a drop of water

I was listening to some of the recorded plenary sessions from the recent AALC (www.sdaalc.org), specifically a message from Ken Fong.  He was saying that one of the hardest transitions is for people who return to their home church from a period of intense missions, whether it be overseas, inner-city, long or short term.  From my own experience the process is like this: you raise financial funds, you get on a plane, and go travel to somewhere that doesn’t feel like home, you may not know the language, you may feel intimidated, you are probably not comfortable, sometimes there are new customs, new ways of interacting, but what holds you all together is that you are single minded.  You have a daily, tangible focus that is so closely tied with your spirituality, its like an artist’s expression in his preferred medium.  And then before you know it, you are getting on a bus, empowered with stories to bring home, headed for the airport, but it is bittersweet because this place that still is outwardly foreign feels like a second home, with new friends forged with purpose.  Then you return to the home church that probably helped fund you and you are shocked to find the opposite of singlemindedness.  Instead there is a whirlwind of people involved in dramas, whether it be church politics, relational drama, materialism, or general american-ness.  Home now feels foreign.  You feel sick, but the pangs ebb away as you are numbed by distance.  During the plenary, Ken Fong was talking about making the atmosphere at the church more like that of the mission field.  I do want that.  Not sure how.  I think to a certain extent this describes the same issue of college ministry involved students transitioning into the local church of families.

One aspect of marriage a commitment to change.  The wedding is like the point of justification, as the process of sanctification is to marriage.  I’m committed to seeing and being apart of God shaping and molding Jenn into the person he plans her to be.  I take joy in that.  I’m hopeful and expectant of God’s continuing work of sanctification in her life.  I’m hopeful and expectant of Jenn being used by God and watching with joy as he continues to fix me up too.  In mathematical terms, marriage is like a 2dimensional force vector, with an x and y component.  Individually they are each traveling in their own direction, but at the point of intersection they form a new direction that is a product of both.

Last Friday Jenn and I attended a seminar at Bethel on the theology of children.  It sparked a lot of interesting ideas about self reflection about Sunday school, the church, and our general attitude about children.

During the question and answer session attendees were bringing up the point that education, spiritual and scientific has been feminized since the 19th century.  People (women) seemed very interested in reclaiming the male source of education, especially in the spiritual.  One man brought up the point that for most men, they were the ones getting in trouble in “sunday school,” so when they are adults the subconsciously want to maximize the distance between them and anything related to “sunday school.”  I personally found sunday school as another academic class where memorized verses were graded tests and candy bars were good report cards.
Some points were brought up about how the problem of sunday school and spiritual education is that sunday school only ends up being a miniscule fraction of the week, while children are educated the other 99% of the time at home through actions of their family and parents.  The point being made is that the sunday school time can only do so much if it is not reinforced at home by the parents, in practice, action and discussion.

Another point that was brought up or was sparked inside my head, is the that why are so surprised when children pinpoint the issue or ask the best questions, or conclude the most simple but articulate truths.  We naturally think that our adult intellect and our non-ignorant informed minds are superior to the pure, inquisitive rationale of a child.  We think that we know more, and we think that we know how to use what we know better than people who are younger than us.  So when our little 5 year old cousin comes and asks a question that inspires us, or concludes something that cuts to the heart of the issue, we are surprised.  But really, we shouldn’t be.  We are all made in the image of God, and that is the source of anything good that comes of any of us.

Jenn asked me if I could see myself as a youth pastor, and I immediately thought, no, because I do not see myself as having the natural high energy level of jumping up and down all the time and doing crazy things to entertain the youth of today…but then I caught myself and started thinking that…maybe…is it that we have created a youth culture that requires a “high-energy” pastor and not the youth that inherently require a “high-energy” pastor?  I don’t know, but its probably part of it.

On a side note, according to a study in 2007, every 72 seconds someone in the US develops Alzheimer’s Disease.  Whatever the source of this disease, it seems as rates are increasing.  We often come contact with beligerent older people who think they understand everything, even when their rationale has been affected by time, whether it is disease or just age.  They are used to understanding it all, knowing everything, and used to being “right” after sorting through all the information.  Now they can not remember, store, process all the information, but still make a “right” decision in perspective of their rational capability, but its inaccurate due to a limited information subset.  My response to this is as young people, don’t ever assume you have all the information, don’t always assume you are always right, because when we are older, we won’t have all the information, we wont always be right, and we need to still be open to new ideas and new conclusions of people around us who might have more information.  I guess thats what maturity is, the ability to realize that you may not be right, regardless of how much of the big picture you think you understand.

Jenn and I had an interesting connection this week coming home from our weekly book table working at church.  Lately we’ve been feeling pretty sad / discouraged / frustrated with the book table and I think that one of the possible sources is that we feel like an unwanted street vendor.  We were feeling like people walk by and look at us as outsiders, as two asian kids trying to make some money by selling books at church and automatically associating us with the money changers thrown out of the synagogue by Jesus.  It was funny because apparently Jenn and I had been separately feeling this vibe but didn’t want to voice it to each other because we thought our feelings were probably just inside of our heads.  They probably are, just inside of our heads, but wer’e  not quite sure what to do with the feelings.  When we started, we had high hopes of providing people at church a resource to challenge, equip, empower, and inspire them, but I think we’ve ended up just isolating ourselves.  We don’t just want to quit (although maybe we should) because we are there to make contact with the few who are genuinely interested in the book table as a resource, but yeah…dunno.  I’m wondering if our original goal of trying to put information into peoples hands isn’t what we should be after.  In reading George Ogden’s Transforming Discipleship, I’m realizing that we (I) often make our faith an individual search for knowledge, often times through books.  We read a book on someone’s recommendation or sometimes because of author-loyalty and assume our interpretations of their truths as our own truths, skipping the actual experiences that led to their discovery.  I guess I sort of want to not only impart information, but more information through experiences…heh.

much has happened, much has yet to happen.