We're Not Who We Think (or Say) We Are

Social media is a really convenient tool. Some say its magic is in the fact that it allows for transparency like never before. Politicians use Twitter to stay connected with their constituents. Parents can spy on their teenyboppers' online lives. Bosses can get a glimpse of their employees' true character out of the office.

While these are noble uses, I say the true advantage of these websites is their cloak-and-dagger aspect, the fact that we can hide our real selves behind the idealistic versions we post online.

New Year, New Ear

For me, journals are altars, written monuments to the places and times when God has worked in unexplainable ways, either responding to faith or interrupting rebellion.

Though not as enduring or tough to construct as the stacks of stones the ancient Israelites used, my written remembrances provide the same thing: a store of faith that I can borrow against when God's presence and goodness aren't so obvious.

In January I considered writing a blog post about the new year, a wrap up of 2009 and a look ahead to 2010. I planned to make new resolutions, posting them on this blog and sharing them with friends as a way of keeping myself accountable.

Giving Up the Quilted Community

Technology's making it easier than ever to build a patchwork Christian community of friends and mentors from the past. But effective faith requires a present context, so in this age of transience, we've got to overcome our fear of new faces.

Sometimes I drive home from work earlier than usual or go in a little late. The latter happens much more often than the former, as my wife can attest, but either way the result is the same when the context changes: The world looks different.

In the thick of winter, I've grown accustomed to darkness on my 6:30 p.m. commute, so darting home during sunlight hours sometimes reveals a food shop or a tire repair center that I've passed each day but never noticed. On those days I feel like a foreigner in my own apartment complex. Everyone who gets off work at 5 is out and about, grabbing mail, walking dogs, taking strolls, even moving in.

A Year of Adjustment

The year 2008 was a year of adjustment for me. When it began, I'd been married for six months and working as an international business reporter for a few weeks less than that.

As with all years past, there are many items on my list of resolutions that were left undone. Instead of losing weight and toning my body, I put on a few extra pounds. Instead of mastering Chinese, I couldn't translate my passion for the language into the discipline I needed to study. And while I know with my head that my spiritual life needs the most investment of all, I really did little to feed it.

Am I resigned to these failures? Am I happy with them? No, but in the blur that was 2008, I at least can say that I realized their importance in a greater way than ever before. I turned 24 last October, and now that 2009 is here, I can no longer say "last year" when someone asks when I graduated college or got married.

That does weird things to my psyche. It's like a secondary adolescence. I feel really grown up at times. I have all the responsibilities someone my age should, and I'm handling them well. But part of me still wants to go dumpster diving with my buddies in the middle of the night.

While I'll never let my adventurous heart die, this year has helped me realize that while growing up is hard, it's not all bad.

There are a lot of awesome things about becoming a man. Your wife often rewards you with awesome food. And there's freedom, albeit a different kind that the kind college offers. I can't drive across the state for a concert or skip work like I did class, but I have real money, and that provides a lot of opportunities that scraping the barrel doesn't.

I have a mentor who speaks in metaphors, similes and old sayings. When I got married, he said I should live the first year as if I were a soldier in the Israelite army. In that culture, newly married men got furlough of one year to live happily with their new wives before venturing off to defend the kingdom. My year has long expired. This year, it's time for battle.

Preparation: The First 30 Years

I'm six years away from 30. I feel like I've lived a pretty interesting and full life. It certainly hasn't lacked drama and action, but I still believe I have a lot left to do. There's much I have missed in my first 24 years, a lot I should've done better, tons more projects and deeds left undone completely.

It's not that I lack ambition or drive. I can't remember a big goal that I set in earnest but haven't achieved. I'm married and well on my way toward a happy family. College was a breeze; sports always came pretty easily. I'm a published writer with a pretty stable, exciting and largely stress-free job. Things are good.

Still, there's something nagging me. There's a sense that follows me - poking me like a cattle prod, yanking me like the bit in the horse's mouth - that where I am at present is not my final destination. Things are good, but they could be better. Things are good, but are they just what God had planned when he crafted my gifts, talents and personality?

To that last question, I think the answer is no. Some people call it a calling, when you've found the thing you know you were made to do, that occupation that puts you where the world's needs and your abilities intersect at the highest levels. I'm wondering whether this calling is something you hear, or just something you discover along the way.

For people like Moses and some other fathers of the faith, the calling was quite literal. God spoke and said the Egyptian-raised Israelite would have his destiny wrapped up in his ancestral people. Abraham, the father of that nation, was called to leave his homeland and settle in a foreign place. In the New Testament, Paul was called through a blinding vision to become the apostle to the Gentiles, a mission that would consume the rest of his life.

Others seem to just have fallen into their fates. Joseph was sold into slavery and ascended from the prison to the Egyptian throne, preserving the fathers of the 12 tribes of Israel during a great famine. Jonah could run from Nineveh, but he couldn't hide from God's plan. Rahab the prostitute was simply at the right place at the right time. She deceived the authorities of Jericho and her family was spared.

The common denominator in these stories is that each of the characters fulfilled the purpose that God had laid out for them, whether it felt like they were willingly following an external call or being pulled by an unseen magnetic field to what God demanded from their lives. In one sense, this is encouraging. If God's got things under control, if he's working the puppet strings I'm dangling from, then I'll probably end up where he wants me to be.

But I don't want to get there floating on a current. I want to be deliberate. I want to have full map, a compass, and maybe even a GPS.

The problem is that God's blueprint for life sometimes seems kind of like a road trip I took a few years ago. My friend Evan and I are trying to visit all the Major League Baseball stadiums, and we were planning to knock out three more. We were trying to get to a Mets game in New York City. Shea Stadium, where the Mets play, is in Queens.

As I was driving on the freeway, New York's endless horizon of buildings came into view. Evan had always been the navigator, and we'd always relied on a certain trusty atlas to guide us to stadiums. Only this time, Evan forgot the atlas. He'd printed directions online instead.

"So where to, Ev?" I asked, assuming he knew the way to Shea.

"Umm, I only got directions to New York City," he said. By this time we were in the middle of the city, a sea of people passing on the sidewalks, cars honking, swerving, almost nailing us from every angle. We had no clue where we were.

"To New York City? Are you serious?!" We just had to laugh. We called a friend who used an online mapping program to get us to Queens in time for the eighth inning.

God's map for us is like the folded sheet of paper Evan printed from Mapquest: limited in scope. He only tells us one destination - one phase of life - at a time, and like colorful little gamepieces moving toward the winner's circle, our next move doesn't become clear until His current objective or lesson is accomplished.

The hard part about this is that we're always being prepared for something, but we don't know what crisis we're gearing up for until it hits.

To me, it's a little scary to think that much of my day to day journey is preparation for something grander. If I have this much time to spend on preparation, what great task must I be called to? And what if I screw it up? What if I'm not preparing like I should be? What if I'm eating Twinkies and watching TV when I should be following Rocky Balboa on jogs through the Siberian wilderness and doing sit-ups on 24/7?

We know that Jesus lived on earth for about 33 years. Scholars generally agree that he began his ministry at about 30 years old. That means 10/11 of Jesus' life was spent preparing for his destiny, not living it like we see in the pages of scripture. At 12 years old, he was in the synagogue sparring intellectually with the religious leaders, but it's unclear as to what he did with the rest of his time as a child and young adult.

For some reason, it makes me feel good to know that Jesus (as far as we know) wasn't casting out demons before he could speak. God in the flesh had to pay his dues, had to be tempted in every way, do chores, share with younger siblings, buy groceries and work on carpentry projects with Joseph to help build the family business.

As God, Jesus knew his fate. As man, he marched toward it slowly.

I'm six years away from 30. I don't know my fate, but may I be content to move to the next destination and enjoy the preparation the same way our Savior cherished his first 30 years.

Photo: Shea Stadium, behind home plate. Copyright Trevor Williams, 2007

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:

18 Years Adrift

I became a Christian at age 6. Impossible, you say? Not at all. Children understand better than adults the dynamics of punishment and the need to be rescued from it. And like Jesus said, kids are more likely to latch onto faith. This is rare for grown-ups, whose minds and hearts have been subjected to the gradual erosion of calloused education.

At that tender age, I only knew a few things. I had done wrong. I had acted against my parents' will. I had lied, cheated, stolen, hated, physically harmed others, discriminated, made fun of people, overindulged, complained, neglected God and acted in a generally selfish manner since the womb. Conviction, the nagging sense that I was imperfect, did not need to be proven from scripture. Experience was enough.

This guilt provided the foundation for faith. My step-dad was a pastor, and every week I heard about the option to leave guilt behind by trusting in Jesus and the work that he did through his cross and resurrection. This grace, this unmerited acceptance, was life's get-out-of-jail-free card, and I knew - however childishly- that I needed to break free from the prison of my young heart's crimes.

That's what led me to ask God to save me and to guide my life, allowing the punishment Jesus' received to become my own. Email me if you're curious...

We need the faith of a child to enter the kingdom of God. Jesus said as much. But he didn't intend that we keep drinking spiritual formula and never move on to solid food. At 6, I was saved, but there was no way I was a finished work. Just ask my elementary school teachers.

As I grew, I began to put flesh on my scrawny skeleton of faith. I memorized the order of the books of the Bible backwards, a useless skill to be sure, but impressive to fellow church members. I started highlighting things in my teen study Bible and really listening to sermons. As my spiritual digestive tract began to churn, I devoured books and conversations and teaching throughout high school.

In college, I weathered the intellectual assaults of Buddhism class and the evolutionary mindset of anthropology. I led Bible studies and played worship music. I raised money and traveled across the world to build God's kingdom. I built a network of like-minded believers.

I'm now 24, a year and a half out of college, with both feet in the real world. My intellect and my intentions are full of the words of God and a desire to do his will. I've now been a Christian for 18 years.

Still, I mostly fail.

I'm packed with ideas, knowledge and ability, but I see little fruit. I'm spurred on by compassion for the needy, but I don't act on their behalf. I burn for those who don't know the freedom of Christ, but I rarely tell them.

In many ways, I'm still adrift, floating backwards from the place I began at 6 years old. Then, I was enamored with God. I loved him and felt his comfort. I really knew something not just with my head, but with my heart.

I've moved onto solid food, but I've forgotten to devour each day the meat of the Gospel, that Christ has saved us from our misdeeds and brought us into freedom - not just from this detached notion of sin - but from ourselves. We no longer are slaves to the patterns of the world. We don't have to live the lie of self-indulgence. Like our savior, sacrifice is our fulfillment. Obedience is our mission and joy.

I pray God will reinvigorate my faith with the love of a child. Only then will my spiritual muscle spring into action.

Key to the Battle

I've been lucky enough never to have to experience war firsthand. Because others sacrificed their lives, I've had the privilege of living in peace. And because our country remains prosperous and vigilant, I've never been called upon to carry the burden of freedom's defense.

But I was ready to enlist today, as the television confronted me with the precious gift that I've received from the brave soldiers who have protected the U.S. throughout our history. Ironically, I turned on the TV to watch football and waste my Saturday away like only spoiled Americans can do. While flipping channels, I came upon a Pearl Harbor documentary and couldn't take my eyes away.

After that was over, a Band of Brothers marathon kept me glued to my couch, its velvet upholstery making me feel like a pansy as the airborne infantry dropped into Normandy to take care of business. I stayed there for the next four hours, switching from football to battlefields with listless clicks of the remote.

I thought about how football - and other sports - are like harmless, silly little parodies of war in a nation so blessed with peace. Strong men fight it out on the battlefield while civilians watch and wave banners, hoping desperately for victory.

This is both sad and wonderful for our generation. It's sad that we're so starved of purpose that we've created and invested so much in these metaphoric battles, but it's amazing that our country is blessed enough that we have time and energy to devote to leisure.

Why do we love war stories enough to create games that mimic them? I think it's because as we follow the characters through their crises, we see how the prospect of death reveals the simplicity of life. Soldiers facing their end value things like milkshakes, as one Pearl Harbor survivor said, or a peaceful plot of land, as a Band of Brothers character put it.

We also see how being embroiled in epic conflicts helps soldiers gain a firm sense of purpose in their roles. Each soldier depends on his group, and each mission is critical to the overall war strategy.

Although our lives aren't filled with mortars and hand grenades, the Christian life seems, at least metaphorically, very similar. We are to live with a singular purpose on one mission for our King, carried out with the help of our brothers in arms. We don't always see the fruits of our missions, but we trust our commander that our effort is a worthy part of a grand victory scheme.

In Band of Brothers, one elite paratrooper becomes petrified with fear as soon as he hits the drop zone. When battle starts to rage, he ducks into a hole, screaming and covering his ears while bullets whiz by. Then he remembers the advice of one of his fellow soldiers: We're all scared, but if you consider yourself already dead, you'll have the strength to fight without the influence of fear.

The key that helped the fearful soldier fight is the key to the battle of our lives. When we turned to Jesus, we counted our old selves dead. We need not fear the fight or the scars we may receive in the battle. The war is won and our fates sealed in him. We are wrapped up in his story. If we follow his objectives, we will receive the glory of the kingdom he is building.

Photo: WWII Memorial in Washington. Copyright Trevor Williams 2007.

Jesus or Cola?

As I pulled into the drive-thru at McDonald's today, I thought about whether or not I should buy a soft drink to wash down my other selections from the dollar menu. The conversation in my head went something like this:

A Coke with my double cheeseburger would be awesome, but I've already had a cola today, and if I just get water, I'll get out of here wasting less cash and saving more calories.

I love Coca-Cola, and although I try not to make impulse buys, sometimes I fiend for a swig of the caramel-colored nectar in the late afternoon. Like a cheap addict, I've resorted to collecting Coke caps and cartons from recycling bins and trash cans for the reward points. Eight caps scores a free 20-ounce Coke, which means that I can save $1.50 when my next binge hits.

As I drove up to the window to pick up my water, I thought about how absurd it is that we spend money on cola when restaurants offer water for free. Packed with high fructose corn syrup, acids and food coloring, Coke isn't great for your teeth, and it doesn't do much for your body either. Water, on the other hand is the basic element we need to stay alive. It makes up 70 percent of our bodies and has zero calories.

Compared side by side on these factors, water seems the easy favorite. The spoiler in the equation is that little thing called taste. Although water is a necessity, it's also bland. Coke is sweet. With short-term pleasure as its goal, the part of the brain that thinks about the long-term impact shuts down.

Sometimes Jesus is like water to me. He's the necessity. He's pure. And He's free. You'd think he'd be the easy choice. But I often turn away from him and choose the saccharine substitutes the world offers, even digging through the trash of sin to finance a fix when there's a faucet pouring with life just inside my front door.

Photo: Old World of Coke building at Underground Atlanta. Copyright Trevor Williams 2004.

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

Bush Finds Diplomatic Middle Way With China

A few days ago I made a post about the mixed signals China often gives us about its human rights picture, especially in relation to Christian persecution. While in many ways the situation has drastically improved, the sterilized and whitewashed view of China that the government would like us to see at the Olympics has not erased the all-too-obvious blots on the its recent record.

That said, President Bush has a difficult tight-rope to walk in attending this week's Olympic opening ceremonies. Ironically, in a country where Buddhism thrives, Bush has had to take a sort of "middle way" of his own.

The balancing act he'll undertake is typical and necessary in dealing with the Chinese conundrum. The leader of the free world has said repeatedly that he will not stop urging the government to use the Olympics and events beyond as a chance to recognize the religious rights of all its citizens. At the same time, he's come under fire from some human rights activists and even the highest officials of the Democratic Party, who believe he should've boycotted the games altogether.

Somewhere on the line the president is straddling is the right approach. A conciliatory tone toward the government would be deadly to his legitimacy as an advocate for China's persecuted Christians and a step back from the tough line he's already taken. Antagonistic rhetoric could lead him into an equally undesirable quagmire. The Chinese authorities would suffer serious embarassment if Bush were to insult their progress on the eve of their big party. As anyone who knows anything about Chinese culture knows, it's hard to gain the trust of someone there when you've made them lose face.

For all the fiery comments by the Democrats during the primary season, Bush has taken the right tack. He stuck it to the Chinese government when he awarded a congressional medal to the Dalai Lama last October, despite their childish insults and noisy opposition to the gesture. The action turned out to foreshadow of a much more intense conflict that would break out in March of this year, when violent acts of vandalism committed by Tibetans against Han Chinese in the province escalated into weeks of protests and subsequent crackdowns by the government in western China.

On July 29, a little more than a week before Air Force One is scheduled to touch down in Beijing, Bush made another very crafty move. He hosted five high-profile human rights activists at the White House. Among these were Harry Wu, who spent 19 years in a Chinese labor camp; Rebiya Kadeer, the foremost activist in the U.S. for the Muslim Turkic Uighur people in China; Bob Fu, a former persecuted pastor and head of China Aid Association; Wei Jingsheng, a prominent political dissident and Sasha Gong, a dissident and writer.

Bush's message was clear. “These are very high profile people. These are people designed to get the Chinese’s attention. It was not just a political move to provide cover at home. It was an important move to let Chinese leaders know that he’s not satisfied with the progress,” the New York Times quotes Michael Green, an Asia expert and former White House adviser as saying.

Christian activists are urging Bush to do even more during his trip. In a conference call Tuesday night, Bob Fu of China Aid and Todd Nettleton, director of media development for Voice of the Martyrs, a Christian group that ministers to the persecuted church, both urged Bush to attend a unregistered house church while in China. Mr. Fu gave Mr. Bush "Pray for China" bracelets during the meeting at the White House and gave the president coordinates of four different house churches in Beijing where Fu assured him he would be welcomed.

Bush attended a registered church during a 2005 trip to China and held a press conference afterwards. Fu said a return visit to the government-sanctioned church could be seen by some as validating the Chinese government's policies of hosting religion on its own terms. This would be disheartening to see for pastors who have been ousted from Beijing to keep them from talking to foreign media during the games, Fu said.

Some 80 percent of Chinese Christians worship in house churches, he added.

"By choosing to worship in a government-sanctioned church again, it will further validate" the government's stance on persecution, Fu told listeners from around the world who had tuned in for a Webcast and conference call with Charisma magazine. Listen here to the complete interview. You might have to log in or return to the Web site at a later time.

It remains to be seen what the president's legacy will be with regard to China. However it turns out, he's taken as right an approach as his position and its many responsibilities will allow.

Photo: A gate in the Forbidden City. Beijing. Copyright Trevor Williams, 2006.

Good Night, Jesus

I've never been much for ritual in my faith. I grew up in a country Baptist church where we called Communion the "Lord's Supper" and observed it quarterly, on special holidays or fifth Sundays, which didn't come around often. When they did, boy were they a treat: cardboard crackers and grape juice in morning service and an assortment of potluck dishes including Miss Evelyn's infamous tire-textured cubed steak in the Fellowship Hall after "Singspiration" (an all-singin' service) that night.

Those were good times, and that was a good church. I was taught the foundations of the Bible there. VBS, Bible drills, Sunday School and memory verses got me to the point where I could recite the books of the Bible backwards, a useless skill that I retain to this day. But outside of the rare observance of the sacred meal and the occasional convert getting dunked in the baptismal pool, rite was nowhere to be found.

I remember going a few times to my friend's Lutheran church. It felt stuffy. Robed acolytes carried a flame down the aisle and lit the fuse for a less-than-dynamite performance by men in funny outfits who droned on with collective chants and readings I couldn't really understand. Maybe I was projecting my state of mind, but the people seemed to drool with boredom. In my view, there was no pep, and I couldn't wait to wake up from the liturgical nightmare I'd fallen into. Rituals made no sense. They were mindless gestures by sad people steeped in lame traditions. And grape juice tasted much better than wine.

It's possible that I was right about the collective attitude of that church, but I was definitely off about the idea that structured, metered worship is useless and irredeemable. Because I hadn't seen it modeled in a constructive way, I assumed rite was wrong. In the past few years, worshiping in different churches and cultures, I've adjusted that view. I maintain that recitations and protocols without the flair of heartfelt spontaneity can lead to spiritual malaise. But now I realize ritual's potential to regularly revive hearts that are constantly being pulled down by the weight of our sin nature and the cares of the world. Predictable actions as symbols, the sacraments, give us an anchor with the saints of old and help us to - like Paul said - proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

On the first night of our recent trip to Savannah, Katy and I wandered the rain-slicked streets looking for something to do. It was a Sunday night, so the old city's restaurants were closing down even earlier than usual. Driving through one of the town's scenic squares, we noticed an old church with a new banner inviting everyone to "Come say good night to God." Sounded pretty awesome to me, even though I had never heard of a "compline," which I later found out is a night prayer that draws on 1,500 years of monastic tradition.

We returned to Christ Church Savannah that night for the event, which the sign promised would involve some sort of Gregorian chant. This Anglican church, established in 1733, is as old as the city and the Georgia colony. That became evident as choir members entered the sanctuary, breaking the subdued silence with steps that creaked the floorboards. Four candles stood at the front of the sanctuary, casting a soft glow on the stained-glass Jesus, who stood with arms outstretched as if to bless the gathered worshippers.

The robed singers disappeared into the balcony and proceeded to bathe the sanctuary in their chanting voices, singing in unison, not harmony, presumably to help focus participants on words and not the music. It worked, and voices that would have grated on my Baptist nerves in the past gave rise to a flow of meditation. Capped off with the Apostle's Creed, a poignant Father's Day sermon and a classical guitar number accompanied by an unseen booming voice from the balcony, I can't think of any better way to say, Good night, Jesus.

For another out-of-the-box worship experience, read about my first Mass, spent with reclusive Irish Travelers in Edgefield, S.C. here.