¡Viva la Vida!

Assembly of the Month

The last Friday of every month, the elementary school has an assembly. The kids do a presentation about all the special days of that month, and it's always so cute! Usually the Mexican flag is presented by the kids in sixth grade, but today it was the preschoolers' turn!

Voices in Global Christianity: The German Jesus Freaks

Something interesting happened in Germany back in the 1990s.  Some German punk and goth teenagers found Jesus and then started nearly a hundred churches across Germany and beyond.  They called themselves the "Jesus Freaks" and are still very active in Europe today.  The Jesus Freaks have a summer festival called, appropriately enough, FreakFest that has grown in popularity.  So God is working all over the world - whether in the poor Developing World or in sophisticated, post-everything Europe.      

Heart-breaking

The other evening we got a call from the director of the Children's Home associated with our ministry. She asked if we could keep two of the kids for the night, as it was too late to bring them out to the Home. She showed up with two little boys (8 & 10) and their dad. There are four children, two girls and two boys, and the mother has gone "loca", suffering from some sort of mental illness. The father works and can't stay at home to take care of them, and the mother wanders the streets all day and night. The kids have been left to fend for themselves. The father wants to do what's best for them, making sure they have good care, food, love, discipline, and a life they deserve - and he knows that he can't give it to them right now. We watched as the dad hugged each of his sons goodbye, bravely smiling so that his boys wouldn't see his pain while wiping their tears away. I imagine his tears came when he went home to his empty house that night.

It was a tough thing to witness, yet there's a spark of hope in me for these boys who may have joined street gangs soon or who knows what else. Now they will be at "Life with Purpose" Children's Home, and hopefully one day be reunited with their parents.

Little Princesses

Several months ago, I heard of a church in Monterrey doing a class for little girls called the "Princess Class". I liked the idea, and I decided to develop my own sort of program for our church and the girls in our community. The eight-week class consists of Bible lessons, etiquette, crafts, and a choreography. My goal at the end is to have a coronation ceremony, where the girls will be officially part of the "club" and then to start it all over again with the next group of girls. I am focusing on ages 8-12, and I want them each to understand what it means to belong to the King of Kings.

Our town has an astounding problem with 70% of the women being abandoned by their husbands/partners/boyfriends (even in our church, the rate is about 50%). The women are left alone to raise the children, feeling unloved and unworthy. My hope and prayer is that these little girls will understand the value they have in Christ, and that they would have a standard for themselves that they are worth so much more than society tells them. Please be in prayer for these little girls and for the pilot program we started last week.

GLOBAL CHRISTIANITY: New Voices at the Table 03: Dr. MaryKate Morse

Part 03 of our series on important new voices in global Christianity (Part 01, Part 02) brings us to Dr. MaryKate Morse, a professor at George Fox Evangelical Seminary in Portland, OR.  Last December, Dr. Morse published a book which we believe is an important contribution in the gamut of books on Christian leadership.  It's called Making Room for Leadership:  Power, Space & Influence (IVP Books).  The importance of today's powerful leaders in evangelicalism to "make room" at the table for others (women, the indigenous, other nationalities, etc) is something crucial that must happen for the greater health and well-being of the church.
Here are some notes from Dr. Morse's presentation at the recent Recalibrating Church Conference from Peter Walker's Emerging Christian blog:

Morse begins talking about her book Making Room for Leadership: Power, Space and Influence, introducing it as a recalibration of the concept of power. She uses the example of kids playing in a sandbox to begin: “no matter how much fun all of the kids are having, some other kid comes in and takes it on themselves to smash what everyone has been building. Why does that happen? How does that happen in the church? I think it has to do with Power.”

She continues, “the problem is, we have a hard time getting along with each other. We can talk about theory and think about things, but we need to get our heads around power. Make this organic community a place where it really can thrive!”

Dr. Morse discusses some myths about power:
Leadership is embodied in a person whose words and behaviors influence others…

I was at this board meeting, and there were all these leaders from other churches and denominations... 16 people there… We worked two hours on this local community problem… We got to a conclusion on how to approach the problem, got up to break, and just then another pastor showed up. He said, “I’m so sorry I’m late!”

“And everyone was sort of ‘buzzed’ about him being there. He said, ‘Well catch me up, what have you talked about?” So they caught him up. And he said, ‘Well, I wouldn’t have done it that way.’ Suddenly the whole group shifted and went his way. All of the resolve went away! Everything we’d talked about! Why would one person come in last minute and shift everything?”

Morse went on: “When everyone finally took a break, I decided to ask him, ‘did you see what just happened here?’ No. He didn’t see. ‘Well, we already had a decision and then you came in and you changed it.’ I asked, ‘How do you manage that in your soul?’ He didn’t answer that. Leadership isn’t a thing that someone brings in. It’s an energy. Everyone in that room disregarded the group’s experience and work, and turned on a dime toward that leader. The group was part of the power process by allowing it. Mesmerized. They decided what he thought was more important than anything else. We get trapped in this thinking."

"Power is a corrupting thing," Morse said. "Jesus Christ came, embodied in the flesh, and he was powerful. People gave power to him. Power is neither good nor bad – it’s the ability to cause or prevent change. You have to have power in order to influence. There is stewardship with the use of power. That stewardship belongs to the group – to prevent the abuse of power."

"Luke 7: Jesus, Simon and the sinner woman. Jesus receives the woman’s love. In that experience Jesus allows her access to his space – his power. And it becomes redemptive. "

"There’s plenty of power – enough to go around."

"We think we somehow DESERVE our 'share' of power. We have an unlimited goods economy in our culture: there’s “enough” of everything. And we’re suffering from this perverted notion. We use power to consume.In Biblical times, there was a LIMITED Goods culture. There WASN’T enough to go around. It was the responsibility of those with more to share and make sure those with less were provided for. Hospitality was normative. This is the same notion we should bring to power. We should cultivate and understand how to use power. The group should talk about it because the group constituted it. But we have to think of it in terms of hosting others. We can have a “sandbox experience” – if you have power, make sure everyone gets to play and have fun.”

Very nice presentation. Dr. Morse was spot on.  

Alex Campos, Lily Goodman & Marcela Gandara Concert

Last night we went to a sold-out concert at the Arena Monterrey of three Latino Christian recording artists - Alex Campos from Colombia (who's one of the biggest Christian artists in Latin America), Lily Goodman from the Dominican Republic and Mexico's Marcela Gandara. It was Jan and my Valentine's present to one another - the only catch being we had to be chaperones for the youth and junior group (50 screaming kids!). But, regardless of that, we had a great night!

Protests in Monterrey this week

This week's anti-government protests on the streets of Monterrey have finally ended.  After seeing firsthand what was going on, I was doubtful that these gang members would have the operational capacities to pull off shutting down the main arteries of a city of 3.7 million people.  But they did.  They did this, the governor of Nuevo Leon believes, with the help of the drug cartels who've been trained in insurgency warfare.  The protests were specifically against the Mexican military's presence in our state - the only threat to the powerful cartels.  On the third day of the protests the Monterrey police commissioner placed in charge of investigating the demonstrations was gunned down on his way to work (Thursday morning).
       
Fortunately the protests ended yesterday and now the city is relatively tranquil again.  But the protesters have been heard - loud and clear - and they now know they can shut down a city.  The government once again is coming out of this as looking inept and incapable of maintaining civil order - exactly the goal of the cartels.  So many Mexicans are saying that the real year of anarchy and bloodshed will be next year - 2010.  There's a fatalistic view here that says that every 100 years Mexico has a revolution - 1810, 1910...2010.  If they insist on revolución, then let's make it a revolución para Cristo...

Last Night's Adventure in Downtown Monterrey

So last night I (Greg) was on my way to a board meeting at a Starbucks in downtown Monterrey when the traffic came to a complete standstill.  I knew it wasn't going to be good when people began turning their cars off and getting out to see what was going on.  There was a lot of noise and commotion several blocks ahead and, though I couldn't see what was going on, it seemed like it was a protest or demonstration of some sort.  One man standing next to his car near me explained that he heard on his radio that gangs of thugs were protesting the army's presence in the city and that they were throwing rocks and smashing up cars.  There had been a similar demonstration the previous night and I don't think anyone expected it to happen again.  But there we were stranded in the middle of a bumper to bumper snarl as things began heating up in the streets ahead of us. 

I called Jan at home and asked her to turn on the local news and let me know the situation.  She told me to get the heck out of there as quickly as possible - the gang members were going car to car robbing people and throwing rocks at the cars.  By this time many of the drivers began pulling off the street (a main traffic artery through the city) onto side streets and I followed them.  We winded through barrios and I of course got completely lost but finally made my way back to the northern, tranquil part of the city and parked my car at a shopping mall.  After calling my friends to see if the meeting was canceled or not (it wasn't), I then hailed a taxi to get to the meeting which was literally right in the middle of the demonstration-turned-riot (it was an important mtg!).  I quickly learned that the taxi driver was completely unaware of what was going on and when I explained to him what I saw he scoffed at me and said, "no pasa nada." ("nothing's going on").  Well, about five minutes later we drove right up to where the traffic was backed up and he said, "ah, tienes razon!" (meaning "you're right!") and so, using his ninja taxista abilities he successfully and safely navigated me to the Starbucks where I joined the meeting in progress.  So we had our meeting there two blocks away from the center of the demonstration while police in riot gear passed in droves.  I was totally pumped with adrenaline and quite distracted by all the activities outside but, in the end, we actually had a pretty productive meeting.  I took the metro back to my car.        

A Missionary's Work is Always Changing