Monster Work Rally!

Monday! Monday! Monday! Monster work rally! Watch cement blocks fly through the air.

            Sand is sifted- pure as silk

                        Concrete is smashed!

Rubble is tossed.

And…

            The man with the pickaxe, the smasher, the pulverizer, the DOUGMIESTER!

Kids are half price. Fancy, pseudo, hard-hats for all. Don’t miss this once in a lifetime event. You can buy the whole seat but you’ll only need…

                                    THE EDGE!

Today I went with others to work at the hospital. This hospital has been in progress for at least ten years and has been growing floor by floor. The third floor is built but very rough and the fourth floor is still in progress.

I’m going to be honest, when it comes to mission trips I would much rather be working with people, interacting with people, than doing manual labor. These soft, supple hands are not meant for hard work. I feel that people work hard at something that may or may not have a purpose and then leave saying that they have accomplished so much because they have built a wall. Wow, building walls for Jesus.

Today I hauled cement for Jesus, and I can’t say that I feel as if I have had an impact on individuals. The lack of connection makes this work difficult. I should say that it is good to work with the other people on the team, to connect with them and to get to know them better. That is a worthwhile experience. Yet in the big picture, I’m not a construction guy.

So I have to remind myself what the hospital is about. Haitians do not have support or rights in this part of the Dominican Republic. This hospital was built to offer help to Haitians, medical help. So this hospital is important.

I am a part of the mission of this hospital and the work it is doing to help the many Haitians and Dominicans who need medical assistance. I am a part of the mission to the least of a society. It is a very, very small part, but it is a part nonetheless. Who am I to say that what I do is not important? Who am I to say that what I do is vital? All I can say is that I am a part of a profound ministry of God.

The important thing is that I do not adopt an attitude that the hospital could not exist without me. That is when ministry becomes arrogant. It could exist without me. I am not essential to the future and/or existence of the hospital. So I am humbled to take part in this ministry. It is a privilege to be able to help.

 Gee, two days in a row of being humbled. Maybe I should change the name of my blog.

La Romana 2012- Day Two - All Preaching, All Day, All Loud!

Day two in glorious La Romana

This Sunday started with church… no surprise. Our group split up – half went to have communion at one batey and anther went to have a plain ole’ worship service at a different batey. I was with the latter. The plan was for another pastor and me to lead the service complete with a grad A, Jonathan Malone, bring em’ to Jesus, sermon.

When we got there we found that we would be working with a local pastor who gave us the tour, showed us the church, then started the church service. He preached. He reminded us that in the Dominican Republic there are many, many black people. I was not ready to face that reality. He reminded us that we (Americans) have a black president. I was blown away with that news.

Skepticism aside, his point was that we are all of God’s children despite our skin color. To me it may seem like an obvious message, but one that is important. Perhaps the message was not only for me but also for the people there who may not be used to seeing white people. We do look kinda weird and are kinda scary.

It was a heartfelt service even without my patented, grade A, Jonathan Malone, bring em’ to Jesus, sermon. I’ll save that sermon for next Sunday.

The batey was what I expected and at the same time took me by surprise. I remember the poverty from the last time I was here, but memory blocks some of the details that emphasize the suffering. We were reminded that the children can only go to school up to a certain age (around 12 or 13) and then they go to work in the fields. That if they are lucky enough to go to high school they will not be allowed to go to college. There are very little possibilities to get out of the batey. There are very little possibilities to make life better. Hope for them is something that I do not understand. I have hope for a better life for my children, my wife, and me, but I don’t know if the people who live in the bateyes have that hope. What hope can one have where it does not seem that there is anywhere to go?

The pastor preached about being ready for Christ to call you home (read-heaven) or to return (read – rapture, end-times stuff). The pastor at church this morning preached that we need to be ready for either at any time. This is not a message I often preach, if at all. It tends to be apocalyptic and gloomy and a little to strong with hell and devil stuff for me. Frankly, it makes me scared. Yet I think I can understand where such a message can offer hope to many people. The idea that there may be a better life afterwards may mean more than I can understand for people here in the bateyes of the Dominican Republic. That assurance is powerful and profound. Something humbling for a theological snob to consider.

There was another church in the batey, something Pentecostal where little children are baptized. One batey two churches…. hmmm. I’ll have to write about that later.

This afternoon we went to the beach. It was indulgent. It was unnecessary. It was very, very nice. Blue water, warm, etc…

Tonight, after dinner, we went to another church service. This time it was in the church here in La Romana. There was a lot of very loud music, screaming prayers, and one mostly white group that sang a timid version of, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.” I think they were afraid.

Tomorrow I actually get to do some work. I’m supposed to be doing construction which I think means getting coffee and donuts, standing around for an hour, moving one cinder block, standing around for another hour, moving the cinder block back to its original location, and then standing around some more. Can’t wait!

By the way – the suitcase was returned. No major donations were made to the mission for our good efforts. I have no kind words for that person.

A picture of people sorting meds for tomorrow... see, we work!

La Romana The Return - 1 - the wheels on the bus...

Day one – kinda. Actually, it isn’t day one at all because we haven’t been here for a full 24 hours. We have been traveling for almost 24 hours so it feels like it has been a long, long, long day.

Just as I predicted, the day started at the lovely hour of 1:00am (bleh!) where all the Rhode Island folks met and go on the bus. Apparently we got the bus that was upgraded with a hyper-drive and we made it from Rhode Island to Newark, NJ in three hours!

Arriving at 4:00am for a 7:00am flight is always a great experience.

We met up with the folks from Syracuse and Albany and donned our fashionable pinkish, mauve, rose, reddish, nasty hats. See picture below. As a whole family, minus one pharmacist from Maine, we got on the plane and made our way to sunny Santa Domingo.

The flight was fine with just a little bit of turbulence. We grabbed our luggage and a little more (I’ll speak more to that in a bit), and then waited for the final person from Maine to arrive. We waited. We waited. We waited. It was a little more than two hours and spending that time in the food court of the Santa Domingo airport, with the constant din of fast talking Dominicans, crying babies, and complaining Baptists, mixed with the heavy smell of grease made the time feel like days. The final person was greeted with mixed emotions of joy and rage. Lucky him.

Then we had the fun, two-hour ride on the school bus. This time we had the luxury bus that had windows in the front, windows on the side, and a “window” in the floor so we could see the ground. Very classy.

The rest of the evening was pretty standard. We arrived, we ate, we unpacked, and we realized we stole someone’s suitcase. That’s right, we stole a suitcase.

To be fair, no one meant to do it. When you have hundreds of bags to collect it is easy to pick up an extra bag that is not yours. It wasn’t until we were unpacking that we realized that the items in that suitcase were much, much nicer than most of the clothes that were donated. Something was amiss. The major problem – the owner did not put their name on the suitcase. See, your mother was right, put your name on your underwear, your books, your tax forms, and your luggage.

We did the right thing, called the airline, and promised to return the bag… tomorrow. After all, it is late, we are tired, and it would not be safe to go out into the night with a strange piece of luggage. In the meantime, I am going to be praying over the stray luggage, laying hands on it, anointing it with oil, and eventually baptizing the suitcase. I found out that I am preaching tomorrow, so I need to practice on something.

In the meantime – check out this link for something that is more serious and probably has much more useful information on our trip. It is written by a real, live journalist so it has to be good.

Here is a picture of me right before leaving:

Here I am after arriving. Do you see what the bus ride, plane ride, and bus ride has done to me!

La Romana Part Two - The Return!

It’s Time! It’s time for me to return to……

THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC!!

For those who have no idea what I am talking about, feel free to check out my posts on this trip from two years ago.

We are going again. This time I have a better idea what I am getting into. The overall group is smaller, but we have a bevy of medical people. Because there are so many “Gray’s Anatomy” lovers I am probably going to end up doing construction. To prepare for the back-breaking, manual labor I have brushed up on my cursing and cussing lexicon, worked on my cat calls, and have gained 150 pounds so I can have a big ole’ gut. I’m ready to work for Jesus.

As you can see from the below pictures, we are bringing with us drugs. Lots and lots of drugs. They are all legal, but I still feel like a mule.

Tonight we leave at the lovely hour of 1:00am. I can’t wait, and have a list of songs we can sing on the bus from Providence to Newark NJ (ah, lovely Newark, how my heart pines for thee). I bet by the time we get to Newark I’ll be the most popular guy in the group.

So watch this space for updates, rants, crazy pictures, and maybe a song and dance. I can’t promise it will be as fun as Indonesia, but who knows. I’m going with a whole bunch of Baptists, many who look to me as their pastor, so anything is possible.

God help us all.

Why are Men So Insecure?

I was planning on taking today off from blogging. I really should thing about a sermon for Sunday and all that stuff, and maybe acknowledge the existence of my children. I was all set to do these great things until I checked out my Twitter account (don’t bother following me – I am boring, borrrrrrrrring!) and I saw a link to the following blog.

The blog post is about John Piper’s call for a masculine Christianity and a masculine church. Normally I would ignore such rants, but Piper is a fairly popular and influential person who has the potential to screw up many Christians. Blogger Rachael Evans smartly asked for guys to respond so she would not be labeled as some angry feminist. My straight, white, male guilt kicked in and here I am writing.

I’m not going to rehash Piper’s argument – I suggest going to Evans’ blog to see a good summary or go here for a more complete text.

So I’m not just rehashing feminist’s arguments I’m going to try to avoid using some great theologians.

Thus I suppose I should avoid mentioning Catherine Mowry LaCugna’s chapter, "God in Communion With Us," in the book Freeing Theology where she points out that the idea of Complementarity (the idea that a woman reaches her fullest existence through a relationship with a man) does not speak to the notion that a man does not have to have a relationship with a woman to reach his full potential as a child of God and in no way reflects the Trinity, i.e. God, i.e. the one in who’s image we were created.

I guess I shouldn’t mention Elizabeth A. Johnson who makes the simple change of talking about God by starting with the Holy Spirit rather than God – creator, and notes many of the feminine aspects of the Holy Spirit and how those aspects are found in God – creator and in Christ.

No, I will resist using these theologians because they just are not masculine enough. I will instead address Piper’s claims myself.

First, he describes Masculinity as:

Theology and church and mission are marked by an overarching godly male leadership in the spirit of Christ with an ethos of tender-hearted strength, contrite courage, risk-taking decisiveness, and readiness to sacrifice for the sake of leading and protecting and providing for the community. All of which is possible only through the death and resurrection of Jesus."

Take out the “godly male” part and I don’t see what makes it masculine. This describes my mother (as well as my father) and many other women and men that I know. Seems to just be a convenient definition that is not grounded in any studies of sociology, psychology, anthropology, or anyone who may actually know what it might mean to be “masculine.”

Second, Piper references scripture saying that all the priests in the Old Testament were male – I guess he forgot Deborah – and all of Jesus’ apostles were male which is only if you us a very specific understanding of the apostles that emerged through time. I’m not going to respond to his Biblical arguments with other Biblical arguments. What I see is a convenient reading of scripture. That is, Piper wants to make an argument about masculinity and then find all of the information he can use in scripture so he can back it up while ignoring anything that may suggest otherwise. I have never encountered the Bible as so crystal clear on one topic. Piper is employing poor scholarship at best and a dangerous hermeneutic that can lead to many other dangerous assumptions like slavery is ok, and polygamy is necessary, and it is appropriate to kill your children or at least sell them into slavery when they act out. If I want to use scripture to argue any of these points I can by using the same method Piper uses – find the passages that work and don’t mention anything else.

Third, Piper is neglecting a large part of the feminist nature of the church in church history. Granted I’m not sure exactly what feminine means, but I’ll work off the common assumptions for now. With that in mind Bernard of Clairvaux’s great sermon On the Song of Songs talks about a holy kiss that we have on and with Jesus. Hmmm….

Jonathan Edwards pushes the idea of religious affections, a whole-body experience of religion. It is emotional and spiritual (disclaimer – I am not an Edwards’ scholar so I may be missing some of the nuance). I don’t know if this is feminine, but based on what Piper is suggesting I think it is.

Finally, I do want to refer to my sister theologians, specifically about the idea of the nature of God. If Piper is a Trinitarian, and I am sure that he would claim that he is, then the nature of God is one of equal, relational, indwelling where one aspect of the Trinity is not above any other nature of the Trinity. If one aspect of humanity is deliberately placed above another, then we are not reflecting the nature of God, but the broken nature of humanity. The church, then, should be a place that strives not for a masculine feel or a feminine feel, but one of mutuality and equality.

End this post with your own bit of angry rants and explicative that this is still an issue with people. We should be well beyond this…. AHHHHH