KOH2RVA: Day 257

Someone was asking me about First Baptist’s year-long, every-member mission trip recently, and wondering how we organized it. “How did you find something for everybody to do?” she asked.

The answer: we didn’t.

I told her what I’ve said again and again since coming to First Baptist, that there must be a thousand ways to bring heaven to earth and that our responsibility is to look around for anything that doesn’t look like heaven and then roll up our sleeves and get to work. I’m convinced that if we look at the world through our own eyes, we will see the things that break our own hearts and call us to action.

That’s so much easier than trying to come up with one, big mission project that everyone can embrace, and so much better than giving someone an assignment and saying, “Here, go do this.”

It also leads to some interesting results.

For example: I heard from one of our members recently who said she was bringing heaven to earth by feeding the feral cats in her neighborhood. And she said she’s using the premium cat food, not the cheap stuff.

That’s pretty much all she said, but I can fill in the blanks. She’s telling me that when she sees those skinny, half-starved cats it breaks her heart, she feels moved to do something about it. And she is moved because she believes those cats are part of God’s creation, and that God has it in his heart to redeem not only his human creatures, but everything he has made and called good, including cats (Rom. 8:18-21). And so she has taken on this ministry to the homeless, and she dishes out the premium cat food because she thinks of cats as something God made and loves, and not as a nuisance.

Chances are good that if she had submitted this idea to the church it would have never been approved. Someone would have said, “We don’t want to encourage this kind of thing,” and someone else would have said, “Are we supposed to pay for the cat food?” But she heard me say, “There must be a thousand ways to bring heaven to earth,” and she looked around for anything that didn’t look like heaven and saw this—skinny, half-starved cats—and it broke her heart, and she rolled up her sleeves and went to work.

That sounds like a parable to me. I can almost hear Jesus say, “What is the Kingdom of Heaven like, and to what shall I compare it? The Kingdom is like a woman whose heart was broken by what she saw in her own neighborhood, and who had the gumption to get up off the couch and do something about it.”

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KOH2RVA: Day 254

Pray for the people of Oklahoma today, friends. The headline of the Richmond Times-Dispatch reads: “Massive Tornado Pummels Oklahoma.” The sub-heads carry the grim news that at least 51 people are dead and more than 140 injured; that a school was devastated and children, some dead, were pulled from the debris; that it was a powerful storm—a half-mile wide—packing 200 mph winds.

It’s that image of children being pulled from the debris of a school that gets me. There’s something about their innocence and vulnerability that makes that scene especially tragic. And even though I don’t believe this tornado was God’s judgment on the people of Oklahoma I still want to know why:

Why do children have to suffer?

I was asking that question on Sunday afternoon as I watched a documentary about modern-day slavery and human trafficking. Often it is children, some of them very young, who are the victims of traders and traffickers. Little boys forced to work in rock quarries or make bricks day after day in India. Little girls prostituted in brothels in Cambodia and hotel rooms in Richmond. It’s their faces that break your heart.

There is no joy there.

On the table in front of me on Sunday was the face of a boy from Africa. He was up for “adoption” through Compassion International. And even though I might never meet this boy face to face Compassion International assures me that for a little more than a dollar a day he can receive food, clothing, shelter, and education. In other words, he can be rescued from a life of suffering.

I already sponsor a child through Compassion (Yosselin, from Mexico, in the picture above), but on Sunday I thought about sponsoring at least one more. I like what Tony Campolo says, that “every Christian should have a kid’s picture on their refrigerator.” If we did that—all two billion of us around the globe who call ourselves Christians—it would make a difference. And beyond that we could support the work of the International Justice Mission abroad and the Richmond Justice Initiative here at home, both organizations working to set children free from slavery and the sex trade.

There’s not much we can do about tornadoes, but we can do something about this. We can do our best to bring people to justice who trade and traffic in human flesh, and we can give children a chance to live a different kind of life. Our efforts may not make a difference to all the children in the world, but as I look at Yosselin’s picture, above, I’m hoping they will make a difference to her.

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KOH2RVA: Day 253

Yesterday was a long day at First Baptist. I got to church a little after eight in the morning and left a little after eight at night. But it was a great day, and in so many ways it lived up to the promise of Pentecost. This morning my mind is a kaleidoscope of images. Here are a few of them:

• The joy of sitting on the steps with the children during worship, telling them the Holy Spirit is like “the best babysitter you’ve ever had.”
• Watching the congregation rise to its feet to thank David Powers for twenty years of dedicated service as Minister of Communications.
• Seeing a young man whose name I don’t even know leap to his feet to push Danny Taylor’s wheelchair out of the sanctuary during the fire drill.
• Rick Belflower getting tears in his eyes as he talked about the crime of human trafficking and how it robs children of their childhood.
• Hearing Bart Dalton praise Skyler Cumbia at her graduation ceremony for the way she inspired other youth to engage in selfless service.
• Sitting in the chapel at the healing service, watching Shawnae Lacy fight back the tears as she told the story of losing her foster daughter to cancer.
• Sitting in the sanctuary later, looking up toward heaven (and feeling it) as the youth and adult choirs ringed the balcony and sang, “In this Very Room.”
• Clapping my hands, laughing, and singing along as they finished last night’s concert with “If You’re Happy and You Know It Say ‘Amen.’”

I was happy, and I knew it.

At some point in yesterday’s sermon I said that there was good news in the story of Pentecost because it wasn’t so much about going to church as it was about being the church. Yesterday I watched the members and friends of First Baptist being the church all day long, but I wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t gone. While heaven has been touching down all over the greater Richmond metropolitan area in the last 252 days, one of the most reliable places to see it happen is in that building at the corner of Monument and the Boulevard on Sundays. I saw it happen yesterday,

Over and over again.

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KOH2RVA: Day 251

When I say that First Baptist Church is on a year-long, every-member mission trip, it doesn’t mean that I know what every member is up to, or how they are working to bring the Kingdom of Heaven to Richmond, Virginia. So it does my heart good when I find out that somebody has been bringing it all along, and I didn’t even know it. Jackie Morsink, for example, who sings with “The Heart Strings,” a group of some 73 ladies whose mission is to bring joy, through music and song, to the many senior citizens in retirement and nursing homes across the Richmond metropolitan area. Jackie writes:

Jim: This has been my “mission trip” (off the bus!!!) this year to help bring heaven to earth in the Richmond area (and also Effie Farmer). We have visited 30 homes on Monday mornings since October 8 of last year. Our last performance is next Monday, May 20, at Lakewood Manor (Health Care), from 10:30 to about 11:15. Come check us out, if you can fit it into your schedule! Would love to see you in the audience! Jackie

Do you see what I mean? On 30 different occasions since our mission trip began on September 9, 2012, Jackie has gotten up, gotten dressed, and gone off to some retirement or nursing home in the area to share some joy (and believe me, Jackie’s got plenty to share). How many others are out there on secret missions and would somebody please tell me?

Secrets like these are too good to keep.

___________________________

p.s. I hear the Heart Strings are going to be singing at the Memorial Day celebration on the Goochland Courthouse Green at 10 a.m. on May 27.  Included in the announcement were these words about Memorial Day.

Memorial Day is the special day on which we remember the men and women who have given their lives while serving in the armed forces of the United States. Like most traditions, it evolved from similar celebrations. Memorial day most likely started after the Civil War as a way to commemorate the death of both Union and Confederate soldiers, however, there is documentation that the women of Savannah Georgia decorated the graves of soldiers as early as 1862.

The day became an occasion to not just lay flowers on the graves, but to come together and remember fallen family members. It is still a common practice in Richmond to assemble at Hollywood cemetery and hold memorial picnics at the military grave sites.

On this Memorial Day, even though it is the unofficial start of summer, take time to find one of the many neglected military graves or memorials. Pull up the weeds, place some flowers, and leave a small U.S. flag in remembrance of those who gave all for this country.

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KOH2RVA: Day 250

I had lunch with Rodney Waller this week.

Rodney is the pastor of First African Baptist Church, a church that, at one time, was part of First Baptist. It’s an interesting story, and much depends on who gets to tell it.

I brought a copy of the church history with me—First Baptist Church, that is—where it says that back in 1838 pastor Jeremiah Bell Jeter was having trouble figuring out how to minister to his large, bi-racial congregation. He was convinced that ”neither group in the church would achieve its maximum effectiveness under existing conditions.” Eventually he suggested that the white members build a new building just up the street, and leave the existing building to the “colored” members. And in 1841, that’s what happened. According to the church history it was a very amicable parting of the ways.

I asked Rodney if that’s the way they remembered it at First African.

He said the way he heard the story was that First Baptist had grown to nearly 3,000 members at that time—the first “megachurch”—but most of those were the slaves of white members. As Rodney talked I could almost picture them in a balcony that creaked and groaned under the strain of their enthusiastic worship as a much smaller number of white congregants sat on the main level, below, glancing upward nervously. When the 387 white members moved into their beautiful new building two blocks up the street there may have been an audible sigh of relief–on both sides.

I tend to romanticize that time when “we all worshiped together,” as if what Paul said in Galatians 3:28 was true even then, that in Christ Jesus there is “neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female.” But Rodney helped me understand it may not have felt that way at all. 

We ended up talking about bringing the Kingdom of Heaven to Richmond, Virginia, and how our two churches might work together on some big project. It was a very hopeful conversation, and Rodney has been in touch with me since, asking if some of our church leaders can meet to discuss it further. At some point the word reconciliation was used and I told Rodney that my favorite definition of that word was “to make friendly again.” And then there was an awkward silence as we realized that for our churches it might not be a matter of becoming friendly again, but becoming friendly for the first time ever, recognizing at last that in Christ Jesus there is neither slave nor free, but instead:

“You are all one.”

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