Finally, I got another newsletter to the presses! Take a peek, and I hope you enjoy. Please let me know if you'd like to get on my email or postal mailing lists to recieve a copy by either of those means next time around.
Stay blessed!
Prayer requests:
Next Tuesday, I speak at the 60th annual Missions Conference at Lanes Mills UMC, my home church where I grew up! I'm excited and nervous, but hope to deliver something good!
My Grandma Elsie (97 years young) recently needed to be placed in a nursing home. It's been a hard transition for her and for the rest of the family, so your prayers are welcomed.
So I decided to reblog myself. Trendsetter, I know. This is guest blog I wrote for The Book of Fellows, the blog for United Methodists Young Adult Missionaries. Check it out and see what my peers are up to and thinking about. Thanks to all who dialoged with me about the video below and for some great insight from sermons at The District Church. Enjoy!
How does this commercial make you feel? What do you think about it?
I’ve mulled this one over with a number of friends, and typically one
of two responses arise. One affirms the commercial. Work hard! It’s the
pathway to success, achievement, and fulfillment.
The other is usually some kind of shock or repulsion. People with
this reaction are the folks who have worked hard, but haven’t moved
upward. Others with this response have climbed to the top, or at least
near enough to see that more hard work is all that awaits them. Still
others have experienced the lives of those who have no choice but to
work hard. I think of my friend Emmanuel, a high school student in
Liberia. His daily routine: run to school, take a quick shower at the
pump, learn and absorb in class, buy a cup of rice at the market, cook
it, eat half, save the other half for breakfast, study, and sleep.
That’s a hard day’s work.
Hard work is a virtue for sure, but does not necessarily correlate
with accomplishment, success, or even being able to meet one’s own basic
human needs. Of course, these basic needs do not come without some elbow grease. They also
don’t typically come without some degree of privilege. I think this is
the component the “work hard” community often misses.
For a long time, I thought my academic success was due to my hard
work. Later, I realized that I actually worked a lot less than most of
my peers! I definitely put in the necessary effort, but the gifts God gave me
allowed me to excel. Now when people discover I studied engineering and
praise my smarts, I have to be honest and say I’m just gifted and would
fail miserably in other fields!
But there is another component we should also consider as people of faith:
He said to me, ‘This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel: Not
by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, says the Lord of hosts.’
Zechariah 4:6 NRSV
Zerubbabel, governor of Judah after the exile, oversaw the rebuilding
of the Temple, which was gutted and destroyed when Israel was
conquered. Rebuilding such a significant edifice was a tremendous task,
compounded by neighboring nations’ opposition and by Israel’s pursuit of “the good life.” Hard work was needed, but so was a reliance on the
power of God’s Spirit to have the right heart attitude, sufficient
strength, and the willpower to stand against the naysayers. Anything of
lasting value is done in community and is done by the power of God’s
Spirit.
Treat yourself to a quick exercise: reread the scripture above, but this time, replace Zerubbabel with your name. Do you perceive the Lord of hosts speaking this into any area of your life right now?
Here is my challenge: work in earnest, be cognizant of privilege, and
enter into the work of the Lord. This is the pathway to success,
achievement, and fulfillment before God. At the end of the day, I hope
we stand before Jesus and hear, “Well done, good and faithful servants.”
So – what kind of crazy, driven, hard-workin’ believer are you going to be?
This article will appear at a later date in the General Board of Church and Society's Faith in Action Newsletter as part of a series of staff profiles. About a year ago was when I firmly decided it was time for a change in my situation, and now seems like an opportune time to revisit this here.
Update: a version of this article has been published in Faith in Action on July 11, 2014.
Photo credit: Wayne Rhodes
“You’re doing ok, but you still have a ways to go. I don’t
see a light at the end of the tunnel yet.” This was not what I wanted to hear
from my academic advisor as I neared the end of my sixth year in grad school. A
Ph.D. student in mechanical engineering at the time, I was growing weary of
research and academia, and I longed for something more purposeful. Also growing
at the time was my Christian faith, and throughout grad school, I struggled to
connect faith, my aptitude for science and math, and an awareness of the
brokenness in the world. While my advisor's comments really cut to the heart,
it was his honest assessment of my progress and it was a talk that was long
overdue. That conversation lead me to begin an earnest search for something
new.
Through a series of connections, I landed on the US-2 Young Adult Missions Program of the UMC (now known as the Generation Transformation Global Mission Fellows Program). After an extremely thorough application and a couple interviews by online video chat, I was accepted into the program, trained, commissioned, and finally placed at the General Board of Church and Society with the UM Seminar Program.
It’s hard for me to imagine a more perfect placement. Since I spent ten years studying engineering, I only had some cursory exposure to social issues. Here, I am surrounded by experts in a variety of areas. Through the Seminar Program, we invite these and many other authorities to share their work with our groups, and I get to learn right alongside them. Teaching and tutoring have been longtime interests of mine, but haven’t felt the pull to formally study education. Being on staff at the UM Seminar Program gives me opportunities to hone my skills in facilitation, education, and curriculum design. Most importantly, this place gives me room to listen for and discern my calling with the support and guidance of a wonderful and wise staff.
Working with my Seminar Program groups is inspiring. Some of my seminar groups are full of knowledge. My first group, a youth group Morrow Memorial UMC in New Jersey, could name all eight Millennium Development Goals while most people have never even heard of them. Some groups come with a wealth of experience. Groups of Habitat for Humanity AmeriCorps Volunteers brought frontline accounts of affordable housing and neighborhood revitalization. All groups, at least so far in my brief tenure here, have come with cups, ready to be filled with more knowledge and more experience, and be sent into the world. They are so much more than just vessels to be filled, though. These groups also come with a sense of adventure, ready to be challenged both intellectually and emotionally, truly engaging in topics that many have the choice and privilege to ignore.
The work challenges me to understand the current state of the world and how we move to the way God intends for us to live. How do we balance personal choice and free agency with social responsibility and the common good? How can providing immediate aid (mercy) and addressing root causes of societal problems (justice) work synergistically instead of one or the other having preference? What is the government’s role in these? What is the church’s role in these? What is my role in these? Many tough questions, no easy answers. Fortunately, I’ve always enjoyed a challenge.
After years of feeling vocationally disjointed, I’m now gifted to be abiding in a place of growth, purpose, and challenge. Where will God lead me next? Many people ask me if I will return to school and finish my Ph.D. At the moment, I don’t feel called to do so. I have a few other ideas, but I also have time to discern and decide.
I know what you're thinking. "Hold up - it's Tuesday, why is there a new post here?" I do what I want. And this is posted before Wednesday. And it's timely. And it's reblogging, which comes with it's own set of rules which I make up as I go.
Actually, before I reblog, I'm going to do a little writing, but feel free to skip my hot air and go straight to the links at the bottom.
I wanted to share a couple blog posts from an organization called DC127, a brainchild (maybe heartchild?) of some folks from The District Church, an awesome faith community in DC of which I'm a part.
The name DC127 is based on James 1:27 and the mission is uniting to reverse the foster care waitlist in Washington, DC. In other words, we want more families in line to care for a child than there are children waiting for a family.
As a sciency/mathy kind of guy, to me, the idea is as intriguing as it is joyful. It's like a chemical reaction. Reactants A (kids waiting for care) and B (families who are willing to provide care) combine to create Product AB (a full family). Right now, we have an excess of Reactant A, so we need to mix in more of Reactant B if we want to eliminate A and arrive at the desired product AB, hopefully with a stoichiometric excess of B.
With me?
Ok, maybe that brought back nightmares of high school chemistry for some of you. But trust me, it's a good idea.
My purpose for reblogging this is twofold.
One, I want to raise awareness of the issue. Kids need a stable place to grow up if they are going to recognize their true worth and have the best shot at all the good things that God has created and planned for us. 400,000 kids are in the US foster care system, and about 1,300 of those are in DC. That's a lot of people, but I'd say the DC127 mission is realistic. What do you think?
Two, DC127 is in a campaign to find 46 regular donors to support the work. Why 46? The average child waits 46.7 months, almost 4 of their most formative years, to find a family. If you feel called, I hope you'll reach out and see how you could support, even for $10 per month.
So take a peek at the following well-written articles and let me know what you think.
