Viewing entries tagged
post-Christendom
When we arrived in the Czech Republic 10 years ago, we encountered young people who were feeling a deep spiritual longing but lacked the vocabulary or the guidance of healthy faith communities to find spiritual nourishment. And isn’t the definition of poverty not being able to get something you need to live fully?
Ergo, Spiritual Poverty.
On July 11, 2010, we left for the Czech Republic on what we dubbed to be a “Worthwhile Adventure.” To celebrate the anniversary of this life-changing trip, we thought it would be good to share personal reflections looking back as gnarled, haggard international church workers 10 years later.
We are funded largely by some wonderful, faithful individual supporters and churches. The struggle is that often when people give you money, it creates this sense that you work for them.
This is the third post in a three-part series that addresses some of the common myths and misconceptions we experience most regularly.
If you’re basing your opinion of us on social media, it could totally appear that we have a lot of time on our hands and we’re really living it up. That’s because we do have fun…as our closest friends would say has always been the case for us. As much as we have fun, we also wrestle with the hardships inherent to departing one’s native culture and entering a new one.
The legacy image of what international missions should look like always seems to linger. We’re not digging wells, converting villages of poor people, and dressing in some relatively exotic fashion. The dissonance that image creates with the parts of our experience we’re able to communicate, combined with the hallmark American fear of getting duped or flimflammed, often results in some unfortunate encounters and assumptions.
The first of a three-part series that addresses some of the common myths and misconceptions we experience most regularly.
The topics of money, wealth, and what Christian economy should look like are as vital to the rebirth of the Christian church as they are uncomfortable for Christians to talk about. Why? Because the economy of a faith community should be in stark contrast to the economy of empire.
Those moments when the church expects or assumes a shared cultural connection are simultaneously the most unifying and divisive moments we have experienced in the church, because in these moments new/unorthodox folks can go from feeling included to feeling like spectators. It can be easy to forget that some cultural hurdles are impossible (or inappropriate) for some people to overcome and, without ill-intention, we may foster an environment where folks are continually confronted with the reality they can never fully enter our community.
This is a problem, because Christian communities must accommodate and integrate outsiders.
I'm going to let you in on a secret: I'm a Christian missionary and I loathe the term "evangelism."
My friend Hal used to say people like me don't like evangelism because we "have seen evangelism done wrong time and time again." Those words have proven to be pivotal for me. If it's possible for evangelism to be "done wrong," what does it mean to be "done right?"
When Alisha and I first began talking about serving abroad several years ago, we never would have thought we'd end up serving in Europe. After all, mission workers are supposed to go to the poor, third-world countries of this world, right?
