Daily Bread Deja Vu

A third short story from one of my Asia mission trips has been posted on the International Mission Board's East Asia field blog.

It's been three years since I went on a mission trip in that part of the world, but God has kept the memories fresh. I hope to continue putting down on paper (or blogs, as the case may be) all the amazing experiences He's allowed me to have.

Click here to check out the story about meeting a friendly face while walking through a rainforest park in southern China.

This post will link you to the other two stories the East Asia blog has published, as well as a chronological list of entries from my 2006 trip.

Living Watermelons - An East Asia Missions Story

A short story from one of my China mission trips appeared on the International Mission Board's East Asia field blog today.

On a backpacking expedition in 2005, a travel companion and I shared some watermelons and a poignant 15 minutes with a peasant family at a roadside hut. Without speaking our language, they communicated hospitality to us, even though we were strangers intruding on their land.

I pray that their kindness returns to them in the form of eternal life through the Gospel. Read the story here.

See all my blog entries from that trip here.

Photo: We left a gospel VCD on this well, the water god's doorstep.

Waking Up to the Gospel

A post from one of my mission trips is featured on the International Mission Board's East Asia field blog today. It's amazing how that journey changed my life and allowed me to wake up to the reality of the Gospel in a way that hadn't been real before.

As I said in one of my most recent posts, it's humbling to know that there are still places in this world where we are only representatives of the kingdom of God, living stones forming the pavement on the road that leads to him.

That backpacking trip across three countries keeps on giving - in friendships, in writing content and in the assurance that short-term trips are necessary and life-altering when done in the right context.

Click here to see my chronological journal of posts.

You Are the Kingdom

A pastor friend of mine just re-posted an entry on his blog about a trip we took four years ago to three Asian countries. We were backpacking through villages, leaving traces of the Gospel and praying for those people we encountered - and many others we will never see.

His post recounts the last leg of our journey, when a six-hour trip turned into 13 after an out-of-season rainstorm flooded the country, turning dusty mountain roads into red-clay mush.

We caught one of the last buses out of town after having lost contact with our American team leaders. When we came to a place where the deluge had overtaken the road, we crossed a torrent of water on a makeshift bamboo bridge, and everyone on our bus crammed into another one on the other side of the river that was almost full already.

On another occasion, we waited an hour for workers to use a tiny chainsaw to cut a massive tree out of our path. Further down the road, we twice had to get out as the driver made impossible turns on mountain ledges, spinning the wheels of the dilapidated school bus that carried us to this country's border. At one point, the water was three- to five-feet deep, and we all applauded as our intrepid driver plowed through, getting us one step closer to home. We had a plane to catch to the U.S., and there was no telling if we'd make it.

I spent about half the journey standing up, holding a bar for support, or sitting on my pack or a bag of produce in the middle aisle. The rest of the time, I shared about one cubic foot with a native woman and her baby. With all the canvas bags of garlic-y crops scattered about and a bus filled to twice its capacity with hot, disgruntled patrons, it's amazing that I ever got to sit, even more amazing that the kids behind me were the only ones losing their lunch.

My friend mentions that at the end of this hellish ride we spent Easter Sunday at the border between two countries, one open to the Gospel, one militantly opposed to it. Did I mention that we had spent three hours the day before detained at the border of another country?

We were talking the other day about how life-changing it was to celebrate the risen Christ in a land where worshiping him is not permitted, where believers don't have the same privilege that we enjoyed in as we sat partaking Easter Communion in that river town. We broke bread from a local shop and sipped mango juice as wine.

"People just can't understand what that was like when you explain it to them," I told him the other day about the impact of the trip.

"You know," he replied, "People in this country just don't get that there are times when you are the Kingdom of God. You're it."

For that reason, the bus ride was worth it, even with all the obstacles along the way. In a way, it was like God leading us in a dramatic crescendo to the resounding final note on our journey. The roadblocks, he seemed to be showing us, were the reason we were there.

Before our trip even began, before we knew all the transportation trouble we'd face, our team had a name. It was the Roadmakers.

See my original blog posts from that trip here.

Freshly Fallen

No matter how beautiful it is undisturbed, I'm always tempted to walk through a patch of snow freshly fallen, where no one has been since it first blanketed the ground.

We had a big snow the other day (never thought I'd be able to say that in Georgia), and I couldn't resist the urge. I put on the boots I bought for a trip to Maine a few years ago and tromped around the grounds of my apartment complex, looking for especially pristine plots to defile.

I guess you could say this tendency metaphorically represents my spiritual life in two conflicting ways, one good, one bad.

We'll take the bad news first. For one, I think it reflects my unrelenting desire in each situation to exert my own will, not to let things rest just in their unspoiled state.

But on the other hand, on a truer level, I think this shows something more pure about who I am. I want to make the first tracks in that fluffy patch of pure powdery white because I want to be a trailblazer, to go where no one else has gone, to become the first to walk a certain path.

This is good and bad in my walk with Jesus, especially with regard to evangelism. In some ways I feel like Paul, who in his letter to the Romans said, "It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known, so that I would not be building on someone else's foundation." After tasting that morsel of satisfaction that comes with planting a seed of the Gospel in new soil, Paul saw it as his mission to continue sowing.

I feel Paul on that one, as evidenced by the way I do well sharing my faith overseas to new ears but often can't find the same resolve in my daily life. I just find the fact that billions still haven't heard Jesus' name appalling, especially with the riches in technology and knowledge that we possess in this country.

In comparison with the soft soil I have sometimes found abroad, Americans seem like icy snow - frozen over, slippery and hard to penetrate. They seem jaded, and the natural inclination - at least for me - is to prematurely move on.

But here's something I've learned, and it has helped me keep a soft heart towards Americans who have rejected Jesus time and again: Many of them are not rejecting Jesus or his grace. They are rejecting the image of him that has been presented to them. They often understand that we believe he died on the cross and rose from the grave. But they don't get his audacious acceptance, and no one has ever taken the time to break it down for them. Most of all, they just don't know who he is.

May I be one who breaks the ice and makes the introduction.

Living in the Trenches

The Gospels tell us a lot of things about Jesus' life. He's born of a virgin, a performer of miracles, set apart, sinless and holy. But I think one of the most compelling things we learn about Jesus is not that he's pure, but in that purity he's not afraid to get dirty.

I say that not in the metaphysical, super-spiritual sense that he left his pristine home in heaven to descend to the lowly earth. I mean that Jesus even goes beyond this. He dives into this ocean of sin and death and heads straight for the bottom-feeders.

In Luke, Jesus talks about how the Pharisees wouldn't be satisfied with John the Baptist's behavior, nor would they accept his own. John abstained from food and drink, and he was said to have a demon. Jesus ate and drank, and he was called a glutton and an alcoholic. The Pharisees wanted to distance themselves from both, because they didn't know which was right.

I fear that Christians do the same thing sometimes. In our efforts to "save our witness," we forget to minister to the people who actually need it. We're like doctors with tourniquets and gauze, watching an injured person bleed to death because we don't want to risk infection or get bacteria on our instruments.

Jesus hung out with tax collectors, prostitutes, sinners and the lowest of the low. Am I advocating that you head down to the nearest street corner and get a new posse? Not necessarily. But I am saying that we should not let our fear of filth keep us out of the trenches. No one ever heard of a good soldier shying away from dirt and grime. No one respects a baseball player who won't dive for the ball because he doesn't want grass stains.

If we're secure in our righteousness, like Jesus was, we don't have to ask permission to share it with others. Like the Pharisees, those who judge are probably not in a position to receive the self-effacing message of Jesus. So why try to please them? And why waste your time on folks who think they're healthy when sick patients are calling for your help?

Situations must be judged with a spirit-led conscience, and we need to be shrewd about the positions we put ourselves in. I would venture to say that most of us don't have Jesus' discipline, so it's not smart to charge toward a sinful environment where we can't handle the pressure.

But get the point of what I'm saying: Without decay, the salt is for nothing. Without darkness the light is for nothing. Why have an antidote if you can't go where the poison has taken root? Let's not quarantine ourselves from the world. If we do, we might live more satisfied with ourselves. But it's God who will judge our impact on the world. Sometimes he'd rather see us in the trenches than dwelling safely in self-built palaces.

Not Invincible

I learned the hard way to savor every opportunity for evangelism. Click here to read how God used a high school tragedy to shake me from apathy and show me that although I'm young, I'm not invincible, and neither are the lost friends and classmates around me.

The article is in the January 2009 issue of Focus on the Family's Breakaway magazine for teen guys. I'm a regular contributor and have written many feature articles using stories from my life to teach about subjects like dealing with divorce, taking responsible short-term missions trips, facing fear, trusting God's supremacy and becoming a man.

My first article recounted my adventures sharing the gospel on a backpacking trip in a restricted Asian country. After being detained and released by border police, I got a taste of how adventurous the Christian life could be if I got off the pew and into the real world.

Details of that journey can be found on this blog by clicking here.

Living Water

America has two obesity problems. Along with our bellies, our billfolds are getting fat, flabby and out of shape.

Just as eating good food isn't bad, padding our pockets isn't necessarily a negative thing. But gorging ourselves leads to weight gain, causing health problems that could be avoided with exercise and a smart and disciplined diet.

Financially, it's the same principle. Hoarding our wealth is a symptom of selfishness, a stem that sprouts out of the roots of pride and selfishness. Building a fortune to serve ourselves, to prop up our comfortable lifestyles, causes clogs in the arteries that lead from our heart to God's and undue strain on the system that circulates his love and ideas throughout our lives.

Today I've been listening to the audiobook of "Revolution in World Missions," a semi-autobiography by the founder of a ministry I support called Gospel for Asia. The ministry seeks to mobilize native missionaries throughout Asia to bring the name of Jesus to their own people.

K.P. Yohannan, the author of the book and the founder and president of GFA, describes the vision as a cost-effective and timely way to reach the most unreached peoples of the world with culturally relevant Gospel teaching. He pits this idea against the paradigm of Western missions, sending "blonde-haired, blue-eyed, white people" to areas throughout the globe where their presence is often unwelcome or forbidden.

In these situations, Mr. Yohannan argues, it often takes years to learn language, secure the requisite immigrant status, build relationships, learn cultural mores, and finally, to plant churches. Gospel for Asia operates by cultivating trained native missionaries who are ready to go to their own people for a fraction of the cost of Western missionaries, if only someone will send them.

A native of the Indian state of Kerala, Mr. Yohannan didn't come to America until he was college-aged. He didn't speak English until he was 16. He'd always heard about American affluence but finally experienced it when he came to study on scholarship at a seminary in Dallas. To make a long story short, he was appalled by the way that U.S. citizens went about their days with little idea of how filthy rich they really were.

One day's meat for us was enough to feed an Asian family for a week, he said. A $3 latte at Starbucks is the equivalent of three days' wages for more than a billion people living in poverty. After meetings where he spoke about the lost and dying, he was shocked to note that the after-church meal he ate often cost more than what he had collected in his love offering for the support of native missionaries who were suffering for Christ.

In fairness, Mr. Yohannan isn't all self-congratulating. He grapples with these issues in the text, and he admits the failures when he fell into the same traps. But his message is clear and unabashed: The Church in the U.S. and other wealthy Western nations has been financially blessed so that it can help faithfully bankroll the work of reaching the lost for Christ in some of the most untouched places.

GFA has grown tremendously out of this vision. A turning point in the ministry was creating $30/month (about a dollar a day) sponsorship plan so that a believer here can support a believer there. That remains a cornerstone of GFA's fundraising efforts.

The problem is that it's hard to get Americans to sacrifice anything. If the current financial crisis tells us anything about ourselves, it's that we haven't yet begun to loosen the grip that materialism has not only on our culture, but on our hearts as Christians and our churches as well.

I propose a way to combat this, and in the process, waistlines will likely slim.

We spend tons of money going out to eat every week, some of us more than others. For many, getting a drink with a meal is second nature, nevermind the fact that it usually adds about $2 to the bill and hundreds of calories that our waistlines are fighting hopelessly against.

Maybe we should try to only drink water (offered free at most establishments) when we eat out and put the money that we saved away so that we can support GFA or ministries like it. I think we'd be surprised at the millions we could raise so quickly and easily. Jesus said that there would be untold blessings for anyone who gives a cup of cold water to nourish his disciples. With this plan, we can even drink the water ourselves and still reap the spiritual benefit. It's dying to self in a small way. Starting here, it's possible that we could begin to walk the path of true, sacrifical giving that invests in God's kingdom rather than our own.

What does anyone out there think?

Click here to support a Gospel for Asia missionary.

Download "Revolution in World Missions" after you sign up for email updates.

Every Tribe and Tongue

A new ministry is building an online community to expedite Jesus' goal of making disciples from every tribe and tongue.

Using open-source wiki technology and an army of volunteer translators, Gospel Translations is looking to provide online access to Gospel-focused books and articles in a variety of languages.

Wiki is a code framework used for collaborative Web sites like Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia where registered users can contribute and edit articles.

Gospel Translations builds its English library by partnering with ministries that allow the use of their copyrighted content (See list here). Then, volunteer translators convert the resources into other languages on the site.

The goal is to quickly and efficiently provide a knowledge base for Christian leaders in parts of the world where there is a dearth of suitable theological materials or where traditional print distribution hasn't kept up with the demands of the rapidly growing church.

The leaders of the effort say the Christian center of the world is shifting away from its traditional seat in the West as the evangelical populations of Africa, Asia and Latin America multiply exponentially.

In some of these areas, the Bible is the only Christian literature available. In places like China, many resources are published, but they're regulated by complex rules.

The emotional fervor of Christianity can spread like wildfire, but if a spiritual movement is not based on true discipleship, it's ultimately an exercise in fanaticism. Yes, God's Word has everything we need for the process of discipleship, but a broader base of knowledge provides protection against heresy and a check against the temptation to interpret difficult passages based on presupposition rather than truth.

The one spiritual commodity the West has available for export is biblical knowledge. What would my spiritual intellect be without the insight of C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity? How would I have started to understand the supremacy of God in day-to-day life without John Piper's Don't Waste Your Life? If not for Donald Miller's Searching for God Knows What, who would have colorfully explained the mystery and wonder of finding identity in the person of Jesus?

Resources like these need to escape the stuffy libraries of ungrateful and complacent hoarders like me. This new platform gives them a chance - through telephone lines, underground wires and fiber optic cables - to really spread their wings.

Projects have already begun in Arabic, Russian, Bahasa Indonesian and other languages, including an entire portal in Spanish. See the complete list of languages on the homepage.

Click here to become a translator.

Watch Gospel Translation's intro video below. It is an initiative of OpenSource Mission:

Historic Chinese Religious Delegation Visits Atlanta

The first-ever American-Chinese Multi-Faith Religious Exchange brought top leaders from China’s five government-recognized religions—Buddhism, Catholicism, Daoism, Islam and Protestantism—to Atlanta last week for four days of meetings with government, civic and religious leaders.

The trip was organized by the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, a group of about 3,000 churches and individuals that conducts evangelistic and community-building efforts all over the world. The difference between CBF and many other Christian groups with regard to China is that it works in conjunction with the Communist government rather than with underground house churches.

Covering the delegation for GlobalAtlanta, I was able to meet Gao Feng, president of the China Christian Council. His organization is the umbrella group that supports all the government-registered Protestant churches in China. To talk with him for 15 minutes was an amazing experience for me. I have long read about his organization and its partner, the Three-Self Patriotic Movement in books about Chinese Christianity, and now I have his business card.

Read the full story here. More about the forum and CBF to come.

Photo: Gao Feng

State of Christian Persecution in China

On Aug. 8, I watched the Beijing Olympic opening ceremonies in Atlanta with about 100 Chinese people. They cheered with each spectacular act of choreography and acrobatics. They were dazzled by the thousands of colorful, luminous costumes. They sat stunned by each passing vocal or dance performance. At commercial breaks, they scrambled to answer Olympic trivia questions. As an outsider, I saw a moment of pride unfolding.

And so it should. China has come a long way since most of them have been alive. Many in that room lived through the Cultural Revolution, when young people ruled the nation and sometimes imposed a state of near anarchy in their zealous pursuit of Chairman Mao's ideal of revolution. During that time, all things foreign, intellectual and religious were considered regressive and "counter-revolutionary" and targeted for humiliation and destruction.

Contrast that climate with China's current hospitable stance toward foreign investment, global brands and even iconic American athletes like Kobe Bryant, and it's easy to see the substantial progress over the past three decades since reform and opening helped China begin to shake off its dour international face and march towards political integration.

But just like in the U.S. and every other country, progress simply means strides toward an ideal, not its achievement. China still has ample room for improvement on that eternally wide continuum between totalitarian regime and full-on democracy.

For one, the Chinese economy's dizzying growth has produced a cavernous wealth gap. Many companies are targeting China's emerging middle class, but it should also be said noted that classes of super rich and super poor are being created along with this new consumer market. Peasant farmers still make up the majority of China's population, though many believe that a massive urban migration will occur over the next 20 years, at which point three-fifths of the country's 1.3 billion people are projected to live in cities. That huge movement of humanity will create a whole new set of problems.

During the Olympic run-up, human rights have been the buzz word. Even as the festive echo of fireworks hangs in the Beijing air, many residents have been forced from their homes and businesses. Dissidents have been jailed or cordoned off while the foreign press is present. Farther off, in areas like Xinjiang, Tibet and Sichuan provinces, periodic unrest has forced the government into defense mode, meaning more crackdowns on groups that don't exactly share the Party's point of view.

This has far-reaching implications for leaders of Christian house church networks and foreign missionaries, who often operate outside the realm of legality for the sake of theological and organizational independence. A missionary friend told me that the well-meaning efforts of many believers looking to "win China" during the Olympics were making it difficult for the folks on the ground there, who have to deal with government monitoring and interrogation in a very real way.

So how bad is Christian persecution in China? I often wonder how to answer that question. I've read and heard firsthand horror stories, but its easy to extrapolate incorrectly when working from emotional anecdotes. A few ministries have made it their mission to compile these stories into a systematic and ongoing study of the fate of believers in China.

The China Aid Association is led by former house church pastor and Tiananmen democracy activist Bob Fu. The association tracks stories of persecutio, using the power of public opinion by reporting their untold stories. Recently, the association partnered with Voice of the Martyrs, a group that ministers to the persecuted church worldwide. Fu joined Todd Nettleton, VoM's director of media development, for a conference call moderated by "Charisma" magazine.

A few highlights:

-The Olympics are being used as a massive PR tool by China. "This is our party, our face to the world. Don't do anything to cause a bad impression." That was Fu's summary of the Chinese government's justification for jailing pastors and kicking many out of their homes in Beijing.

-Bush urged to attend house church. Instead, for the second time, the president decided to go to a registered Three-Self church and advocate for religious freedom from the front steps. Bob Fu says it wasn't enough: "By choosing to worship in government-sanctioned church again, it will further validate the government's stance," he said, adding that 80 percent of Chinese believers worship in unregistered house churches.

This point of view ignores many of the diplomatic and cultural issues Bush would face in going to a house church. Fu has the luxury of ignoring such considerations. Bush doesn't.

-Amity Press in China recently celebrated publishing its 50 millionth Bible. Many believe this is a sign of openness. Nettleton points out that most of these are exported, and even if they were all Chinese, they'd only be half of what's needed for all the Christians there.

-House churches that have relations with foreigners and sophisticated networks may be targeted more heavily by the government. The highest ideal in Chinese politics is stability, which the government perveives is threatened by belief.

-China Aid found instances of persecution in half of China's 22 provinces in 2007. Labor camps are still prevalent as a tool of the government to "re-educate" offenders.

-Nettleton rejects the idea that we can't use capitalism as a tool to convert them to our ways. "I think that's a myth, that we're gonna trade them into democracy, trade them into relgious freedom," he said. Personally, I think it's a way to work from the inside.

-With local officials running their own fiefdoms, there's no end in sight for rural and urban persecution, but government policies have gotten more receptive to a general idea of religion.

LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW AT THE CHARISMA WEBSITE

Photo: Our bags confiscated at a border stop. Notice the green hats of the border patrol agents. Copyright Trevor Williams, 2008.

Andy's Journey

My most recent trip to Panama was spent in business mode. Traveling with a trade delegation from Kansas City, I visited the Panama Canal, ports on both sides of the isthmus, logistics outfits, diplomats and U.S. companies. It was interesting to see what makes Panama tick on a commercial level, but it wasn't my idea of an ideal trip.

Before I joined the workforce in July of last year, my international trips were focused almost exclusively on building God's kingdom through missions. Crazy adventures marked with whimsical itineraries were part of the territory, especially on journeys to China. In 2006, I visited Panama with a different agenda, though the elements of danger and stupidity were still present.

Our mission was much simpler than in China. Instead of bringing souls into saving faith, our goal was to save ourselves from all that can go wrong on a tropical island known for its role as a former penal colony and covered with virgin triple-canopy jungle. Not a mission trip per se, but during the expedition I learned a lot about preparation and how it pertains to my faith. It also deepened my hunger for international travel, a desire I feel is God-birthed.

This year, I thought I'd leave Panama without any kind of spiritual experience. I did visit a cathedral, but it was cold and empty. I did pray a few times, but up until the last night, work had sucked much of the life and energy out of the journey.

But a window of free time opened up, and I spent it with a friend who coincidentally had flown in from the U.S. to speak at a men's retreat. He had recently lived in Panama City for six months and had just moved back home to the States. The day I found out I was going to Panama was the day he moved back. I was sad, but then I found out that the retreat would bring him back at the same time as my trip.

When his plane touched down, he invited me to hang out, but only if I was "up for a little praying." Bone-dry spiritually, I took him up on the offer and hopped a cab to a small church.

We gathered around a table, three white guys and five Hispanics, all men save the one woman who had come with her husband. They started in Spanish. By the fourth prayer, I was understanding about a third of what was going on. I was last, and I thanked God (in English, of course) for the privilege of being around people that wanted so desperately to see his kingdom come. I also asked for him to give my friend strength as he spoke to the more than 100 men registered for the retreat.

Afterward, on the way to a restaurant, my friend and I rode with Andy, one of the men administering the retreat. In what was an affirmation for me that the bond of Christian brotherhood is vastly different and stronger than any other fraternity, he shared his testimony with utter transparency.

Andy's father had lived a double-life for more than 20 years, visiting another each week while his wife and kids thought he was teaching night classes at the college where he was a professor. When Andy's family caught wind of the rumor, they followed their dad and found him coming out of the woman's apartment.

A sick feeling still rips at Andy's gut every time that image comes to mind. His mother's pain was similar. Confronted, begged for her to let him stay, claiming that he didn't love the other woman. Andy's mother consented, but the wounds persisted. Heartbroken, they decided to get him help for what was nothing less than an addiction. They tried everything in the realm of superstition. When nothing worked, they gave a Christian pastor a chance.

That was the turning point. Andy's mother accepted Christ and forgave her husband. He eventually followed suit. He mailed his mistress a Bible. In it, he highlighted the verses that God had used to deliver him from her grasp. That was his last contact with her.

All this time, Andy was still an unbeliever, working his way up the corporate ladder, showing little regard for spiritual things. He found a beautiful wife and earned plenty of money. But there was unease, and his father's legacy began to creep up on him. Around the time the whole family moved to Panama from Colombia, Andy began thinking that an affair of his own wouldn't be too bad of a deal. He traveled often for business, and a lot of the men he knew had engaged in similar flings.

Soon, his wife began, ironically, going to church with his parents. She drew him there, and he stubbornly came along. He became a believer before ever acting on his adulterous thoughts, and now his whole family knows and serves Jesus.

"We must remember," he told me, "when we are ministering to men, we are not ministering just to men. We are ministering to whole families. Tomorrow, we will be ministering to 100 families at our retreat."

Andy knows firsthand the devastating impact a man has when he shirks his fatherly and husbandly responsibilities. I do too, having come from a somewhat broken home.

I shared my testimony with Andy as he drove me back to the hotel. He told me that he is planning to quit his high-paying job to become a missionary to a West African country. His co-workers will think he's crazy, but he prays that it will be an opportunity for him to share the Gospel.

I realized that he had touched on the theme of both of our stories. As in our lives, God's plan often looks ridiculous. But with him, broken families and illogical career choices are chances for unworldly forgiveness, power and sacrifice to be made known. With a God who writes the rules, impossible circumstances become prime opportunities.

Noticing

A journalist is supposed to have an eye for detail, the ability to edit a scene while living it, filtering out meaningless content and honing in on the best sensory material to be recalled when pen hits paper. In short, the journalist should notice things that aren't meant to be in the foreground. Those nuanced observations provide the color that can make a story engaging.

As a first-year reporter, I still have trouble breathing in the sights, smells, moods and tastes of an event and getting my mind to grind a colorful experience into the black-and-white confines of language. To make things worse, the inability to see detail increases proportionate to the commonness of the setting observed. This seems counterintuitive, as you would expect a more familiar place to lend itself to vivid description.

But while everyday occurrences can desensitize us, an unfamiliar setting seems to flip some switch in the brain, like a flashing alert that this could be the one chance at recording this unique information. On some weird level, I feel like that's what happens when I go to China, and I'm usually able to sustain this strangely heightened memory capacity for the entirety of the trip.

Maybe it's because I'm an outsider or because I'm so intrigued with the language and culture in the first place, but I soak up China like a sponge. I eavesdrop on conversations, try (unsuccessfully) to read every character and drink in the scenery of a world where every small fulfillment of curiosity only sparks a thirst for more.

My fresh cultural lens and my openness to see helps me notice things some insiders wouldn't, including the habits ingrained within the culture. In China, this means the spitting, the constant rush to get ahead, the lack of courtesy, and at the same time, the hospitality and welcoming nature of people and how they try to claw out a niche for themselves in a huge mass of humanity.
Also, much more so than in America, I really look at people and attempt to understand their hard lives. India has its untouchables, the Dalit caste that has been trampled on by the higher-ups on the social ladder, and China has its unnoticeables, the migrant laborers and farmers that make up the majority of the population. They're the ones that build the skyscrapers but don't get the recognition for all those days they toiled away, living in a ratty dormitory next to an opulent tower.

On a recent trip, I was with millions of them in Shanghai, walking around like a scuba diver submerged in a strange aquatic environment. I had the necessary survival gear: four times in China already and enough language ability to keep me buoyant. But foreigners are always laowai, literally "old outsiders," in China. You can rub elbows with folks inside a subway train, but don't expect to pass as anything but a foreigner.

While some might see the outsider role as a disadvantage, as it invariably is in some cases, being a laowai also gives us a chance to make a difference. Because we're so novel, we have a chance to be ambassadors, not only for our nation, but for Jesus. Our intrusion into someone's life could be the thing they talk about for years to come, especially in rural areas where a laowai sighting isn't an everyday event.

Because of this, each time I go to China, I feel called to live like a journalist as I walk around, taking special interest in characters who are relegated to the bit parts in the daily drama unfolding on China's great stage. The dime-a-dozen waitress, the lady directing the line at the airport, the street sweeper, the bottle collector and the occasional crippled beggar - they're all souls. Jesus knows them, and he notices them, even as the world rushes by to catch the next taxi or train.

Our tour bus driver was a quiet man who spoke no English. He whispered softly to nail down directions with our guide as we rode around town but otherwise kept to himself, unable or unwilling to crack the language barrier between us.

As he stood by the bus waiting for some of our group to transfer to another vehicle to catch an airport shuttle, I walked up to the driver and introduced myself in Chinese.

"What is your honorable surname?" I asked, using the most polite language I could muster. Boredom, detachment and self-consciousness cleared from his face as he smiled.

"Shen Wei," he said. Still beaming, he used his forefinger to trace the characters on his hand to show me which "Shen" and "Wei." (Chinese has a lot of homonyms.)

From then on, he was Mr. Shen to me, and there was a noticeable difference in our relationship. Somehow, I had torn down the wall and imparted a small measure of light into Mr. Shen's day.

Of course, Jesus won't be saving someone based on whether or not a foreigner asked their name, but somehow I believe that if I notice them, they'll know that God notices them. If a mere foreigner can take the time to see them, an even more foreign God can move closer.

If and when that happens, I hope that Mr. Shen and the millions of others like him will notice Him for who he is: a God who notices our struggles and comes alongside us in them.

Photo: Yuyuan Shopping District, Shanghai
Video: Wooden buddhas preparing us for the magnificent (no cameras allowed) Jade Buddha at the Jade Buddha Temple, which was built around him after he was brought back from Burma about 120 years ago.

China 2005 Trip Narrative

This is the first ever chronological compilation of my blog posts about my March 2005 trip to China. For most people, this is probably way too much to read, but I have had requests from some readers to put it in this reader-friendly format, rather than the bottom-to-top way Blogger puts posts in order. This way, you'll be able to remember where you left off, if you're really that interested. The links are dated by the time I wrote them, but they're also chronological as far as the events recounted within the post.

This menu will be linked from the "China 2005" icon in the sidebar on the homepage and will always be accessible from there.

You'll notice, if you read all the way through, that the trip ends abruptly. There was plenty more where that came from, but it took me almost a year to get that far. On subsequent narratives I got a bit more concise and timely in my trip summaries.

I hope eventually to have a YouTube page with all my videos linked to these posts. Stay tuned for new developments as I'll be updating the other trip narratives soon, and enjoy reading up on Yunnan province, China.

1. 3/3/05 – Freedom Fighting
2. 4/7/05 – Gametime
3. 4/21/05 – The First of Many Sunrises – Day 1
4. 4/25/05 – Our Humble Abode
5. 4/28/05 – An 8-Part Body
6. 4/28/05 – Two by Two
7. 8/9/05 – In Search of Three Circles
8. 8/9/05 – We Are the Pavement
9. 8/9/05 – Village 1 – Our Test Run
10. 8/23/05 – Bus Station
11. 8/23/05 – Linear Perspective
12. 8/23/05 – Service Road
13. 8/23/05 – Village 2
14. 8/23/05 – Seeing the Future
15. 8/23/05 – Bearing a Bamboo Burden
16. 8/25/05 – The Kingdom Belongs to Such as These
17. 8/25/05 – Kingdom Bearers
18. 8/27/05 – The Next Generation
19. 8/27/05 – Alley-oop: A VCD Drop Highlight Reel
20. 8/27/05 – Deep Roots
21. 9/8/05 – Perspectives of Pain
22. 11/17/05 – Our Chariot
23. 11/21/05 – Another Helping Hand
24. 11/21/05 – The Colonel
25. 11/28/05 – Blind Faith and Passes
26. 11/28/05 – Movable Beds
27. 11/28/05 – Crouching Driver, Whistling Steve
28. 11/28/05 – Tired Sun
29. 11/30/05 – Good Night
30. 11/30/05 – Success
31. 12/24/05 – The North Road
32. 12/24/05 – Hat Trick
33. 12/24/05 – Bamboo Storehouse
34. 12/24/05 – Quick Change
35. 12/24/05 – Uncharted Villages and Strange Prayers
36. 12/24/05 – Temple Sideview
37. 12/24/05 – Courtyard
38. 12/24/05 –Breakfast with the Fangs – Part I
39. 1/9/06 – Real China
40. 1/9/06 – Breakfast with the Fangs – Part II
41. 1/9/06 – Refuge
42. 1/11/06 – Rubber Trees
43. 1/27/06 – Home
44. 1/27/06 – Harvesting Mud

Degree Trains Students in Helping Persecuted Church

America is a strange place for those who would practice faith in Jesus Christ, an anomaly in the truest historical sense. Ironically, it's our freedom and Christian heritage that make it that way.

Call them "Christian roots" or not, it's not really debatable that Christianity has at least formed the backbone for the worldview that the majority of Americans have held over the years. The problem with the widespread acceptance of the basic truths of Christianity is that it has created a sort of purgatorial state for the believer with regard to the suffering Jesus promised for those who truly follow his commands. We can always point to some hardship, but it never seems to be the kind that requires true death to self. Not that our concerns are necessarily petty, but it just seems cheap to even compare them with what the rest of the world endures.

Although we've weathered numerous assaults on our traditional right to practice our faith in the public sphere, American Christians have rarely, if ever, been physically threatened for gathering for worship or living out our beliefs.

We've been insulated from the type of suffering that has befallen millions other believers across the globe. If they aren't persecuted directly by their governments, many faithful brothers and sisters fall victim to vicious anti-Christian militants who can't stand the thought of their nations becoming the least bit Christianized.

We can look at the dearth of physical threats in America two ways. The first view says that since our worship is uninhibited, it should be all the more effective in bringing about the changes Jesus requires of us. After all, Paul told Timothy to pray that his rulers and authorities would be favorably disposed to the Church so the believers could practice "peaceful, quiet lives." The problem in American model is that peace and quiet have produced passivity, not fervor.

The other school says that a bit more difficulty would separate the true wheat from the chaff within the church. The threat of violence would force out all counterfeit believers, those whose faith is not strong enough to take the suffering. The problem here is that - at least we hope - we won't have to deal with such a litmus test anytime soon.

So now we're in the awkward position of being enormously saddened by the suffering of world Christians at the same time we're deeply intrigued by it as a foreign phenomenon. It's something far off, like the AIDS outbreak in Africa or child trafficking in South Asia. Just atrocious enough to catch our interest, but far away and culturally foreign enough to all but ignore.

In light of all this, a Christian university in Oklahoma has partnered with Voice of the Martyrs, a ministry that specializes in caring for persecuted believers around the world, to create a bachelor's degree program that helps bring the problem of persecution a bit closer to mind in the U.S.

Oklahoma Wesleyan University touts their Persecuted Church Ministry program as unique in the U.S., a standalone degree that students can also pair with more traditional majors like business, education or cross cultural studies. Others who aren't interested in pursuing an academic degree can take VOM online workshops that provide similar instruction without the same academic rigor.

I don't know how practical OWU's new degree will be in helping students find careers, but I think the spiritual consciousness it will create should foster a heart that's more malleable for the purposes of God. It wouldn't hurt for us to be able to understand the plight of world Christians a bit more. If we do, we'll be less likely to complain about our own circumstances and more apt to help others out, whatever theirs are.

Bible Translation - Getting the Word Around the World

The Bible says that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God, but the Babel debacle threw a wrench into the process. Since that linguistic diaspora, believers worldwide have been left to figure out which translation of this Word to rely on.

As is the case with most American Christians, I have more than a few Bibles lying around the house. I bought a few for different translations, but most are simply the product of years of accumulation in a culture where more is better and a scriptural surplus exists. This is not the case in many other parts of the world. Even where the Word is widely published, translations are sometimes disseminated with faithful intentions but little cultural knowledge or concern. (A domestic case in point: warm-hearted, suit-clad Gideons who continue to distribute King James New Testaments on college campuses in America.)

I recently read an article about the World Bible Translation Center, a 34-year-old organization based in Arlington, Texas, that focuses on getting the scriptures out to literate but little-educated people around the world on a conversational and culturally appropriate level. According to the article, the center has translated the Word into more than two dozen languages - including Hindi, Urdu, Bengali and Yi - and has completed New Testament translations in 20 more. Such widespread production and distribution is an enviable achievement, considering the fact that the World Center's translations take almost seven years of painstaking study to complete. The Center puts in the effort for clarity on the front end so that those receiving the scriptures aren't forced to do all the work, i.e. making interpretations they aren't educated enough to make. "Responsible translation means communicating the meaning, the ideals, as opposed to the literal words," Ervin Bishop, the senior translator for the center, says in the article.

But some aren't so sure that this is the way to go. King James Only advocates believe that the Authorized King James Version is the closest approximation we have to the inerrant word of God. A translation that has been so well accepted for 400 years should never be put to shame, these critics say. No matter that scholars have shown the King James to emphasize the oratory aesthetic more than literal translation, and don't worry about the fact that it's hard to understand. God doesn't change, so why should the scriptures? they ask.

I see more than a few problems with such a view, almost to the point that I almost don't want to dignify this movement with a response. The first thing to notice is the xenophobia it fosters. One Web site says snidely that a team of scholars were assembled by God "to translate His word into the world's most popular language, English." This statement comes packed with all manner of insincerity, implying that English is the language of God and the Western world is privy to some degree of spiritual privilege. The author of the same article "debunks" the myth that we should go back to the original Greek and Hebrew to translate. One wonders about the lineage of the texts used by the King James translators. And by the way, although English might have been popular at the time, it's arguable as to whether or not it was the world's most popular language. Also, despite the fact that English has already started along the path to becoming the lingua franca of global trade, Mandarin Chinese boasts the most native speakers of any language in the world, and China has its own translation issues, as I point out in a recent post.

Another problem is one I think the World Center nails on the head. King James advocates, and anyone else who makes one translation their sole epistemological resource, value soliloquy more than the soul, the message behind the words, which are the skeleton upon which God adds the meat. Check this quote from the World Center's Web site, from Bishop again, "The Bible is the Word of God. 'Word' in this usage, however, is not the same as 'words.' The Word (logos) of God is His 'Message' conveyed to us, the people of the world using our 'words,' that is, whatever human language we use. This means it has to be expressed differently for different people."

The article cites an example that I think drives home the need for a reasonable degree of innovation in the field of biblical translation. The center's Arabic translation takes the word "Christian," which has a negative connotation in Islam, and makes it "Christ follower," capitalizing on the respect that Muslims have for Jesus while more accurately relating the true meaning of Christian discipleship. If such cultural concern can be replicated throughout the whole of scripture, why should we place unnecessary impediments to understanding in the way of those who could be seeking God?

In fairness to the King James folks, who I think are well-meaning but grossly misguided believers, the center of the debate is the extent to which we can become all things to all people (1. Cor. 9:20-23) without watering down or completely changing the essential message of the scriptures. With the wealth and prosperity message catching fire as yet another American Christian aberration, enough of that is going on already, and the issue is that more translations breeds less uniformity and more confusion. While I believe this may be a valid concern in a liturgical setting, it's hardly a problem in translation. Easier translations will give more people access to the message of Jesus, which at its core has to be received like a child anyway. And with more people reading, more people will discuss the Truth, and the every believer can be pleased with the end: God gets more glory.

Jesus came to fulfill the Law and the Prophets by loving the world. He reserved his sharpest critiques for those who were the most well-versed in the letter of the law, but had little regard for the spirit behind it. Although sometimes he spoke in parables to avoid being understood (in alignment with prophecies about him), he also used everyday illustrations so that common people - like fisherman, farmers and tax collectors - could understand the deep truths of God's kingdom. And many times, Jesus is cited as using Aramaic, the vernacular, rather than Greek, Latin or even Hebrew, which were all in use at the time.

The World Center distributed 2 million Bibles last year through missionaries and foreign outposts, but they don't only deal in languages other than English. The government of Uganda, the national language of which is English, is helping distribute 283,000 of the World Center's user-friendly translations to be used in elementary schools, the article said. As long as the Word is not compromised, I welcome the efforts of the World Center and pray that they will be used effectively for the spreading of the kingdom abroad and at home. I continue to collect Bibles from each country I visit to remind me that my language does not have a monopoly on the Word, and that (gasp!) Americans have no divine right to scriptural superiority.

To support the World Bible Translation Center, click here.

For recent posts on Pastor Bill Shorey's blog about the importance of using different English translations to hear the meaning behind the words, click here.

Photo: An Arabic New Testament given to me by a Jordanian believer who had been persecuted for his conversion from Islam to Christianity (left) and a Chinese Bible I bought at a rare Christian bookstore in China. Copyright Trevor Williams, 2007

Dallas Seminary Offers Online Theology Courses in Chinese

A few months ago, I wrote about why America couldn’t afford to boycott China, and in light of all the human rights incursions and trade disputes since that time, I offer an interesting article that lends a little more credence to my claim.

The AP reported today that Dallas Theological Seminary is responding to the growing number of Chinese Christians and the dearth of theological training in the Asian nation by offering government-approved online distance courses in Mandarin Chinese. The article, which appeared in Saturday’s AJC, began with an anecdote about a female Bible study leader living in Hong Kong, so I naturally assumed that the courses would be limited to that city, which operates under the “one government, two systems” policy.

As I kept reading, I was surprised to find that a group of students from Beijing—the Communist Party’s center of power—has enrolled in the courses. According to the article, it took years of talks with the Party to the go-ahead from the strict government.

With the launch of the program this fall, the 2,000-student, nondenominational seminary could only accommodate 30 students in the program, but capacity is expected to double in the spring, due to the high level of international interest it attracted.

The seminary received hundreds of applications, and Chinese-speaking students in Malaysia, Australia and the Ukraine are currently enrolled.

The online courses allow students to follow video lectures of normal class periods in Texas, conducted in English. Chinese subtitles scroll across the bottom, allowing students to follow along. Christians looking to learn both English and theology get the double benefit of being able simultaneously work on their language comprehension and study the Bible.

A quotation at the end of the article left me a little wary about the government’s intentions for letting this program penetrate the “Great Firewall of China.” Chinese laws guarantee religious freedom, but it’s a freedom tightly regulated by the government. Religious groups must be sanctioned by the government and, at least in the case of Christianity, must register churches with local officials meet at approved locations. House churches and other groups meeting in undisclosed locations, like Tibetan Buddhist groups, are banned.

Of course, every positive development in China must be taken with a shaker-full of salt. Amid concerns voiced by a China Aid Association representative that the government would try to exert its influence over the teachings of the program, a DTS spokesperson offered this answer:

Yarbrough [the spokesperson] added there have been no recruiting restrictions. "We asked that question, and the government representative made the phrase, 'As long as they can access the computer, what can stop them from taking the course?' And he said that in a positive light."

Having been to China a few times and studied the language, I know that the Chinese rarely say what they mean. For that reason, the above statement is dripping with irony, as the government goes all-out to censor dissent as the Olympic Games approach. I presume that the government will be watching DTS’ program, and if it doesn’t lead to exponential proliferation of believers, they’ll continue to allow it as an example that they are opening the doors to religious freedom and outside influences. It may be all for show, but I still stand by my belief that enough feet in the door will eventually pry it open. And maybe with theological training, the Chinese will begin to send missionaries to America.

On a related note, last week I did a video interview (now posted on YouTube) for GlobalAtlanta with a U.S. special envoy to China, Ambassador Alan Holmer, who was visiting Atlanta to spread the word about the economic issues that would be discussed during his upcoming trip to China. To read or watch the video, which addresses the trade imbalance, product safety issues, and the U.S. role in speeding China’s economic reforms, click here.

Photo by Brad Kinney, 2006

Presidents and Paupers - Humility

This morning at church the pastor preached from Philippians 2, one of the greatest chapters on humility in the Bible. The apostle Paul reveals that the struggle to be humble and inclusive toward your brothers in Christ is to remember that Jesus, though in the very nature of God, emptied himself of the position that was rightfully his so that he could rescue us and draw us into fellowship with himself. Once we realize the indicative—that we have been captured by the experience of his humility—we can actualize the imperatives to go and do likewise, having the “same attitude of Christ Jesus” and “considering others better than ourselves.”

Tonight I was leafing through my journal, which I don’t keep up with very well. Inside the leather-bound volume, I have firsthand accounts of events spanning half a decade. The most recent entry came a few weeks ago, and the first was written before I even began dating Katy, who became my wife June 16 after more than five years of dating.

I can remember writing the entry by lamplight after an amazing day doing mission work in Washington. How we got there is a long an interesting story that will soon be published in Breakaway magazine, so I won’t reveal it now. But I remember that night, sitting at a desk in an apartment on the top floor of a barn in Damascus, Md., trying to process all that had gone on that day as we had toured the monuments downtown and scouted the area where we would do homeless ministry in the next few days. My whirling mind stopped on the intersection of two different human encounters and how God used them to show me that he was working on humility in my heart. So I began to write:

Feb. 22, 2002

Today was our fun day in the great city of Washington D.C…I had a few highlights during the day. First and foremost is that I saw the president taking his afternoon jog. They had shut down all direct views to the White House because the president was outside. We had to wait about 20 minutes in brisk cold for the North Vista to be reopened, but it was well worth it.

But, surprisingly enough, that was not the [biggest] highlight of my day. The pinnacle of the day’s activities was found in the filthy face and dirtier speech of a homeless man we came to know as Frank Nitty. He was a friendly and intelligent man, adorned in conventional homeless garb, engaging in the normal activity of begging for change. His sickly, sallow eyes told the story of a harsh life with little hope remaining.

It’s interesting how Christianity changes your views. Who, in the right (worldly) mind would value an encounter with a “nobody” more than a peek at the president? When Christ’s humility grabs a hold of you, whether pauper or executive, you consider all better than yourself. Only when you do this can you begin to implement his mercy, grace and love in life’s situations. I came across the two extremes of our country: the chief executive and the common pauper. The most important and the least important crossed my path, and I didn’t mind investing my time and wonder in the lesser.

I went on to talk about Mr. Nitty’s views on God and the church. He saw the world as a house of cards that would soon be blown to pieces. God was an supernatural agent worthy of respect because of his power, but not deserving of our love and worship. We parted ways cordially but without agreement. I think I ended up giving him a dollar. The lesson in humility he gave me was worth much more:

God has shown me that before my acceptance of his gift, I was just like everyone else. He has forced me to remember that the world is lost like I once was, but it doesn’t have to be.

Photo: The White House, Copyright Trevor Williams 2o07. This picture was taken this year during my bachelor party baseball trip.

Exporting the Gospel

After an extensive Internet search, I've only been able to find a few statistics on missions, but I found enough to reach some conclusions on how targets and effectiveness global outreach efforts are impacted by today's economic and political boundaries.

Take China, for example. Although it's a pretty well-known fact that Christians survived and began flourishing house church movements after the Cultural Revolution subsided in the early 1970s, I wonder if the American church's involvement in missions there has ridden on the coattails of the "reform and opening" policy initiated by Deng Xiaoping. On a macro scale, missionaries are able to take advantage of the increasingly open markets by claiming business as their purpose for remaining in country. More indirectly, foreign ideology, at least in some places, slips subtly through the cracks along with imported goods.

According to a recent article in the Asia Times, the U.S. still sends out more missionaries than any other country. South Korea is second, with 17,000 proselytizers abroad, most of them in China. One of the pastors in the article satirized the way that American and other nations see China as having little value other than as a giant market for products and pool of cheap labor.

"There are one billion customers in China; there are also one billion lost souls in China too," he said. Ironically, it seems, at least in my view, that the drive for customers is fueling export of missionaries as well.

But the extent to which market reforms open doors for the Gospel still isn't clear to me. One could argue that the U.S., which has the most missionaries abroad, probably has most of its personnel stationed in nations that allow open proclamations of faith. But you could use that same argument to saw that raw numbers alone would catapult Americans to the top of the statistical list even in closed countries.

What is obvious is that in closed countries, platforms are necessary, and the more open a country is, the more likely it is that missionaries will go there. I guess the real question is whether there's any correlation between the U.S.' top export destinations and its high-ranking missions sending destinations, or whether a country's government or economic policies have any empirical impact on how many missionaries we send to that country. If anyone has any information or resources on the subject, please let me know, because I might like to do a more extensive article on it.

One statistic I read, which saddened me most throughout all this research, is that of the missionaries on the field, almost 3/4 of them are among nominal Christian groups, while only 2 percent are ministering to unreached people groups. That means that we're placing 75 percent of our emphasis on people who have already had a chance to receive the Gospel, while those who have never heard are slowly perishing.

Another statistic that will make you sick: The cost in total ministry expenditures for every one convert baptized in America is a whopping $1.5 million, according to numbers released by the U.S. Center for World Mission in Pasadena, Calif. In Asia, the ministry cost per convert is about $61,000, and it's even lower in Africa. Makes you wonder if we should do a bit more outsourcing of the gospel.

Find out here about Gospel for Asia's native missionary approach. GFA trains pastors (mostly in India) to do church-planting within their own cultural framework, eliminating the high overhead cost of transplanting a worker across the world and the need for cross-cultural training. Also, all donations go directly to the field, not to administrative costs. Adopting a GFA missionary is a budget-friendly way to impact God's kingdom and to get your church (or yourself) out of the mindset that Americans are the only Christian soldiers moving onward for the cause of Christ.

Photo: 'Exporting' to Xinjiang province, China.

Loving the System

Individual trustees must refrain from public criticism of Board approved actions . . . trustees are to speak in positive and supportive terms as they interpret and report on actions by the Board, regardless of whether they personally support the action.

While this might look like it came straight from the National People's Congress in China or some other Communist organization, it ironically came straight from the top of one of the most well-funded and influential Christian missions councils in the world.

While I don't have the time, willpower or desire to give a full account of these events, the Pasty Quail, an Athens-based blog, recently cited the censuring of a Southern Baptist crusader who, however gracefully and tactfully, violated the above guidelines in blog posts that "reflected poorly" on his fellow trustees.

Wade Burleson, a pastor in Oklahoma who himself is a member of the Board of Trustees of the International Mission Board, has become known throughout Southern Baptist circles for his "Robinhood" style of blogging: With delicate words, he takes esoteric knowledge from the rich, the Board of Trustees, and he passes it on to the poor, the common Southern Baptist who attends church every Sunday but knows nothing of the highly bureaucratic entity that oversees his denomination's overseas ministry.

Basically, the story goes that Mr. Burleson was censured at a recent convention for failing to retract comments that he made on his blog. Instead of focusing on positives--like the fact that the IMB budgeted $305 million this year to reach the lost abroad--issues surrounding Mr. Burleson were put on display at the convention. What's more, the censure (which I'm pretty sure is like a rhetorical slap on the wrist) was done in private, behind closed doors, after Mr. Burleson was under the impression that an agreement had been reached.

You can read the full story (at least Mr. Burleson's side) on his blog if you want, but it will suffice to say that this type of mess is what keeps the Church from reaching its full potential as an institution, and it brings up the question: Why has the church become so institutionalized? For me, someone who grew up giving to Lottie Moon and Annie Armstrong, the Christmas and Easter missions campaigns of the Southern Baptist Convention such news is particularly disheartening. And the worst part about it is the negative press coverage it brings. While Jesus said that we'll be known for our love, it seems that Christians in America attract attention for too many other reasons.

Just as a bad tree bears bad fruit, sinful people, though washed in the blood, can never make a perfect institution. Though I'm sure many are motivated by their desire to see God's renown increase in this world, it seems that form has replaced substance and reverence for certain rules or traditions has supplanted the desire for relevance in a changing and lost world.

The key to keep from going insane as a Christian in this context, as a Baptist pastor once told me, is to recognize the flaws in the system without becoming blind to its potential. We must identify those who believe in the system and are working to please God in it. Concentrate our energies there, and we can see spiritual returns on our investments.

I still have many friends who are serving as missionaries in the System. Like Americans who are patriotic despite their distrust of the government, these warriors continue to fight for the cause of Christ though their leadership betrays them with petty and sometimes unbiblical regulations. Let's pray that the SBC, despite its flaws, can be used miraculously for the glory of God. When bickering ceases and the trumpet sounds, he'll be the one issuing the censures.