Boxing Day

Canadians, like their British counterparts across "the Pond", get a second stat holiday after Christmas Day: Boxing Day, which exists for no other reason than to give a name to all the sales in the stores. There's probably some historical reason for calling it "Boxing Day", but I'm unaware of what it might be. Anybody have any ideas?

Christmas Day was a blast for our family, including phone calls from:

• Guber (and Mrs. Guber) who now live in Montreal
• Three generations of my extended family in Ontario, enjoying a feast at my sister's place
• The incomparable Logan (aka Skip) from Los Angeles; the only Los Angelean to dare to visit us in Canada (okay, it was July at the time, but still...)

Later that afternoon, our doorbell rang, and I was jumped on by none other than Dave & Sandi. Normally, getting jumped on in this end of town means dialling "911" as quickly as possible, but Dave & Sandi are amazing friends of ours from our time in Ontario when we worked at a youth detention centre together, and were involved with YWAM's Performing Arts base in Cambridge (note the very "80's" style YWAM t-shirts that we all wore like a uniform back in the day).

Whenever we've been praying together as a family these past few days, especially on Christmas Day itself, we've been very thankful for the relationships we have as a family, with our extended families, and the blessing of true friends. Given that the common denominator of almost all of these relationships is Jesus, it made Christmas (the celebration of God's gift to us that brings us into relationship with Him) all the more special.

Merry Christmas!!

Merry Christmas!

It's been two years since Manitoba's premier (that'd be equivalent to Governor for the U.S. folks, as in "Governor Schwarzenegger") walked into the Legislature in our province and got fed up with the "Multicultural Tree" that is put up every year. It's the "politically correct" tree for the "holiday season".

He wouldn't have been so upset, except that there were, on either side of the Multicultural Tree, huge "Happy Hannakuh" and "Happy Kwanzaa" displays. He went on record as saying, quote:

"If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, you call it a duck. This is a Christmas Tree, and that's what it's going to be called!"

Ya gotta love a socialist premier who decides that the politically correct sanitization of Christmas has gone too far!

I don't know why I'm including this in a Christmas Eve blog, except that I really enjoyed the moment:

A seaside baptism in the Pacific Ocean, Santa Monica California, Easter Sunday 2001. We were on staff at the Vineyard Westside, and although the church had a new building that had just opened, it was never even questioned that the tradition of public, beachside baptisms would continue.

The funnest part of the picture is that it's me - Rob McAlpine - on the left, during a pre-baptism group prayer time, and the guy on my right, who was getting baptized a few moments later, is Rob McAlpine. We used to jokingly call each other "cousin". It was an honour to participate in his baptism.

When I first started this blog, back in mid-August, I decided I would give it to Christmas to decide whether it was worth the time and effort, and if it actually seemed to be contributing something worthwhile. The first four months of blogging have been great, and it's a gift to me to have had such a great time dialoguing with so many different and unique people. Thank you, and Merry Christmas!.

God is Speaking through the Music

Ever had this experience? An everyday, normal, just-fun-to-listen-to song that was written by someone who doesn't claim to know anything about God, suddenly speaks to you as if God had written a part of the lyric?

I was watching the "Rush In Rio" concert DVD last night (as a bass player, Geddy Lee has been my "we're not worthy" nomination for many a year), and caught these lines from "Resist":

I can close my eyes to anything but injustice
I can learn to get along with all the things I don't know
You can surrender without a prayer
But never really pray without surrender
You can fight without winning
But never win without a fight

It reminds me of the first time Wendy & I saw Amanda Marshall performing "Let It Rain", and it immediately struck both of us that this was a very cool song of repentence.

It's easy sometimes to point to certain songs because we know (or suspect) that at least some of the members of the band are Christians -- such as Collective Soul and Creed. I'm talking more about bands that you wouldn't normally expect to have God speak through. Anybody else ever find this? What songs/artists?

A final thought from Max Webster (the band Kim Mitchell was once a part of): "We're just musicians, here to thin the thickness of your skin."

P.S. NOTE: the fact that the bands (except for Creed & Collective Soul) are all Canadian has nothing to do with archaic CRTC restrictions...

Postmodern Missionaries

If you haven't already guessed from the entries I've made in recent weeks looking at ancient Celtic Christianity, Don Richardson's book "Peace Child", and even the Augustinian "theology must look people in the eye" post, I'm very taken with the idea of being a missionary to a postmodern society.

I say this because a lot of people seem to be treating "emerging church" as if it's the magic wand or cure-all bandaid that, if applied, will automatically result in Christian communities of faith as they were "meant to be". Enough of us have visited or been a part of dysfunctional emerging house churches to know that "house church" in and of itself can be just as self-absorbed and self-congratulatory as any other structure or destructure.

I'm actually afraid that a lot of people are going to treat "pomo ministry" as the latest fad, learning all the "in" jargon & lingo, reading all the "approved" books, and yet not really engage our culture on more than a surface level -- and then drop "emerging" ministry like a cold old potato and move on to the next sure-fire, this-will-fix-everything-and-the-glory-will-return ministry fad.

I'm much more inclined to view postmodern society as a "people group", which we would look at from a missionary's point of view:

• we learn the "language and culture" of postmodern society - not in an all-embracing, "pomo-good, modern-evil" abdication, but recognizing that the gospel must be contextualized to whatever societal/cultural setting we find ourselves in; while some of us ARE pomo instinctively, I firmly believe that anyone who is willing to invest time & energy can become more so -- you'd do it in foreign missions, so if postmoderns seem "foreign" to you, why not do it here?
  
• we do not adopt the values of the culture, although we may look like, sound like, and "taste" like the culture around us - but we do not adopt their values; we are salt and light; as George Mercado used to say "use anything, short of sin, if it communicates the Good News";
  
• we invest ourselves in our "tribe" - it's not a quick-fix nor is it a short-term program or outreach: we join the tribe and invest our lives in building relationships, "earning the right to be heard" as George would say, over the long haul; missionaries sometimes lived among the locals for literally years before they began to reap - we tend to be "fast food drive-thru" in our expectation of instant results (maybe it's time to grow up and get serious?);
  
• we learn new ways to tell our story of Jesus - Larry Norman once challenged us at a worship conference to try and share our testimony with people without using the same words twice - he was trying to get us to let go of a "canned" testimony and more into sharing our lives and stories of our interaction with Jesus with our friends;
  
• although some are fearful of going "social gospel" (so focused on meeting peoples' physical needs that the gospel is neglected), if we adopt the missionary metaphor, missionaries were always using medical supplies and treatment, educational reform, agricultural assistance etc. as part of their work with their "people group"; we can do no less with the poor & needy around us - I like the way Leonard Sweet puts it: "to unbind the confined, whether they're the downtrodden or the upscale, the overlooked or the underrepresented". To be fair, this may or may not mean the literal poor, but I've noted in recent years and been encourageed to see a strong upsurge among the emerging generations that ministry to the poor is vitally important (and that the lack of caring for the poor is one of their complaints with "institutional churches").
  

If we do not approach our ministry in a post-modern, post-Christian society with a missionary's eye to learning the culture, joining the tribe, and contextualizing the gospel, I fear we may find ourselves -- no matter how "emergent" or destructured we are or become -- increasingly isolated and ineffectual. May God give us wisdom and faith to engage our culture for the good of the Kingdom!

Must Be A Vineyard Thing

Wendy & I were in Brandon all weekend, mainly for Celina & Ken's wedding, but it was great to catch up with some of our extended "family" that we haven't seen for a while -- the "Southies" aka Winnipeg South Vineyard. And to talk for a while with the Heinrichs who are leading the Transcona Vineyard church plant. And to visit with Jan & Coral at the Brandon Vineyard on Sunday morning -- complete with Jan doing his traditional act of hauling me up to play bass with no warning or chord charts.

Must be a Vineyard thing: back in Victoria during the mid-1990's, I was phoned just before a meeting was about to start, and it was the sound tech asking if the band could borrow my bass guitar for the evening. I said "sure", ran to our Vineyard to get it, took it to the "other" Vineyard and got it set up, checked the tuning, etc. @ 6:59 (meeting to start prompt at 7:00).

As I was turning to leave the stage, the worship leader, Andrew Smith (who I'd met and had a few conversations with here and there), grabbed my arm. "Where are you going?" he asks.

"I'm going to sit down," I reply. "The bass is ready to go."

Andrew gets this funny smile on his face. "No, I need a bass player."

I look around the band -- Sherri Funk, Norm Strauss, Rik Leaf, Trevor Haug -- and think to myself "it'd be cool to play with these guys", so I said, "yeah, sure, I'll do it. Where are my chord charts?"

Andrew gave me another bemused smile as he began strumming his guitar to start the first song. "Chord charts?"

I put on the bass, and turn to look at the congregation, who are primed and ready for worship, and who's sitting in the front row? The Kevin Prosch Band -- including Tony Green, one of the best bassists I have heard in the Vineyard. And here I am with no chord charts, and as the evening proved, Andrew did a lot of songs I had never even heard before.

It was a lot of fun playing with those guys, and I would later enjoy many opportunities playing and touring with Andrew, Norm, and David Ruis in the years following, but it was a very humbling beginning, believe me!

Must be a Vineyard thing. But getting back to Brandon...

It was a little unnerving at times to have people walk up to me and say "hey, are you that 'Robbymac' guy?" It's hard to know how to respond -- "Well, yeah... friend or foe?" It was cool to put faces to some of the names of people who have commented, and to be reminded that there's a number of people who don't comment but drop by for a visit fairly often. So, for those who drop in but remain silent, "hi!" and thanks for taking the time to visit.

Christmas Traditions

You can tell it's December -- aside from the cold and snow, that is. Not to forget the plethora ("plethora" -- what a word, eh?) of papers that are all due within the next two weeks, signalling the near-end of my semester and sure-fire end of my sanity due to the sleep-deprivation experiment that we call "term papers".

The bad side of the yearly traditions is the re-emergence of the Christmas Whiners -- maybe you've met them? They whine and rant about the commercialism of Christmas and how much they hate the plasticity of giving gifts to people once a year when we should be loving all year long, blah, blah, blah. They sound like some sort of the modern-day equivalent of Ebenezer Scrooge.

I like Christmas! Sure, some people have commercialized the life out of it, but those people don't tell me how to think, how to shop, or how to celebrate with my family. I choose for myself how to celebrate Christmas, and if I like to give extra gifts to the ones I love once a year (besides their birthdays), that's still my choice.

Yesterday, the Clan McAlpine did one of our yearly traditions on the first day of December: putting up the tree. Listening to the soundtrack of "Charlie Brown's Christmas" on CD while we decorated the tree. Watching some of the classic Christmas videos that we keep in a box with the ornaments and bring out only once a year.

Above all that -- doing these things with my family, enjoying the relationships that God has given us, and being thankful that, no matter how chaotic and unsettling life around us can be (and usually is, in our household!), we have each other.

Oh, and lest we forget, remembering to be thankful to God for the gift of His Son Jesus, regardless of whether He was "really" born on December 25th or not. Sometimes, we miss the "main and the plain" of Christmas because we're too focused on side issues like commercialism or anti-commercialism, or TERM PAPERS! Oh no, I should be working on TERM PAPERS...

That's one tradition I look forward to renouncing...