God's grace

I fly back to Milwaukee, on an airplane, May 17th in order to make it in time for a friend's wedding that weekend.  I will be in Wisconsin until August 5th.  In case you have yet to hear it directly from me or through the grapevine, I am coming back to Jacksonville at the end of the summer to join staff with 2nd Mile Ministries!  I'm so excited to come home and see family and friends that I've missed this year, but I'm actually even more excited to share with you, hopefully face-to-face, my heart for this neighborhood but more importantly what God has been doing in Pearl World.

I have a confession to make.  There are so many times I forget to or just don't thank God for the things he pulls me through, the ample resources he graces me with, and also the experiences he gives me.  I know I've been bad at this this year, but for those of you that have been praying for me, the ministry, the neighborhood, or the two:fiftytwo kids, you are so appreciated by us.  There are so many intentional things God does in our lives that sometimes they go over our heads.  I've been living here in Brentwood by the grace of God as well as the financial support of many of you.  I can honestly say that I wouldn't and couldn't be here impacting the kids, families, and schools without your support.  Cliche sounding as it may, I couldn't have done this year without you.  You trusted that God was moving in me and the ministry, or maybe you were just being nice (both appreciated), and helped me as you could.  Have peace in the fact that God loves a cheerful giver (2 Cor. 9:7).  In five days, I'm going to a "Boot Camp" conference in Atlanta, Georgia for two days, 8am-6pm both days in lecture-intensive seminars learning the biblical way to support raise.  I've already spent about 35 hours in personal study on the subject with the help of some books.  It's been comforting to know Paul, Jesus, and many disciples lived on the support of other people at critical times in their ministry.

There have been many moments this year where I've felt worthless and alone, but then God used some of you to give me a call/email/text of encouragement or prayer that was unexpected.  Thank you for all you've done for me, not just financially, but through your thoughts and prayers.  The fact of the matter is, if you are currently supporting me, just know that my internship here with 2nd Mile Ministries end in about a month, but my journey towards staff begins.  If you would be in the process of thinking and praying about (pastor Francis Chan calls this "prinking") supporting me once again, I know the Lord will bless you.  If you have been blessed at all by the things you've read or heard, or if you've shown someone in one of your circles this blog or told them about me, I'd love to meet with you/them and invite you to join my support team.  I can't do this alone.  I don't think anyone could.

Please pray that God would take away any fears that I have of support-raising this summer which include worrying that asking for help will somehow ruin my relationship with that person and also the fears of trying to do this without God's help.

There's a good chance I will contact you...and I'm so excited for the chance to connect/reconnect and invite you to my support team.  Love you guys.  Thanks again.

                                                                                                           -Andrew

A Closer Look at Poverty - part 2 of 2

What is poverty?

The first time I remember being asked this question was during my summer experience living in inner-city Milwaukee in 2009.  It was there and then that my direction in life took a huge detour and I haven't changed course since.  I went to the University of Wisconsin for a Viola-Performance degree, kind of without thought.  I graduate high school.  I go to college.  Pick something I like or I'm good at.  Find a job in that field.  Do that the rest of my life.  Have you ever made a whirlpool with friends when you went swimming?  Everybody walks/runs/swims in a circle in the same direction for a couple minutes until the water's momentum picks up.  Then on the count of three, everyone turns around and tries to swim in the other direction and its difficult to make any forward progress.  Coming out of high school, I went with the flow of expectations I received from the people around me, those friends and family that spoke influence into my life.  I just sort of swam in the same direction as those around me.  It was comfortable.  It made it easy to feel like I was doing to right and normal thing when I saw that most others around were doing the same thing, seeing life through similar lenses.

My junior year of college will go down as the year God changed my course, had me switch my direction from the majority around me.  After a spring break to Panama City Beach, FL with a Christian organization on campus, God gave me the desire to sign up for a summer project in Milwaukee.  It was close to home and I'd at least feel somewhat at home.  Haha.  I look back and smile at how wrong my thoughts were.  I realized I knew nothing about Milwaukee, nothing about its people, nothing about the material poverty, nothing about the segregation, nothing.  It was at City On A Hill (a former hospital) where we stayed for the summer.  "How would you define poverty?"  "People that don't have much money, food, clothes, etc.?"  That entire summer, we focused more on the fact that everyone is spiritually poor.  Let me explain.  Due to the fact that everybody is a sinner, everybody is spiritually poor.  If I look at my brother on the street who has much less than me and somehow assume I'm more spiritually healthy than he then I am dead wrong and very unhealthy.  Do you remember the parable from Luke 9 about the Pharisee and the tax collector?  "To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector.  I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’ “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”
If you answered the question "What is poverty?" with words describing material depravity, let me show you your ignorance in a loving and kind way like mine was shown to me a couple years back.  Here are a couple samples of how the materially poor have described their situations.

"For a poor persdon everything is terrible--illness, humiliation, shame.  We are cripples; we are afraid of everything; we depend on everyone.  No one needs us.  We are like garbage that everyone wants to get rid of."   -Moldova

"When I don't have any food to bring my family, I borrow, mainly from neighbors and friends.  I feel ashamed standing before my children when I have nothing to help feed the family.  I'm not well when I'm unemployed.  It's terrible."  -Guinea-Bissau

"During the past two years we have not celebrated any holidays with others.  We cannot afford to invite anyone to our house and we feel uncomfortable visiting others without bringing a present.  The lack of contact leaves one depressed, creates a constant feeling of unhappiness, and a sense of low self-esteem."  -Latvia

"When one is poor, she has no say in public, she feels inferior.  She has no food, so there is famine in her house; no clothing, and no progress in her family."  -Uganda

"The poor have a feeling of powerlessness and an inability to make themselves heard."  -Cameroon

Do you hear their words?  Have you ever felt like nobody needs you?  Have you been in situations where you feel there is no way out?  If you remember from part 1 of 2, the welfare system helps provide for those specific people who are of low-income and can't provide for themselves.  However, this system with good intentions also is pretty dynamic in keeping these people in poverty.  You might judge like I once did and say that government handouts make these people lazy and create dependence, therefore justifying your own lack of concern for these people (poverty of the heart).  We can't blame people for a broken system penalizes people for working by taking away benefits for every dollar they earn.

Since my summer in Milwaukee, my eyes have looked at materially poor people with new eyes, ones that judge less and are concerned more for their hearts.  Don't get me wrong, I had nothing to do with this course change in my life and I hope that God can do in your heart what he has done in mine and that is, showing me his love for his children and his creation, humbling me to see I'm no better than the drug-dealers, the prostitutes, the high-school dropouts, and by being present with me every step of the way, even when my own selfishness and pride attempt to mess up his plan.

Living in Brentwood has been awesome and the relationships we've built with the kids, the teachers, the parents, and the neighbors have been awesome.  I wish I knew more better words to describe my experiences.  For those of you curious about what my plans are for after the internship...tune in next week.  Or, if you want to know sooner, call me.

A Closer Look at Poverty - part 1 of 2

What is poverty?

From When Helping Hurts:
On poverty-

"It is easy to conclude that the majority of the problem lies with the people themselves--their worldviews, behaviors, and values--because the people's faults are far more obvious than the fallen systems in which they live.

The Broken American System
The ghetto into which [many people are] born, through no choice of [their] own, originated in the massive migration of African Americans from the rural South to northern cities from 1910 to 1960 as a result of the increased mechanization of Southern agriculture.  Centuries of slavery and racial discrimination contributed to the relatively low levels of education of these migrants, who fled north looking for blue-collar manufacturing jobs.  Upon their arrival in the North, a combination of economic forces, public policy, and housing discrimination caused the migrants to concentrate in inner cities.

Despite the crowded conditions, in the early 1950's the African-American sections of America's inner cities were largely viable, stable communities; however, the subsequent three decades were quite destabilizing.  Federal urban renewal and highway programs required land in inner cities, and African-American neighborhoods were often razed.  Low-income African Americans were then relocated into publicly funded housing projects, while middle- and upper-class African Americans were forced to relocate elsewhere.  Using a set of policies that both explicitly and implicitly discriminated against African Americans, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) then began to offer subsidized mortgages that enabled millions of Caucasians to purchase homes in the suburbs and flee the cities.  Ironically, advance in the civil rights movement later reduced suburban housing discrimination, allowing middle- and upper-class African Americans to relocate to the suburbs as well.  As a result of this suburban flight, the remaining inner-city, African-American communities lost leaders, role models, working familites, and a solid economic base.

And then the jobs left.   America transitioned from a predominantly manufacturing ecomony to a service economy.  From 1970 to 1985, millions of high-paying, blue collar jobs simply disappeared from inner cities, moving to other parts of the country or overseas.  Unemployment in the inner cities skyrocketed, and many African-American inner-city residents joined the welfare rolls, a system that penalized them for working by taking away benefits for every dollar they earned."

This book, although I've only read three chapters so far, has opened my eyes to why things are the way they are today.  The book is written by Steve Corbett who gives many examples of methods used by the church to alleviate poverty that have caused more harm than good due to a lack of understanding of the people who live there, their perception on life, and what they're really needing. (there, their, and they're in one sentence--ten points!)  It's a great book and I recommend reading it.  I'm going to give another excerpt from the book that may illuminate some of what may be in your own heart.  The author states,

"One Sunday I was walking with a staff member through one of Africa's largest slums, the massive Kibera slum of Nairobi, Kenya.  The conditions were simply inhumane.  People lived in shacks constructed out of cardboard boxes.  Foul smells gushed out of open ditches carrying human and animal excrement.  I had a hard time keeping my balance as I continually slipped on oozy brown substances that I hoped were mud but feared were something else.  Children picked through garbagef dumps looking for anything of value.  As we walked deeper and deeper into the slum, my sense of despair increased.  'This place is completely God-forsaken,' I thought to myself.

Then to my amazement, right there among the dung, I heard the sound of a familiar hymn.  'There must be Western missionaries conducting an open-air service in here,' I thought to myself.  As we turned the corner, my eyes landed on the shack form which the music bellowed.  Every Sunday, thirty slum dwellers crammed into this ten-by-twenty foot "sanctuary" to worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  The church was made out of cardboard boxes that had been opened up and stapled to studs.  It wasn't pretty, but it was a church, a church made up of some of the poorest people on earth.

When we arrived at the church, I was immediately asked to preach the sermon.  As a good Presbyterian, I quickly jotted down some notes about the sovereignty of God and was looking forward to teaching this congregation the historic doctrines of the Reformation.  But before the sermon began, the service included a time of sharing and prayer.  I listened as some of the poorest people on the planet cried out to God: "Jehovah Jireh, please heal my son, as he is going blind." "Merciful Lord, please protect me when I go home today, for my husband always beats me." "Sovereign King, please provide my children with enough food today, as they are hungry."

As I listened to these poeple praying to be able to live another day, I thought about my ample salary, my life insurance policy, my health insurance policy, my two cars, my house, etc.  I realized that I do not really trust in God's sovereignty on a daily basis, as I have sufficient buffers in place to shield me from most economic shocks.  I realized that when these folks pray the fourth petition of the Lords' prayer--'Give us this day our daily bread'--their minds do not wander as mine so often does.  I realized that wile I have sufficient education and training to deliver a sermon on God's sovereignty with no forewarning, these slum dwellers were trusting in God's sovereignty just to get them through the day.  And I realized that these people had a far deeper intimacy with God that I probably will ever have in my entire life."

1 John 2:15-17 says, "Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.  For everything in the world—the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does—comes not from the Father but from the world.  The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever."

Do you love the world and the things of the world?  What do you put more importance, thought, time into than your relationship with God?  What acts as a shroud in your life even though God intended and has made his children alive through Christ? (Ephesians 2:4-6)  I ask you once again--what is your definition of poverty?

-to be continued

The Last Supper

Ever wonder what it would be like to walk with Christ when he was a human walking the earth?  One thing I often forget to think about as I read the New Testament is that Jesus was familiar and practiced many of the Jewish traditions.  One thing I'd like to bring to your attention is the fact that Jesus, or Yeshua, celebrated Passover.  For those of you that are unfamiliar, in the book of Exodus, God instructed Moses and Aaron (Moses's brother) to have every Israelite family put lamb's blood on the sides and tops of the doorframes of the houses where they eat the lambs so that when He (God himself) goes throughout Egypt, He will "passover" those houses and will not take the lives of their firstborn (the last plague).  If you want to know more about this, it's in Exodus Chapters 11 and 12. 

Why am I talking about Passover which celebrates the liberation of the Israelites from Egypt when tomorrow is Easter Sunday?  Because last night, I participated in a Seder for the first day of Passover.  It was cool that the first day of Passover was on Good Friday, the day Jesus was crucified.  A Seder is a Jewish dinner that celebrates Passover.  I know a couple Messianic Jews (Jews that believe that Jesus, or Yeshua, is the Messiah and that salvation comes through faith in him alone, not these rituals) that used to come to our ministry's community dinners back in the day.  There were only 6 of us at their house, well, 7 if you include the 11-month old Lily who didn't really participate in the synchronized readings.  We started with each person having a plate with Morar and Chazeret (two bitter herbs which include a lettuce leaf and horseradish which burns the nostrils if you have too much), Charoset (a sweet brown paste with fruit and nuts symbolizing the mortar used by Jewish slaves to build the storehouses of Egypt), Karpas (another herb which can be parsely, celery, or cooked potato, we had celery dipped in salty water), Beitzah (a hard boiled egg, nothing to do with Easter), and finally Zeroa (roasted lamb bone, which only the host ate last night).

The ceremony continues with readings, particular times when you eat each of the six items, four times wine is poured (I had Welch's grape juice) and we poured for someone else, never for ourselves.  As we drank, we all leaned to the left which is a "reclining" position.  People traditionally (even before Jesus) ate Passover standing up.  In Jesus's time, it became customary to sit down and recline.    The Four Cups represent the four expressions of deliverance by God in Exodus 6:6-7.  "I will bring out."  "I will deliver."  "I will redeem."  "I will take."  At about the half-way point of the night, we had the main meal which consisted of corn, peas, more Charoset (which was delicious), Matzah (a bland bread you might've had during Communion) and a tasty chicken salad.  After the meal, we continued reciting the Haggadah, then had our last food for the night--the afikoman.  At an earlier part of the Seder, I was asked to hide the afikoman (basically just matzah) and this was to symbolize Jesus's death and burial in the tomb.  Later in the Seder, the afikoman was found, which symbolized His resurrection, and we ate it.  It's also custom for the afikoman to be the last thing eaten that night, a mini-fast.

It was very interesting for me to experience the Passover meal as Jesus and His disciples, more or less, experienced it.  If you read the accounts of the Last Supper starting at Luke 22:7, it mentions that they reclined, took the cup, took the bread, all parts of the Passover.  Unlike other Passovers, Jesus substitutes himself into the ceremony.  Take this cup.  Take this bread.  A ceremony filled with so much symbolism and remembrance, and as I see it, nothing of real physical substance, would become 100% real and physical only a day later.  His blood poured out, his body broken like the bread.  Jesus knew what the cross would mean for those he loved and who would believe.  I admit that many times when I sin, I forget that His blood already paid for it.  I beat myself up as if I thought I could do better.  I can't.  Not alone.  Not by my means.  If you know Jesus for yourself, don't forget that this world is not about you.  The main character is God.  "What can God do for me?" is replaced with "How can I live for God?"  "How do I stop sinning?" is replaced with "How do I fix my eyes on the Lord so that nothing else even comes close to importance?"

I'm not Jewish and haven't turned into one in case you are curious or concerned.  I'm still doing inner-city ministry.  I'm just more and more curious about the Jesus that walked the earth as well as the Jesus whose death and blood sacrifice two thousand years ago still matters today.

Happy Easter!