Danger signs - literally

There are all kinds of danger signs . . . here is one for you in this photo. I bet you are wondering how (better yet why!) I am so close. We rarely pay attention to warning signs. I don’t know why. Some people say that it’s just human nature to ignore warning signs and to believe that it could ever happen to you . . . or me. My brother was just telling me how close he came to being blown up by one of these things when he was stationed in Croatia after the war!

This sign says, “Do not walk here, there is a great danger of unexploded mines!”


So why am I standing so close? It’s a good question and for the life of me I don’t have a good (i.e. rational) answer. These signs are everywhere around Osijek, Croatia where I am currently hanging out, teaching at Evangelical Theological Seminary. I must admit that teaching Missiology pales in comparison to mine fields . . . is this a guy thing? huh?

This sign is in English, so you can read it for yourself ☺


So why are these signs up all over the airport in Zurich? Smoking is going to kill you, and so I want to be sure and tell you that, and then provide a special room where you can commit incremental suicide with my assistance. That is what the warning signs really seem to be saying.

So when I read similar warnings in God’s Word, why is it any surprise that my lack of concern for the warning resembles my lackadaisical response to these other warnings? Are there too many warnings in our lives today? Do we not really believe the warnings that are given? Or do we have that fatal human tendency to believe that it can’t happen to us? I don’t really know, but I working through taking God’s warnings more seriously than I do the mine field warnings.

What the cars have been drinking?

She said “Let’s wait for the light, because of the holiday you don’t know what these cars have been drinking!” Drinking indeed! Well contrary to my wife’s misspoken words, the car’s aren’t drinking anything in the Hairy Armpit, but most everyone else does.

It is used to entertain guests, to stimulate discussions, given to babies in their bottles, to give honor to those who have achieved status by doing good in the community, it is in fact the center of practically all social activities in Slavic culture . . . it is impossible for people here to understand a society where drinking is not the center of life and relationships . . . just ask the two fellows I passed this morning at 7:35 am who were having their morning beer at the cafe. They greeted me warmly, and I them . . . passing on their offer to share a beer with them. But since I was not close to them relationally, they were not overly insulted by my refusal to drink with them.

But in most of Europe drinking is the context of social discourse . . . and social discourse is the foundation of relationships . . . and relationships are the foundation of sharing the Truth.

There are certainly people here who abuse alcohol as there are everywhere in the world. The wrecks left in the wake of abuse are heartbreaking and frankly awful. We all have seen them. Many of my friends around the world are working right in the middle of these addiction- wrecks . . . and they can tell you horror story after horror story.

But the reality that we Evangelicals ignore is that those lost in the desperation of addictions (any addiction) are generally a minority . . . the majority partake in social discourse responsibly. Too many people in my line of work lose vast opportunities and access to these relationships because their cars aren’t drinking anything either.

50% of my church relationships are conducted in a completely alcohol-free environment. 95% of my non-church relationships are conducted in an alcohol-included environment. (John 2:10-11; 1 Tim. 5:23; 1 Cor. 9:22-23).

While the cars aren’t drinking, and honestly they aren’t☺, those that Christ died for are . . . and there are already so many barriers to them hearing the Gospel, should we build one more wall for them to climb? What will the wine-making Christ say about that, when we stand before him face to face?

Privacy - interruptions without permission are unwelcome? (Completely present 2)

Promptness can be defined by a clock, only in monochronic cultures. In our western monochronic culture, we have placed values on units of time . . . seconds, minutes, hours, etc . . . . and we place high value on these units . . . therefore you show others that we value them by valuing their units as well. Promptness (clock promptness) and schedules are those things which lead us to live efficiently . . . but is that good?

Polychronic cultures see time as the point where you are at the moment and not something that can be divided into any types of units. Thus time becomes almost irrelevant by the western (monochronic) definition. How you handle time (the place where you are at that moment) in synergy with relationships, determines how you value others. So promptness is not a clock event. Instead the result is multilevel, simultaneous involvement (no one excluded because of time) . . . interruptions are simply part of the rhythm of life.

When all promptness is defined by the relationship rather than the clock, it is actually possible to be completely present. I wrote chapter one of this concept and you can read it here if you wish, but being completely present in this moment, and in no other, is beyond the grasp of most monochronics.

I am currently teaching at the seminary and I can say with authority that 99% of the students here are culturally polychronics. They have no sense of time (in a monochronic sense) and consequently they also have no sense of privacy and respecting my time (in that monochronic sense) because they are not monochronics. They are polychronics. You know you are loved, when you are interrupted constantly, because life (and time) is about relationships. Maybe polychronics have it right after all.

A Marvel of Western Ingenuity

It took me a total of 13 minutes from the moment I arrived at the airport, until I was completely checked and ready to fly. Thirteen minutes! You can’t have this in North American because we are over-challenged in our ability to manage freedom responsibly. This system that allows 13 minute check-in’s, requires a certain attitude to accomplish. It requires everyone to be willing to follow the guidelines ruthlessly. It requires everyone to value everyone else’s time at least as much as they value their own. In fact, if you have no check baggage, it requires exactly zero minutes to check-in, because you can do it all online up to 60 days before and then proceed directly to the gate!

Did I happen to mention that you don’t have a seat number with this airline? So not only did check-in take 13 minutes, but we seated an entire aircraft with almost 200 people in less than 10 minutes. That is right 10 minutes. Because you get on the plane and take any availible seat, moving as far from the aisle as possible to make it easier for the next person to sit. Now if you have ever seen or experienced the 45 minute boarding process used in my least favorite airport in the world for instance, Dulles . . . a 10 minute boarding event is breath-taking!

Oh, did I happen to mention that it is the cheapest airline in the world? Yep, all this speed and for beans!! So how do they do it? Well they pack us like sardines onto the plane ☺. The seats are closer together than a standard airline. So they get more people on per flight than a regular carrier. Also they strongly encourage you to carry on the heaviest bag you can manage to carry. That’s right, they want you to carry your own baggage, rather than they managing your luggage for you.

All in all it was a marvel of ingenuity . . . unless you love the comforts . . . me, I wanna get there and cheaply.

What a day!

I wrote this a few days again, but I think you can handle that . . .Today was about as perfect a day as anyone could have. Today I got to see my son play soccer in a high school game for the first time ever. I imagine that sounds like some small matter to those who get to see their kids play in various sports all the time, but when you live 1200 miles away from your kids . . . it is exceedingly rare for such a thing to happen.

In fact, most missionary parents never get to do what I did today. And I not only cheered for Jake, but also Christine from Macedonia, and Josh from France, and Becki from Russia, and Yoel from Turkey, and Ellen from France, and . . . well you get the picture . . . I was yelling for all the parents that could not be there ever and watch their kids play in a simple game.

Jake was the General out there . . . making sure every person was covered and that the team was safe and protected as well as his defense could make it. They creamed the opposition!




Its great to see him rise to the top . . . especially in light of his challenges in the past. He is becoming quite a man, and I was thrilled to get to see him play today, and see what he is shaping up to be. One thing is for sure, he is becoming a man to be reckoned with, and God has wired him just for such a task.

Once long ago, a psychologist told us that we were the perfect parents for a boy like Jake. But he got it all wrong . . . Jake is the perfect boy for parents like us.

Prop planes over the Alps?!?

Yesterday's flight over the Swiss Alps in an ancient prop plane was over the top . . . just barely. I wasn't sure we were going to gain enough altitude to clear the tallest peaks. In fact I wrote this post while actually looking out this small airplane's window and it seemed to me that I could reach out and grab some snow right off the mountain below us at this moment! Here is a photo for you.




Ok I admit it . . . flying is way overrated. There is just something about being inside a tin can 5 miles above the planet surface . . . that is unnatural. On the other hand I love the speed of air travel, while hating the hassles of airports and especially security in our terroristic world.

The lady sitting beside me was freaking out because she had never ridden in a prop plane before and the extra noise and vibration was scaring her. She fretted with her seatbelt the entire time and was hyper-ventilating some as well. I had to help her get it on in the first place and she seemed to be afraid that I will go to the bathroom or something and then we might start to crash and she not be able to get out of it.

The one-handed child across the aisle is a poster boy for the ADHD society. The person sitting in the seat directly in front of him is currently getting pounded as the boy kicks the chair repeatedly. I think his mother is close to the point of seeing if he can fly with one arm. I feel like I am caught in a Shakespearean comedy, or at least a Mexican soap-opera (which my wife loves to watch).

Now the stewardess is coming through offering us a sandwich. My seatbelt-challenged seatmate asks the stewardess a typically Balkan question about the sandwich . . . "Is it ours?" The implication being that no one else's food products are worthy of consumption. Hopefully the beer she is drinking will relax her a bit and at the very least slow her Croatian down . . . I am having a hard time following her, she speaks so rapidly.

Now to add even more excitement to this overly exciting trip, the stewardess just escorted a passenger into the cockpit . . . at least that made my excitable seatmate stop talking . . . but it put a more worried look in her eye. And I too wonder what is up with three in the cockpit . . . ?

Prayerfully I will survive this trip to Zagreb . . . prayerfully someone will actually be there to pick me up . . . prayfully I will be awake to teach class tomorrow . . . I guess if you are reading this at least we made it over the Alps.

Conflict resolution (my recent experience)

due to a flaming post I wrote recently . . . .

it was interesting to see how different people wanted me to, or thought I should resolve the apparent conflict (although I did not see it as a conflict). But since someone was supposedly offended (no one actually ever wrote me and said "David you offended me"), then I must surely do my part to resolve the conflict (which may have never actually been a conflict). What lots of people did write me was that "IF you had said these things to me, THEN I would have been terribly offended."

Which actions were then expected of me were determined by the point of view (POV) of the advice-giver. Amazingly it was like they fell into two camps . . . the “collectivist” or “individualist” POV of the reader/advice-giver. Missionally these designations are usually used to explain cultural differences, like the difference between North American culture and Thai culture. But I experienced both coming out of North America! Here are the two basic Points of View:






What I found clinically fascinating (it was not experientially fascinating nor pleasurable) was the fact that the POV of the person chiding me or cheering me, determined their suggested next course of action AND each side (POV) used scripture to back up their instructions to me!

While everyone agreed that I was either stupid or brave (again depending on your POV) the fact that scripture was used to support both collectivist's and individualist's POV taught me something very important: that we often read and use and see scripture from our POV, (i.e. our POV informs our understanding of scripture) rather than Scripture informing our POV. This is dangerous, especially in a world that makes Truth very personal and non-absolute. I think I want to be more careful to let the Word of God say what it says, rather than using it as a instrument or weapon for my purposes.

The wisest 8 year old

“You are not like the foreigner that lived here before“ was Stefan’s opening line. He must have been really bored to have come over and begin talking to me. Stefan is 8 years old, but he speaks like an adult. He is extremely frank, especially for someone from the Hairy Armpit. I mention that he and I arrived in the Balkans about the same time. We came here the year he was born. He thought that was hysterically funny.

”Sometimes Janice allowed me to come inside the yard“ he said, referring to the former tenant. ”She was from Holland“ he informed me. ”Where exactly are you from?“ he asked. ”We are sorta from all over“ I told him. ”I was born in Georgia, Brenda in the Zaire, Heidi in Florida, Jake in Canada, and Helen in PA.“ ”And you can come into our yard anytime your parents or grandmother allow you to“ I added. ”Really?!” he asked.

And he ran away to ask if he could come into our yard and help me pull weeds. Seconds later he returned and said that his aunt gave him permission to come into the yard and he did. I showed him which weeds I was targeting and he went at it with a vengeance, all the while telling me that I had to make certain that I got the roots up, or that we would be doing this again in about 2 weeks! Indeed, he was pulling them up, roots and all.

This little 8 year old guy who was helping me pull weeds today, understood more about weeds and roots than most adults. That to really remove those weeds from our life that we need GONE, we gotta get the roots too. I am suspicious that most days, Stefan is wiser than me.

Completely present

I think this is a state (country, universe) where few of us ever visit. I know that I rarely get there, even though I have been working to do so steadily for years and frankly I am closer now than I ever was before my brain aneurysm 12 years ago.

Mark Van Doren describes it this way, There is one thing that we can do, and the happiest people are those who can do it to the limit of their ability. We can be completely present. We can be all here. We can . . . give all our attention to the opportunity before us.

Those who cannot find this place of being completely present, in some fashion will wither away from destination disease. They are always looking around to the next thing. There are always thinking about tomorrow, next week, next month, next year . . . they never are completely present.

For them, life is not about this moment, this breath, this relationship, this child, this spouse, this hour, this God, this life . . . but rather everything seems to dribble away into a means and never an end. Yet if I never have an end, then I never have a present, a now, a this moment.

Sure there are deadlines, and projects, and work. But there is also the present and I want to more and more be completely there ☺

the cost of tease

Can you live without TV? Can you live without cable? Can you live without constant films or shows that you are addicted to?

I have been completely fascinated by a post that my Google Reader brought to my desktop yesterday. It was a financial blog promoting the idea of getting rid of cable. According to them, you can save $60 per month, which comes to $720 a year by getting rid of cable! Save that for a few years and you can buy just about anything you want, including a car!

Or you could invest that money in something other than entertainment. Like world evangelism (half the people in the world cannot freely go to church). Feeding the poor (if you have food in the fridge and a roof over your head then you are in the top 25% of the world’s population). Or you could give more to your local charities that assist all sorts of challenged folks.

What was most amazing were people’s answers about why they could not give up their TV. Their favorite drama was the most frequently given answer. They would be bored, was the second most common answer. I find it a bit hard to comprehend either one of those answers. So when do you exercise, read, pray, study, talk, relate, learn and do if you are watching TV all the time? The cost of the being teased/entertained is high, financially and productively speaking. If only one family in each of our 2000 churches would give up cable for the year and direct those resources to the GCF, it would equal 1.44 million dollars! And think about how many books they might read as well :-)

A disclaimer is in order here . . . we have cable ourselves! Then again I don’t watch it at all (but lets remember that I do have three teenagers!) and plus it costs $7 a month. Does that make me a hypocrite?

fishing rabbits out of the ocean, and hunting fish in the forest

This is about how backward our world has become. How Muslim can the Muslim remain and still be in the Kingdom, and belong to the King? How Hindu can the Hindi be, and yet actually be an inheritor of the Kingdom? As we grapple with missional/contextual issues, these questions are pertinent for those in the West as well.

How rich can a rich person be before they can no longer pass through the eye of a needle? How sensual can a sexy person be and still be a part of the Bride of Christ? How much skin must one cover to be a model of Christ? How much food can a person eat a day and still be Holy as Christ is Holy? How secular can we be and still be in? How much prayer must a holy person offer each day to truly be holy? How much scripture must we read each day to have appropriately have had our quiet time? How much money can I spend on me and still love Jesus? How much time must I devote to evangelism to please Jesus? How much do my small sins (is there such a thing?) hurt me and Jesus, compared to the BIG ones my neighbor is doing? Is how much a person spends on entertainment important to Jesus? Just how much dying is required in this “crucify the flesh“ deal?

Ok ok I have started getting facetious ☺ But I think for the most part these are pretty valid questions (and I have dozens more!) . . . and questions that pertain well to lives that most of us are living. Too often we are hunting for fish in the forest and rabbits in the ocean - Bulgarian Proverb

Egg Dumping - the Easter problem

We have egg problems again this year. My neighbors are all coming by and giving me eggs. Laboriously, carefully, painstakingly painted and colored eggs Here is a photo of some simple ones.



Literally my neighbors are walking around the neighborhood giving and cracking eggs. The traditions connected with this practice are tough to talk about in the context of Christ’s death and resurrection . . . so let me explain some of the thinking behind this practice. People get these eggs blessed by the priest and then the blessed egg is buried in the vineyard to have God’s protection from hailstorms and to try to get God to bring a good harvest . . . some even claim that the egg is still good to eat a year later? In Serbia the first colored egg is kept until next Easter as a guarantee that the family will be healthy and secure. The rest of the eggs are used for Egg Dumping. It is an egg hitting tradition, where you hit everyone else’s egg and try to break theirs and preserve your own from cracking. I always lose at this game as you can see my effort in this picture.


According to the internet a 100 million eggs will be colored in Bulgaria, they will have special paint and designs in Croatia, and in Greece they will mostly just be red . . . signifying the tradition that Mary, the mother of Christ placed a full basket of eggs at the feet of the crucified Jesus and they all turned red from His blood.

As you can see, there is some truth mingled here with lots of fantasy and tradition. My coffee drinking neighbor (read post here) came and gave me four eggs . . . one for each member of my family that is at home at the moment. I just finally point blank asked him, “why the eggs, what is the significance for you?” To which he replied, “I don’t know, you need to ask the women folk.” We chuckled and then on impulse I said to him a standard Christian phrase for this part of the world, “Christ is risen!” and he answered me back, “He is risen indeed!” So in the middle of swapping eggs, we can still spout good solid theology and significant theology at that.

What does all this mean? Well it means that the reason for missional work in Orthodox countries is valid (and difficult) work. A different sort of egg dumping has occurred, in that eggs of Truth have been placed in a basket - eggs of fantasy, magic and culture, and then the whole basket was dropped (dumped). Now try to sort the Truth-egg from the other eggs and see what a quagmire you find yourself in. That is a pretty solid picture of what Truth faces in this part of the world. Sorting it out takes years . . . maybe a lifetime.

Great Friday?

“Fresh Lettuce” yelled one, “the juiciest tomatoes!” sang another, “a sale, a sale!” rang a third. It’s not known as Good Friday here, its Great Friday. The vendors of fresh vegetables hawked their wares from every side as I walked the street and market, along with thousands of others. Everyone shopping hard and buying up for the long Easter weekend.

I was flowing with the crowds when I hear someone yell, “komshe!” (neighbor!) at me. I looked up and indeed it was my closest neighbor. He motioned for me to come in and around, behind the produce stands that lined the market end to end. I have never been on this side of the stands . . . it was a very different perspective of the community. Then a more interesting thing started to happen . . . those that know me within the community were startled to see me sitting on the vendor’s side! It was interesting to see the various thoughts flowing across their faces.

Anyhoo back to my neighbor. He told me to sit down with him and have a coffee and we did . . . talking about our kids (our oldest two are very similar in ages). Then we began to talk about Great Friday as it is known here. It was sad to discover that he knew little about the meaning of Great Friday and even less about its significance. Pray that we will have more opportunities to sit and drink coffee and unpack the significance of Great Friday. Will you? It has taken almost three years of trust-building to get to this point where we can sit down and have a coffee as friends. As I have commented before time is view quite differently here, and as a foreigner it takes even longer. It’s hard to have enough patience . . . I want to tell him everyhting now!

apology

There are few things more frustrating than being foolish and needing to apologize. But that is where I find myself. I am sorry for the language I employed to bring attention to the post entitled, “Skimming Work Funds.” I apologize to anyone I offended, and most of all am sorry for confusing the issue further. The language I chose was inflammatory, and that was wrong on my part.

The worse part of it all is that the inflammatory language I used prevented about 98% of the folks who read this particular post, from working through the material contained in the post, or even dealing with it in a rational manner. Yet, that is certainly no defense.

But I am not sorry for having raised the issue. I was not referring to, nor complaining about Salary reductions (which are not salaries at all, but rather allowances). Instead the point of the entire post was the 15% administrative fee imposed on Mission-Field Approved Specials and Missionary Work Specials (Car funds and Outfit funds excepted). My points were as follows:

1. The Great Commission Fund (GCF) is in trouble; income is falling short. (Though, through the amazing generosity of some people, we have been bailed out of this current urgent situation!)
2. Giving to missionary projects and work funds are soaring (according to what one Board member told me).
3. Number two did not cause number one, but is rather a result of how number one is funded and disbursed in my opinion.
4. Re-appropriating money that givers intended for one thing, to something else (anything else!) needs to be questioned, even when you have a legal right to do so.
5. The reason for the rise in Work and Approved Specials (in my opinion) is that less and less money from the GCF is actually going overseas (I am referring to a less percentage of money, not an actual dollar amount) and this decrease is being address by other donors in the form of Approved Specials and Work Specials.
6. To keep us out of this quagmire, I suggested a two-fund system where we raise missions dollars that go to overseas missions, and that we raise North American dollars that fund North American ministries.

Again I am sorry for the language I chose to use and for the pain that I may have caused any individual or group. Unfortunately I will probably make more mistakes in the future. But this is a critical issue for us as Bolman and Deal say in their book Reframing Organizations “Organizational ethics must ultimately be rooted in soul - an organization’s understanding of its deeply held identity, beliefs and values.” God has more than enough resources to accomplish all His tasks for today, and His mercies are there fresh and new each day.