Category: regular

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Sunny California!

There are a few places in America where “weird” has become a value, and a goal.  We happen to live near the epicenter of the east-coast weirdness earthquake here in Asheville.  There is virtually nothing you could do in downtown  Asheville to elicit the response, “hmm, that’s odd.”  After all, when the goal is absurdity and doing something “different,” eventually you just have a new definition for “normal.”  But (to milk all we can from the tectonic metaphor) our earthquake here in Western NC is a relative aftershock compared to the rumblings of Santa Cruz, California.

Four summers ago I experienced the earthquake. (seriously, that was the last time.) One day a local street musician coined a phrase that has stuck with me.  We were listening to him play some music, and as we tossed him some change and headed on, he stopped playing his severely out-of-tune guitar (because “off-key” is nearly synonymous with “different”…) and shouted “Thanks for coming to the Can of Screws!”  What a vivid description of Santa Cruz.  Screws of all different shapes, sizes, and smells.

I am excited to announce that this summer Jacqueline and little Benjamin are going to get to experience the smells of Santa Cruz.  We will be attending the 2009 Santa Cruz Summer Project.  We’re pretty pumped about it.  For the last 2 years Jacqueline has been on the outside of all of our inside jokes about Santa Cruz, being the only person on our staff team to not have had the joy of being “a screw for a summer” in the Can of Screws.

It’s our prayer that we as staff and students will recognize our own “weirdness” and from that point the other weirdos to a relationship with Christ.

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The Bigger Story

I’ve had two weeks to process what happened during Blanket Appalachia (other than the Just As I Am incident) and I figured if I don’t write it down, it is quickly going to get swallowed up in my brain.

I’ve never been that close to that much devastation wrought by drugs.  There is a distinct difference between seeing some pictures on a website and standing close enough to smell the smoky breath of a guy who fried his brain on years of abusing drugs.   It was an eye-opening experience.

I could dwell all day on the bad news from my time in Manchester, KY.  But then, like the news media, I’d miss the real story.  God is at work there.  He is “restoring what the locust has eaten” (check out Joel 1 and 2).  Friday night we met an amazing pastor of the First Baptist Church in town and he told us the story of he and a Pentacostal pastor in town getting together to pray once a week for the city.  Over the course of a year those two pastors meeting to pray became 150 pastors and laypeople meeting to pray for their community.  Through that prayer meeting they formed a march against drugs that would eventually lead to even high-ranking local government officials being carted off to jail in FBI handcuffs.  All because God’s people prayed.

The best part about that pastor’s story was the end, when (like a master artist) he painted us into the story.  Some yuppie North Carolina college students, campus ministers, and church people fit right into this story.  We were directly answers to prayers of those pastors and laypeople.  He told us how God was going to use us the next day to bring people into His kingdom.  Not only had they had a political and social renewal and overhaul in Clay county, KY—they were ripe for a spiritual renewal. And God had brought us in to love the people well, to challenge them with the gospel of grace, and to take a few giant leaps of faith with them.

I don’t know if I would have appreciated what I was doing all day Saturday had I not been painted into the bigger picture.  Sharing my faith with strangers without a bigger picture is exhausting.  Joining God in what he is doing, on the other hand, is exhilirating.  We got the chance to see 26 people trust Christ the next day, and 1300 people left with jackets, blankets, socks, and Bibles.  We initiated spiritual conversations with every person that walked through the door.  Some of them had all of their teeth rotted out of their head from several months of meth abuse.  Some of them couldn’t complete sentences because they were still blitzed from the night before (at 9 AM).  I talked to one guy who was about my age and said he had never had a job of any kind, but instead just made and sold drugs for a living.  And he didn’t even look alive.

Some of our students who had never gotten up the guts to have a spiritual conversation ended up initiating conversations by the end of the day with ease, and got to see multiple people trust Christ.  In the midst of the devastation, we saw God planting flowers.  Restoring.  Bringing new life.

I marvel at the bigger story I am a part of.  What bigger story are you helping to write, whether you know it or not?

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Art as a Bridge, a Weapon, or a Tool?

I am in the midst of preparing for an interactive study of art and spiritual issues that I will be leading at UNC Asheville next semester, and I am struck by how poor of a job we as Christians have done when it comes to our interactions with art.  Here are some of the extremes that I have seen in my own heart and life.

On the one hand, there is bad art and copyright infringement masqueraded as parody or as a way to be “relevant.”  At best, this type of art is reactionary and childish.  And I have done it.  I have been the guy who didn’t listen to anything but “Christian music.”  By “Christian” I meant that the content had to be blatantly about Jesus.  In fact, it was best for it to state right on the surface what it was about, so that there would be no doubt.  We’ll take a popular secular song and steal the production, the beat, the instrumentation, and even some of the lyrics, and we will “Jesus it up a little.”  Take a love song meant for the artist’s significant other and make it about Jesus.  Use that song as a way to lure in unsuspecting folks who thought they were walking into a Los Lonely Boys concert, and then kick them in the face with the Bible (metaphorically, of course—with some rare exceptions)

On the other hand, some Christians have demonized art.  Anything with a synchopated beat is of the devil.  Any art used in a worship service is idolatry and a breaking of the 2nd commandment.  Anything Eminem has ever written should be burned, and therefore there is nothing redeeming in any form of rap music.  “Gospel Rap” is an impossible hyperbole.  We can only sing hymns in church.  Some denominations even take it so far that you can’t even have instruments at all in worship.  It seems that Elvis sinned so much that any type of instrument he ever touched is now beyond redemption.

Is there another option?  Can art be, as I think it was meant to be, a window into the soul of the artist?  Here’s my first attempt at a promo blurb for our upcoming study. And you get to read it before it’s done!

Strip: (v) to remove extraneous or extra material from, to make bare or clear.

What’s your label?  Democrat? Republican? Christian? Buddhist? Gay? Straight? White? Black?

What’s your cause? Abortion? Legalized marijuana? Same sex marriage? Religious freedom? A new baseball stadium? AIDS in Africa?

Those questions all draw us into our corner.  The evil people on the other side of our line in the sand become less and less our fellow humans and more and more our enemies.  All we need is proof that they don’t really care about the world, and we’ll bury them.  Whoever can find the biggest stone to throw wins.

Art is a unique window in the soul of the artist.  A glimpse across the line drawn in the sand and into a heart of a person with real cares, real fears, and real passion.  And if we let it, art can be a tool to strip us, to take us (even if only briefly) out of our corner, and engage with life using a new pair of eyes.  If we begin to see the people in the other corner as fellow travelers on a spiritual journey, we realize that we have much to learn from each other.  We are stripped of our label and our cause and are forced to engage others on a singular level, that of human.

Our goal is not to eradicate the labels, but to give them a context.  We want to engage with others of different opinions, and create a place where two things guide our discussion:  No question or observation is off limits, and nobody gets to apply truth to anyone other than themselves.

Join us for Stripped, an interactive experience where we look at the world through each other’s eyes, and the eyes of artists like Rembrant, Gauguin, Munch, and others.  Brought to you by Campus Crusade for Christ at UNC Asheville.

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Urgent Prayer

I got an email today (indirectly) from some YWAM missionaries.  Please pray, and spread the word to pray.

This is a request for prayer for YWAM (Youth With a Mission) missionaries and their churches in Orissa, India.

The request came from Mabel Hurst, an associate of HCJB Global. Please read and make this a matter of urgent prayer.

Dear beloved sponsors and friends of Good News India. We have never seen anything like this. We knew that Orissa was the most resistant and hostile State in India as far as the Gospel is concerned. And we brushed off the continuous threats and harassment we faced as we went about His work. But none of our staff imagined that they would see this kind of carnage…. And it seems to be totally under the radar of the Western Media.

Let me explain: A militant Hindu priest (Swami Laxmananda Saraswati) and 4 of his attendants, who were zealously going around the villages of Orissa and ‘reconverting’ people back to Hinduism, were gunned down by unknown assailants in Central Orissa last weekend.

Immediately the Christians were blamed. The cry rose up, “Kill the Christians!” And the horror began…In the past 4 days, we have first hand witness to hundreds of churches being blown up or burned and many, many dozens of Christian tribals have been slaughtered. For no other reason than they bear the name of Christ.

Night and day I have been in touch with our Good News India Directors spread across 14 Dream Centers in Orissa—they are right in the middle of all this chaos. In Tihidi, just after the police came to offer protection, a group of 70 blood-thirsty militants came to kill our staff and destroy the home. They were not allowed to get in, but they did a lot of damage to our Dream Center by throwing rocks and bricks and smashing our gate, etc. They have promised to come back and ‘finish the job.’ Our kids and staff are locked inside and have stayed that way with doors and windows shut for the past 3 days. It has been a time of desperately calling on the Lord in prayer. More police have come to offer protection. In Kalahandi, the police and some local sympathizers got to our dream center and gave our staff and kids about 3 minutes notice to vacate. No one had time to even grab a change of clothes or any personal belongings. As they fled, the blood thirsty mob came to kill everyone in the building. We would have had a mass funeral there, but for His grace.

In Phulbani, the mob came looking for Christian homes and missions. The local Hindu people, our neighbors, turned them away by saying that there were no Christians in this area. So they left. We had favor. The same thing happened in Balasore.

All our dream centers are under lock down with the kids and staff huddled inside and police outside. The fanatics are circling outside waiting for a chance to kill. Others were not so fortunate. In a nearby Catholic orphanage, the mob allowed the kids to leave and locked up a Priest and a computer teacher in house and burned them to death. Many
believers have been killed and hacked into pieces and left on the road—even women and children. At another orphanage run by another organization, when this began, the Director and his wife jumped on their motorbike and simply fled, leaving all the children and staff behind.

Every one of our GNI directors that I have spoken to said: ‘We stay with our kids…. we live together or die together, but we will never abandon what God has called us to do.’ More than 5000 Christian families have had their homes burned or destroyed. They have fled into the jungles and are living in great fear waiting for the authorities to bring about peace.

But so far, no peace is foreseen. This will continue for another 10 days, supposedly the 14-day mourning period for the slain Hindu priest. Many more Christians will die and their houses destroyed. Many more churches will be smashed down. The Federal government is trying to restore order and perhaps things will calm down. We ask for your prayers. Only the hand of God can calm this storm.

None of us know the meaning of persecution. But now our kids and staff know what that means. So many of our kids coming from Hindu backgrounds are confused and totally bewildered at what is happening around them. So many of their guardians have fled into the jungles and are unable to come and get them during these trying times.

Through all this, I am more determined than ever to continue with our goal: the transformation of a community by transforming its children.
Orissa will be saved—that is our heart’s cry. If we can take these thousands of throw-away children and help them to become disciples of Jesus, they will transform an entire region. It is a long term goal, but it is strategic thinking in terms of the Great Commission.

Please uphold all this in fervent prayer. Also, please pass this news on to as many friends as you can. We must getthe word out and increase our prayer base for this isspiritual warfare at its most basic meaning. We are literally fighting the devil in order to live for His Kingdom. The next 10 days are crucial. We pray for peace and calm to pervade across Orissa.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. Please pass it on and help us to get as many people to partner with us on this cutting edge effort to fulfill His mandate: Go and make disciples of all nations…

Prayer works!
Blessings,
Chip & Sandy Wanner (Col 2:2 MBI)Team Facilitators to YWAM Frontlines

Please be in prayer, and let this be a lesson that the media may or may not be picking up the biggest stories in the world.  I checked snopes to make sure this isn’t a scam, and found neither confirmation nor refutation.  I apologize in advance if I am passing along false information.  But I figured better to pass along and have to retract later.

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My TV could be diagnosed with a split-personality disorder.

The dichotomy between the news and the advertising spots on news shows these days has me simultaneously scratching my head and rolling my eyes. In fact, it’s pretty funny.

Next up: how terrible the economy is, how we are losing life as we know it, watching Wall Street flop around and foam at the mouth.  Then they cut to commercials.  The commercial then spends 30 seconds trying to convince me that I should go out and buy things.  My life as I know it will not be the same if I don’t get this gadget or that shampoo, for the low price of 19.99 plus shipping.  Now back to the news.  We should churn our own butter and stock up on canned goods to prepare for the apocolypse, right after this break.  During the break they convince me that I should go on a cruise with Royal Carribean.  Indulge.  Treat yourself, you deserve it.  Now back to the financial news.  The Dow Jones Average is down more than it has been in your grandparent’s lifetime.  You should prepare the emergency bunker and invest in a ham radio that you probably wouldn’t know how to use, just in case TV signal goes dark.

And on it goes.

Bottom line, I’m gonna invest in a cruise where they have complimentary shampoo and gadgets, they teach you how to churn your own butter, and there’s a really large bomb-proof life boat.  It’ll make everybody happy.

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