and not lots and lots of green leaves.
But not every new member-initiated ministry is the best use of resources, is it? If seemingly spontaneous growth explodes, it can tend to go off in all directions, and that isn’t always as good of a thing as it seems. You don’t want activity for activity’s sake, or growth for growth’s sake.
You want a healthy plant, a healthy garden, and good fruit that will last beyond hype and frenzy.
Third, if you find yourself in a growing boom, prepare for a harvest that will tax your resources and creativity. I see what’s growing on the twenty tomato plants outside. And I really don’t want any loss or waste. So I’m researching canning, freezing, and storing. I’m researching recipes and methods. I know I’ll have to carve some extra, flexible time for the days when everything’s coming up tomatoes. I don’t want to miss the opportunity. I want to reach for a jar of marinara sauce when it’s five degrees and snowy and smile at the July sun that’s bottled up inside it.
And you want to see a person who’s been planted and watered and is flourishing and growing and who, months and years down the road, is continuing to bear witness to the season when they came to Christ. The long-term effects of the harvest will bring joy and beauty in unexpected ways when subzero wind is howling, as it inevitably does in seasons of ministry and life.
I don’t know if you’re in a season of plodding, laboring, or attempting to catch the harvest. Sometimes it seems more manure than miracle.
But if, on the off-chance, Jesus has upended your wisdom, keep these things in mind as your nets strain, as your plants hang heavy, and be thankful.
P.S. – and pray. The other day I found something bubbling up out of my heart. I was praying for the people who would end up eating some of the extra tomatoes growing on my vines. I was praying for whomever would end up with a jar of homemade marinara sauce at Christmas. I was praying…for my tomatoes. For them to give good nutrients to growing bodies.
Sometimes one of the best things you can do in ministry is to plant a physical garden, not just a spiritual one. We all need to see results of our labor.
“Move ON!” a little girl voice shouted from the porch.
She’d been watching me weed then went inside. During that time, I’d moved down the flowerbed but doubled back, pulling stray weeds I’d missed the first time in the tangle of morning glory vines. When she came out, she saw me bending at roughly the same spot as when she’d gone inside.
“You need to move ON!” (She’s no shrinking violet.)
Weeding and praying go hand in hand. I tug and clear and get dirty and think and talk to God and process my thoughts and feelings and listen to the birds and untangle morning glories. And God weeds my soul and cultivates my soil and could, like in the cemetery Easter morning, be mistaken for a gardener.
My aim this summer isn’t to weed perfectly, obsessing over one patch of dirt and plants. I pull the big ones, clear the edges, and move on.
But what about when we don’t move on? When we scratch the soil over and over in one place, ignoring the rest of the flowerbed, poring over our troubles, worrying the soil like we can read clumps of dirt like tea leaves?
A while later something caught my eye. When I was young I collected the dried mud cicada shells left behind by the bugs that crawled out of the dirt. I don’t like the siren calls of cicadas and I don’t like the live locusts flying anywhere around me, but watching one flutter and squeeze out of its shell was mesmerizing.
“Move on!” I wanted to say. “You can’t stay in there forever, you know, and now you’re halfway out. Keep going! The world is waiting and you cannot return to the ground you crawled out of.”
It can seem hard to move on, but consider how absurd it would be for the wet, stiff cicada to attempt to fit back in its dried dirt shell.
In what area is it tempting to stay?
In what shell are you comfortable?
What draws you to stay laboring in one spot over and over, turning the soil over and over, but never planting and moving on?
“Move ON!” There are pressing things just around the corner – in my case, burgeoning tomato plants loaded with promising yellow blossoms – and your eyes are settled on one patch of dirt.
There is promise and a new world and all you see is the struggle of escaping the shell.
It is summer camp season. For thousands of children and youth that means night hikes and camp fires, arts and crafts and lake fronts.
It is commonplace for churches in the United States to offer a trip to summer camp for their children or youth. It is often a highlight of the year for these ministries. Years after their experiences, many former summer camp participants describe it as a particularly important time: when they accepted Jesus as Savior, made a deep commitment to Christian discipleship, or heard a call to ministry. What makes summer camp such a significant experience?
Perhaps it is because, in some ways, summer camp is a bit like a Christian pilgrimage. Historically, Christian pilgrims journeyed to a place where they understood God to have worked in the past, expected that he would work again, and expected that he could work in them while they were in that place. When setting out, the pilgrims do not expect to stay at the pilgrimage site, but to be there for a fixed period of time and to return to their homes different than when they left. So it is with many Christian summer camp experiences.
In a classical understanding of pilgrimage three things are necessary: 1) a strong sense of community among those on the pilgrimage, 2) an escape from the routines of home, and 3) a return to that home after witnessing God do something amazing, perhaps even miraculous. Let’s take a look at each of these.
Community. My teenage children talk throughout the year about the friends they made and the counselors they got to know at camp. Though they were only together for a few days, they speak of these friendships as though they have lasted for years. What makes this bond so strong? In part, the strength of this bond comes from the common experience they share. For example, while together, the kids in the cabin are much the same: in a room full of bunk beds and sleeping bags. No one has a “cooler” bedroom than another here. They are all the same at camp.
Escape. Many camps do not allow the students to have mobile phones or other devices. Even if they did, students are often so far out in the woods, no one would get phone service! Such devices may be a part of everyday life at home, but not at camp. Similarly, the pressures of school and home life are left behind at camp.
There are a few keys to make the community strong and the escape profound. The pilgrimage to camp must be voluntary, to a place considered extraordinary, where special goals are pursued. These goals can be physical, like passing the swim test or going on the zip line. Or they can be spiritual, like those pursued through Bible study and prayer that are integrated into daily Christian summer camp schedules. These first two, community and escape, create a space for the profound to happen. By leaving the mundane the pilgrim seeks the sacred. It is here that the pilgrim discovers what was otherwise hidden at home.
Return. But the pilgrims do not remain away from home forever. After leaving to search for the holy, they will return to the place they call home—in an elliptical motion. Often when the camper (pilgrim) returns, she will be a bit different than when she left. She has been on a sacred quest and learned more about God and herself while she was away. Sometimes the lessons become obvious immediately upon return. Sometimes the lessons reveal themselves years later.
If your church is sending youth to summer camp this year, how can you continue foster the lessons of their pilgrimage? What can you do to help them process what they experienced in their sacred time away? When they get back to the routine, how can you rekindle that spark they felt while they were away at that extraordinary place?
Featured image courtesy Josh Campbell for Unsplash.
Do they give out “Webby Awards” for“Best Social Networking Campaign Aimed at Disenfranchised Young Men Searching for Meaning and Manhood in a Post-Religious Context”?
In the 90’s, radicalization looked like bored, angry, white, oddball suburban teenagers shooting up their classmates as they latched onto whatever Nihilistic philosophy made sense of their bullied, middle-class ennui.
Now ISIS just Tweets. And young men sit with their laptops or tablets or smartphones, drawn to the message and imagery.
What a tragic form of religious “outreach.”
The public response to a bombing, shooting, or terror attack ranges from dismay and compassion to fear and confusion. While Muslim representatives present a memorial wreath at the British embassy in the U.S. and immigrant cab drivers give free rides to Manchester residents, social networking graphic design pops up with endless variations of hearts, ribbons, candles, and prayers for the London Bridge victims, for the northern English city of Manchester. Just like profile pictures changed for Paris, and Nice, and Orlando. There’s been less outcry over the English driver who plowed into Muslims leaving a mosque after services.
Underneath the response that ranges from depressed acceptance of the new norm to calls for blanket discrimination in an effort to control damage, there’s a pulsing anger: is nothing sacred? Can’t holidaymakers – innocent civilians – go about their leisure in peace? Can’t children and young teenagers go to a concert in peace?
Terrorism disrupts the basic social contract we have with each other in the public square: you stay in your lane, I’ll stay in mine, and I won’t swerve my vehicle towards yours just because the impulse hits. You sit and watch a film in a cinema without standing up and screaming in the middle of it, I’ll sit and watch a film in a cinema without standing up and screaming in the middle of it, and we’ll both function within these unspoken norms because we both want to enjoy the movie.
Globally, anxiety has grown as these basic modes of interacting together in public life break down. I may intend to stay in my lane, but I can no longer assume that you will stay in yours. I may intend to go to a crowded mall just to shop and not to take out my anger with a firearm on strangers, but I can no longer assume that you will. This is different than sacrilege: it’s a problem, but it’s not sacrilege.
There is sometimes sacrilege in the public square, and it can be easy to confuse sacrilege with the breakdown of social mores. Yet many people would say that sacrilege isn’t even possible because – and this is important – there is no identifiable or agreed-upon sacred. Sacrilege implies profaning the holy. But it assumes the existence of the holy. For a great many people, if you ask them even rhetorically, “is nothing sacred?” they would be inclined to say, “no, nothing is.” If you cannot really know anything, then you cannot name it sacred. So at the same time that the mores that govern our public interaction together are ripping and frayed, the very notion of the sacred is also disappearing from public consciousness.(And an intellectually honest person who doubts the existence or the knowability of the sacred is not likely to attend Sunday worship, no matter how well-designed your social media graphics are, no matter what your theology is.)
In recent American politics, one of the biggest tug-of-wars has centered around whether the current U.S. president is an iconoclast or a defender of the sacred. Most arguments pivot on whether he functions in the public square as someone who rips apart unspoken social contract, publicly verbalizing lewd or rude content (iconoclast) or whether he functions as a guardian of a particular ideology, specifically, certain evangelical political interests (defender of the sacred). Is he defending the sacred or smearing it? Almost all conflict condenses down to that question.
But most Americans don’t use the word “sacrilegious,” even if they mean it. Even most fundamentalists wouldn’t describe the phrase “oh my God” as sacrilegious, even if they defined it as “taking the Lord’s name in vain.” Shock-jock antics long ago ballooned to absurd lengths for ratings, so that now, this spring’s high school graduates were born years after Sinead O’Connor tore up a photo of the Pope on SNL to the instant dismay of many.
In the past few years, the most famous incident related to anything touching on the word “sacrilege” was the shooting of employees at the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo for its artistic depictions of the Prophet Muhammed. Extremely strict interpretations of Islam forbid portrayals of Muhammed and attackers targeted the magazine for its alleged blasphemy. Plenty of moderate Muslims still believe in the sacred; but extremists chose to kill non-Muslims for acts that they deemed sacrilegious. And so the extremists are willing to ignore western social contracts (iconoclasts) of communal and public safety for the good of guarding a particular religious ideology (defender of the sacred).
People of many religions face the challenge of how and what to expect in the public square. Like agnostics or atheists, within the public square, most people of faith hope for basic social mores to be upheld – you stay in your lane, I’ll stay in mine. The Catholic priests “live and let live” down the street from the Hasidic Jews, and the progressive Unitarian Universalists “live and let live” down the street from the Amish farmhouse. In North America, free speech is prized – but in the past, social contracts have guided how and when, as a religious person, to politely express that speech so as not to be sacrilegious in the presence of someone of another religion. Insulting another person’s religion in the public square might have fallen under freedom but it wouldn’t have fallen under good etiquette.One needn’t be a universalist to be kind. For all its political baggage, separation of church and state was a vital part of the founding of the United States, many of the inhabitants of which had come pursuing religious freedom.
It can be easy to forget that there are still places in the world where religion and state are one in the same. (Even in the Western world we have Great Britain, where the monarch is the head of the church.) But you do not need to have a fused church and state in order to have a robust approach to the reality of the sacred.
When the average secular citizen sees the sacred defended with explosions, death, and terror, it tends to drive them harder towards deeper secularization. What Christians need to do is to present the Beauty of the sacred in self-sacrificial love. The response to violent defense of the reality of the sacred isn’t to abandon the sacred but to recalibrate our response to it and our appreciation of it.
If you are asked, “Is nothing sacred?” you may respond with a resounding, “Yes! Yes, it is!” but your response will not be filled with examples of passengers being polite to each other on a jumbo jet – that’s meeting basic social contracts, not defending the sacred. Your response will likely have little to do with putting out a flag on national holidays or keeping explicit content off television networks while children are still likely to be awake. Those may be considerate for the good of the community, but failing to do so isn’t sacrilegious.
Christians are called to witness to the Beauty of the sacred through our rituals, our service, our worship, our love. Christ, the Word Made Flesh, brought heaven and earth together, and no act of sacrilege can undo that. Christ, the great cosmic insurgent, turned the system upside-down already, and when we say we bring his Kingdom, we do not mean at gunpoint. We mean we arrive with a bowl and washcloth to clean the feet of the violent, just as Christ washed the feet of his betrayer, Judas Iscariot. We believe that the sacred can be experienced but not contained, and that Jesus wants us to love those who are sacrilegious, not to punish them on his behalf.
We are comfortable being neighbors with those of other religions in the public square, but we are not afraid to live out our understanding of our faith – that God is three-in-one, and that we are called to a lifestyle in which we are individually and communally transformed more and more to be like Jesus Christ. We do not expect the public square to bend to accommodate us, but we enter into public space and dialogue with the intent to witness to the Beauty of God through humility, integrity, and humor.
When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”
But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:
“In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day. Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” (Acts 2:1-21)
In verse 12, the people who witnessed the events of that Pentecost Day had one important question: “What does this mean?” They knew that something significant had occurred in their midst. However, they did not yet understand the fuller implications of the Spirit’s movement among them.
Just as they asked themselves, “What does this mean?” we too should reflect on the account in Acts for contemporary witness.
What does this mean? It means that the Spirit will meet the needs of the people. Many times in our churches, we work so very hard to meet the needs of people: those in our doors already and those yet outside of them. Yet, Acts tells us that God is even more interested in meeting the needs of people. He will do the miraculous to meet those needs. People heard the story of “God’s deeds of power” in their own language. That means that the Spirit met people in their own setting to meet their needs. In our contemporary contexts, we are often tempted to meet the needs of the people with some new out-of-the-box program or the next big idea. The lesson of Acts 2 is to instead be channels of the Spirit’s work and let him do the work that he wants to do.
What does this mean? It means that the ministry of the church does not rise and fall on one person alone. Peter, nor any single apostle, is the center of ministry. Rather, all the people are empowered to serve in the Kingdom of God. In the local church, it is tempting to pin the hopes of effective growth on one or two people. The hope of the church does not lie solely with the pastor, the longest standing member or the hip new staff member. All believers are called, and empowered, to serve.
By reading further in the account in Acts 2, we see what those new believers did: Theywerebaptized, they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, they were discipled, and they shared meals and fellowship.They thought of others first. They put the mission of God before their own agendas. They spent time in the “breaking of bread,” taking care of each other and enjoying each other’s company. They did so in small groups and in large assemblies. They didn’t wait for Peter (the senior pastor, if you will) to do it.
And they prayed.When you pray, be careful. Things will change. If you start praying, really praying, things are going to change. Watch out! Are you ready for God to bring about the change you are praying for? Are you truly ready? In the Pentecost story the people embraced the change that God brought. And thank God that they did.
Can you imagine what would have happened if they refused to accept the changes God was doing? Imagine if the disciples had said, “Well, that’s all well and good, but I do not want to do anything different. Jesus is gone now and I just want to go back to my fishing boat, my tax collection booth. Don’t bother me.” What if they had stood up and said, “That is not the way we’ve done it before, and I sure don’t want to do it that way now.” Can you imagine the travesty? Christian believers today celebrate a spiritual heritage because those at the Pentecost movement of the Spirit said “YES” to the new thing that God was doing.
What does this mean? It means that churches were planted. They grew into vibrant communities of faith. By the power of the Spirit, they brought the Good News to the world. The Spirit met the needs of the people. The Spirit empowered the people to serve in the Kingdom of God. Those first believers responded by sharing with others the amazing things that they had seen. And they prayed in that same Spirit. They prayed and things changed.
What does this mean? Because the Spirit is still at work in the world, it means that the contemporary church can do just the same. This means that the church must prioritize the work of the Spirit over any ideas of people. As twentieth-century evangelist E. Stanley Jones said, “Unless the Holy Spirit fills, the human spirit fails.”
Rev. Dr. Rob Haynes is the Associate Director of Education and Leadership Development for World Methodist Evangelism. He may be reached at: rob[at]worldmethodist.org
Wesleyan Accent is pleased to share an introductory interview with Rev. Dr. Rob Haynes, World Methodist Evangelism’s new Associate Director of Education and Leadership Development.
Recently earning a PhD in Theology and specializing in Missiology and Wesleyan Theology from Durham University, his thesis is a dive into “Consuming Mission: Towards a Theology of Short-Term Mission and Pilgrimage.”He is a Senior John Wesley Fellow and a Senior Harry Denman Fellow. His publications and presentations include “The Overlooked Globalizers: Wesleyan Short-Term Missioners, The Missio Dei, and World Christianity.”
Wesleyan Accent:In your experience, what’s the biggest misconception about “evangelism” or mission?
Rob Haynes: I don’t know if it is a misconception, necessarily, but it is important to consider the source of the missionary enterprise.
A few years ago, some people knocked on my door with some literature in hand. They initiated their discussion with, “Do you know why Jesus came to earth?” I quickly replied that I did, in fact, know why Jesus came.
Jesus explicitly tells his hearers why he came. In Luke 4 he is teaching in the synagogue in Nazareth when he reads from the scroll: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
This is the inauguration of Jesus’ ministry and he demonstrated it with his life, work, teaching, death, and resurrection. But the work did not stop there. Jesus inaugurated the Church, his followers, to carry on the work he began. This initiation is recorded in John 20:21, one of Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances. “Again Jesus said, ‘Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.’ And with that he breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit….’”
The work of mission and evangelism hinges on four little letters: two in “as” and two in “so.” As the Father sent Jesus, so Jesus sent his followers, by the power of the Holy Spirit. This is done in both words and deeds. Evangelism is mission, but mission is not merely evangelism.
God invites, even commands, his followers to be involved in the work he is doing still: that which he announced in Luke 4. As his followers, we have the amazing privilege, and responsibility, of participating in his ongoing work of redemption.
WA:While globalization brings specific challenges, it also brings new opportunities. How do you think the realities of globalization will shape Christian faith around the world and in North America over the next 20 years?
RH: In 1792 William Carey proclaimed that the mariner’s compass was a gift of God to the work of the missionaries of his. We may be experiencing a similar opportunity in our day.
Travel is becoming easier and cheaper all the time. Communication is instantaneous. Social media platforms play a significant role in the revolutions (like the Arab Spring) and relief work (like follow-up to natural disasters). Mass movements of people, that are both voluntary and involuntary, are impacting communities and national governments alike. Issues of globalization will only accelerate.
Many of these can be used in the work of developing mission leaders. As of 2010, there were 43 million people living in the United States who were born overseas. Three quarters of whom identified themselves as Christians. (I recommend “Diaspora Missions: East Meets West (and North meets South): Reflections on Polycentric Missions.”) While many see the church in decline in the United States, it is worth examining the new things that globalization is bringing to the American Church. Old forms may need to be re-evaluated to faithfully make disciples and evangelize those yet outside the church.
Trans-cultural mission is available to many in their own back yards. This does not replace the need for foreign missionaries, but opens the doors to new possibilities. Similarly, globalization provides significant opportunities to form faith, deepen discipleship, and cultivate leadership across borders and cultures alike.
WA:What are some of the benefits of theological education, sometimes seen as superfluous in an era of religious and doctrinal pluralism?
RH: Mission and evangelism are scrutinized by people inside and outside the church. Often the discussions about these address the how, but they sometimes fail to address the why. Our theologies shape the why, which will make a more lasting impact on the how.
It is important to point out that everyone does theology, at some level. It may not always be good theology, but we all do theology:
“God helps those who help themselves.” This is not scriptural, but it is a theological statement.
“I am spiritual, but not religious.” Usually I hear this when someone doesn’t want to go to church but wants to talk about God.
“All roads lead to the same place.” This is a theological rejection of Christ’s exclusivity.
Theologies shape motivations and motivations shape actions. Teaching sound missional theology is the essential to any renewal of missionary efforts.
By teaching a sound and robust biblical theology of mission we can impact the how and the why of missional service. Wesleyan theology is a missional theology. We embrace God’s invitation to participate in his redeeming work as he invites all to be saved. That work is a part of the effort towards the full restoration of God’s Creation, and everything and everyone in it. No one is excluded in the invitation, though not all may accept it.
By emulating the self-sacrificing love that Jesus demonstrated (see the discussion of Luke 4 and John 20 above) we can reshape the why that will naturally reshape the how.
Now that the heat sparked from the light shed on Vice President Mike Pence’s personal rules of not attending cocktail parties without his wife and of not dining alone with women has dwindled, let’s take a few moments to reflect more evenly on the practice of personal rules and boundaries in opposite-sex professional relationships in the pastoral context. I do not presume to speak to fields other than pastoral ministry and Christian leadership, nor do I presume to offer a rule for all people. Rather, I want to help pastors and Christian leaders understand some of the framework for developing their own rules. While the issue of professional boundaries is not limited to opposite-sex relationships, this article most clearly addresses that context.
Let me start with a story. When I was about 10 years old, a neighbor paid to have a small parcel of land surveyed in order to build on it. Little did I know that land surveys cost more money than I could earn in an afternoon of grass cutting; all I knew was that those little sticks poking out of the ground at various points hampered playing football in the open lot next to my home. So, up the stakes came, removed from the field of play before each game. We did our best to put the stakes back in the right spots, but who could really tell if we did? And who cared? We had a sense of where the property started and stopped.
There are different stakeholders when it comes to boundaries. My friends and I had a stake in not being impaled by inconvenient objects when running, diving, and jumping as we pursued professional football dreams. Being impaled could hurt your draft status! The property owner had a stake in having clear markers of the land that belonged to him. To put it playfully, we both had stakes in the stakes. The same is true in boundaries in professional relationships between opposite sexes in Christian leadership and pastoral ministry. The boundaries that are set up have implications for different people. Different parties have different stakes in the stakes. Thus, boundaries are not—and cannot—be individual constructs. They are formed in relationship and these relationships will often plant stakes that are in tension with each other. Without being aware of the stakeholders, we do a disservice to a few people that we ought to be honoring. In ministry settings, I’ve identified four stakeholders—four people who ought to help determine where the boundaries get drawn. These are four people with stakes in the stakes.
The pastor/leader has a stake in the stakes.
Whether a woman or man, the leader is a stakeholder in professional boundaries. She or he has an internal compass, a sense of right and wrong, appropriate and inappropriate, wise and foolish. Their stake is set by their own tradition, foibles, weaknesses, experiences, narratives, and opinions. A person in spiritual leadership cannot disregard their own sense of propriety or conviction when creating boundaries with the opposite sex, so they must consider their own self when setting boundaries. Recognize, then, that you have a stake in your boundaries.
The spouse of the pastor/leader has a stake in the stakes.
No less than the conviction of the pastor/leader, the conviction of the spouse must be considered. In Christ, there is mutual submission between wives and husbands so the convictions of the spouse matter. The pastor/leader must factor how his or her spouse feels—not just thinks, but feels—in setting boundaries in professional relationships. In unhealthy relationships, one spouse, either the one setting boundaries or the one sharing their own convictions, can call all the shots, always using their veto. Of course, this is not the goal of healthy relationships. Rather than mutual submission, this is a kind of domination. Instead, mutually submissive relationships will seek to factor both convictions in pursuit of practical wisdom in boundaries in professional relationships. Recognize that your spouse has a stake in your boundaries.
The professional colleague has a stake in the stakes.
This stakeholder is becoming more and more visible. And they must remain a prominent stakeholder because their interests matter. The boundaries that the leader draws have real implications for the people they impact. Boundaries are useful only inasmuch as they mark someone or something “in” and someone or something “out.” The leader/pastor’s boundaries will do just the same. And they will not always do so fairly. When men in leadership only meet alone with men, then key decisions are skewed with a set of values that might not represent both sexes. If the pastor/leader has a rule not to meet with the opposite sex privately, but is not aware that private meetings with the same sex will inevitably develop deeper professional friendships, trust, and confidence than their other friendships, then there will be professional injustice. Some will get more opportunities simply by virtue of their gender and the boundaries of the leader. Of course, while less often considered, unhealthy relationships can develop between members of the same sex, too. Unhealthy relationships may include same-sex attraction, codependency, and groupthink. Appropriate boundaries will not simply focus on sexual issues, but any interaction that may keep the colleague from thriving for accidental reasons. Recognize that the professional colleague has a stake in your boundaries.
The church/organization has a stake in the stakes.
Finally, the church or organization that the pastor/leader serves is a stakeholder. The pastor/leader’s boundaries will have implications for the church and the church/organization also has boundaries. Sometimes these boundaries are written; sometimes they are not. When they are written and approved by a formal board as policy, then there can be clarity. More common, however, is an unwritten boundary that many people know about and that remains unshared until it is crossed. Moreover, people know why it is a boundary. Sometimes boundaries exist to keep sinful, wrong, and inappropriate things from happening. Sometimes boundaries exist because sinful, wrong, and inappropriate things have happened. Organizations do not always craft and publish boundaries in the fallout from these breakdowns. Pastors/leaders will do well to discover what stakes their church/organization has already laid down and to see how their own stakes line up. The church and organization has a stake in your boundaries.
So, how do these stakeholders influence crafting appropriate boundaries? Obviously, there will be tension in the boundaries that each stakeholder would draw. If each stakeholder was allowed to put down stakes, some might have a nice, square boundary with four pegs, trusting a person will know when to step outside the boundaries without issue. Some would have thirty stakes, weaving in and out at various angles to accommodate the various contingencies that could arise. The complexity of life demands the complexity of the boundary. Yet, tension is not a bad thing. In fact, it can be a good thing. It can help us get outside our own considerations, to be stretched, and to have collective wisdom. With the various stakeholders in mind, here are some internal and external actions that could help develop working, consistent, and wise boundaries in professional relationships.
Take periodic surveys.
Every day provides new twists in traditions, new experiences to be assimilated, outside opinions to be considered, and growth (or regression) in the weaknesses and strengths in the leader. Thus, the stakes of this stakeholder will be changing. The boundaries that made sense at one point in time will not make sense at others. Leaders and pastors should take periodic review of their own personal boundaries because their personal stakes might be changing. The same is true of the pastor or leader’s spouse. Spouses are not static. They grow in wisdom, maturity, grace, and insight. Sometimes general rules of relationships shift over time and the practice stops matching the policy, whether written or unwritten. In other words, stakes do not make boundaries; they mark boundaries. Take periodic surveys to see if your stakes are still marking the boundaries that need to be marked or if they need to be changed and re-aligned.
Think creatively inside the box.
Once your stakes are understood, think creatively inside the box. For example, if you have a boundary not to meet with a person alone, can you invite along their spouse? Several times in my own pastoral ministry, I would invite a married couple to my house (or out to a restaurant) to recruit them both to a team or project. I would often have one of the couple in mind, but would try to recruit them both. Sometimes the person I had targeted would respond; sometimes the other person would respond. Sometimes they both did. Technology provides many ways of communicating, influencing, and engaging in professional relationships without surpassing boundaries. However, technology obviously provides a new context for crafting boundaries. And people use technology differently. Some people use their cell phone for all forms of communication—social media, texting, email, etc. Others use it for less tasks. While technology provides ways of remaining inside boundaries, technology also provides a new land that requires surveying and consulting the four stakeholders listed above.
Move stakes with sensitivity.
When Jesus re-drew covenantal boundaries, it cost him his life. To set aside enmity between Jews and Greeks, Jesus was lifted up on the cross. To be one in Christ required the cross. Moving stakes is serious business. Especially when it comes to spousal and church values, work at understanding the full rationale for why the stakes exist in the first place. What might not be a sensible boundary marker to you that needs to be plucked up and re-established likely stems from a narrative that remains untold.
Set boundaries in light of barriers.
It is naïve simply to say, “Jesus met the woman at the well” as though this settles professional relationships. What is not naïve, however, is to consider all our boundaries in light of the cross; to recognize that any barrier that Jesus tore down by his death on the cross may influence any boundary we consider staking. Jesus’ death tore down status barriers, gender barriers, ethnic barriers, so we must set conscious boundaries in light of Christ’s work and consider what unconscious boundaries within which we might be operating.
Conclusion
Whatever your opinion of Vice President Pence’s boundaries, the scrutiny he faced is something pastors and leaders might face. Rarely will your boundaries be so widely scrutinized, but with various stakeholders, scrutinized they will be. Stakeholders will not always agree or appreciate boundaries, even when their opinions have been sought and considered. So, be ready to have your stakes yanked up and tossed aside while people might run football routes across the boundary. But the stakes are much higher in your life and ministry than they were in my football game. You might need to plant the stake again and again, keeping confidence with the stakeholders who really matter. So, what other stakeholders have you discerned in this situation? What other advice would you give in the midst of finding, setting, and moving stakes?
Recently earning a PhD in Theology and specializing in Missiology and Wesleyan Theology from Durham University, his thesis is a dive into “Consuming Mission: Towards a Theology of Short-Term Mission and Pilgrimage.” He is a Senior John Wesley Fellow and a Senior Harry Denman Fellow. His publications and presentations include “The Overlooked Globalizers: Wesleyan Short-Term Missioners, The Missio Dei, and World Christianity.” 
