Ten Things I learned from Living in the Philippines

1. If you are tired take a nap
People here wake up with the sun and work very hard. For that reason they don’t mind taking a nap in the afternoon. When you are tired you should rest, if you work hard you know it helps you do more, so you should not feel guilty. We spend too much time trying to present ourselves as busy and hide when we are not busy. Our infatuation with busyness has made us less productive and less real. Rest is a part of a healthy, whole and Godly life.

2. Bench seats are better than buckets
You can fit more people on a bench seat. We love bucket seats because the are customized to our individual backsides. For us bench seats tend to cost less and are considered an inferior kind of seat. But here they are preferred. Mostly because you can fit more people on a bench seat. The bench seat as a concept is a shared seat. A seat with room for more than one. Here I have learned to value a world set up for community and sharing. Our often vicious individuality allows for tremendous personal accomplishment but leaves every one else alienated and lonely. It is just better to have a seat for two than for one.

3. A sacrificial life for the poor is possible
I have discovered living here that sustainable ministry to the poor is possible. Burn out is not inevitable. If you have a rhythm of prayer, reflection and renewal with a community of people who are not planning to move on to the bigger better thing, what seems virtually impossible in our context (think about when you have seen it) a life time commitment by a community of people to the poor is suddenly a realistic possibility. The pastors we have worked with have no ambitions beyond God. They want to serve the poor (as they are) for as long as they can. And they are content to do just that.

4. Sometimes being indirect is better
Man this has been a hard lesson to learn. Sure, I still believe that there are times when we need to be direct about something, but all the time? Not even close. Saying something indirectly can preserve a persons dignity, honor and love them but not embarrassing them and still get the point across very nicely, if you could do it that way why wouldn’t we?

5. Goals are not more important than people or God
The western love affair with accomplishment and achievement has produced a lot of good things but being so driven by goals that we fail to notice that life is made of up people is not one of them. We all know that people are important but when it comes to achieving sometime people can become the currency of our goals. We care for people because they help us get where we want to go. This inversion of the kingdom priority, on its face is hard to recognize. But it is dangerous and destroys the work of love inside us. people have to supersede our goals. In fact, our goals need to serve the people we are called to love. Period.

6. Air conditioning is not a necessity
Neither is a bed, or hot water, or an oven, or lots of things we think of as household essentials, we can live on a lot less and be very happy and comfortable. Sometimes convenience and luxury are mistaken for necessity because we have been duped by the ad-man and we really start to think that there are things we can not live without. People can be even more happy when their lives are simplified.

7. Burnout is connected to the wrong expectations
People burn out, or bug out because they are addicted to success. We expect it, and when we do not get it we think something is wrong with us (or more usually) the ministry we are a part of. get sick and tired and want to move on because we have to see huge results or we feel life things are failing. I have seen almost no burn out here (although conditions are decidedly worse) in part because they know that things are a struggle, but that God is good in the midst of it. They are okay with small victories and less grandiose results.

8. Poverty is not greater than the joy of Jesus Christ.
When I look at the conditions that some of the God’s people live in here, I wonder how it is that they do not live in constant despair. Ironically, they seem more psychologically healthy than we are. Poverty strangles hope from people, but when they know Jesus poverty, in that regard, is defeated by the joy that Jesus offers. Poverty is a powerful evil, but it is no match for the presence, friendship, and love of Jesus Christ. For real.

9. Details change but God is the same and so am I
We put too much emphasis on circumstances. We tend to believe circumstances are the parts of our lives that are hard or nice or need to change. When in the end circumstances have little to do with who we are. If I am a content person, I will be content whether I have filet minion, or just rice. If I am discontent as a person even the filet will not be right. If we are stretched out on the gallows or living like the Jeffersons, we have access to joy AND complaints. We will tend to pick one or the other because of who we are not because of where we are or what is happening to us. No matter where God places us, he gives us enough grace and access to real joy while we are there. And no matter what goes right for us we can still find fault in it and wish it were different. I realize here that I need to stop trying to change the things that don’t change me. I can not make the lines I wait in go any faster but I can enjoy the slowing down of my life that the line affords me.

1O. sometimes the most spiritual thing a person can do is cry
Living close to the poor, and getting to know them; even fighting for them does not change the tragedy of poverty. Sometimes I think action will give me a good nights sleep, because “I did what I could.” But when you work with the poor you realize there is pain that is too great for our resources. As our resources have been swallowed up in the needs we have seen we too have reached our limits. And those limits remind us that this world needs its true leader and the pain we see we simply can not solve. All we can do if feel that pain with those who suffer and let our hearts be reminded that we need Jesus. Sometimes the only thing we can do, sometimes the right thing to do, is cry.

Island Change

As we prepared this weekend to get away from metro manila for a few days, i found myself getting disproportionately excited. I realized, it has been more than 8 years since i have gone this long without getting on a plane to go somewhere. It has been almost 4months for me being in the same place without leaving. Sleeping in the same bed without change and i started to realize how much of a routine travel has been for me. Of course we are comforted by our routines but at the same time we are limited by them. If i always take the same route to work, the route is not something i have to think about (that comforts me) but if i never deviate from that route i will also miss a part of the city that is both worth knowing and accessible to me. i realize that my challenge has been to sit still. To stay put in one place and to serve and continue in one course, working at one set of tasks with one group of people. i have grown from it. it has been said that the one constant in life is change. And that is true. The change for me of late has been to embrace a life with less change. And i am learning to be content with that too. We took a short inter-island flight to the island of Boracay. It is everything the brochures said it would be, And this change has meant a respite from the pain and struggle of urban poverty. After a day and a half i am sunburned and revived. I enjoyed several hot showers, air conditioning in my room, and cable television, all for the first time in months. and i am content. Like paul, i think i can say that i am learning to be content in little and in much. Yesterday, i ate Japanese food as the sun went down with my feet in the sand of perhaps the most beautiful beach i have ever seen. I watched a Manchester united soccer match on television (satellite) and ate fresh pineapple for breakfast on the white sands of Boracay. What a contrast to the urban poverty and rush of living in metro manila. It occurs to me that each change, if it is in response to following Jesus, will bring its own beauty and its own pain. when we head back tomorrow i will be equally content to be back on my bamboo bed and severing alongside the people of God in the work of God in manila.
If you are interested i also wrote down some more of my thoughts on community this weekend. The paper is posted on our manila team website. Check it out on the link that says "papers".

manila.tampaunderground.com

Thinking of Home

The family is still thriving, but we are starting to see some signs of home sickness. Every couple of days Noah will say, “dad, I miss tweezer” (our dog). The other day Simeon was looking at a picture of our house in Tampa with Monica, and he pointed to the background and said excitedly, “I want to go there!” We do miss our home but we are still loving life and ministry here in the Philippines. Our relationships are deepening and we are all become integral parts to the ministry teams we are serving on. One of the challenges for ministries that work with so little financial resources and who are working with the poorest of the poor, is that simple things like printing prayer letters is often too costly. They have trouble raising money because they can not afford stamps to send a letter. I have been talking with MMP in particular about using more of a web based approach which will save them money and make communication easier for them. However, most of these pastors working in the slums do not even own a computer, and while internet cafes are now accessible everywhere many of them are intimidated to use them. So some of the training that I have been doing with the staff and pastors is how to use web based communication strategies. I have conducted a few workshops for them to demystify the process and I have been working on some tools that will help them. It has been challenging to learn together and to help them integrate new systems. One of the things that I have worked on are simple, clean websites for them that they can edit and use in the future.

Websites
The first is for MMP church planting. It is now up and running so you can take a look at it and learn more about MMP if you want. Check it out at:

http://www.mmphilippines.com/

On this site you will also see blogs that I set up for each church plant and they are starting to learn how to use.

The second is for MMP preschool division. I am still working with them on it but the basics are there. Check it out at:

www.intervarsity.faithweb.com/mmpreschool

The third site is for Samaritana. They recently built an amazing building that they also wanted to make available to the body of Christ for retreatants. We have been helping them organize that and I built a website to help them get the word out about their facility. You can see that one at:

www.samaritana.org/retreat


Thank You
We have been busy with lots of other ministries. The team is serving in three different church plants. Every weekend I am teaching as a part of a training program for Pastors in training to plant churches in the slums of Manila. So far I have done training on fund raising and leadership. This weekend I begin modules on Preaching and Hermeneutics (bible study). It is a lot and we are busy every day but I have adjusted the pace of life here, which in general just seems less frenetic. So I feel busy but not hurried. The days are full but not stressful. I guess I am getting a sabbatical after all.

Thank you all for your love, prayers and support. Thank you for staying faithful to us while we are in Manila. It is such and honor to walk with you as we walk with the poor.

Journey to Obscurity

In an orientation for Mission Ministries Philippines (church planters to the urban poor) Rainer Chu described their work as a journey into obscurity. After spending much of last week in the slums with MMP we are begging to understand what he meant. Church planting can be lonely, thankless work. There is no congregation to support you, no programs to glory in and precious little to point to as fruit of your ministry. Church planting among the poorest of the poor is exponentially lonelier. We have all been struck by the relentless dedication to Jesus and his calling on the lives that these Filipino missionaries to the urban poor walk with. They have chosen a vocation that is completely obscured as they labor in the places that the world would prefer to forget. They have no big congregations, no church salaries, no expense accounts, and precious little thanks. But they are content in a way that boggles our minds. We are beginning to understand that there is a greatness that is not measured in numbers or dollars, that there is kingdom fruit that seen and measured only by God. And we are asking our western hearts, is that enough for us? Can we too follow Jesus into the dark foreboding, forgotten alleys of Christian mission, into the places where he is, in fact, lighting the world. This journey to obscurity is actually the way of Jesus. It always has been. But we have believed the lie of the Hollywood, celebrity Jesus. We continue to be tempted (as Jesus was) by the false urge to become great in the worlds eyes, to make sacrifices for all to see, to throw ourselves down from our proverbial temples so that we can make a spectacle of Gods power and make ourselves celebrities and rivals with God. Jesus’ own walk in the desert was a foreshadowing of his calling, to walk toward death, his own identity, his own purpose, his own greatness, obscured. To say we follow Jesus is to walk that same path. We are learning more what that path looks like.

On Being Prophetic

I was recently criticized for being too critical in my preaching (the irony has not escaped me). In response I have been doing some thinking about what it means to be prophetic (and what it doesn't). i am pasting an excerpt from the book I am finishing. Just a bit of my thinking on the subject. Being here among the poor has only further illuminated the questions and not really the answers.

...Prophesy does not have to be negative. I once asked a group of my staff a simple yet profound question. Is God happy with the human race or not? What about the church? I mean, in a general sense, when God looks at his people is he pleased with them? Or is he disappointed? It is a question about which I have vacillated in the 10 years since I first asked it. There are days when I feel connected to the heart of God for the poor, the violated, the abused and forgotten and I rage. I do not know how to describe it other than to say that it is not the kind of rage that comes from ego or self interest. It is deeply spiritual and deeply honest. On these days, spent among the poor of the earth or remembering them in my heart are days when I know that God is not pleased. That the cries of the afflicted that rise to the throne of God day and night are indeed heard, and the promise of vengeance is the clear reply from the compassionate and powerful heart of God. On these days, I sense that God’s anger burns against the child killers, the slave holders, the frustrated megalomaniacs who make the weakest parts of humanity their theatre of power. Yet, on other days I sense the affection of God for me in such a way that I know it applies to a great sinner. I see in Scripture a God who loves outcast, who sees epic failure and responds with mercy and tenderness. I find this reaction harder to understand but I know it also represents the truth about God that no human being no matter how despised or despicable is beyond the love of God. On the contrary, that love seeks and saves those very people.

So which is more true than the other? Are they both true equally? How can that be? I still do not know the answer. I am not entirely sure which one outweighs the other or how they intermingle in the mind and heart of God. But I know that both are true at some level. Scripture makes that clear. So prophesy has to embody both of these realities.

Being prophetic means representing the truth about God, as best we can within the limitations of our own personality. And it is not simply a matter of saying two positive things before you say one negative. It is about knowing what pleases God and saying that with as much conviction and passion as what does not please God...

Trying to Think

I honestly thought i would be able to slow down here. I mean i brought so little of my work with me. the days here are long and hard. maybe not as long as some of the work days i am used to putting in but different. Time here is heavy. Driving to a meeting for instance takes a toll on me. Driving 5km can take an hour. Since i know the roads the best and have the international drivers license i have been doing all of the driving for us, which has meant hours in the card every day. And driving in this traffic in a major world city like this is crazy. 2-3 inches is really safe distance from the car next to you. It is an aggressive style of driving that really leaves little room for error. I am fine with aggressive driving but it is so intense that at the end of an hour or two in the car i am whipped out. What am i learning? I don’t know. It is hard to say, it is hard to know. It is hard to think, and thinking in part is what i came to do. My dissertation awaits me, the final edit on my book awaits me, papers on all kinds of subjects for the underground all await me; but my brain feels like mush. I am even having trouble writing this. The mornings are early and the evening short here. There has been little time to just rest, and when there is the rest is so hard I don’t even want to read. Ever been that tired? Partly it is the heat. Even though this is a nice time of year the lack of air conditioning and the strong sun really takes its toll. But in spite of it all, I am really loving being here. It is a new kind of hard, a new kind of challenge. And in the midst of it a new kind of appreciation for just being alive. This lifestyle is unsophisticated, i have become unsophisticated. Outside the community i am really just a driver. A American novice in manila. A cold shower at night is one of the nicest parts of my day. Just laying in bed with a fan on is really amazing. Waking up with the sun, and being surrounded by friends—i am thankful in a way I have not been before. But when i walk into a building with air, i am thankful for that too. In a way I have never been. I am living on food i am not used to and i am glad for it. but if you give me a dr. pepper i would love every drop. Clean water, a soft bed, good friends, these are all things that have always been a grace from God but i guess i am only just now realizing it. God is good in ways we never give him credit because we focus on what is wrong in our lives. we have the luxury of nit picking because so much has already been given to us. the poor are teaching me, that friends make a man rich and that rice is a gift from God. The poor are also helping me to understand contentment. If we are rich and do not remember the poor then we are fools because we shut our hearts to the heart of God himself for them. If we are rich and we take what we have for granted, then we forget the grace of God itself. If we have plenty while we are with the poor then we share it with them and both we and the poor are glad. Contentment is not the same as gratitude. Contentment is seeing what you have and saying that is enough. You money, your work, your family, your accomplishments, your car, your house, you knowledge, your charisma, can you look at what you have and be so grateful for it that you say: That is enough for me? We are still middle class, though we live among the poor. We can not change that. we could hide it but we can not change it. we still have bank accounts and budgets and degrees. We are who we are. Living with our near the poor does not change that. but it does make you pause to think about what those things mean. How they are a privilege that we did not earn. That they bring with them responsibility. The poor do not want us to renounce our education or burn our money. They simply want us to share. They want us to learn from them that what you have is always enough for another. One of the sad ironies of the west is that we who have so much are the least generous, the least likely to share, and these who have so little can not think of another way to live. Sharing, generosity and hospitality are what makes someone whole.

i will keep trying the think strait. but i am not going to define myself by it. i am who i am, and God knows me. that is enough for me.

Forward through the Philippines

For several years I have had a burning in my heart to focus more of my ministry on my own city. With InterVarsity I have felt a pulling away from local ministry to more national and even international work. After 11 years on staff with InterVarsity I sense that God is leading me to establish a new ministry here in Tampa. Exactly what that will look like is unclear to me but I am ready to shift some of my time to that end. I already have a committed group of about 50 believers who have been gathering to look at scripture, pray and help me to discern what God is calling us to. Whatever it is we know it has to be something that mobilizes communities of people to share the gospel, empower the poor and change our city. For me starting something new has to come out of a clear sense of direction from God and a clear understanding of the need we are called to meet. In order to grasp that, we realize we have to spend time hearing God and designing our strategy, and of course for me that has to be done in community. For these reasons and others I have decided to take 9 months to leave the country with my community. We are 9 adults and 10 children and we have settled on the city of Manila in the Philippines. I am going to stay on staff with InterVarsity during that time, as this amazing ministry that I am part of has agreed to support our trip as an extension of our ministry here. I will continue to receive support (from all of you) and that will provide my salary to fund our ministry in Manila while we are there. In fact, because the cost of living is lower there, my salary will be able to help fund others on the team that are coming. Here are our objectives:

To walk alongside the poor in manila serving them and being served by them
To be mentored by Filipino leaders who are faithfully serving the poor.
To teach our kids and watch them thrive in an overseas context
To be a self sustaining team, (to not be an undue burden to our hosts)
To host a team from the US, in July of 07.
To set ourselves apart for the purpose of designing a comprehensive ministry
paradigm that will transform Tampa

While we feel strongly about this time of ministry overseas our work here is too important for us to jeopardize it in any way. Our original idea was to be gone for one year but that would have taxed our local work too greatly and so we have chosen a 9 month period that allows us to be present for two of the most critical leadership intensive enterprises in the fall. After supervising the beginning of our school year, and our state wide new student outreaches I will direct our state fall conference (Sonburst). Two days later, I will board a plane to Manila to find our team housing. I will return a week later, tie up loose ends, pack and load up our team. We will be leaving October 31 and plan to return on July 13, 2007.

The project will end with us receiving a US team (comprised of students and others) so that we will really be back with our people leading a global project by the middle of June. I plan on sending out another letter before we leave detailing our partnerships and asking for your prayers specific to that mission. Thank you for praying for us as you think about it.