Church, Mission, World Economies

I (Kevin) am sitting in Portland right now, going to school listening to lectures on missional ecclesiology, talking about secularism, post-modernity, early church practices, consumerism in the church, etc. Everyone who knows me for more than one minute knows I'M IN HEAVEN! Well not quite, but close. There is a special lady back in Chico, that could be here to complete the current picture.

I am happy, loving school, but pondering the future. Pondering Spain. In the ponder, I see that our dollar is raising against the Euro. As a missionary, relying on payment in dollars, a weaker currency, this should be a relatively happy thing. Yet I'm sad, because the global economic situation does not effect us all equally, and it is an excercise in loving the communities that I will be a part of, while also loving and worrying about my own community. I watched 7% drop out of the market in the States yesterday and over 7% in most of the European markets. I'm glad I'm not happy that my dollar will now go a little further. I'm glad because I am happy to begin identifying with people I don't know yet, and I'm grateful to God for allowing my heart to soften even now for people we will be in community with.

This pertains highly to the mission of the world. We are not just a country at crisis. We are a world in economic crisis. We are interdependent upon each other. I am sitting in class with "missionaries" to the US. I put that in quotes, only because I know many people can't see missionaries as local practicioners. Yet they are. Their target population is an unchurched people group in their local cities. I love my colleague and hope for greater interdependence with him, and I hope that at some point he will send students that he's leading, to us in Spain so that we might be able to share a new world-view and an entirely different struggle of the Church.

When in crisis, we tend to find community a little bit stronger. Though I personally don't want to see my retirement fall, I want to take this opportunity to be involved in God's mission for the world by recognizing our global interdependence and work cross-culturally, cross-globally to be involved in what God is doing.

(Can you tell that class-time is wonderful for me!) (But I really, really miss my wife.)