Christmas in Jesus’ hometown

In the days before and following Christmas, Nazareth Village puts on a Christmas play.  It is staged in the first century buildings and gives visitors a feel for what it may have looked like at that time.  In this play I have been given the role of the Angel Gabriel.  In the lines that the narrator reads leading up to my entrance she talks about the Angel Gabriel who appears to Mary in Nazareth.  When I hear this, I always think about how strange it is that I am actually in Nazareth in a first century recreation of Nazareth town acting out the part of an angel appearing to Mary who lived here at the time. And yet, realizing this has never really made me feel more Christmassy about the whole thing. Shouldn’t one feel closer to Jesus in Bethlehem or Nazareth particularly when surrounded by 1^st century replicas? Many I talk to who visit this part of the world do not feel closer to Jesus here while there are those who most definitely do feel his presence more strongly here than other places.

I am a traditionalist by nature and our family traditions surrounding Christmas have always been very important to me for creating the “feel” of Christmas. It is also a time for family in my view and so being away from family does make it more difficult for me personally feel festive about Christmas. However, at the same time I am soaking up the opportunity to be part of a new culture and new traditions while developing a new family of relationships. I am not feeling sorry for myself at all, I am just observing that Christmas is really about tradition and fellowship for me personally and so the part I play in experiencing Christmas here is really the part of an observer.

What I have appreciated about Christmas here is the lack of advertisement and general materialistic hype leading up to Christmas.  I understand that there is more of this hype in Bethlehem itself but again doesn’t compare the holiday season splendor in North America.  So what is the meaning of Christmas? Let’s consider the first Christmas of Jesus’ birth in the time of Herod’s rule and a time under general Roman occupation. What is striking is the contrast of a simple stable scene, of simple shepherds in the fields, a simple young woman, all taking part in something that would become a new way of looking at the word “kingdom”. So perhaps I should reevaluate my low key Christmas this year and consider myself closer to the meaning of Christmas in its very simplicity and in the proximity to the atmosphere of oppression and empire that would have existed at the time of Jesus.

What has become very clear to me is this –I do not care if Mary was or was not eternally a virgin, or if the three wise men came when Jesus was three or one year old or if Jesus was born in this cave or that stone house.  What does matter is that in the humility and simultaneous courageous authority of his fellowship and sharing with people, Jesus shattered the preconceived societal norms, loved those who seemed unlovable to others and pointed them toward God while opening their eyes to see beyond their immediate political and religious environment. The divine Son of God came to live as a person among people, eating with them, suffering with them and ultimately offering a freedom from the dominance of empire, social repression, and religious elitism not through escape from these realities but through intimate knowledge with them and the capacity to see beyond in certain hope.  The freedom he offered was a kingdom we have part in that has come and is still coming and is one that offers freedom through the promise of an eternal life that will never be captured, boxed, and sold in bite-sized packages. Can Christianity today claim that it does the same?

When Elephants Fight

“When elephants fight, it is the grass that gets trampled” says an African proverb.  This saying is often applied to a situation where tensions between political powers result in suffering of the uninvolved communities of people at the grass roots level. Here I am, in Nazareth, in a part of the world where this proverb can so aptly be applied and yet I find myself losing track of who the elephants are and who the grass is. Don’t misunderstand what I’m saying…I am a typical social justice type Mennonite in my beliefs about injustices and the wall here in Israel/Palestine etc.  And if I label the situation as “complicated” perhaps I will suffer the wrath of those who would say it a simple matter of lobbying one’s government because it is clearly the governments who can make the difference if they would only change their policies.

A story recently came out about a Jewish “museum of tolerance” planned to be built on a Muslim graveyard site in Jerusalem. The irony of the situation is rationalized away by language about rights, Jerusalem’s space issues, and the fact that the entire city is probably built on bones anyway.

But if you remove yourself from the situation for just a moment (which is difficult to do when you live here) you realize how ludicrous the rationale is and yet this is the very rationale that most governments base their action on when it comes to situations of “injustice”.  In the first century when the Jews of Nazareth were being oppressed by the occupying Roman government, they looked for a leader/or leaders who might lead them to something that they understood as justice.  Then when a 30+ year old Jesus stood up in the synagogue in Nazareth to read from the scroll of Isaiah and when he so eloquently took passages from Isaiah 61 and 58 all talking about freedom from oppression, those gathered in the synagogue were elated! Yes finally, someone who understood their situation and would lead them, by the power of all those amazing things they had heard he did in towns surrounding them, to freedom and justice.

Jesus turned the situation on its head, questioned the faith of those gathered and talked about a freedom and a fulfillment that did fit the demands of those gathered in the synagogue. In response to the suggestion that his ministry and God’s message was for all – Jew and Gentile – those gathered were ready to kill Jesus (see Luke chapter 4:16-30).

Jesus has always symbolized the third way to Anabaptists and this story in the synagogue in Nazareth is yet another example of how he so creatively and provocatively achieved this.  How would he creatively and provocatively find a third way today in Israel/Palestine? Yes there are political powers who are clearly elephants but then there are other elephants who pose as grass and grass that abuses power like an elephant would. The situation however, is not more complicated than it is has ever been.  How did Jesus navigate the craziness of his context? He simply lived, challenged the status quo in love of those who he came into contact with and that in itself was somehow revolutionary enough to get him killed. Simply the integrity and truth of his being was enough to challenge the powers and enough to comfort and encourage the oppressed at the same time.

It’s a paradox that I continually strive to understand but risk making more complicated than it need be in my search to uncover it.

Gibran’s wisdom on Beauty

A few days ago at the beach I was reading Nouwen’s wisdom on hospitality and prayer and then Khalil Gibran. With all the beauty of nature surrounding me, this passage from Gibran jumped out at me:

Beauty is that which attracts your soul, and that which loves to give and not to receive. When you meet Beauty, you feel that the hands deep within your inner self are stretched forth to bring her into the domain of your heart. It is a magnificence combined of sorrow and joy; it is the Unseen which you see, and the Vague which you understand, and the Mute which you hear – it is the Holy of Holies that begins in yourself and ends vastly beyond your earthly imagination…

Only our spirits can understand beauty, or live and grow with it. It puzzles our minds; we are unable to describe it in words; it is a sensation that our eyes cannot see, derived from both the one who observes and the one who is looked upon. Real beauty is a ray which emanates from the holy of holies of the spirit, and illuniates the body, as life comes from the depths of the earth and gives color and scent to a flower.

Beauty is that harmony between joy and sorrow which begins in our holy of holies and ends beyond the scope of our imagination.

Beauty is not in the face; Beauty is a light in the heart.

-Khalil Gibran

Is my bank’s service prejudiced?

Today I had to run to the bank to deposit a US check that would then be rolled over into investments in Canadian funds. When I walked in, the lady at the greeting/information desk didn’t even look up. I made my way to the teller who soon informed me that this check would be held for 15 days so that it could be verified with the institution in the US. I asked if there was any alternative since I needed to access the funds sooner and 15 days seemed rather unnecessary. Eventually the manager came out and started asking me questions about my student status and seemed unconvinced when I told her I was not a student. When she found out I was a volunteer for the Mennonite Church, she was equally unimpressed. So I took my check back home and formulated a new plan.

I had been wearing shorts and a t-shirt and had my hair pulled back and had a nice “granola” type purse from some other country in the world. I decided I would dress nicely, switching my chacos for leather sandals, my shorts for capris, and my t-shirt for a more attractive shirt. Then I put down my hair, put on a bit of jewelry, made sure my sun-glasses were placed in the trendiest of positions and off I went back to the bank.

It was merely a couple of hours later but the difference was amazing. The lady at the information desk looked up, smiled and called out a greeting even though I hadn’t looked at her first. I had made sure to enter the bank with a sense of entitlement whereas I probably entered with some timidity ealier. I waited in line looking just a bit impatient and indifferent and a young male teller who was on his lunch break, left his break and opened a new till and called me over. When I explained my situation, he said it was absolutely no problem, he would call the US instituation immediately. In a matter of minutes, the check was verified and the funds were in my account. I thanked him profusely on behalf of myself and my financial advisor and set off.

So then, if I, a young white female am treated with this sort of prejudice based on my appearance and perceived wealth status….how are others treated in this institution? Our society here in Winnipeg has huge prejudices when it comes to serving Native Canadians particularly. This was an experiment I wasn’t sure would work. I am rather horrified that it did.

Back in Canada

So once again time has flown and I haven’t posted as much as I would have liked. The past month was amazing for me. I enjoyed co-leading the group more than I ever thought.  Being outside so much (more than I have been for the past while) was a very welcome thing and I can say that I feel much healthier now than I did a month ago. We got to do a bit of hiking which was one of my favourite parts. One of my main concerns before heading out was that the culture would not “click” with me. Although this may seem selfish, it is true that some personalities click more quickly with a culture than others. Yes there are so many things under the surface that remain to be discovered, and most likely some frustrations as well, but for now I am happy to say that I found the culture (I was mostly in Arab circles in Nazareth and East Jerusalem) to be quite comfortable. The food was great, hospitality was everywhere, and people were quick to open up and talk for the most part.

There are any number of political and historical realizations that I could post about (some new and some not so new) but suffice it to say for now that the situation is so complex and overwhelming that I wonder at my own audacity (and any other foreigner’s) going into the country and thinking I can make any positive contribution. I think the only way that one can approach such a situation is with great humility, learning from those who belong to land, inviting others to learn as well, and possibly being a bridge to bring people together in some small way. That would be the ultimate goal but even that seems presumptuous at this point.

Of spices, mikvehs, and good company

Wow, the past few weeks or so have gone by in a blur. I am now in Nazareth Israel and have been in the Galillee area since the 9th with the youth venture team that I am co-leading.  Thus far it has been a great experience. We have a very good team of young adults who are enjoying their experience (as far as I know, they are quiet), and I feel that it’s an honour to be leading them and to be part of this journey with them.

Coming here has felt quite natural although this is also true of other places that I have been….and yet this is different. It is not entirely explainable but I’m not looking for an explanation. I am loving the food, culture, people that I meet, the activities that we are involved in and the company of the group although I am a wee bit low on sleep. As with any group, there are dynamics that can get a bit stressful at times but these are eclipsed by the beauty of the location, people and culture here.

The old city of Nazareth reminds me of the old cities of Lamu, Kenya or of Zanzibar although here it is far more ”organized”, it is cleaner and there seems to be less Islamic influence in the architecture. The smell of spices in the air, the feeling of market time, shopkeepers sitting outside their doors is very similar. I look forward to actually understanding Arabic so that I can converse with people and build relationships.

We move on to other places next week and hopefully I will have time to write again. This week we are busy dressing up as 1st Century people at a place called Nazareth village that recreates the time of Jesus in the style of a living museum. This is the place where I expect to spend my first two and half months when I return in October. For the last two days I have been working on the roof to a mikveh which is a Jewish ritual bath used for purification back in the 1st Century. I am now able to do 1st century masonry (sort of) in very warm handspun clothing.

That’s all for now.

Detoxing in Nature

I have two days left in Manitoba before I head for Philadelphia for meetings and for an orientation. I’m co-leading a Youth Venture trip to Israel/Palestine in July and we’ll be doing the group orientation in Philly for one and half days. I’m really looking forward to meeting the group participants and hearing their stories, not to mention traveling out of North America again.

This past weekend a friend and I drove the 2 hours to the Whiteshell that is part of the Canadian Shield here in Manitoba. It’s a beautiful area with hills (!), rocks, and forest. Why is that anything to mention… because I’ve been surrounded by flat prairie and/or city for a mighty long time now. Rain storms were forcasted for the day we chose to hike, but we decided to go for it anyway because we both needed to get out of Winnipeg. We chose the PinepointRapids trail that began as a wide gravel trail and gradually narrowed and thickened to a single-person path in dense undergrowth that was a wee bit mucky and mosquito-infested in the rain. We saw deer, wolf, and bear tracks but didn’t meet anything other than deer and a large animal off the path that we chose to ignore and walk quickly away from.  If it was a bear, it was most certainly repelled by our very advanced anti-bear whistles and claps (some other hikers had warned us about a bear on the path). The most exciting thing on that hike for me was finding a raided turtle nest with egg “shells” everywhere. Second exciting was rushing water since I like any bodies of water whether rapids, waterfalls, or oceans.

In general I found Thoreau’s Walden fairly dull when I read it in college but he did most certainly have a point when he emphasized the healing and balancing effect that nature has on a person. Nature has always been one of the places of healing for me and growing up it was the wide open Savannah and African wildlife. Since I live close to down town Winnipeg, I sometimes now need to be reminded that there is a vast difference between a city park and the truly wild outdoors.

And so I’m that much closer to feeling ready to tackle the upcoming month of travel/learning/fun. My month of stress detox was fairly successful - the world is looking larger, less fragmented, and generally brighter with increased possibilities. I have let go of more in this month than I would ever think possible and this means being OK once again with the uncertainty of the future.  I’ll take the freedom of uncertainty over the bondage of control (or the illusion thereof) any day.

 

 

A piece from my old blog

Playing our part in the global symphony of faith

Taken from Canadian Mennonite, Volume 11, No. 09, April 30, 2007 http://www.canadianmennonite.org/vol11-2007/11-09/upclose.php

-Tanzania

On a recent trip back to Tanzania, Hinke  reunited with her childhood friend, Amina, and got to hold Amina’s daughter.

“Aaaiii, Hinke!” yelled Amina as she bounded out to hug my brother and me during a recent visit to her home. Amina and I had last seen each other 13 years ago, but for much of our childhood we grew up together in Tanzania. Her father, Juma, had worked for my family and had been like a second father to me.

Quickly the entire family gathered and we caught up on 13 years of family news. Several hours later we were all sitting down to a meal of ugali (a paste made of maize meal and water) and mchicha (Tanzanian greens), as well as a few celebratory bottles of pop. We sat on wooden stools in the dirt yard and ate from a communal dish.

“Hinke, my sister, why aren’t you eating?” asked Juma’s son, Athumani, in Swahili, after I had eaten a few handfuls of food.

I grinned at him and answered, “I am eating, but I’m also listening.” It was the same response I had given to the same question when I was a child. I gave him a look of mock annoyance and we both felt a distinct sense of home.

Like that of most transient, world-travelling young adults, my faith has been shaped by numerous voices. It is only when I consciously stop and listen, that I hear each cultural melodic strain that together compose the symphony of my faith.

My experience of revisiting Tanzania makes me realize that the voice of Africa has silently influenced my decision-making, principles and faith. Hardship and daily struggle for the most basic of needs in Africa makes simplicity a reality that cannot be avoided and should not be romanticized.

Anabaptism tells me to live simply and with honesty, but Mennonites today have yet to honestly face the reality of a cultural and global paradigm that is already silently informing future Mennonite generations. The church often pays the price in youths and young adults who leave as the gap between church and their culture leaves them feeling apathetic or frustrated.

Because of Christ, I can see the examples of his life and the stories of the Anabaptists and Africa come together to form a terrible and beautiful symphony of faith. The end goal must be to live out our faith in a way that is meaningful as a community that owes its existence and purpose to God.

At last year’s North American Young Adult Fellowship, I met others who find themselves similarly inundated by a diverse collection of faith melodies. These young adults spoke about how their faith interacts with the church. In essence, they described church as living out our Christian faith every day, leaving no room for a dichotomy between faith and social action, finances and work.

In the summer of 2006, North American young adults took part in a bike tour that visited more than 19 congregations across the northern part of the United States. It sought to transform those many voices into one unified experience of intentional community while initiating and inviting conversation about the church.

Experiences like these empower us to listen intentionally to those individual melodies that inform our faith, to take ownership of them, celebrate them, and, with God’s help, to weave them into an integrated whole.

In today’s world we are not all raised in one geographic location or by a distinct faith community. As Mennonites, we cannot assume that other Mennonites have been shaped in the same cultural or faith environment. My generation—and the generations following me—receive information and values from a rich variety of geographic, philosophical and theological sources, and our culture expects that we listen to each source with respect.

To a large extent, the stories of previous generations still define our current Mennonite Church and faith culture in Canada. But we have new stories and new beautiful melodies that must be written into the greater story of our Anabaptist faith history. With God’s guidance, we can filter through the many voices informing us. Slowly and carefully we form an understanding of Anabaptism and what it means to be Mennonite in our world today. We may not be of the world, but we are definitely in it. I have faith that we—as a young generation of Anabaptists—will, by the grace of God, realize our own communal symphony of faith and give this as a gift to a world that is crying out for us to play our part.

Deep Calls to Deep

Some weeks ago I went to a Steve Bell concert. His lyrics are basically scriptural and it is the way that he combines this with his musical style (folk?) that is so compelling. I’ve been listening to his music a lot lately. While in India in some sort of monastery somewhere he heard the “Deep Calls to Deep”words chanted as part of a spiritual ritual. The words really struck me:

Deep calls to deep and my soul finds no resting place but Him. He is my God, the yearning of my soul His touch can still. And each rare moment I felt His presence, I shall remember and forever cherish.

Deep calls to deep for He created me to be His own. He understands the joy and pain of life He too has known. And each rare moment I felt His presence, I shall remember and forever cherish.

Deep calls to deep and at His feast I am a welcomed guest. He gives me food, the hunger of my soul is laid to rest. And each rare moment I felt His presence, I shall remember and forever cherish.                                                     

Maybe you’re asking the wrong question

The following is what I presented this past weekend at the Believers Church Conference (Believers Church includes Baptists, Penticostals, Mennonites, Brethren, etc…adult baptizers). I was the the young adult representative on a panel discussing mission and evangelism in light of denominationalism and congregationalism in the Believers church in our time. My answer is based on a personal theology of mission and recent reading as well as conversations I have had with young adults in the Mennonite church.

Question: “How do young adults desire to engage in the church’s ministry of mission and evangelism? Where do you see possibilities and problems in the church’s approach to mission in our day? Provide illustrations.

 

The question asked assumes that mission and evangelism exist as departments or branches owned by the church. We know that ultimately mission and evangelism belong to God and so every Christian should naturally engage the world with mission and evangelism through the way they live. The church then is a group of Christians who gather together for mutual encouragement and building up and worship of God. Therefore mission is at the heart of this group of Christians called the church. The church does not design, select, and control mission and evangelism unless the church is purely viewed as a structural organization. If the church is viewed as a body of believers living in the way of Christ, then Christians of all ages, young adult, middle-aged adult, baby adult and old adult, are part of this body and together they engage the world with mission and evangelism because it is integral to who they are as individuals and as a larger body that God has called, is calling and will continue to call.

 

Michael Frost sums this up well in his book Exileswhen he says “In fact I believe that our proper understanding of Christ (Christology) leads us into an appropriate commitment to mission (missiology) which forces us to develop the means of a common life together (ecclesiology). It must happen in that order. Too many churches begin by trying to artificially develop an ecclesiology, determining first where to meet, what songs to sing, what to preach, how to have small groups and leadership structures.  Instead…to build a ship, you must first create a hunger for the sea.  That hunger comes form our familiarity with Jesus.”

 

The church cannot exist without mission or evangelism. The church functions as an earthly representative of the body of Christ. It should be seen as a sign of the kingdom of God which is to come and should reflect the truths of the kingdom that we experience here on earth. Any true representation of the kingdom arises out of a unity in Christ. That in essence should be the basis for groups of churches with similar views (known as denominations).

 

The early church operated as a community in which members served one another following the example of Christ. The wealthier Christians shared what they had with those Christians in need (see Romans 15:25-28, 12:13, 2Cor 8:13-14, Gal 6:10). This generosity was based on Jesus’command to love your neighbour as yourself (Matt 22: 27-40). Healthy relationships and the possibility for reconciliation among members of the body of Christ are possible through this same command (Romans 13:9). The commandment was not new to the believing community since it had been in effect since the time of the exodus (Lev 19:18).

 

A community cannot function as a Christ-like unit without an attitude of servanthood. The apostle Paul saw his mission intimately connected with the identity of Christ as the Servant in Isaiah. The whole-life mission of the church or the church in mission must be realized within the greater context of God’s salvation-history. This principle was the basis for Paul’s theology of mission and in the same way it should also be central to the core of the church. As a natural result it will be seen in the mission theology of the church. In order to achieve any real unity and fellowship in the church, each member must see others as better than themselves (Phil 2:3-5).  This is foundational to our being as local bodies (known as congregations).

 

Michael and Allen Hirsch, in The Shaping of Things to Come, remind us, “Mission is not merely an activity of the church.  It is the very heartbeat and work of God.  It is in the very being of God that the basis for the missionary enterprise is found.  God is a sending God, with a desire to see human kind and creation reconciled, redeemed, and healed.”

 

Mission is the church and the church is mission. As members within the church are ministered to, they become energized for mission outside the church and as they minister outside the church, they are energized for mission within the church. As long as the church does not become too inwardly focused and is open to the Spirit of God, it is able to continually give of itself and is thereby representative of the body of Christ. The example of the early church can be used to avoid the dangers of extreme self-focus and misplacement of priorities. Tom Sine believes that the churches mission now seems to be the designing of programs to meet the needs of those inside the building or inside the denomination. I would have to agree with him.

 

I realize that much of what I have said thus far can be labeled “missional” church talk. I know at least that we Mennonites have talked the talk and write prolifically about the walk, but I’m afraid that collectively we Mennonites do not yet walk the walk.

 

As the individual in the church lives out the call to follow the example of Christ, to love God first and secondly to love your neighbor as yourself, a holistic embodiment of the message results. A “people-orientation” that respects, loves and approaches the “Other” in humility is central to mission. I believe that number oriented mission (whether budget, souls converted, or lives physically saved) should be replaced by an emphasis on a whole-life and relationship-centred service in the message and life of Christ. This whole-life orientation that serves to help others is certainly counter-cultural in today’s individualistic society.

 

In his book The New Conspirators, Tom Sine asks a tough question: Have we settled for a dualistic discipleship in which our faith has very little influence on how we live our daily lives? Have we settled for a compartmentalized piety that has little impact on the direction or major decisions of our lives? Stuart Murray, in his book Post Christendom, indicts much of the Western church for largely abandoning the countercultural, prophetic role in society that often characterized premodern Christian communities.  He argues that established churches out of the Christendom model have become little more than a chaplain to the modern culture. For many of us, the dominant culture is more influential in defining the focus and character of our lives than we realize….In spite of our best attempts, we wind up with a dualistic form of discipleship and rarely seem to notice.”

 

Walter Brugemann has explored a counter-cultural perspective of Christ-like service when he identified this counter to the dominant culture as the alternative consciousness in The Prophetic Imagination. This new perspective is very important mainly because it opens our eyes to the amazing alternatives that Jesus offers in his radical message which contrasted strongly with the cultural message of his time. It is this type of realization that will keep the Christian from becoming complacent or comfortable in a society that numbs us to injustice, inequality, violence, and materialism.

 

Those young adults who understand and accept the institutionalism of the church are sometimes content to engage the church’s ministry of mission and evangelism through occasional missions trips ( that I believe cater largely to our increasing consumeristic and individualistic culture), and through other approved programs. But their actions most likely will not display the denominational loyalty of times past because they are constantly bombarded by a myriad of choices from every denominational direction and culture dictates an individualistic right to filter these choices. Again from Tom Sine’s The New Conspirators, “Christian leaders need a wake-up call. While interest in traditional religion in declining, interest in spirituality is experiencing a remarkable revival. Australian commentator Philip Johnson states, “Put simply, many people are highly suspicious of institutional and organized religions…The Net generations are growing up in a flood of choices, lifestyles and information. Authority figures in religion are less likely to have “street-creed” because religious ideas can be sussed out with the click of a mouse. ..

 

Others, who may be seen as “on the fringe” of the institutional church choose to make mission (as they understand it) a way of life, living in community, focusing on social justice issues  and ecological concerns close to home because these are equally aspects of being missional. If loving God means obeying Jesus and this means action then action means living the Way everyday. This means pursuing kingdom here even as we wait for kingdom come. It is most likely a matter of eschatology which impacts our view of stewardship and which impacts our view of social justice.

 

The possibilities for the church’s approach are many. We exist in a North American culture displaying rampant individualism, consumerism, and materialism together with increased attention to the spiritual, increased desire for community, and increased desire for down to earth products and increased concern for the environment. How does this translate for the church? As a church we are a body that can offer God’s community, God’s down-to-earth integrity and honesty, and God’s love that fills that spiritual hunger as we act in accordance with God’s concern for social justice and stewardship. In addition we live in a world where the church outside North America and Europe is growing at an unprecedented rate. We have the opportunity to learn from these Christian brothers and sisters in partnership and in equality in the eyes of God.

 

What are the problems?  Can we get past our quibbling about music styles, how much technology to incorporate, how many worship bands, what theological interpretations and so on long enough to recognize the hunger that is out there and within ourselves, realize the legitimate basis to accusations of Christian hypocrisy, tune into this, realize how short we have fallen as a church, fall in humility on our knees, and in brokenness embrace those who are crying out to God in their own brokenness? Can we get past patting ourselves on the back for a job well done when the job remains to be done? This is the engagement that the majority of young adults that I know want with the church: An engagement that is the body of Christ, not priding itself on what makes this or that denomination different than another but rather a body that together re-discovers the pain and joy that led real Believers with real life issues together in the first place. This is the real-life joy and pain that results in whole-life worship of God.

 

In Exiles Michael Frost says “Mission is an expression of Christian worship…the central and most powerful expression of worship” and further “Our works of generosity and hospitality are acts of worship…We are racing into an uncertain future in which our world and our churches face daunting new challenges.  To respond to these challenges we must resolve, by the power of God, to become whole life disciples and whole-life communities committed to placing God’s mission purposes at the center or our lives and churches, giving compassionate, creative and celebrative expression to that world that is already here.”

 

Many say our numbers are declining, many churches are losing people under the age of 35 at a rapid pace. Perhaps some day soon we will no longer have the luxury of meeting to discuss what makes our various denominations distinct from one another or what Christian distinctives make us more alike than other denominations.  Perhaps we will have to pull together out of sheer hunger for community in a culture where Christians are no longer the majority, where Christian morals cannot be assumed, where we are forced to explain our in-house language and our lives because they are considered oddities in a society largely defined by a new dominant culture in which our children were raised. Perhaps that day is already here. The answer is not complete separation from this dominant culture, because after all, we are already more greatly influenced by its characteristics than we will ever know. The answer might be to re-realize what makes us unique and counter to the dominant culture as a Believing community living in relationship as people with real problems and weaknesses, as well as gifts and strengths to be celebrated; To creatively re-realize the amazingly difficult simplicity of living our Christian faith every day on the street, at work, on a Sunday or a Monday or a Thursday here or in another country. That is truly how the young adult desires the church to engage God’s ministry of mission and evangelism.

 Note: I’d like to add a comment that someone brought up in response to this paper: There may be communities of Mennonite young adults who are striving to “live out” faith, but there seems to be a lack of people in general who can verbalize what they are living and share that with others in an understandable way.   I (Hinke) would add that perhaps this is where we can begin to re-define the word “evangelism”… a simple verbalization of what we are doing when we live out a whole-life faith. This verbalization should be understandable to those inside and outside the church and connect with our contemporary culture in a relevant way. This language should be simple and minimal and must always be accompanied by action since we are guilty of producing far too much language as a denomination already. Perhaps this would cure those of us Mennonites who have an aversion to the word “evangelism”, and help us to realize that the problem does not lie with the word or its real roots, but with the baggage that we understand the word carries.

Another note: what I’m saying is nothing new. Yes I realize that. So what’s wrong with being reminded again….lest we forget?