Summer is the peak time for Short Term Missions Trips, it seems. I recall my home church packing a van full of teenagers and heading for Mexico. These trips, whether to Mexico, the Caribbean or beyond, are part of American church culture. And as Americans, we think these trips really matter and are a big help to the foreign fields.
Darren Carlson, president of Training Leaders International, begs to differ. In a hard-hitting series of articles posted at The Gospel Coalition blog, he challenges many commonly-held assumptions about short term missions. They often do lasting damage to the very places they were hoping to help. If not done well, they can be a burden to missionaries and national pastors alike.
Rather than just critiquing and poking the American short term missions bubble, Carlson goes on to point out a path toward improved short term cross-cultural ministry. He encourages churches to think local first, and to partner with foreign pastors and missionaries closely on any international ventures. Manual labor is often counter-productive, when locals could be employed to help build that church or fix the school.
I can’t say more than what Darren has spelled out in this series. I just want to encourage you to take time and consider reading these articles — especially if you are a pastor or in charge of such missions trips for your church. Don’t just repeat the past, think carefully about how to make such trips truly have lasting impact.
Like most everyone else, my heart was sickened by all the news surrounding Jerry Sandusky. Now that he has been convicted on 45 counts of child sexual molestation, it seems that justice is served. Setting aside the questions of whether Penn State should have done more to ferret out Sandusky, his conviction offers an opportunity to ponder the moral impulse of our society. By and large, the general public is shocked and outraged by Sandusky’s behavior, especially since he was in a position of authority. Pedophilia is universally condemned, and this by people of many different world-views.
The Gospel Coalition blog alerted me to an excellent article in the Catholic World Report that explores why Sandusky is guilty in the public opinion. The answer is Christianity and its effect on our culture and its undergirding of our moral fibers for hundreds of years. Let me excerpt the article and encourage you to go read the whole thing.
This is 2012. Turn the historical clock back 2000 years, and find yourself in the pagan Roman Empire before Christianity arose, i.e., before the Christianization of the West. In Rome, as in ancient Greece, homosexuality was completely acceptable. To be more exact, homosexual activity was frowned on (but not very diligently) when it occurred between two free-born men, but it was cheerfully affirmed between a master and his slave, and even more, a man and a boy between the ripe ages of about 12 to 17—just the target age of Sandusky. The man generally presented himself as a kindly benefactor to the boy, taking him under his wing, so to speak, and (in return for sexual favors) helping him up the social ladder. Just like Sandusky.
If Sandusky would have lived 2000 years ago, he would not have been found guilty of anything. He would not even have been noticed. His actions would have been entirely unremarkable. There would have been no disgust, no anger. The verdict would have been innocent, and in fact, the notion that he was guilty of anything would have been unintelligible.
There is one and only one reason, 2000 years later, that Sandusky is guilty now…Our consciences, our minds, our hearts, our legal system in America have been formed by Christian moral teaching about sexuality. Subtract Christianity from history, and we would be back in Rome. In pagan Rome, Sandusky would be innocent.
The piece goes on to illustrate how natural morality, darwinianism, democracy, psychology and philosophy all fail to lead to a condemnation of the kinds of acts that Sandusky is convicted of. But the article concludes with a warning:
But again, here’s the problem. Our society is being successively and successfully de-Christianized. The moral formation is wearing off rapidly. Now that we’ve answered the why of Sandusky’s guilt, we’ve got one more question to ask: How long will we continue to feel guilty?
That is a good question indeed. But I would demur. We still have many Christian underpinnings in our society, and for that we should be thankful. I often bring up this free attitude toward pedophilia or even ritualistic sex that was so pervasive in Rome and Corinth, and other ancient cultures, when I encounter the widespread Christian pessimism about how bad things are getting today. Christianity thrived in the most pagan of cultures, and it will continue to thrive the darker it gets today. Saving our society and improving our secular culture shouldn’t be the primary focus of Christians. Living out the Gospel of Jesus Christ in all its tranformative moral power should be. May God help us “be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom [we] shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life” (Phil. 2:15b-16a).
Dr. Russell Moore struck gold in his comments Friday on the Susan G. Komen Foundation’s reversal of their decision to remove funding for Planned Parenthood. I really appreciated his viewpoint and wanted to share some of his article posted on Christianity Today here.
Some pro-life persons might wish that the Christian churches had as much influence in the public arena as Planned Parenthood, that we were able to mobilize as many callers and threaten as many boycotts. Some might see this as a sign that we need more money and respect. After all, if some Christian foundation had more financial firepower than Planned Parenthood, Komen might have stood firm…
In all of this, though, we can gain an opportunity to see what the abortion culture is all about: cash. Planned Parenthood and their allies use the thoroughly American language of freedom of choice and women’s empowerment, but what’s at stake, as seen here, are billions of dollars…
The answer for those of us who cherish the lives of women and their children, regardless of stage of development, isn’t to long to compete with Planned Parenthood in the influence that comes with massive amounts of wealth. It’s instead to see, first of all, how our own captivity to Mammon devolves us in the same way…
We don’t need a Christian foundation to compete with the merchants of death. We don’t need one more coalition with enough signatures to counter the threatened boycotts of the abortion rights peddlers. And we sure don’t need to sell bumper stickers with a line drawn through a pink ribbon.
What we need, first of all, are churches who recognize that this isn’t all that surprising. Mammon is a jealous god, and he’s armed to the teeth….
And then we need to demonstrate what it means to believe that a person’s life consists in more than the abundance of his possessions.
Let’s stop highlighting how God “blesses” the millionaire who tithes. Let’s stop trumpeting the celebrity football players and beauty queens as evidence of God’s blessing. Let’s show that God has blessed us in a Christ who never had a successful career or a balanced bank account, but who was blessed by God with life, and with children that no one can number, from every tribe, tongue, nation, and language.
Planned Parenthood has won this one. They spent a lot of money, and they’ll make a lot of money. And they’ll do so off the shredded corpses of children and the raped consciences of women. If Jesus’ kingdom were of this world, we’d be fundraising to keep up with them.
But what we have is greater than that. We have a word that tells a pregnant young woman that we believe her Down Syndrome baby is a gift, not a health care burden. And we can offer the kind of gospel that cleanses the conscience and offers what outlasts money and power: life and that to the uttermost.
Let’s work to legally protect women and children. And let’s grieve that old Mammon has won the day, again. But let’s not grieve like the pagans who have no hope. When it comes to the struggle for life, the color of victory isn’t pink like a ribbon. It’s red like a cross. [Read the full article]
In reading through Old Testament Wisdom Literature: A Theological Introduction by Craig G. Bartholomew and Ryan P. O’Dowd, I came across a number of excellent quotes worth remembering [read my full review here]. The following excerpt flows from reflections on how Hebrew wisdom literature celebrates all of God’s creation and details how all aspects of life can be lived for God’s glory.
The dualism mentioned in this quote is all too common in Christian fundamentalism. I think the thoughts below ring true. Let me know what you think.
Creation and wisdom… thoroughly subvert the Christian dualism that has become so commonplace in too much contemporary Christianity in which the “soul” and the church–the sacred–are all that matter while the rest of the creation–the secular–is left to go it’s own way. Theologian Gordon Spykman captures the utter comprehensiveness of wisdom succinctly: “Nothing matters but the kingdom, but because of the kingdom everything matters.” Craig [Bartholomew] often uses the popular chorus: “Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in his wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim, in the light of his glory and grace,” as an example of the incipient gnosticism in contemporary Christianity. While we understand the positive sentiment in this chorus, we suggest that a wise, more biblical version would be: “Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full on his wonderful face, and the things of earth will receive their true perspective, in the light of his glory and grace.” [pg. 266-267]
Gloomy. That’s the general outlook that the vast majority of Americans seem to have when it comes to our future. Whether it’s political wrangling, economic turmoil, pandemics or education — the present is bleak and the future is downright scary. It’s not just Al Gore predicting global devastation caused by global warming, nor is it simply the war-mongers who see a jihadist behind every bush, it’s Christians too, who seem to enjoy pointing out how bad things are (and are getting).
Bradley Wright, in his new book published by Bethany House asks, “What if the Doomsayers have it all wrong?” A Christian sociologist, in Upside: Surprising Good News About the State of Our World Wright explores why it is that so many of us can’t get enough bad news, and why we all think that things are continually getting worse. The reality, however, is a far cry from the perception! And Wright proves his point by the end of the book.
Reading Upside, was like inhaling a deep breath of fresh air. On so many fronts, there has been remarkable progress in the world. Life expectancy, health and disease, poverty and access to clean water, air pollution, crime, financial well-being, literacy — all these areas and more have seen astounding improvement in the last 200 years.
For some examples: Life expectancy has doubled around the world in the last 100 years, as vaccines, hygiene improvements, medicine and general safety measures have become widely available. Did you know that in the 1820s, the world average of life expectancy was only 26, now it’s 66 and rising. Literacy rates have soared from 25% to over 80% worldwide in the last 100 years, and extreme poverty has been cut in half just since the 1980s, in developing countries. Financially, the world income rates have increased 1300% since 1820 — 300% per capita income increase just since 1955. We are able to feed more people for less money than ever, and more people are healthy than ever. And they’re living longer, fuller lives. Things have dramatically changed since the early 1800s.
Some would counter and say, well what about pollution and global warming. Wright shows that both air and water pollution have dramatically improved since the 1970s when the issue was first trumpeted and environmental controls started being written into law. Even deforestation is beginning to level out with some gains being made in some regions of the world. There are still improvements to be made, don’t get me wrong, but the direction has turned.
Others would say crime is on the rise. But statistically it is not. Even as the population has soared, the homicide and burglary rates have dropped significantly since the 1980s. This drop correlates with a dramatic rise in the incarceration rate. In the US, we have 1 in 100 adults behind bars, and including probation and parolees, that number rises to an astounding 1 in 33 adults!
Certainly, most Christians would think the family is weaker and morality is far worse than it has been in America’s past. But for three generations, levels of premarital sex, for instance, have been fairly consistent, with a slight rise in today’s numbers versus the previous generation. Divorce rates have actually fallen since the 1980s, as have abortion rates. For marriages and families, the reality is certainly a mixed bag, but the immoral culture of America has been on a trajectory away from the JudeoChristian ethic for the last 75 years or more.
Now, with all the good news, why is there still so much pessimism? Much of the pessimism, Wright claims, can be traced to advocates not wanting good news to cause people to relax when it comes to supporting their cause. Environmentalists, for example, don’t want you to know that the environment is getting better, otherwise they may lose financial support. It can also stem from the fact that bad news sells, and a steady diet of bad news breeds an expectation of more bad news. The problem with all this is that unwarranted pessimism can obscure our focus on areas where we really should be pessimistic. Wright explains: “Pessimism, if accurate, can serve us well, and ignoring real problems has its own costs. Accurate perceptions of the world both in the ways that it’s getting better and worse, is the ideal.” (pg. 31)
Wright’s findings aren’t all positive. He started his book “with the simple question of whether life is getting better”, and his answer is “mostly yes.” He goes on: “Think of it this way: Is there any other period in history when people were better off than now? I don’t see one.” (pg. 205) In his conclusion he challenges his readers to to be aware of all the good news, and thank God for the state of our world: “While we hear people thank God for their food, their healthy children, or their job, when was the last time you heard someone thank God for the declining national crime rate? Or the rise in literacy around the world? Or the amazing decrease in poverty over the past generation? Aren’t these things worth being thankful for?” (pg. 217)
Wright has an important point, which is why I think it is so important to read this book. It’s not just a book full of dry statistics, nor is it written with a preachy tone. Interspersed throughout his analysis of the state of our world are personal anecdotes, witty observations and off-the-wall interesting stats. The following quote, illustrates Wright’s knack at keeping his discussion of numbers fun: “On average, a passenger would have to take a commercial airline flight every day for 20,000 years before they died in a crash. By then, death might be a welcome escape from peanuts and pretzels.” (pg. 111)
There are not many books out there like Upside. I recommend you purchase a copy for some needed relief from the deafening drone of constant bad news. Read it and rejoice in what God has done for this world in the last 200 years. Then tell someone else that things aren’t all as bad as they might seem!
Disclaimer: This book was provided by Bethany House publishers. I was under no obligation to offer a favorable review.
Summer is the peak time for Short Term Missions Trips, it seems. I recall my home church packing a van full of teenagers and heading for Mexico. These trips, whether to Mexico, the Caribbean or beyond, are part of American church culture. And as Americans, we think these trips really matter and are a big help to the foreign fields.
In reading through 