Voice Box

moral failure, the limelight, and the evangelical Mecca that is Colorado Springs

You can't be in Colorado Springs this week and not be talking about Ted Haggard.  Living in the shadow of Ted's blue-roofed megachurch in the north part of town keeps not only American evangelicalism ever in the front of your mind, but also the horrors of November 2006 when Mike Jones exposed his sex-and-meth relationship with the President of the National Association of Evangelicals.  More news this week.  An intern at the church tells more of the story.  Jones posts another Youtube confessional.  Haggard appears on several news outlets including Oprah and Larry King.  It has us all thinking and talking about sin and sexuality, power and platforms, lying and truth-telling.  My good friend Patton Dodd, author of My Faith So Far, wrote an insightful and helpful article for Slate.com: The Ted Haggard Dilemma: Can A Fallen Pastor Ever Redeem Himself?

friday listening party: Taize

I had been hearing of Taize for a few years, but it wasn't until the Fall that I really got acquainted with this group.  First, it was over breakfast with Steve Williamson, worship arts pastor at Church of the Resurrection in Wheaton, IL.  Then, our church, Holy Trintity Anglican Church, used Taize during the Advent season.  Taize is an ecumenical monastic community in France that has built its life around contemporary chant, the reading of Scripture, and responsive prayers.  All this is done in many languages.  In one 10-12 minute service that you can podcast, you will hear a Psalm sung in English with harmony, guitar, flute, and violin, you will hear a reading of Scripture in Polish, and a responsive reading in French.  It's beautiful.  The focus upon meditation, simplicity, prayer, and silence is refreshing and nourishing.

prayers of the people

You may remember that I invited some reflection and dialogue on the three prayers that the three pray-ers that marked the inaugural events, Bishop Robinson, Pastor Warren, and Rev. Lowery.  I continue to think about this and want to point out just two things about each prayer as we endeavor to live faithfully at the intersection of faith and politics in a very interesting time in our country's history.

The way each of them address God reveals something about their respective theologies and worldviews.  Bishop Robinson begins with 'O God of our many understandings.'  Pastor Warren begins with 'Almighty God, our Father.'  And Rev. Lowery begins with 'God of our weary years, God of our silent tears.' 

Robinson represents at least a certain ecumenism, if not a pluralism, in his prayer.  Our differences and perhaps our inability to fully comprehend an infinite God, thus meaning that many of us have many understandings, is highlighted over and against a more historical and foundational approach to praying to the Judeo-Christian God. 

Pastor Warren's prayer is rooted firmly in a conservative evangelical address, calling God, Father.  In the Old Testament, God is LORD or Yahweh, there are at times familial images used to understand the relationship of God to Israel, but it is Jesus, in his prayer in Matthew 6, that has brought the address of God as Father into common Christian use for 2,000 years. 

Finally, Rev. Lowery brought tears to my eyes when in his aged and experienced voice, he said, 'God of our weary years.'  Speaking out of the civil rights movement and a liberation theology that finds its formative story in the Exodus, I heard the labor and pain of millions over hundreds of years in his cracking voice.

In each of the prayers, I had a favorite moment.  Allow me to share those with you. 

Obama, being one of our younger Presidents, is moving young family into the White House.  I'm no President, but I am pretty busy with work and school and church and travel, and I too have a young family, a 2 and 1/2 year old son, a 13 month old daughter, and another daughter coming in mid-June.  I was moved when Robinson prayed 'Give him the strength to find family time and privacy, and help him remember that even though he is president, a father only gets one shot at his daughters’ childhoods.' 

Warren's closing was among some of the most brilliant public speaking about Jesus in a pluralist society that I have heard.  He closes his personal prayer and invites all to join him in the Lord's Prayer with these words: 'I humbly ask this in the name of the One who changed my life—Yeshua, Esa, Jesus, Jesús.'  Beautiful: saying the name of Jesus in the language of the world's three monotheistic Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, and in the most common language spoken in America after English, Spanish.  I thought this was brilliant.

But by far Rev. Lowery's reinterpration of Isaiah's (and Joel's and Micah's) eschatological image of swords beaten into plowshares was my favorite moment.  He prays, 'Help us then, now, Lord, to work for that day when nation shall not lift up sword against nation, when tanks will be beaten into tractors, when every man and every woman shall sit under his or her own vine and fig tree, and none shall be afraid; when justice will roll down like waters and righteousness as a mighty stream.'  Tanks beaten into tractors!  I love it!  It captures the economic and ecological implications of God's new creation that the Old Testament prophets, Jesus himself, and Christians for thousands of years have been looking for.  Tanks into tractors.  It makes the think of my two visits to Africa where only a fraction of arable land is used for food production (tractors!).  Corruption, disease, civil war, terrorism, and rebel militia groups hold back a beautiful continent with great people and abundant resources from realizing their economic and ecological potential (tanks!).   Let's beat tanks into tractors.

follow Tom Davis as HopeChest cares for orphans in Swaziland

Check out Tom's blog beginning on January 19th for great stories, insight, ministry updates, and pictures from his recent trip to Swaziland.

come with me to Russia! get your church involved in orphan care!

I am heading to Russia in April.  It is such a remarkable privilege and humbling opportunity to connect people here in the States with long-term, holistic, redemptive orphan care in Eastern Europe and around the world.  HopeChest currently has relationships with 62 state-run orphanages and boarding schools in five regions of Russia.  Six of these, in Kirov, about 600 miles northeast of Moscow are waiting for a church, business, school, or online community to come alongside of them.  When a community gets involved through HopeChest, they commit to have individual children sponsored, take annual trips to visit the children, and pray and write letters regularly as we build relationships that will transform the lives of abused, neglected, vulnerable, and orphaned children. 

Watch this video to see what happens when orphaned children in Russia leave the orphanages at age 15 or 16:  ONE Orphan.  Through relational and practical intervention and preparation, we hope to guide them into healthy adulthood despite the overwhelming enemies of educational and vocational obstacles, substance abuse, crime and violence, prostitution and trafficking.

Watch this video to get the big picture of what our ministry does: Life, Transformed.

As I said, I'm going to Russia April 19th through 26th.  We'll see HopeChest's ministry at work in Kostroma and then visit the unsponsored locations in Kirov so your community can make connections.  The cost is $1650 plus airfare (which is running about $900 from Denver right now on delta.com).  The deadline to sign up is Wednesday, February 11th.

Email me at daniel@hopechest.org and come along!

urgency and rest, consumption and simplicity (reflections on the third Sunday of Epiphany)

We live in the tension.  If we're honest with ourselves, we live in the grayscale.  Yes, there are certain things that are black and white, or certain things that are colorful, if you will.  But so much of our life can be (or become) grayscale.  As I read and reflect on the four readings from yesterday's Revised Common Lectionary, this unavoidable tension jumps off the pages, comes to life, and threatens my preferred 'way of life.'  At first, not much seems to be in common between the time when Jonah finally obeyed and preached repentance in Ninevah (Jonah 3:1-5, 10), a psalm of David (Psalm 62:5-12), Paul's admonition to live like its the end of the world (1 Corinthians 7:29-31), and the time when Jesus called Simon, Andrew, James, and John to follow him (Mark 1:14-20).  But on second thought, I see a similar tension in all the readings: that unavoidable balance we all seek between urgency and rest, and consumption and simplicity.

Jonah comes preaching an urgent message to the consumeristic society of Ninevah.  It was a huge city, and in Biblical literature stands beside Babylon and against Jerusalem in representing the presence (or absence) of God and the life of God's people (or the death of those opposed to God).  In the Psalm for the day, David is seeking rest and hope in God alone.  In Paul's letter, we have one of the most difficult New Testament passages: live like the time is short!  He even says, 'from now on those who are married should live as if they were not!'  Take that home and discuss it over dinner with your spouse.  What do you do with that?  Of one thing we can be sure: there is definitely an urgency and a simplicity in Paul's message.  And in the gospel reading from St. Mark, Jesus meets four fisherman, two sets of brothers.  He calls them away from their vocation, away from a life of profits and losses, of weather and early morning launches, of income and consumption.  With urgency, the gospel says 'at once' and 'without delay', they left the family business and followed Jesus.

As a husband, a father of 2 and 1/2, an advocate and activist on behalf of orphaned children at Children's HopeChest, a part-time worship leader at Holy Trinity Anglican Church, a part-time grad student at Fuller Theological Seminary... and a brother, a son, a friend, a neighbor... I find that most of my consumption is not simple, rather it's urgent, and there's not much time for rest.  And much of this is 'grayscale.'  Most of the things that take up my time, and most of the things that fill my suburban home, are not bad in and of themselves.  But even with my desire to live a restful and simple life (and the knowledge that this is good for me), it quickly becomes obvious that the pace of my days is set by urgency and consumption.  Now I'm spinning in grayscale.

Upon another read of the Psalm for today, I find a 'key' for processing all of these mixed messages.  David says in verses 11 and 12, 'One thing God has spoken, two things I have heard: 'Power belongs to you, God, and with you, Lord, is unfailing love.''  I've often wondered what this business of 'one thing spoken, two things heard' really means.  I was reading Karl Barth's Dogmatics in Outline recently and happened upon a clue.  He said that God's grace and God's power are identical.  Perhaps this one thing the Psalmist hears is the gracious power, the powerful grace of God.

Now, as I go back and read the Psalm first, and then follow it with the Old Testament, Epistle, and Gospel readings, thinking of the gracious power and powerful grace of God, I begin to understand just a little bit more how this urgency and rest, this consumption and simplicity can play together on the same field.  The first realization is that it is not my grace or my power - or even my ability to understand the grayscales in my life that really matters.  It is, rather, that the powerful and gracious God is LORD over Ninevah and Galilee, over the urgency of deadlines and the rest of a sleep Saturday afternoon, over the consumption of a suburban home and the simplicity of working-class fisherman leaving their nets behind.

So, with the psalmist, I say, 'yes, my soul, find rest in God.'  Find rest in nothing but the graciously powerful and powerfully gracious God.

friday listening party: musical fusion in DC

Two weeks ago I started doing Monday reflections on the previous days readings from the Revised Common Lectionary.  In the same vein of days-of-the-week foci, I will write about music on Fridays: Friday Listening Party.

I love when different styles of music come together.  My dream band would be with my friend Ben who is heavily influenced by the Edge, my brother Ben who is influenced by Iron & Wine and Pedro the Lion, and the gospel choir I was in in college under the direction of AME Reverend Judith Erwin-Neville, and a string quartet, and some of the guys who taught me to play djembe in their Ghanaian village of Sokode-Etoi.  Whether you agree with the policies of our new President, you have to admit that the Sunday concert on the Mall was a beautiful picture of American music.  This was fusion at its best - many styles, many people representing our common voice in song.

There was Bruce Springsteen and Pete Seeger singing 'This Land is Your Land.'  We had Usher, Shakira, and Stevie Wonder singing 'Higher Ground.'  We had Garth Brooks singing 'American Pie' and 'Shout.'  We had James Taylor and John Legend and company singing 'Shower the People.'  We also had Beyonce and a whole host of perfomers singing 'America the Beautiful.'   My two favorite moments were Sheryl Crow, Herbie Hancock, and Will.I.Am singing 'One Love' by Bob Marley.  I think they nailed it.  And of course U2 performing 'Pride (In the Name of Love)' and 'City of Blinding Lights'.  Bono might think he's a diplomat and I definitely respect and affirm his work on behalf of the world's poor, but he'll always be a rock star first.  Case in point: during 'Pride', a song written in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., he says something to this effect: 'This was not only Dr. King's dream.  This is the American dream.  This is an Irish dream.  This is an Israeli dream...' then a long pause... 'This is a Palestinian dream.'  What a moment!

Desmond Tutu - a global elder who finds it easy to cry and easy to laugh

I was moved by reading this story about Desmond Tutu.  What an amazing man of God and man for the people of South Africa and the world!  I am thankful for him.  Read it here: A joke over breakfast with Desmond Tutu.  And don't forget to mark your calendars or program your DVRs for CNN's showing of Revealed on Saturday, Sunday, or Monday.

Presidential pray-ers

Let's do something together.

Three very different men were called on by President Obama to pray at Sunday's and Tuesday's inaugural activities, Bishop V. Gene Robinson, the first openly-gay bishop of the Episocopal Church, Rick Warren, one of evangelicalism's favored (though moderate) sons, and Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowery, an icon of the civil rights movement.

I've linked you to all three prayers.  Read them, thoughtfully, carefully, patiently.  Compare and contrast.  Each of them has an embedded theology and worldview.  Each of them has a message and a mission.  The way they talk about God and humanity reveals much.  There are things about each that I embrace, that I was glad to hear.  There are things about each that I might have said differently.  How about you?

Bishop Robinson's prayer.

Pastor Rick Warren's prayer.

Rev. Dr. Lowery's prayer.

Read them.  Comment here.  What do you like?  What do you not like?  What do you notice about each prayer, the theology behind it, and the message in it?  What might you have said if called upon to pray at such a public and significant event?  If this is a conversation you are interested in having in this forum, I'll share some of my thoughts in the coming days.

Tom Davis in Swaziland

Tom Davis, President and CEO of Children's HopeChest, and author of 3 books including Red Letters and a novel coming this Spring, is arriving in Johannesburg today.  He is leading a team to visit Swaziland's orphaned children.  HopeChest began implementing our holistic, long-term, and redemptive orphan care programs there in 2006 with the partnership of Adventures in Mission and Swazi pastors and leaders.  It is a strikingly different context than Russia, where the vast majority of HopeChest's work has been for the last fifteen years.  But what remains consistent is that orphaned children need practical help and God's hope in order to experience the blessing of family and prepare for a healthy adult life.  Please join me in praying for Tom every day while he is there.  I've included a brief itinerary below so you can know where he is and what he and the team are up to.  Also, please pray for Emily and the kids as they continue with a full schedule of school, church, and activities while Tom is away.

January 20th
Arrives in Johannesburg

January 21st
Drive to Swaziland
Settle in at Emafini
Cultural Orientation

January 22nd
Visit Bhalekane carepoint; to see how a developed, sponsored carepoint looks like
Visit Bhobokazi to see Discipleship team in action; unsponsored carepoint

January 23rd
Visit Mpholi carepoint; a new carepoint close to Manzini
Visit hospital
Visit Pastor Sam

January 24th
Visit new carepoint in Mpaka
Visit Pastor Themba’s carepoint

January 25th
Church with Pastor Walter
Market

January 26th
Visit Hawane farm
Visit to Bheveni carepoint

January 27th
Help with small project (craft orientated) at one of the carepoints

January 28th
Visit Moriah Centre in Big Bend
Visit Pastor Themba’s new carepoint

January 29th
Leave for Nelspruit

January 30th
Cultural activity

January 31st
Leave for Johannesburg