Thursday review

To summarize the day-

The day started off with a 3 mile run for me. I ran in two states today...Ohio and Kentucky. The bridge that connects the two states is about a five minute jog from our hotel, so we crossed the bridge, ran Kentucky for about 15 minutes, and jogged back into Ohio. Nathan, if you are reading this, we ran past the Cincinnati Bengal stadium.

Opening session was some worship time and a precious hour with JP (John Perkins) leading Bible Study. If I had to give his study a title today, it would be "back to the basics". John spoke of the crisis in the Church today as being one of a lack of discipline and discipleship. Knowing the Word of God, living out the Word in obedience, confession, and prayer as listening to God. He used 1 John 1 and 2 as the text.

Wayne Gordon gave a good word this morning using 1 Samuel 15:1-35, the text where God had asked Saul to annihilate a people and their possessions, but Saul spared Agog and the best of the spoils he did not destroy. He then tried to justify his disobedience and live as if partial obedience was to be respected. Gordon spent time talking about partial disobedience to the Word of God is disobedience straight up. And if anything is going to derail ccda, it's our disobedience to the full Word of God.

The evening session's speakers were Gabriel Saguero, senior pastor at Lamb's Church in Manhatten, and Jim Wallis, leader of Sojourners. Both were excellent. Both spoke on synergy and how we must be about this walk and work together. I'll likely bring home cd's or dvd's of many of the main sessions if you'd care to borrow and listen after our return home. The picture at the top of this post is of a group of young ballerinas called Cure City Princesses who danced this evening in the main session.

what a great group of friends

This is our group at CCDA this year:

front to back, left to right:

Ellaysa Newton, Laura Hoy, Brad Hillebrand, Barb McMahon, Marla Kraayenbrink

Derek Sallis, Blayne Jesse, Brynn Gardner, Dante Marcellous, Chassidi Ferguson, Deb Tensen

George Marshall, Shawna Stone, Judy Marshall, Randy Kraayenbrink, Erin Hagen, Doug Tensen, Neil McMahon, Kirsten Klepfer, Cindy Mickey.

The group met after tonight's session for some time together to share and pray. And play...below is a picture of a round of "1,2,3, Kung Fu Panda", a game taught by Mr. Brad Hillebrand, game master and friend to humpback whales.

Bob and Peggy Lupton

Some of our group ran into Bob and Peggy Lupton in the hotel lobby this morning. Bob is coming to CF next month to teach an institute called "Empowerment". Bob wrote an excellent book that I highly recommend called Compassion, Justice, and the Christian Life.

Bob wanted guarantee that we will get no icy or snowy weather in mid-November, as he leaves the following day from his visit with us to go to Ireland with his wife.

We'll pray for good weather, Bob, and we're excited to have you with us next month!

opening plenary

Summary of tonight's opening at ccda:

1. Started with the Cincinnati youth symphany orchestra. Beautiful.

2. Barbara Williams-Skinner, chairperson of the ccda Board, talked about how we are standing between the old and new. She used Deuteronomy 1:6 where Moses is speaking to Joshua and passing on the baton of leadership. She talked about how the church of old is steeped in a culture of racial alienation and there's a new generation that wants to break free. God is calling us as a whole people, collectively as His followers to:


-Break camp. We've settled into white spaces and black spaces and Latino spaces, rich and poor spaces...we're separate and disconnected from one another. We do not know one another. We do not understand one another. We need to break camp. Get up and move from this separation and begin to spend time together. Begin to know one another. Own our fear and move toward freedom. We have to mentor people in freedom not in fear. We have to model the way.

- Advance into hill country. Move up. Not even so much physically as mentally. We have to pray like never before. This land cannot be possessed by our own power. It will be God's power. We have to change our language about one another. If our associations and relationships don't look like a piece of the Kingdom of God, then we should move ourselves until they do.

- Possess the land. The land of racism and poverty will be possessed by the Kingdom when we surrender and come broken-hearted and humbled to the foot of the cross to be reconciled first to God and then to one another.

3. John Perkins had a few words of vision for us about the Church not accomodating to apartheid but being a living testimony of the Gospel of reconciliation.

4. Soong Chan-Rah gave a compelling talk about our changing world. How by 2023, the majority of children in America will be non-white. By 2042, the majority of Americans will be non-white. And the American Church is changing as well. The growing segments in Christianity in America are multi-ethnic and non-white churches . By 2050, about 85% of the Christian world will be a non-white population. His question was "why are we then captive to white, western culture's paradigm of Christianity?"

Chan-Rah used Haggai text to talk about the 3 R's of Christian Community Development:

Relocation- He spoke about how relocation is less about the white wealthy moving into the inner city to help change the community and more about how it is the willingness to give up power and privilege to learn from the poor. That God's power most often manifests in weakness and struggle.

Reconciliation- God's power, God's Spirit is essential for reconciliation. It's about God's covenant of Grace, not about earning points for God or works.

Redistribution- Haggai 2:9 and 2:6. "This temple will be greater than the glory of the former house." At the current time in Haggai, the beautiful temple that Solomon had built was a pile of rubble. But 2:6 talks about "the desired one of nations" coming...Jesus... which will make this pile of rubble even more glorious than before. We are that pile of rubble. And there is nothing more glorious than the moment Jesus steps in. What should we be redistributing? We should be sharing and spreading the presence of Jesus in our lives.

The night closed with a joyful, passionate worship set by a gospel choir from this area. And then several folks went to an ice cream social down the block. I can hear music from it and imagine lots of folks networking. This is the kind of conference that you can almost never sleep at...always something going. I, however, am getting old and need to find a little sleep tonight. I want to be up early to run with Noel Castellanos, the ceo of ccda, and other interested runners. I can go because I am a runner now! :)

on the streets in Cincinnati

I was up before light this morning and asking in the lobby where I might find a coffeeshop in the neighborhood of our hotel. Hotel staff gave me directions to a nearby Starbucks, and I proceeded to walk outside to accidentally take a right, left instead of a left, right as she had told me to do. I could tell quickly that I was heading in the dark toward even darker streets, and I was keenly aware that I was a woman, a stranger to this city, and I had with me my laptop and my bookbag that had every dollar and bank card I had brought on the trip. At one corner, I met a homeless man seated up against a building with a big backpack and bedroll next to him. I asked him the location of the Starbucks that I was trying to find, and he pointed me in the right direction, ending with a "can you spare me change for a cup of coffee?"

With my response being that I'd buy him a cup if he wanted to come along, I found myself walking and talking with Gary, a man who'd been on the streets for four years. In our course of conversation over a cup of coffee and some donuts at Starbucks, Gary became a man with a story rather than an object and statistic of homelessness that we typically picture in our minds. Gary graduated from high school one year behind me and has a birthday in two days. He's troubled by the death of his mom 17 years ago, a death that he believes was a murder at the hands of his half brothers, but that the police ruled a suicide. Gary is obsessed with this and trying to prove the police are dirty. No matter how many topics we addressed, Gary came back to this story.

On our walk back toward the hotel, the city had begun to bustle at 6:30 in the morning. The street we took back was not the street that we had taken to get coffee, and I was amazed by the mix of the business community and street folks. That always impacts me so much in the downtowns of large cities. The stark extremes of wealth and poverty sharing the same sidewalk but not sharing eye contact. It's just such a picture of our separateness and brokenness as a society.

Gary and I parted after I told him that I'd like to pray Jesus's peace for him over his mom's death, and now I'm sitting in the hotel lobby ready to do a little reading and noticing several of the ccda leadership wandering through. My daughter just called to usher in the morning and I'm now going to attempt to "chat" with her a spell on facebook. Our group is excited to be here...it's fun to watch the relationships begin, and we're anticipating all that God has for us through this week.

CCDA in Cincinnati

I've arrived in Cincinnati, the location of this year's Christian Community Development Association conference. There are 21 adults of us from the Wloo/CF area here, and we're looking forward to spending the next five days together learning about best principles and practices for community transformation in Christ.

I'll look forward to sharing a little of our week here on this blog in the upcoming days.

Haiti Home of Hope

The people in the picture above are Jennifer and Bill Campbell. Bill and Jennifer and their son, Jessie, received God's call and left their Kansas City home to move to Haiti in 2002 to run an orphanage. What they first believed would be a home for about 15 boys, God has made a home for 36 children, boys and girls.

Bill and Jennifer were at Orchard Hill a week ago and shared for over an hour in the sanctuary on a Wednesday evening.

I was moved and inspired by their great faith and obedience. I was moved to prayer that these little ones will grow up not only strong in body, but strong also in mind, soul, spirit. At the Haiti Home of Hope, the children are receiving 3 meals a day, an education, and they're learning about God's Word and their identity in Jesus. They're hearing the Gospel, and they're experiencing the Gospel being lived out all around them. I pray that God would raise them up to lead and help transform their community in Christ.

Other prayer requests and needs at this time are:

- money for infant formula so that the Campbell's can continue a milk program for babies in the area.

- money for a new truck that is badly needed.

- Also prayers for Jessie. He's in Kansas City, living apart from his parents, for his senior year of high school.

When we send teams to Haiti from Orchard Hill, the teams visit the orphanage, which is near Pignon, each year.

You can write an encouragement email to the Campbell's at campbellsinhaiti@yahoo.com

The Haiti Home of Hope exists to provide food, shelter, clothing, medicine, education, and most importantly, the love of Jesus, to orphans and other needy children in Haiti.