Applying the Spheres (Week Three)

Last week from Monday to Wednesday Colleen Milstein taught us over Skype about the eight (or seven, depending on how you divide them) areas of influence in society, reflecting a God who cares about the entire person, every aspect of our lives and every area of society. The different domains are easy to remember, as you can use the first letters of the alphabet to label them: art, business (or economy), communication (or media), discovery (for science and technology), education, family, government and holiness (for church).

Not surprisingly, the ones that stood out for me personally were family and education, but I was also fascinated to hear Colleen speak extensively on the different roles of government and the church and touch on the topic of immigration (which I’m hoping to find time to write a little bit about in the near future). The categories are based on the worldview behind the faculties in the University of the Nations as well as on Landa Cope’s book The Old Testament Template, which I read about four years ago after doing my discipleship training school. The core idea in the book is that the church is caught up in split thinking, segregating the sacred and the secular, and in doing so, excluding God from anything outside the institution of the church.  

Colleen went on to explain that to a large extent, churches are divided in preaching either a Salvation Gospel or a Social Gospel, whereas the Bible talks of neither. While salvation is a part of the Gospel, as is social justice, the two are not mutually exclusive, and what the Bible actually focuses on is the fullness of the Kingdom Gospel. The background to Landa Cope’s book is her own personal struggle in realizing that some of the world’s most evangelised  nations are also some of the world’s poorest and most socially deprived ones. Most African countries, for instance, are evangelized, yet a huge number of people continue to live in poverty without even the most basic of their needs met, such as access to adequate education or health care.  “The devastation you see,” she writes, “is the fruit of preaching salvation alone, without the rest of the Biblical message,” in other words, evangelizing without discipling. Saddened by the fact that a large Christian population does not necessarily benefit a community, and that most Christians don’t even really seem to care or feel responsible, Cope was pushed to search the Scriptures to find principles we can apply to bless a community in every area of society.

“You start in a community with the window of opportunity God opens for you,” Colleen told us. Going into a community should not be about seeking self-fulfillment; it should be about asking what the community needs and what I can do to best serve in it – how I can model and communicate God’s love to the people. Instead of trying to find the right ministry or the most cutting-edge issue to work with, Colleen encouraged us to engage in a community and live out our faith among the people on a day to day basis. Interestingly enough, she said that geography is not the point. Rather, obedience to what the Bible says about reaching out to the poor was the point she was wanting to get across to us.

In May and June I spent seven weeks in Malawi, where I lived with a local family in a very local area of town, interacting with the local people, going to church with them, working side by side with them, getting around on foot and by minibus just like them and eating the same food as they do. All of this was due simply to very practical reasons, limited finances and safety. I can’t take any credit for having been intentional about it, but in retrospect, I’m hugely grateful and kind of amazed to have had the opportunity to live in a local community and build relationships with local people (as well as with all the people I met who had immigrated to Malawi, of course J). I thoroughly enjoyed it.  

Inner Healing (Week Two)

I feel that God started preparing me for this week’s topic already in the course of last week. Things stared coming up I thought I had already dealt with, I thought were a part of my past but not my present. I thought I’d had more than enough time to heal and ought to have done by now, but started realizing that not everywhere and all the time, but in certain contexts, in some situations, I still resort, almost cling to, things God surely didn’t intend to be a part of my identity. So I need to ask myself why. 

The second teacher in the Children at Risk School, Christy Scott, taught us about inner healing, applying the topic to our own lives as well as to working with at-risk children. She said that we often build what she referred to as high places in our minds (alluding to the Bible), making certain experiences or areas of our life bigger than God. It can be that we know Him in every other area of our lives but one, thinking He is all-powerful and able to heal and restore in every other area except for this, especially if we grow up hearing lies about who we really are.

The first step in dismantling the high places or uprooting the lies spoken over our lives, is asking God to define what they are and when we first believed them. “You can cut down a branch,” Christy illustrated, “but the tree is still there – you need to go to the root”. As Christians we also want to ask God what the truth is that He wants to speak into our lives in place of the lies. When we dig up what was there, God doesn’t leave us empty, He fills us with truth about who we are. Just like when you plant a tree, you need to take care of it, and even when you do, it takes time for it to grow, Christy encouraged us to wait for the fullness of what God has spoken into our lives, to write it down and to speak it over ourselves.   

God has spoken and continues to speak Life to me, but there are still patches of dry land that remain, devastated, overwhelmed, by sorrow. Gradually, I learn to let go of the things too heavy for me to carry, even the ones that have become a part of me. And I pray and I trust that He will carry the burdens too heavy for me and reshape my identity where it is defined by things it was never intended to be defined by.  

My King comes to me humble, low. I can’t get past how deeply that moves me. Hosea 11:4 says: I led them with cords of human kindness, with ties of love. To them I was like one who lifts a little child to the cheek, and I bent down to feed them. And Zechariah 9:9:  See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

Healing, I believe, is a process. Investing in broken lives requires commitment, dedication, time.  Coming to terms with our own brokenness, not dwelling on it, but rather moving towards restoration, hopefully makes us that much more willing to face brokenness in other people and have hope and faith that even though my understanding is very limited God’s love is unfailing, and what looks like a desert now, those cracked and dry patches of land, will one day be a garden where His streams of abundance flow, because, as Christy so poignantly put it, “the truth outlives a lie”. Consoling.

Why We are Here: A Framework for Action (Week One)

The first speaker of the Children at Risk School was Janna Moats, founder of the Women and Children’s Advocacy Centre (http://wcacentre.org), a mother and grandmother, and formerly also a teacher, school administrator and espresso café owner.  Janna gave us a framework for the rest of our school and for working with at-risk children by interweaving together the three things that impact us as Christians working with or on behalf of children: God (the Word – God’s nature and character), the world (its need but also the tools it offers) and us (including our individual gifts, skills, experiences, relationships etc). I really enjoyed how personal she made the topics for us, challenging us to question common beliefs on family and what’s best for the poor and the needy, and encouraging us to reflect on what Bible verses mean to us personally in the time and place we are at right now and in what our goals, hopes and dreams are.

The first few days of classes went by in what seemed like a blink of an eye. On Monday and Tuesday I just couldn’t believe how quickly teaching was over, but towards the end of the week the tiredness from travelling, seemingly endless sitting on airplanes and wandering around airports trying to find a place to sleep, finally caught up with me. I was thoroughly exhausted, but even so, only after one week of teaching, I already feel encouraged and better equipped to organise some kind of training to support and hopefully inspire the volunteers at the church preschool in Malawi. They are amazing ladies, very committed to what they do, but with little training and scarce resources, I worry they might soon become weary. After listening to Janna teach and talking with my Children at Risk School leader, Rachel, I also know now that I want to share with the volunteers about the value of the child and God’s intentions for every child.

One of the topics Janna touched on is something I’ve been thinking about quite a bit recently.  It was very encouraging to hear her highlight the importance of humility. “You will always mess up,” she said, “if you don’t talk with the families and children first”. On other occasions she urged us to “know the history, the pain, a community has walked through” and “recognise that no one develops in isolation… we must look at children in contexts to fully understand child development”. During my second stay in Malawi, what became increasingly apparent to me could be described as the colonialist mindset, the belief that it is the Westerner who has something to give/teach and the local who can only receive/learn/follow. It made me feel really sad and utterly powerless at times, and I’m afraid it’s the Westerners who have not only created this legacy but to a large extent continue to reinforce it, so it was very refreshing to hear Janna speak about the value of humility, the importance of staying teachable and asking questions, and creating an environment of interdependence, as opposed to functioning independently or creating dependence. Janna also pointed out that “every new generation is an opportunity to know God in a new way” and “we should expect to learn new things about God from the children we care for”. Truly inspirational – don’t you think? :)