Scenes from our Neighborhood (Autumn)

I Believe I Can Fly

Yes, I do like the Michigan Wolverines--but this post is about human beings doing amazing things and appreciating amazing things.  An Airborne guy parachutes from an airplane into a stadium of 100,000 people in Ann Arbor.  Just watching it makes me nauseous---but it is truly amazing what human beings do.

Wonderful Egypt!

We just got back from Cairo, Egypt yesterday.  It was a business trip with lots of meetings taking up almost all of our time.  But we return very excited by what we saw.  Three-Worlds is going to be focusing heavily on Egypt in the future, and we were there to meet with the primary leaders in the Church of God in Egypt. We were also there to celebrate and honor Franco and Bea Santonocito who have spent 60 years in ministry with the Church of God and are now retiring and leaving Cairo for their home in Rome, Italy.

We are all extremely happy with what we saw in Egypt.  The Church of God is doing very well and a new generation of leaders is emerging.  For those of you that read Mosaic, I write about the church in Chapter 5.  Since I conducted that interview a year and half ago, the Church is in even better shape!

This new generation of pastors in their 30's and 40's are being allowed to take up key positions of leadership.  The are pastoring churches and make up the council that I met with.  They are sharp, self-sufficient, and very committed.  In our meetings we committed ourselves to encouraging them and partnering with them in the future.

As you may recall, three-worlds is committed to 1) engaging young people 2) raising up a new generation of empowered, accountable leaders, and 3) creating inner-connectivity within the Church of God in Europe and the Middle East.  All of that is on Egypt's agenda as well, so this is a very good match.

We also meet with the Cairo Christian Fellowship--the church Jamie attended when she was growing up in Egypt.  These people have become like family to me over the years and the connection continued to grow on this trip.  We discussed the future of the CCF and we were happy to learn that they are ready for new challenges.

And we had a wonderful celebration of the Santonocito's ministry in the garden of the villas that the Church of God owns in Cairo.  The Santonocito's were presented with gifts, a plaque, and a letter of appreciation from the General Director of the Church of God, Ronald Duncan.

We are worn out, but very encouraged by what we saw.  For Jamie's mother, it was a sort-of-homecoming.  It's the first time she has been back in 11 years.  I know she had a blast and it was great to have her with us.  She was very helpful as we tried to reconstruct and deconstruct the decisions of the past, so that we can make the right decisions for the future.  Very good stuff.

Here are some photos:

Photo: Marco with Giza behind him.

Photo: This time it was a father and son outing only.  Marco  and I went to the Pyramids together and then to the National Museum.  No girls allowed.

Photo: You can see the size of the stones that make up the Pyramid.  It took over 30 years to build.

Photo: At one time, the surface was all smooth limestone and at the top it was gold which could be seen for miles away.  By the time Jesus passed through Egypt, the Pyramids had already existed for 2,600 years.

Photo: The Pyramids have existed 4,600 years.  Marco has existed for 7.5 years.

Photo: Behind the Sphinx are the Pyramids.  In front of the Pyramid is Pizza Hut.  No kidding.

Photo: Marco is such a great traveler.  Egypt is chaotic and it doesn't bother Marco at all.  On the way to the Pyramids, our car was attacked as 4 guys tried to force our driver to pay money for no reason (seriously).  Marco and I thought it was super-fun.  It didn't phase him a bit.  Neither did the traffic.  Neither did falling and scraping his knee on one of Cairo's crumbling sidewalks.  Totally not phased.  That's my boy!

Photo: Unlike so many places in this globalized world, Cairo's skyline remains remarkably untouched in contrast with other developing countries.

Photo: For many years, the beautiful Shubra church did not have a pastor.  Now it has a young, Lebanese pastor.

Photo: Recognizing the Santonocito's after 60 years of hard work.

Photo: Jamie's mother Sharon joined us on this trip as a representative for Global Missions and Church of God Ministries.  Here she is presenting the Santonocito's with a plaque of recognition.  This was Sharon's and Jamie's home for 10 years.

We are off to Egypt

It's been about three months since we moved to Germany.  Those three months have mostly been spent setting up our home, getting Marco settled in school, and setting up appointments and meetings for the next three months.

We are entering an important period.  Over the next 3 months, we will be meeting with national leaders, missionaries, and other key leaders throughout the Middle East and Europe.  This past week I was in Central Germany talking with the national leader here about our future work and collaborations together.  From October to June, much of our time will be spent in these kinds of meetings as we begin our work in the region.

Tomorrow all three of us are going to Egypt to meet with a number of people there--including national leaders--as we set the next stage for Church of God work in the region.  It's a time of healthy transition there.  There is emerging young leadership (which is what Three Worlds is about), and the opportunity to see some new, exciting things come about.

We will be in Cairo for a week.  The schedule is pretty packed, but I've promised Marco I will take him back to the Pyramids and the National Museum.  The three of us were in Egypt last year (when these pictures were taken) and Marco really fell in love with the people and the culture.  It is one of my favorite places in the world to visit.

As many of you may know, Jamie grew up in Egypt so her Egyptian family has become my family.  It is always like going to see old friends.  And it reminds me very much of Costa Rica, culturally speaking, in many different ways.

We will be joined on this trip by Sharon Skaggs (Jamie's mother) who works at Global Missions and will be representing the North American Church of God as we say "goodbye" to Franco and Bea Santonocito who have been serving in Egypt and in the Mediterranean region for decades.  We are having a special time of celebration for them as we present them with a number of gifts on behalf of the Church of God, Global Missions, and our region.  We will also be discussing details regarding the transition of leadership in this region.  It's a big week for us.  And since this place has always been special to the Skaggs family, we really want to get it all right.

In addition to numerous meetings and celebrations, we are hoping to have some time with old friends and Marco and I want to do our regular ritual of morning Green Tea (and Mango juice for Marco) on Road 9 in Maadi, Cairo.  That little street has to be one of my favorite places to be in the world--and that's saying a lot.  Last year I found a place where we could get online and update the diary.  We'll see if we can do that again this time.  There's lots of internet cafe's, but since I'm so incompetent with computers, I wasn't always able to figure it out.

We've also been invited to the Cairo Opera--so we are all having to take extra fancy clothes.

Hopefully, I'll be able to write more very soon.

A New Church is Born: In Russia

Marco and Andrei on a very cold day at the Chelaybinsk zoo in Siberia. 

Congratulations to the Church of God in Chelaybink, Russia. This Sunday 10-10-10, they planted a new church in the Lenin district of the city.  The church is led by our great friend Pastor Andrei who reports that there were over 100 people and the place was packed.

A few years ago Jamie, Marco and I went to the Chelyabinsk church, and the church made it into my latest book Mosaic.  So if you want to read more about the challenging situation of trying to be a Protestant church in Russia today, check out the book and hear about the experience in Andrei's own words.

In March, the Philips and I will be going to Chelyabinsk for some key meetings and will be also getting our first look at the new work.  I included the Chelyabinsk church in Mosaic because it was an example of a very geographically isolated church (something that is common in the Church of God), but one that pro-actively and intentionally reaches out to make connections with the Church of God beyond Russia's borders.  Their efforts are impressive.  Now they are reaching into a new part of their own city.

Newsletter Changes: E-mail Only

For those of you that have signed up to get our newsletter, we hope you enjoyed the last one.  You should have received our first edition of Three Worlds Journal about a week ago.  This replaced our old Chinatimes Newsletter which some of you have been receiving for 10 years. 

We started our newsletter back during a time when many people were still not connected to the internet (especially older supporters) and people still expected most things coming to the them through the mail.  So while we were in Hong Kong, we had quite a few supporters that still asked to receive hard copy versions of our newsletter.

Now we live in Germany and due to the very high postage rates, we are going to ask that everyone switch to the email version of Three Worlds Journal.  The email version is longer, better, and more beautiful.  So it's a switch we hope you will want to make. 

In Hong Kong, we were able to mail international letters at a rate cheaper than what it costs to send mail from one place in the USA to another place in the USA.  It is under .40 US cents per letter.  The cost here in Germany per letter is $2.31 US.  Quite a difference.  Since we send out over 400 each time, that's a bit of a problem.  Consequently, we can't afford to keep sending the newsletter by regular mail (and let's save some trees--yoohoo!).

So if you are receiving the paper form of the newsletter but are ready to switch, send us an email and let us know. 

For churches, they will still receive a hard copy as they often post these on the walls or in places where people can read them.  Those come directly from the offices in the U.S. 

A new edition of Three Worlds Journal will be out very soon.  Look for it in your in-box.

Continuing the critique of the Emerging Church

This video continues with a critique of the post-modern mindset and of the Emerging Church (particularly Brian McLaren who seems to be the most extreme well-known figure in the movement). This is R.C. Sproul, Ravi Zacharias, and some other guy I don't know. Their concern is that there is an embracing of relative truth in this movement.

Critique of "New Evangelicals"

Here at Three Worlds we are trying to get our heads around the shifts taking place in Christianity.  Yesterday I posted a video of some American Evangelicals of the younger generation talking about how the American church (in that generation in particular) is changing. 

From the video, it sounds like there is an effort to make sure that the church is existing outside its four walls (in a visible manner to the secular world)--and amidst that, there is an effort to re-brand Evangelicalism to some extent--with the sense that Evangelicalism is now believed to be intolerant, bigoted, and overly-political.

I asked a reader of Three-Worlds.com to critique this video.  Interestingly, this reader is not much older than the people speaking lest you think that it's someone in their 70's writing in:

CRITICAL RESPONSE:

The underlying assumption of this video is that in order to live Christianly in the modern world, modern Evangelicals must throw our forefathers under the bus, that we must stand and point an accusing finger at those who have nurtured us in the faith.

The book mentioned in the video "UnChristian" is premised on the notion that Christian can improve their image by surveying unbelievers about what they don't like about Christians and then changing into something they like more. A dubious premise at best.

Yet, it is very much this line of thinking that these people are pursuing. 

What irked me most about the video is the speaker who said the previous generation of evangelicals did something (voted) once every four years but otherwise didn't raise a finger to help their neighbors. On one hand, these people like to come off as if their only focus is love and sweetness, but underneath they are happy to do damage to the lives and reputations of those they deem uncool.

The fact is that in the last generation Evangelicals have produced much compassionate ministry around the world. They have done more than lift a finger to help their neighbors. They have moved mountains. 

Yet, in a desperate attempt to please the liberal cultural elite, this guy lies about the record of evangelicals.

Disgusting.

The New Face of American Evangelicalism? Discuss.

A friend sent me this video.  It is an ABC report on the new face of American Evangelicalism.  It shows a group of twenty-somethings (perhaps some thirty-somethings?) talking about how American Evangelicalism is changing and how this younger generation wants to present itself to the world. It's a 9 minute video.  It's worth watching for those that are interested in this discussion.  For the past few posts, we have been trying to understand the post-modern/post-Christendom approach of emerging/missional churches and the younger generation.  After this video, I will post a critique of it, followed by a video questioning this kind of thinking as well.

Living on a Prayer

It's official.  We now have permission to reside in Germany.  It always feels a bit strange to be living in a country, getting a home, driving around, having your child in school---without knowing if you will get your residency status.  Here, it took us three moths to get our official passport stamp.

A few days ago, we we went down to the offices where you do this and we waited only about 15 minutes before we were called in.  The woman who was to give us our approval looked like she really would rather be doing other things.  She had a look like "I'm going to approve this one quickly so I can go get a cigarette."  There were no questions.  She didn't even check all of the forms we have carefully prepared.

I thought it was a good sign when we walked in and saw two posters of Jon Bon Jovi in her office.  It was hard to imagine being rejected for German residency by a woman who idolizes Jon Bon Jovi.

So we made it--and at least for 2 years--we have permission to reside in Germany.

PS--I really dislike Bon Jovi