Lou Wagenveld

Thanks for submitting this, Anneke, via Wendy's post.  As someone deeply interested in and committed to holistic Christian witness, I read this type of post with keen interest.

I sensed, Wendy, something of an "apples and oranges" disjunction in that the title led me think we were going to get something on short term MISSIONS projects.  But the "paper" is about community development; our old bug-a-boo about our terminology... is development "missions."  Of course it is, or should be.  Allow me a couple of comments/questions.

I also sensed something of a disjunction between what sounded like CRWRC's direct work through local/national "staff" as contrasted with the next paragraph, working with local churches. Are those national workers identified as  staff of an international development organization? Are they on loan to other NGOs?  And, are they Christians?  How do they work? Does CRWRC pay church-related staff to carry out the projects?

Back to the question of STMs.  Anneke is correct in her skepticism about much of what is tried.  A story I know about is of a California church that spent $83,000 on a ten-day trip to Uganda to "form a library, build a wall, and start a new church." Yeah, all in ten days!   My concern is to see "church growth" and "community development" so integrated that it becomes an almost seamless witness to a full-orbed Gospel witness.

What I didn't read in the paper is what if anything these good community development models are doing for the increase in the number and depth of the local churches, of whatever denomination.  Lets keep conversing.......

(Disclaimer/clarification: when in the last paragraph "church based development work is twice mentioned, I construe that as CRWRC's N. American church based structure.  And as discussed elsewhere, I hope that is not eroded significantly with the changes that took place over the summer with Synod's approval of a name change... and whatever else may be coming down the pike along with that)

BAck again...thanks Wendy.  I'd used the word "disjunction" twice in my comment.  Partly I got thrown off when a second paragraph started:  "Another way CRWRC works....."  It didn't like those employees with the churches.  

And when we get into the question of disjunction in terms of policy, I don't know whether I should bring up here the difference in CRWRC and CRWM policy.  We (of the latter) had neither funds for deaconal needs, nor permission to hire nationals.  So we were on a different footing with our own relief/development agency.   I'm wondering if that will ever get straightened out.

Thanks for the lead to the other post, which is exactly the kind of thing we need to be focusing on, and what I hope that interns like Anneke get exposed to and underscored in their experiences.  

No comment at the moment then on changes that may or may not take place in World Renew.  Time will tell.

When the piece on Honduras started off with what to me were figures on religion that were so far off and out of date, I wondered what else of facts and perceptions might be skewed as well.  But then, I'm an inveterate doubter about the "effectiveness" of STMs. On balance, it sounds to me as though Honduras - at least as relates to CRC folk - is well above average on that score.  And I don't doubt that Kurt and company have a lot to do with that, with awareness raising on both ends of the exchange.  Lets keep the dialogue going, and the debriefings Stateside for many months afterward.                       PS I'm wondering how many of the participants to Honduras of the last several years are aware of the serious situation presented to the leaders and staff of the Association for a More Just Society .... look them up.

Maybe because it was published at 5 AM over two years ago, I missed this gem of a reflection.  My friend who wrote it should really go to work for a PR firm that specializes in glossing over things and putting on the best face, even while underneath the body suffers.

For us veterans of the - yes, fights - between these "sisters," this article just describes the present because the past has been so sad.  And the lack of real collaboration/coordination/cooperation on so many "fields" (following the lead of the home offices in spite of some very good attempts otherwise) has led to a paucity of results in too many places.  There are not many places where we can point to a thriving church with a holistic ministry where Word and Deed are a natural integral expression of what our theory is.  Why?  Dual agencies/administrations by nature replicate dual structures.  

In a couple of Central American countries the national Christian Reformed churches have practically no working relationship with the new model of going with NGOs as the preferred expression of the CRCNA there.  Please give a critical re-read of the paragraph "Do CRWM and World Renew work together?"  We are not surprisingly replicating our grand mistake of  allowing the divorce of 50 years ago to go on and on.  And my sense of things is that the boomerang of ecclesiastical history has come home to debilitate our whole bi-national denomination, as evidenced by the malaise and decline so lamented by many of us who did what we could to do it differently. 

Mark, very stretching and helpful piece.  Now I'd like to see you or someone who knows the Batman mistique do an analysis of where those - and especially this latest "Dark Knight" - movies are on the "morally ill/healthy" scale.  The "media" doesn't like to talk much about that either; they label - and dismiss - as "conservatives" those who might want to attribute some of the problem to the "dark" stuff in today's (well, last 25 years) movies.

Thanks, Kris, for making this important perspective piece available.  And my your California trainings be blessed as well as the W. Michigan ones next week

Kelly, it was great to take the Church between Borders training with you just last week; reading this story of your experiences adds even so much more.  Thanks.

I'm glad to see this topic - much discussed but not by the right people, and never resolved - picked up again on this page. I found chapter 7 in B Fikkart's book When Helping Hurts quite helpful in outlining pros and cons.  I'll be glad to join the conversation; with a couple of stories I've picked up along the way.

Lou

I'm happy to add a testamonial to what Seve writes, from the perspective of colleagues in Latin America.  Both Stott's writing and his support in little and larger ways of of pastors and institutuions is widely appreciated there.

Yes, Joel, that is a very good question.  This comment just adds annecdotally to the issue, at least as I see it in El Salvador.  My hosts on my trips are my former landlords; they are quite typical Christians, having been converted in one of the traditional evangelical missions, gone through two more types of congregations, and now are in one of the pentecostal mega churches.  They are self-made business upper middle class folk; the architect daughter works with her civil engineer father as associate.  When there, we talk a lot about the type of questions you raise.  On my trip last year, I cited the statistics that the local jesuit university survey had recently come up with: 38% of Salvadorans consider themselves "evangelicos."

In the light of that, I asked this lifetime 35 year old Christian: "Lets just say that over the next couple of decades that percentage of evangelicals rises to 85%, ''What changes in El Salvador"?  Without hesitation she replied "nada" (nothing)!  My increasingly radicalized interpretation of that is that the reducionist "gospel" that has been exported to Central America is so "heavenly minded that it is of little earthly good."  How to get beyond that?!  Some of us are listening... please amplify the "table talks" as analysis and patterns take shape.

Thanks, Joyce.  Just fyi and by way of response, I'll mention that now for three years an ad hoc committee in Holland Michigan has been sponsoring celebrations.  This year our committee included CRC, RCA, PCUSA, and ELCA pastors.  We held a vesper type service with an attendance of nearly 200 (not nearly enough for a town with 50 CRCs RCAs!, but we were pleased after several years with no such services at all).

We share your sentiments about not wanting to be exclusive and triumphalistic. We want to build on the best of our heritage and seek to find themes that will speak out of the past to the present challenges we face.  For example, two years ago our panel discussion just four days prior to the general elections was on "Reformational Principles for Politics." 

Carry on with your celebratory efforts!

Snowbird travel and transition got me behind on reading this link.  On 11/11 Steve wrote:

"And there is a qualitative difference, it seems to be, between the short term missionary who travels to a place where she doesn't speak the language or understand the culture, and the person who has invested deeply and over decades in understanding the uniqueness of the people with whom she is sharing the Gospel. "

"Qualitative difference" - we can't afford an inferior witness.  And the Holy Spirit notwithstanding, even in God's economy to a large extent "you get what you pay for."  STMs are misspending a lot of our mission resources.

For me - and I belive for the American churches - this is a foundational question that still needs a lot of clarifying debate and resolution.  After reading Fikkert's When Helping Hurts, I pretty much came down again on my original side of the fence I've tried to straddle out of convenience (if you can't fight them, join them), but now I'm 90% in favor of not sending STMs abroad, for both missiological (as per the discussion) and economic reasons. 

Who is carrying on the best discussion of that?   Are we close to resolution?

Lou