Travel as Pilgrimage

I recently read a book with an illustration that profoundly resonated with my life experience.  The author (Paul F. Knitter) compares one’s inherited worldview (culture, tradition, geography, etc.) to that of a telescope.  A telescope offers a beautiful and clear view of a few starts in the sky, but it fails to offer such a view of the whole universe. Because we all look through our telescope with a specific worldview, we must humbly ask to look through another’s telescope in order to get a more full understanding of the way God works in the world.

Jan and I have traveled to roughly 30 countries in the past few years.  Our travel has been less of vacation and more of a pilgrimage.  From refugee camps in the West Bank to war torn towns in Croatia to the rainforests of Costa Rica, our worldviews have been expanded and our faith been made real in the midst of such pilgrimage.  Having taken note of endless conversations and experiences around the world, we have been able to see the face(s) of the Kingdom of God in myriad contexts. For so long, our worldview could only be articulated through the lens of the West, now we can’t help but see the hand of God in the stories of all the inhabitants of the earth.

I once heard pilgrimage beautifully described as seeking self-knowledge in humility while walking down the path of obedience.  For the religious, a pilgrim’s destination is the place where God meets humanity. It is a place where they encounter earlier parts of their story and get a glimpse of the divine on earth.  Holy pilgrimage has been a central practice in major religions for much of history.  For the Muslim, it is the pilgrimage of obedience to Mecca as a way to encounter Allah.  For the Jew, it is to Jerusalem where God met his people in the Temple.  For the Christian (more common in the Early Church), it is to Jerusalem where one can walk in the footsteps of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection.

A pilgrimage is less about transforming the world and more about being transformed yourself.

When we first started to travel, I can’t say I approached it as one on pilgrimage.  No, it was more about having some fun with my wife and exploring the world.  The reality is, when you explore the world you quickly find that the world is not simply made up of interesting destinations, but of dynamic individuals.  As I began to be swept into the stories of those we encountered, I was quickly confronted with the reality that the God of the universe was just as much at work in the refugee camps of Palestine and the bustling streets of Barcelona as he was in America.

I don’t know if I would have put this in words, but I subconsciously believed that Western Christianity had a corner on the market of God’s favor. As if I/we had it all figured out and travel was simply about visiting other places and people who hadn’t quite “gotten it.”

While I didn’t begin my journey on pilgrimage, the pilgrimage found me. I began to stumble upon earlier parts of God’s Story (which is also my story) and encounter the reality of his inaugurated Kingdom in the most unlikely of places and individuals.

It is those stories that I will share each Monday for the next few months. I share them as one who has been transformed by the unlikely pilgrimage I stumbled upon, and I invite you to look through the telescope they may offer as we encounter the mystery of God’s diverse and growing Kingdom.

Have you had any similar experiences or revelations as a result of cross-cultural travel?

 

One of War’s Forgotten Casualties

NOTE: While I wrote this post three years ago, it is more relevant today than ever. I just got off the phone with a national leader who works with refugees and he described how his organization gets waves of new refugees after each international crisis. Currently, Syrians and Iraqi’s are pouring in, each with their own traumas, stories and humanity. The UN recently announced that 51.2 million people were forcibly displaced in 2013.

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When pending or actual war invades the headlines of our news outlets and personal attention, we sometimes forget one of war’s worst casualties; displaced civilians.   In Libya alone, 75,000 people fled the country between February 19th and March 11th. Tens of thousands waited and continue to wait at the border seeking protection from their war torn homeland.

So what happens to them once they escape the war and oppression of their homeland?

Simply put, they become refugees who most likely will never be able to return to the life they once lived.  A migrant is one to leaves their country seeking socio-economic recovery, most often because of their homeland is experiencing oppression is some way.  In contrast, a refugee is fleeing physical persecution, oppression and/or war.  Death is an immediate reality.

When a refugee escapes their oppressive homeland, they most often have to live in a refugee camp awaiting resettlement in a more developed country.  While they keep their physical life, their daily reality is remains in dyer straights.  Sometimes refugees live in these camps for up to 20 years awaiting resettlement.

My wife and I work with a refugee family from Somalia each week.  After fleeing persecution in Somalia, they lived in a refugee camp in Kenya for years waiting for resettlement.  They are now in San Diego (which is a resettlement city) living in a crowded apartment complex alongside refugees from dozens of other countries.  The family we work with has 8 members and lives in a tiny two-bedroom apartment.

While modern day refugees have escaped physical death, they have experienced profound social and relational death.  First, they have been forced from their physical homes and the rich culture/heritage that make them up.   Second, a refugee family is NOT resettled alongside the rest of their extended family.  The family of our Somalian friends are now scattered all over the U.S. and Europe.  With their modest income, seeing the family they grew up with is now close to impossible.

The casualty of war that is often overlooked is that of the refugee’s loss of “home.” Everything they would equate with “home” has been taken (physical home, family relationships, culture, etc…).  It is no wonder that refugee’s often cling to their last symbol of “home” in the form of their inherited religion/tradition.  Without a physical setting or extended family, their identity is now only found in such tradition.

For this reason our friends from Somalia quickly cover their heads when we come to their door, have passages from the Quran on their wall and obey a certain diet.  Their tradition is all they have left and it offers them the security of “home.”

From early in the Story, YHWH commanded his people to make a “home” for the foreigner within their community and tradition.  Jesus always had a special place for the deserted outcast and socio-political refugee.  May those that follow Jesus (and those that don’t) mourn the casualty of the loss of “home” for those fleeing Libya today.  And may we honor their traditions while offering them a “home” within ours.

How can we help?

  • THIS is a good article with some suggestions
  • Follow the International Rescue Commission and/or UN Refugee Agency on Twitter to keep up to date
  • Get connected with local organizations that resettle refugees and help them in their transition to a new “home” – See the IRC and UN Refugee Agency websites for more info
  • Pray and advocate for the stories of the refugees to be told and considered in time of conflict

 

How Getting “Snowed In” Can Save Your Sanity

Thanks to the generosity of a close friend, my family got to get away this week for a much needed few days of downtime up in Big Bear, CA.  We are staying in a sweet little condo with a full kitchen, fireplace and patio.  Janny and I came up for a weekend retreat I was speaking at a couple years ago and really enjoyed it.  While that was a good time, this has been a GREAT time with zero responsibility.

Although, it is only a few hours from San Diego, it might as well be half way around the globe.  Being a product of California coastal communities my whole life, I didn’t really consider the need for chains on this trip.  After all, it is only 3 hours from the always-warm San Diego.  After successfully driving our little Nissan, 1.8 liter hatchback up the 7000 foot mountain, it began to snow…REALLY snow.

Within a few hours of our arrival, we quickly realized we wouldn’t be going anywhere for a while.  It snowed for nearly 2 days straight and we were completely snowed in.  There would be no running errands, no eating out, no site seeing, the only option was to simply stay right where we were.  And it…was…brilliant.

There is something sacred about being “stuck” somewhere with those you love most. We live pretty hectic lives.  I’m not proud of that and it is something I struggle to acknowledge and change on a regular basis.  When you’re snowed in, you have no option for chaos.  Janny, Ruby and I simply hung out together all day for two days straight.  We watched movies, read, prayed, ate, walked in the snow and even found a hot tub to sneak into.  It has been exactly what we needed.

Live a hectic life?  Feel a bit disoriented from all the chaos of responsibility?

My advice: GET SNOWED IN. Even if that means you have to pile ice cubes around your front door and car tires.

 

Practice #2: The Upside-Down Job Description

I recently had a conversation with NieuCommunities’ founder, Rob Yackley, about my role within the missional church community we serve among in San Diego (NieuCommunities has two other sites in Vancouver, BC & South Africa).  Coming from a leadership paradigm where I had been used to getting a piece of paper with a job description that I am responsible to achieve, I unconsciously entered the conversation seeking a checklist of responsibilities.  Having trained and lead leaders like myself for many years, Rob knew the tension his leadership style would create in me.

He began to explain that my job description was filling out beautifully based on the passions and practices I had displayed since joining NieuCommunities.  I was a bit confused. Rob continued to explain that rather than handing his staff a sheet of paper of responsibilities, he seeks to foster an environment where ones gifts and passions have room to be discovered and lived out.  As those passions and practices come to life, the job description starts to fill itself out.  It is a description based on what God has gifted you to do rather than what I tell you to do, he said.

This is an upside-down leadership style that cultivates the divine imagination God has for his followers.  It is building the Church around leaders who are living out their vocation and ceaselessly committed to advancing God’s Kingdom.

Does this style leave out the responsibility of necessary details?  No, the dirty work is accounted for and gets done, but it is not front and center.  When you’re participating in God’s Mission out of your unique vocation, the dirty work is no longer menial labor, but a necessary piece of the grander picture.

At its core, the missional Church seeks move towards others in the way that God moves towards his people in Jesus.  We don’t expect people to come to us, we have been called to go to them.  This model requires an imagination bigger than ours.  We need leaders who have been swept up into God Story and who have found their unique role within it.

What would happen if our job descriptions grew out of our God given passions and practices? If the imagination of God is unleashed in his people, we create room for God’s imagination to be unleashed in his Church.  May this be so.

Two Essential Practices of Missional Church Leadership (or any leader)

Having studied and now served/lived among a missional church community, I am seeing more and more the unique role leadership plays in this model of ministry. Initiating the paradigm of flat leadership (as apposed to hierarchal), these aren’t easy waters to navigate. In fact, in an attempt cultivate an ethos of shared leadership, the lines can become so blurred that there ceases to be any leadership at all.  Based on my observations and experience, these are two essential leadership practices of the successful missional church leader:

1. Integrating Individual Ideals into the Mission of the Community

Ideals

Whether we like it or not, we all enter community (whether an intentional community, local church, new relationship) with a set of expectations and ideals. Once we step into this new community context we start to compare our checklist of ideals (often unintentionally) with the set of ideals embraced by the greater community.  When my ideals aren’t embraced and lived out by everyone else in the community of faith, I get frustrated and bail saying, “I’ll go start my own faith community that wants to value a TRUE set of ideals.”  I understand this frustration, but it is exactly what fractures the Church (on a micro and macro level).  Further, this person holds a definition of community that is 180 degrees counter to what community really is.

Ideals are essential to formation and mission, but when they aren’t integrated into the greater mission of a community, they become a hindrance.  For example, Shane Claiborne has become a modern day prophet and community dynamo.  When we hear and see his values being played out in his storytelling and way of life, we often (probably subconsciously) make his values our ideals.  They are inherently great things, but when they become our unbending ideal of life and community, they are destined to isolate us from the very life and community he is advocating. If we truly desire deep community, we have to be willing to shed personal ideals that may not fit within the greater mission. And if your community is healthy, they will be open to embracing and exploring whether your ideal should become a community value.

Community

Living in deep community, which serves as a medium for communion with God and participation in his Kingdom, embraces conflict and releases unrealistic personal ideals/expectations for those of the greater community.

I don’t know how many conversations I have had with brilliant and well-intentioned folks that have started intentional communities or missional churches that within one year had given up and moved on.  They often are discouraged, frustrated and alone.  This breaks my heart.

Their story almost always ends with an explanation of broken ideals and expectations of community and they become paralyzed.  The myth is, “If we don’t do this, this and this, then we obviously aren’t a true community.” True community isn’t a static set of ideals.  Community lives and breathes and has to flex so as not to be paralyzed by the very ideals we expect to give us value.

They had been striving for a common set of ideals instead of a common Mission.  When their mythical utopia didn’t take shape, they figured they weren’t where God wanted them and it was time to go back to the drawing board of building community.

Mission

The wise missional church leader doesn’t simply point to a set of ideals, they point towards the Mission.  There are all sorts of ways to serve God and advance his mission.  A set of ideals fills out what that service might look.  They are the means, not the end.  If the leader points towards God’s mission, the ideals will fall into place, but they may not be the ideals that we first thought important when we came into our new faith community. We must choose mission over ideals.

Bottom Line

Living in deep community is hard.  Leading a group of individuals who all hold a set of personal ideals towards one Mission is hard.  It is messy and I certainly don’t have it all figured out.  With that said, it is worth it. I can imagine few things as symbolic of God’s Kingdom come than a band of Jesus disciples trading in personal ideals for the common Mission of God.

To Be Continued…Practice #2 in next post.