The gift of repentance

Many of us long for change, in ourselves or other people, and are working hard to see it happen. In the churches we spend a lot of energy trying to change people that don’t really seem to want to be changed, and it can leave us frustrated. Despite our best efforts, the status quo remains.

Lately a biblical theme relating to this has been on my mind: repentance. I believe that this theme is one key to live in peace with our frustrations. Repentance in the Christian understanding means to change course or attitude, it’s the realization that I’ve been on the wrong path and I didn’t know it. It’s often accompanied by feelings of regret and sadness as we realize that we’ve hurt people, sinned against God or just screwed up in general. Those feelings are important because they propel us into changing, not just feeling sorry. Repentance is complete when we have changed, our thinking and our behavior. (a process that 3DM call the Circle)

What is key to remember for us is the repentance is a work of the Holy Spirit, not of our actions. It’s a gift, not the result of persuasion. And because of that it’s powerful, see Acts 10 for an example. The Spirit can break thru to the most proud person, pick a hole in the strongest armor and bypass our usual self-justifications.

Because it’s a work of God, we can’t do it. If He doesn’t do it, there won’t be any repentance. If He does, there will be the opportunity for change. But we can’t. And in that there’s rest. Where we sense the presence of repentance, we should press in, but where there isn’t we should do our piece and then wait. Much like with the Person of Peace in Luke 10.

With a little deeper thinking about this, perhaps we would have little less frustrations, what do you think?

Anyone want to start a factory?

The other day I sat with a woman, a neighbour to the church, and talked about the survey we just begun. It's a simple survey about the needs in the community, only five questions long. Her answer to the question "what is missing in Benjamin Aceval?" was: Work. She didn't need to say more, I got it. There is very little work opportunities in the area, only some factories in the nearby town of Villa Hayes. To work you have to go to Asunción, to work in houses, or to the big cattle ranches in the Chaco wilderness.

What struck me today is what difference a factory would make to life here. A simple production factory, low tech, that would employ 50 people, and had a bit of a conscience, could transform the life of maybe 250-500 people. Follow my thought if you will.

To be able to support their family, many men leave their families for months at a time to go the the Chaco. Or alternatively get jobs with enormously long hours, like the security guards that normally have twelve hour shifts, plus travelling  time over an hour each way, often seven days a week. Or, they leave for good and start what they call here a second family. The result of this is absent fathers in the home. And mothers, that more often than not, themselves need to work long hours in the homes of other people.

The social impact of this is enormous. A colleague of mine said that 4 out 5 Paraguayan households are run by single mothers. If they are working, there might be grandmothers to pick up the care for the children. Or there might not. There is nothing from the state. In short, there are many kids without any oversight, especially since school is only 4 hrs a day. Add to that the unemployment connected to alcoholism and general insecurity in the workplace.

A new factory in Benjamin Aceval, with 50 employees from the town, which ran reasonable hours, did not exploit it's workers and paid at least minimum wage, could really change some of this. It could mean that some people didn't have to leave the families for so long, or have much shorter days, which would help family life. It could provide 50 households with a stable income.

If you would add to that any kind of benefits, remember that Paraguay does not have national health insurance, like reading classes or the chance to finish up to sixth grade, any kind of child care, stipends for further education, basic health education, etc you could really have an impact.

These days this seems to be called "Business as Mission". Basically it's business people doing what they do with the purpose of creating welfare and prosperity that help change peoples lives. We could use some of these people here.

Dealing with a very local life

Life for many people in Benjamin is very local. And I mean VERY local. When we had a thing for Mothers Day, the children commented that some of their mothers never left their house, and getting them to come was a real treat. Asunción, the capital is inly about 40 km away and accessible by bus, but some have never been there. The town has 15000 inhabitants, not very small but certainly not big, yet many people complain about the distances, walking a few blocks could be considered far. Basically, if you're not working and especially if you don't have a motor bike, you're not moving far, your house and street is often your world.

This affects church life. In response some pastors, like in many places, have "reuniones caseras", meetings in homes, mostly on weekdays. This appears to be popular and neighbours have the opportunity to come by. It gives the opportunity for people who can't or won't leave their streets to listen to the Word and fellowship. We have been thinking about this as well, since we also have contact with people that have a transport issue. And being used to working with house groups and such it's natural to us.

But the complaint from some pastors about these meetings is not that they don't work, it's that the people that come to these meetings don't then come to church, and some of the church members that attend also stop going to the services. And because of that some pastors stop with the meetings, slightly annoyed at times.

I have reflected about this. And it seems to me a bit like the difference between boxing and judo. You can confront something you don't like straight on, like in boxing, and spend a lot of power defeating your opponent. Or you can use the the movement of your opponent and bend it in your direction, like in judo.

Because if you take out the goal "people should go to the service in the church" from the equation, the problem disappear. If you instead work from a perspective that the group that gather in the home is in reality a small church, then the local life is no longer a problem. If you don't treat the meeting as a recruitment point for the "real church", which happens on Sundays, but as something that can grow and function as a New Testament church in it's own right, then you have bent the local mindset in your direction. And as such the culture can become an asset, not a hinder.

As we haven't tried this yet, it's more of a theory, but I'll come back and report the developments. A great thing about being a church planter / missionary is that we have a mandate to try new things, as long as we're happy to fail at times!

Teaching or implementing?

The other day I met up with some pastors and one of them shared that he was working with the book The Purposedriven Church by Rick Warren. But, ha added quickly, what he did was he was preaching through it in the services. I reflected on that afterwards, because I think it's something that we often do, as leaders. We teach things, explain things, share books we have read, or we go to conferences and seminars and hear about stuff. But we don't actually put it to practice.

For example: It's one thing reading The purpose driven church and teach through it, it's something completely different implementing the philosophy of that book, the way of doing things that it describes.

As I reflect more it seems to me that one is the work of a Teacher, an explainer, and the other is the work of a Leader, or perhaps Apostle. Two different approaches, two different personalities. And because in the history of the church we have emphasized Pastors and Teachers, carers and explainers, we find it easier to talk about stuff rather than doing the stuff. We don't actually expect that things will change, even though we might talk about change. A way of doing things like Warrens book describes, or any other way really, requires the whole church to change in a quite profound manner. It's hard work.

But it seems to be that it's work that needs to be done if churches are going to evolve and grow. We're trying to do that now. slowly introducing new ways of thinking, showing them, repeating them a million times, because that's what it takes. We don't use Warrens model, but we have a pretty clear picture what we want to see, and talking about is just one part of the process, practicing it is the key.

Learning from life

This blog is bi-lingual; it has a twin in Spanish. Most of the time I write in English and translate to Spanish (Yes Google is a part of it *blush*) But this time I did the other way around because I wanted to describe a tool we’re using in our work. It’s called the Circle, and is a part of the Lifeshapes developed in an Anglican church in England and now spread over the world. More info on www.weare3d.com.

There are excellent summaries of the Circle on-line so I’ll be brief. It’s basically a learning circle, like Kolb’s, which has been cross-pollinated with the notion of discipleship in the teaching of Jesus. A disciple was of course a learner, and the Circle is a tool to keep us learning from the things that happens in our life.

The process has two sides; I often use the parable of the two houses in Matt 7 to illustrate them. One person hears the message of Jesus and acts on it, and gets a stable life; another hears but does not act and have fragile life, basically. One side is called Repentance, because it’s most often about changing direction or thinking. The basic question on this side is “What is God saying to me thru this?” 

The first side has three steps: Observe, which basically means realizing that something special happened; Reflect where we ask what this means for me, pray, think and listen; and the third, Discuss, where we check what others can contribute with.

When we feel like we sense what’s the message we can move over to the left side where the first step is Plan. We need something concrete to do as a response. Easy and preferably just one thing. Because we so easily fool ourselves we need to make ourselves accountable to someone that can ask us the question “How’s it going?” And finally, the cruncher, Act. To do what we planned.

If we go through the whole Circle our lives will change a little according to will of God. If we do it regularly it will change a lot :-)

We realize that to keep the dynamic part of our relationship to God we need to keep on learning, changing and listening. The Circle helps us with that. Nothing new really, just an easy form. It actually coincides with the first chapters in the material we already use for new Christians.

Together before going out

I am blessed with a wonderful wife, who very often see things that I don't. We were praying the other day and I was thinking about how to relate more to the people around us in the town. So far we have been working mostly with the people in the church, some that used to be in the church and their friends. I don't want to get stuck there, and it's easy to do that. Especially I'm interested in the Catholicism here and how to relate to it. No doubt subject for another post.

As we were talking however my wife cautioned me saying that "we need somewhere to bring people to". That somewhere doesn't have to be a building or meetings, but more like an environment, relationships, a community. Being married for over 20 years I recognized the wisdom.

Today I bumped into this blogpost where Ben Sternke argues for "centralization-before-decentralization". He writes: "Discipleship is the “intense centralization” process that happens before the “decentralization” of mission. Discipleship is where the core values are hammered out, where people are socialized into a new way of life before being “turned loose” to join Jesus in the renewal of all things."
 
That is probably where we're at. We have to build more internal first, disciple as it were. Especially here where the system hasn't really been geared for mission and growth, more for attendance.

The challenge is that often we teach and preach about these things, we give information, but that rarely changes peoples lives. I'm doing a course with 3DM and the have a illustration of this:

The point is that information must be followed by imitation, practice with someone, before we get a life that reaches other lives. And that's the challenge folks, living a life worth imitating and sharing that.

Who to lead?

At the moment we are meeting with people in Benjamin who has been part of this church or another. As we are getting to know them the issue of ministry, leadership, doing something in the church comes up. And a lot of times about leading worship. It seems like the outlet of the energy for young people has been leading worship, or being part of the worship band.

Who to lead is one of the most important issues we face when planting or restarting a church. A good leader can be a real blessing but a bad one can seriously hinder growth and development.  So what to look for? Well here are three things I’m thinking about at the moment:

1. Character. Always more important than gifting. But gifting is more apparent and attractive. But without character and good attitude it can be a real pain. Choosing the person who is a little less talented but with a good character always pays off in the long run.
2. In process. With this I mean that the person is aware of their own weaknesses and sins and that they are a person in a process of change, sanctification. Brokeness over ones own sins almost automatically gives an merciful attitude to others. The opposite, a person who feels ready with themselves and would like to change others gives of a perfectionistic atmosphere which is very unattractive.
3. Relationship. It’s important in church to first connect on the level of being brothers and sisters in Christ, like it’s important in life to connect to anyone firstly as a human being created by God. Being brothers and sisters doesn’t involve work, so that kind of meeting, call it meeting between pilgrims, has a different flavor to it. After that comes the task. Without the relationship foundation the work is too vulnerable to conflict, as there are no base for communication and resolution.

I’m sure theres more, but these are my thoughts today J Never rush into these things, people deserve good leaders, children even more. Resist the temptation to “fill the gaps to make the machinery work”, they’re worth it!