Voice Box

doma international launches website

I introduced you last week to my wife's new blog and new ministry.  On Monday, the website for her organization launched.  Check it out: domaconnection.org.

powerful houses and heavy cars

I learned much from Joseph Elotu during the 10 days we spent together in Uganda last October on a Vision Trip with HopeChest.  Coming from a childhood of poverty and polygamy, dodging the LRA in the bush outside of Soroti, working his way through college in the capital city of Kampala, and now a father of four working with the Department of Agriculture and The Children of the Nile Foundation - Joseph was incredible guide.  One morning we were standing on the lawn at our hotel near Jinja.  It was a beautiful view of Lake Victoria.  We begin talking about corruption in leadership on the continent - especially with politicians and pastors.  He said, 'They are the ones who have powerful houses and heavy cars, yet their own people are hungry and homeless.'  Powerful houses.  Heavy cars.  These phrases stuck with me.  These are not the adjectives that we usually attach to these nouns.  We might be more likely to say 'big houses' or 'nice cars.'  But powerful?  Heavy?  It is true, economics has power.  And this is not a bad thing, it just needs to be used well and needs to be in the hands of wise and tempered people.  There is such imbalance on our planet.  As Bono has put it, 'where you were born should not decide whether you live or whether you die.'  We who have access to material goods (and luxuries) should take seriously are commission to extend our reach to those who have little (or none).  Just as Paul and Barnabas were encouraged by James, Peter, and John: remember the poor!

dust and stars (reflections on the fifth Sunday of Epiphany)

There is admittedly a disconnect between our experience and our eschatology: that despite the bad news and barrage of daily challenges, God is in control and all things will be 'put to right' (as N.T. Wright says).  Some theologians have called this the 'already' and 'not yet' of the kingdom.  In the readings from the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany we see this sentiment explored as dust and stars.  Isaiah's well-known 40th chapter gives us beautiful poetry, beautiful images of dust and stars.  This is also present in the Psalm and Gospel readings 

The dust... grasshoppers and stubble, fainting and weakness, weariness and exhaustion, demons and diseases. 

But lift your eyes, look at the stars... God is the creator who stretched out the sky giving power and strength to creation. 

We see the same dust-and-stars dichotomy in the Psalm: 'He heals the brokenhearted, and binds up their wounds.  He determines the number of the stars; he gives to all of them their names.'  And even in the gospel reading, as long lines form in dry dusty days of demon-possession and political oppression, Jesus lifts dusty eyes to the stars, healing, exorcising, encouraging.  Jesus is saying, 'You who are covered in dust, you who are rusting unburnished, I am making all things new, I am making you stars.  Shine!'

a family cares for a carepoint in Swaziland

Check out what Deb Gangemi, her husband, two sons, and the online community the are gathering are doing to care for orphans in Swaziland: A Story, an Adventure, and an Invitation.

friday listening party: Compassionart

I have been anticipating this record for months.  Delirious? has been one of my favorite bands now for over 10 years and when I heard last Spring that they were breaking up, I was disappointed... until I heard about Martin Smith's and Stu G's new project, CompassionArt. I love this music because it is the closest thing to Christians living at the intersection of creativity and compassion that I've seen.  Some of the greatest worship songwriters in our generation, Martin Smith, Michael W. Smith, Darlene Zschech, Christ Tomlin, Steven Curtis Chapman, Israel Houghton, Paul Baloche, Matt Redman, and Tim Hughes, come together to co-write 14 new songs to light up the church and encourage the church to be the light of the world.  The result is some incredible genre-blending.  The opening track, Come to the Water, proves this.  It opens with Watoto Children's Choir, then a U2-influenced guitar riff kicks up the intensity.  Chris Tomlin and Martin Smith sing verses and choruses, only to be joined again by the Ugandan choir and the preeminent hip-hop preacher, Kirk Franklin, toward the end of the song.  Not only is the eclectic style inspiring, so is the lyrical content and the way in which these songwriters are responding to the compassionate heart of God in light of the crisis of poverty on our planet.  Martin Smith sings, 

There's a cry from the child in the factory
There's a prayer for the prisoners of poverty
Save us from the greed and the apathy
We need a river
There's a hope like a flood running down our street
We're an army of peacemakers on our feet
Take us to the place love and mercy meet
There is a river.

Not only style, not only lyric, but also the purpose gives me hope for the church in the world.  All of the artists, writers, and publishers have waived their rights and royalties, and all of the proceeds go to help some of the poorest people on the planet.  Beautiful!

My other favorite moments on the album are Lead me to the Rock, Fill My Cup, Let it Glow, and There is Always a Song.  Check it out.

Delirious? at the intersection of creativity and community

I'll never forget when, over Memorial Day weekend in 1998, my youth pastor gave me a copy of Delirious?'s double-disc worship album, Cutting Edge.  It introduced me to a new world and what I would use much of my time and energy for for the next 8 years, writing music and leading worship.  I'm still involved in this kind of ministry, and I can describe my life's vision with the phrase at the top of this blog: exploring the intersection of creativity, community, and compassion.  That's where I want to live.  I'm inspired by guys like Martin Smith and groups like Delirious? that do that.  Check this out: Kingdom of Comfort proceeds opens Mumbai Medical Centre.

economic turmoil + early death = orphans in Eastern Europe

There were approximately 400,000 children in Russian orphanages when Gorbachev introduced perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness) in the late 80s and early 90s.  Over the next decade, those numbers swelled to nearly 1 million in orphanages and 2 million on the streets.  I'll never forget driving through Ivanovo region on my way to visit an unsponsored orphanage, Vasilyevsky, on my first trip to Russia with HopeChest in May 2004 with the others on my trip: my wife, Julie, George Steiner, founder of HopeChest, Chuck Smith and Craig Whittaker from Capo Beach Calvary, Kevin Harrison, a HopeChest board member and dear friend, and Harrell Cook, a business man (we're an unlikely pair but dear friends to this day).  Driving through a small town, Yelena Kharitonova, National Programs Director, pointed at a factory.  She said, 'There are 25,000 people in this town.  In Soviet times, that factory employed 8,000 people.  Now only 800 work there.  You see why there are so many orphans.'  I'll never forget that brief conversation and the wise and faithful experience of Yelena and others like her who, even in difficult times, have turned to those on the fringes of society, orphaned children.  Just last week, The Economist published a story about this very topic, the connection between economics and vulnerable populations: Mass murder and the market.

doma international - a new ministry and a new blog

My wife lights me up.  I am inspired, energized, encouraged by her.  It was in my first conversation with her on a beach in Maryland in June 2001, when I was traveling with a worship band and she was in a college and career group at a church near DC, that she introduced me to the world of orphan care.  Our life has been full of adventure and risk, interesting stories and great friends since then.  She is now beginning another season.  After getting her undergrad degree in early childhood and special education, a Master's degree in school administration and international comparative education, then leading a preschool for special needs children, she got a law degree specializing in international human rights and child advocacy.  Now she has started doma international, focusing on the vulnerabilities of young families and young children around the world.  Check out her new blog: Welcome Home.  Read, subscribe, and join her in this journey.

heavy words and empty calories (reflections on the fourth Sunday of Epiphany)

In the readings for yesterday, the Fourth Sunday after Epiphany, we see heavy words and works in Deuteronomy and Psalms, and empty calories and corruption in 1 Corinthians and Mark. 

Paul deals with the food sacrificed to idols by telling the church in Corinth that these are empty calories linked to empty gods.  The bottom line is that evil is not real, it is not an equal and opposite power as good.  This perspective would lead us into the problems of dualism and gnosticism.  Instead, evil is a parasite.  Idols are a parasite.  They just attach themselves to something real and have no ontological ground of their own.  (Ontology: that's just a fancy way to talk about existence, being, or reality).  Paul puts it this way: 'no idol in the world really exists.'  So one of these parasites has attached itself to a man who storms into the synagogue while Jesus is teaching.  It is the man who is real, a child of God.  The demon is not real, a parasite.  But over the empty calories and corruption of unreal idols and unclean spirits, Jesus speaks a heavy and healing word.

The interesting (and encouraging, healing, nourishing) thing is that Jesus' heavy word is authoritative, but not authoritarian.  It is powerful but not oppressive.  Jesus says, 'Be silent.'  While the parasite had taken over the man and 'emptied' him by oppressive authority, Jesus brings a different authority: one that silences, stills, heals, and fills.  The man has been emptied by the parasite, but Jesus fills him up with real life.

We face a lot of parasites in our lives - they are those things that empty us of hope, life, purpose, presence.  They attach themselves to us and suck us dry.  They are materialism, relational discord, despair... lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, pride.  Sound familiar?  The seven deadly sins are parasites, attaching themselves to good things like sex, food and drink, rest, confidence and sucking them dry, transforming them into a lifeless (unreal) force.  But to these things, Jesus says patiently, lovingly, 'Be silent.'  The Psalm for the day tells us that the Lord gives food to those who fear him.  Where parasites have left us hungry and empty, the heavy and tasty word and work of God in Christ fills us up.

As my wife's Italian family would say, 'Mangia! Mangia!'  Eat!  Eat!