THREE WORLDS DIARY
Good Marco Quote: Indianapolis is not like...
"Indianapolis is not like a town. It's more like an open field."
The Effects of Technology on Missions
Christianity Today online has an article about some of the effects of the tech revolution on the life of missionaries. It's a huge subject and a short article but it highlights some of the ways that the internet, cell phones and computers are changing things.
Among the things mentioned:
PHONES: Unlike the old days, where a long distance call was super expensive and rare, today even missionaries in rural Africa can make cheap, crystal clear calls around the world. Sometimes the connection is even better.
HIGH SPEED INTERNET: Nearly 75% of missionaries in their survey had high speed internet.
CONNECTING WITH SUPPORTERS: Technology makes it easier and more regular for missionaries to relate information to their supporters about their ministry, their life, and the issues important to them. Twitter, Facebook, web-pages, Skype etc. are making it easier to "see" the field.
LONGEVITY ON THE FIELD: Then they make the dubious claim that all this technology helps missionaries stay on the field longer than they otherwise would. Actually, that's probably not true. Other factors that we've written about here on this blog regarding student loans, the effect of short-term missions, anti-institutionalism, and multi-career lives are bigger trends that are negating that effect it seems. The long-term trend is for shorter tenures.
TOO MUCH CONNECTION: A downside is that all of this ability to connect is leading some missionaries to spend so much time online and keeping up with friends back home that they fail to integrate into the local culture. Now everything seems so close.
I remember when I was a kid having to wait for weeks for Grandma's chocolate fudge to make its way from California to Costa Rica by ship. Letters were slow---and in the Third World---things regularly got lost in the mail. That was not uncommon at all.
Another downside mentioned is that even when missionaries are on home-assignment (furlough), technology means that the field follows them and that they are just as actively involved with things in the home country as if they were on the field.
I would add that another downside for administrators in central offices is that while the old days required mail for important questions that required answers (3 or 4 weeks each way), nowadays, thanks to email, central offices have to make big decisions daily at a moments notice.
There are many things not delved into in this article and we won't go into them now (I've got to pack my bags), but there are a lot of benefits. One is the way the Bible can be put on one's phone or a memory stick. The transmission of the Bible has never been easier and that alone is a huge benefit.
Another negative though, is the way we are constantly surrounded by media (and thus work). It comes at you via the computer constantly and it doesn't stop when work hours stop.
One of my New Year's Resolutions involves how I manage my time. This past week I did an experiment. Once the weekend arrived, I stopped reading email for the entire weekend. And for the first time ever, I did not do anything work related (including reading). Wow. What a huge difference that made. I felt like it cleared my head, and created some sort of buffer to move into the next work week.
I also barely surfed the net (I'm a news junkie...and news is mostly negative really).
There was this crazy idea in the Bible called "the Sabbath" which seemed to suggest that our bodies require rest and focus on higher matters once a week. Perhaps the overwhelming impact of technology means that we need to really create a Sabbath that minimizes or cuts out a lot of this technology at least once a week. Just thinking out loud...
This week I am off to Lebanon to meet with the leadership there about a few different key issues. My laptop has gone on to be with the Lord, so I think my internet connection will be minimal this week. That may be a good thing considering the subject of this post.
Quote of the Year 2010
From 7 Year-old Marco Nachtigall: "I would be a total disaster if I weren't a Christian."
White as Snow
It looks like many places where our friends live are having severe winters. We are too. It seems to have been constantly snowing for 3 or 4 weeks here which is unusual for Berlin. There was an article yesterday about how this has been the biggest amount of snowfall in Berlin in 110 years. German capital Berlin has experienced more snow this month than any other December of past 110 years, as more bitter cold is expected in the country's east, the German Weather Service (DWD) said Tuesday.
Berlin and the surrounding state of Brandenburg have never seen such a thick snow in December for more than a century, as some places received 40 centimeters of snow since Dec. 1, the weather agency said.
Snow embraced the capital city, which has a population of 3.4 million people, on this year's Christmas, while the last white Christmas that Berliners remembered was in 2001, with only 10 centimeters of snow on the ground.
Here's a couple of pictures from outside our window. On the table, you can see how much has accumulated.
Alps--Austria
Photo: After visiting the church in Pforzheim, we headed to Austria for a 3 day family vacation. It was gorgeous, but went by way too quickly.
Photo: Luckily for us, the roads were very clear despite all the heavy snow in Europe this winter.
Photo: Absolutely gorgeous. After a decade of not being close to nature, we are really enjoying being around nature now.
Photo: We traveled to a little town in the Austrian Alps that is on a beautiful lake. The town completely clears out during the winter, the tourists go elsewhere, and you are left with a very quiet, very small little town where you can relax. We saw few people and we enjoyed playing games inside and just relaxing without phone, email, and all that stuff.
Photo: Austria is a pretty conservative country. While people associate Western Europe with liberalism and an "anything goes" mentality--that's not necessarily true. Austria is politically quite conservative. The governments in Austria often flirt with far right racism. Mountain cultures are often closed, conservative cultures--and that's the case with both Austria and Switzerland in many ways.
Photo: As we were driving around Austria, we saw lots of crucifixes all over the place. (Above) is the beautiful town graveyard overlooking the lake and next to the small Catholic church.
Photo: Just think of how beautiful these pictures would be if I knew how to operate my camera.
Rothenberg
Hi folks. That was a longer break than I expected from the diary. Well, the Christmas season turned out to be more hectic and exhausting than I thought. We all got sick, we had car problems, and we've had multiple computer problems, we were off the internet for a while during our travels--and all of that kept me off the diary for longer than I had planned. Well, we're back now.
Prior to Christmas, we traveled down to one of our churches in Southern Germany (Pforzheim) to visit the congregation. Whenever we have free time, we will be trying to visit various German Church of God congregations just to encourage them and thank them for letting us live in their beautiful country. This time it was Pforzheim, which is a very strong church pastored by a 33 year old friend of mine. I love the youth group there and I probably know more people in that church than any other--so it was nice to visit them. Great to see young leadership emerging also.
On the way down, we stopped in Rothenburg, Germany which is considered one of the most beautiful towns in Germany. It's a town that is surrounded by castle walls and sits on a hill overlooking a valley. It was gorgeous. All three of us loved it there and we definitely plan to go back.
In the first picture below, we are walking along the castle walls.
It is a medieval town dating back to about 1400 AD. It was a major stop on a couple of the trade routes that crossed Germany in medieval times. But it was ransacked a couple of times and bombed in World War II. In the picture above (on the Right) you see a man drinking a large mug of beer. The story has it that the town was going to be pillaged once but the invading army said that if any citizen of the town could drink a large glass of beer without swallowing once, the town would be saved. The former mayor took up the challenge and drank the mug of beer without swallowing and the town was saved. So today, at noon, everyday in the center town square, you can see the clock tower re-enact that famous moment (that probably never happened).
2010-My Top 10 Books of the Year
Well, it's that time again. Each December for the past 3 or 4 years, I have been doing a post on the top books that I read in 2010. The last few years have had some real good ones. This year started off pretty good and got increasingly disappointing. Oh well. As usual, the winners get nothing, but it's still the most exciting diary entry of the year. The red carpet is out, the limos have pulled up and I'm wearing my tuxedo. Not that anyone really cares. Let's get started: 10) The Serpent and the Rainbow: A Harvard Scientist's Astonishing Journey into the Secret Societies of Haitian Voodoo, Zombies and Magic by Wade Davis (304 pp.). A look at the world of Haitian voodoo. After the Earthquake I was interested in learning more about Haiti as well as the religious situation there. What emerges is a pretty sociological examination of Haitian society which is held together through informal networks of small communities (often tied to African-influenced Voodoo). Amidst all that you learn about curses and potions, and the way people can appear dead and even be buried alive (zombies). Fascinating book.
9) Crossers by Philip Caputo (464 pp.): This novel takes place on the Arizona-Mexico border over a period of 100 years or so showing that the border situation of today is not much different than a century ago. Crime, illegal immigration, tension between races, smuggling--it's all happened before. The novel is not nearly as good as I expected it to be. Drug Cartels in Latin America are a subject that really interests me. The Power of the Dog by Don Winslow is a far more entertaining novel.
8) Enders Game by Orson Scott Card (352 pp.) is a science fiction book that follows the story of a young genius named Ender Wiggin. It's the future and the Earth has been attacked by aliens, so the world government is trying to breed genius kids to lead the charge against the aliens. I don't like Sci-fi usually. What's most interesting about the book is Ender's struggle to understand his place within the world upon being a chosen one.
7) The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century by George Friedman(pp. 288) . George Friedman is the founder of Stratfor which does geo-political analysis for corporations and anyone who wants to subscribe to their expensive newsletter. Friedman believes history is often counter-intuitive (I absolutely agree) and he tries to project into the future counter-intuitively. Sometimes he is very convincing (arguing that Mexico in the 21st Century may become a wealthy and strong enough country that it really doesn't need the USA anymore), or that Poland and Turkey are well positioned for the next century. At other times, he's less convincing, as when he argues that Japan and the USA are headed for a clash. Overall, a very informative read.
6) Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community and War by Nathaniel Philbrick (pp. 480). A very readable history of the early settlers to New England. The harshness of the environment, their naivete, and the way they both depended on the Indians, fought the Indians, and were ultimately supplanted by bigger more powerful people is fascinating and very American. Their moment in history was very short and this book explains why.
5) The Blue Parakeet: Re-thinking How You Read Your Bible by Scot McKnight (240 pp.). The most easy-to-read, helpful book on how to read your Bible and why people read it so differently--and where they go wrong in their approach. Extremely readable, very insightful.
4) Unnamed: by a certain French writer I like. (320 pp.). I'm not going to put the name of this book on the web because I don't want to get complaints. This one is not a book that you can just carelessly recommend. It will depress you. This book is a very brutal novel about the meaninglessness of modern life and how Western societies individualism and obsession with beauty is destroying it. It's a bleak, bleak novel. What I like about it is that in its brutal way, it shows the true consequences of nihilism--Radical Individualism is taken to its logical extreme and the results are grim. Behind the darkness lingers the question of whether man is ignoring his maker.
3) Arrow Pointing to Heaven: the Rich Mullins Story by James Bryan Smith (pp. 272). Rich Mullins was a Christian musician from Indiana that became successful in the 1980's and tragically died in a car accident in the late 90's. It's the moving story (as told by one of his friends) of a guy who lived the life he sang about and in many ways envisioned the challenge institutional Christianity would soon face. Very inspirational. I highly recommend it.
2) Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman by Jon Krakauer (480 pp). The true story of NFL Football star Pat Tillman who left the Arizona Cardinals in the prime of his career to fight in Afghanistan after 9/11. Tillman, an atheist, had extremely high moral expectations for himself. His journey is one of developing his character at an early age, having amazing amounts of integrity, and then getting put into a situation where that integrity was challenged. Tillman died in a friendly-fire accident in Afghanistan that was then covered up by the US military. For me, the most appealing part of the story is about the challenge of keeping up one's idealism for the team when the team doesn't keep it up for you. Tragic.
1) Acts of Faith (Novel) by Phillip Caputo (pp. 688). This novel takes place in 1990's Sudan during the Civil War. It is a story about missionaries, mercenaries, tribal people, pilots, and UN workers, all trying to navigate Africa. The book exposes the corruption, opportunism and compromise within the global aid community. People are a bag of mixed motivations and sometimes their actions result in good and sometimes they result in further damage. It's a novel about what drives people and how difficult it can be to change the world. It is also a novel about the challenge of Africa, a subject that has always fascinated me. I could not put this book down. It's the only book this year that I read that had me on the edge of my seat the whole time.
Well, as you can see some of the books are Christian, some are not, and I think that's important. Especially working in a setting like we do, it's incredibly helpful to understand people's underlying worldviews and assumptions and I am always looking for books that do that and do it well. Some of the books were challenging, others were just informative, and others were just for fun.
My goal for 2011 is to try reading more books written between 1500 and 1900 because not everything wise and interesting comes from the 20th and 21st centuries. There's a lot in the past that we need to re-discover, so hopefully next year's list will include more books written in different eras of history.
Biggest Disappointment 2010: V.S. Naipaul's "The Masque of Africa: Glimpses of African Belief" which deserves its own post. What a let-down.
Be Thankful
I post this because it's a beautiful song I love. I think I've posted it before. She's a songwriting genius.
Layers of Post-Christendom: Reflections on Liverpool
Last weekend I was in Liverpool, visiting our church in Birkenhead. This building was immediately right outside of where I was staying. The sign says something to the effect of "Do you know religious persecution is worse now than 5 years ago. Do you believe in God?"
There is a Christian presence in the U.K. And even in super secular Berlin, there are now over 100 international congregations. But overall, rates of practicing Christians in Western Europe are very low. So doing ministry in a place like Liverpool is very hard work.
Pastor John has been faithfully serving here since the mid-1990's and also works at a shelter in downtown Liverpool. Recently, he was joined by two 26 year old newlyweds--Zach and Audrey. Zach and Audrey are two super sharp young people from the Sixth Avenue Church of God in Alabama (Ken Oldham's church to be precise). Zach fell in love with the Church of God in the U.K. and he's very good at reaching out to youth in places like this. Audrey strikes me as super-sharp and highly intuitive. I really liked them both. We went out for fish and chips (delicious!) and I learned more about them.
It's not easy, what they do. The U.K. is so secular that young people have virtually no respect for the church. As we saw in New Zealand, many do not even know what a church is. Zach and Audrey said that on youth nights sometimes parents drop off their kids at the church just to get rid of them for a few hours---the kids literally have no idea where they are. Absolutely no clue that they are in a church building or what a church is or what goes on there.
There's no doubt that culturally Christianity is in real crisis in Britain. Zach asked a good question the other day, "How come so many hundreds of thousands (millions) of people showed up to see the Pope in England a couple of weeks ago?"
I think the answer is that there are layers to Christianity in places like the U.K.
On one level, there are the remnants of Christianity everywhere in the underpinnings of European civil society. But these are so entrenched in everyday life, they are ignored and undervalued.
Then there is a second level of cultural Christians---people who perhaps do not practice Christianity on a daily basis or have any kind of personal connection to Christ, but who still feel like baptisms, christenings, confirmation, and other Christian rituals are a necessary part of life. It's tradition and superstition. This describes much of Europe. Much as a Buddhist might stop off at a temple before an important job interview, Eastern and Western Christians may attend mass for special occasions, light a candle, or visit the Virgin for an important moment.
On a third level are Church attenders--those that perhaps attend church regularly, and here the percentages in a place like the U.K. or Germany may be as low as 4%.
And I would add a fourth level--those who not only attend church but are practicing Christians--practicing an active Christian life of servanthood and discipline. This number would be much lower than 4%, but that is where we are at.
Despite how difficult it can be in the U.K., Christianity is growing there--and not just amongst immigrant communities. Here is a video of a girl from Wales who is part of the growing (Native-Briton) population of Christians--many brought to Christianity through the Alpha Course (to be discussed in a later post). Check out the video and say a prayer for Zach and Audrey. We have invited them to Berlin and hope to continue being an encouragement to them both here and in Liverpool (Birkenhead):
