Off to Sri Lanka and India

I leave this fine Saturday morning to be in Sri Lanka for 5 days and India for 7, so I won't be online much. We'll see what kind of internet connection I get while there.

Despite having been to nearly 60 countries, it is my first time to these two important places. Just looking at the location here tells the story -- strategically located between the Arab world to the west, China to the north and the Asian tigers of Malaysia and Indonesia to the southeast.

I'm looking forward to seeing what progress may have been made in responding to the Tsunami challenges in Sri Lanka as well as exploring the "new" tech center of the world in India.

Hosted by the Evangelical Alliance of Asia, I'll be assisting in a consultation on refugees for key Christian leaders from South Asia in Colombo, Sri Lanka. According to the organizers, it'll be the first time groups have gather to talk about how to work together to meet the needs of the hundreds of thousands displaced by war and the Tsunami in this small island country south of India.

I'll be with my sports ministry friends in India, helping to lead training on partnering for community outreach. They rock -- and I look forward to learning much from them.

The Seattle SeaHawks

Well, Seattle is celebrating it's big victory today in American football and its first trip to the Super Bowl. Many around the world know that the US feels its version of football is the more entertaining -- whether it's true or not is irrelevant (to Americans). More of them watch their brand of football than any other sporting event by far. No, it's not baseball, America's so-called "past time" (and another sport that most countries do not play).

As for Seattle, after 30 years of having a football team, they finally get to the game of games. And the city is going crazy over it. It was the most watched television show in Seattle's history (78%). The fictional SeaHawk bird will be flying high. We play the Pittsburgh Steelers, which was Christine's favorite team growing up (yup, she's a football fan, even though it's a bit unusual for women).

It'll be a long two-week wait for the February 5 game in Detroit. I'll get to try and watch it from India where I'll be on a ministry trip.

Best of 2005 -- "C" Music

I have never been a big fan of the phrase "Christian music." In fact, I rarely see anything good coming out of the use of the word Christian as an adjective. Feel free to send me your favorite usages, but know that most all of the good ones seem to have already been taken (Christian books, tapes, schools, and one of my personal favs -- Christian politicians).

Having said all that, Christianity Today (CT) magazine just listed their top Christian albuims of the year. So who do you think put together the best music of 2005? I might have said U2, but the release date for How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb was November 2004.

Here's CT's list and believe me, I don't know many of them, but I do know the number one: Switchfoot's, Nothing is Sound. Kind a cool that SF is one of the bands that both my two 18 year olds and I like.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/music/reviews/2005/2005bestof.html

Celebrating Progressive Lenses

In honor of my getting new progressive lenses, I offer you this wonderful picture of what I often now see. Enjoy (but don't stare too long!).

Influential Evangelicals?

Probably get in trouble with some for this one, but . . .

Earlier last year, as I was channel surfing through some television, I ran across the Larry King show on Time Magazine's Top 25 Influential Evangelicals and watched the better part of it. They had Tim and Bev LeHaye, Franklin Graham, Brian McLaren and TD Jakes on a panel discussion.

I have to say that I was a somewhat embarrassed to see Tim/Bev LeHaye and Franklin Graham representing the broad-based "evangelical" community. Though they bring strong and solid views of faith and practice, they often reinforce the stereotypes of American evangelicals as being relatively unthoughtful, uncaring and narrowly focused in their political and social engagement. It was a pleasure to see TD and Brian bring at least *some* reasonable thoughts (to the degree they were allowed). It seems like Larry likes the stereotypical rather than the outside the box person.

I would encourage people to look through the list of Time's most influential evangelicals (see www.time.com). Having interacted with many of them in my days in Washington, DC (and since), I can honestly say the list is more a commentary on the perception evangelicals have in American culture (elsewhere around the world, too, I guess). Still, they are those who are exercising political influence, but not necessarily cultural influence.

Fortunately, I believe that God continues to use the people of apparent insignificance -- those who are under the radar -- to accomplish His greatest purposes. It is rarely the ruler and more often the minion that God flows through most easily. I wonder why some of us want to be more significant then?

Perhaps there needs to be a parallel list of those types of folks; people having grassroots impact that most of the church don't have a clue about. The "Under the Radar List of Influential People." I would like to start a list of those folks. Any ideas for me?

Epiphany Sunday

Today is Epiphany Sunday, the time to celebrate the visit of the Magi to the baby Jesus. It's also called the festival of lights (since the wise men followed the star).

The wisemen brought three symbolic gifts to be given to the Christ-babe…

• gold – a symbol of power
• myrrh – a symbol of sorrow
• frankincense – a symbol of worship

The season reminds me that I need to continually give those things back to Jesus. What are the things of my perceived power I need to hand over to Him? What were (are) the things of sorrow from this past year? What acts of worship must I remember to offer Him?

For the past 16 years, Christine and I have celebrated Epiphany by holding what we have called an Epiphany Open House. It's where we invite all the different sectors of our life (family, Christine's work, my work, our boy's school, church, neighbors, etc.) to come together for lots of good food, good drink, and fun. It's surprising how many people end up discovering old friends and acquaintances.

It also allows us to continue to share our journey more intentionally with the different people that God has brought into our lives -- at least the ones who live close enough to drop by!

Collaboration and Crisis

I wrote this several weeks ago and thought I'd already put it up.

Collaboration and Crisis

Will we be able to look back on this year of crisis and say it was an impetus for partnering among the Body of Christ? That we were able to work within the context of communities facing didasster in a way that offered hope and modeled relationship?

No, sadly not. From the Tsunami in Asia and Africa, to the earthquake in Pakistan, to Hurricane Katrina in the US, there were few -- if any – good examples of groups working to reduce the massive duplication and coordinate their efforts. This despite virtually all of the relief and development experts, and those evaluating local projects, saying that cooperation would be a much more effective approach than what we currently see.

But, before we go and blame the groups and ministries that were offering relief during these crises (or in the case of Katrina, FEMA), it’s important to note that developing collaboration during crisis is virtually impossible. Why? Because the foundation of good partnering is relationship and trust, and there is little or no time for that kind of work while lives are being rescued and families being looked after.

The needed work of collaboration among disaster response group needs to take place before a crisis happens. Relationships need to be established, vision shared, potential joint projects excplored, and, most importantly, groups must learn to develop how to share success -- long before the fund raising machines are geared up to secure the resources needed to respond to a calamity. Once the marketing department gets ahold of the issue, the difficulty of developing cooperative strategies and talking about shared success is hard to overcome.

So the question becomes, how can we encourage the advance work needed for a collaborative response? It should be easier than it is given the lip service that most non-profit organizations give to the notion of partnering. However, the work of partnering takes hard work, dedicated leadership, intentionality, and the knowledge and skills necessary to really make it happen.

Those are the kind of things that REACT Services offers to its clients, and offers as assistance to our ministry projects. See: http://www.REACTServices.com

-- November 8, 2oo5

God's Address to the Electronic's Expo

Father Roderick Vonhögen, a Roman Catholic priest in the Archdiocese of Utrecht, in The Netherlands has a huge website, with lots of good stuff to explore. So while some might wait for Steve Jobs expo speech this month in Las Vegas, try "God's Keynote Speech" developed by Father Roderick. It’s delivered at an imaginary Heaven Expo and is quite funny -- especially if you're an Apple user.

http://media30b.libsyn.com/podcasts/dailybreakfast/godskeynote.mp3