Good Times

The first couple of weeks in YWAM have been extremely busy, but really exciting for us as a family. Our schedule is absolutely NUTS -- YWAM is full-time, and I'm still working at St. Arbucks about 25-30 hours a week, plus all the kids' extra-curricular pursuits (think: "Dad's Taxi"), and you probably get the idea...

A few quick things about our YWAM base:

A) I absolutely LOVE how incredibly international and multicultural our base is, from staff to students. There's about 70 people at the base, and over a dozen languages. This week, the DTS that Wendy & I are a part of (second floor) joined with the Korean DTS (main floor) for our lectures, and it was cool to be part of an English/Korean (via an interpreter) week of classes.

B) Praying with Koreans is a blast. When they say, "let's all pray", they all do -- at the same time. Loudly. Our own DTS class is smaller, about fifteen people, but six language groups: English, Korean, Swiss, German, Dutch, and Japanese. During prayer times, people are encouraged to use their native language so that they can be more free to pray and less tied up with trying to translate. So, prayer times are wonderfully international and multi-cultural as well.

C) There is a very deliberate effort made by the staff of the base (who are also an intriguing hodge-podge of languages and nationalities) to intregrate everyone into a community. To that end, they facilitate weekly base parties where different countries get to show a bit of their own culture.

For the first Canadian night, the Clan McAlpine got up, all wearing hockey jerseys, and proudly sang "Canada Is Really Big", by Canada's very own Arrogant Worms.

Chorus: We’re the second largest country On this planet Earth And if Russia keeps on shrinking Then soon we’ll be first (as long as we keep Quebec)

All that to say, there's good times at YWAM.

Road to YWAM Part 2

My first ever exposure to YWAM came about when I was still a kid. My father's university roomie (for all four years at UofToronto), was Earl Pitts, who for many years was the director of YWAM Canada. Earl was also at the Performing Arts base that Wendy & I connected with in the late 80's. Our daughter Jo loved going there as a one-year-old because, unlike church, she could toddle up to the band and dance her little feet off, or at least until her diaper caused her to overbalance.

While pastoring in Victoria BC, two pastor friends and I started a youth pastors' prayer group, to pray for each other and for the difficulties of youth ministry. While we invited every youth pastor we had met, only six guys came. We became very tight relationally, and the group became not only a prayer group, but also an accountability group. And one of the six was Graham Jackson, director of YWAM Victoria.

Canada Day 1996: Victoria doesn't like having Christians doing anything publicly. They allowed the March For Jesus, which was a breakthrough of sorts, but it was still difficult to get permission or permits to do much in the local bandshells or other public performance areas.

I had created a performing entity called "Stark Raving Mad" which covered live performances by bands, drama teams, or whatever, who needed ways of getting into public places. Through Stark Raving, I was able to get all the proper permissions to hold a three-hour performance in Market Square, just a few blocks up the road from Victoria's Inner Harbour. With Graham Jackson's connections, we were able to bring three YWAM teams (Hawaiian, Vietnamese, and Maori) to perform cultural dances and war songs -- actually, spiritual warfare songs, although not in English. There were some significant gains made that day.

When we were pastoring in Los Angeles, our friend Norm Strauss called from Canada to say, "hey, I'll be in L.A. for a week. Put a band together for me, and we'll be leading worship in the Valley". Guess where it turned out to be? Of course: YWAM Los Angeles, for a Worship & Intercession DTS.

Wendy & I have had various copies of the "Go Manual" (directory of YWAM ministries and training bases) over the years, and we've often looked through them, wondering when & where we would be involved.

In the fall of 2003, while spending another year in seminary (upgrading my M.A. to an M.Div. so I could start my Doctor of Ministry with Len Sweet), I literally ran into Frank Naea in the student centre. Frank is a 6'3", 250 pound Maori guy, so running into him is something of an adventure in itself.

Despite being the main speaker at the missions conference, Frank had no-one to eat lunch with, so the two of us sat down together and I plied him with questions about YWAM.

I was pursuing a doctorate as a door-opener to teach at a Bible college or seminary, out of a desire to work with the next generation of leaders. And while I really enjoyed the times I was able to be a guest lecturer at Tyndale Seminary in Toronto, the culture in the world of academia isn't really what puts the caffeine into my coffee, if you know what I mean. I love teaching, but to me, investing tons of time in getting papers published in obscure theological journals sounded like the ministerial equivalent of decaf.

When I was given the left foot of disfellowship from my denominational job last March, Wendy and I both had a very strong sense that, after over sixteen years, the time to join YWAM "officially" was NOW. So, after much prayer, we felt that we should move 2300 miles west to BC, and we arrived here last August, taking jobs wherever we could (St. Arbucks for me) to pay the bills until YWAM starts (tomorrow!).

So now we're back in the familiar territory of living by faith and praying for finances to come in. And we're really excited that the YWAM dream is finally starting to unfold for us; we've always been kinda nomadic and occasionally even risk-takers, so we're eager to see what God is going to have for us through this next transitional season at YWAM.

Stay tuned...

Road to YWAM Part 1

Prayer requests really tell you a lot about what's occupying your thoughts and day-to-day life, don't they?

When I worked at Hope Manor Detention Centre, just after I finished seminary, our prayer requests often included things like asking for opportunities to share our faith with some of the teenaged inmates residents, for peace in the facility's dorms and school program, and -- not infrequently -- that we wouldn't be killed during a shift at work. (I was almost stabbed in the stomach with a meat fork on Christmas Eve, and a full-scale riot broke out on New Year's Eve; since we worked with minors, we were unarmed and prohibited from using force to protect ourselves.)
These smiling people served in an often hostile setting; hostile because of the nature of the work, and also because as a Christian-run correctional facility, we were paddling upstream with parole officers, court officials, and the residents themselves, who were generally not impressed with having Christians on staff.

The level of community that the staff developed through working in such a situation was quite raw and real. Because of our rotating work schedule, we could only attend church once every six weeks, so a house church in our apartment (where this picture was taken) became our main gathering every Thursday evening.

We were connected with the local YWAM Performing Arts base, and YWAM students would spend one night per week volunteering at our facility as a part of their DTS. Through the YWAM staff, we discovered that there was a worship time every Thursday morning at 8:00AM that we were welcome to participate in. From that time on, Thursday became our "Sabbath", as we would join YWAM for early morning worship, then go out for breakfast as a staff together, and meet in Wendy's and my apartment in the evening for a Bible study and more hangin' out together. And, once every six weeks, we'd join the Cambridge Vineyard for worship.

By the spring of 1990, Wendy & I were seriously considering three possible future options: joining YWAM (we'd been invited to be staff at the base), or perhaps Jesus People USA (we'd visited their inner-city place in Chicago twice to explore the possibility), or accepting an offer from a church in Victoria to be their youth pastor. Although we ended up moving to Victoria, Wendy & I both had a strong sense that, at some point in our future, YWAM would play a bigger role in our lives.

Heres-O-Meter

A number of comments in the Post-Charismatic forum and emails have voiced some questions recently that touch on an important issue:

Does holding an erroneous theological understanding -- a "false teaching", if you will -- make someone automatically a "false teacher", or even -- at the extreme -- a "heretic" (one who has departed so far from the centre of Christianity that they cannot truly be considered "Christian" any longer)?

Of course, there are many in the blogosphere who seem to think that they've developed a fool-proof "Heres-O-Meter" that can flawlessly detect even the slightest toxic deviation. Unfortunately, the "margin for error" on these Heres-O-Meters often tends to be quite large.

Remember the somewhat minimalist "Chacedon Compliant" quiz that was posted here a while back?

Two things to keep in mind regarding this little quiz:

1. It's just a fun little quiz, not the final arbiter of orthodoxy, and
   
   
2. most of the people who took the quiz were "Chacedon Compliant" (orthodox in their Christology) but had a wide range of secondary influences, some of which would qualify as questionable, if not heretical, beliefs.

What it all boils down to is that Matt Redman's song is right: "It's all about You, Jesus." The most important line of orthodoxy comes from the mouth of Jesus:

When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, He asked His disciples, "Who do people say the Son of Man is?"

They replied, "Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets."

"But what about you?" He asked. "Who do you say I am?"

Simon Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." (Matthew 16:13-16)

To call a teaching or practice into question is not synonymous with judgmentally calling someone a false teacher, a heretic, or labeling someone as leading others into delusion. Ultimately, it is the teaching and/or practice that is the issue, not the personalities.

Bad theology in some areas doesn't make people heretics and/or false teachers, if they are also Chalcedon compliant. Incorrect in some areas, taking things to extremes in others, not handling Scripture carefully -- yes. Heretics (outside of the faith)? -- I'm just not prepared to go there, if they are also Chalcedon compliant.

Besides, the battery in my Heres-O-Meter is dead. And the warranty ran out. The instructions were written in FOR-TRAN. And it never really worked right in the first place, anyway.

Appeasing Blog Guilt

That piteous cry I hear from time to time, voicing sad tales of abandonment, can be naught but the lamentations of my languishing blog, accusing me of neglect and impoverishment; a truly effective and difficult-to-ignore language it speaks.

Perhaps a haiku written on its behalf would suffice as appropriate blogging penance?

Blog lying fallow
All conversation stagnates
Repent, post again

Some bits and pieces from the last couple of weeks:

One of the great side-benefits from The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe being made into a movie is that some of C.S. Lewis' out-of-print books have been re-released. Wendy had found the entire Cosmic Trilogy at a used bookstore and given them to me as a birthday present about ten years ago, but various borrowing friends (coupled with our cross-country treks) depleted my library of their presence. Until now... WOOT WOOT.

Charlie Wear, editor of Next-Wave, is one of the people who first strongly encouraged me to start my own blog (two others are Len Hjalmarson and Leighton Tebay); Charlie has kindly published several of my articles in the past couple of years, and emailed me last week to request an article on my Post-Charismatic writing for this month's cover.

Thanks, Sir Charles, for your continued encouragement and the somewhat freakish sensation I get in my gut seeing my name on the cover of Next-Wave.

I've been receiving and answering a LOT more emails than is normal for me, and it's been a joy to hear from so many different people, and to have some great conversations with these new-found friends. Plus, I've been reading Lewis' Cosmic Trilogy, as well as following the train wreck that is found in the record of Israel's kings as detailed in 1st and 2nd Chronicles.

However, my time should be slightly more "freed up" in the next couple of weeks, as just yesterday, I informed my manager at St. Arbucks that my availability to work any and all shifts would have to be curtailed once we start YWAM officially; to say that she was quite displeased would be -- accurate, if somewhat cryptic. As a result, apparently I will forfeit my shift supervisor position, and she hinted that I might find myself at the bottom of the list of baristas for getting any shifts at all.

While I am not wanting to burn any bridges with St. Arbucks, at the same time, I didn't move all the way across the country to serve coffee. YWAM is why we came here, and while I consider my job at St. Arbuck's to be part of the Lord's provision for our family, YWAM is the main focus.

Speaking of YWAM, we're getting really excited about starting there in just a few weeks. We've been friends of YWAM in several cities for many years, and have felt since 1990 that someday YWAM would be a more permanent place for us.

Starting with a "divine appointment" in 2003 at Providence College & Seminary's annual missions conference with Frank Naea (past president of YWAM), the journey/dream of becoming officially a part of YWAM began to gain momentum, and is finally coming to fruition.

And more frequent posting will follow and serve as "fruit in keeping with repentence" (Matthew 3:8). I mean it. Really and truly. Verily, verily.

Taming the Teacher

There seems to be a lot of schooling metaphors and slang going around these days. My daughter Jo tells me that at her high school, if you verbally outwit or physically out-manouvre somebody, you can triumphantly claim that you "schooled" them.

One of Jo's friends recently whupped her backside in an online game, and proudly emailed her, "Paint me yellow and call me a bus, 'cuz I took you to SCHOOL!"

Even our good friend Jules brought a teaching-based bit of slang from Victoria when she visited here in December: if somebody is proving to be difficult, obstinant, or argumentative, Jules refers to him/her as "all hard to teach".

"Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly." (James 3:1)

I don't know how many times I've heard this verse read -- solemnly, passionately, accusingly, admonishingly (oops -- think I just made that word up). It's a sobering bit of Scripture, any way you look at it.

What I find surprising is that it took me so long to realize that St. James is not starting a whole new line of thought for the remainder of James 3; the famous teaching on "taming the tongue" isn't a separate topic, with the first verse being somehow stuck in there, maybe because it didn't fit in chapter two or something.

I'd like to suggest that the verse written to teachers is the introduction to the teaching on taming the tongue. While this passage is definitely applicable to everybody, it's a special lesson for those who open their mouths to teach.

Many would (correctly) assume that the warning to teachers is about their content -- the "what" that they teach -- and "correctly handling the word of truth" (2 Timothy 2:15) is definitely of highest priority.

But according to St. James, the manner in which we present truth is equally important. Try re-reading the entire chapter (James 3) with teachers -- writers, bloggers -- in mind. The character of the teacher, and how his/her teachings are delivered, is very important to God.

St. Paul corroborates this when he wrote to the Corinthians: "If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing." (1 Corinthians 13:2)

Is our content important -- without question, yes. Is the manner in which we speak -- taming our tongues, showing love and compassion -- equally important? According to Scripture -- without question, yes.

That's probably why the teaching on taming our tongues is introduced by the admonition to teachers, and concluded with this:

But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. Peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness. (James 3:17-18)