My Favorite Beatles Song?

I'm in Liverpool with Josh Wieger, just 9 hours away from our 3W Seminar.  We had a great day seeing Birkenhead with Zach and Audrey who are working up here, and a great afternoon meeting with Pastor John and Linda.

This city honors the Beatles.  We walked passed the cavern club where they played here before they were famous.  We flew into John Lennon International Airport.  Their stamp is all over their city.  (What? Nothing for Gerry and the Pacemakers?  Frankie Goes to Hollywood?").

There is literally a Beatles cover band playing music outside of our hotel room in downtown Liverpool.  It's loud, but I love it since I love the Beatles--my all-time favorite.  So, you are asking...what is my favorite Beatles song of all time?  Are you crazy?  I can't give you just one.  I must give you 5....with commentary.

1. "A Day in the Life":  A truly complicated, symphonic song that is genuinely 50% McCartney and 50% Lennon.  It was a technical masterpiece in the days of analog recording.
2. "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds": Not about LSD, but rather about a picture Julian Lennon drew for his father.  The first and best psychadelic song.  Love when the drums and harmony kick in for the chorus.  John's voice on lead is great in this.
3. "Glass Onion":  Complicated drum part that had to be done by Paul McCartney because Ringo Starr couldn't play it.
4. "And I Love Her".  Hard to believe two Liverpool boys in the early 60's could write a guitar/rhythm part that sounds like it could be from traditional Andean folk music. Mind-blowing that they could write this stuff at such a young age.
5. "She Came in Through the Bathroom Window":  From the mini-musical that makes up side B of Abbey Road.   It's a Paul song with a great guitar part by John.
FAVORITE ALBUM?  "The White Album" tied with "Abbey Road."
LEAST FAVORITE SONG?  Revolution #9 of course.  It reeks of Yoko.  Pure torture.

FAVORITE BEATLE?  Absolutely Paul.  They say you can tell a person's personality type by their favorite Beatle.  I'm a Paul guy. So it's interesting that songs 1-3 feature John Lennon so heavily.  Overall, in my top 20 or 50 Beatles songs, the majority would be Paul songs.

FAVORITE BEATLE BOOK:  "Shout" is great, but "The Love You Make" is the best one I've ever read.

And I might add, "The Complete Beatles" is still the best documentary about them.

Uhm....thanks for asking.

We're Back!

We're back!  Did you miss me?  I missed myself.

These little breaks from the Diary that I have started to take after 9 to 10 years of doing this are a good idea.  I think it was 2002 that the diary was started.  That's a long time to be writing once every 3 days on average.  Most blogs don't last nearly that long.  But over the years it has been a great way to communicate.  Nevertheless, from time to time, I need a little break.  In the future I'd like to have a guest blogger (diary writer) take over when I'm on diary vacation.  Perhaps we will try that in 2012.  That would be cool.

Well, here's what is coming up in December.

*Josh Wieger of Park Place Church of God in Anderson, IN will be joining me tomorrow as we head to Liverpool, England for our 3W Seminar on "Developing a Youth Ministry."

*The following weekend I will be back in Paris doing 3W Seminar II in Paris also on "Developing a Youth Ministry."  Josh will be joining me as well and preaching on Sunday in the beautiful church there.

*We will continue our discussion of Philip Jenkins' book, "The Next Christendom."

*I will share about our recent trip to visit the CHOG's in Lebanon.

*I will continue to write stupid things with occasional references to 80's pop music (some things don't change).

*It's time for my annual Top 10 Books of the Year Awards.  It's a spectacular star-studded gala.

*And we get to take a little 6 day winter vacation after Christmas again over Marco's school holiday.  Once again we will go to Austria.  We will try to unplug completely.  No work.  Just Monopoly, UNO, and things that don't cause stress.

Throughout this past month that we have been offline here at the diary, I have continued to write at Bookface and Tweezer. So be sure to check us out!

Facebook: Three Worlds

Twitter: 3WCHOG

So thanks for giving me some time to catch my breath.  You all are cooler than Bootsy Colllins playing a bass solo in Reykjavik, Iceland during a snow storm.

"Stay Thirsty My Friends."

,

Join the 3W Care-A-Van!

,

This coming April 5th through April 19th, Three Worlds will be introducing its first ever Care-a-Van experience.  Care-a-Van is an opportunity for North American Christians to join us on the road in Europe as we visit a few small churches located throughout Europe that could use encouragement.  Throughout Europe we have many Church of God congregations that are isolated and struggle in an environment hostile or indifferent to Christianity.  It is difficult to stay encouraged.  Consequently, the Care-a-Van will give North Americans the opportunity to connect to these churches and encourage them through prayer and fellowship.

The Care-a-Van (a group of cars driving from church to church led by the Nachtigalls and Aaron and Nicole Varner) will set out from Munich, Germany and make their way through the Alps to visit congregations in Southern Germany, our newest church in Arco, Italy, as well as to join in the celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Rome Church of God.  Along the way our visitors will be educated on the challenge of ministry and mission in the European context and given ideas for how churches in North American can enhance their global connections.  The trip will be educational, strategic, encouraging, and will include some of the most beautiful scenery in the world. It will be a great introduction to Three Worlds.

We highly recommend this trip for mission pastors as well as lay-leaders and pastors who are interested in learning about the Three Worlds vision and connecting with churches in Europe and the Middle East.

Cost: Approximately $2,000 + Airfare to Munich, Germany.  Contact us for further details.

See You in December!

As I have started to do in this last year, I am going to take a break from the diary for a while.  We'll be back in early December when we do our next 3W Seminar in Liverpool, followed by a 2nd one in Paris. Park Place Youth Pastor Josh Wieger will be co-leading those two seminars as they are about youth ministry.  We will also continue the next part of our Next Christendom discussion in the Three Worlds diary.

We are on Facebook at:   Three Worlds

and

Twitter at:  3WCHOG

Thank you to the Church of God in Greece for allowing me to visit and share about Three Worlds this past Sunday.  Thank you also to St. Andrew's International Church in Athens for allowing me to share as well.

The Next Christendom: Discussion 2

Today we look at Chapter 2 of Philip Jenkins' book: "Disciples of All Nations."

It is often said that "history is written by the winners."  That tends to be true.  Those in power are often able to define what "historically happened."  And so Jenkins writes Chapter 2 to remind the Western (and Non-Western reader) that Christianity is not a Western religion.  That strong, vibrant expressions of the Christian faith existed before Christianity became associated with Europe and the United States.

Even non-Westerners (and certainly American and Europeans) tend to think of Christianity as being Western.  But long before that, Christianity was strong in places that today we call Syria, Iraq, and Ethiopia.  While Constantine is remembered as starting the mingling of Christianity and the State (Christendom), Jenkins points out that the same thing occurred in Armenia and Ethiopia at the same time.

The same holds true for the Coptic Christians of Egypt who have a long ancient history as do the Thomist Christians of Western coastal India. "I would argue at the time of the Magna Carta or the Crusades, if we imagine a typical Christian, we should still be thinking not of a French Artisan, but of a Syrian Peasant, or Mesapotamian town dweller, an Asian, not a European."

The the 1500's arrived and the first period of globalization led to countries like Spain, Portugal, and England propagating the faith to every corner of the world.  By the 1950's, "the United States was supplying two-thirds of the 43,000 Protestant missionaries active around the world.

For Protestant Christianity, the center of the faith was very much in the West.  Only 1% of Protestants were non-Western in 1800, but by 1900 it was 10%.  Since then, of course, we have seen exponential growth as we discussed in discussion 1.

******COMMENTS

It's true that Christianity has primarily been viewed as Western for the past few centuries because it has primarily been propagated by European and North American nation-states.  This coincided with a rise in economic power beginning in 1500.  Asian, the Middle Eastern, and Latin American empires and civilizations were not able to compete with the fast economic growth.  The combination of nation-states advancing Christianity and the rise of Protestantism (sola scriptura) expanded the rate at which Christianity could be shared.

But another reason why Christianity is often viewed as Western is because Armenian, Nestorian, Ethiopian, and other Eastern forms of Christianity often had big theological differences between the orthodoxy of the West.  For instance, some of these groups were monophysites: They did not believe Jesus was fully human and fully divine but rather had one nature while Nestorians believed that the human and the divine were fully separate.  Because orthodoxy came to be defined by the churches of Western Europe, Eastern Europe and today's Turkey--anything beyond that is forgotten as having been a part of Christian expansion.

So Christianity became "Western" as did the definition of Christian orthodoxy.  One of the challenges that the current wave of non-Western growth is presenting is that often the theology growing in Latin America, Africa, and Asia is not entirely orthodox either.

This raises some questions:

Is there such a things as orthodoxy?

Did Nestorian Christianity and the other earlier versions of the faith get a bad deal?

Or were they genuine expressions of the faith?

If African Christianity or Asian Christianity now goes in a different unorthodox direction, is that okay?

Is "orthodoxy" just a Western product?

Some scholars and people are suggesting that the answer is "yes."  That if we look at the historical church councils, we see that there were close votes and political campaigns in deciding what would become "orthodox" thought.  Consequently, it is not entirely fair that the West got to define Christian Trinitarian orthodoxy.  So if this (Western) Christian Trinitarian orthodoxy is dismantled by the Next Christendom (Non-Western Christianity), this is not such a bad thing.

I actually disagree with that position.  I do believe there is a concrete Christian orthodoxy we can appeal to--and that God revealed that through historical moments and human beings--just as he did the scripture.  So I trust the early Christians and the Councils that they set up.  I do not, for instance, believe that the Prosperity Gospel is orthodox Christianity, nor do I believe that post-modern Christianity that emphasizes Jesus as a nice guy and underplays the role of Christ's atonement is orthodox.

Does that mean that Christian orthodoxy is Western?  Not really.  These councils occurred in the Near East, not in London or Boston.  Furthermore, it is more an issue in my mind of apostolic authority and the authority of the Early church than geography.

The best thing about Chapter 2 is that it gets Western Christians out of the mentality that Christianity went directly from the Apostles to Europe and America.  Many denominations and Western traditions act as if this is the case.  Nothing mattered but the Apostles, Martin Luther, and their denominations history.  Chapter 2 corrects that and is consequently very important.

3W Roundtable

This week I am in Paris working on the creation of what we are calling the 3W Roundtable.  We are entering an era of new fiscal challenges, new legal challenges in the area of transparency for non-profits, and an era in which we need to re-examine the effectiveness of the flow of money from North America to mission-fields around the world.  We need to make sure that our investments are well-thought out, strategic, and do no foster unhealthy dependencies.

In an effort to make sure that we at Three Worlds examine these issues and always operate with high levels of transparency, we are creating the 3W Roundtable which offers an extra layer of transparency for us Regional Coordinators, our 3W crew, and our partners on the field.

The goal of the 3W Roundtable is to create an extra layer of accountability and transparency.

It will:

*Provide a higher level of transparency.

*Serve as advisors and and offer an objective viewpoint.

*Provide an added layer of personal accountability for Jamie and Patrick.

*Strategize and create synergy.

*Help 3W become a portal that churches, districts, and other organizations can tap into for healthy global ministry.

Creating healthy churches and mission-fields is not something that happens automatically.  And churches and Christian organizations can easily fall into the trap of basing decisions on individual, subjective interpretations.  In this region, we are wanting to make sure that our decisions foster health and longevity.  It means making sure that we have equal relationships (not balanced too far toward North America nor too far toward the field), that we share a common missiology, that we share a common vision for the field, and that we share a commitment to health and financial transparency.  If those things are not in place, good intentions can lead to disaster.  We want our partners to know exactly what is going on in the field and over the coming years, we will be increasing the ways that people can be in touch with our region.

The Next Christendom: Discussion 1

Today we begin taking an in-depth look at Philip Jenkins book, The Next Christendom: the Coming of Global Christianity.  This is the book Jamie and I selected as our book of the year for our 3W Staff.  Three Worlds is about helping the church navigate the Three Worlds of Christianity at the dawn of the 21st Century:  1) the Traditional 2) the Post-Christendom and 3) the non-Western.  This book deals with the world that is growing the fastest---Non-Western Christianity.  Consequently, it's highly relevant to us at Three Worlds and highly relevant to all of you too as you shall see.  As I've said previously, I think it is the most important book about Christianity that has come out in the past 10 years.  It should be required reading for anyone in ministry (or for anyone studying history, international relations, religion or political science).

I'll be taking the book piece by piece, highlighting important sections, offering commentary and raising questions.  Feel free to write to us here if you have any questions or comments that you would like to add.

SOME BACKGROUND

Philip Jenkins is a a professor of history and religious studies at Penn State.  He has written a large number of books and really excels at covering a lot of ground in a very clear and concise way.  He is a perfect popular academic writer.

This particular book deals with the growth of Non-Western Christianity also called "Southern Christianity" by Jenkins or "World Christianity."  This is the Christianity that is growing rapidly in Brazil, Sub-Saharan Africa, and parts of Asia  including China.  Places that were once thought of as pagan or non-Christian, like Africa, are now predominantly Christian.  Furthermore, while Christianity in the West is in steep decline, it is growing and taking on a local, non-Western flavor in much of the world.

People still think of Christianity as a Western (American) religion.  But the reality is that Christianity has been increasing for quite a long time.  Independent African churches (not tied to Western denominations and Western Christianity) have been growing since the 1930's and really began a fast growth curve in the 1950's.  But it wasn't until the late 1990's (if then) that even academics took notice of this growth.  Only around 2005 or so, did articles about the 100 million + Christians in China start making it into regular news outlets.  Jenkins book was the first to really take non-Western Christianity public.  Excerpts from his book were highlighted in a cover story article in the Atlantic magazine (formerly the Atlantic Monthly) in 2002.  That put the subject "out there" so-to-speak.

Behind the scenes, scholars like Andrew Walls at Edinburgh and Lamin Sanneh at Yale had already written and discussed non-Western Christianity at length.  Sanneh was a professor of mine and a great inspiration to Philip Jenkins.  Mark Noll, Jehu Hanciles, Paul Freston and other scholars who are now writing books about this subject.  Sanneh, however, can't write for a mass audience the way Jenkins can.  And that's why "The Next Christendom" has become the book on this subject for now.

LOOKING AT CHAPTER ONE (pages 1-3)

Jenkins writes:  "We are currently living through one of the transforming moments in the history of religion worldwide.  Over the past five centuries or so, the story of Christianity has been inextricably bound up with that of Europe and European-derived civilizations overseas, above all in North America...Over the past century however, the center of gravity in the Christian world has shifted inexorably southward to Africa, Asia and Latin America."

If we want to visualize a "typical" contemporary Christian, we should think of a woman living in a village in Nigeria, or in a Brazilian favela...

Many of the fastest growing countries in the world are either predominantly Christian or else have very sizable Christian minorities.  Even if Christians just maintain their present chare of the populatin in countries like Nigeria and Kenya, Mexico and Ethiopia, Brazil and the Philippines, there are soon going to be several hundred million more Christians from those nations alone.

Some 2 billion Christians are alive today, about one-third of the planetary total.....by 2050 only about one-fifth of the world's 3 billion Christians will be non-Hispanic Whites.  Soon the phrase "a White Christian" may sound like a curious oxymoron, as mildly surpirsing as a Swedish Buddhist."

****PATRICK'S COMMENTS

He's a good writer isn't he?  The beginning of the book sets the stage and challenges the current conceptions of who Christians are, what they look like, and where they live.  It's amazing that all of this has gone so unnoticed for so long.  To this day, we frequently meet Christians actively involved in missions who assume that Christianity is primarily Western and that there are very few Christians in places like Africa.

There can be several reasons for this--perhaps you can add more.  One is just ignorance about life outside of our own country or environment.  It's easy to latch on to an image and have that be your permanent reality.  "Most missionaries are white," "Africans primarily live in tribes and in small villages where they have never been exposed to Christianity," "everyone in Latin America is Catholic" etc.  I remember my father used to include slides of Nairobi, Kenya's skyline in his presentations just because most people hearing his presentations had no idea that Africa had cities and even tall modern looking buildings.  This was in the 1970's and 1980's.

But there's also the fact that Christianity has been so defined by American Christian media, American denominations, and American preachers.  As the Christian nation with the most money and p.r. possibilities, "what does a Christian look like" very much gets defined by North America--particularly the U.S.A.

Another reason is probably that Evangelical (mission) efforts have often come with very little analysis on the ground.  Decisions are made and fast-tracked and as the reality on the ground changed--missionary efforts did not.  The Evangelism push if often almost manic as opposed to being strategic.  A numbers-obssessed approach hasn't helped matters. It created the paradox that this extreme Evangelism efforts yielded results and then went unnoticed.  That would be fine if it weren't for the fact that some of this new Christianity is filled with errant thought--which will be talked about later.

Then there's the secular press, which prior to 9/11 never really took religious stories seriously.  Religious stories are common place now and the rise of the New Atheists brings even more attention to the positive and negative role played by religion.  But all of this was largely absent prior to 9/11.  The change has been dramatic. A shift this dramatic could easily go unnoticed in the secular press.

Same with universities which often remained completely oblivious to major religious shifts happening in the world.

So the ground has shifted as far as Christianity is concerned and people are just beginning to notice.  But this change has effects both positive and negative--and we'll continue to look at that as we make our way through the book.

New Church of God in Treviso, Italy

A new church in Italy has just been formed.  This is the 2nd new church in Northern Italy in the last 18 months.  Like our new church in Arco, the Treviso church is in Northern Italy.  On a map, it is just a bit north of beautiful Venice.  For now, the Lovaglio family continue to lead both churches.  The Arco church meets on Sunday morning and the new Treviso church meets at 6:30pm and is starting with about 30 people.  This is really great.

Three Worlds is already committed to offering strategic support to efforts in Italy.  We look forward to meeting with the people of Treviso in the coming months to begin working together.

Order Your Book Now

In the coming weeks at Three Worlds, we are going to be taking a close look at Philip Jenkins book, "The Next Christendom: the Coming of Global Christianity."  It is our 3W staff book for this year and I think it is one of the most important books of the last 10 years--not just in regard to Christianity, but period.  Christianity's explosive growth will have massive geo-political implications.

If you are interested in following the discussion on a deeper level than just reading the summary and analysis on the diary, order the book at amazon.com.