WCD: Transformative Discipleship For Mission Today

How do you learn to love and serve God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind? Not by using the conventional ways the world approaches learning.  I’m a pastor who’s been to seminary – a very good seminary for which I am grateful and which am happy to support – but I think the Church has become a bit too worldly in the way we train our leaders.  Learning to love and serve God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength is not merely an academic exercise.  It requires the use of all your heart, soul, mind and strength.  Discipleship is meant to be holistic, teaching us to love and serve God using relationships, our experience, prayer, worship, mission, service, and the intellect.

This is why I love the World Christian Discipleship Program. It’s a nine-month program designed for recent college graduates who want to learn to follow Jesus in community together.  The goal is to prepare them to live as missional Christians in any vocation.  Participants study early Church writings, create rules of life as they learn about spiritual formation, and  world mission.  During this time they’re volunteering in a local church and learning to practice living missionally in their workplaces. Participants also go on a short-term mission trip (international or domestic), giving them a cross-cultural mission experience as part of their missional and spiritual formation.  And this isn’t just for people who think they’re called to traditional ministry. It’s open to anyone. The congregation I pastor now has three people participating in it – one’s a nurse, one’s a social worker and future missionary, and one’s a seminary graduate preparing for overseas mission. And I believe that WCD will prepare each of these young women to glorify God wherever he calls them after this.

The biggest reason why I’m excited about WCD, though, is that I’ve experienced the transforming power of its components myself.  One of the books participants read is The Philokalia, a collection of monastic writings from the early Church which has completely transformed my own personal discipleship, the way I pray, the way I read scripture, and the way I approach my role as a pastor. In short, writings like this have encouraged me to pursue prayer and holiness in ways that I never before thought possible.  And with the way WCD is designed, such powerful material for spiritual formation is connected directly to mission.  Participants seek sanctification for the sake of mission in the world.  So they read Lesslie Newbigin beside St. Teresa of Avila. They learn to pray without ceasing while working part-time jobs in the neighborhoods where they live. They laugh and cry together and learn from each other what it means to be the Body of Christ.

I’ve spent three years as a church-planter doing bi-vocational ministry, learning what it means to be engaged in mission in a post-Christendom environment.  WCD offers both the training that I wish I had when preparing for ministry and the transformation I want members of the congregation I lead today to have. Anyone who wants to be truly transformed by God for the life of the world should consider applying.

Invisible Children Film “Tony” at Upper Room

On Sunday, September 11th, Upper Room will be hosting a team from Invisible Children, sharing their new documentary “Tony”. As the world remembers the tenth anniversary of the September 11th disasters, this documentary will show us yet another facet of terrorism. The film follows the story of Tony, one of the invisible children from Uganda, as he comes to the US to raise awareness about child soldiers, but returns home to face terrorist attacks in Kampala, Uganda. Watch the trailer to learn more.

Upper Room’s screening will be at 7:00pm on Sunday, September 11th, at 5828 Forward Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15218. Email us at church@pghupperroom.com if you have any questions.

“Hiding” Presented by Liberty in North Korea (LiNK)

On Thursday, March 3, Upper Room will be partnering with Liberty in North Korea (LiNK) to host a screening of Hiding. The film will provide a glimpse into the perils oppressed North Koreans face as they escape to China in search of freedom. As LiNK says,

“While the world focuses on North Korea’s security issue, hundreds of thousands of North Koreans continue to be enslaved in prison camps today. Up to 300,000 have also escaped to China – seeking food, medicine, work, or freedom from political and religious oppression. Among the 300,000, 70 to 90 percent of North Korean women are trafficked and sold into the sex trade, and more and more refugees are fleeing to Southeast Asia to escape imprisonment upon repatriation by China. Through LiNK’s networks, these refugees can be helped and given new lives. ‘Hiding’ is a film about a group of North Korean refugees hiding in China today, and their attempt to escape.”

The screening will take place at 7pm at 5828 Forward Ave. in Squirrel Hill. For more details, check out the Facebook event page. Questions? Email chris@pghupperroom.com.

Team World Vision and Clean Water in Africa

Today is Blog Action Day (see Blog Action Day), and writers all around the world are writing on the theme of clean water. I’m no expert about it, but World Vision says that at least 20 percent of the world does not have safe drinking water, and lack of access to safe water is the number one cause of preventable death. So what can we do about it?

It’s seven months away (exactly) but on May 15, 2011, several friends and I will be running in the Pittsburgh Marathon for Team World Vision to raise money for drilling clean water wells in Kenya and Ethiopia. One well costs upwards of $13,000, and we have a small team, so our goal is only a portion of that amount, but any giving will help go a long way to provide clean water for those who need it most. Again, I’m no expert, but this is something tangible we can do to transform lives. So, please support us. For more on what we’re doing with Team World Vision, go to my Team World Vision page.

Haiti and Human Trafficking

I recently came across this article about human trafficking after massive disasters.  As perverse and evil as it may sound, people actually prey upon young children and vulnerable women in the days and weeks following major natural disasters.  Rather than led to shelter and provision, they are lured into domestic, agricultural, and sexual slavery.  Pray that children would be protected, law-enforcement and security personnel (to the extent that they’re present) would be vigilant, and that traffickers would not prey upon the victims of this disaster.

Human trafficking may seem undefeatable, but there is reason to have hope.  This Friday, January 29th, at 7:30pm Upper Room will be hosting a screening of the documentary At The End of Slavery.  The film, produced by IJM (where the author of the article linked-above previously worked), exposes the reality of human trafficking, but also the hope of shutting down the trafficking business.  If you’re in Pittsburgh, especially around Squirrel Hill, come join us.

At The End of Slavery: End Human Trafficking

January is Human Trafficking Prevention Month.  In response, Upper Room will be showing a documentary on human trafficking called At The End of Slavery on Friday January 29th.  It’s at 7:30  pm at 5828 Forward Ave. in Squirrel Hill. Check out the trailer:  At The End Of Slavery – Extended Trailer from International Justice Mission on Vimeo.

Dying of Consumption

I remember the day quite clearly: I was a junior in high school – a time when I was active in our local Young Life group, regularly attending church, and eager to grow in my faith – and I was opening my mail at my mom’s house after school.  The envelope that most excited me was from “Sound & Spirit” – a mail-order Christian music distributor.  It was one of those “Buy 1 CD get 13 FREE” deals that were popular before mp3s were invented.  I opened it up, flipped through the catalog inside and smiled to myself, thinking “Wow - there’s so much I can buy that will make it easier to be a Christian!”

The word consumption used to apply to disease.  It described a wasting away of the body, or was used to describe tuberculosis.  Marmeladov, the drunk man whom Raskolnikov encounters early on in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, speaks of his wife dying from consumption.  Two books I’m reading right now think the Church is dying from consumption.

The first is Paul Louis Metzger’s Consuming Jesus and the second is Soong-Chan Rah’s The Next Evangelicalism.  Both trace the American evangelical church’s division along race and class lines to the consumerization of American society.  And there’s much to support that idea: the Church certainly has played mistress and not prophet to the economic structures of the West.  As Rah notes, to be a good Christian in America is to be a good consumer.  Even immigrant congregations face pressure to assimilate to the unholy (Next Evangelicalism pp. 60-61).  He cites two examples that are particularly disturbing.  The first is President Bush’s charge to Americans after 9-11: “I encourage you all to go shopping more” (p. 48).  I remember hearing these words on television eight years ago. I remember wondering then why it didn’t strike anyone around me as odd (much as I wondered silently why so many of my Christian friends in college eagerly supported the war in Iraq).  The best advice this “evangelical” President could give was to shop more?  Really?  . . .  The second example Rah cites is that of a professor at Colorado Christian University who was fired because “his lessons were too radical and undermined the school’s commitment to the free enterprise system.”  That quote isn’t from Rah’s own words; it’s the statement given by the university president for why this professor was fired.  That president also said “I don’t think there is another system that is more consistent with the teachings of Jesus” than free market capitalism (p. 50).  I’m ashamed that this happened at a school that’s inside my home state.

Rah continues, “The Western, white captivity of the church means that capitalism can be revered as the system closest to God and the consequent rampant materialism and consumerism of the capitalist system become acceptable vices” (p. 50).  The Church doesn’t just fail to confront consumerism, it buys into it hook, line, and sinker: Buy 1 CHRISTIAN CD Get 13 Free CHRISTIAN CDS and God Will Love You More!

And yet the system is somewhat inescapable.  To cite the books mentioned above, I linked to their Amazon pages. (Though, no, neither was free to me nor was I paid anything to write this.)  Still I have to confess I’ve traded the Sound & Spirit subscription for a book fetish, thinking at times like so many other “Ministers of the Word” that the answers to all of my questions can be found in possessing more books. 

But there are changes we must make to bear authentic witness to Christ’s Kingdom.  In Advent, Upper Room will be participating in Advent Conspiracy, encouraging people to spend less and give more meaningful or alternative gifts this Christmas.  I look forward to the conversation we’ll have at Upper Room’s Fall Retreat in two weeks about Consuming Jesus.  And  I pray that the Spirit will guide us in finding concrete ways to fight of the disease of consumption.

Thoughts on Siddharth Kara’s “Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery”

Yesterday I finished reading Siddharth Kara’s book Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery.  There are about 28 million people in slavery across the world today, only a fraction of whom are sex slaves.  But Kara’s book gives a horrifying glimpse into the very real evil of sex trafficking.  He spent years travelling to hotspots for this form of slavery, such as Falkland Road in Mumbai and the Salaria in Rome.  In each place he spent time interviewing victims of human trafficking, often doing his own detective work in finding the brothels that housed slaves and interviewing them secretly inside the brothel.  The stories are harrowing: young girls beaten, starved, drugged, and forced to serve customers 20 times a day.

Kara blames the rise of sex trafficking on several factors.  First is economic globalization, including IMF policies that crippled the economies of former Soviet republics and some southeast Asian countries in the 1990s.  This led to poverty than in many such places created a desperation for jobs which allowed people to be tricked into believing that traffickers offering legitimate jobs in the cities, only to discover too late that they were becoming slaves.    Second is gender bias against women in many cultures, especially in India, Nepal, Albania, and parts of southeast Asia.  Third are poorly implemented governmental strategies to oppose trafficking, including a lack of extradition agreements between certain countries, policies which focus only on the transport of slaves, and corrupt and easily bribed judges, prosecutors, police forces, and border-guards.

Given this analysis of the situation, Kara gives a detailed proposal for a way to fight human trafficking in general and human trafficking in particular.  Included are suggestions for more just economic policies and improved techniques for governmental opposition to slavery.  The goal of these policies, for Kara, is to increase the cost of doing business for slave-owners to the point that slavery is not an economically sustainable business model.  Current fines imposed on convicted traffickers are surprisingly small, and the rates of conviction are so low that human trafficking is (bizarrely) a low-risk venture.  If fines and prison sentences (and of course prosecution and conviction rates) were raised to the levels he suggests, Kara believes that slave-owners would no longer think the money they generate from slaves is worth the risk and the business side of human trafficking would crumble. 

So, writing as a pastor, I’m wondering what can the Church do to fight against this manifestation of evil?  Certainly we can give. Numerous times in the book Kara relates how non-profits and NGOs that work against trafficking or provide shelter for victims are underfunded and poorly supported. Kara gave part of the proceeds from the book to Free the Slaves . At a conference a year ago I met Mark Wexler, of Not For Sale.  Their I am page has ideas of ways to help presented in such a way that its accessible to anyone.  For people of faith, they have the Underground Church Network.

Yet even beyond the scope of these practical human attempts, I wonder is there more the Church can do?  Some stories in the book seemed to reveal the blatantly demonic.  Nigerian Edo women, frequently trafficked to Italy, undergo a ritual that gives their captors and owners a “spiritual” power over them, preventing them from even testifying against the traffickers.  Kara writes that when forced to testify, “Some suffered epileptic fits or entered catatonic trances rather than break their juju vows” (p. 16; see also pages 89-92).  Thinking of Ephesians 6:12 where Paul says “our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but . . . against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places,” I wonder what this means for evils such as slavery and human trafficking.   On another level, how much of the problem really lies in the human heart?  What if ”customers” who purchase prostitutes repented of lust?  What difference would it make if the Church were serious in its discipleship and proclamation about promoting gender-equality (Galatians 3:28)?  Or if we really confronted the sin of greed that drives the capitalist imperialism that Kara says created the economic conditions that allow slavery to flourish?