Some time ago, I met a lovely person on the plane as I traveled home from a business trip in Washington D. C. Her name is Miriam and she is from Iran. Miriam moved here in 1977, 2 years before the Revolution, when the Shah was deposed. This was a watershed moment in the history of the region and of the world, but on a very intimate and personal level, I was given a glimpse into an event that I’ve only read about on a global scale.

Numerous times during our conversation, Miriam marked time by the cataclysmic events that came to be known as “The Revolution”. “Before the revolution, this… and, after the revolution, that…”she would say. Miriam had definitely lived a full and interesting life, but what I’ll never forget about her was the sadness she carried like a sack of Jerusalem stone borne upon her shoulders. Though her eyes gleamed and her voice had a musical quality, she looked tired. Was this the sadness of someone simply getting along in years, or was there something more?

She eventually revealed to me that her mother had recently died, and that she had not seen her in 40 years. Months earlier, Miriam had to make the decision of whether or not to go visit her mother in Iran as she lay dying. With all the turmoil swirling around the Iranian elections that made international headlines taking place, her brothers and other family members strongly discouraged her from visiting. It was simply too dangerous they warned her. This was a very difficult position to be put in and while she was trying to process it all and make up her mind, her mother died.

Now it appears that a deep sadness will be her constant companion for quite a while, if not forever. She will continually be sorting through the pain of her indecision and delay. It must be a terrible thing to be put in such a predicament. I wanted to say something, bring her the truth of the gospel of Christ or something, but I was speechless. All I could do was let the woman talk and hopefully, let her know by listening intently, that I could hear her heart and I cared.

I marveled at Miriam’s quiet, reserved strength; a strength, possessed by many women in that region of the world so accustomed to, and known for, its wars, violence and hatred. I was blessed by her willingness to share her brokenness and despair so intimately with me on that plane, and while I wanted to do something great to help this woman, I realized there was little I could do.

Reflecting back however, I now realize that maybe I was given a glimpse of the hope that lies in the little things. For as Mother Theresa once said, “We can do no great things, only small things with great love.” Perhaps, a small thing like listening intently to someone pour out their heart can be perceived as a great act of love that could change the world. My wife’s been telling me this for years; it’s a little secret that all women know, she says.

Maybe I should start listening!

Driving on main roads is a certain adventure. It’s a crush of cars weaving in and out, beeping,  surging, swerving. Elade says everyone understands and works together, we’re all in this together so let’s make the best of it. No road rage here, but the driving is aggressive.

School is a business here, and most aren’t focused on results. There are many untrained and unqualified teachers who don’t truly prepare kids to go on to university. Parents often send kids to school for a few years as they can afford, hoping they will at least learn to read and write. Schools are opening all the time so a lack of schools is not the problem. It’s all about the quality. I can’t wait to see the Hope for Haiti school in Zorange. It’s laying the foundation for changing a nation.

On the side of the road known as Truman Blvd, people are buying clothes by the pound. Large bundles that probably came over from American thrift stores stack up high and foreboding as a monument against the small merchants who used to make a living tailoring clothes. There is no native dress. Everyone seems to be clad in mismatched second hand clothing from developed countries.

Once outside of Port au Prince the world changes. The winding roads through majestic mountains are breathtaking. Elade has a gift for driving these dangerous roads as if it were a 4 wheeling game.

I was sick the first hours of the trip. Bob Carpenter is a chiropractor and said I had a viral sinus infection. He helped fix me by doing a little trick with pressure points in my head and giving me some type of vitamin C spray to immediately boost my immune system. Thirty minutes later I was back to my old self and exceedingly grateful because I don’t think I could have it in the condition I was in.

We stopped at the future home of Hope for Haiti in Bainet. Hope helped buy a hospital and a dormitory there. The hospital was destroyed, but the dorm is in tack. The dorm looks like a tropical resort with turquoise blue ocean waves crashing on the beach out the back door.

30 minutes later on our way to Zorange, we are on the side of the road with a flat tire. We were gonna be there a while. Darkness fell and  we really began to hear the goats and the dogs bleating and barking on the hillsides. Their sounds echoing through the valleys and onto the ridge lines.

You could smell cooking fires all across the area as well. It was a surreal time on that potholed road out there in the Haitian outback.

I heard a baby’s cry piercing the darkness. I remember thinking, these guys are amazing changing out the tire in these conditions. The Toyota Landcruiser is an amazing vehicle when put to the test. Navigating those roads is an explanation of how that vehicle has become legendary.

We were getting close to Zorange, but we still had about an hour drive up the Bainet River bed.

These are notes I took during my recent trip to Haiti:

Flying into Port-au-Prince after flying into Miami is an experience in contrast for sure. 

The airport was destroyed during the earthquake. The current terminal is makeshift, and from the outside as we taxied to it, looked like a giant hut with a tin roof. It was much nicer on the inside and you actually felt like you were in an airport .

As we leave the airport we are immediately greeted by taxi cab drivers and hustlers desperate to serve you. Red shirts are on a wave of chattering, shouting and desperate entrepreneurs clamoring to aid people just off the plane laden with cash.

Good news- Elade said that the tent village right outside the airport is shrinking. It means that people are going home, but it’s still amazing how many tents are still out there. 

People openly urinate out in public and Port au Prince is still a mess of a city. Elade says that no one from Haiti would dare blame the earthquake for their problems. Haiti was  a disaster before the quake. The quake just magnified the many problems already there.

It’s certainly a hustle and bustle place. Road rules are what you make them and none of the stop lights have worked since the quake. One cool thing is the absence of road rage. Everyone realizes they’re in the soup together so they might as well cooperate. What seems to be a constant beeping and dog eat dog driving race is really a very nuanced dance of cooperation. I’m coming up on your right and need to get over, so I beep at you. You beep back to let me know you see me. Its quite remarkable actually. The margin of error is slim, however and accidents are common. When accidents occur, police don’t arrive and make a report. Negotiations take place on the spot and they work out who is at fault and who is going to pay. If you are not from around here and you have “blancs” (white people) with you, it’s gonna cost you more.

Most secondary roads are really just very rocky paths. Animals occupy the margins of the road everywhere right alongside the people. The amount of trash and rotting produce on the side of the roads is astonishing. It’s easy to see why there is so much disease in the city. Elade says the countryside is beautiful. It’s hard to imagine from the bowels of this city built for a population of 50,000. 3 million people live there now.

For a couple of hours we scampered around Port au Prince trying to find a fuse for the generator that Mark Martak gave Hope for Haiti Foundation (HFHF) through his company PowerSecure. The generator backs up HFHF’s main solar power supply system and has become a valuable part to their system of operations. We went to 3 places with no luck. At our last stop, Wilner, Elade’s HFHF’s accountant and everything man, finds a fuse and buys 10 of them. We found out a few hours out of town that the fuses are not the right ones. C’est la vie in Port au Prince. 

HFHF has plans to one day provide at least 3 hours of power for the people of Zorange each night. They will charge an agreed upon amount, say $1 or so. This is real community development in action that doesn’t enable people to depend on a helping organization. It enables people to stand on their own and take responsibility for their lives. It  gives dignity. This impresses me and gives me hope for what can be accomplished in Raleigh.

More to follow…..

Yesterday marked a watershed moment in the history of Raleigh, Durham and surrounding cities. Well over 200 leaders from churches, organizations and ministries gathered together at Hope Community Church in Raleigh to unite around a movement to alleviate poverty. This movement is known as Christian Community Development (CCD), and has at it’s core, the idea of loving God and loving our neighbors in under resourced and poor communities. 

Christian Community Development Association (CCDA) is at the forefront of this movement. Their mission is to inspire, train, and connect Christians who seek to bear witness to the Kingdom of God by reclaiming and restoring under-resourced communities.  One way they do this is through Intensive workshops conducted by the their Institute. These workshops help people and ministries get to the next level of understanding and practice of CCD and are conducted in cities around America.  The Raleigh Intensive was the largest such event in the organization’s 21 year history. Two of their founding and current Board Members, “Coach” Wayne Gordon and Dr. Barbara Williams-Skinner, taught on two of CCD’s 8 key components; Church based community development and Reconciliation. 

Church Based Community Development says that God’s people are uniquely capable of affirming the dignity of the poor and enabling them to meet their own needs. It is practically impossible to do effective wholistic development apart from the local church. A nurturing community of faith can best provide the thrusts of evangelism, discipleship, spiritual accountability, and relationships by which people grow in their walk with God. “Our church works to remove barriers in under resourced and poor communities that keep people from glorifying God with their lives”, said Coach.

Reconciliation is at the heart of the gospel. Jesus said that the essence of Christianity could be summed up in two inseparable commandments: Love God, and love thy neighbor. (Mt 22:37-39) First, Christian Community Development is concerned with reconciling people to God and bringing them into a church fellowship where they can be discipled in their faith. Second, CCD is concerned with reconciling people to each other, and the church should be the greatest example of this. Unfortunately, Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in America. We’ve got to end this apartheid system that we’ve created in the church, said Dr. Williams-Skinner. “We’ve got to learn to pray with and for each other if we’re going to do it.”

The CCDA Raleigh Intensive was a great day of inspiration, training and connecting that we all hope will galvanize the Church of Raleigh, and the Church of Durham and of all the cities represented. We will be conducting follow up forums in the coming months to pray together, plan together and begin acting on all that we learned- together.

Thanks to everyone who attended. It was a beautifully diverse group of passionate people doing great work. Thanks to the following sponsors who made the event possible:

Big Mike’s BBQ, BlessDurham, Habitat for Humanity of Wake County, Hope Community Church, Jobs for Life, Green Chair Project, and Neighbor to Neighbor.

A couple of weekends ago, I traveled with Mike Strawbridge to Koinonia Farms (KF) in Americus Georgia, as a part of the Schools for Conversion weekend visit program. Thank you, Jonathan Wilson Hartgrove for encouraging me to go.

I learned a lot and had a great time on this beautiful piece of land filled with an incredible history. I was inspired by the nearly forgotten story of a courageous group of blacks and whites who withstood bullets, bombs and boycotts in the years leading up to the tumultuous Civil Rights era. It gave me hope to see how Koinonia survived the battles of integration, changed the lives of generations to come and planted the seeds for the global work of Habitat for Humanity International. See the PBS documentary about it called Briars In The Cottonpatch to learn more.

Here are some of the observations, stream of consciousness style, that I jotted down in my journal from the visit: “Orchards full of magnificent pecan trees-
People living simply and unadorned- large fields of varying crops-meadows and tall flowing grasses- gardens producing food for the community to eat-crates full of chocolaty brown pecans stacked on top of each other-a hundred year old mixer still used today to make pies-people laughing at themselves- simple hospitality that was genuine-simply adorned and adequate living quarters-copies of monthly newsletters dating back to 1942-cedar fence posts being hewn-Clarence’s simple writing shack-roosters and hens- gobbling turkeys-giant hand made clay ovens-people having genuine conversations-fresh milk directly from their cow, Short Stuff, chilled in a mason jar…

Clarence Jordan Writing Shack

Yes, there are a million beautiful things to write about that farm, but what captured me most is the way the people there live day by day. They seem to be people who understand Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and have a desire to live it out. They seem to grasp the essence of being poor in spirit and mourning as a beginning to an alternative way of life.

Clarence Jordan (CJ), founder of KF, defined mourning as “to have deep concern”. It is evident that the people now living at KF had “deep concerns” about their lives and the way they were living before moving to the farm. They all seem to have realized that there is a vacuum in the American Dream that is sucking the life out of people and they began pursuing a better way of life.

They seem to have found it at Koinonia Farms and they are working it out day by day in “fear and in trembling” as the apostle Paul put it. Now there are multiple levels to how they are going about this, but above all, it appears to me that they are trying to live reconciled lives; reconciled to God, to each other, to themselves and to the land and all of creation. They are not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but they see the beauty and power of the kingdom and they are working in earnest to bring it about in God’s strength. They are working it out by faith; faith that is embodied in CJ’s Cotton Patch Gospel translation of Hebrews 11:1

“Now faith is the turning of dreams into deeds; it is betting your life on the unseen realities.”

So thank you, Sarah and Brendan, Bren and everyone else, for welcoming us all to your home and helping us to dream and imagine the reality of a new, but very old, way of living. Thank you for faithfully working the demonstration plot known as Koinonia Farms.

This past weekend I traveled with Hope College Fellowship to Urban Hope Training Center in the W. Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia. I witnessed and experienced amazing things and want to share a few of them with you over the next couple of days. 

Leadership Development

I’ve been going to Urban Hope 2-3 times a year for the past eight years. Perhaps the most powerful thing that I’m seeing is the young people taking on leadership at the church and training center. This weekend, it was inspiring to see Hector and Luis stepping up and leading training sessions and providing spiritual guidance.

When I first started going to the center all those years ago, Hector and Luis were just boys from the neighborhood who had been invited to the Kingdom Kids program. They were very active as Kingdom Kids and found a place where people loved them, accepted them and provided a safe place for them to grow up and learn about Jesus. When they reached middle and high school age, they graduated into Rock, the youth program of Urban Hope. There, they were given an alternative to the mean, cold streets that claim the lives of so many of their teenage peers. Hector and Luis were your typical teens, mostly self absorbed and just wanting to have a good time. There didn’t appear to be anything all that special about either of them, but they had found something that they belonged to and they began to take ownership.

This past weekend, as they both gave their testimonies of how God ushered them into His family and is now using them as leaders, I was deeply moved. The strategy of Urban Hope to move into the neighborhood and love on children and their families and to be on mission as the incarnate hands and feet of Jesus was validated loudly and clearly in the lives of these two young men. It’s taken a long time, and there have been many trials, setbacks, heartaches and fears realized. But it is evident today that the ministry is on solid ground because of their efforts to raise up indigenous leaders.

In church based community development the primary goal of leadership development is to restore the stabilizing glue and fill the vacuum of moral, spiritual, and economic leadership that is so prevalent in poor communities by developing leaders. This is most effectively done by raising up Christian leaders from the community of need who will remain in the community to live and lead. This is no easy or quick program and takes a tremendous commitment on the part of those engaged in trying to bring it about.

As I observed the Spirit of God manifested in these two boys who have become men, I realized that we, as the body of Christ, the Church, must be willing to bear a great cost to make it a common occurrence; not only in our inner cities, but everywhere we go.

At CCDA Indy 2011,  I was blessed to attend a prescreening of the movie Unconditional. It is a powerful story of  love, forgiveness and the power of sowing into the lives of those hurting and in despair.  It is a movie of the highest artistic quality and it could possibly change your life.

We have the opportunity to bring a prescreening to Hope Community Church in order to pave the way for a wide distribution in mainline theaters afterwards. Please go to the website and view the trailer. Once the trailer is done, “Like” the movie and then  X out the trailer and click on “Sign Up for Updates” We need as many people as possible from our area to express an interest to bring it here.

I don’t beg often, but I’m begging you to do this. You will not regret it. 

Unconditional is more than a movie!

Byron

“Since its earliest centuries, the church has set aside a day to remember the great cloud of witnesses who have gone before us in the faith, stretching across the centuries and around the globe. However hard it might seem to follow the way of -Jesus in our own time and place, this is a day to remember that we may be crazy, but we are not alone.” Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals

Today is a day to remember family; the family gathered together by God, across the centuries, to bear witness to His kingdom here on earth. We are supposed to celebrate those who have passed along a way of life contrary to the kingdoms of this world and popular culture. We are supposed to remember the story of sons and daughters of God who knew that a better way of life existed and were willing to pay any price to obtain it (see Hebrews chapters 11 and 12). Unfortunately, we seem to have forgotten.

We are sons and daughters of the King, brought together as One through the shed blood of Christ. The color of our skin isn’t supposed to be the defining factor of the family to which we belong; the color of the blood that washes our sins away defines who we are. Everyone who acknowledges this, and accepts this as the ultimate reality belongs to the family.

As family, we have to learn to get along. We have to learn to love each other and nurture a common life. We have to learn to live together in community and stop scratching and clawing our way to the top as individuals, only using community as a tool to get what we want. Scripture teaches us to value interdependence and community more highly than independence, and that we are to lose our lives if we want to find them.

This past weekend I was in Richmond for a CCDA Intensive. Perhaps the greatest thing I take away from all CCDA events is the love that everyone has for each other despite their differences in color, age, theological context, etc. It’s always a gathering of God’s people coming together, trying to work it out and become the family that God is calling us to be.

We must come together and remember that a better world is possible through Jesus. Then we have to go out and live it day by day in the strength of the Holy Spirit. Being a family ain’t easy, but obtaining anything of value never is.

 “Lord, your saints come from every nation and every tribe. Such is the beauty of your kingdom, where every race and -people are honored and recognized as being made in your image. Help us live lives of peace and reconciliation that pay homage to the diversity of your great cloud of witnesses. Amen.” Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals

This week has presented me many fresh indications of our broken world: a son moves out of his home because of a violent relationship with his dad; another son is sentenced to a minimum of two years in prison for selling drugs, while his loving family helplessly looks on wondering what went wrong; yet another son checks into rehab as his life spirals out of control; a daughter in her second year of college is told that she will be getting a new roommate, who happens to be a lesbian and a victim of hate; another daughter trying to turn her life around after prison is told repeatedly that she is not welcomed in the work place and she begins to believe the lie that she is beyond repair. What do all these situations have in common? They are all being experienced by followers of Jesus. They all radically affect friends and family of mine.

These situations are fraught with pain and suffering and they are not uncommon in our world today. As followers of Jesus, we’ve got to understand that these are opportunities to live out what we believe and show a peace to the world that is beyond what is expected. We shouldn’t be surprised that these things befall us. Simply praying that the problems go away may not be the course of action we are supposed to take. Jesus told us, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).

We are called to be the hands and feet of Jesus because we, as the body of Christ, the Church, are supposed to be the reflection of the living God here on earth today. As new creations, we are to usher in the Kingdom of heaven today, moment by moment, while still waiting on the kingdom in full to be ushered in by God Himself some day. The kingdom is now and not yet! This is the ministry of reconciliation, reconciling all things to God and Christ through the cross (2 Corinthians 5: 17-21).

As people of God, ushering in the kingdom and reconciling all things, we have to learn to operate in the strength and power of the Holy Spirit, not our own feeble strength. This calls for us to draw close and to truly know God; not to pretend we know God. Pretenders cannot truly enter into the pain and suffering of other people and show them the way; cannot give real hope, cannot usher in the kingdom. Pretenders get overwhelmed with burdens they’ve taken on. Pretenders can’t even bear their own burdens.

As we participate in the ministry of reconciliation we cannot shy away from the great problems that confront us. Addiction, racism and homosexuality are three tenacious bondages that cause great suffering and pain. As I stated earlier, I have been confronted with the problem of homosexuality and its prevalence, especially on our college campuses. I know that some of you cringe at the thought of the word because your beliefs have given you a righteous indignation on the matter. Others of you cringe at my mention that it is considered a “problem”, that it causes bondage.

I believe that homosexuality is a sin, plain and simple, just like so many other touchy issues of our day that we don’t like to label sin; porn, materialism, greed, selfishness, lust, debt, addiction, etc. It is a missing of the mark. It causes people to live contrary to how God created them. We must confront it vehemently and persistently. Its pervasiveness is on the rise and it is not simply going away.  As followers of Christ, Disciples of Christ, we must not put our heads in the sand and hope it disappears. We must stand and fight!

However, as with all sin, love is the weapon that we are to wield to combat it, and we are reminded of Dr. John Perkins famous saying, “Love is the final fight.”

Rather than go into the whole issue, I’d just like to give you a couple resources and ask you to pray and allow the Holy Spirit to guide you in how to respond. Exposure to the Marin Foundation and Emmaus Ministries opened my eyes to a problem I did not understand or know existed. It’s helping me to respond in love. Perhaps it can do the same for you.  

 I  learned about the Marin Foundation during a visit to the Emmaus House (EH) in Chicago at CCDA Immersion.  EH seeks to reach out to young men who are trapped by male street prostitution (hustling), generational poverty, homelessness, drug addiction and HIV/AIDS. Emmaus hopes to “build relationships of trust with these men, working together to help them get off the streets and build a relationship with Jesus Christ.”

 Read this article: http://www.timschraeder.com/2010/06/30/a-different-kind-of-demonstration-at-gay-pride/

 Learn from this site: Http://Www.themarinfoundation.org

I just entered to win the book SANCTUARY OF THE SOUL by Richard Foster from @ERBks ! You can too: http://t.co/Udgym6Zv

I wish I could capture in words all that I experienced and learned at the CCDA conference in Indianapolis this year, but that would be impossible. The main theme was Innovation, and 1 Kings 19 was used to show that God encourages us to trust that he’ll show us new ways of doing His work if we’ll just be quiet and know that He is God. John Perkins, as always, was inspirational during his morning Bible studies.  He focused on the foundation for all this innovation– discipleship. We are in an emergency situation in our land, and there is an urgent need for us, the Church, especially the local church, to get back to the business of making disciples who make disciples, and that we all become One.

Hope Team with John Perkins at CCDA Indy 2014

John, in his way that draws us into the pain and agony of a situation,  shared his realization that perhaps we are making people Christians before we are making them disciples. He helped us remember that Jesus’ initial followers were all disciples first. They remained disciples for the three years of His ministry here on earth. It wasn’t until later, in Acts when He was no longer here, that they were first called Christians. People saw their behavior and realized they were acting like Christ.

John pointed out that it’s hard to get someone to become a disciple when we’ve already labeled them a Christian and punched their ticket for heaven. We seem to be getting people “saved” and labeled Christian without any emphasis on being a disciple. Is it any wonder that we see so few people who look like Jesus? Is it any wonder that we are not One as Jesus called us to be?

Disciples of Jesus, those who look and act like Him, are the only ones who can do this impossible work of Christian Community Development (CCD), bringing shalom (nothing is broken and nothing is missing) to a world looking for solutions.  So it is imperative, no matter what type of work we are engaged in or what our context of ministry, that we all be about the business of making disciples who make disciples.

I think we all got the message. I know that I did.

In addition to the importance of innovation and discipleship, I received clarity in regards to the mission statement for the ministry context in which I serve:

Our mission is to enter into the pain and suffering of the people and, through the power of God, bring healing, justice and peace to our broken land.

We are all to be engaged in this ministry of reconciliation, reconciling all things to God through Christ; all the broken things fixed, all the missing things in their place, all the hurting people healed. This is the mission of the Church, His Bride. We are to bring beauty from ashes, heaven to earth, we are to usher in the kingdom that is coming and is already here.

We are to do this in the ghettos of the inner city, where material resources are scarce and social systems and relationships are broken. We are also supposed to do this in the sprawling suburbs where there is an abundance of stuff and highly efficient social systems, but no shortage of strained and broken relationships. No matter where we find ourselves, we are surrounded by a broken and hurting humanity who need to know the love of Jesus.

I am thankful for CCDA calling us to innovation and discipleship especially in the context of the local church. At the end of the day, the local church is still, and will always be, the hope of the world. If we fail to understand this, we become irrelevant and miss out on what we are called to be. The Bride is beautiful, and everyone stands and looks in awe at her. Are we worth the gazes of the people? Are we, individually and collectively as a local congregation, the Bride or are we something else?

 We have to ask ourselves this question. If we answer yes, then we have to wrestle with our disunity as the people of God, the Church, the Bride of Christ; because as Shane, JWH and Enuma point out in Common Prayer; A Liturgy For Ordinary Radicals, Christ is coming back for His Bride, not a harem!