Eliot was a theologian, Bible translator, and political writer.  He translated the Bible into Algonquin, or Massachusetts, in 1661 (that's right, I just wrote 1661).

He is most known for his efforts to create a new civil order among the Indians he served as a missionary.  He emphasized the need to protect indigenous culture while at the same time organizing the Indians into towns focused on living a Christian life both privately and publicly.  He was known for leading the "Praying Indians"

Ultimately, his vision of a Christian society among the Indians would be destroyed by English settlers who didn't like to see the advancements in Indian culture that missionaries were introducing (literacy, health reform, and a respect of basic human rights) and were threatened by the Indians' alliance with France.

Wikipedia notes that Eliot's book was the first book to be banned by an American government (not the US government as it didn't yet exist).  He proposed a system of government based on Exodus 18 which proposed dethroning the King.

That can get you into trouble.

You can download the whole book here.

Sources:  Evangelical Dictionary of World Missions, ed. by Moreau, The Christian Commonwealth by Eliot, and Wikipedia.

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This is how Jonathan Edwards enjoyed this little exercise:

…the beauties of nature are really emanations or shadows of the excellencies of the Son of God.

 

So that, when we are delighted with flowery meadows, and gentle breezes of wind, we may consider that we see only the emanations of the sweet benevolence of Jesus Christ. When we behold the fragrant rose and lily, we see His love and purity. So the green trees, and fields, and singing of birds are the emanations of His infinite joy and benignity. The easiness and naturalness of trees and vines are shadows of His beauty and loveliness. The crystal rivers and murmuring streams are the footsteps of His favor, grace, and beauty. When we behold the light and brightness of the sun, the golden edges of an evening cloud, or the beauteous bow, we behold the adumbrations of His glory and goodness; and, in the blue sky, of His mildness and gentleness. There are also many things wherein we may behold His awful majesty, in the sun in his strength, in comets, in thunder, in the hovering thunder-clouds, in ragged rocks, and the brows of mountains.

That so blesses me!

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As a part of my PhD research I have been studying the phenomenon of how movements take root and spread.  Lately, I have been challenged by James D. Hunter's book, To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World.

For a review of Hunter's book, this Christianity Today review is excellent.  There has been some excellent "back and forth" between some authors.  Both Andy Crouch and Chuck Colson responded (they get a rather strong critique in Hunter's book).

The premise of much Christian writing and thinking has been that if you change the hearts and souls of a people, their culture will change.  Hunter disputes this premise.  He notes that if it were true, American culture would be far more Christian, as the majority of people in the US claim to Christians (yes, he does deal with the argument of people saying they are Christian but not acting like it).

He notes that subgroups within cultures often have more sway than the majority group.  He cites Jews and homosexuals as subgroups that have far greater cultural influence in America than Christianity does.  He makes the argument that one must capture the hearts and minds of the elites in order to have real and lasting impact.

In the end, he takes the "easy way" and combines both the "top down" and "bottom up" approach into what he called "Faithful Presence."  It is a focus on both institutional and personal renewal.

This has great implications for those seeking to foster Christian movements globally, if true.

As I have read this book one movement has stood out to me that is not a good fit for his model.  The church in China has not been a movement of either elites or of institutional reform.  From the perspective of this outsider at least, the growth of Chinese Christianity has happened in an almost completely grassroots fashion.

I am grappling with these ideas.  The Pioneers' missionary force, at over 2,000 strong, is mostly aimed at the grassroots approach.  Should we press on in this mode?

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Thousands of words per week, I am sure.

Most of it has a pretty small audience.

Most of it is not anything that I share with anybody or that has any "wheels."

Currently I am writing the following items:

1. Research Questionnaire (PhD program)
2. Discussion Guide (PhD program)
3. Strategic Plan (for Pioneers – group project with leaders in Pioneers-USA)
4. Book reviews on multiple books (PhD program)
5. This blog
6. 3-4 books in the idea stage
7. 1 blog post for another blog
8. An article for an academic journal
9. Hundreds of emails per year (3,203 at work alone, not including the ones on my personal address)

That list just came off the top of my head – imagine what it would be if I really thought about it!  That adds up to thousands and thousands of words.

In light of all this, I struggle with the writing projects I really want to do.  They never get done.  Things like good blog posts that bring meaning and something useful to people.  A book project.  Soon, my dissertation.

Think about, for example, Rodney Stark or Mark Noll both of whom write more books than I have time to read.  Lately, I have been amazed by Ed Stetzer, who seems to write a book a week (ok, not really, but you get that impression if you follow him on twitter).

So here is my question: How can some authors pump out so much "stuff" all the time?  Is it simply a matter of managing time and priorities?  Or do they not have "real jobs" with meetings and budgets and other time demanding tasks? 

HELP ME!!

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How about the world's most diverse city?

To answer this question, one must be able to "count" diversity.  I propose the following categories:

• Ethnicity / Race
• Languages Spoken
• Religion
• Diverse Cities

So here goes… what nation on earth is the most diverse?

Ethnicity / Race

Ethnicity is very complex.  Is it related only to physical characteristics or does it also have linguistic aspects.   A country like Papua New Guinea with lots of distinct languages and cultures ranks low on ethnicity scales if the determiner is something like skin color. Race is also problematic in large part because within major racial grouping there are many different cultures.

I am going to suggest that ethnicity and race are not very helpful for determining the answer to this question.

No points awarded.

Languages Spoken

Shamelessly stealing text from the CIA (can I get in trouble for this?) is perhaps the best list of countries and their spoken languages that I could find.  Here it is:

Top 20 Languages by Number of Languages Spoken
Data source: CIA World Fact Book.

Score a point for Papua New Guinea (PNG).

PNG is very diverse linguistically and culturally. The religious views of PNG'ers are divided between Protestant Christianity and Tribal animism.  There are also plenty of "cargo cults" present.  Islam is seeking to influence the nation as well.

Religion

Religious diversity is a tough one.  From my research, there are three countries that lay claim to being the most religiously diverse.  There are Indonesia, India, and the United States (I am sure there are others but these come up the most).

Indonesia is home to the largest Muslim population in the world.  They also have a Buddhist and Hindu presence.  Christians make up as much as 15% of the population.  Islam makes up for 80% of the population.  Islamic repression of other religions, however, would lead me to believe that they are not the most religiously diverse nation.  So, I would strike them off the list pretty quickly.

India is the birthplace of four major religions.  Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism.  it is roughly 80% Hindu but also has a substantial islamic population.  Within Hinduism there is great diversity as well.  India could be a contender for the title of most diverse nation religiously. 

However, the title has to go to the United States.

Diane Eck, in her book, A New Religious America : How a Christian Country Has Now Become the World's Most Religiously Diverse Nation, makes a strong case that the United States has become the nation with the greatest number of religions present within its borders.  She traces this in part to a change in immigration law back in the 1960's.  It's the immigration angle that the United States has over other contenders in this category.

Even Canada and Australia, with their relaxed immigration policies, pale by comparison when it comes to the sheer numbers of immigrants who, of course, bring their religions with them.  35 million Americans are legal immigrants who were not born in the USA.  Millions more are in the US illegally.  That's 35 million out of the world's 200 million immigrants (source can be found here).  Many immigrants to the US are hispanic and therefore either Catholic or Protestant.  However, in "2005 alone more people from Muslim countries became legal permanent U.S. residents — nearly 96,000 — than in any year in the previous two decades" (source can be found here).

Score a point for the USA and this time, the referee can't take that point away.

Most Diverse City in the World

I could find no conclusive answer to this question.  Toronto certainly claims the title, but the data is very suspect.  

I know this is very unscientific, but on the various Internet lists I found the following names most commonly:

1. London [United Kingdom]
2. Toronto
3. New York City
4. Amsterdam
5. Los Angeles

Again, I will be the first to admit that this is non-scientific. However, the US has two cities in the top five list (I was trying to be objective, HONEST!).

I think the US scores a point here for having two cities in the "most mentioned" list.

Summary

SO…. This (biased?) American chooses the United States as the most diverse nation on the planet.

You don't have to take it from me!  I invite you to comment – feel free to critique this assesment and tell me if you feel that it is wrong.

Note:  Population Reference Bureau is an excellent website on population statistics and trends is http://prb.org. Check out their annual global report: http://prb.org/Publications/Datasheets/2009/2009wpds.aspx Also, Wikipedia is great source – particularly the footnotes, for finding out demographic info. Finally, I would suggest that the best religious data is available on The Joshus Project.

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This little guy hit on a lure that was about half his size!

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Or so it appeared for a fleeting few hundredths of a second.

Umpire Jim Joyce made a bad call and declared Donald safe at first. Video replay confirms that Donald was clearly out but in baseball there is no instant replay.

That's all there is to it, no excuses can be made.  Joyce admits the mistake.  Nothing much can be done now.

Listening to the pundits and analysts review this bad call has made me wonder if our culture is able to accept honest mistakes anymore.  Everybody was looking for some sort of just resolution.  When somebody messes up we immediately are looking to find the guilty party in order to punish the offender.  I don't believe that Obama is anymore to blame for the oil spill (or the failed cleanup) than Bush is to blame for Katrina (or the slow response).  That's just one example of many in which we hunt for the guilty party, assess the political or moral fall out and declare the winners and losers.

The truth is, mistakes will happen.  I blame us.

And, thank heavens, it gives us the opportunity to extend grace.  I much admire both Joyce's and Galarraga's response. You can watch the interview by clicking here.

Thanks to both of these men for showing us what grace looks like.

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What concerns me about most of the information I read on BAM is that it grossly oversimplifies the missionary task while bypassing centuries of learning by missionaries in the field.  There seems to be a conclusion that missionaries have been largely ineffective (a case which is actually difficult to make given the growth of the global church over the past 30 years) and that pragmatic, smart, and efficient business thinking will reverse this.

BAM proponents emphasize the positives while glossing over the difficulties.  These difficulties, if discussed at all, usually focus on the launching and management of the business.  They seldom emphasize the ministry objectives and missiological insights.  Even more rare is the impact of the strategy (BAM) on the culture in which it is being used and the integration of BAM and ministry.

Straw Man

One reason for the lack of BAM critique is that missionary agencies are fearful of being labeled as embracing a traditional form of missionary endeavor that is hostile to BAM.  The polemic that BAM proponents use regarding the “sacred versus secular” divide makes critique by the “traditional missionary” a difficult task. 

Last year, an open letter was signed by Steve Douglas (President of Campus Crusade for Christ), Mark Anderson (President of GPN/call2all), and Loren Cunningham (founder of Youth With a Mission) in which they apologize for focusing on the sacred and secular divide regarding the mobilization of “full time Christian workers” (click here for letter).  They write, “We have realized that for too long we have focused on the ‘professional’ mission agencies and churches to get the job done. We now want to release the other 95% of the Body of Christ to join us.”  Who could ever argue with that sentiment?  Certainly not me!

As I discussed this with colleagues I realized that I felt no need to apologize on behalf of my organization and that we felt little guilt about how we have focused our energies.  We recruit many (actually, mostly) businesspeople very purposefully. 

In fact, from the earliest days, the modern missionary movement has been filled with BAM practitioners.  William Carey is considered to be the founder of this movement.  He was a BAM practitioner, opening indigo factories, a publishing house, a newspaper business, and many other entrepreneurial efforts.  Perhaps his biggest opposition came from the business community.  The East India Company, the dominant business of his day, worked against his efforts to bring the gospel to India because, in part, he highlighted their exploitation of the people of India.  Even so, he did not label business as evil.  The missionary movement that he spawned has been open and actively pursing BAM models ever since.

To be sure, there is a strand of “churchmen” who use language in a way that reinforces the feeling of discrimination that businesspeople often describe.  While I am very sorry for this, I don’t believe it should become the rallying cry for the recruitment of BAM workers.  Instead, a positive, engaging empowerment of both the BAM strategist and the full-time Christian worker should be our focus.  My experience with effective BAM models leads me to conclude that the best efforts combine on one team both BAM team members with team members focused exclusively on traditional missionary roles.

Anything less than an “all hands on deck” approach to reaching the world for Christ sells short the Great Commission. 

Entrepreneurs

Another area of disconnect for me is in regard to the type of person necessary for doing the Great Commission.

At a presentation by a prominent BAM speaker I heard this question asked, “Is it easier for you to train a businessperson to be a missionary, or a missionary to be a businessperson?”  The reply was predictable and swift, “Missionaries don’t make great businesspeople and it’s better to start with the right raw materials.” 

As the presentation unfolded, I was amused to see a slide of his executive team that included himself and two former long-term missionaries, one of them from my own organization.  Both of these missionaries had the advantage of training and preparation under the care of a “traditional missionary agency,” multiple years of supervised culture and language acquisition (paid for by faithful donors back home), and then a hearty blessing as they left to get involved in a Kingdom business.  This little anecdote highlights the problem with much of what I read, see, and hear from the BAM community.  It is a gross oversimplification of what is needed on the ground in BAM globally.

The need in mission today is a much stronger focus on those parts of the world where missionaries have been least effective.  These are not typically business-friendly environments.  To succeed one must be an entrepreneur.  Entrepreneurs are needed whether one is starting a church, a business, or both.  CEO’s and upper management types will have a limited role in this type of startup-oriented setting.

Is this to say that there isn’t room for larger businesses or existing business to become involved with BAM?  Heaven’s no!  Please, bring on the SEO’s!  However, the “M” in BAM requires entrepreneurship even if the business piece doesn’t.

The question should not be “Who is better, a businessperson or a missionary?”  This sets up a false dichotomy.  Rather, we should recognize that entrepreneurs are the ones that start things and starting things is the need of the day.  Give me an army of people who love to start things.  They will start both businesses and churches.

Colonialism

Colonialism and economic gain go hand in hand.  The East India Company is, in the view of many Indians today, emblematic of the exploitation of their country.  For two hundred years missionary work and economic exploitation were synonymous.  They still are in the minds of many.

It’s very easy for us as Americans to think that this is not our problem because we don’t believe we are currently participating in colonialism.  This is a serious mistake.

Consider with me for a moment how this might look to a person in an poverty stricken culture which is hostile to Christianity:  The white people from the West come in with money, create a business to make money, own that business, hire people who are Christians (or become Christians), and ultimately profit from the company.  It sounds pretty much like the model that was used in a less enlightened era of missionary endeavor.

In our hearts and minds we are working from the best motives.  In the hearts and minds of a hostile culture, we are working with the worst motives.  We see business as redemptive.  They see it as one more example of colonialism.

This should give us great pause.  We should be critically assessing the models of business we are using, asking big questions particularly about ownership and profit, and working very hard to gain local understanding of our goals and objectives.

Are there models that avoid colonialism?  Yes, there must be, as evidenced by teams that are, in fact, able to be effective doing outreach utilizing BAM strategies.  There are also historical models that might provide us with some insight as to what is working.

So…

Let’s tell people the truth. Doing business cross culturally is tough.  Doing cross-cultural ministry is tough.  When you put them together, it is doubly tough and adds elements of difficulty not present in other models.  The expertise of traditional missionaries is sorely needed to assist in the BAM effort.  BAM is not a panacea for recruitment or on-field success.

BAM will be the new colonialism without deeper missiological reflection and application.

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Persecution in India: Francis' Response from Cornerstone Church on Vimeo.

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Miguel comes from a village about 3 hours hike from a remote medical clinic staffed by a missionary doctor and his family.    He was about 7 years old when his family brought him to the clinic.  He was very weak, skinny and not able to walk with nosebleeds and was coughing up blood. He was diagnosed with TB and sent to the government hospital in the capitol to recover.

A couple of years later the doctor heard that a boy was being brought in who was very weak.   They were asked to pick him up along the path from his village as he couldn’t walk the last mile.  When they arrived, the patient was once again Miguel.  He had the look of someone in severe kidney failure and initial lab tests done in the remote clinic revealed he needed immediate intervention.  A missionary flight was called in and he was flown once again to the capitol where he stayed for about a month in the same hospital.

His diagnosis showed he was in severe kidney failure and only had a small percentage of kidney function left.  After his time in the hospital, he was released, but his prognosis was grim.  He would have to remain on abdominal dialysis unless a kidney transplant could be done.   The missionary doctor was there when the hospital staff attempted to show his very traditional, tribal parents how to apply dialysis treatments through a surgically implanted plastic tube in his abdomen.  They are completely monolingual and speak no Spanish.

The missionary doctor knew that to send Miguel home to his hidden village, where most of the inhabitants live in mud adobe houses or caves, where the only access is to hike 3 hours along a riverbed, was a death sentence.   To be sent home like this would ensure that he only had 1 month, maybe 2, left to live.  Even if the heavy dialysis bags could be shipped in via donkey or on someone’s back the conditions in the homes with dirt floors and no ventilation, where disease was sitting dormant on most of the surfaces, meant certain infection. Additionally, his daily dialysis needs were 4 to 7 treatments a day. The boxes of life saving fluid used in dialysis take up almost an entire room! It would also have required someone transporting Miguel each month to the government kidney specialist to receive a prescription for another month’s supply of the fluids and scores of medications, and then to take another 2-3 days to run all over the city to various government agencies picking up the meds by piecemeal from various agencies.

The doctor approached his wife about taking Miguel into their home.

Miguel has been living with them now since June of 2008. His heart is tender to things of the Lord and He loves hearing stories from the Bible and listening to and memorizing Christian choruses that have been translated into his language.  His very still traditional monolingual parents and close family visit on site once a week and spend the weekend close so there is a good friendship with the extended family.

What makes this story even more remarkable is that some years before, while the doctor was studying medicine in a nearby city, the family took in another person suffering from kidney failure. Over a few years they watched the young woman slowly deteriorate. She died in the doctor’s arms after becoming an integral part of their family. The doctor, his wife, and their children grieved deeply. Now, once again, they face the prospect of losing an adopted family member.

The government has recently shut down their kidney transplant program for lack of funds although two of Miguel’s sisters say they would like to be tested for a donated kidney potential. Even when the program was open, they were not able to approve the lifetime of anti rejection meds that would be needed to allow the kidney to remain functioning well in his body. It’s possible that the program may open up again someday, but it will probably be too late for Miguel.

These requests for prayer were sent to me by the doctor and his family:

• Please pray with us that we would be wise to make each day count with Miguel as he grows into a deeper knowledge of God and His ways and that he would comprehend God’s word even though it is still not translated into his heart language.
• Miguel continues to live with our family and the team gives us a break when we have to travel or need help with him. Looking back, having Miguel with us has been the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, but has brought the great blessing. Praise God for this opportunity to serve Miguel.

Thanks for praying for Miguel.

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