'Hermits United' in Edinburgh

As part of my doctoral program, I am strongly encouraged to participate in a 'community of scholars' directly engaged in my particular field of study. Not only does this present an important opportunity for professional networking, but also contributes to a healthy balance in the otherwise rather isolated life of a full-time scholar.

'Hermits United', though, would be a good way of describing it. This week, I attended the Ecclesiastical History Society conference on 'Church and Empire' in Edinburgh, Scotland. It was a highly enjoyable time of meeting other scholars studying various aspects of Christian history. I presented a paper that formed part of a recent chapter in my thesis, and got a positive response from the eighteen or so experts and research students in the room. Timothy Barnes, whom I consider the top person in the field of study related to the Roman emperor Constantine, sat in as a guest and listened to my presentation. I had earlier learned that, although retired, he held an honorary professorship at the University of Edinburgh, so I leapt at the opportunity to invite him to hear my presentation. Meeting someone whose work I admire a great deal was easily the highlight for me.

I also unexpectedly had the opportunity to represent and explain the Church of the Nazarene to several others attending the conference. I had the pleasure of seeing a couple guys I had connected with earlier this year in Cambridge: one of them an Anglican priest, and the other an atheist studying Welsh poetry who is nevertheless friendly toward Christianity. I also met a Roman Catholic priest from Washington, DC, an evangelical youth-worker from Australia, and a pair of Russian Orthodox scholars, an Italian from Milan who is doing a Ph.D. in a second language at the University of Nottingham, and a self-described 'radical political theologian' whose worldview, except for our shared Christian faith, is almost completely different than my own. Finally, I met another high-calibre historian of late antiquity, Gillian Clark, whose grandmotherly demeanor and smooth aristocratic accent immediately won my heart.

I intended to advertise myself as connected with the University of Manchester, thinking it quite likely no one knew or cared about Nazarene Theological College. However, my name-tag said 'Nazarene Theological College' anyway. It was actually quite the conversation starter! Quite a number of people -- including the above individuals -- asked about the college and the Church of the Nazarene. Most had already heard either of the college or the denomination, and had very positive things to say. This was also a top highlight, explaining briefly and simply our denomination's 'place' in the body of Christ as related to our history and our emphasis on holiness.

Our travels often present us with opportunities to explain some aspect of our faith to people we happen to meet. In the UK, it is most often our American accents that start conversations: 'You're not from around here, are you?' is often followed by 'What are you doing in the UK?' We go on to explain her job, my research, and the church connection immediately gets inserted with those. People are almost always interested in hearing a bit more. Gina also had a similar conversation with the young lady who hosted us in her home for the week: she's a rather talented visual and performance artist, and has a general interest in and respect for all religions but self-identifies with none in particular. These personal conversations do not immediately result in any conversions: however, we do believe that, in such moments, we are part of perhaps a long 'chain' of people in someone's life through whom God reveals his love to people. We believe that if someone is having a positive interaction with us on any subject relating to Christ, the chances are high that their hearts will be drawn closer to him in the process.

Many of these people we have met, we may never see again. But we crossed paths once. We pray we will be able to do so again in God's kingdom.

Squirrel War of 2016

While other friends were relocating to Africa as missionaries, where they would post photos on social media of monkeys or other undomesticated creatures that managed to sneak inside their homes, we didn't think we had to worry about such things when we moved to England.

We were wrong.

The squirrels in Didsbury are quite aggressive. We have been told they're actually American grey squirrels that somehow got to England, bred out of control and dominated the native red squirrels to near extinction.

Anyway, we have a top floor, one-room studio apartment on the campus of Nazarene Theological College. We're actually in the undergraduate dormitory, where Andrew serves as the resident assistant for all the students living on campus. When we first arrived, there were warning signs posted throughout the building about invasive squirrels. We thought it was a joke.

Each summer we battle the invasions of the squirrels, competing with us for the food in our own kitchen. I feel truly sorry for those little red squirrels.

In Europe, most residents do not have screens on their windows. If it's hot or you want fresh air, you open your window wide and there's nothing standing between you and whatever is out there, waiting to come in. My biggest concerns is usually about mosquitoes and spiders. There have been few of those. But the squirrels are another thing entirely.

If we open our windows in the summer, because it can get pretty stifling on the top floor on a warm, sunny day, these cunning critters will just come right in. Sometimes they poke their head through to watch and see what we're doing. Once I was exercising vigorously to a video on my computer just a couple of feet from the window and a squirrel peered in and watched me, and even tentatively started putting its paws inside the frame as if testing the boundaries to see what I would do. If we're not looking or we happen to leave for a few minutes, or even go into the bathroom and the squirrels think we're not there, they waltz right in and start finding treats and then hiding them in other places in our flat.

Just last week, we had already been raided 3 times when we accidentally left a window open while we were out. But we thought that it would be OK to have them open overnight to make it more comfortable for sleeping.

At 6:15 a.m., we were violently started awake by a loud noise. We bolted upright and looked around, but could see nothing that had tipped over or was out of place. So, we tried to go back to sleep for a little while longer. Then, Andrew heard something and looked over to see a squirrel standing on our kitchen table. He leaped up to shoo it away, but in the blink of an eye, it had vanished. We looked around for a while, and then finally peered behind a large piece of furniture and saw a bushy tail in the shadows. We opened a kitchen window and then moved the furniture to prompt the squirrel out. The squirrel leaped on the table again and then jumped out the window.

Other incidents involve squirrels finding my hidden bag of chocolate under my side of the bed and hiding truffles and other pieces of chocolate around our apartment, I guess to come back and get later. I've found an unwrapped truffle underneath my laundry basket, a small chocolate bar inside a shoe, and strangest, a truffle tucked underneath the corner of the fitted sheet on our bed when I changed the sheets. They also like to eat hamburger buns.

I did try to put up mosquito netting on one window to see what would happen. The squirrel pushed right through it to raid our kitchen once again while Andrew was blissfully unaware, studying on the bed with headphones in, listening to his music. I came back to find crumbs all over the kitchen floor.

Cheeky!

Suffice it to say, this is an unexpected aspect of "missionary life" in England.

The Lamb

Animal sacrifice is all through the Bible. It was the practice laid out by God for His people in the Old Testament to atone for their sins and seek God's forgiveness. For people whose livelihood depended on raising livestock for food, milk, offspring, pelts, etc., to give up one of their animals for this ritual -- in fact, the most perfect ones -- was really a sacrifice for them in terms of losing all that the animal provided them to live. It wasn't just a symbolic act.

Yet, when Jesus came -- God Himself in the form of a man -- and walked among us, He made the ultimate sacrifice of His very life for us so that never again would humankind need to kill animals to repent of our sins. Jesus' sacrifice was for all of us, for all time.  That is why throughout the New Testament, He is often referred to as The Lamb.

For those of us in the West who mostly eat meat that we've purchased pre-cut and packaged at a grocery store, it's hard to understand what it really means that we consume living creatures for our own well-being.

In this culture, it is still a common practice at special occasions for someone to give up one of his lambs for a family or village feast. Often the men will gather around the animal and pray over it before the slaughter. All are expected to stand and watch the moment of the animal's death, in respect for its sacrifice. Then, the men and women participate in skinning the animal, removing its organs and cooking the meat slowly for several hours in a wood-fired covered bowl or pit. When it is finished, everyone sits on the floor and eats the meat and broth mixed with rice, along with other special foods.

The eldest or most honored man takes the head of the lamb and removes parts of the head and gifts them to people, explaining how this part of the animal symbolizes a character trait and wishing for that person to experience this trait. For instance, if the man gives the ear to a boy, he might say that he wishes the boy to have good ears to hear the wisdom of others and to learn and grow from this wisdom. Or if he gives the lip of the lamb to a young woman, he might say that he wishes all her words to be gentle and kind.

"Anna", the national leader of our people in this country, explained to me that many people here believe that Jesus is an American or a Russian god. They view our faith as something foreign that doesn't belong in their culture and traditions. So, Anna has found ways to see the Christian meanings within her people's cultural practices, and to incorporate those cultural practices into the life of the believers. The feast of the lamb is one of those practices.

Our team had the honor to witness this sacrifice of the lamb and to spend time with other believers during a feast ceremony here in Central Asia this week. It was interesting to see how the group related the slaughter of the animal to the death of Jesus for our sins, and used the feast as an opportunity to celebrate and remember what Jesus has done for us. It was also interesting to see how they related the gifting of the parts of the head in terms of fruits of the Spirit that they wished for the young people and children present.

Although it was hard to witness the death of a living animal, our group felt incredibly honored and privileged that the believers here would share their cultural practice with us, and that together, although we speak different languages, we could all celebrate the sacrifice of the Lamb and the freedom we now know in Jesus.

Report from Central Asia

Greetings from Central Asia!

I am about halfway through a two-week media mission trip with four Olivet Nazarene University media students, on a story-gathering trip in two neighboring countries.

The trip is partially the result of my visit to Olivet last fall, when I was given the opportunity to speak in four different communications classes about how to use journalism, PR and media in missions. Heather Attig McLaughlin, who grew up in the youth group at church with my husband Andrew, is a professor in media there now. She had previously wanted to put together a mission trip to the Eurasia Region, so we talked about that before I visited the school. Missionary Scott Rainey, who leads the CIS Field, of which Central Asia District is a part, asked if we would come to these two countries to gather video and written testimonies, to encourage the believers and also lead a young adult media camp. His idea was that we could teach young adults how to use their smart phones to film and edit short videos that they could use to share their faith with their friends. It was the perfect idea for this small team! Also joining us are Nancy, a leader from Olivet, and Natasha, a Ukrainian who is serving as our tranlastor.

We spent the first four days in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, where we have a church. We filmed two testimonies, and I also interviewed two additional people for written articles. We also have done a lot of videography for our archives for future videos, and photography.

It’s been a great experience so far. The church people were amazing in hosting us. They put us in a very good hostel and two women from the church prepared our meals each day. They were delicious and allowed us to try a very different kind of Russian-influenced cuisine from what we are used to. Nick, a member of the worship team at church, who is also a freelance media professional, hung out with us each day, showed us around the city, took us out for late night shooting, taught us Russian words, and explained the culture and what it is like to be a Christian in Kazakhstan. We have learned a lot!

The students have great attitudes, have been incredibly flexible, and know what they’re doing with videography. I can’t wait to see how these finished videos turn out! They even edited together a one-minute preview of Nick’s story, which we were asked to share in church on Sunday morning. It was fun to see a bit of what the students have learned in their program at Olivet.

We also enjoyed being part of worship with our brothers and sisters on Sunday morning. It was a small but faithful group.

We have learned that in Kazakhstan there have traditionally been three ethnic or “national” groups – Korean ancestry, Russian ancestry and native Kazakhs. In this culture, your ethnicity determines your religion. If you are Korean, you might be Protestant Christian. Russians are Orthodox Christian if they are religious. Kazakhs are nominally Muslim. It is not acceptable to change your religion. It is also illegal to proselytize, particularly if you’re Christian.

Astana is a beautiful, new, clean city with a lot of advanced technology and beautiful, creative architecture. The capital was established just 20 years ago, so all the buildings are brand new, funded by revenue for the sale of oil. It is one of the world’s few planned cities. The population is about 1 million.

Monday, we flew from Astana to another country on the district. We will move around a bit here, traveling to a couple locations to spend time with Nazarene believers and hear their stories. We have gotten to hear a bit from Scott about their backgrounds and how God has worked in their lives. I can’t wait to hear the full stories with all the details! We’ll also worship with them on Sunday, and run the two-day media camp here. The Olivet students have already prepared training materials and a sample video so they can teach them what they have been learning at university, using their smart phones.

I am really grateful for all those who have been praying for us. Several team members have had slight stomach or sinus problems, but overall everyone has been healthy, despite a continuing lack of sleep as we have kept tight schedules with late nights or early mornings. We have had smooth travels and all our equipment has worked flawlessly, and we’ve had good group cohesion and unity with lots of laughter and fun conversation.

The people you meet: New friends from Croatia

If you saw our newsletter in April (hint, join our Facebook group), you saw that I started writing about the people that we meet through our life and ministry in the UK and Eurasia Region.

This week, we met two wonderful women from Croatia.

Our good friend Betsy Scott (left), a Nazarene missionary in Croatia with her husband Dave, and two children, J.J. and Emma, brought two of her good friends and fellow church planters to Nazarene Theological College this week for what NTC calls an "intensive class."

Background: Intensive classes meet four or five days in one week, all day, and squeeze a semester worth of material into that week. Then a follow-up essay is due later, which is the entirety of the grade in the class. Some of the students from this past year have stayed in town for the intensive classes, and other people, like our Croatian friends, have traveled in specifically for this educational opportunity.


I had the unexpected pleasure of being able to spend some time with these women -- Sanja and Dalia -- and hear more about their stories over meals and an interview.

Sanja (right in photo) is an entrepreneur, selling natural food cakes in Croatia, and is passionate about holistic health and clean eating. She met Christ about 20 years ago and, as a natural extrovert, she is also passionate about sharing Jesus with others, but has struggled to know how to do this appropriately in the Croatian context. Early on, she and others would go door to door and knock, or stand on street corners preaching. When this did not work, she became discouraged.

About a year or two ago, Sanja met Betsy because their sons were in the same class. She learned that Betsy was starting a Bible study for women, and Sanja enthusiastically joined. She fell in love with the doctrines and biblical beliefs of the Church of the Nazarene, which is a new church in Croatia. Although Sanja had been a committed Christian for many years, she felt that she was simply floating in her faith, without a firm foundation, and didn't know how to grow deeper than she had already grown. But what she was learning in the Bible study took her deeper while giving her a more firm foundation in her faith

Sanja joined the Scotts' church planting team, and is one of the leaders of The Valuing Life ministry, which the group created to meet once a month, giving women from Zagreb a place where they can share about their crafts and creations and sell them to others. As Croatia is struggling economically, and women don't always have work opportunities, Valuing Life allows them to showcase their creative work and also earn some income. It is also a time to discuss faith and get to know other women, whether they're Christian or non Christian.

When Sanja learned that there was the opportunity for her to study theology in a deeper and more focused way through two of our Nazarene educational institutions in Europe, she leapt at the chance to study. She took the evangelism intensive this week, which gave her many new ideas about how she could share her faith in more culturally appropriate ways for Croatia.

Dalia is completing her PhD in environmental management, and is passionate about science and creation and how this intersects with theology and Christian practice. She learned about the Nazarene Bible study from Sanja. Dalia had been feeling a deep need to understand God more and to grow deeper in her faith, so she felt the Bible study was the answer to her need.

Dalia has become captivated by Wesleyan theology, which is the source of the distinctive doctrine of the Church of the Nazarene, particularly the understanding of holiness in Christian living and relationship with God. She has read numerous books on Wesley and translated a booklet called Nazarene Essentials into Croatian. Dalia is very interested in pursuing a master's degree in theology.

Sanja and Dalia are part of the core team which is planting the Church of the Nazarene in Croatia. Dave and Betsy have been working there with a variety of volunteers for about five years, and after all the team's hard work in networking, developing relationships, and creating spaces for informal spiritual discussion, there is now the first Nazarene church in Zagreb -- a God-thing in a culture where Protestants make up less than 1 percent of the population.

Riding a double decker bus for the first time.

Selfies with Mexican food.

I had a great time showing the three women around Didsbury where we live. Andrew and I took Betsy to the Curry Mile for dinner and conversation one evening. On Thursday evening, I took all three on our standard double-decker buses (their first time to ride in a bus with a second level) into the city center for Mexican food (think Chipotle knock-off) and a bit of shopping.

These beautiful ladies are smart, ambitious, and loads of fun, and it brought some unexpected pleasure into the week to have them here and to be able to share our current home with new people and talk about how God has been working in all our lives.

Margin

Andrew and I both woke up this morning very stressed. We are both in deadline-driven work, with other requirements and commitments thrown in. Add that to being part of a non-profit ministry that is perpetually understaffed, you can feel like the whole world is riding on your shoulders.

The world is heavy.

Throughout the past six years of my work in a cross-cultural setting, the waves of stress have ebbed and flowed. I learned the hard way (through stress-related illness) early on, that God is not asking me to carry the whole world on my shoulders. That's His job. Yet, so often, I forget.

I forget when the news becomes a rapid-fire sequence of disasters, acts of violence and war updates that we need to report on without delay. I forget when I am happily flooded with story after story of God's redeeming work in broken lives, broken relationships and broken communities. I want to tell those stories RIGHT NOW, because I'm excited, and I want the whole world to know how great and wonderful is our God. And maybe I'm wanting to erase the bad taste of all those bad stories, too.

But there are only so many hours in a day.

I've lamented frequently that I even have to sleep. Or cook. Or clean. Why did God make it just a 24-hour day? Why not 36 or 48? Couldn't He send a housekeeper and cook and personal assistant to run my errands so I can keep on working?

I also pray that God would send more workers into the harvest to labor alongside me in this really exciting ministry of communications. And He is answering. People are turning up, ready and willing to help. It's great. And it's more encouraging to me than I can say. But we're still not there. There are more stories to tell than people to tell them, more deadlines to meet than hours in the day. More projects that need worked on. More meetings to be had. More proposals that need written. More budgets to be drawn up. More trips than space between them. More desktop to be cleared off, more emails to be answered and archived. More, more, more...

It's not just missionary life. It's simply life in the Western world, whether or not you're a missionary. If you're a stay-at-home mom, or a mom who balances child care with working outside the home; a husband working during the day and trying to finish a degree at night; or a retiree who suspects you're busier than when you had a full-time job; or a single woman working two jobs to make ends meet, to give just a few examples, chances are you know what I'm talking about. Maybe it's like this globally, now, I don't know.

Margins. As I texted a bit with my dad (retired Nazarene pastor) this morning, he reminded me of the principle of blocking out "margins" in one's life. This is the white area around the text in a book or document that gives your eyes space to "breathe." We need this in our lives, too: blocks of time in our daily schedule or weekly calendar when we have space in which we can just take a breath. Say a prayer. Think. Reflect. Be at peace.

I haven't had that for a while. Not everything in my calendar has been a demand. Sometimes it's been good things, like dinners with friends, or a weekly Bible study, or a day trip to explore some new area of where we live.

But it still hasn't left me any breathing room. Thus, we wake up to a beautifully sunny day arced over by a cobalt sky and just simply feel grumpy and irritable. What a waste of a rare sunny day in England.

Again, God is telling me that His yoke is easy and His burden is light. He's not asking me to kill myself in His work. In fact, there is a major theme in the Bible of entering into God's rest. I dearly need that promise of His rest right now. I don't think He means sleeping in late or getting a solid 9-hour night of uninterrupted sleep (although I would happily accept either of those blessings). I think He means peacefulness, trust in Him in the midst of a storm, knowing that in the end it's all up to Him, not me.

I hope we can all enter into His rest today as we allow Him to help us draw out boundaries, or margins, in our lives and in our service to Him and others.

And if you want to pray for us (for Andrew's balancing of research, serving the college, preaching, etc., for more people to join me in the work), we won't turn that down, either.

War, peace and Hope

December 22 - 24, 1940, is known as the Christmas Blitz here in Manchester. For 17 hours, Nazi planes flew over the industrial city, dropping 443 bombs in commercial and residential areas alike, killing more than 650 people, many of whom were with family, having Christmas parties. More than 50,000 homes were destroyed -- just two days before Christmas (which seems especially cruel).

It must have seemed like the darkest, grimmest, most hopeless Christmas ever. So much for peace on earth.



The Imperial War Museum of the North today released this rare propaganda video of the destruction of Manchester, and how the city was beginning to defiantly rebuild: http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/incoming/manchester-christmas-blitz-video-aftermath-10622423

I am reflecting this morning how strange it is for me, as an American, to have spent five years living in Germany, and now more than a year in England -- two fiercely opposed enemies who, just 70 years ago, slaughtered each other wholesale, one side to establish dominance over all of Europe; the other, to prevent that from happening. 

It's hard for me to comprehend, because we haven't seen all-out war on our own soil since the Civil War in the 1800s. We've had violence and terrorism, and the attack on Pearl Harbor. But not this kind of war. To stand in places in Germany, England, France, and even other nations in Europe, where major battles took place in modern times, is quite surreal.

St. Ann's Square, where I just explored a Christmas Market on Sunday.

Today, these nations live at relative peace together as part of the same European Union. They may snipe at one another in politics, but they are at peace. I dare to say they are even friends.

What a difference a few decades can make.

As I watched the footage in the above video, it was hard to imagine that where I live today, the second largest city in the UK, which is vibrant and busy and productive, was the scene of such carnage and destruction. I really don't recognize anything in the video. But the place names are familiar to me. I stroll regularly in the city center, particularly Piccadilly, and I've visited Manchester Cathedral. I can't even imagine walking among the smoking ruins of those places today.

Mancunians celebrating Christmas on the eve of the anniversary of the Christmas Blitz.

Probably inevitably, this video made me think of the pictures I've seen of Syria. Of major metropolitan areas that have been turned into skeletal, desolate ghost towns. I have thought more than once that no city could ever recover from such an onslaught.



Now, after viewing the destruction in the Manchester video, and comparing it to the lively place where I live today, I am seeing those ruined Syrian cities with a bit more hope. There is really only one Hope for such places.

Maybe someday, the war there really will end. Maybe peace really will come. Maybe people really will be able to bulldoze away the heaps of concrete and steel and start again. Maybe new, beautiful, vibrant cities really can spring up from the ashes.

Maybe. Someday.

 

All Is Well

By Michael W. Smith

All is well, all is well
Angels and men rejoice
For tonight darkness fell
Into the dawn of love's light
Sing A-le
Sing Alleluia

All is well, all is well
Let there be peace on earth
Christ is come; go and tell
That He is in the manger
Sing A-le
Sing Alleluia

All is well, all is well
Lift up your voice and sing
Born is now Emmanuel
Born is our Lord and Savior
Sing Alleluia
Sing Alleluia
All is well

Songwriters: SMITH, MICHAEL W. / KIRKPATRICK, WAYNE

© Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Universal Music Publishing Group