Tuesday, February 8, 2011

third culture

"Being third culture means having the mindset and will to love, learn, and serve in any culture, even in the midst of pain and discomfort." This is what our staff heard Dave Gibbons (pastor of Newsong Church) say in a video segment we watched yesterday during our staff mtg.

One thing Gibbons said is that Third Culture focuses on the misfit not the masses. Third Culture loves and serves those on the margins. And God loves to use the fringe to lead movements. Gibbons also talked about how weakness guides us more than strength and how relationships trump vision.

I was thinking about my experiences at Harvest Vineyard, our partner church. I was there on Sunday for worship and to teach a class to students. As I walked into church, I passed through a whole crowd that spends the worship hour having fellowship with one another outside while smoking cigarettes. I walked through another layer of folks who feel safest to hang out at the coffee tables and listen to the service from another room. As I walked in to the sanctuary hearing worship music, I watched one member who was close to the front dramatically and physically respond to the worship music. I saw an old youth group member of mine who just got out of jail. Less than a year ago, I sat next to a man who, with alcohol on his breath, propositioned me and handed me a piece of the bulletin with his phone number on it and said sternly "call me" as we came to the end of the service. This group has many of what our community would label the "misfits". The poor, the addicted, the unemployed, the homeless, the struggling. And what have I discovered in their midst over the past few years?

1. I'm a misfit, too. The Holy Spirit has helped me to understand my brokenness and weakness in the midst of this group better than anywhere else. Maybe it's because there's such an openness and vulnerability to our struggling, sinful condition among those who don't do much to mask it. Whatever it is, I have owned and become more honest about my own heart because of them. And that leads me to the next discovery.
2. God's grace. I experience God's grace and a great dependence on the Holy Spirit to fill me and change me. When you're with those who have come to the end of themselves, you realize there's only One who can supply and transform.
3. Relationships really do trump vision. I've learned that in the midst of building relationships and beginning to understand those we have seen as "other", God gives a new vision grounded in those relationships. He reconciles people and binds them together to realize a new vision together. It's new wineskin.
4. God really does use the fringe to lead movements...
- God is drawing people to Himself through Harvest. It is growing, and becoming more diverse. More "mainstream" people are attending. There's a growing African-American presence in the congregation. It is reaching about 200 people on a Sunday, and there are 3 other mainline churches in the neighborhood that are in decline.
- Harvest is a lead church in Love Cedar Valley. Of all the churches that participate in Love Cedar Valley, Harvest has the greatest percentage of their congregation participating in the event.
- Harvest purchased a house in the neighborhood to rehabilitate. With cash. And their hope is to meet the need for transitional living quarters for men in the community.

Every day that I spend in the margins, I am keenly aware of the upside-down Kingdom of God. I am keenly aware of who I am and who God is. Our Luke reading for today is fitting....

Luke 5:30-32 But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, "Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and 'sinners'?"
Jesus answered them, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance."

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