signing off

The Global Day of Prayer was amazing - I was at the stadium event in London with about 15-17,000 other people. Where were you on the day?

The Gotan Project was also great - not my kind of music, necessarily, but a very hip and slick live show incorporating tango, techno, trip-hop and cool visual elements.

I am not posting these days because a) i am too busy without Anjali and Jen to help carry the load or b) I am in Canada and on holiday. Hopefully I will be able to stay away from a computer as much as possible! Expect me back later in June.

miscellaneous...

ok this is a smash and grab one, because i'm really busy and i WOULD HAVE posted on time if the internet connection had been functioning earlier.

1. WHAT ARE MY VIEWS, as one anonymous poster asked, regarding Islam and Wagner's views posted earlier. I agree 100% with him on the fact that those 4 points are QUESTIONABLE ASSUMPTIONS. They are all assumptions and they are all questionable. Debates have raged over them all. I have no problem accepting the first 3 as myths and/or falsehoods. I think the reality on the ground shows that a democratic Iraq with strong leadership and a unifying national identity is not yet a reality and might never be. The issue of "Who is Allah?" is a very sticky and sensitive one with massive implications. There is very good evidence on both sides of the argument. I see from the Old Testament (and the New) that even if we get the right God, sometimes we can worship Him in the wrong way. Wrong enough to commit idolatry, wrong enough to elicit God's wrath and judgement. Modern day Muslims are no more exempt from this dynamic than were Hebrews in 1300 BC. Nor are materialistic Westerners...

2. HELP! We have lost 1/2 our team in the last week or two and already we are under the cosh. These next 2 months will be a real time of testing and temptation. I honestly don't know WHY God allows these things to happen. We were supposed to get new members in months ago and it hasn'tworked out that way. Sadly, each day that passes in our current state of survival mode means another day added on to how long it take to get the book done. I don't anticipate making any progress of note in the next 6 weeks.

3. HELP! Just in case you didn't read the first one.

4. YEAH!!! A little bright spot in a gloomy world of musical mediocrity and dull, market-driven products the equivalent of soggy cardboard. Go to the Spiritual Prog site and be amazed. This is the kind of music I reckon Bach and Beethoven would have been playing if they were alive today. OK, maybe not, but Mozart, for sure :)

funeral for a friend

i went to my first funeral in years today. it was of the father of a friend and former colleage, a man who was a stalwart at our church, a great supporter of Frontiers, WEC and Betel and a tireless advocate for ministry to the Muslim world. the whole affair made me think about a few things...

first of all, the difference between the approach to a funeral of a believer and an unbeliever. for unbelievers i guess it is really a time of bereavement and loss. grieving. uncertainty. for a believer like my friend's dad, it is like a graduation ceremony and celebration that they have finally arrived home, to the place that is eternally prepared for them. any loss and grieving is purely for ourselves because we miss the person. but that person is happier, healthier and more complete than they ever were on this earth.

second, it's an incredible opportunity for witness. the confidence, peace, hope and grace with which he met his end were a real testimony to all, and the peace of the believing family and friends must have seemed strange and possibly even compelling. Les asked that no one wear black at his funeral/memorial service as mourning was not appropriate! the pastor pulled no punches in making clear that we were celebrating his life, not mourning his death, and i can imagine that many who were there and not believers must have begun to ask questions about their own life and what happens when it ends.

finally, legacy. there were many wonderful things said about this man, and he clearly left behind a family, friends, colleagues and a church who knew and loved him. he had run the race and finished well. it reminds me of how Nobel (he of the peace prize) read his own obituary, when the paper accidentally mistook his brother's death for his own. the indictment and condemnation of this industialist who invented, or rather aggressively marketed dynamite as an instrument of war and violence caused him to reconsider his life and he poured the rest of it into good things, such as the legacy of the trust fund for the Nobel prizes for Peace, Literature, Science, etc.

i also read recently of a funeral where the pastor began the eulogy by talking about the deceased using the wrong name and cataloging all the terrible things he had done. the congregation were shocked, to say the least, but then the pastor explained that the departed had actually been part of a witness relocation programme and had found Christ later in life. he then proclaimed that while the government can give you a new name and address, only God can give a new life and identity.

although sad to say farewell to a man who 7 months ago was in fine health, i am glad to have known him and glad i went today, to be reminded of the things that really matter.

to fulfill requirements...i promised earlier to include these

i did say that i would continue with 2 very different and interesting viewpoints about issues related to Islam (not my own views, necessarily, but interesting nonetheless).

so here they are...

This article is a couple of years old but is very insightful regarding Islam, Europe and the future.

The other is from C. Peter Wagner, who is known to many as one of the originators of the modern church planting/missiology movement, to others as part of a cabal of prophetic influences in American charismatic Christendom. It reads as follows and was taken from strategicprayer.net:

SOME THOUGHTS ON IRAQ
by Peter Wagner
May 3, 2007

The perspective I bring to expressing these thoughts is that of a professional missiologist, one who specializes in the cross-cultural communication of the gospel of the kingdom of God. My supposition is that there might be some insights from missiology that could help us to understand and pray more clearly about the current situation in Iraq.

Let me be clear that I agree that Saddam Hussein was an international criminal who deserved to be removed and punished. George Bush the father should have and could have removed him, but it took George Bush the son to do the job.

However the design for rebuilding Iraq was flawed from the beginning because it was based on four questionable assumptions, all of them derived from the premise that if everyone in the world had a free choice they would want to be like Americans and would want their nation to be governed like America. This is very similar to the faulty presumption on the part of early American missionaries that churches all over the world should look and behave like churches in America.

The first questionable assumption was that the government of a nation like Iraq could move from a dictatorship to a democracy in a relatively short time as long as there is a superior military force to impose a new government. Most Americans believed that as soon as Saddam Hussein was removed, there would be rejoicing in the streets all over Iraq, that everyone would embrace democracy, and that Iraq would live happily ever after. The reality is that the transition from totalitarianism to freedom is an extremely slow process that requires a time line, undoubtedly a much longer one than the corporate patience of America could endure.

The second questionable assumption was that Iraq is a nation and that Iraqi nationalism would trump any internal cultural and religious differences. The reality is that Iraq is only a pseudo-nation, not created by the will of its own people but with boundaries imposed from the beginning by outside forces. Missiologists know that loyalty to the homogeneous cultural unit is, in fact, the highest social loyalty. In Iraq, Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites have a greater loyalty to their respective people group than to their artificial nation. Realistically, they should be regarded as three nations who do not particularly like each other. Think, for example, of trying to create one nation from Germans, French and Spanish.

The third questionable assumption was that democracy and free national elections would produce strong national leadership. The reality is that under Saddam Hussein there was no second in command on a national level. Shiites are the majority and their leadership, with virtually no past experience of leading a nation, would predictably take charge in a democratic election, but they could not expect to be accepted as leaders by the others, especially by the Sunnis. The Sunnis could not use the democratic process to change this, so their resource becomes force.

The fourth questionable assumption was that Allah is just another name for the true God. This was a great victory for the enemy who is attempting to control the spiritual atmosphere over Iraq. The reality is that Allah is a high-ranking demonic spirit who has come to steal, to kill, and to destroy. As long as Iraqi people worship him, he has legal right to accomplish his vile purposes in their nation. Political correctness may attempt to deny this spiritual reality, but it only plays into the hands of the evil principalities and powers over Babylon. Intercessors need to recognize that in the invisible world this is a clash of kingdoms. The question is: Who will rule? The kingdom of darkness or the kingdom of light?

In conclusion, it would be well to recognize that “E. Pluribus Unum” has not worked in Iraq, just like it could not work in Yugoslavia. Why, then, did it work in America? It worked because the 13 colonies agreed on a common enemy. They overthrew the enemy from the ground up, not by the will of outside forces. They had strong indigenous leadership such as Washington and Jefferson. They agreed on a national ideology through the Federalist Papers, largely written by Alexander Hamilton. Most of all, they enjoyed the blessing of God. Not all were Christian believers, but none of the founders of America, as far as we know, openly worshiped a false god such as Allah. This cleared the heavens for the work of the prophetic intercessors and the leaders of the church and allowed the United States to be established and to succeed.

latvia and brunei - a very short study in contrasts

I 've been working on these two very different countries. One of the most obvious contrasts is in geography (DUH), but also in religion. Brunei is overwhelmingly Muslim and a brand of Islam that is conservative without being radical. Latvia is officially secular, and with more atheists/non-religious than any one type of Christianity. Lutherans, Catholics and Orthodox are evenly balanced, but in decline or stagnation - the only groups growing seem to be the neocharismatic megachurches and cults.

But economically, there is a massive contrast. Latvia has little to no natural resources, and has basically leveraged up a huge debt and trade deficit in order to stimulate economic growth. It has the fastest growing economy in the EU for several years running but also one of the highest levels of poverty and debt per capita.

Brunei, on the other hand has had the proverbial silver spoon firmly in mouth for generations. Since massive oil and gas deposits were discovered in the 1920s, Brunei has had it made and has possibly the highest standard of living of any Asian country. No one in Brunei even wants to work anywhere but in a government sector. However, the oil will run out soon - and then what? The Sultanate has been trying to prepare for that eventuality. This except from the Asia Sentinel (Aug 2006) illustrates some staggering fiscal irresponsibility.

Some efforts at diversification have ended in unmitigated disaster. The sultan’s brother Jefri is thought to have blown as much as US$40 billion in astonishingly bad or venal investments through the Brunei Investment Agency, which was responsible for investing the proceeds from the country’s energy extraction, and Amedeo Development Corp., Prince Jefri’s personal corporate plaything.

When Amedeo collapsed in 1998, the infuriated sultan banished Jefri to England, where he remains today, and sold some 10,000 items putatively worth US$17 billion in a debtor’s sale that brought only about US$2 billion. A long string of lawsuits has continued ever since. The collapse of Amedeo actually triggered a recession in the oil-steeped kingdom. “Public finances have yet to recover from the so-called ‘Jefri Scandal,’” said a 2003 report by the World Markets Research Centre.

The more destructive outcome of the Amedeo collapse, however, may well have been its long-term impact on the Brunei Investment Agency and its government offshoots, which have been frantically gun-shy ever since about where to place the kingdom’s fabled foreign reserves. Those at one time were thought to amount to as much as U$100 billion, although Jefri’s misadventures and the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997 shrank the excess. Although the sultanate’s foreign reserves are a state secret, observers put them currently at US$40-60 billion.


Wow! Is all i can say. Anyway, there you go. Back to work for me!

walking

this evening, after a lovely meal with some colleagues (well, actually, i got invited over to help finish some leftovers but the food and companionship were great nonetheless), i began to enact my 3 week programme for getting back some semblance of fitness and even lose some of the not insignificant weight i've put on in the last 2 years. i should also begin a programme to end my run on sentences, but that will have to wait for another time.

since i'm under strict orders from the surgeon to limit my activities to a certain range and duration, walking is one of the few things i AM allowed to do freely. so i popped out of the office, wearing my trusty walking shoes and fleece top and trudged off to the valley to power walk a la the 50 year old executive wives i see pounding the pavement in town (but i didn't have those 2 pound hand weights to help tone my arms like they do).

as soon as i made my way off the property and onto the neighbouring pasture land i was greeted by the cool air and the wafting scent of, well, of horse manure. the pastureland is a valley about a mile long and 1/2 a mile wide and home to several dozen small horses whose purpose i cannot detect apart from make the place very scenic and a little bit pungent.

i made my way down to the far end, across the dew-damp grass were littered hundreds of thousands of buttercups, so many that from a distance the grass looked almost yellow rather than green. as the valley sloped down to the end of the valley and i turned back to circle round the other side of the crescent of land, i realized that the sky behind me had turned into a glorious canvas of pastels as the sun set. making my way back around, walking past the horses that ignored me altogether despite my passing within 3 feet of where they were grazing, a fox trotted across my path, sniffing its way up the hill. presumably it was on the trail of the dozen rabbits or the pair of pheasants i had startled earlier.

in those moments i was reminded that although i am poor, although i can't do much else of a physical nature apart from walk, and although i'm overworked and losing team members faster than a chocoholic loses resolve in the cadbury's factory, i am actually very blessed to be here.

brother andrew

most people know the famous story of God's Smuggler - they've read the book or possibly the comic book! WEC had the privilege of hosting Brother Andrew in the 2007 WEC Open Day this past Monday when close to 2000 people descended on Bulstrode to hear news about Open Doors, WEC, and how God is at work around the world.

Brother Andrew is an old man, with an old man's wisdom and experience, but he has the energy and passion of a young person. And that passion has taken a different tack of late. With the fall of Communism (a blip on the timeline of human history), he has employed his experience and passion to the area of sharing the Gospel of Jesus with Muslims.

it's amazing what he has seen in his lifetime - this is a guy who is sharing the Gospel, no punches pulled, with high up Taleban and Hamas leadership. and they are listening and responding to him! of course the way that he shares it is not the way that your standard american street evangelist might shout it at you.

what i took away from the day with him and also with Eliki, our Fijian field leader in Chad, is to focus on the harvest fields, rather than on the wolves (Jesus sent us out as sheep amongst wolves). to not look at Muslims as wolves or as enemies but as people who need salvation and are probably going to be surprisingly open and responsive when it is shared in the right way. forgiveness, peace with God and reconciliation with our fellow man must be balanced with Christ crucified as a substitutionary atonement.

more tomorrow on some interesting insights from 2 very knowledgeable people about Islam

mercy ships makes the bbc

having spent a day onboard the Anastasis and having read about it in the story of YWAM and Mercy Ships, i have been following the progress of the African Mercy, a massive upgrade for Christian floating medical ministry.

the recent ship was just launched recently from shipyards in the northeast of england after years of preparation and millions of pounds spent.
Publish
what's most impressive is that the ship and its ministry got a spot on the bbc news and the clip can be found on the bbc website: here. that's a notable achievement for a Christian ministry, even one as high profile and media-friendly as the the Mercy Ships.

if you want to find out more about the ministry of Mercy Ships, then go here

catholicism and the spirits

i'm sure that books and books have been written about this subject, but i always find it fascinating from a cultural and missiological perspective.

in doing some work on haiti, dominican republic and cuba, it has been interesting to note that the Catholic "landlords" attempted to make conversion to Catholicism as easy as possible for their slaves who they had hauled over from africa. so with minimal instruction they mass converted them. part of the instruction was about the saints - which ones to pray to on which days. the africans took this to heart and began to insinuate their own saints and little gods into the equation, as well as a lot of spiritism. so we basically have paganism along traditional african lines, with a coating of Catholicism on top. imagine looking at a pie whose crust was nice and buttery and flaky but the content of the pie was rather nasty. you don't know what you get til you cut into it. the fact that people are more likely to see a witch doctor than a priest in these predominantly Catholic countries says something about the quality of faith there. some people might have theological issues with Catholicism, but the fact is that this is hardly representative of "proper" Catholicism.

and then it makes me wonder about evangelical mission activity. how much of the same are we doing - converting people to a thin veneer of westernized evangelical culture while underneath their hearts, their way of thinking, their values, the things that matter remain largely unchanged. i would assume that modern evangelicals are not guilty in the same fashion as the 16th century priest were, but it's an issue that anyone working in another culture would have to be aware of.

smoking may damage....Bible production

In a very interesting insight by the German Bible Society, it was revealed that the exploding Chinese market for cigarettes is driving up the cost of the special thin paper that is used in printing Bibles. So apart from destroying your health and life, making you a social pariah in many circles and countries and staining your teeth yellow, smoking is also driving up the cost of Bibles. Not that it matters for those English speakers who seem willing to spend any amount on The Purpose Driven Life in Modern English with faux crocodile skin cover and testimonies from the cast and crew of American Idol or the new Transformers Bible, released in conjunction with forthcoming Spielberg blockbluster where your Bible can transform either into a grenade launcher (the bad guys) or a first aid kit (the good guys). But for those people in poor countries, who are lucky to even have ONE translation in their language and who have to pay a week's or month's wages for their Bible.

Coming up soon - voodoo vs the Pope, concerts in caves and cliff walks to quaint harbour towns.