My son Jared finds some interesting art online. I thought I'd share a couple of images with you. They are by a guy named Banskey. Very interesting social commentary. The first one is called
"God Getting Busted."
The next one is called "Feed the World."
The last one is just called "Media."
I found a great Valentine's day story written by a good friend. I have been looking around for a good Valentine's story that wasn't too sappy on the one hand or too theologically clinical on the other - for I think most of us have experienced the extremes of each end. In the past couple of days I have come across an online article on the Grammy's and read the Wikipedia post on Fleetwod Mac. Both revealed the anguish experienced in relationships that are in the spotlight. It must be extremely difficult to be married to someone who is constantly in the spotlight. Every activity publicized; every expression photographed; every blemish exposed and every failure ridiculed. Any relationship built on anything but solid love and commitment will be tested and found wanting. Anything that can be shaken will be shaken. My heart has been going out to all those in our world who have been looking for love in all the wrong places.
My friend Tim Huff, who works with homeless youth with an organization called Youth Unlimited in Downtown Toronto has been someone who has brought love and compassion to young people who have been forced into all the wrong places. He shares this story on his blog and I wanted to post some of it here. If you want to support a worthy cause in Toronto - this is one of the best. Thanks for all the work you do Tim.
Three Other Words
Deza won’t tell me her age. (But I would guess 25 or so?) Won’t tell me where she’s from. Won’t tell me where she goes when she’s absent from the street for days, weeks, even months at a time. Still, I have known her on-and-off for at least 3 years. 3 years that have aged her no less than the equivalent of 10. Still, despite her secret existence of survival, she seems mildly amused by my redundant presence and failing persistence. On Monday, I offered to help dig out her lost belongings covered beneath the 25cm snowfall that landed while she slept, somewhere beneath the Jarvis onramp. But, “no thanks”.
On Tuesday, I brought her hot chocolate and a bagel and begged her to let me walk her to a shelter, submitting to the -25 degree wind chill. But, “no thanks”. And on Wednesday, I brought her extra socks and hand warmers. And again, with raised eyebrows and a polite nod, “no thanks”. Tell-tale signs of abuses at the hands of men who had posed kindly in her past, and ended up tearing at her soul.
So, I walked on. A 30 minute meeting at a donut shop, a 20 minute conversation with a frostbitten teenager, and a 10 minute chat with 2 drunk seniors on a heating vent, and I had circled back to Deza’s corner for the day.
I looked at Deza, smiled and sighed, “I know, I know, no thanks.” And she smiled back. But then, straying very far from the norm, she called out, “Hey, hey…”
My heart leaped. She was always a responder. And in that, always kind and courteous. But distant at best. Never, in any way was she an initiator. Perhaps this was a new day though – I thought, I hoped, I prayed.
“Yes, yes, what is it?” I all but leapt at her.
She drew her shoulders back as if to say – “too close”. So, indeed, I stepped back instantly and repeated myself in softer tones, “Yes, yes, what is it?”
Her hands fidgeted beneath her worn sleeping bag and then one reached towards me. In her grey mitten was a shred of paper. I reached out and took it slowly between my fingers.
Much more than a simple note, it was a Valentine. Not a glossy store-bought. Not a romantic poem or sonnet. No ribbons, bows, or tinfoil glue-ons. Something much, much grander than those could ever be.
Deza had hand-torn the red back of a cigarette pack into the shape of a heart and written 3 words on the opposite side…
“Thanks for trying.”
Measures for success in my career do not exist. Trying to create such a yardstick would and could only announce the unbearable failure in seeing too few lives changed, bettered, or made new. So, people like me cling to “ministry” terms, so that we can at least get out of bed in the morning without feeling completely defeated; sigh – “the only measurement for success is being faithful”.
But if there was a gauge in place that would at least identify the true highs – well, simple and profound things like notes on the backs of cigarettes packages would peek the mercury. And 3 words like “thanks for trying” are worth more than silver or gold.
Happy Valentine's Day!
con·flu·ence n.1. a flowing together of two or more streams, a point at which streams combine, or a stream formed by their combining. Also called conflux.
An interesting confluence happened in the past couple of days. I meet with a number of groups to pray for the city of Toronto and the GTA region. We have been wondering and praying about how to overcome some of the evil influences in our city with the rise of crime and violence and traffic accidents and spiritual apathy. In our prayer and discussions one of the chief things that came out was that when we focus on evil we actually accentuate or even glorify that evil and miss what God is trying to do and say.
Then I got an email from someone who spoke about the same thing in the context of a Christian response to the Halloween season. "Interestingly, I was listening to a teaching on the way home - he was talking about redeeming time, and specifically focused on Halloween as a specific time where through the ages there has been much demonic defilement, reinforced again and again over the years, that the actual time seems defiled. His strategy? Worship gatherings. To redeem the time (the date on the calendar) by filling the air with worship of the One True God to displace all the demonic worship. Here's my thinking. I think if we gather [a prayer team to confront evil activity or teaching], it would "give it place." However, what if we were to just have a worship gathering - or several worship gatherings that night, as others have suggested? We don't have to focus on or even mention anything about evil at all - Halloween is enough of a reason to implement the strategy of "displacement".
I also just read a review of N.T.Wright's book "Evil and the Justice of God" and the reviewer (Samuel Wells in Christian Century) says:
"In a lucid treatment of this perennial conundrum, N. T. Wright argues that pondering the "problem of evil" is an activity that displaces us from the business of implementing the healing, restorative justice of God. The problem of evil is philosophically located in theoretical analysis of an inherently distant God-that is, the deist God of the Enlightenment. By contrast, Wright engages with the scriptural God, revealed through narrative rather than theory and addressed through lament, obedience, discipleship and faith rather than through dispassionate analysis-in short, the God of Jesus Christ. Christ's death and resurrection, the promise and embodiment of forgiveness, and the hope of God's final victory make the people of God a people who bring into the present a reconciliation that is assured in the future."
That's a long way of saying that focusing so much on evil means we have a deficient view of God. Focusing on evil displaces us from our position as worshippers of God, as seeing Him in His incarnation, and often blinds us from seeing Him at work in the world.
So our response to evil - implement the healing, restorative justice of God through worship, prayer and action.
Yesterday afternoon, Jared (my son) and I went downtown and attended a service at the Warehouse Mission (part of the Salvation Army). About 60 people squeezed into a small second floor room not much larger than my living room and laughed and prayed and worshipped God with the abandonment that only those who have lost everything can display. The crowd was mostly older (ie 40+) street people. Street people means people who are not necessarily homeless but live most of their lives identified with some aspects of the street culture, often accessing services that assist the poor and homeless (food banks, meal programs, support services, drop-ins, employment training, I.D. access, etc.).
It was a good afternoon. The Warehouse Mission is run by Ron and Linda Farr - both Lieutenants in the Salvation Army. (you can check out an article about them written in Christianity.ca here.) There is also a personal connection here - Linda used to be my secretary and office manager (then kitchen manager and street youth worker) when I worked at Evergreen. They have been good friends for many years (even though I don't see them much these days). Ron and Linda started this ministry by just going around talking to the people who were hanging out on the street in the St. Jamestown (Parliament and Wellesley) area of downtown Toronto. They are doing a great job.
The service itself was the right blend of down home warmth, country music, Salvation Army culture, and lots of laughter. Ron and Linda have made the Gospel real to these people and have incarnated Jesus in a way that perfectly fits this context. It's worth a visit and worthy of your support.
I talked to a very interesting guy yesterday. He's my son's friend and has just gone away to college in the Hamilton area. He was looking for a church to attend and decided to go and visit a number of churches to see what they were like. His criteria were "Were these churches friendly and accepting?"
Not so interesting you say? Actually, it's the way he went about looking for a church that caught my attention. He dressed up like a homeless person (adding appropriate smells) and went church to church, Sunday by Sunday to see how he would be received. There were some who accepted him, others who suggested he clean up before he comes in and still others who told him to leave. No one offered him money or a meal (except for a church that was having a meal for visitors that Sunday).
He went back to some of the churches dressed as most people would attend church and found that many of them were not much more accepting than when he was dressed as a homeless person.
As someone who has worked with the homeless for a number of years, I'm left feeling a little uneasy. Now it's not because I haven't been tempted to do the same thing (because I have). And there were times when we actually "set-up" the churches I spoke in, and had a staff person come into the church dressed up as a homeless person interrupting my message. Let me tell you that created quite a stir.
I'm not sure if I'm uneasy about the churches or the activities and attitudes of this young man. Some questions come to mind. What is a "good church?" Why do you attend one and not another? Can you determine whether or not you would attend a particular church based on one visit? Does visiting a church and attending its services really give you any basis for knowing whether or not it is a good church? Sometimes I think that what happens during Sunday services is almost irrelevant to what a church is really all about. Too often we think that church is a place or an activity rather than the gathered body of Christ. Should a church be judged on how people are welcomed at the door or by the kind of relationships it has among its own members and with its community? Does outreach happen on Sunday morning at church or on every day and in every situation?
I would also wonder why a homeless person would come to a church in the suburbs. It takes a great deal of energy to go so far out of your way. If that happened during one of our church services I would try to determine the person's need - because normally it is not "Hi, I'm just checking our your church to see what you're like." It's usually an acute need - whether it be spiritual, physical or financial, or an invitation by a friend - that would drive them so far out of their way to come to Suburban Community Church.
A church should definitely be a good neighbour and have compassion for the poor but most suburban churches will be very ineffective if they based their ministry to the poor on the number of homeless people who came through their doors on a Sunday morning. There are suburban churches that have effective ministry to the poor but they usually do it by partnering with an urban church or mission and supporting them with people and finances. To measure a church's effectiveness we should look at their financial records and activities of their members and perhaps their list of programs.
But then maybe I just analyze things too much.
I've been at a number of "think-tank" meetings where we have discussed the future of church, or mission or denomination or ________ (fill in the blank). At at least three of these meetings I have suggested that we sell ... all the real estate and give the money to missions or to the poor or at least create an endowment fund to pay for inner city street outreach workers.
I came across an interesting appendix in a book ("The Way Church Ought to Be" by Robert Lund) that expands on this idea. He quotes from Christian Smith ("Going to the Root") who estimates that the value of real estate (as of 1991) owned by churches in the US is over 230 billion dollars. We could probably double that figure for 2006 dollars (which if sold today would provide enough money to give every American citizen $200,000.00!). In addition to the actual value of the buildings and land is the money spent on utilities and maintenance to say nothing of the billions spent on debt maintenance. So if we took that money (say 500-600 billion dollars) and invest it at a modest rate, it would provide 30 to 50 BILLION DOLLARS per year EVERY year.
That amount would be enough to provide a full time job to one million people at a very decent wage
It could probably eliminate world food shortages within a couple of years.
Christian Smith suggests about 40 projects that could be funded with the money including relieving homelessness, theological training for 3rd world church leaders, funding orphanages, establishing Christian based environmental lobby to positively affect legislation, child support funding for pregnant teens, etc.
We need to remember that this does not include the ongoing tithes and offerings which would suddenly be freed up to provide ongoing support for inovative community development programs, outreach, and missions.
Well, I can dream can't I?
