Too Long Since Writing and maybe too long for reading :)

It's been too long since posting, but we had a difficult first third of the semester - several papers and a Greek test that was none too easy. But we survived and are into the first reading week.

We're heading to Mozambique this summer, and it's been interesting doing some reading and research to prepare. One of the books that I've wanted to read for a while has been suggested reading for understanding Moz - The Mystery of Capital. Emily and I are actually starting to read it together. She has become a bit tired of my talking about business stuff without reading parts herself, so its been good for both of us.

We also attended a Business as Mission discussion this past week. One of the speakers had worked for Accenture and another consulting firm while in France. Right now, he and his wife are in seminary and planning on heading to the Middle East after graduation to do something like BaM. Anyway, he said so many things that resonate with our experience. He was saying that he had some close missionary friends in France that had been there for four years upon his arrival (he and his wife just stayed for 10 months). During my friend's time there, he had opportunities to build relationships and to share the Gospel in the business setting. He was invited into a French home (non-believers) for Christmas and really got to share his heart significantly. Upon telling the missionary about his experience, the missionary - who terms himself as a Christian worker when speaking with the French - was shocked and said that in four years he had never had such an experience to either engage the French culture or share the Gospel.

In concert with those thoughts, Emily and I continue to feel that to reach people effectively in the secular societies of our day, you've got to show that you are excellent in some field. Let's face it, if you go over to share the Gospel as a relatively young believer (which I would argue is anyone under 30), you may grow a lot in the experience, but you probably won't aid the church much unless you have phenomenal leadership that helps you grow in process because 1) you're very young in your faith 2) you're completely inept in the language 3) you don't understand much of their culture 4) you don't add value to any other part of their society. I don't begrudge anyone going and sharing the Gospel, but I think that we should rightly think about who is being blessed primarily in this process :) That is the situation that I find myself having come from. I'm deeply thankful for the experience, but I'm disturbed that I thought we were accomplishing so much (stats later on the lack thereof).

Some groups undoubtedly focus on the growth of their individual workers. There was certainly a focus on our training, but in addressing the key issues of discipleship and submission to Christ, we can't say that our maturation was a focus. I am not saying that maturity is the only factor in having a bit of an impact. Certainly, the Lord was gracious to do some things in a some of the guys lives that I was in contact with, and Emily's ministry certainly blossomed more significantly. But, our level of maturity (and of those expats that we worked with) is the reason that we are no longer surprised at the loss of most of the believers in our company's movement in Asia upon graduation (which was initially a shocking revelation to us - we did not realize that statistically, the vast majority had fallen away). In essence, you can't call someone to a level of maturity that you are not at. Countrywide, we may see 4000 people "make decisions for Christ" in a certain year, but if only 100 of those graduate and walk with the Lord (which is not an outlandish estimate of what is really happening) , that should be viewed as the bottom line. In Christ coming to the world, he took on flesh as a human, went to the lowest level of culture and society, shared life with people, modeled walking with the Lord in front of the them, lived selflessly, and took on pain and suffering. We are not called to be the Savior, as he was, but we are ministers of reconciliation, which means that we should follow a similar path (minus taking the sin of the world upon our shoulders). Within the company, our lives were simply too detached from theirs. We lived in nicer apartments and had few if any of their struggles in business/school. In essence, we modeled very little of the Gospel to them in the places that it was hardest. It would be like if Christ had been born into the house of Roman Senator. While there, we could love them and pray for them, but at the core level of life (in dealing with corruption in the government and business world, in dealing with spiritual forces in Chinese religion and ancestor worship, and in addressing social disharmony), we had no experience and weren't really gaining any.

It's been difficult to stomach at certain points this past fall and winter, but we come from a Christian culture that sees itself as a world leader but is in fact spiritually emaciated in many ways. People in the "two-thirds world" typically grasp discipleship, enduring, suffering, compassion, etc. much more quickly than we American Christians. This isn't a diatribe against the West, as I am certainly indicting myself, but rather it has been a sobering discovery that Africans, Asians and South Americans are continually calling us (the West) to true discipleship at different conferences and meetings, whether this be the Lausanne Conferences of World Evangelization or other smaller events. This doesn't just relate to homosexuality among bishops or abortions en masse; instead, they hammer at our materialism, consumerism, and political bullying (sorry W, but it's true at many points).

Onto another issue :) I'm getting to explore the question of "Are there multiple ways to heaven?" in one research paper, issues related to Christianity in contact with Hinduism in a few others, and Biblical text criticism in a third. The paper on a multiplicity of ways to heaven has been very helpful in clarifying thinking about what it means for Christianity to relate to other world religions. Certainly, there are glimmers of the truth in each of these, yet we Evangelicals sometimes do a poor job explaining this reasonably. The intellectuals of the world have termed us "exclusivists" while giving themselves names like "pluralists" (meaning that all major world religions provide independent salvific access to the ultimate Reality, or God) or "inclusivists" (meaning that all are saved through Christ's work but that their faith in God, being Vishnu or Krishna in Hinduism, Allah in Islam, is salvific according to their culture). So, one of the things that we have to do to engage in the debate and to argue for the concept of truth is truly to recast the debate. We should be termed something like "particularists" or perhaps better "engaged particularists" to denote that we recognize some common points of debate but feel that God has spoken and that He is redeeming a particular people to Himself, namely those who believe in Christ and walk accordingly.