Whew ... the Olympics are over.

Well, the Olympics are finally over. I can get some rest, and maybe even post a blog entry more than every 3 weeks!

I was really into the Olympics this year, mostly because they were in China. It was very cool for the world to get to know China from afar ... both the good and bad. In my opinion, it is the most exciting country in the world. The pace of change there is unprecedented, and it will be extremely interesting to watch what happens in the coming years. I just hope I get to visit again sometime.

On another note, I continue to be REALLY excited about what is going on with Onelife in India. Please pray for our leadership as they determine how many trips Westside will take next year, how we will start building the new orphanage buildings, how we will start the microfinance ministry (apparently thousands are interested!), and how we will help train pastors. I'm tentatively planning on returning to visit there in Jan/Feb. Please pray for this decision as well.

My thought for the day - I've been rediscovering how bad we are as humans at doing what we want to do. We often skip from the original idea or the 'want to' straight to the 'just do it' without considering the 'how'. We make it all about will power, and when we fail, we think, 'if I just try harder ...'. What if 'trying harder' isn't the answer? What if we're going about it the wrong way? What if instead of trying harder to pray more, we scheduled a meeting time in the middle of our day to actually do it? What if instead of just trying to spend less this month, we didn't buy that new pair of shoes? What if instead of just trying to spend more time with our family, we cancelled the cable TV? I think it would work. It would work a lot better than just trying harder!

Wow! You go China!

I hope you all had a chance to catch the Olympic Opening Ceremonies last night. Even on TV they were unbelievably amazing. I found myself tearing up at the pride of the Chinese people. This was their moment and they nailed it! If you have not been there or lived there, you can not understand how proud of China and Chinese culture the Chinese people are. And they should be. It's not everywhere that the opening ceremony would trace THOUSANDS of years of history.

The ceremony captured China and all of it's paradoxes. You saw the coordinated force of thousands of people. The size and the detail. There were people everywhere on the stage working together. That is China at its best. Everyone, billions, working to protect and serve their country and culture. We in the west do not relate well to the idea of the whole being above the individual. For the Chinese, the accomplishment of China as a whole is greater than any individual accomplishment. You could see it in their eyes. They were unified and they were proud. It was awesome. I could picture my friends, their faces glowing, as they watch their TVs in their homes a half world away.

China gets a bad rap here so many times and they are certainly far from perfect. But the change since the late 70s is unmatched in history. They have transitioned from isolation and obscurity into the center of the world. They have done it without starvation, without war, and without revolution. They have not been perfect, but last night they showed the world how far they have come. To my Chinese friends out there. Congratulations! You were amazing. Even here in the USA, your passion and performance were unmatched. It was simply wonderful to see.

Creative Capitalism

Bill Gates wrote an interesting article in the latest issue of Time Magazine. It’s called ‘Making Capitalism More Creative’. Read it here. This is something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately as we explore expanding the Onelife India ministry into some sort of micro-financing. Micro-financing at its simplest is making capital (cash) available for small loans to the poor who normally would not have access to that type of financial service. The most famous example is Grameen bank in Bangladesh. One of the coolest examples is Kiva – which is not a microfinance institution itself, but instead connects those people with money and a desire to help with the microfinance institutions. Check it out!

The premise Gates is proposing is that we can increase our ability to help the poor if we take actions that create incentive for market driven, capitalistic investment to join in the task. The biggest example of this is the ‘Red’ campaign organized by Bono, and made popular mostly by Gap. Money is raised for the needy, Gap’s image is enhanced, and everyone thinks they are cool for wearing a ‘red’ shirt. Everyone wins, but mostly the poor that are being helped.

There is a key dilemma I continue to run into as I think about micro-financing. Do we raise a pile of money, charge just enough interest to cover admin, and then return the money back to the pile for reuse when it is repaid? This is the strictly charitable path. Or, do we create a structure designed to give a return on the investment, making money by charging higher but reasonable interest rates? In this case, raising the initial and ongoing capital funds becomes much easier, and we are still providing a great service to these individuals who would otherwise have no access to a loan.

It basically comes down to … is it reasonable to make a profit from the poor if it would sufficiently increase the capital available over time to help the poor? More people would join in if we created a 5% return, than if we were just taking donations. However, a donation would always be able to be re-used for another loan, while a person desiring a 5% return would at some point want to withdrawal his/her money. And if 5% is good, why not 8% to attract more investment ... at what point are you taking advantage of the people? And at what point is the return so low you might as well just ask for donations? Tough questions!

In the end, both structures are good. If you were designing a new micro-finance system, which would you choose, 'pure donation' or 'return on investment'?

Obama and Religion

In case you missed it, (I did!) Newsweek had a good article on Obama's religious beliefs. You can read it here. Obviously everything Obama or McCain says right now about their religious beliefs is carefully calculated so you have to take it with a grain of salt, but this article provided some interesting information on Obama's background, how he came to decide to follow Jesus, and some hints about what he feels 'following Jesus' means. It's a good read and helps clear up some of the misinformation out there. (No, Obama is not a closet Muslim!!) In fact, in my opinion his life history compared to McCain's shows a stronger pattern of following Jesus. Obama researched multiple religions, made a conscious decision, was baptized, and was an active member of a church (until that recent flare up!). McCain is not a member of a church although he does attend one sometimes. He has also stated that he found great comfort in prayer while a POW in Vietnam. I'm certainly not saying I agree with all of Obama's theology (or McCain's for that matter). And I'm not saying that Obama's policies are more 'Christian' than McCains. I'm just saying from a life event standpoint Obama has a solid Christian history.

On a side note, I'd like to officially declare myself as firmly undecided. I'm attracted to things about both candidates. Right now I'm leaning towards McCain because his strong pro-life stance tips me in that direction. However, there is much more to leading this country than being pro-life so I'm still trying to balance out all the issues. On the other side, personally, I feel it would be a huge benefit to our country both domestically and abroad to show the world (and ourselves) that we can elect and follow a president that is both black and has a Muslim sounding name. I really like the fact that I'm basically OK with either Obama or McCain - a complete opposite from 2004 where I didn't really want either one.

My wife would accuse me of being sucked into the Obama media frenzy. I don't know about that, but I am intrigued by him. I think he dominates the media not really because of bias (although I'm sure there is some of that), but mostly because he is an infinitely more interesting story than McCain. Of course, a more interesting story doesn't make a better president.

Quote on Courage

Here's one of my favorite quotes - simple, short, and sweet.

"Courage is not the absence of fear. It is the absence of self." -Erwin McManus

Also, thanks to everyone who helped me to have an incredible birthday weekend. Everyone who helped watch the kids so Michelle and I could get away - double thanks to you!!

The 'E' Word

Evil - it appears to be the new 4-letter word for today’s culture. We have such a hard time with it. Why can’t we recognize the evil around us and in us and call it out? We assume goodness and ask the question ‘Why do basically good people do bad things?’. Maybe we should be asking “Why do bad people do good things?”. This is an uncomfortable thought for me because I admit that my natural reaction to someone using the E-word is “Who made you God?” and “Who are you to judge?”, but I’m not sure this inclination is correct. Over the last few months, I’ve been asking myself the question ‘What makes people change?’, and I can’t get past the E-word. I think this is where many of us are missing it. We don’t recognize the evil, and so we don’t approach the process of changing it correctly.

The first step in the 12 steps of addiction recovery is to ‘recognize that we are powerless and our lives have become unmanageable’. I think unmanageable here is a euphemism for bad, or dare I say it … evil. (Nobody goes to addiction recovery because their life has become unmanageably good!) The success and acceptance of the 12 steps make me think these people know what they're talking about.

However, if that's not enough or you prefer the Biblical slant, 1 John 1:8-10 says “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives. “ Here it is - not only forgiveness, but also becoming more righteous (stated here as purity from unrighteousness) is dependent on recognizing our sin. Most of us would agree that sin=evil so try replacing that in the verse above. Yikes!

My personal struggle against porn addiction (ok, that may be a shock to some. Get over it and I’ll share more another time) shows this as well. My constant struggle to be free of it did not succeed until I recognized it as a whole and as evil. When I viewed myself as a basically good person who just happens to be sinning every day, week, or month – I couldn’t bust out of it. When I viewed myself as a wreck who needed help - I found success. After all, how can you follow Jesus' teachings to kill the old self if you don’t recognize it as bad. Jesus says he who wishes to find life must lose it. If we want to really live, we must die to self and it will not happen until we take step 1: Admit that I am e.... ( I don’t even want to print that last sentence, it makes me uncomfortable)

We must be 'Cause Driven'

I came across an old email the other day that I sent out shortly after returning from our two years in China. The email referenced a very short article entitled, 'The Cause Driven Church' written by my favorite speaker, Erwin McManus. It refreshed for me one of my passions and so I thought I'd try to articulate it here.

The cause of Christ is singular - to bring God glory by expanding his Kingdom. And as the church is the body of Christ [the way the world in this age contacts, sees, and experiences the physical Christ], the church's purpose is singular as well: to bring glory to God by expanding his Kingdom. Everything we do must flow out of this cause or we are missing the point. When we miss the point, we wonder 'where in the world is God?' and 'why isn't this working'?. All the while, God says to us, 'if you would stick to the point, you will not fail because that is what I'm all about and I do not fail.'

A little background - Kingdom is a strange term we don't use much, but it helps me to think of it as the extent of God's rule, or the places where God's will is done (Thanks Dallas Willard for that helpful hint!). The Kingdom can be expanded in two ways: in our individual lives as we act more and more like God wants us to act, and corporately as more people begin to join the process. My church's mission statement expresses this well: to reach people for Christ and grow believers to be like him. These are simply the two ways the Kingdom expands.

Here is where I, we, all of us, so often get it wrong. We pursue community and unity as the end goal and end up faking it, then wonder why it falls apart. We pursue discipleship as 'knowing' more and convincing others to agree with us rather than becoming more obedient. We serve out of obligation or in an attempt to manipulate or impress other people or God, instead of out of a desire to help. We pursue missions to bring other cultures our supposedly superior (and more comfortable) western ways. We pursue worship by singing to make ourselves feel better. All of these basically good pursuits, (you may recognize them from Rick Warren's 5 purposes) become distorted when we pursue them outside of the main thing: the expansion of the kingdom of God.

Jesus teaches us to pray 'thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven' because this is the point! Everything else comes after this and in fact is a result of it. There is a reason that when you join the cause to expand the kingdom you bond with a team in an incredible way, you begin to act more like Christ, and you serve without recognition. You begin to realize that people don't have to sleep with a feather pillow but they do need food, water, basic care, and Jesus. And then you celebrate with music the worship you have already demonstrated through your actions.

The church must be 'cause-driven'. It is the key to it's success! How are you doing at keeping the main thing the main thing? I haven't been doing so well lately.

Here is a portion of Erwin's article:

"Healthy community flows out of a unified cause - not the other way around. Jesus called his disciples and said, “Follow me. I’ll make you fishers of men.” This was not an offer of community. “Follow me and I will give you something worthy of giving your life to” is a statement of cause. But the neat thing is, when they came to the cause, they found community like they never knew could exist. That’s the power of the church.
One danger of the American church is that we often try to offer people community without cause. Without cause, you’re just another civic organization. You don’t have life transformation.
Jesus said, “I have come to the world to seek and to save that which is lost.” The cause of Christ is accomplished by expanding the kingdom of God."