Carissa’s List of Firsts

I come from a small town in Illinois called Coulterville. Being from such a small area, there were a lot of things that I had never experienced before I came to South Africa. A few weeks ago, Lori Larson, from the CRM office, visited us here in Pretoria. She encouraged me to write down a list of my firsts…and here it is!

Before I came to South Africa, I had never:

Lived in a city
Had a roommate
Hung my underwear out to dry for all to see
Lived in a place that has a housekeeper and gardeners
Encountered an alarm system
Had wireless internet access
Cleaned a pool
Driven stick shift
Driven on the busy busy highway
Driven on the left side of the road
Fallen off a horse
Had a cast
Spent the night in the hospital as a patient
Had a sponge bath
Been to physical therapy
Had my eyebrows plucked
Eaten avocados
Eaten kangaroo biltong
Eaten milk tart
Eaten brie
Eaten a samosa
Ordered a ladies rump (200-gram steak)
Picked and eaten fresh raspberries
Been to a tea party
Seen Aladdin
Gone to a cricket match
Been on a ropes course
Seen a celebrity
Played chicken foot
Encountered someone who was high
Seen homeless people
Stayed at a bed and breakfast
Attended a Passover meal
Spent 24 hours in silence
Led a worship service
Led a prayer service
Sang in front of people
Been to a concert in a club
Been to church in a bar

and just tonight drank coffee

Why Community?

As I was recently reading Sub-Merge by John B. Hayes (Regal Books, 2006) I was reminded of one of the most disturbing facts regarding missionaries: “80 percent of those who leave the field before their committed time is up leave due to relational issues with peers” (p. 200). My wife and I were missionaries in Russia before we came to South Africa. Before I went to Russia in 1991, I was aware of this statistic and it hauntingly sat in the back of my mind. Fortunately for me, my teammates were committed to each other and to working through relational conflict. I believe this saved our team from sliding into the abyss of relational dysfunction. None of us left Russia due to relational issues, which was quite unusual.

Why is this so important? Hayes goes on to say, “…sustaining mission workers for the long term is essential if we are to help them get to their most influential, or impact, years. Mission effectiveness, perhaps more than most careers, comes with time.” I’ve seen numerous missionaries leave the field within their first two years in spite of the great amounts of time, effort and resources to get them there. This was troubling and disheartening for them, their teams and their supporters. Hayes continues, “(Relational friction that ultimately sabotages teams) can be pre-empted and/or prevented with deft leadership and an honest, caring community” (p. 200).

Creating healthy communities of faith is one of the most exciting, yet one of the most daunting aspects of NieuCommunities. I’m using the word “community” to mean a group of Christ-followers and Christ-seekers, who consistently travel through life together. Community doesn’t just happen by itself, and it isn’t a Utopian bliss where we all “just get along” and never have problems. What is community? Community is a way of living and relating. It is born out of our solitude and communion with God. It is a commitment to one another (think of all the “one another” passages in the Bible). It is serving. It is honouring relationships by resolving conflict in a godly and timely fashion. It is a great shaper of character. It is loving others more than yourself. It is unity of the Spirit. It is dying to self. And so the list goes on.

Although community never exists just for itself, and can never completely fulfil us, it does play a significant part in sustaining us. Our hope and desire in NieuCommunities is that we would learn how to live in deep community with others in a way that will not only sustain, but also encourage. Encourage each other toward a deeper communion with God. Encourage each other toward mission, fulfilling God’s calling upon our lives. Encourage those around us to seek and follow Christ.

I ask you to pray for our community today. Pray for our apprentices and staff as we seek to live out the above realities of community. Living in the midst of a loving, God-centered community may be the most precious gift we can give to our apprentices. A gift that they will take with them into whatever situation they find themselves in the future. A gift that will, hopefully, multiply as others come in touch with authentic community.

Do you have a community that is sustaining and encouraging you? If not, then I encourage to earnestly look for one. If you do, then I would like to ask, “What might you do to help make your community all that it could and should be?

Faith Over Fear

Fear and faith are one in the same. They are the belief that something invisible is coming to pass. This saying is posted on the wall of the livingroom in the house that I’ve spent the last two years living in. I’ve read it many times, but am not sure I’ve ever really understood its depth until now.

So often, I’ve chosen fear, whether it was out of ignorance or sheer hopelessness. I laugh at how many times God has given me so many reasons and opportunities to put my faith in Him, blatant ones at that and I’ve chosen to walk in fear instead. For some reason, at that very moment I choose, fear seems like the easier route, the lazy route; I don’t want to have to make a decision that will require any work on my part.

Where it begins to get difficult is when I realize at those moments of choosing that when I choose to walk in fear, I begin to understand what I am missing by not choosing to have faith in my Creator. In a sense, its almost as though a challenge has been put before me. God says, “See what happens when you put your faith in me. What do you have to lose?” In my own extremely limited thoughts and perspective, I find myself believing that I could lose a lot. I could lose the respect of others who don’t believe in what I’m doing, I could lose my diginity in making a fool of myself, etc. But when I stop and look at the bigger picture, when I understand how limited my perspective is in comparison to God’s, I see how none of that really matters.

About a month ago, I was presented with an opportunity to pray healing over a complete stranger laying in a hospital bed across the room from Carissa. It wasn’t one of those moments where God lays something so heavily upon your heart that you know you have to do it, but rather, it was a simple invitation where I could have said “yes,” or “no.” It wasn’t until the wee hours of the morning that I finally got the courage to accept this invitation. I walked over to her, asked her permission to pray for her, laid my hand on her and prayed for God’s healing. When I was finished praying, I held her hand for a bit and wondered to myself what had just happened and what God would do. She wasn’t instantly healed then and there and I will admit to a slight dip in my heart as I thought I had failed in some way.

Through some helpful insight from close friends at home (melina, jenn & sonnet , I was reminded that what I walked through was not a failure, but rather a step toward the strengthening of my faith. It is always Christ’s invitation to pray for and to intercede for those who don’t have the strength or the will to do it themselves. I said “yes” to faith instead of fear, and while the enemy did sneak in there and whisper into my ear, “Psst! You FAILED! It didn’t mean anything. The girl wasn’t healed,” I would rather have stepped out in faith and FAILED miserably and made a fool of myself than to ignore the invitation and forever wonder what God would have done had I stepped out.

Universally, failing is considered apart of the learning process, whether in our walk with the Lord, or in physical, everyday activities. We learn from falling down and getting back up again. I am not saying that my prayer over that 16 year old Afrikaaner girl was a failure, but rather a cornerstone foundation for building my faith and maybe even posing an opportunity to show Christ’s light and love to this girl.

I know that God has called me to be a prayer warrior, an intercessor for those who I meet on my journey through life. As I was reminded by a very dear friend of mine, “You should not despise small beginnings,” so I am beginning to understand that where I am, is in a place of preparation. God is building within me the foundations I need to continue on the path that He has designated for me.

Choosing fear disables my growth in Christ, while choosing faith builds the foundation for growth. When you come across fear, if it pushes confusion and tension, it is not of our Creator. I speak from experience as I have been learning to discern where healthy and unhealthy fears come from…I am still learning.

Choosing faith over fear may require an effort on our part, but in the long run, shouldn’t it be worth the risk? Keep in mind too, that as I write all of this, I am preaching to myself as I still struggle from time to time, but I am confident in our Father’s character…He is always, only, ever good.

What will you choose to believe?

Jewish Roots

As the Easter weekend has passed by for us, we took time to reflect on the Jewish roots of our faith especially as they relate to the central event of our faith, Christ’s death and resurrection.

I’ve lived in Israel for a couple of years and I’ve appreciated both the Jewish and Arab expressions of faith that I’ve experienced. Surrounding the events of Easter, the Jewish Passover envelopes the full significance of what Christ was doing during that Passion Week. So this past Thursday, our community took time to have a Passover meal and reflect on its significance not only for Jewish faith, but ours as well.

The Passover meal, although a huge Jewish feast, is not a meal with the most scrumptious food you can think of. Some of the food you would prefer not eat. Parsley dipped in salt water or bitter herbs is usually not appetizing, but each piece of food and each drink has special significance as it relates to the Hebrews exodus from Egypt over 3,000 years ago. And as we move through the meal, we can see how the entire Passover meal is meant to remember the Hebrews’ “salvation” out of Egypt, but we also see (and taste) the meal calling God’s people to remember God’s promises yet to be fulfilled, which we can see being fulfilled by Christ.

What if other Jewish practices and feasts were observed? How much of our faith would have fuller meaning and significance if the Church would take time to understand its mother faith? Or maybe we could just start by actually studying the Old Testament valuing its significance?

I hope each of you have more and more chances to experience the fullness of our faith found in God’s commands to the Hebrews long ago.

Being Among

This week was the first week of our submerging posture, where we’re focusing on serving and “being among”–submerging into people’s lives. To kick things off, we were asked to pick a person or place we’d felt drawn to, and spend Tuesday through Thursday staying with that person/in that place. The idea was to spend a concentrated amount of time in someone else’s world, spending time with people, and considering what submerging looks like. I’ve felt drawn toward ministry in Soshanguve, so I made plans to stay there with Granny Beauty and her family.

The three of us going to Soshanguve made our way there by taxi. Taxis here usually consist of a minibus packed with as many people as will possibly fit. White people don’t usually ride taxis at all. Tyler, Katie, and I found a guy who directed us to a taxi parked at the side of the road. This particular taxi sported a sticker on the back reading: “Thank God I’m a black man. Amen.” Appreciating this irony, we three white people piled in, clutching scraps of paper with directions to our various destinations. After a 45-minute wait for more passengers (a final total of 11), we were on our way.

When Tyler and I arrived at Granny’s (over an hour later than anticipated), we were warmly welcomed by the whole family. One of Granny’s daughters, Emily, gave us African names (for me: Lerato, which means “love”, and for Tyler: Kebelo, which means “given”). We were told that we would be speaking fluent Sotho by Thursday–an ambitious goal, indeed!

We spent the first afternoon playing hide and seek with some of the kids (this served as a whirlwind tour of their home!) and I also had the opportunity to chat a bit with several of the women in the family. One of the girls in particular, Winnie, was full of questions about the Bible. She was reading Genesis before going to bed on Tuesday night, and she peppered me with questions about the creation story–why would God do this? What if Adam and Eve hadn’t sinned? Why did God make the man first? A really great conversation came out of her questions, and her spiritual curiosity was exciting to see.

As the weekend went on, I encountered first hand some different aspects of faith in this family. Displayed on one wall in Granny’s 4-room block house is a small plaque that proclaims: “We belong to Jesus.” Just across the corner from it is Granny’s certificate for being a sangoma, or traditional healer–a practice that includes herbal remedies and calling on ancestors for guidance and healing. This mix of beliefs became quite apparent on Wednesday afternoon. Shortly after I fielded more questions about the Bible with another family member, two women carrying a large bag came in to chat with Granny. Before long, they were pulling smaller bags out of the large bundle, and Granny began measuring herbs and bark and roots into small bowls–she was purchasing herbs for her work as a sangoma. It was an odd juxtaposition to the conversations I’d had with different people thus far about the Bible, and I started praying about what my response should be to this very different aspect of culture and faith here. This is something I’m still processing!

My time in Sosh gave me a lot to think about as I start to look at ministry in the coming months. I was glad I was able to talk more deeply with several of the women in Granny’s family, as well as just spend time getting to know them. But most of all, my time there left me with a lot of questions about what submerging should look like for me. This experience connected directly to a lot of things God has brought to my mind over the last year. Something I’ve struggled with–back home in California and now here–is the idea of “shipping in” for ministry outside the community in which I live. I’m seeing more and more the importance of incarnational ministry–being among those I’m ministering to. After all, this is how Jesus reached out to us: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:14).

As a community of faith, we want to emphasize “being among” instead of asking others to come to us. Being convinced that “you submerge best where you live” and that “the best ministry happens where life takes place” (ideas we’ve talked about a lot this past week), I wonder what that should look like for me as I live in Pretoria North–a nice suburban neighborhood–and go to do ministry in Soshanguve–a poor black township. I know mere presence makes a big impact–that I would want to spend time with families in their homes in Soshanguve means so much to them. But what does presence mean? At what point does it truly make a significant impact? How can I truly “be among” this family and these women I feel God is calling me to build relationships with?

We were given several questions to consider during this submerging experience–questions which continue to linger in my mind:

-What will it take for me to truly “be among”?
-What will it take of myself to be where God wants me to be?
-How is submerging going to be significantly more impacting than simply “going to do ministry” in this context?
-How deeply do I feel God calling me to submerge? What might it look like?
-What is submerging going to take?

I encourage you to consider these questions for your own life, in whatever ministry setting you find yourself. And let us know!