Evendays

Daughter, Wife and I got back home from the Annual 4 day Teen Retreat last night after a 5 hour drive. It’s something I organize each year, a retreat I inherited from two great, older guys who were looking for a naïve "young" man who would carry on the tradition. 12 years ago I had lots of ideas and about 35 kids. Today I have a lot less ideas, but still about 35 kids (though their places of origin have very much changed). It’s amazing what God can do with a few Bibles and some new songs, ping pong, soccer and basket balls, especially if He sends some good weather your way. Add pizza and pasta and hamburgers and fries, ice cream and popcorn, campfires and evenings of crazy games, late nights and a full moon, mix well, and see what happens.

Long live youth ministry. 

Immigrant populations can often be open to Gospel while “Europeans” are not. The churches of Christ in Paris are essentially focused on the “changing France”, that is, one of the churches is largely made up of French citizens from the Caribbean (blacks) while the other is made up of French-speaking Christians from sub-Sahara Africa. Of course, many African immigrant children will become European citizens, possibly opening the door to new missions.

The Marseilles church is in a rather poor area of the city. Their members come, for the most part, from the neighborhood. On any given Sunday, you will find North Africans, native Marseillais, several European French who are retired people who cannot afford to leave the neighborhood. The church there is a reflection of the neighborhood.

The same is true in Lausanne and Geneva. There are ethnic Swiss, French, other Europeans, South/North Americans, and Africans all worshipping together. The church is a reflection of the city and the neighborhood. As long as this is the case, local churches appeal to all ethnic groups.

In general, it has proven difficult, for example, for predominantly African or Caribbean churches to attract “white” Europeans. As a church reaches out to specific ethnic groups and its identity is partially defined by that ethnicity, it may be “stuck” in that ethnicity until popular thought changes and that specific ethnic group is no longer marginalized.

People are evolving in the way they approach truth. It must be experienced, tactile, self-authenticated, rather than revealed through some outside authority. This is challenging to those of us who believe that faith comes through revelation (the light came into darkness), through God’s incarnation, through living and telling God’s story, through the Son who is Way, Truth and Life.

I’m not saying that Christianity shouldn’t be existential. The Relationship must be lived and the Will carried out. But the new creation in Christ calls us to pour our experience through the filter of the Message, rather than the Message through the filter of experience. 

Most Europeans believe that they have already heard the story and are not open to hearing it again. We tackle that problem through the formation of youth who experience the story as new. They are already capable of reaching their peers (who do not think in the same way as we older folks). What we strive to do is to form the mind, not by the means of today’s thought, but through the transformation of thinking that comes about through Gospel. Postmodernism will pass away. The Message, and its transforming power, will not.

The high cost of doing missions can discourage workers and sponsoring churches, for workers must spend much time finding new support or convincing current supporters to continue.

Weariness can set in on the part of the supporting church, on the part of the worker, and on the mission church.

The sponsoring church may ask itself questions like: What are we getting out of this? How is it forming our members at home? Doesn’t it make more since to use the resources here than abroad? Does the mission work create excitement and enthusiasm in the local body? Are we putting our money where it can get the biggest bang for its buck?

The worker can doubt his effectiveness or try to compete (or feel incapable of competing) with churches that have greater resources. She may feel that she is wasting her time in a hard field.

The mission church itself may feel like a foreigner in her native land, and may wonder if it’s worth the cost of persevering when so many friends and family members do not understand their “fanaticism” (that is that God has invaded every compartment of their lives).

There are many other challenges: the focus of sponsoring churches on short-term missions rather than long-term, loneliness on "the field", discouragement (how to deal with lack of growth or the loss of members), keeping church identity without becoming sectarian, etc. Some are unique to mission churches. Others are common to all church families and workers.

Wife strung together 21 straight five minute kilometers and finished strong in a cold (45 degree) head-wind that whipped along at about 30 kilometers an hour (which, according to my math, means she was running at 42 kilometers per hour, or 26 mph… Pretty fast, huh?).

To see her cross the finish line, go here, then click on the "forward" red triangle to view her in the following 3 pictures.

That’s not a grimace… It’s a smile for having completed the race.

God loves Europeans. He has a plan for them. That plan is summed up in one word: Glory. And you will meet many French-speaking family members when the Lord comes.

We are but 200 years from the French revolution. For God, that is but a breath. (Remember, Israel spent 400 years in Egypt. Almost 500 years passed between Daniel’s vision of the God’s Kingdom and the enthronement of the Messiah.) Supporting slow-growing, slow-going missions is not a waste of time or resources. It is part of God’s plan and he has gifted people through his Spirit to do it and enabled churches to be partners in that effort.

I believe two things about Europe: What we learn here about “evangelizing” will one day (perhaps in 20 or 30 years) be applicable to the USA as the USA follows philosophically in Europe’s steps (on a material and economic level, Europe follows the USA’s lead…); And we must be present, trained and ready when openness to the Gospel comes. Waiting for that day, then training people, will mean lost opportunities. Spiritual vacuums will be quickly filled with deadly philosophies.

And let me mention, we are planning on staying.

Though there have been periods of great growth since WWII, most churches are still quite small.

As you know, most European countries were, at one time, governed by royal families. Much of their authority came from organized religion. When the French “secularized” during their revolution (1789), enlightenment had forcefully intruded upon Europe. It was out with tyranny and out with organized religion. In many ways, royalty was not the only victim of newfound freedom. God (as viewed by many) was dethroned too.

Interpreted through the Enlightenment, religion had brought the people wars, feudal societies, the darkness of superstition and enslavement to tyranny.

A century of “freedom” brought about the same problems as before, though much magnified. Empires collided in World War I, spurred by survival for some (France and Belgium), “God and country” for others (England). The USA was mostly spared the horrors of that war. The European intellectuals who had discarded God now claimed that his “absence” (how could a loving God—even a rejected god, at that—permit such a thing?) was proof of his non-existence.

Communism and fascism spread across Europe (not just Russia and the Axis), the one denying the existence of God and the other using him (in Germany) to defend nationalism. Once again, on its own territory, the USA was largely spared the horrors of war. Existentialism grew out of the European ashes. The war had proven, once again, that God was dead and that, above all, fanaticism must be avoided at all costs. Tolerance became the chief virtue. There was no room for absolutes for they lead but to destruction.

Would you like to know your future?

If you knew it, would you be tempted to change it?

I know I would. Which probably means that (and this is silly since it can’t happen) that I shouldn’t know the future for the future belongs to Someone who is big enough to handle it. I can barely manage my present, let alone my future!

The desire to manage what lies outside my reach causes nothing but grief. And even if it were in my reach (by use of fortune tellers, divination and the like) I would still be called to give that future to God. That would be a step of faith. Knowing that he has something good planned for his creation, and for me, is a sign of hope. Taking advantage of the present, living as I have received from God, is an expression of love.

Faith, hope and love.

Barbara is in her 60’s. We first met her when the grapes got ripe. She’s lived in Lausanne forever but 35 percent of our conversation is in Italian. (0% mine. 70% hers.) Wife has become her “best friend”. The door bell will ring and it’ll be Barbara asking for “la donna bella”. (I think that means “the boss”.) She and wife will chat. Barbara will magically produce a half pound of coffee (we now have enough for the next five years), then they’ll head out to the yard and pick figs, apples and grapes.

A year ago our paths crossed in front of the house. She, dressed in black. “My husband left me”, she said with a tear in her eye. In my absent-minded way, I asked her where he’d gone. “To ‘cielo’ and ‘la vita’ will never be the same.”

Barbara rang again this past Saturday, offering us a 15 pound pumpkin squash-type thing. She said her grandkids were coming over and they’d just use it as a soccer ball. Better that we should have it. She didn’t take any fruit, didn’t want a cup of coffee. Just wanted to give us something.

And although she smiles a bit more, life really is not the same without her “chéri”.

Eulogy, eublogy. Good word, good blog.

(Organ music…)

Today, we’ve come here to honor that cherished blog, Ocular Fusion. (No, you’re not in the wrong place. Come on in… Take off your hat. Respect, and all that…) He breathed his last and passed into cyberspace on October 8, 2007 after a short, event-filled two years.

I first met the departed blog through comments left on a popular site. I visited his place, laughed and cried, left a comment. He replied.

I was hooked.

We will miss his shots on goal, his diatribes on the Tide and Notre Dame (he’s been strangely silent on that one…), his glimpses into the human eye and his stories of Eyegal and the 3 Eyegarçons, his runs in the morning and his walk with Jesus.

He elevated the bar for the daily post. Dedicated to his readers, and especially to his comment-ators (Fusioneers), commenting on their comments, which generated more comments on his comments. And on it would go.

Though I will miss him, I’ll probably get more done. I am sure that he will too.

But like all the faithful, I await with expectation the resurrection, when new life will be breathed into http://www.ocularfusion.net/

Yes, I eagerly await that day…