July 20th was an amazing day in Colombia. Throughout the country, and in many cities worldwide, Colombians marched for peace, for an end to the 44 year old guerrilla war, for an end to the kidnappings, for the FARC to lay down weapons and enter into negotiations. Millions of people took to the streets all wearing white t-shirts in over 1,000 Colombian cities and towns. Shakira appeared in concert in the Amazon city of Leticia along with President Uribe and his colleagues from Brazil and Peru.

Karen and I marched as well - in Cartagena - and were interviewed on Caracol TV, a national newscast, by an intrepid journalist who was intrigued by our homemade sign saying “Canada loves you, Colombia”.  You can view the 10 second clip at minute 1:48 at this link.

Check out video from the day below:

I can’t help but post this news.  After six years in captivity, Ingrid Betancourt is free.  What an amazing, elegant, and graceful woman.

We are halfway through 2008, halfway through my fallow year.  And it is noteworthy that at the midway point we had our annual Bridgeway AGM and adopted a new strategic plan going forward.  I’m excited to say that our work will increasingly focus on charitable activity that we would term as missional (as I and 49 other blogging buddies attempted to define): work done on the margins which offers hope and life.  In the fall we will explain this term further and meet with existing and new partners to introduce this funding emphasis.

I’m going to take a month off from blogging.  Karen and I are travelling to this city and to spend the first week of July with Opportunity International and the last week of July with World Vision, renewing relationships and following up on mind-blowing three-year projects that have just concluded.  (More on those two projects here.)  The two weeks in the middle are just time for her and I to be together on holiday.  (Our sons are counselling at camp in northern Ontario.)

Have a restful and renewing summer.

I recently read an advance copy of Andy Crouch’s book Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling and was asked to write a book review by the folks at Comment magazine (it will be released there later in the summer). Finally finished, and I have posted the beginnings of it below, with the full review found on our website. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in how faith engages with culture.

Andy Crouch’s creative energies have been simmering and are ready to be brought to the patio table this summer in his latest book by Inter-Varsity Press called Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling. This thought-provoking, accessibly-written work confronts a simplistic understanding of how Christians make a difference in our world. Rather than an ostrich-like burying of one’s head in the sand, placarding the excesses of our fallen world, or overspiritualizing solutions, Crouch contributes both language and framework for thoughtful engagement as Christians. Certainly it is far easier to ignore our world’s dysfunctions or conversely, be angry, but Crouch demonstrates the more arduous and ultimately rewarding pathway of constructive engagement.

The author presents his thesis in three parts – culture, gospel, and calling. He defines culture, demonstrates how it is an integral part of the gospel and is woven throughout scripture, and finally invites the reader to awake to the possibilities that the gospel we embrace also calls us to intentionally engage with our world through the creation of cultural goods. Following Jesus is all about creating alternative, life-giving expressions of culture for the mainstream culture.

I have met Andy Crouch on two occasions, and both of these times we savoured a good meal and conversations about culture making. From our springtime perches at a Yorkville café, and later overlooking the bustle from the restaurant in Grand Central Station, I heard the book from the author before I read it. Given our mealtime conversations, it was not surprising to me to see food analogies served up in this book.

There is a growing network of my donor friends who relate to one another on facebook and using a beta version of Zloop, a social networking site.  I have mentioned these relationships in the past.  Through Zloop, I’ve just discovered that one of these friends have a website - check out W Charitable Foundation which is located in the Bay Area.  It’s a beautiful website; I think they are still in the process of uploading files, photos and other media.

I have to admit I am still trying to get caught up with my reading of the 50 bloggers who synchroblogged on ‘what is missional?’ The reading has been intense and given added fuel to my thinking.  Thanks, you know who you are.  But it has significantly reduced my blogging time this week!

In light of the missional conversation, I found my friend Chris’ thoughts on the City of Joy, the well-known book about Indian poverty and the hope Christ brings.

It’s the story of a collision of two men’s lives in a Calcutta slum. One man, an Indian from a rural village ends up in the city trying to find a better life for his family. Tragically, he ends up spiraling further and further into the clutches of poverty, eventually finding home in a slum. The other man, a Polish Catholic priest, voluntarily chooses poverty and in a gesture of solidarity and moves into the same slum as the Bengali farmer.

While studying in Jerusalem back in 1992, a Ugandan Bible translator gave me his copy of The City of Joy. Perhaps more than anything I had read up to that point in my life, this book changed me.  The thick paperback story of courage and hope hidden in the folds of oppression and suffering disturbed me.

Suddenly, the reality of poverty took on an embodied and humanized face. Flipping through these pages illuminated the complexities of poverty not as the experience of an individual, rather that of a community. The commitment and solidarity of the priest with the slum community challenged my own willingness to sacrifice and submit to the suffering of the world. The sad and real cycle of poverty, hopeless and fatalistic, seemed a daunting challenge, yet an invitation to hope for an end to it all.

I was overwhelmed. I was devastated. I was filled with compassion. I was inspired.

Read Chris’ whole post here.

I was invited to a meeting this morning with a large Canadian charity at a downtown hotel.  They were seeking input from their major donors on a potential new capital campaign that is centred around a new program initiative.  Ketchum KCI led the focus group - there were six of us present (matched by staff of the NGO, who left the room when the focus group started).

Interesting experience I have run into several times before.  These conversations with consultants about new fundraising initiatives often happen by phone, or they pop into visit me at my office.  I think this was the first time I participated in an actual focus group on the issue.  You know when they pull out the chart that outlines the potential giving pyramid [it's just an example], that they are really trying to suss you out for your giving potential when you point to where you would land on the chart.  Kind of crass, but I suppose it is working for them.

Regarding this experience, my first comment would be that I don’t think we needed to be paired up 1:1 with staff.  Seemed like heavy-duty overkill and a waste of resources.  I felt kind of embarrassed for them.

We heard from the president, then a report from an expert which justified the program expansion.  The staff left, and then the focus group began.  It is interesting how a group of experienced outsiders can cut to the chase and how quickly each outsider raised issues, inconsistencies, and proposed brilliant solutions.  (No, it wasn’t me.)  It was a story to me of how within a closed system - without outside intervention or perspective - you begin to all talk the same and see things the same way.  The evident loopholes just are not observed.

I am hopeful that the consultant from Ketchum was able to grab our thoughts and that they will grapple with this new endeavour’s potential to change the dynamic at the organization.  It’s a group I believe in, and value for what they do, and I want them to succeed.

The board of the foundation I lead will be gathering today to discuss a proposed new strategic direction which will take us to mid-2011. Up to now, we have been involved in sponsoring a variety of initiatives - most faith-based - which didn’t have much in common beyond a common faith perspective. My goal today, however, is to introduce a common, unifying theme to direct our grantmaking. The question ‘what is missional?’ will be high on our own list of concerns as we deliberate.

So it’s ironic that today is also the day of the synchroblog on the same question. I’m excited to add my 2c worth, and I’m intrigued to see what the other 49 bloggers state on this topic today. (Thanks Rick Meigs for organizing this.)

I’m going to start with a story: the story of Sarah Lance who works in Kolkata, India with Word Made Flesh. And then I’ll finish with some observations on what makes this story, and ones like it, missional.

Coming down off the rooftops is hard. We visit one brothel every Tuesday. On those days we go up to the rooftop and have the most amazing conversations with our friends who live there, looking at the sky as the sun sets. For a moment, I can forget that we are on the roof of a brothel, that the women who live on the floors below are selling themselves and that the streets below are being filled with darkness as the sun sets…

To celebrate the two-year anniversary of Sari Bari, we took the ladies out to eat at a nice restaurant, all of us dressed in saris to mark the occasion. We went from the restaurant to the movies to escape into the illusion of Bollywood. After two years, it was easy to see the marked changes in the women who have come to be part of our community. They are healthy, and many have recovered from multiple serious health issues. Two women were hospitalized when they first came to work with us, but now stand as a testimony of healing and life being recovered and made new. All the women, including the trainees, reflect a glow that they did not have when they walked through the doors. They love each other. Some of them love Jesus, and it really shows. They have begun to know that they are loved. If you ask them what business we have, they will tell you “freedom” is our business. If you ask them about life, they will tell you that it has so much value, and they are really starting to believe this. The women with whom we shared our celebration meal and stood at the entrance to the movies are not prostitutes, they are not rejected, they are not without value. No one could identify them as anything but beautiful Indian women on a day out. It was beautiful – a picture of profound redemption. It was our rooftop, so to speak.

Do you see how Sarah is being missional in this story? I love her willingness to get into the world of her friends, her desire to not judge by labels, and the risks she is taking to live in Kolkata amongst the women in the red light district.

Here’s my attempt at defining the elusive term. And no, I didn’t try to come up with a top ten list. It just happened!

Being missional is:

1. having a focus outward, not inward
2. serving with no-strings-attached, not driving an agenda
3. listening to the needs of the community, not imposing one’s own solutions
4. learning the language and customs of the community, not being incomprehensible or irrelevant
5. enjoying the journey together, not feeling that the destination is the only thing of value
6. moving out from our community incarnationally (I am at home everywhere), not bringing people into our community (I am only at home with my own kind)
7. being all of us together, not ‘us versus them’
8. learning to dwell in the margins or risky areas, not preferring the comfortable centre
9. being changed - all of us - not just ‘them’
10. belonging before believing, not believing before belonging

OK people, give me your feedback. What do you think?

Here are the others who are synchroblogging today:

Alan Hirsch
Alan Knox
Andrew Jones
Barb Peters
Bill Kinnon
Brad Brisco
Brad Grinnen
Brad Sargent
Brother Maynard
Bryan Riley
Chad Brooks
Chris Wignall
Cobus Van Wyngaard
Dave DeVries
David Best
David Fitch
David Wierzbicki
DoSi
Doug Jones
Duncan McFadzean
Erika Haub
Grace
Jamie Arpin-Ricci
Jeff McQuilkin
John Smulo
Jonathan Brink
JR Rozko
Kathy Escobar
Len Hjalmarson
Makeesha Fisher
Malcolm Lanham
Mark Berry
Mark Petersen
Mark Priddy
Michael Crane
Michael Stewart
Nick Loyd
Patrick Oden
Peggy Brown
Phil Wyman
Richard Pool
Rick Meigs
Rob Robinson
Ron Cole
Scott Marshall
Sonja Andrews
Stephen Shields
Steve Hayes
Tim Thompson
Thom Turner

Dan, you made my day with your post Creational Theology: Why I Love Earth. Thank you.

For some reason, this YouTube clip on the birth of a Beluga Whale in Vancouver deeply moved me. I think I understand why. I love this earth - I love it’s dust, it’s vistas, it’s people and it’s creatures. I love it because something in me tells me I must, and something outside me tells me to try. I haven’t been hurt by it all enough to disdain it (a tsunami or a wild man), but I have been healed by it’s complexity and beauty many times over.

We cheer (like the bystanders in the clip) at birth; we weep or go silent at death. It’s the joy of beginnings, and the fear of unknown endings that seems to be common to us all.

According to the New Testament, the eternal destiny of Christians is not “the sky” or “heaven,” but rather Earth. New heaven’s around us, new earth beneath, all things made new, turned right side up, returned to Edenic glory.

I sing toward that Day.

Thought we needed to lighten up a bit, so here you go.  This made me chuckle.