New Perspective, Anyone?

The two men in this picture have a long and significant history with each other, although they hadn't seen each other for over two decades when this picture was taken last year. One of them is a Providence Seminary grad, which is how I heard his story.

The man on the left tortured and executed the father of the man on the right. He is one of several military executioners who chopped all of the family members and dropped them into a mass grave with other political prisoners who were resistant to "re-education" during the Khmer Rouge uprising in Cambodia in the late 1970's.

What makes this photo so remarkable is that the young boy, who was left for dead but survived his injuries and later came to Canada and became a follower of Jesus, had sworn years ago to hunt down each of his family's butchers. His original intent had been to torture and kill them, as they had done to he & his family.

This photograph documents the new vow he has made: to hunt down each of his family's killers and forgive them to their faces. This man, his father's executioner, was the first. He continues to seek the others to tell them that he has forgiven them, and that Jesus can forgive them too.

He has begun spending a lot of time in Phnom Phen, where he meets with many people who went through the same turbulent period of Cambodia's history -- killers, torturers, and victims alike -- who are all trying to learn how to reconcile, and are finding that Jesus is the only hope they have for letting go of the cycle of vengeance, and finding healing.

There are times, in the midst of our wrangling and angst over the modern/postmodern question of church and ministry, when a story like this -- sobering & inspiring, humbling & triumphant -- brings some much-needed perspective.

Robbie Burns Day in Winnipeg

The band I joined earlier this month played a local Irish pub last night for a Robbie Burns Day celebration -- complete with genuine, honest-to-goodness, sure-sign-of-the-end-times HAGGIS. Don't ask me how an Irish pub thought to celebrate a Scottish holiday. Must be a "celtic cousins" thing. Painted on the wall above the band are these words:

"God is good -- but don't dance in a small boat."

Badger Badger Badger

My daughter found this one. You'll be singing it for days. You'll become a zealous "badger evangelist", fanatically determined to get everyone you know and all their relatives and pets to visit the URL. You will wake up in the morning with this little ditty running relentlessly through your brain. You will gravitate to spending most of your waking hours only with "enlightened" others who have joined the badger movement.

www.badgerbadgerbadger.com

You may end up annoying people with unsolicited badger literature in an airport, but hey, when you start a new cult, you need to let people know what they're missing out on, right?

God's Frozen Chosen

Yes, it's -43C (that's -48F for the Americans) here on the Prairies. The highways are almost in a white-out condition due to the blowing snow. The wind feels like it's on a personal vendetta to turn any exposed skin to ice (which would take less than two minutes today).

I drove all the way to Providence Seminary today in these conditions (takes an hour normally, and I even left a bit early today, just in case) only to get here and be told that classes have been cancelled for the day because of the extreme cold and wind.

So, I'm getting lots of homework done in the library and catching up on my blogging ways.

An aside: why do most people think that the place of eternal damnation referred to as "Hell" will be hot? Ask any Manitoban how the weather is, and they'll likely say "cold as hell". Spending eternity living in today's weather would qualify as being adequately punitive for the wicked, methinks.

The Celtic Rock band I joined recently (I'm wearing one of our t-shirts right now -- they call all shirts, CD's, etc. "swag" -- this is a great band for fans of "Pirates of the Carribean") is playing all week at the Festivale du Voyager in February, and was just recently signed on to be the official Celtic band in the Irish Pavillion during Folklarama in August. If you're anywhere local, feel free to drop by for a pint and some (to quote the t-shirt I'm wearing) "butt-kickin' Celtic Rock".

I'll write some more on postmodern ministry/destructured church stuff in the near future, but right now I've got homework to attend to and fingers to thaw.

New Semester

Another semester at Prov Seminary started yesterday, and I'm already swamped with homework. Old Testament Theology (this course is gonna rock), New Testament Apocalyptic (yes, I'm actually voluntarily taking a course on Revelation, but it's not what you think, it looks like it'll be really "real" and not one of those chart-making, hair-splitting, who-is-the-anti-christ kind of classes -- and we already know Bill Gates is the antichrist, right?), and last but not least, the class I'm most looking forward to: Worldview & Culture. TONS of work already, but it looks like it's going to be a great stretching time of learning and gaining understanding!

For those who have been wondering, my first weekend with the Celtic band went great; each night I felt more familiar with their music, and therefore more relaxed and able to "perform" rather than simply just "play" the songs. These guys have a reputation as "Winnipeg's favourite Celtic party band", and after seeing the packed bar and rowdy reaction to the band, with a lot of people loudly singing along with many of the tunes, I don't think they're exaggerating! Lots of fun, and I'm also enjoying getting to know the extended community of friends and family around the band itself -- which is the actual mission field.

More later...

Friends, Not Projects

Here's some thoughts that have been running through my mind this past week: as Christians, we are called to "do the work of an evangelist" (II Timothy 4:5); not all of us have the gift of evangelism, but we are all called to be "witnesses" (story-tellers) of what Jesus has done in our lives.

We often conceptualize "witnessing" as a pre-packaged presentation of our "testimony" (what led up to us becoming followers of Jesus) that has solid theological and doctrinal content to hopefully lead someone to "pray The Prayer". But the word "witness" simply means to tell what we know, have seen, or experienced. Some people immediately cringe: "I've never been all that bad, so I don't really have much of a 'testimony'..." So what?!? God doesn't get more glory if we screwed ourselves up more in the world's (or the church's) eyes than someone who (like my little sister, who I'm very proud of) becomes a Christian at an early age and never looks back.

Many people have advocated, and I agree, that we re-learn how to tell our story. I seldom refer to my pre-Christian days any more, for two reasons:

1. I've been a Christian since 1977, and God has done a lot in my life since that time, so the more recent stuff is, frankly, more interesting to me (and probably to those who I'm talking with, too)
2. there's no real "gory details" to satisfy the wierd vicarious-voyeurism that some churches seem to delight in, and churches/Christians aren't the ones I'm trying to communicate with anyway. I'm trying to communicate with people who don't know Jesus all that well -- at least, not yet! (Although we need to be careful that we don't arrogantly assume they have no understanding, because God has often been speaking to them in various ways before they meet us).

Another thought: How would people feel if they thought that they were a "missions project" to us, rather than just being their friend because we like them? I'm not befriending people in order to convert them, but as a true friend, I can't not at some point share with them the One who has made such a difference in my life. I pray for them, and pray that God gives me opportunities to show them the Gospel even before I tell them the Gospel (St. Francis of Assissi: "Preach the gospel at all times, and if necessary, use words."). I ask God to alert me to divine appointments to pray with them, and to give me creative ways of telling my story in a way that does not instantly cause walls to come up because of peoples' bad experiences with religion (Jesus probably had the same problem!).

With this in mind, you will notice that I've removed the name of, and links to, the Celtic band that I've just joined from all my posts. The reason is simple: this band has a large following all across Canada and the US, and "Google" brings up their site -- and mine. I don't want anything I write here to suggest to my new-found friends in the band that I'm viewing them as "projects" or "potential converts". There's too many stereotypes of Christians out there that could cause offence -- I want to share my spiritual journey with my friends in my own words, in my own time (as God leads, of course), and not because I'm having to defend a misunderstanding or knee-jerk reaction to this site.

A vision statement we had in one of the youth groups we led in B.C. was "Normal People, Full of God" -- it spoke of our heart desire to strip away "churchianity" and "religion" and just be people like the disciples:

"When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus." (Acts 4:13, emphasis added)

Aside from being with Jesus, there was nothing obvious to demarcate these men from any of their peers. That's the kind of follower of Jesus I want to be (which is also why I stopped wearing Christian slogan t-shirts back in high school -- I want my life to say it, and if it doesn't, the shirt won't help).

One final verse/thought:

"The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and you say, Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and 'sinners.'" (Luke 7:34)

Too few of us could have the same "testimony" as Jesus; too few of us are friends with those that religious types denounce as 'sinners'. Along with reflecting the disciples' having "been with Jesus", I want to have the same "testimony" as Jesus, in the friends that I welcome into my life and invest my time with.

Know Thyself

Len Hjalmarson's post from January 5 is well worth having a read. Part of the ongoing wrestle is not only defining what we're doing, and in what context we're doing it in, but also in who we are as followers of Jesus in a postmodern world.

The order of my wording is deliberate: we are not postmodern Christians -- we are Christians who live in a postmodern world. Jesus transcends all culture, be it modern or postmodern, and we dare not create another level of the "Christian ghetto" in which to insulate ourselves farther from the world. Leighton Tebay mentioned a few months ago that there's even a "Emerging Church" section in the Christian bookstore in Saskatoon -- surely a bad sign when the churchianity marketing machine starts taking advantage of peoples' interest in redefining "church as we've known it" (sort of like all those "radical youth worship" CD's that recycle the same songs over and over and over).

In the original "Matrix" movie (don't waste your time on the sequels, trust me), the Oracle instructed Neo, "Know thyself"; for Neo (and for us), it meant to become comfortable with who we are, and what we are called to do. In Neo's case, it was embracing being "the One"; for us, it's embracing who God has made us to be, and what He has called us to do, and rejecting both the box of modernism and the box of postmodernism (for they both limit us and fail to adequately define us).

We are followers of Jesus. That is what defines us and gives us our identity. Anything else is a form of idolatry.

Let The Games Begin!

2004: Let the games begin!

Todd Hunter has moved his blog YET AGAIN, but I've tracked him down once more. Todd's renamed his blogsite "Society for Kingdom Living". Hopefully, he'll be updating more regularly than the past few months, because he's got a lot of good stuff to add to the conversation re: postmodern society and the advancing Kingdom of God.

Jumping to the ongoing topic of being a postmodern missionary, I have recently signed on to play bass for a local Celtic rock band. They do a lot of traditional Celtic tunes, although with a more modern, rock feel. They also take popular tunes and "Celtify" them -- such as "Werewolves of London". The drummer and I were formerly bandmates during the late 1990's, and when the band started the search for a new bass player, he thought of me and as of a week ago, I'm feverishly learning three CD's worth of their material before next Thursday!

Oh, and Happy New Year!