Coffee finger pain

It is good when your coffee finger hurts. Coffee finger pain is related to holding a mug of coffee too long, . . . it is sorta the carpel tunnel syndrome of relationships. But it’s good not bad.

It comes from having multiple or constant cups of coffee in your hand in the process of good conversation with significant relationships. Those relationships might be the dirty old man next door (evangelistic - uncle Lybe) or something like today, where I sit for three hours and a half with two really sharp CMA pastors, that have keen hearts for missions, and frankly want to see their congregations surge forward with an intense involvement in missions around the world.

Now when you sit there for 3.5 hours with your finger in your coffee mug, it starts to hurt! This is a great way to gauge the intensity of good conversation. These guys are so amazing that I met with today, because they are both bringing short term teams to the hairy armpit to help us a church/seminary, and neither of them actually have a building themselves! They both meet in schools . . . they both really wish that they had a building to call their own . . . but they are not planning to allow their lack, to interfere with reaching out half way across the world and helping someone else first.

I frankly find such attitudes extremely rare and amazingly refreshing. Instead of the mission-field receiving the proverbial used tea bag, these guys are putting missional needs ahead of their own needs. These fellows and what they represent are a great reason to wear your coffee finger out. I could have sat there all day with them! I wish I could find a dozen more men like them. They are my heros, and I want to be just like them.

Breakfast, snow and America

This weekend I experienced that iconic American church event known as a men’s prayer breakfast, which has a good meal, but little to do with prayer, yet it still serves a unique purpose in the lives men on early Saturday mornings. This particular Saturday morning was different than most of this events that I have attended, if for nothing more than the fact that there were nine churches represented there. No this was not a WWCC meeting or some other quasi-spiritual movement of ecumenicalism.

No it was the result of a local CMA pastor who had visited with us in the hairy armpit last Fall and saw us working in our part of the world largely without denominational walls in place. It was a defining moment for this pastor in some ways and he saw that we can be more about the King and the Kingdom, and less about our particular fractured sliver of that Kingdom. It is Christocentric rather than ecclesiocentric. What he saw us doing there in Skopje resonated so much with his heart that he came back to the states determined to use the same approach in Maryland. And he is!

He brought all these pastors, churches and men together, to challenge them all to work together toward building the church/seminary that we are in the process of building in Kumanovo. It was a bit of heaven I have to tell you, to see all these different churches considering doing a Kingdom thing instead of a denominational thing. It was focused on the King, not the CMA. This is good.

And then Sunday morning of course was marred by the magnificently beautiful snowfall, along with a good measure of sleet and freezing rain. Most churches in the area were closed, but the church here determinedly went ahead with their services, and we also drove out 3 hours or so to another church Sunday evening! I was just glad to get back home, after seeing a dozen cars in the ditches along the way!

It is fascinating to see the eagerness that most churches have, to get involved and get their hands dirty on a task that is located on the other side of the world. The day of asking people for trust and give money while they sit in their zip-code and we go do all the work, is long over. This is the day of mobilizing people to do and live the great commission out in their own neighborhoods and across the seas. Bring it on!

Two bottles of red wine

As I was packing up for this trip to the states, I realized that our supply of red wine was threatening to overflow our fridge. (almost everyone who comes to visit or to join us for a meal, brings a bottle of Macedonia's finest - wine is Macedonia's favorite past time and number two export). Thus I decided to pack a couple of bottles in my suitcase for gifts to give to some of the folks that I will be seeing on this trip.

I was planning to pack them into my check baggage, but the likelihood of them remaining intact for the whole trip was low, and the damage that they would do the clothes in my bag was large. So I put them in my carry-on. Those of you who fly often are already laughing, but if you live in the hairy armpit, these details often escape you. I did not even make through the first security check, when they made me open my bags and they confiscated my two bottles of Macedonia’s finest!

I was not happy. I asked the smirking security officer if he was going to pay me for those two bottles, and his laughter is still echoing in Europe. So I come to the States for a mini-tour de-wined . . . and wine-less. No gifts for my friends ☹

The security risks in life are less concrete than the current paranoia that the airlines and governments of the world are expressing for frequent and non-frequent flyers. The security risks in life are apathy, small-mindedness and self-absorbtion. These elements are barely noticeable in the modern Western world, expected rather than surprising, common rather than rare. These are not only the enemies of one’s soul, but also the enemy of missions. You can’t care about the world, when you don’t care about your neighborhood and city. Caring about yourself doesn’t count in the long run.

Curiosity

I consider this the one indispensable gift from God, and one that has been lacking from my life much of the last 5 years. And honestly those have been 5 hellish years of uncertainty and struggles all the way to bottom of my soul. My mind and soul have been in a bursting saturated state, and . . . and a sated mind/soul is a terrible experience. It wants nothing but escape. The experience is far worse than boredom and we all know what stupid things people do when they are bored! This is worse by far.

This is when you will consider alternatives you never would have under any other circustances. You will throw away 20 years of work in your profession in a heartbeat, to alleviate this particular form of hell. You will view faith and life in ways that previously would have been unthinkable. You would consider walking away from the King, the Kingdom, the Church or your Faith, only for a measure of relief. Time moves as slowly as continental drift. There seems to be no possibility of escape.

Curiosity cures all of this. Curiosity about what God might do next, or with whom He might do it. (all interest in this is totally absent in the lack-of-curiosity-state). Curiosity about the amazing possibilities with God . . . curiosity about where He might send you next . . . curiosity about why you survived this or that . . . curiosity about what role you might play in this next step in building the Kingdom . . . curiosity about when God will answer your prayer . . . curiosity about God Himself and what He is about at the moment in your world . . . and a million other curiosities are what make life worth living.

I am actually getting a bit curious these days . . . its been a long long time. It is still early . . . I am not sure what this means yet . . . mainly I am curious about curiosity at the moment. But that is a start.

Some call it wonder and some call it awe and I am sure it probably has a dozen other possible names, but without it, life is hell on earth.

Exit row seating

Unforgiving, that is what scares us about airplanes. Practically every accident involving an airplane is completely fatal. There is no margin for error. Falling out the sky is such a total death trip. Few of us know anyone who has survived a plane crash. All of us know people who have survived auto accidents.

So while the additional leg room on the flight to Zurich was welcome, it made me stop and think about the added responsibility that also comes with this seat in the exit row. The evil side of me, says "Oh yes, I am closer to escaping this airplane than the guy behind me, because I am closest to the emergency exit." I can easily live my life like that too (yes I am a missionary, and yes I know that this is ungodly, and yes I am working on this problem - that's why I am writing this blog). I can easily think that I am saved, and that that is mostly what matters. Once someone asked Spurgeon if the heathen will be saved without preaching the gospel to them, he replied, ‘the question is, ‘Are we saved if we do not preach the Gospel to them’?. . . . and I think that is a powerful answer.

That was the evil side of me. There is the humane side and the spirit of God side of me that says, "No I will stand here and help other people out of the plane." While this view is closer to a Christ-like point of view, it too is fraught with pitfalls. Like "how noble it is to save people" or "how heroic it is to sacrifice oneself for others." Missionaries get that crap all the time. Heck, who are we kidding? It is what keeps half the missionary force on the field. But this too is a wrong perspective because I certainly am no more noble nor heroic than anyone else.

Final destinations, just like airplane crashes, are completely the end. That video on the airplane that shows these cartoon characters helping others down the "slides that deploy in case of a water landing" are cartoons for a reason - because there is no such thing as a water landing. Oh it may be a possibility in the world of physics and science, but when have you ever heard of one actually happening?

I have come to the conclusion after flying around the world for the last 32 years (I took my first flight when I was 12), that all this safety business/instruction on an airplane is mainly to give the illusion of safety, the feeling that everything is under control and survivable no matter what. Even though I continue to enjoy the view of the Swiss Alps out my window in this sardine can filled with people zipping through the atmosphere, if the engines go out, there is no stopping the work of gravity - I have no illusions about this.

And I have come to the conclusion after 20 plus years of vocational ministry that I also can't save anybody in a spiritual sense. Only God can do that, only Him. At the same time, I can't let the cynicism of 32 years of flying grab me in a spiritual sense, and cause me to lose perspective that God is both challenging me and inviting me (us?) to join in His saving work around the world.

So I am planting myself in the exit row of life, and I am determined to help all I can.

kidnapped at 13 years of age

She was telling us this amazing story, of the kidnapping . . . but her story alone was amazing. Here she is in the Hairy Armpit, born in Iran, married to a local who brought her here and now she and her two daughters continue this line of strong women who have overcome amazing trials.

So as we sat at the table, mesmerized by the story of her grandmother, who at the age of 13 was kidnapped by an Iranian man in Russia (Georgia more precisely) and taken to Iran to be his bride, and she was. She told us that her grandparents remained married for their natural lives.

And while not a kidnap victim per se, Silvi is reliving her grandmother’s challenges, as she is stuck in Skopje. As she sat there with her Persian bible (the first I had ever seen in my life) she told us some of her story. Long story short, she was just so thankful for the International Church here in Skopje, and for the home group that we were attending.

It was a pungent reminder to me that while I cannot control what comes my way in life, I can control how I respond to it, and in that bring much glory (or shame) to the King. It made me a bit ashamed to read some of my previous posts, peeing and moaning about whatever, when other people nearby and within our reach, are trapped in one sense, yet set free by God in another. She calls me her pastor . . . I felt like a worm.

Our home runneth over - with females!

It has come once again to Skopje, the monthly invasion of women . . . all connected to my wife in some fashion! I swear, she has to be the most well-known woman in the entire country. I am largely known throughout the country as Brenda’s man. If I go to the store, all the people who work there want to know is, “How is Brenda?” or “Where is Brenda?” And that happens when I go to the market, the money exchange, the grocery store, the book store, the clinic, the hospital, the printing shop, heck I can’t even go to McDonalds without the girl taking my order asking, “Where is Brenda?” I don’t think any of the women actually know my name. That is probably good since I would have to then engage them in endless conversations extolling the virtues of my lovely wife, which would then in turn convince them that I am the village idiot, since all one can do when listening to Brenda’s virtues is just sit there and shake your head up and down. Not a bad thing to be said about her. She is reaching icon status here in the hairy armpit.

But as I was saying the invasion is on in about 24 hours and will last all weekend. I am actively devising strategies to hide and evade. Not that I don’t like these women, they actually represent the best and the brightest from all of our churches from across the whole of Macedonia. The are the creme of the crop . . . and Brenda is training them here once a month for a weekend of intense teaching. Then she lives on the road the rest of the month, visiting each of them in their own setting and situation. Mentoring them, coaching them, crying with them and laughing with them . . . no wonder they love her.

I leave for the States on Monday morning at 0:dark:30 . . . and I have a full day of services on Sunday . . . so I have plenty to keep me hopping and working. All in all this is a good invasion, I will just keep a low profile and cheerlead from the sideline. Just call me Brenda’s man.

Wasting time praying?

It was not the way that I prefer to use my mornings . . . a prayer meeting. On one hand, it had potential. We gathered together all the pastors of all the churches (a major miracle in and of itself) in one place to pray about the Global day of prayer, coming up soon.

So far we are an hour into this meeting of prayer, without having prayed a single time.☹ Unfortunately this typifies my experience with prayer meetings . . . lots of talking . . . no listening . . . little prayer.

With the relational and organizational pressures of this week, my normal prayer time would have been much more effective. What drives (causes us) us to waste time praying in these fashions? Its like we delay getting around to God!

Of course there is no such thing as wasted prayer. Just wasted prayer meetings. I love it when people finally stop their little social talkings and start to pray, really pray from their hearts, calling out to the Living God. I need to find a way to spend far more praying and far less time flushing time down the drain.

Tonight was a much better example . . . and all with teenagers. Simple direct prayers, said with earnestness and faith. It was refreshing and a great end to a great worship practice. We rocked tonight, both in heaven and musically.

people and emails

Where do the days go? As I am getting ready for bed here and wondering that to myself, I just happened to count how many emails that I wrote today. That number would be 28 (oops, just answered Beth and that makes 29). And then I counted how many people I met with today at various times, and that number would be 13. I don’t know if that number is high or low, but I do know that these two tasks of people and email took 14 hours to accomplish. I just sent the last couple home and its 11:00 pm. I guess there were lots of incidentals thrown in there as well. 12 SMS’s, 9 cell phone calls, 6 land line calls (that I can remember). And a meal with my wife ☺ That was the best part of the day.

Is this the work of God in the modern world? Yeah, I know I have the spiritual gift of fund-raising, but is it really God’s ministry for the day?

Well one side of me says yes and the other side of me is not so sure. The yes side says that it was all communication stuff and that is certainly the hard work of ministry. People and communication are the two axis that ministry often pivots on. The side of me that says no, is the scholarly side that would rather be diving into the Word getting ready for Sunday. Sure I guess there needs to be a balance right? huh? What balance do we evangelicals have? Most of us believe that we don’t pray enough, read the Scriptures enough, be with people enough, communicate God’s Truth often enough. So where is the balance and when is enough enough?

It was just a typical people/email day, plus . . . not to mention my favorite spiritual discipline of writing a blog throughout the work week. ☺ Can I see God in all of this talk (communication)? I am not sure. Am I busy? For certain. I know that many believe that we cannot see the eternal value of what we do until eternity . . . but only a fool would not at least try.

Blueberry Muffins

Have you ever tried to mix baking and ministry? Are you a man? Well I have done and am all of the previous. The results can be pretty funny. Sundays are looooong days that begin at 5:00 am. And so Brenda was traveling again yesterday, on the road as usual, and so I have two goals here, fix myself breakfast and make some muffins for the fellowship time at the church. But like a typical man, I did not make certain that I had all the ingredients prior to starting this process.

So I fired the oven up, got out the muffin pan, greased it up, started mixing all the batter in and then those expensive blueberries! Then the water, then the eggs, and then the vegetable oil . . . WHAT, no OIL! It’s 6:00 am on a Sunday morning, no stores are open yet, and I have to be at the church in a bit over an hour for worship practice! So the best I could do was melt some butter we had and add that to the mix.

The results were debatable, yet no one came up to me at church and said, “Who baked those terrible muffins!?” I would have gladly admitted that I was the culprit, but thankfully no one said a word. But it got me to thinking about how many things in my life are like making blueberry muffins. I think I often approach my spiritual life in the same manner . . . busily working at it, without counting the cost of this action, or making certain that I have the proper elements in place to accomplish the goal. It seems to me that this is a risky (and perhaps ungodly) way to live and one that has great potential for harm. I want to live more carefully than that . . . and I think in order to do so, I will have to slow down the pace a bit more than I am currently living, and be a bit more thoughtful about where I am heading, and where that will take us all.

The coat of another person

It was one of the loudest parties I have ever attended in my whole life . . . and that covers quite a few parties. This party was one of those, lean close to the ear and yell as loud as you possible can, to even be heard kind of parties. Insult to injury was that all the music was from the late 70’s. ☹

It was a surprise birthday party for an international businessman that happens to attend the International Church that I lead. He certainly was surprised, that, I can vouch for, especially when the belly dancer arrived! But I may tell you about that in another blog.

Yet it is in such contexts that some of the very best pre-evangelism happens. Out of the 100 guests there last night, 7 of us were core people from the International Church. So we spent the entire night spreading Salt.

It must be my age, but my capacity for ear-folicle-destroyingly-loud music has declined, and so after 40 minutes of suffering near permanent brain-damage from the quest to be nice and thoughtful and hospitable . . . I snuck out to the stairwell landing at the coat rack and served in the capacity of greeter and coat hanger/arranger. Soon I was joined by another fellow from the church and we proceeded to sow Seeds . . . for the rest of the evening. Some of them appear to fall onto fruitful ground. It was great fun!

One example, George (a local boy, not ex-pat) kept circling back to me throughout the evening. He was intrigued because everyone from the church was calling me “Pastor” and introducing me as their pastor. In Macedonian language that can only be translated as pope or Father. George said, “there is no way that you are a pope!” And of course I certainly do not remotely fit the Orthodox understanding of that role (nor the Western one either for that matter), which has lots to do with position, power and costumes (OK uniforms if you must). I am not sure what threw him the most, my jeans, my earrings, or my long hair, but he steadfastly refused to believe that I was a pastor. I took that as a great compliment.

As the evening was drawing to a close, George had circled back to me yet again and we were having a ball arguing about women and health and the final destinies of our souls, when the birthday boy join in our conversation. George and I switched back into English, and I proposed a toast, literally to birthday boy’s health. George immediately said, “but I thought you said that ultimately our health was not important, and here you are toasting his health!” And I said to him, “George, I was toasting his Spiritual health.” And in an amazing moment, I looked up and in a semi-circle around George were all 7 of us from the church. I said to George, “you are surrounded by spiritual people, as all 7 of us attend the International Church.” George said incredulously “you are a pope!” To which we all howled ☺

Then it was time to go home, because I needed to call my daughter back in the States, and I grabbed my leather jacket, as George came up to me once again, and said, “maybe I will see you Sunday morning.” And maybe we will indeed. Please bring George to yourself Lord Jesus.

I almost lost my voice from yelling, but it felt good to see God drawing people to Himself and His children. I am a pastor, among other things, yet I am a lousy coat man, because this morning I realized that I came home with someone else’s leather coat.

Evil Saints?

Here we have saints for the house (and you sacrifice an animal and place the bones in the cornerstone of the house), each person has their personal saint, and there are saints for half a dozen other things as well. The way you choose your house saint is, you go to the local priest, and he takes the book of saints and opens it randomly three times and you can choose any one of those three saints that the priest open up to, as your personal house/home saint.

Now we have met more people than we can count, who have had their saints come to them in dreams and have now begun terrorizing them and introducing them to more “saints”. We know people who have had these demons come into their rooms and terrorize them!

As Brenda is teaching women leaders from all across the hairy armpit, she also has been mentoring them in between teaching times. One of the ladies she was with today, handed Brenda her homework and said to Brenda, “I have come to realize from the Scriptures that celebrating the saint day for the house and the saint day for our name saint, and all these pagan celebrations are in direct opposition to serving the living God, but Brenda, I am afraid to stop the saint days!”

We met people every week who have St. Peter, or St Petra (his feminine equivalent) come to them in dreams, demanding service, introducing more spirits, etc, etc. When these people meet the living God, the horrible nature of these “Saints” are exposed. I don’t often ask you to do this, but please stop and pray that people will be freed from bondage here, and have their spiritual eyes opened. Unfortunately, few people find Jesus in this part of the world, but everyone has a Saint.

persevering

Its hard to hang in there sometimes. And we both know dozens of people who “tried” and “quit” and lets face it, I could easily become one of those persons. I could so easily fade back into the crowd . . . fade off the CMA radar . . . fade out of the organization, and/or the church, I could even fade out of myself . . . and be nothing anymore.

We don’t hear much about stick-to-itiveness any more. Its sorta gone out of style I think. And I am highly sympathetic to the fact that it has gone out of style, but on the other hand, it sure is difficult to lead without it! In fact it is difficult to do anything significant without it.

Financial downturns, building projects, additional staff, significant growth, people leaving, and needy seasons of life are all give up times according to leadership guru Carson Pue. This is when all but the toughest give up and quit. And let’s face it, you don’t even have to be going through one of the events listed above, you can quietly be falling apart inside, and feeling like its all a waste of time. Many days, OK correction, most days I ask myself it is all worth it. Some days you just don’t want to get up out of bed . . . those are the worst. On the other hand, you can’t build on what you propose to do . . . you actually have to do it. You have to get up one more time than you have been kicked across the room. Is that what makes a good leader?

So what gets you up in the mornings? Me? I am just trying to stick-to-it and finish something that I started . . . but does this job have an ending point? Persevering is a tough gig.

I hate Americans, Greeks and Bulgarians!

She told me this as I was buying my baking potatoes and broccoli. I am fairly certain that this means she doesn’t know I am an American, but then again one can never tell in the hairy armpit. She continued, “I hate the Greeks because they won’t recognize our name, I hate the Bulgarians because they think we are one of them, and I hate the Americans because they are such bullies around the world.” My produce lady in one fell swoop summed up the politics and attitudes of my entire neighborhood.

What is so intriguing about this dialogue is that this lady considers herself our friend. I think the lesson I learn here is that people can receive you on your own terms if they remain unaware of your political connections/histories/leanings, (regardless how powerless/helpless/uninvolved/unwilling you may be in relationship to those connections). I wonder if I can apply this to my relationships that are moving in a spiritual direction? Is this being “wise as a serpent and innocent as a dove”?

My produce lady could have (and would have had she thought of it) said just as well, “I hate every religion (other than Orthodoxy).” And once again, in a nutshell she would have captured the religious politics and attitudes of my neighborhood.

What this means that my neighbors love me, but they hate my origins and faith. The question then becomes how to bridge the like and dislike? Lets make it more practical. My neighbor, the dirty old man who lives next door . . . he and I ran into each other a couple of days ago on the street. He was hugging on me and talking about how much he has missed me and how soon can we sit and drink a coffee together! But he too, as much as he loves me, often has a hard time getting beyond the fact that I am not Orthodox (he has gotten past the fact that I am an American, because according to him I don’t really act like one. But what does an American act like? Our diversity is a little breathtaking for largely mono-cultural perspectives to get a grip on). When he and I starting talking about Christ, he changes the subject to religion. Its the automatic knee-jerk reaction to Faith in the hairy armpit. Where do you go from there?

Superbowl of decadence

OK, I admit it . . . I put on my unapologically American hat last night and I stayed up most of the night and watched the superbowl LIVE on Macedonian television. Not only did I watch the superbowl, but I also had American salsa (though admitedly unamerican chips). It felt very decadent ☺ I have to fess up . . . I don’t indulge myself like this very often. It was great I have to say ☺.

Especially after the mighty struggle that church was Sunday morning. I had gotten a good night’s sleep Saturday night, but after the morning’s service, I laid down and slept another 3 hours! The service was definitely a struggle for me yesterday. I am not exactly sure why, but I am confident that it was one of the toughest mornings I have had preaching in a long time. Preaching is often like breathing for me . . . but not this one.

Honestly, I enjoyed watching the boys play in the rain more than I enjoyed the spiritual battle in the service Sunday.

An Irishman eating Mexican in Macedonia

As I have said, truth is stranger than fiction here. Last night I was sitting in a Mexican pub (all the workers are proudly trained in Slovenia . . . which I guess is marginally closer to Mexico than Macedonia) with an Irishman, two Macedonians, and another American. This little hole in the wall was packed out and since we were a group of five, we had to take a table on the first level.

The decor and atmosphere were great, although Mexican music would have been better, because we had just come out of the philharmonic and pop/rock was a bit of a shocking change of pace musically. And inside the pub, there is a second level, almost like a terrance or inside balcony level . . . completely sharing the same air space . . . and I was informed that the upstairs part was the non-smoking section. I choked on my quesadilla when I heard this . . . have you ever heard about peeing in the pool . . . well this is the same effect. But since I don’t generally sit in the non-smoking section anyhow, what does it matter?

The Irishman and his lovely wife (a violinist in the Macedonian National Philharmonic Orchestra) also are folks who know and love Jesus and attend the International Church which I lead on the side. The other two guests with us definitely don’t know Jesus and frankly are barely interested in spiritual things . . . but in this part of the world, we operate on the principle that spiritual interest in God can only grow, when you know some people who have the Spirit of God. Unfortunately, spiritual interest in magic, spells, demons and curses is high and there is a corresponding high number of people who have those spirits around all the time.

People are so far from the living God . . . in the sense that most have never even met a Christian, much less read a bible or prayed . . . that you need to be a patient person and plan on spending lots of time with all sorts of people in Mexican (and every other type of) pubs. Jesus woulda been there, right in the mix (Luke 15:1-2).