On My Way {Part 8}

Location: Brighton Park - Chicago, IL

My church in Chicago commissioned me this past Sunday:

Sharing about my upcoming trip

My pastor and the elders

My dear brother and sisters

This experience was like no other. I can't tell you what a privilege and honor it was to be a part of this!

*Anybody interested in receiving my update emails with more specifics about this trip let me know (via comment or email) and I'll put you on my list*

Reentering

Location: Evergreen Park, IL

I'm back in Illinois and excited not to be living in a hotel room. As much as I loved my roommate and spending time with my Texas friends, it's good to be in a place that feels like home.

I'll be moving to a basement apartment tomorrow (very excited!) and I'll be in my own space. Also, I was able to go to a birthday party yesterday, a Mexican one, and see my friends and students from church.

However, not all parts of coming back have been fun and exciting. It's been difficult feeling so different when everyone else seems the same. It's a similar feeling to arriving home from a mission trip and having your entire worldview changed while everyone else is still caught up in their own lives.

I'm struggling with the idea of support raising, getting people to catch the same vision I have for going overseas. I will continue to pray and seek God's guidance as I wrestle through this process. I would appreciate your prayers as well through this time :)

This post is simple me trying to get some thoughts out and not necessarily and exhaustive treatment of the topic. More to come...

Night all!

Here's the Church...

Location: Evergreen Park, IL

For those of you who grew up in church...remember that little rhyme with hand motions about the church? The one that goes, "Here's the church and here's the steeple. Open the doors and see all the people," or some variation of that? The rhyme what quite entertaining for me as a child but as I've grown older I've began to think more and more about the church.

Most members of the universal church today agree that the church isn't the building but rather the body of Christ. This is why we so many different forms of church around the world. From small meetings in homes to a gathering under a tree, church is anywhere where the people of God our gathered. But what will the church look like in places where it doesn't already exist?

It's hard to think about places where there is no church. For those of you who don't know, the most likely place for this to occur is the 10/40 window. The space in the eastern hemisphere between the 10 and 40 latitude lines north of the equator. These people have a lack of access to the Bible, Christian resources and missionaries. I was there last summer and got to see up close how the people have been deceived by false teachers.

As I learned about evangelism in the 10/40 window I realized many of our Western church models wouldn't work for these people. The culture they come from separates men and women completely. It requires extreme modesty for women. It places high value on written scriptures, so much so that no one would ever think to put a sacred book on the floor or write in it. Music is a controversial issue. These issues would post major problems when it comes to planting a church among this society.

So I began to wonder...

Is there anything wrong with church being separated by gender? Doesn't 1Timothy encourage older women to mentor younger women and older men to do the same with younger men?

Is it wrong for women to cover their head as a sign of respect and modesty? Any depiction of women in Bible times usually includes them with head coverings.

Would it be so awful if the Bible were always placed in the highest place of honor?

Can we worship God without music?

I'm not saying that Western models of the church need to change but I'm wondering how much contextualization can happen in the context of a place where God's church has yet to take root. It's not about making Christianity palatable because the Gospel is offensive. However, the West doesn't have the claim to perfect Christianity and imposing it on other cultures doesn't seem fair.

I could be totally off base here and I welcome your opinions. What is the church? What is the church supposed to look like? How far can contextualization go?

Two fellow interns and I at a restaurant on one of our last nights in the country