J and M Fly out of Rome

And then there were 9.  Jamie and Marco flew back to Berlin today. I drove them to the airport here in Rome for their flight out.  Spring Break is over and Marco needs to get ready for school on Monday.  He greatly enjoyed the Care-a-Van and being with the Care-a-Vaners.  Spring Break flew by fast.

Yesterday we took the Care-a-Vaners around to some of the sights of Rome.  The rain finally caught up with us on the trip.  It was a race to get through all the sights before the late afternoon downpour kicked in.  Fortunately, we were back under a dry roof by about 2PM after taking in all the key sights.  Tonight we meet up with the Ostia Church for Italian dinner.  Tomorrow will be church with Care-a-Vaner Larry Deacon preaching.

I'll be counting the days until I can see J and M again. On Monday, we drive to Innsbruck, Austria in the heart of the Alps, and then Tuesday will be in the German Alps, before Wednesday in Munich.  Thursday Aaron, Nicole, and I will fly back to Berlin and the Care-a-Vaners will return to the zoos from which they came.

All Care-a-Van Roads Lead to Rome

The Care-a-Van continues as we drive past more beauty than one can possibly describe. The day started very cloudy and rainy as we headed to Cinque Terre on the Italian Riviera, but it started to clear up as we arrived to the most scenic spots.  By the end of the day, it was just gorgeous.  The breathtaking views of the Mediterranean Sea were all around us--with the cliffs dropping off 3,000 feet into the ocean below. I didn't get any good pictures of those cliff-drop offs, since I was driving the van along the narrow road.  Then today we drove to Rome by way of Pisa.  I love the drive from Northwestern Italy to Rome along the coast.

Aaron and Nicole's Big Announcement

The Care-a-Van continues!  After spending time in Venice and with the Lovaglio family in Treviso, we drove from one side of Italy to the other.  From the Adriatic Sea to the Ligurian Sea and the Italian Riviera.  We stopped off in Verona to see the beautiful old downtown, the fully functional Roman Arena (no lions though), and the famous balcony where Juliet was hit on by Romeo.  From there, we drove across the increasingly mountainous terrain into Tuscany and now are within striking distance of Cinque Terre.

Aaron and Nicole continue to do an amazing job leading the Care-a-Van.  Leading groups is NOT easy.  There are so many things that go into it:  Arranging meetings, booking reservations, dealing with people's eating issues, dealing with health issues, collecting deposits, managing the funds, convincing waiters to let a group of your size into the restaurant, driving in foreign countries, --sometimes dealing with people's strange demands.  One time I was leading a group and upon arrival at the airport, the person I picked up immediately demanded that I take him for a haircut!!  Immediately!!  There's a lot more than that that goes into organizing something like the Care-a-Van.  Your mind is constantly planning, thinking----trying to figure out the shortest walking route on the spot, making sure no one gets lost, finding landmarks that are easy for people to follow--going on a hunt to find the only functional toilet for a bathroom break.  Helping people buy souvenirs, interpreting into another language, helping people be culturally sensitive, public speaking, arranging the public speaking, etc. etc. etc.  In other words, it's a massive job.

Aaron and Nicole have just done such an excellent job on the Care-A-Van and everyone has been having a great time.  The churches we have visited have been blessed, and the Care-a-Vaners have really enjoyed their time with the churches, and of course the gorgeous scenery.

Today, the Varners made their official announcement!  No they are not pregnant!:......yet.  Aaron and Nicole are winding down his 3 year contract with Global Missions and will be finishing their time in Germany in the summer.  They would like to begin thinking about starting a family and living close to the future grandparents.  We have been supportive of this decision all along since they were signed up for 3 years.

The Varners still have the Care-a-Van to finish, as well as two different Urban Missions experiences to host in Berlin for Anderson University and Warner Pacific College.  Then they will be heading to the USA in July to close-out and to prepare the way for the next group of team members we are planning to add to the 3W Team.

We can't imagine the last 18 months of starting-up Three Worlds without Aaron and Nicole's help.  They have been dispatched to various countries throughout Europe to help Jamie and I as we introduced 3W, they worked with young people in the region, they were part of XZ Berlin, they helped get the XZ and 3W internships off the ground, led and organized the first 3W Care-a-Van, and were the great money-managers of the team.  We will miss them greatly.  But we are quite sure that we will continue to interact with them and we may be leading groups across Europe together in the future anyway. They are always welcome and we are very proud of them.

We wish them the best as they move back to the USA and have a little baby Patrick or Patrickella.  And we're sure we will see them over in the USA and over here in Europe again in the future.  We love you guys!

Oh, and they look better than in my blurry photo above!  But it wouldn't be a Patrick photo if it wasn't awful.

First Photos of Care-a-Van 2012

Care-a-Van: From Arco, Italy

Hello everyone!  Greetings from one of my favorite places in the world, Lago di Garda, Italy.  The Care-a-Van is on day 3, and what a beautiful day it was.  It is so gorgeous around here.  But back to the beginning. Aaron and Nicole Varner and the 3 of us landed in Munich on Wednesday.  By Thursday morning, the six Americans on the Care-a-Vaners were on the ground with us and we started off with a 4 hour drive in grey and rainy weather to Haiterbach, Germany.  Despite the grey skies, the town itself is charming and the church people were great.  We had a really fun evening event on Thursday night which included a dinner and then a time of sharing where we learned about the German Church and they learned a little bit about the United States, Africa, and Three Worlds.

We had a great time staying in the home of Ricard and Meta who are Germans that were born in Uzbekistan.  They have a very charming family and invited us to come back for a conference or 3W Seminar.  So hopefully we can do that in 2013.  We really enjoyed our time with them.

The next morning we had an Eastern morning service which included the Lord's supper and footwashing.  Jesus, just before he was captured and taken to the cross, washed his disciples feet. It was a sign of deep humility as feet were considered very dirty (and were very dirty) in the ancient Near East.  In the Church of God, many of us engage in this ritual where we wash a person's feet.  I washed the feet of a young man that I know from Fritzlar Bible College.  (at Heiterbach, you wash the feet of the person next to you). This is done on Maunday Thursday--the day before Good Friday when Jesus was Crucified.

After lunch, we started our 7 hour drive to Arco, Italy.  Luckily the weather cleared up as we drove along the Swiss border and into Austria.  The Alps were looking gorgeous as always as we climbed up on our way to the Italian border.  Sharp mountains and rocks with castles on them dot the landscape.  This is a spectacular area of Europe.  I'm sure the Care-a-Vaners were amazed.

One of them said, "What more could we possibly see?" And the trip is only about 1/5 over!  Another said, "I'm going to run out of photos by the third day."  That's the kind of scenery around here. It's just stunning.

Today we spent the day in the Lago di Garda area looking at the cliffs that surround the lake 4000 ft straight up.  We took them into the mountains for lunch and then met with the Pastor and his wife in the evening.  We also spent a lot of time sharing about the challenge of Secularism in Europe and the Three Worlds of Christianity.  Throughout the trip we will have these mini-lectures that give people a full overview of 3W.

Tomorrow we will attend church in Arco before making the 2 hour drive to Venice.  I'll be speaking in Spanish both in Arco and in Treviso and it will be interpreted into Italian.   Then Monday we will hit Venice.

It would be nice if I posted some pictures but I'm busy being the tour guide along with Aaron and Nicole and Jamie and Marco---and I'm really tired.  So maybe at the next stop?  You know me. They will be blurry and useless anyway.

Care-a-Van Kicking Off

Well, the time has arrived.  The first 3W Care-a-van in which we will take a small group of people on a tour of Church of God congregations in Europe.  The trip has 3 objectives:

1) To connect European churches to North America.  Many of them are quite isolated and could use encouragement.  This will include the 2 new church-plants in Northern Italy.

2) To share with our visitors about the Three Worlds vision, how we operate, what are goals and strategies are, and how Christian cross-cultural ministry is changing in the 21st Century.

3) To show our visitors some of the most beautiful scenery in the world.  This continent is absolutely amazing.  I always say, "pound for pound" it's the most beautiful continent.  And this particular route will be going through some of it's most scenic areas.

We will be visiting the following places:

Heiterbach, Germany (Black Forest)

Austrian Alps

Lago di Garda, Italy (Dolomites/Alps)

Venice, IT

Treviso, IT

Verona, IT

Cinque terre, IT

Rome, IT

Insbruck, Austria

Oberammergau, Germany

German Alps

Munich, Germany

Hopefully, by the end of the trip, everyone on the trip is an expert on all things Three-Worlds.  And hopefully, we will have encouraged these churches that we are visiting and started connections that will last a lifetime.  And hopefully, there will be no car trouble or accidents.

Nicole and Aaron Varner have been working on the Care-a-Van for months.  It's occupied much of their time and they have been very busy doing everything from room reservations to calculating parking fees.  They have been very meticulous and have completely taken this on themselves.

Jamie and I have been to all of these places, so we'll be sharing tour guide duties, but the actual legwork for all of this has been done by A and N.  Great job guys.

Well, we're off to lovely Munich where we will meet up with our 6 Care-a-Vaners.

Let the adventure begin.  I'm sure we will all be posting from the road.

I'll also be updating on twizzle and BookFace.

Twitter:  3WCHOG

BookFace:  Three Worlds

Chinese Evangelicals in Europe

We talk a lot about the growth of the Non-Western church in Europe and the important part that plays for the church as a whole.  Immigrant churches are all over this continent, including in the Church of God. This is a great video sent to me by my friend Juan Carlos in Spain.  It's about the Chinese Evangelicals in Spain.  A perfect subject for Three Worlds.  Link here:  http://www.rtve.es/alacarta/videos/buenas-noticias-tv/buenas-noticias-tv-iglesia-china/1358325/ but it's in Spanish.

The Next Christendom: Discussion 5

Today we look at Chapter 6 of our ongoing discussion on "The Next Christendom." Chapter 6 focuses on how the growth of Christianity in the "Southern" world (Brazil, China, countries in Africa, South Korea, etc.), are bringing new levels of diversity to Christianity.  It also means that Western (European/American) views of Christianity are being openly challenged.  The title chapter, "Coming to Terms" suggests that Western Christians must come to terms with this new Christianity, which in my book Passport of Faith (2006) I referred to as a spicier version of Christianity.

It is a non-Western faith more comfortable with the supernatural, prophecy, visions, ecstatic utterances, and healing.  It raises the question of how much of their Christianity is really just adopting cultural values.  Jenkins points out the obvious that Western Christianity has itself borrowed and been formed by Western and pagan culture.  He points out that St. Paul's Cathedral in London "almost certainly stands on the site of an ancient pagan structure. " There are many other examples one could go through such as this (p.111).

Inevitably local culture changes and adds flavor to Christianity.  He refers to the work of my former professor Lamin Sanneh at Yale who argues "that the simple decision to translate the scripture into local languages was in itself a key concession to native cultures, and one made by even the  most obtuse Northern missionaries (p. 113).

An example of a local tradition entering into Christian practice comes from Zaire/Congo.  Distinguished visitors were to be greeted by spear-bearers, and accordingly spears were added to the liturgical procession as a means of acknowledging the presence of God."  (p. 115).

Theology is equally formed by culture.  He points to African Christian theology being concerned about Jesus the healer (in a context of so much suffering) , and Latin American theology being concerned with the rights of the oppressed due to the history of oligarchy and oppression in that region.  I would suggest American theology is very interested in victory and growth/power.

The challenge becomes when the theology or traditions become more local than Christian/Biblical.  This is referred to as syncretism. He gives the example of a female Korean theologian who mixed Confucian/shaman ideas with Christianity (p.120).

While the Non-Western church can often be accused of the Western church as being accommodating to paganism (or syncretistic), the West can also do this. He gives a great examle on page 130 regarding an Anglican archbishop of Southeast Asia who traveled to Vancouver, BC and saw the totem poles on display in the city and viewed them as pagan idols which needed to be exorcised.  This alarmed the the Canadian Anglicans who were trying to cultivate a strong relationship with the Native American population and just viewed the totem poles as tourist objects.  But in reality, the non-Western archbishop was actually giving them the spiritual credence that they deserve as objects of veneration.

The chapter concludes by referring to the work of sociologists Max Weber and Ernst Troeltsch.  They categorize institutional Christianity as "church" and refer to the kind of movements we see in the non-Western world as "sects." Sects are more authoritarian and have a high level of commitment.  Churches are more institutional--like an organization (one of many) that people belong to.  Do sects become more like churches over the long run?  Sure.

Patrick's comments***

This is a very important chapter---perhaps one of the most important in the whole book.  It raises very important issues that Westerners need to be aware of.

The impact of culture on Christianity is the subject of my next book if I ever get around to writing it.  American Christianity is uniquely imbued with all sorts of values that are more American than Christian, or at least which come from an American slant.  As I wrote "Mosaic," the Church of God certainly is full of cultural values that can be easily traced to the 19th Century values of the American Midwest--particularly it's peculiar obsession with "autonomy"--a word not even mentioned in the Bible, but which is certainly an enormous part of the foundation of the United States beginning with its independence from Britain.  "Don't Tread on Me" certainly resonates with the American mind in a way it would not with, say , the Japanese mind (it is quite the opposite in fact--group first).

As for syncretism, it seems pretty clear that there is a scale to this.  All cultures deal with it to some extent, but I actually think the New Testament is quite clear on what is not appropriate.  The diversity of the faith as seen in Acts 2, is reigned in quite a bit by the New Testament accounts of disharmony and violations that upset the church.  You don't hear that too often.  Once again, I think that's why Three World exists---to identify that Biblical center that exists within the Three different worlds of Christianity--amidst a sea of cultural differences.

London 3W II in the Books!

What a great time in London!  Do I ever not have a great time there?  Aside from being my favorite place in the world, I love the church.  It's always great to be with the good folks at Tottenham, and I was extremely pleased with the 3W Seminar response.  Our goal is to just help churches process and be a resource to them.  They are free to take or reject anything they want.  The overall desire is to just keep increasing the sense of inner-connectivity in our region.  It's good to go on the journey together. We covered an immense amount of subjects--it was a dense presentation.  But I think everyone tracked it very well and the response was very positive.  I'll be sending them notes later today.  Should have thought to do that prior to meeting.

I'm so glad the meeting went off without any problems.  This time around, I actually stayed out by Heathrow airport because I had a very early flight to catch on Monday.  Consequently, it was a 90 minute tube journey to the church.  The trains stopped running on the Victoria line just as I got off at the church stop.  It's a good thing I was on that last train. It would have been a shame to have been stuck far away.

This was a short trip, but I did find time to make it to my favorite travel bookstore Stanford's near Covent Garden as well as the bookstores in the area.  There are no good English bookstores in Berlin so it is my trips to Paris and London that give me an opportunity to browse the bookstores.  This time I only purchased one book; Philip Norman's new biography on John Lennon.  It's been a while since I've read a book about the Beatles.  I've read quite a few, but this will be the first since 1992 or so.

On Sunday night I attended Hillsong church on my way back to Heathrow.  We're always trying to keep an eye out on the various kinds of churches that are being planted in Europe as we prep the way for what we will be doing next with the Church of God.  This was their fourth service of the day which is held at a theatre in the West End that 6 days a week is where "We Will Rock You" plays.  So pictures of Freddie Mercury are absolutely everywhere.  I wonder what it costs to rent that place?  They have interpreters for a multitude of languages.  Very impressive.  And the average age of the church seemed to be about 25.  I sat next to a young Chinese-Australian girl from Melbourne, Australia who just moved to London for work.

So many of you have written in to say:  "Please, Patrick.  Enough about ministry talk.  Can you please talk more about airplanes and airports."  Yes, yes, I know that this is what you really want to hear about.  Well, okay, if I must:

Flew over on British Airways--an A320.  This small two-jet aircraft is used a lot in Europe for these short hauls.  It's a safe plane, but not nearly as nice as a Boeing (Boeing rules).  The new Terminal 5 at Heathrow (as I tweedled over at twizzle, or twicker, or twitter--whatever-it's-called" is a horrible scandalous monstrosity.  It looks nice, but it is is almost entirely duty free shopping with few options of places to eat and few places to lounge around or entertain kids.  It was constructed PRIMARILY as a duty-free shopping center as opposed to an airport terminal--and it shows.  I don't understand why people can't duplicate the Hong Kong International Airport or Singapore Changi design.  Those two airports--along with Seoul's Incheon really set the standard.  Ironically, HKIA was designed by a British firm.  It's genius.

Here is a  picture of a British Airways 747-400 taken from the tarmac--which just landed from somewhere exotic.  At around 7AM (when this was taken) there are a ton of 747's landing at heathrow every minute or so.  That's when the Asian, African, and North American 747's and 777's of British Airways arrive before they head out again in the afternoon and evening.  It's the best time for airplane watching.  I had a Virgin Airways Airbus 340-600 fly right over my head before landing on the runway.  SO AWESOME!!!!!  Good thing it didn't land on my head before flying over to the runway.

My next British Airways flight will be in June when I head to the USA for Regional Coordinator Meetings and visit some churches.  It will be a 747-400 from London to Miami.  Looking forward to that flight, and immediately going to the closest Olive Garden in Miami.

Jamie's off to Greece tomorrow.  Marco and I will be on the starvation diet.  Pray.

3W Seminar London II

I'm off to London for a 3W Seminar at the Tottenham Church of God on "Becoming a Missionary Church." This is the second 3W Seminar in London, but the first time that this particular topic is being done.  I always enjoy my time at the Tottenham church and they are always such gracious hosts.  This is the 2nd 3W Seminar in the UK in the last 3 weeks.  Dave and Kathy Simpson just did one in Liverpool/Birkenhead.

And of course it's always great to be in my favorite place on planet earth: London, England.  It's always a happy day when I'm boarding a plane that is bound for London.  Total heaven.

Here is the description of this 3W Seminar.

3W Seminar:  Becoming a Missionary Church

Part 1:  Obstacles to Mission Description:  There are many issues in the life of the church that can block our efforts to become an effective missionary church.  Some of these can be read about in the New Testament and others are challenges we face in the 21st Century context.

Part 2:  The Life-Cycle of a Church Description:  Like all organisms, the church has a natural life-cycle from birth to death.  It is important to understand where your church is on the life-cycle and how to re-vitalize the life of your church so that it can be effective missionary church.

Part 3:  Solutions: Removing the Obstacles to Becoming a Missionary Church:  The obstacles to healthy, mission-minded church life can be very significant.  We look at ways to clear the path for effective ministry. Part 4:  Ideas for Mission & Analyzing Your Church’s Potential: We look at 4 different ways to mobilize your church for effective mission and discuss how the church can analyze its strengths and weaknesses.