Synapse to Synapse

John doesn't live here anymore...

2008-07-03T00:26:00.001-07:00

Go here instead - http://tinroofchorus.wordpress.com

NY Times on Tourism in Haiti

2007-02-16T13:08:00.000-08:00

Today's New York Times has an article about Labadie, a fenced and heavily guarded tourist resort that 20 minutes to the west of my hometown of Cap-Haitien, Haiti.

The article brings out the complexities of trying to build any sort of viable tourism in a nation that has seen such perennial instability, namely, that the only way to build anything attractive to first-world visitors is to completely isolate it from the reality of what the country is actually like. Visitors to Labadie see nothing but green hills, white sand, and smiling merchants. They do not see the houses to which the merchants return in the evening, nor do they seem to care about the squalid, sprawling city that lies behind the hills.

The article encourages and discourages me at the same time.

On the one hand, it is good to see that the Haitian government, which has an "inch-thick master plan for turning Haiti into a big-league destination," is looking to capitalize and expand on what little tourism still flows into the country. On the other hand, it is disheartening because anyone who has lived in Haiti long enough can predict what will probably happen next: The government will reinvest a small part of their profits, pocket the rest, and none of it -- none -- will reach the people who need it most, the ones who desperately need their government to come through and improve the nation's sanitation, education, and health care.

Ben Witherington's Wonderful Blog

2007-02-14T21:23:00.000-08:00

For those of you who are theologically inclined (and even those who are not), NT scholar Ben Witherington's intelligent, lively, and good-humored blog will be a welcome addition to your daily round of Web surfing.

Witherington is a professor at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky. He is also a thorough scholar. Last year, I was assigned to read his book, The Paul Quest, for my Pauline Epistles course and quickly grew fond of his precise scholarship and his intellectual honesty. His blog reveals a lighter side to his nature, containing, among other things, poems, personal stories, political musings and cultural commentary.

This post, on hearing the voice of God, is particularly worth the time.

http://benwitherington.blogspot.com

My Dad Has Been Released

2006-10-18T19:55:00.000-07:00

Four thousand dollars and forty-eight hours later, my dad is a free man. Once I've processed this and regained all the sleep I've lost, I'll write more. To everyone who prayed us through: Thank you, thank you, thank you.

My Dad Has Been Taken Captive

2006-10-16T14:42:00.000-07:00

My mother called me last night, with tension in her voice and a long pause after the "hello" that let me know something was amiss. Last night, she told me, while she and my father and the night watchman at our house were driving home from Sunday evening service, they were stopped by four armed men, who took over their vehicle and drove them far, far out into the country. After driving down back roads to disorient everyone, they took my father out of the car and then drove my mother and the night watchman back to a safe place. My dad is still in the hills, being held by gunmen as a hostage. My mother called me with this news last night, asking me to call everyone I knew to prayer.

Our dorm met last night to pray for the situation. I had enough strength in me to tell everyone what the situation was and how to pray for it, and then we all began to pray in tongues, singing Scriptures out loud. My brother came in halfway through and began to cry. It took me longer to feel the weight of what had actually happened. After I did, I got down on my knees and worshiped the Lord with tears. I felt the weight of many hands upon me, praying earnestly for my father's release. Several of the guys shared encouraging words with us. Many more just sat in silence or paced the floor praying out loud.

Our school dean, Ken Malmin, convened a prayer meeting at 10:00 last night to get the entire school in on the situation. By then, I had felt God give me peace about the situation that surprised me. I did not expect to be as confident as I was. The leader of the event asked Gabe and I what specifically needed to be prayed for, and I asked for a quick release with no ransom given, strength and grace for my mother, and the sovereign grace upon my home church. My brother added that we should pray for the salvation of the captors as well.

The next hour was spent earnestly seeking the Lord. Many people shared Scriptures. Dean Malmin related a similar story that had happened to a PBC student while he was a teenager in Trinidad. Muslim radicals had kidnapped him, asking for ransom. He was eventually released with no harm done to him, but he had told Ken how the Lord had opened his eyes to the true nature of the situation he had been in. "I knew all of a sudden that I wasn't really in their hands," the boy said. "I was in the Lord's hands the entire time, and the devil didn't even know it."

The school then split into four groups. One group prayed that my father would be given grace, strength, and wisdom for the situation. A second group prayed a similar prayer for my mother, who is in Haiti, and for my sister, who is in North Carolina. A third group prayed for the kidnappers. A fourth group prayed for our church. I felt the Lord tell me that our church is like a lamb to him that he has carried near his side from its infancy. My father has many more sons to father, and he will be released soon.

God has been so gracious to us! My fellow students have been phoning their home churches, putting our name into their prayer chains, and shouldering this burden as though it were their own. My local church in Haiti has sent men and women to stay the night at my parents' home so my mother doesn't have to worry about it being broken into in her absence. (She is staying with another missionary family, making negotiations.) My mother says that it is obvious how much they love my dad.

One of the things we prayed this morning in class was that God would give my mother wise counsel. Apparently, He has already answered this prayer! An FBI officer who specializes in Iraqi kidnappings has been counseling her over the phone. Other embassy officials in the area have also been assisting my mom.

We need your help as well. Please pray for my dad, who is still a hostage. Pray for his captors, that they would see the light of Christ and be changed. Pray for a ransomless rescue. Payment of any sum to these thugs would only result in furthering the cycle of violence and emboldening others to follow their example. Pray for my mother, who is physically drained and has not had much chance to rest. Pray for the unity of the church -- God's chosen instrument to extend the kingdom and destroy the works of darkness in our country. Pray for Haiti. Oh, please pray for Haiti! Pray that those who have for so longed walked in gross darkness would see the greatest light. Pray that the God of peace would crush Satan under our feet.

Most of all, pray that all of this would be a catalyst to revival in Haiti. This is the plow to which my father has put his hand for the last 23 years. The restoration and healing of Haiti through the cross of Christ has been our ache and our dream for too long. Please pray with us that God's will would be accomplished in Haiti as it is in Heaven. It is time.

The Other Side of Haiti

2006-08-15T21:33:00.000-07:00

A slice-of-life introduction to my favorite country.

Nothing new to read here yet (I promise I'm working on it), although I've stumbled upon a worthy bit of recommended reading, if you're interested.

"From Haiti" (fromhaiti.blogspot.com) chronicles the life and times of a foreigner in a very strange country. Paired with sharp photographs and wry commentary, brief posts outline a U.N. observer's first-draft reaction to a nation as unflappably absurd as it is insouciantly corrupt. (A recent post on "Los Chanchos Jesucristo"--the "Jesus Christ Pigs", who scavenge for food by "walking on water" into the bay of Cap-Haitien--captures the former point perfectly; a post on the mob violence marring the recent elections excellently portrays the latter.)

Although the blog requires a working knowledge of the Spanish language to fully experience, non-speakers (like me) can limp along using Babelfish, a Web-based translator which renders every Spanish sentence into a readable, if absurdly circuitous, English counterpart. (Run through Babelfish, even such a seemingly simple inquiry as "do you know what this is?" morphs into the oddly existential "to that you do not know what is this?")

Firsthand observations of Haiti have always been rather rare and hard to come by. Even scarcer have been empathetic versions of the same. Over the past century, the Western media has tended to present Haiti to the public eye as a haven for despots and a witch doctor's playground, the world's first black republic now the hemisphere's poorest nation--gaunt and hobbled, an AIDS-addled wisp of its former self.

To be sure, Haiti is all of those things. But to those who have invested their lives into Haiti, who have buried their hearts there as David Livingstone buried his in Africa--to those whose emotions are forever entwined with the people of Haiti and the daily burdens that they bear--it is also much, much more. And that is the primary reason I recommend this blog to you. Bit by bit, post by post, Baturrico is authoring a long-overdue introduction to the unseen side of a nation which continues to evoke my heart's deepest longings, and remains the object of its profoundest affections.

Mighty Mouse Wireless

2006-07-31T10:04:00.000-07:00

Yet another Apple product I wish I owned.

As Charlie would say, "Oh, lust."

Eternal Security

2006-04-08T00:34:00.000-07:00

A position paper written for Hebrews class.

Central to the debate over whether or not true believers can truly apostatize is the classic Calvinist/Arminian debate over soteriology: How much of a role do human beings play in their own salvation? Adherents of both of these positions have the potential to go to extremes. A Calvinist who takes the stance that man is not at all involved in own salvation, which is a mysterium tremendum enacted long ago in the nebulous councils of the Godhead, will be forced to conclude on these grounds that the apostate was never a true believer in the first place. On the other hand, the Arminian who takes the opposite tack and argues that man’s efforts in sanctification determine the status of his justification will probably wind up at the conclusion that man’s salvation can be lost by his own efforts just as easily as they were won by them. In my own personal beliefs, I have tried to take the middle road and assume that man has but one responsibility—simple faith in the saving work of Jesus. Based on this premise, I have arrived at the conclusion that one’s salvation can be lost in only one way—the individual believer’s loss of faith—one’s patient trust—in the blood of Christ.

With the prospect of church persecution looming on the horizon, the author of Hebrews attempts to steel his readers against the apostasy which will soon become all too easy. In chapter 6, he refers to those who apparently have had a genuine salvation experience and yet who cannot be renewed again to repentance due to their “falling away.” What is the context for this “falling away?” Previously, the author of Hebrews has exhorted his readers to avoid following the example of the Israelites who did not enter the promised land due to their unbelief (3:19). The word which they had heard “did not profit them, because it was not united by faith in those who heard” (4:2). The readers, therefore, must be “diligent to enter that rest, so that no one will fall, following the same example of disobedience” (4:11). The means by which they express this diligence is by holding fast to their confession and by drawing near to Jesus’ throne in time of need. There, they would receive mercy (divine compassion) and find grace (divine enablement) in time of need. The way through persecution was not apostasy, but by perseverance in faith and drawing near to Christ in time of need.

Chapter 5 continues the author’s plea to the readers not to forsake the good confession in the forthcoming time of persecution. In this context, Chapter 6’s frightening description of those who have “fallen away” makes more sense. Those who have lost their faith in Christ and have renounced Him crucify Him anew, putting Him to open shame are those who have lost their faith in Christ’s saving work—or who perhaps have demonstrated that they always lacked it. These people have fled back to the Jewish synagogue from which they had been exiled for comfort in time of need. The ground that had been tilled so mercifully by God has produced thorns and thistles.

Salvation cannot be lost in any other way than by losing one’s trust in the salvific power of Jesus’ blood. Indeed, in Hebrews 6, the author draws a comparison between us and our father Abraham, who received an irrevocable, unconditional promise of blessing from God. Through faith and patience in the promise of God, Abraham inherited what was promised. Abraham sinned in some interesting ways after receiving this promise, but the promise came to pass because of his steady belief in its fulfillment. In the same way, if we continue to hold firmly to God’s magnificent promises, this hope will serve as an anchor that prevents our faith from going adrift. Eternal security is the knowledge that God will never abandon us, nor will He ever back down on His own promises. All He requires of us is patient faith.

Why I Am Going to Seattle

2006-03-31T00:26:00.000-08:00

There are roughly 200 miles that lie between Portland and Seattle. Tomorrow, my brother and I will become familiar with them as we make the trek northward. The broken lines on the pavement will rush past in a whir of white, an iconic representation of the timid lunges and faltering half-steps that have gotten me to this point—to the point where I have enough longing to question the safety of the “safe” decisions that invite me to set up camp in the hallway when there are mysterious doors on every side that beg to be explored.

Three years ago, the door I chose led to a Bible school I’d never seen set on the outskirts of a city I’d never visited. In my mind’s attic, Portland was the wardrobe, Portland Bible College the sleepy lamppost in a snowy wood. Three years of learning respect for men and Scriptures, cleansing my soul, and aligning my life with the spirit and truth of the words of Jesus have done me an immense amount of good. After years spent surviving the air-raids, my soul has revived in Narnia.

As wonderful as this time has been, however, my soul screams aloud that beyond the lamp-post is a wonderful, mysterious world! At the base of my spirit rests a longing that arcs occasionally into flame. “Hurrah, sir! I exist and I will not be silenced. Do not pretend to ignore me; my words are deeper than the ocean, stronger than the sea. I am a restless fire within your bones, the itch and the longing you cannot ignore. I am the energy at the end of your fingers, the pot of gold at the rainbow’s end. I am the stab of joy you feel at the thought of traveling. I am in the rush of gratitude you experience at the ocean’s edge. My work can be found in the tears you heave and weep upon the mere thought of returning home.”

I do not know what to do with this voice, or how to answer her. She is not only persistent, but also quite mad. And yet she is also right about one thing—she is completely impossible to ignore. In fact, she has slowly tricked me into the trip I am making tomorrow—first, by pushing me to admit that other possibilities besides the theological/ministerial autobahn exist; second, by arousing in me an insatiable curiosity for the long and curved path to the same destination; third, by reminding me of all the times she would come to me through books and poems and stir my longings for another world that I had never seen; fourth, and finally, by forcing me to admit that I have loved her in all the forms that she has visited me. With a twinkle in her eyes and softness in her steps, she has whispered to me through the pages of a thousand letters that there is mystery in life, some clear joy to be found.

Of course, I am describing poetically what I could have said simply, in five to seven words: I am interested in the study of literature. That is why I am going to Seattle Pacific University tomorrow. That is why the lines will run together on the pavement. There is a great big world out there to be seen, and I am peeking my head behind door one to see if a portion of it suits me.

Ripping the Scabs Away

2006-01-30T18:51:00.000-08:00

This is a rough sketch of a brief speech I gave this morning in Pauline Epistles. I was introducing the subject of "The Psychology of Paul and How it Affected His Message." People always tend to preach the things which are most important to him. The tension of belonging or being left outside has mattered to me for a long time, and so it was a natural subject for me to address.

The Apostle Paul lived in a society where belonging mattered. People defined themselves—they derived their sense of identity—from what gender, family, city, race, or religion they belonged to rather than who they were. A man was only as valuable as the family from which he came. A woman had only as much value as the husband to whom she belonged. A slave had no protection or social status at all apart from the good will and protection of his master. All individual identity was derived from belonging.

In the modern world, the opposite is true. Identity is defined by the degree to which a man can distinguish himself from the pack. Self-sufficiency is seen as the key to successful living, and personal autonomy is the god on whose altar the society’s sacrifices are burnt. The poet Ralph Waldo Emerson captured well the spirit of the age over a hundred years ago with the following words: “Trust thyself, every heart vibrates to that iron string. Discontent is the want of self-reliance. It is infirmity of will.”

As our society has stressed the importance of personal autonomy, we have seen a corresponding loss of any sense of personal responsibility. No one belongs to anyone, and so no one is indebted to anyone, either. We see this spirit at work as fathers choose to abandon their families; mothers choose to abort their children; children choose rebel against their parents. Even the elderly are now demanding the right to be euthanized rather than be abandoned to dependence upon strangers at a nursing home by relatives who feel no sense of responsibility to care for those who once cared for them.

The Bible paints a quite different picture for society to follow. Self-reliance is seen as foolishness (Prov. 3:5-6). To place one’s hope and trust in the Lord is wisdom. Autonomy is also seen as foolish—when Jesus came, he was moved with deep compassion for those who were like sheep without a shepherd. The self-made man in God’s eyes is no more than an easy mark for a wolf on the hillside. To belong to no one is not to be free, but to be estranged from the natural order. Even Christ belongs to God, Paul writes in 1 Corinthians. Man can certainly stand no higher than his master. He must belong to someone, and that someone, Paul writes in the same passage, is Christ.

And so, as we study the psychology of Paul, we study a man who had found in Christ an answer to the question of belonging. This answer strips away all dividing distinctions within humanity, uniting it in broken forgiveness at the foot of His cross. Let us take the time to ask ourselves what petty and worthless things we are allowing to define us, what worthless things we are allowing to scab over the wounds in our lives. And, like Paul, let us be brave and allow Christ to gleefully rip them away. Let them bleed anew, and let God soothe them with the healing balm of his Holy Spirit, assuring us from the inside that we belong to Christ and teaching our spirits to cry, “Abba! Father!”

A Hard Goodbye

2006-01-25T21:12:00.000-08:00

Learning difficult truths for the first time

The first cat I ever owned was a gray tabby with white-mitten paws. I think he was a gift from someone in the church who felt that the pastor’s family needed to own a cat. (People think the pastor’s family need to own all sorts of things—the people in my church were always offering us puppies or kittens or billy-goats or roosters.) At the time our kitty was given to us, I was about seven years old and just learning how to read French out of my songbook at church. I decided to name the kitty the first phrase that my little-boy mind could think of: enfant de Dieu, which is French meaning, “Child of God.”

Apparently, God has strange children. Enfant de Dieu would squeeze his way through our wrought-iron door late at night after we had returned from one of our evening services. Curling his back and looking up at us with a wild desperation in his eyes, he would scratch things and meow loudly and make Olympic-sized jumps up onto the counter to try and finagle some tuna from my mom as soon as she’d open the can.

Enfant wasn’t only a thief, however. He was also a prowler—dragging in rats the size of footballs from the yard outside, and grinning proudly over his catch as my mother shrieked in horror at the sight and smell. Oftentimes, Enfant could be heard from outside on the short wall that marked off our property from the neighbor’s, expressing his affection via a painful-sounding ballad to every female within earshot. “MOW-WOWWWW!” he would sing to anyone who would listen. Even though I’m not sure he ever actually scored with anything (he was an ugly kitty with no social skills), after singing his heart out, he would swagger back inside with the cocksure look of a heavyweight wrestling champion. Yeah, his kitty-face would smirk. And there’s more where that came from, too, baby. Enfant was a cocky cat.

Most of the time, however, Enfant was more crazy than cocky. Even though he was a thief, a pest, and terrible as a brass band out of tune once he got into his nightly serenades, the whole home eventually grew to love him, with the exception of a few well-placed kicks in the ribs when he’d try to swipe tuna. The only part of the family that didn’t love him was our dog, Kayanm, who despised Enfant because he would taunt her whenever she was leashed behind the house. Swiping at her nose from the safety of a wall just high enough to avoid her leap, he would mock her with his mow-wows as she barked in outrage at his insolence and tried in vain to bite him as she jumped into the air.

One day, Enfant was outside performing his regular taunting bit, when my seven-year-old decided that Enfant had had too much fun—that it was time to give Kayanm a bit of an unfair advantage since she had never before won any of her shouting matches with Enfant. As Kayanm growled and lunged in the air, I pushed Enfant a bit further down the wall than he had intended to go. Bewildered, he lost his nerve and his footing, and it turned out to be just the edge Kayanm had needed.

Before I could think, Enfant had tumbled off the wall and was flailing his limbs and trying desperately to get out from under the weight of Kayanm’s furious attack. After a few moments of hissing and spitting and swiping and bleeding, Enfant was out, but he looked visibly different. He was shaking like he had the jitters and he stumbled around, his tail in the air like his antenna was up and he was trying to find the frequency that would tell him the way home. Being seven, I didn’t think any more about it.

A couple of hours later, however, I pranced into our living room, only to find Enfant sprawled out behind one of our living room chairs. I thought at first that he might just be enjoying a nap on the cool concrete tile-floor, but when I pulled back the chair, I immediately noticed that his face had a limp, vacant expression. His streaked fur was matted and stiff, and drool was running from the corner of his gaping mouth. The sight grew worse—he had apparently lost control of his bowel movements, with all the feces and urine that had been within his system lined up in a neat trail behind him. Behind the waste, his tail stuck out straight and rigid.

I screamed and called for my mother to come. She hurried into the living room, immediately catching sight of Enfant lying limp and listless on the living room floor. She called for our watchman to come, and he quickly scooped Enfant onto a piece of cardboard, took him outside, and buried him. I was not allowed to watch as he was buried; I was told to wait in the kitchen. My heart grew heavy as night fell.

Later that evening, as the sky grew dark and the kerosene lamp in our living room flickered, I munched on animal crackers as my mother explained to me what this strange thing called death was and why it had chosen to happen to Enfant. I told my mother about shoving Enfant within Kayanm’s reach, and I can still remember vividly the guilty feeling I had about it all. If only I had left the poor cat alone, I thought, he would still be alive. All of this is my fault.

Kindly, my mom explained to me that it was not my fault—that this was all part of a curse tripped into effect long ago by a man named Adam and a woman named Eve. Stupid Adam, stupid Eve, I thought, and the words came out exactly the same. Munching animal crackers by firelight, my mind turned to heavier thoughts. I sighed and hoped there was a kitty heaven, where God’s special child could sing awful, off-key ballads to high heaven in a place where no evil dog—or evil boy—could ever reach him.

The Christmas Goat

2005-12-26T20:25:00.000-08:00

Gabe and I hiked up the hill behind our house today. While walking, we happened upon a flock (?) of goats. A little baby goat with cute, pointy ears was trusting enough to let me pick it up. I was pretty excited about that.

Gabe's got pictures of the Goat and I here. We all hope you had a scampering good Christmas! My friend and I sure did.

Sincerely,
John

Mercy and Truth

2005-12-24T16:14:00.001-08:00

Riffs on evangelism

All good Christian evangelism, it would seem to me, is built upon the premise that the truth-claims of Christianity--about God, about sin, about the necessity of Christ's death and resurrection--are not only true, but also obvious. The Bible never stoops to mount an apologetic for God's existence; it is assumed. Paul's letter to the Romans begins with an incredibly brief summary of pagan religious history, in which he more or less assumes that while man was worshiping stars, idols and brute beasts, he was fully aware of what he was doing. Man did not claw his way upward, weaning himself on weak nature religions on the path toward monotheism; he staggered downward at an alarming rate, cast out of Eden but willing in his pride to worship lower beings rather than the God who made him. As a result, God judged the wickedness of man, and his foolish heart was darkened.

This is an important thing to understand about the Bible--and about man, because it changes the nature of how we approach man in our task of evangelism. If man's problem is not only ignorance of the fact that he is loved by God, but also a willful suppression of the truth in unrighteousness (as Scripture so boldly and clearly states); then the solution to man's problem is not to tell him he is loved (he is already prone to believe that), but rather to clear away all the lies he is telling himself about God in order to avoid serving Him. I think this collides head-on with our traditional evangelical approach to evangelism, which has been to tell man that God loves him and has a wonderful plan for his life. Of course, it is true enough that God loves him, but if the fundamental problem we are dealing with is rebellion, mightn't we do better to follow the example of Peter, whose first sermon included these bold statements: "God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ" -- "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins" -- "Save yourselves from this corrupt generation"?

If we began to preach the Gospel as it really is (salvation from God's wrath as well as God's ultimate act of kindness and love for man) to men as they really are (rebellious as well as beaten down by their ignorance of God's mercy), is it possible that we would see evangelistic results closer to that of the early church? After all, Peter's politically incorrect first sermon in Acts 2, left his listeners "cut to the quick," asking, "What must we do to be saved?"

In my opinion, the problem with most modern-day evangelism is that it does not produce in men the desperation needed to ask this question. Telling man that God loves him is true enough, but the whole truth as Scripture gives it is a bit less palatable: God is going to judge man for his wickedness, and Jesus' blood is the last line of defense between man and God's righteous judgment. Any gospel that does not instill in man this fear and trembling before God, humbling him into a profound appreciation of God's grace, is no gospel at all.

I believe that evangelicals and fundamentalists alike have missed the boat on this issue. Evangelicals are too busy assuaging man with the assurance that God loves him to remind him that God will also judge him if he will not repent; fundamentalists have spent their efforts on frightening man with the prospect of hell, forgetting that unrepentant man does not realize that he deserves hell. It is easy enough to inculcate in man a fear of hell (the fundamentalists and even the Muslims have proven that); it is not nearly as easy to lead him into the fear of God.

If this is true--and it is--then our evangelistic situation is dire, because "The friendship of the Lord is for those who fear him" (Ps. 25:14). We who come in the Lord's name might do better to present the Cross as an act of justice as well as mercy, an idea of God's hatred for sin as well as of His love for man, and a standard against which sinful man will be eternally judged if he will not repent and be forgiven.

Now I Know Why

2005-12-22T20:48:00.000-08:00

I know what it is. I know why I'm not a good blogger. I'm never. Ever. Satisfied. I write the bare bones of an article, story, or essay, get disgusted at my own writing, attempt in vain to hammer it out into something more legible, eventually give up, save it as a draft, and quit my browser in dejection.

My father once told me that my main problem is that I never see anything through to completion. It was true then (I'd given up on reconnecting my grandparents' VCR to their home-theater system), and for the most part, it's still true now. I'm all perfectionism and no persistence. I guess I should probably be more diligent in what I set my hand to doing, and more gracious toward the final product when it's done.

One Church, Nine Locations

2005-10-23T20:37:00.000-07:00

City Bible Church has unveiled plans to extend their collection of regional campuses to a total of nine locations, strategically placed all over the Portland metro area. The aim, writes Senior Pastor Frank Damazio in today's bulletin, is that no one in the metro need "drive more than twenty minutes to experience church the way we believe God had in mind."

I have my thoughts on this, but I'd rather hear yours. Comments?

The Calling of a Shepherd

2005-10-18T19:31:00.000-07:00

“Simon son of John, do you truly love me?” He answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Take care of my sheep.” – John 21:16

Any call to shepherding must begin with a personal call from Jesus Christ. Jesus is the Good Shepherd, the Sheep-Gate, and the Chief Shepherd over many shepherds, who is ultimately responsible for the well-being of the sheep. He is the one to whom all under-shepherds must give account. Without a commissioning from Him, therefore, into the role of shepherding, all efforts to shepherd God’s people will prove to be vain—a monumental waste of time and energy. The cornerstone of pastoring is a personal call from Jesus Christ to take care of His sheep—feeding them, providing for their needs, protecting them, disciplining them, tending to their wounds, and ensuring that they grow healthy and strong as Christians.

A call to shepherding is a call to disciple people. Scripture records that Jesus was moved with compassion on one occasion as he observed a large crowd that had gathered to hear Him speak. Matthew 9:36 says that Jesus saw that they were “harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” Mark 6:34 says the same thing, and then continues, “So He began teaching them many things.” Shepherding involves having a deep well of compassion for people who do not know about God—whether they are believers or not. When we see the multitudes ignorant of the promises of God and the true nature of reality, we should—we must—be moved with great compassion. That compassion should translate into action as we share the Good News and expound the promises and the life-changing message of Scripture to those who have ears to hear.

So these are the basics of how we know that we are called to shepherd God’s flock: We are given a personal call from Christ, which translates into a deep compassion for people, which in turn moves us to teach them truth so that they can change how they live. John 10:12 also tells us that a shepherd is someone who is loyal, laying his life across the opening of the sheep-pen so the wolf cannot gain entrance. If someone thinks that they are called to shepherding, they must exhibit a compassion for people, a desire to instruct them in the ways of the Lord (and an ability to do so), and a loyalty to people that would take the shepherd to the point of risking his own life so that the world, the flesh, and the devil do not overtake people and entice them back into sin.

If shepherding involves loyalty, the source of that loyalty must be a deep-seated desire to see Christ’s church grow up into the full stature of what she was created and called to be. Any would-be shepherd who does not exhibit a passion for Christ’s church—local as well as universal—is unfit to serve. We can learn from the example of the Apostle Paul, who wrote of his passion to see the Ephesians “grow up into him who is the head, that is, Christ” (Eph. 4:15). Later on in the same epistle, he writes of his vision of a “radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.” In a particularly moving passage written to the Corinthians, Paul writes, “I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him” (2 Cor. 11:2). This is the heart of a shepherd singing out pure and true. Our hearts must be like Paul’s—seeing the end from the beginning, hearing echoes of the Wedding Supper even though the Bride has a long way to go before she is prepared to marry.

If we are to have the shepherds’ hearts that God has called us to have, we must be constantly aware that all our labors are for the Great Shepherd. We must have a firm understanding that we are merely stewards of what He has given us to oversee. All of our labors are like that of a best friend preparing his friend’s bride for marriage. We are overseers of God’s flock. If any man feels a call to shepherding, he must exhibit a clear understanding of his relationship to Christ’s authority and the parameters of his own authority as a leader. When a man can clearly demonstrate that he understands the principles of spiritual authority—and can adequately show that he is not prone to falling into its many abuses—then, and only then, is he fit to walk in his calling.

How does a shepherd know whether he is truly called to a life of ministry? He must have been called personally by Jesus Christ to the ministry of feeding his sheep; he must have a deep wellspring of compassion for people that prompts him to study the Scriptures and to expound them to people with the purpose of creating abundant life; he must have a vision for people that transcends the present, putting all his labor into seeing the great marriage supper of the Lamb made a reality; and he must demonstrate that he grasps his submission to Christ and to other spiritual authority, as well as the limits of his own spiritual authority. Having done these things, the pastor is called to walk freely in his anointing, shepherding and nurturing the flock for which God gave His own life.

Isaiah 40

2005-10-08T22:13:00.000-07:00

Rewritten in song

Speak words of comfort to my people
Speak with kindness to Jerusalem
Today, your stain has been erased
Today, your sins I have forgotten.

Every valley shall be exalted
Every mountain and hill made low
And the crooked shall be made straight

And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed!
Oh, the glory of the Lord shall surely be revealed.
And you ask me to cry, oh Lord
I answer, "What shall I cry"
What shall I cry?

"The Lord will carry His lambs in His arms
Not one of them will be forgotten.
And He will be our shepherd
He will gather us into His arms;
He will press us against His bosom."

5-Minute Rock Stars & Buddhist Cemeteries

2005-10-08T22:03:00.000-07:00

Sunday - "Jumping Worship"
We took the train into the heart of Osaka to play as a worship team at J-House, one of the newest and liveliest churches in Japan. On the way, we met up with Eriya (one of last year’s graduates at PBC), who had taken the bus through the night to meet us at Osaka Central Station. After meeting him, we walked for about 15 more minutes to find the J-House building, passing a myriad of small Buddhist shrines on the way. Since we are a praise-and-worship team, we had all of our instruments in hand, and so we were quite exhausted by the time we got there.
During the walk, Sharon (one of our team leaders) observed that people were parking their cars on a sort of metal ramp which would then lift the vehicles up a few levels by pulley. She said that this was how Japanese had to park in these crowded urban areas. I would have taken a picture, but my hands were full of instrumental equipage.

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J-House was interesting--not a very big church, but full of young people and remarkable in a staid culture for its lively worship. Lots of “jampingu waaship,” as the pastor called it. (Bob seized upon this as joke fodder immediately.) Bob preached, Joel translated, and the rest of the team played for a special worship service. After the service, we all went downstairs and had lunch.

I met a lady downstairs from Jamaica there who was nice until I asked her how, being Jamaican, she failed to speak with a Jamaican accent. After this question (which I thought was innocent enough) she became quite prickly, informing me that any real Jamaican can immediately discern the conversational context, and can switch the accent on and off accordingly. I decided that that was a good enough answer and finished my lunch.

We hung around after lunch because the afternoon service was about to begin. This time, it was just our team’s band playing. So we played and I dropped my pick twice while trying to look cool and our jampingu waaship leader Shinya broke a string and despite our best efforts, everything still managed to turn out alright in the end.

The second service ended and we packed up and walked about 15 minutes to another building across the river (I have no idea which one). We went in and it was a youth rally taking place in a big theater-style building. A couple of kids sang a song and an older Japanese man preached (he had an amazing testimony – his Dad was a traveling evangelist who never had time for his family and as a result, his Mom abandoned the family when he was 9 – God helped him deal with abandonment issues), and the J-House worship team played for a bit. After everyone was done, we got up and played “Shine,” (a song someone at City Bible Church wrote) and then that was apparently all the playing we had time for.

I got to play the J-House guitarist’s Stratocaster, which was awesome. Eriya had told me before we went on that he’d asked him, but after the service said guitarist came up glaring and huffing.
“I don’t mind if you play my guitar, but it would have been a matter of common courtesy to ask,” he said in a way that let me know he’d been offended.

I tried to respond as politely as I possibly could: “A friend of mine told me he did ask you,” I said in a conciliatory tone. He appeared surprised, and then Eriya showed up and said some things to him in rapid Japanese, and I suppose that something was sorted out, because the guitarist proceeded to shake my hand enthusiastically, smile broadly and tell me how much he'd really enjoyed our set and how well I'd played.

We were all beat, but the night was not yet over. Kenji, the regal-looking man whose wedding we'll be attending at the end of the week, treated us all to dinner at a terrific Japanese restaurant. The Japanese guys on our team introduced me to "hambaagu"--which as far as I can tell is an American hamburger patty (pattie?) stripped of the bun, ketchup, mustard, and heart-arresting grease and chemicals, and served as a meat entree. I ordered it and it was good.

We had a long train ride home, and since Eriya had been awake for over a day without sleeping, he joined me in sleeping very soundly and awaking the next morning in a groggy state of mind and wishing I’d had just a little more sleep.

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Monday - New Hope Chapel
We got to sleep in a bit later this morning, since there was only one service to play at in the afternoon. Took the train out into the hills, got off at Yamazaki station, and made our way to New Hope Chapel’s beautiful new building. It had wooden floors and wonderful people. The youth leaders there had invited youth from other local churches to attend a small youth meeting at their church. There were maybe 30 people there in the end, which is rather large for a Japanese Christian meeting.

I looked in vain for an electric guitar and finally had to settle for playing my crappy Alvarez acoustic. I had forgotten my capo, so I had to play a lot of barre chords at first, which made a bad guitar sound even worse. By the last few songs, however, I’d hit my stride and kids were visibly touched by the worship as members of our team laid hands on them and asked if they needed prayer for anything. Shinya, Eriya, Andy, and Hisato all got down from the platform after a while and helped Bob and Joel pray for and minister. I was too shy to venture into the crowd and pray through a translator, so I stayed up on the platform and helped Kelly keep the music going.

I really wrestled with feelings of insecurity very badly today. Constant feelings of not being good enough, of not doing enough, of not being spiritual enough all plagued me to the point where I couldn't really enjoy anything we were doing. I was glad when the service finally ended and I could have a few moments to myself.

After the service was over, we hung around while pastors coordinated car rides back to the train station and Bob got bored and started messed around with the church’s Hammond organ, its wavering electric tones creating responses of deep approval within my brain.

As I listened from the top of the staircase, I tried to sort through some of what I was feeling while staring out the window at the Buddhist cemetery across the street. Several rows of narrow graves were stacked almost vertically straight up the side of a bald rock hill, and there were a couple of sad-faced girls solemnly carrying flowers in their arms as they picked their way down the winding concrete slope that ran between them. The combination of listening to the Hammond's strange, Gospel-tinged warbling (which reminded me of funeral scenes from films I'd seen that were set in the American South) and staring at the sad Buddhist mourners created a strange juxtaposition in my mind which seemed, for a moment, to explain some deep, ineffable ache within me. In a way (and I can't quite explain how), the idea that people all over the world were dealing in different ways with sadness and loneliness and loss in the best ways in which they knew how helped make me feel a little less self-conscious about sitting on the steps of a church and feeling so sad and lonely and lost myself.

A Hole To Nowhere

2005-10-08T21:59:00.000-07:00

Once we arrived, my former roommate, Ryo-ichi, met us on the other side of customs, took our larger luggage, and showed us off to the J.R. line train that would take us into Osaka. The first 45 minutes or so of the trip into town felt like we were riding a ghost train, with a few odd people getting on and getting off as the conductor slurred name stops over the intercom and brilliant advertisements for anime films that I couldn’t begin to read swung softly from the fluorescent-lit ceiling. I was just about to wonder whether Japan’s reputation for being so crowded was vastly overrated when the mechanical doors slid open at Osaka Station and I experienced the crush of thousands of people trying to get onto a train that you are simultaneously trying to get off of.

From Osaka, we took another train to a suburb called Senrioka. Once arrived, we took our shoes off at the door, left our luggage downstairs and took a flight of very steep stairs up to the living-room level. My camera failed to do the stairs justice, but let’s just say that as you ascend, you can easily touch the stairs in front of you without having to bend your back. The house itself, however, was very nice, with wooden floors and a kerosene heater (there is usually no central heating in Japan) that warmed the house up veeery slowly. There was also a very nice traditional Japanese room with a tatami reed floor. That was the room I slept in. I went to sleep quickly, because by the time I went to bed, I had been awake for over 26 hours.

Saturday
I awoke to the strange sound of heavy panting and wood creaking and looked over to find Andy, our violinist, wide awake and doing push-ups at around 6 in the morning. My blurry eyes focused in on him in an awkward position, with his hands arched backwards and supported by the chair behind him. He was huffing and puffing and highly motivated. I rolled over and went back to sleep.

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Today was one of our free days, time taken out of our trip to rest and recuperate from all the traveling we've done. We decided to go visit Osaka Castle, which once was the seat of power for all of Japan during the Shogun Period. As such, it had been set on fire many times before eventually being burned to the ground and then finally rebuilt to its original proportions in 1931 by modern architects who had studied Shogun-era watercolors and diagrams in detail. (The fact that they were able to reconstruct it exactly to the original form certainly seems to say something for the abilities of ancient Japanese artists.) Although the building did suffer some damage after its reconstruction when Allied aircraft flew in to bomb the city during World War II, it has long since been repaired and stands as a beautiful relic of a time long since past. The stateliness of its design also seems to cast aspersions upon its more recently erected neighbors, a steel-and-glass assortment of skyscrapers and modern office buildings, none of which can rival Osaka-jo (as the locals call it) for its beauty and ingenuity.

The interior of the castle has been converted in recent times into a modern museum with typically Japanese high-tech animation and holographic videoscreens (the installation of which is highly controversial among the residents of Osaka). There are elevators (also controversial) to whisk visitors to the top floor, which is open around the perimeter and good for panoramic views of the city.

The area surrounding the castle is a large plaza-type area with all kinds of food vendors hawking takoyaki (fried batter encasing octopus meat), which is reputed to be an Osaka delicacy. There were some young workers on the plaza who were exhibiting a product that looked like some kind of cross between stilts and pogo sticks. The resulting invention allows people to bounce and jump along at about 3-4 ft. higher than they usually stand. The style of walking allowed by this invention looks pretty peculiar, since the curve of the “leg” is in the back rather than the front, which makes the walker look like a gazelle bounding across the African savannah.

I took a few pictures of the human gazelles before getting sneaky and playing the part of the innocent tourist, while I was secretly shooting a lot of good candids of passersby with my camera and a good use of its zoom lens. Thanks to team-leader Bob for showing me how to "click from the hip."

After I was done shooting photos, I noticed there were a lot of people looking down through a grate that covered what looked like an old well out in front of the castle. I walked over myself and peered into the hole. And saw nothing. I spent the rest of my time walking back and forth between the steps and the hole, trying to understand why everyone who entered the building was coming over to look into a seemingly empty grate. Was it a wishing well? An old dungeon? A tunnel to China? I guess I'll never know. I couldn't ask anyone and they wouldn't have understood me if I had. I wish I could have, though. Parents were holding their children up to the ledge, speaking soft Japanese words into their little ears.

"This is a very deep hole, Aka-chan. If you go all the way to the bottom and dig deep enough, it will take you all the way to America. Don't ever try to do that, though, Aka-chan. Gracious, we all know what they're like, don't we?"

Confused, I spent a few more minutes shooting pictures of all the onlookers before finally arriving at the conclusion that the whole thing was just a subtle form of peer pressure –- the mysterious power of seeing others doing something you haven’t yet done. After all, didn’t I just say that I did it, too? Several times? See, I must be right.

Ghost Ships & Empty Airports

2005-10-08T21:25:00.000-07:00

From the air at least, L.A. appears to be vastly overrated. The “City of Angels,” as it is sometimes called, is not much more than a hazy, gray mess of smog and soot and buildings, buildings everywhere, and the coastal plain on which it lies is a never-ending series of street grids and building complexes that yawn from the Pacific to the smog-obscured San Gabriel Mountains. The hills to the north of the city looked quite beautiful and rugged, but they were also covered with suburban developments that appeared from an aerial view to be red-roofed leeches contorted into “S” shapes and slowly sucking the life out of the raw, red earth.

Once we landed, the view from the ground didn’t serve to improve my opinion by much. LAX is a writhing cacophony of gas fumes, concrete buildings, and automobile traffic, designed architecturally to revolve around a “modernistic” café which fits perfectly the definition of “modern” people would have held around 40-50 years ago. As it stands now—a rude, peeling-white mess of legs which rather resemble a squid with its legs proceeding from the top of the head rather than the bottom—it is a rather sad remnant of an airport built by architects intent on creating the future, rather than planning for it. (The futuristic café is now dwarfed by gargantuan concrete parking garages.)

Nevertheless, there are good things to write about. For one, I had the pleasure of changing about $500 U.S. into Japanese yen. The current exchange rate is 106, which means that I am walking around with around with a bizarrely high denomination of money in my pocket. As Paul Musgrave remarked when he visited Japan a few years ago, it feels empowering to be able to discuss dropping 10,000 in a day without discussing terms like “equity” and “prime rate.” For another, I am feeling strangely fine despite my having gotten only two hours of sleep last night.

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After 12 hours in the air, our plane landed in Osaka at around 9 p.m. local time. Around 500 of us deplaned and walked through a very long hall of the strangely empty Kansai airport down to customs, where we were met by an elderly Japanese officer dressed in a royal-blue uniform accented by white Mickey-Mouse style gloves, whose sole job description seemed to be to direct us with deft and gracious hand movements to the next open desk as though he were choreographing the flow of rush-hour traffic.

While we waited, I thought of how well the heater was working and how strangely empty the walk to customs had been. I read long ago that Kansai is built on an artificial island in Osaka Harbor made out of an enormous amount of fill-dirt borrowed from the mountains that surround the city. Although it is truly a marvel of modern engineering, its architects didn’t count on the effect that gravity and the ocean current would gradually have on the enormous amount of dirt they had just deposited. As a result, Kansai sinks into the ocean at a rate of something like 2 1/2 inches every day, and to counteract this, an enormous (and enormously expensive) maintenance project goes on around the clock underwater, buttressing the island by placing steel girders at the weak points.

Add to this knowledge the spotless, gleaming emptiness of the hallways and the strange, empty silence which accompanied the train ride to the main terminal—broken only by the mechanically cheerful voice of the intercom—and the airport felt like a ghost ship gone adrift in the middle of the sea, its hallways lying empty by some strange spell until the stroke of the clock. At this, the curse was broken as automatic doors hissed and peeled themselves back to allow a wave of people to spill through, preceded by the roar of shoes tapping and suitcase wheels rolling on the linoleum floor—and the sounds of happy people saying, “It’s so good to be home!” and unhappy ones cursing the length of the flight or the fickleness of the attendants—and succeeded by the resulting quiet of their departure and the strange, mechanical ignorance of the cheerful intercom voice, welcoming the walls to Osaka Airport and wishing the void a pleasant stay.