Great Commission Air

I had a great lunch today with Robert and Jennifer Rice. They have ministry, Great Commission Air, that provides air transportation for Christian missions and humanitarian relief, primarily in Guatemala. This involves anything from flying supplies to missionaries serving in remote locations to flying injured or sick children to Guatemala City for urgent medical care.

Right now they're back in the states trying to raise enough support to return to Guatemala for two years. They've raised enough to cover their basic expenses (which doesn't take much down there) but still need to raise about $40,000 to cover the operational costs of flying the plane 50 hours a month.

If you're feeling generous (and/or a prompting by the Holy Spirit), take a minute and donate to their cause. You'll be glad you did.

Change faith versus politics standoff, says Christian think tank

We don't have a "state religion" like they do in England, but many of the issues that led to a new book Faith and Politics After Christendom would seem to apply to the American church as well. Published by the British think-tank Ekklesia, it lays out some provocative ideas worth contemplating....

The history and ideology of Christendom, which has parallels in other religious traditions, has led to the utterly false assumption that the only options in the relationship between faith and politics are between the kind of religion that tries to dominate others, or the virtual expulsion of religion from public life and its reduction to a ‘private’ sphere.”

Neither of these approaches, often advanced by religionists and secularists respectively, is either credible or desirable, argues Ekklesia.

In Faith and Politics After Christendom, Jonathan Bartley says that if it wants to follow the subversive way of Jesus (who rejected violence, broke religious taboos, by-passed political authority, and was ultimately killed by the powers-that-be) the church should stop trying to grasp political privilege for itself.

Instead, it should recognise itself to be a creative minority, operating from the margins, with an imaginative agenda for change which it should seek to ‘get on the agenda’ by example, by witness and by cooperation with others – as in the global anti-poverty movement.

Although here in America we might quibble about resigning ourselves to a "minority" position, however creative, its well worth considering the virtue of behaving as if one were a minority voice. After all, the humility that the Creator Himself demonstrated when he walked the earth is to be our standard. Regardless of whether we are a minority or majority, we are to not to use the tools typically employed by the majorities in the world.

The Gospel of Niggle

The following is actually the conclusion of a paper by theologian Scott McKnight on his Blog Jesus Creed. I've only read the last third of it, and its interesting, but I was especially taken by this wonderful summary of a story by Tolkein about Niggle.

"Which leads me now, finally, to Tolkien’s little man named Niggle. Instead of thinking our task as teachers and preachers of the gospel to be that of Prometheus or Dymer, we need to realize our task is to be a Niggle. Niggle was a little man who painted leaves but, because he was so sensitive to the needs of others around him, he seemed never to get his masterpiece done. This work began with a leaf, turned into a tree of some proportions that led its viewers into a forest on the edge of the mountains. Niggle, as I say, was unable to finish his task because he served his neighbor, Mr. and Mrs. Parish. Not that he didn’t curse them at times under his breath. But, one day the Driver came and took him off to purgatory where Niggle got his act all cleaned up. Soon the Second Voice, who surely must be the Son of God, called him to the next stage where he found his leaf and his tree and his forest and his mountain in pristine reality. What Niggle had dreamed of on earth, and what he was able only to approximate in his art, was fully realized when the Second Voice took him to what he had dreamed for.

Niggle was a dreamer who painted leaves. Ours is not to defy the gods or to take down the teachers of our tradition; ours is, like Niggle, to live out the gifts we have been given. Even if it is painting leaves, even if we are little people. Niggle’s little dream world became, according to the Second Voice, Niggle’s Parish where people came to be refreshed. The Second Voice, in fact, says that “it is the best introduction to the Mountains.”

Someday, so the Bible tells us, we shall get to the Mountain and see Him as he really is. And, when we do, we will know that our efforts to preach and teach the orthodox faith were not in vain."

Dick Staub: Staublog - Evangelical Childlike Hysteria & The Da Vinci Code

If you've been thinking about how to respond vis-a-vis the DaVinci Code, Dick Staub has a great commentary today...Here's some choice excerpts:

"The editor's footnote is indicative of deeper problems. 'Editor's note: We are not suggesting that Christians necessarily should watch The Da Vinci Code when it comes to theaters; skipping it is certainly a viable option. We are only suggesting that the Christian community be willing to take part in the overall cultural discussion about the film and the book, rather than take a reactionary approach with noisy protests and organized boycotts—just as we would hope secular culture would take part in the discussion of 'our' movies, like Narnia and The Passion of The Christ.'

The footnote's very tone reveals the 'nanny state' mindset of evangelicals. Can you imagine the New Yorker reminding readers that, 'skipping a movie is a viable option?' These kind of comments make evangelicals seem like babies strapped into a high chair waiting for Dr. Dobson to tell them what to do next.

....An alternative view would say evangelicals are hopelessly conformed to culture, consuming it, marching like lemmings off the cliff, incapable of thinking independently, revealing the truth of Mark Noll's comment 'the scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is so LITTLE of the evangelical mind.'

....

Hans Rookmaaker once said, 'Jesus did not come to make us Christian, he came to make us fully human.' [emphasis added] Whatever else it means, to be fully human would include the ability to reason, to participate in creating culture and to be conversant with other humans about our common condition and cultural environment. "

Read the whole commentary here: Dick Staub: Staublog - Evangelical Childlike Hysteria & The Da Vinci Code

The Meaning of Easter

An Article today in the Washington Post about the Gospel of Judas quotes N.T. Wright's new book "Simply Christian" on the meaning of Easter...

"'When Jesus emerged from the tomb, justice, spirituality, relationship and beauty rose with him. Something has happened in and through Jesus as a result of which the world is a different place, a place where heaven and earth have been joined forever. God's future has arrived in the present.'"

Evangelical Christianity shifting outside West

Here's an interesting article on the nature of Evangelical Christianity outside of the US. If you've read Philip Jenkins' "The Next Christendom" you'll be familiar with the themes, but Nussbaum's article adds some fresh perspective that is worth reading.

Here are a couple of excerpts:

Philadelphia Inquirer | 02/20/2006 | Evangelical Christianity shifting outside West:

Evangelicals in the global South and East are, in many ways, at least as conservative as their U.S. counterparts. But they often diverge on such issues as poverty and war.

'On abortion or gay marriage, they sound like American conservatives. But on war and peace or economic justice, they sound like the Democratic Party,' Carpenter said. 'And I have not met one foreign evangelical leader that approves of American foreign policy.'

Non-Western evangelicals may already be charting new directions with new leaders that the old bastions of Christianity are unaware of, said Mark Noll, a professor of history at Wheaton College.

'Historically, in unpredictable places and unpredictable times, you get real savvy leaders,' Noll said. 'I suspect that in Beijing, Nairobi or Cape Town, things will be very well along with innovation before Philadelphia, Chicago or London is aware of it.

'Almost everything that's significant takes place below the radar screen,' he said."

...

As the new evangelicals expand their influence and their territory, they face confrontation with other religions, most often Islam. The issue of how the world's two biggest religions will interact "is a fantastically important question," said Lamin Sanneh, the D. Willis James professor of Missions and World Christianity at Yale Divinity School.

Muslims represent about 20 percent of the world's population, compared with Christians' 33 percent. But Islam is growing more rapidly than Christianity, largely because of faster population growth in Muslim countries, and it may surpass Christianity as the world's most popular religion in this century.

Sudan, Nigeria and the Balkans offer recent examples of violence between Christians and Muslims. But there are other examples, such as South Africa, where the two religions coexist peacefully, said Sanneh, a native of Gambia who is the author of Whose Religion Is Christianity? The Gospel Beyond the West.

In Islamic countries, the Western notion of separation of church and state is largely unknown, and Sanneh said American Christians ought to better explain the advantages - to both religion and government - of keeping the two separate.

"The American experience on that is relevant to the rest of the world in a remarkable way," Sanneh said. "Americans confronted that centuries before the rest of the world."

After centuries of receiving missionaries from colonial powers in the West, evangelicals in Africa and Latin America and Asia are now planting churches in the United States and Europe. As immigrants arrive here, many bring their own brand of evangelical Christianity with them, while others start churches specifically to minister to "post-Christian" Westerners.

Lars the Lutheran

I hope to finish my Russian travelogue next week. In the mean time, here's cute joke I got from a friend:

Lars, a Norwegian from Cook County in northern Minnesota, was an older, single gentleman who was born and raised a Lutheran. Each Friday night after work, he would fire up his outdoor grill and cook a venison steak.

Since it was Lent, the Catholics were prohibited from eating meat on Fridays. The delicious aroma from the grilled venison steaks was causing such a problem for the Catholic faithful that they finally talked to their priest.

The priest came to visit Lars, and suggested that Lars convert to Catholicism. After several classes and much study, Lars attended Mass and as the priest sprinkled holy water over Lars, he said, "You were born a Lutheran and raised a Lutheran, but now you are Catholic." Lars's neighbors were greatly relieved, until Friday night arrived, the wonderful aroma of grilled venison filled the neighborhood.

The priest was called immediately by the neighbors and, as he rushed into Lars's yard, clutching a rosary and prepared to scold Lars, he stopped in amazement and watched. There stood Lars, clutching a small bottle of water which he carefully sprinkled over the grilling meat, and chanted: "You were born a deer and raised a deer, but now you are a walleye."