The Ghana Experience – Part 2

Posted on September 6, 2005 by me

If you haven’t read Part 1, start there.

YWAM Housing As I said, it was exhausting, but in a very good way; nothing we did (even sitting on the beach watching kids and fishermen) was filler. They weren’t just trying to keep us busy, the good foks at YWAM Ghana had a purpose for everything they were doing. It wasn’t always planned as well as we would have liked, but we adapted, and they adapted for us, and it worked.

The second point I will make about my trip to Ghana – and I use the word “my” on purpose, as I am looking at this more or less existentially as opposed to a “what I did on my summer vacation” kind of way – is that it stretched me. Or, at least I thought I was being stretched. In reality, I found that my limits were much larger than I thought, like Indiana Jones in “The Last Crusade,” where he steps out on to what looks like empty air, to find a quite solid rock bridge (wow, what a cool analogy, like stepping out on “the rock,” you know…). Okay, enough silliness.

I was exhaused when I arrived, after 30+ hours of travel, and I think that just being that tired had a lot to do with my initial culture-shock. That, and the heat (everyone kept telling us how cool it was, compared to the past few weeks). This was also the furthest I had been away from home, ever, and I was not in control, of anything. Thank goodness for international cell phone service; I was able to call home, and connect with the world from which I was now physically removed.

I begged off doing much the next morning, but as I “caught the groove” of the church we were visiting, and realized that I was not without something to share with these people, and that they had things to share with me, I began to ease in a bit.

They made us feel as “at home” as possible, trying to give us food that we could at least recognize. Lots of fried chicken, lots of rice, and this wonderful red sauce that I am positive kept me on pepto-bismal throughout the trip. The pineapple was absolutely incredible- I still miss the pineapple. The people were absolutely wonderful – much more gracious than anywhere else I’ve been.

We had also each brought ample supplies of Starbucks coffee and French presses, so we were not without a little taste of home (except for our 2-3 days in the Central Region, where we learned to appreciate Nescafe – it’s really not that bad, if it’s all you have).

By the time we were ready to leave, about 10 days later, it had begun to feel like home, and I had some mixed feelings about leaving, already thinking about when I could return.

Next: thoughts on cross-cultural ministry.

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Community Questions

Posted on September 5, 2005 by me

Okay, let’s suppose you invite some friends over for a potluck-style dinner. A few of the people you’ve known for years, and are very comfortable with, some are newer acquaintances, and a couple of people are friends of friends. You have plenty of food, and everyone seems to be enjoying themselves.

At some point between the meal and serving dessert and coffee, you get everyone’s attention, and begin to make a little speech. You thank everyone for coming, compliment the cooks on the wonderful food, then proceed to go down a list of things everyone could do to be better friends.

Our friendships, you say, aren’t good enough. We can all do a bit more, and try a bit harder to be better friends. Friendships require work, and people giving to one another. Our potlucks need some work, too.

First, too many people brought chips & salsa, and more attention needs to be given to main dishes. People came late, and didn’t help set up. It would also be wonderful and very good for the community if someone else would volunteer to host the next gatherings, and you’ll pass around sign-up sheets. We could use some better entertainment, so we’ll audition people for next time. And, would people please stay and help clean up.

Just how many people do you think would show up for your next party? Or, even want to be your friends?

However, this is common for our church gatherings. I don’t think we understand community at all. We call it community, but is community just a name we call the program? What is really driving our gathering together? Is it because we want to be together? Is it really because we have a common desire to gather and worship? Sometimes, wonderfully, it is. I’ve been a part of such groups, and it’s great. But, I don’t know if it’s the rule, or the exception.

Certainly, community, and any relationship, requires effort. Even a potluck-style gathering requires work. But, can community be built by telling people they aren’t doing enough to be community? Or, are we just building an organization?

Perhaps it’s my cynical nature, but I wonder if church would change if the need for “tithing units” didn’t exist? If our churches were not hierarchical, pyramid-shaped structures, but were flatter structures, where a few leaders didn’t depend on the others for their incomes or position, would they be happier with smaller groups? Would we even want to be in relationship with all of the people we try to “disciple?”

This is not necessarily an indictment of any particular group(s) or person(s) or even program(s), and I truly mean that. I was just thinking about how many churches talk and talk about the need for community, and wondering if their paradigms even allow for true community to exist. Perhaps they wouldn’t even like community if it happened?

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The Ghana Experience

Posted on August 31, 2005 by me

YWAM Ghana

In March I went to Ghana along with my brother-in-law, Fred Allen, and Ken Perkins, to be guest teachers at the YWAM base in Tema. It was, for me, an incredibly stretching experience. I have wanted to write a recap of the trip, but so far I haven’t been able to find an appropriate way of wrapping it up in a small enough package.

I will say a couple of things about the trip: One, it was exhausting, in a good way. Fred had asked them to keep us busy, and they had no problem doing that. We hit the ground running, as it were, getting into Tema on Saturday evening (next time I go to a foreign country I’ll try to arrive in daylight, so at least I can see where I am), then speaking Sunday morning at a local church and that evening at the YWAM evening service.

We were scheduled to teach the first week at their normal DTS school (3 sessions per day), the School of Worship (2-3 sessions per day) and a moning seminar. Fred took the majority of the seminar, and Ken and I split most of the other 2 schools. Then, for 4 evenings we held “revival” meetings at a mission church planted in the middle of a shanty town; that story in itself would take a while to tell.

Saturday, we held a worship conference (it was supposed to end around noon, but as I recall it went well into the afternoon). Sunday we had a “day off” as it were, as we traveled to the central coast region and spent some time visiting the oldest slaving castle on the Gold Coast (another story in itself) and discovered our hotel was walking distance from an un-touristed, palm-lined beach. Monday and Tuesday we spoke at a Leadership Conference attended by several key church planters in that region; these days ended in the early afternoon, so Monday afternoon we had a bit more time to relax by the Atlantic. Wednesday Ken and I had a very quick shopping trip to a craft market in Accra, then we were off to the airport for the 30+ hour trip home.

So, it was exhausting.

As this is probably long enough for one blog entry, I’ll continue with pt 2 another day.

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The Occasionally Positive Consequences of Vanity

Posted on August 28, 2005 by me

Okay, so I freely admit it – I google myself on occasion. It has often been quite interesting, as I see myself quoted and “borrowed” and linked to in various blogs and sites around the world – sometime I’ll list some of them.

Today, I had the very pleasant surprise of discovering that I was mentioned in a high school memory in a blog by Mike Haubrich, a guy I haven’t seen or communicated with in about 30 years, and in a nice way at that. (If I recall correctly, Mike was, among other things, the guy who turned me on to John Prine.) We grew up in the Lake Woebegon-like community of Hallock, Minnesota, you betcha. Mike is a talented writer, so his memories are fun to read, and you’ll probably enjoy reading them even if you’ve never been there. Here’s an excerpt:

Rich had always wanted to see the Northern Lights, he had heard about them. The day that he and Jay got to Hallock, they were lucky enough to run into Alden Swan. Even though Alden had graduated from high school, he was still living in Hallock, playing Christian Rock when he got the chance, teaching me a thing or two about bass guitar. He was a good role model kind of guy. Rich asked him about the Northern Lights. According to Alden, “Heck, they practically live here. Don’t worry, you will have plenty of chances to see them!”

Northern lights are way cool. Kind of like hallucinagenics, but the colors are really there. I haven’t seen them in years.

Check out Mike’s blog, and read the whole story of the Baptist missionaries, Rich & Jay. For the start of the topic on my home town (you should have Paul Simon running through your head about now), go back into July 27, I think it is: tuibguy.messagemonster.com.

So far, my vanity searches have been good experiences – people actually read some things I write, and no one has called me a wacko or anything evil (as far as I can remember). Today was especially nice.

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