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LINKS
You cant say everything every time you say anything or youd never say anything because youd be so busy saying everything else.
Richard Pratt

Here is where Ill say the everything else so you can read the main thoughts uninterrupted. This makes the chapters seem ever so much shorter.

Alfajores If you want a taste of Argentina, sit down with a cup of coffee and an alfajor. A classic in the countries of the Southern Cone, this treat is made of cookies sandwiching a thick caramel called dulce de leche all covered in powdered sugar or chocolate. They are forever linked to this project for me because in the mornings while I was writing in Buenos Aires I would wake up before everyone else and tiptoe past Terence and Chase sleeping in the Living Room to get to the roof where I had my computer set up. Terences cupboard was rather bare but he did keep a good selection of alfajores so I would quietly grab one en route to the roof. Not exactly the breakfast of champions, but it held me over until they woke up and made tea and toast. Antoni Gaudi On my first visit to Barcelona, Spain I was captivated by the creativity and originality, the lines and the colors of Gaudis architecture. The more I learned about his philosophy, distilled into his famous phrase originality consists of returning to the original, the more captivated I became. The following comments have been culled from biographical material available online written by Professor Juan Bassegoda Nonell who has served as the director of the Royal Gaudi Chair at the School of Architecture within the Polytechnical University of Catalonia (Barcelona) since 1968. I include them here because I believe ecclesiastical leadership can learn a lot from them:
There had never been architects in the Gaudi family, only craftsmen, especially copper and iron smiths. He did not have the occupational idiosyncrasy that is characteristic of dynasties of architects. While he was extremely naive, he was also highly perspicacious. He saw things as they actually are, without prejudice, not as sometimes one might wish them to be. Observing Gaudi's architectural forms, one might think that his was either a complex or a convoluted mind. The sinuous facades of his buildings look like somewhat irrational, baroque conceptions. But this is not the case. Because his compositions are inspired by nature, they stand out from those of architects who have always utilized a simple geometry based on abstract forms, like the line or the plane, forms that are nonexistent in natureGaudi's ingenuous observation of nature led him to see that these regular forms either do not exist in nature or, if they do, only rarely. When pyrite cubes are found, or prisms crowned with rock crystal, or pentagonal dodecahedrons of cinnabar, they are kept in museums of natural history as rare and curious objects.

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At the same time, he understood that nature did not intend to create works of art but rather elements that were above all functional and useful. The brilliant color and agreeable fragrance of roses is not devised to inspire poets or painters but rather to attract insects and to encourage the reproductive function of the plant. An absolutely functional purpose. Gaudi's conclusion was a very simple one. If an architect looks for the functional in his work, he will ultimately arrive at beauty. If he looks for beauty directly, he will only reach art theory, aesthetics, or philosophy, abstract ideas that never interested Gaudi. Moreover, he was able to see an infinity of magnificent structural forms in nature. If nature works by always looking for final solutions, since it is subject to the inexorable law of gravity, there is great wisdom in studying natural structures, which have been accredited by millions of years of perfect functioning.

Arnold Pent I havent inherited money or even knickknacks from the Pent side of the family, but I have received more of a legacy from them than I think about. One of Arnolds sons was an early protestant missionary in Peru, who crossed the Andes on foot. Several of his children lived for a while with my grandparents, which is what piqued my mothers interest in Latin America. She took my two sisters and me to Costa Rica for a summer so we could all learn Spanish and organized work trips to help out at that cousins Young Christians New Youth Movement in Costa Rica back before anyone talked about short term mission trips. Part of the legacy of great-grandfather Pent is told in the book, Ten P's in a Pod: A Million-Mile Journal of the Arnold Pent Family by Arnold Pent III. Attractional I first came across this term in the seminal book The Shaping of Things to Come: innovation and mission for the 21st century church where Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch say,
by attractional, we mean that the traditional church plants itself within a particular community, neighborhood, or locale and expects that people will come to it to meet God, and find fellowship with others. Evangelism therefore is primarily about mobilizing church members to attract unbelievers into church where they can experience God. Rather than being genuine out-reach, it effectively becomes something more like an in-drag.

The opposite of an attractional congregation would be a missional or distributed one. In Confessions of a Reformission Rev. Mark Driscoll explains that missional churches, see the churchs primary task as sending Christians out of the church and into the culture to serve as missionaries through relationships, rather than bringing lost people into the church to be served by programming. Chase It was Tims idea for me to spend a week in Buenos Aires doing nothing but writing. The problem was what would he do? We do most of our work together and hes not one to

3 just sit around, so he invited Chase, our postmodern poster child, to come down and get to know the city and our friends there. Tim, Chase and Terence would pray for me in the morning and then leave me alone all day to write. Come late afternoon we would all converge on the roof with the traditional Argentine afternoon snack of facturas (sweet croissants) and mate and they would listen to me read what Id been working on. Theoretically, you can check out Chases work at www.adefonline.com. Chisholm Trail By the end of the Civil War in the United States (1861-1865), very few cattle had survived east of the Mississippi River because the Union and Confederate soldiers had eaten most of them. As a result, a steer would go for as much as $50. On the other hand, Texas was full of cattle but the going price there was only $3 a head. An easy route from Texas through the Indian territory of what is now the state of Oklahoma was created to help cattlemen get their herds to the railroad in Kansas and then to the lucrative cattle markets in the East. This route was named the Chisholm Trail after Jesse Chisholm, a half Cherokee Indian trader, guide and interpreter whose was known to both Native Americans and new settlers for his fairness and neutrality. Concordance This complete listing of all the places that a specific word appears in the Bible is one of my favorite Bible study tools. Whenever Im thinking or writing or just curious about a topic I pull out my concordance and spend time hearing what the whole of the Bible says on the subject because I think it is important to have a clear picture of what God himself says about something before I move on to read what other people have said about it. I prefer having the book on my lap but you can also do this online at www.biblegateway.com or with a bible software program. Congregation Church is not an unclear wordwhen people say it, their listener understands them to mean either a building used for Christian gatherings or a definable group of people who regularly meet at the same place to engage in religious routines and programs under the guidance of a paid pastor who provides doctrinal teaching and organization direction(Revolution)nonetheless, I have issues with the word because I dont believe that these two meanings mirror what Jesus and the New Testament writers meant when they used it. Because of this discrepancy, I generally try to steer clear of using the word church and try to find one that unmistakably communicates exactly what Im talking about. For example, when Im talking about the aforementioned definable group of people I will frequently use the term congregation. When Im referring to the religious rituals, programs or government structure, I might call it the ecclesiastical institution. Ill be the first to admit that this feels clumsy, like Im belaboring a point when people would understand what Im trying to say if I just said church. But I have become convinced that our use of the word obscures the big picture of what the Church is, so it is becoming a discipline for me to avoid the term. I hope that someday we fill it with its

4 full meaning. Until then I will to stick with my synonyms, cumbersome though they may be. Dinner Whenever we invited someone to dinner we almost always went out to eat because a) our kitchen was so small we couldnt do much more than make brownies there, b) we never saw the sense in spending time cooking when there were so many amazing and inexpensive restaurants around. Our friend Angie introduced us to every one of our favorite restaurants in the Toluca area. One evening she took us deep into the pueblo tipico (traditional village) of Metepec with its brightly colored adobe houses. On a corner with no more signage than a lit bulb and an open door is the room of Dona Pazs home where she has served up tacos dorados ahogados (drowned fried tacos) for over 40 years. We were hooked. When we were in town we tried to eat dinner there once a week, often taking friends to show off what we have voted the best tacos in all Mexico. They invariably agreed. Ecclesiology Derived from the ancient Greek words ecclesia (church) and logy (study of), ecclesiology is a branch of study that deals with the nature and mission of the church: what it is and why it exists. My little Kittle (Abridged version of Kittles Theological Dictionary of the New Testament) explains that for Paul,
the church stands or falls with its sole foundation in Christ, its acknowledgement of him alone as Lord, and the rejection of overemphasis on persons and places. No description of the church is given, but Paul gets to the heart of the matter with his understanding of it (parallel to that of Acts) as an assembly which is the assembly of God in Christ.

Entropy This idea has always stuck in my mind because of Thomas Pynchons short story, Entropy in which one of the principal characters, Callisto, found in entropy or the measure of disorganization for a closed system an adequate metaphor to apply to certain phenomena in his own world. A footnote for the story found in The American Tradition in Literature explains that in physics entropy is, the quantity of disorder or randomness in any system containing energy. As the entropy increases, the energy becomes less available for use. Callisto taught me about entropy through his musings on this law of thermodynamics: He had known all along, of course, that nothing but a theoretical engine or system ever runs at 100% efficiency; and about the theorem of Clausius, which states that the entropy of an isolated system always continually increases. Exurb According to Wikipedia, exurbs are the ring of prosperous rural communities beyond the suburbs that, due to availability via new high-speed limited-access highways, were becoming commuter towns for an urban area. Suburbs are primarily residential areas; people live there but commute to a nearby city to work, study and play. However an exurb is a town with a life of its own, despite its proximity to a large city. As a proposal

5 for developing a downtown in Maitland, FL explains, A city center is sorely needed too give residentsa commercial core capable of sparing them repeated trips outside town; and to give them a better sense of place. I find the distinction between exurbs and suburbs relevant to my thinking about the church because it gives me an image of the difference between a congregation that aims to be a self-contained destination and one that exists as one aspect of a larger system. Forecasting I think of weather forecasting as an exact science but its definition is the process of estimation in unknown situations. In Florida were well aware that there might be a vast difference between the estimation of a hurricanes power and the reality when it reaches us, but one thing is sure, the people who ignore hurricane warnings are the ones who get caught unprepared. Furlough When individuals who have a long history of involvement with Christian missions use this word they generally mean a year of rest and fundraising (as if those two things were compatible) between terms on an overseas mission field. Justification paper Prophesying in the Valley of Dry Bones available in English at <http://www.sepal.org/gulick/parable-contest.htm> Heaven For years heaven has been touted as the destination Christians should focus. Because evangelicals talk about heaven so much, it would be natual to assume that were expressing what God says in his Word. Unfortunately, like much of the religion called Christianity, our thinking about heaven has more to do with a cultural mythology than an exegesis of the biblical record. The poll of religious beliefs in Mexico Tim and I sponsored revealed a startling confusion about the afterlife. 86.7% of the general population over the age of 13 claimed to be Roman Catholic and 78.4% of the general population says they attend a religious service at least once every month, however their beliefs vary widely from orthodox teaching. 75% 60% 59% 53% 37% believe in Heaven in Hell in life after death in Purgatory in Reincarnation

Im confused just thinking about 13% of the population who believes in both heaven and in reincarnation or the people (16%) who believe in heaven but not in life after death.

6 The celebration of the Day of the Dead that, sanctioned by the Roman Catholic Church despite its pagan origin and world view, is undoubtedly part of the problem but Im not sure things are that much clearer to folks in the US. For example, a Gallup poll in 1981 found that 23% of Americans believed in reincarnation while 25% of profession Roman Catholics in the US did. C.S. Lewis says that Most of us find it difficult to want Heaven at all in part because we have not been trained and because when the real want for Heaven is present in us, we do not recognize it (Mere Christianity). My junior year of college I took a course on the writings of Lewis which began my training as I worked my way from Mere Christianity and Screwtape Letters to The Great Divorce ,The Weight of Glory and Letters to Malcom. Hiking When we would be back in the US we would hear people talk about the great sacrifices that missionaries make. Of course there were things that we missed about life in the US but our life in Mexico was rich with things we loved. I feel a the sharp pang of longing just thinking about driving up into the mountains with our golden retriever Spike. For hours we would immerse ourselves in the trees and plants that had become familiar, discovering amazing vistas while drinking up beauty and the otherness of the life God had given us. After years of trying to find the word in Spanish for hiking, we realized that there is no term for it because for most of the people who do walk through the mountains it is something practicala variation of walking home, cutting firewood or making a pilgrimage to a hilltop shrineinstead of a form of recreation. Most of the paths we followed ended up at a chapel or shrine. I always felt a bit spooked out when we would come across a religious site with a pagan feel. Once we got to the top of a very wide, well traveled path only to find bread, bananas and flowers strewn all over the ground in front of a rock ringed with candles. There was a small Roman Catholic chapel nearby but from what we know about the relationship between Catholicism and the preHispanic religions this rock was probably related to an indigenous deity. The chapel was built later so the townspeople could continue to celebrate the deity, under a new name which would have been chosen according to the name of the saint on the calendar for the day of the celebration. House of God The English word church comes from this Greek phrase which in reality is seldom found in the New Testament. The few times when Jesus used the term he was usually talking about the Temple in Jerusalem and was often quoting an Old Testament story or passage. The notable exception is John 14:2, In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. The Inner Ring The first time I read the C.S. Lewis essay by this name, I felt like he was shining a spotlight into a dark corner of my heart, identifying a craving hidden there: the desire for

7 the delicious sense of secret intimacy that comes from being on the right side of that invisible line that separates those within the Inner Ring from everyone else. Lewis believed that this desire is one of the great permanent mainsprings of human action and that,
in all mens lives at certain periods, and in many mens lives at all periods between infancy and extreme old age, one of the most dominant elements is the desire to be inside the local Ring and the terror of being left outside.

I highly recommend The Inner Ring, found in the collection of essays entitled The Weight of Glory and other addresses for its helpful discussion of the dangers of this desire as well as the chapter Friendship in The Four Loves for a better understanding of the alternative. Liberate the splendor of the church A few summers ago our Lebanese Jamaican friend Richard spent several weeks in Namibia with a group of Americans on a short term missions trip. One of his responsibilities was to help some local woman prepare the food for the team. One day in the kitchen he discussed the issues he has with the church. Afterwards one of the older women drew him aside and told him, The church is Gods bride. He is in charge of presenting her spotless before the throne. You just show up and trust him. The Namibian woman is both right and wrong in very important ways. She is right that the Church is Gods. He gives her life and he will present her spotless. As Jesus told Peter, I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it (Matthew 16:18). But I believe that Richards analysis and criticism is valid, even important. We are not passive observers of the process; God has chosen to build his church through us. When God took on flesh and lived and worked on earth he didnt do all of the teaching and preaching and healing himself. Instead he prepared and sent out others so they could share in the joy and the sorrow and ultimately in the glory (1st Peter 5:4). Missionary The mission in question is to obey the instructions that Jesus gave to his followers after his resurrection:
Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." (Matthew 28:18-20)

My mother always says that every Christian is a missionary and she is absolutely right. This mission is for all believers, not just for the privileged few who are paid a salary to do it. However the term missionary has traditionally been used about individuals who take the news about Jesus Christ where, as Michael VanHuis puts it, people dont ask who is Jesus but what is Jesus. That type of works still exists, however the picture of

8 what it will take to make disciples of all nations is more varied and complex today than is has been in the past. Neighborhood One of the things we expected to miss terribly about our life in Mexico was living in a true neighborhood. The house we rented there was only 600 square feet but it and its location were perfect. As we walked from our front gate towards the park a block away in the middle of Casa Blanca, our neighborhood, we would pass a family run brake shop, a barber shop (decent haircuts for $2.50 USD), a paper goods shop, and a cyber caf. At the corner was a small family run supermarket, next to a popsicle/ice cream/cold drink store, beside a family run bakery with a larger supermarket, next to a convenience store. The fresh tortilleria was next to the Catholic Church and across the street from the photo store where we could have our passport or visa pictures taken. Every Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday a cement covered area around the corner became a tianguis, a sort of roving market that sold everything from fresh fruit, vegetables and meat to pirated movies and music as well as amazingly delicious, and unfortunately bacteria laden, quesadillas. Some of our best friends and colleagues lived three minutes away and our congregation gathered in a building two minutes past their house. Our new neighborhood is surprisingly user friendly. In a two block radius we have a city park, a public library, a dry cleaner, an art theatre and several good restaurants. Weve lost our cheap haircuts but weve gained a stroll around a lake on the way home after dinner. OC International www.oci.org We were drawn to OC because of their philosophy of ministry (Research, Motivate, Train, Mobilize) and their relationship to the national church (They only enter a country after being invited and their work focuses on helping the local people make disciples of their own nation and beyond). The life story of OCs founder Dick Hillis, Steel in His Soul by Jan Winebrenner, is well worth reading both for a first hand perspective of a momentous time in Chinese history and to see how Dick developed his empowering, non-paternalistic philosophy of ministry. Everyone asks, So what does OC stand for? Here are some of our answers: a) The Organizationally Correct answer: One Challenge. This is illustrated by a nifty graphic of multiple arrows encircling the globe which shows that we are many individuals from all over the world reaching around the world to complete the One Challenge of discipling the nations. I have no problem with this answer except I never use it because the re-imaging process that created it happened many years after we had formed the habitual answer. b) The Habitual Answer: Um, well actually nothing. It used to stand for Overseas Crusades but because the word crusade has such negative history in some parts of the world where we work we dropped it.

c) The We Have Time and They Look Interested answer. This flows naturally out of answer b) and is my favorite because, as you now know, Im a big fan of context: We were originally called Formosa Gospel Crusades because our founder Dick Hillis, who had been a missionary in China before the communist revolution, was invited to Taiwan by Madame Chiang Kai-Sheck. This was such a success they expanded to the Philippines, becoming Orient Crusades. When they opened a team in Argentina they changed the name to Overseas Crusades...

Perspectives The discipline of corroborating our points of view about something with other perspectives about that same issue is both a common sense good idea and an epistemological model called tri-perspectivialism. Proponents of this model believe that everything that can be known can be seen from three viewpoints: Normativethe standard guide a person uses, whether it be their personal experience, their religious or political or philosophical beliefs, etc. Situational the facts of reality like historical or scientific data Existentialthe way the presuppositions, experiences, temperament etc. of the person affect their perspective of the thing being known

These are not three different types of knowledge; they are three perspectives from which to view the same thing just like the way someone deciding whether to buy a new car will walk all the way around it, look under the hood to study the engine, and take it out for a test drive. Each of these perspectives adds to the others to provide a fuller understanding of the car. In the same way the normative, situational and existential perspectives each interrelate with, correct and reinforce the others. In terms of Biblical knowledge, the Bible itself represents the normative perspective, our fellow believers now and throughout history correspond to the situational perspective, and an individuals understanding represents the existential perspective. Understanding how these elements relate to and reinforce one another helps an individual construct a belief system in which they can place their full confidence. [For a fuller treatment see Richard Pratts course Building Your Theology available through www.thirdmill.org] Right Here, Right Now Today is September 12, 2006. Im sitting at a desk in Terrences apartment in Buenos Aires, Argentina sipping a cup of black tea accompanies by slices of apple dipped in dulce de leche (caramel sauce) after a 2 mile run through the neighborhood of Martinez. I tell you this because I believe that a persons perspective is intimately related to where they are and where they have been. I have seen that when I really learn something, it is because of a convergence of things in my internal and external context like thoughts, information, conversations, observations, personal experiences. Once I have learned something in one context, I

10 can then extract the kernel of what I have come to understand from the matrix of that context and pass it on to others who are in another context. Eugene Peterson reminds us in The Contemplative Pastor that Virtually everything in Scripture is rooted in particular places and deals with named peopleno lofty abstractions, no sweeping generalities What follows will have some abstractions and generalities but at least the headings will give you a sense of the context in which the thoughts were solidified. Rooster-shaped weathervane The night Jesus was betrayed Peter said to him, Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death. Jesus answered, I tell you, Peter, before the rooster crows today, you will deny three times that you know me. (Luke 22:34) As a result the rooster and its crowing became a symbol of the Christian's need to be faithful to Christ and to be ready for his sudden return. In the ninth century A.D., a pope (according to the reference staff of Orradre Library at Santa Clara University, it was the early ninth-century Pope Paschal I) reportedly decreed that every Roman Catholic church building should place the image of a rooster on its dome or steeple as an admonition to the faithful to come to mass instead of denying Christ as Peter had done. These roosters were not required to function as weathervanes but because steeples were visible from anywhere in town many of them had weathervanes as a service to the community. So it was logical that the cockerels atop church steeples would be made as weathervanes. Sacred assemblies Although the assemblies of believers recorded in the New Testament are significantly different than the communal religious gatherings that were specifically prescribed in the Old Testament, we can learn a lot from studying the latter. In light of the fact that in Deuteronomy 4:2 Moses specifically warns the people of Israel not to add to or subtract from Gods commands, it is interesting to note that the commandment about the Sabbath found in Exodus 20:8-11 and Deuteronomy 5:12-15 instructs that the day be holy to the LORD but does not mention required attendance at a sacred assembly. And when Moses reminds the Israelites of the divinely initiated sacred assembly that took place at Mount Horeb he emphasizes the individuals responsibility in the spiritual formation of their children:
Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them slip from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them. Remember the day you stood before the LORD your God at Horeb, when he said to me, "Assemble the people before me to hear my words so that they may learn to revere me as long as they live in the land and may teach them to their children."

Ship In the CD cover for Nothing Like the Sun, one of the CDs from Terences collection that I enjoyed while I was writing on his rooftop, Sting shares some wise counsel, A

11 great uncle of mine who was a seafaring man once gave me the following advice, Never board a ship unless you know where its going. Start Being the Church This is a quote from Revolution by George Barna in which he describes a new breed of disciples of Jesus Christ he calls Revolutionaries, individuals who are not willing to play religious games and arent interested in being part of a religious community that is not intentionally and aggressively advancing Gods Kingdom. According to Barna, Revolutionaries share the following passions which can also be seen in the lives of believers in the book of Acts: intimate worship, faith-based conversations, intentional spiritual growth, servanthood, resource investment, spiritual friendships and family faith.

Tea Tim and I drink tea, lots and lots of tea. We started this tradition on our honeymoon where our favorite lunch place was Miss Maes TeanTings on Harbour Island in the Bahamas. The hot tea came in generous pots and the iced tea was the best wed ever had. Our last day we asked the waitress how they made it she explained that all morning they poured what was left over from the tea pots into a pitcher and then just added sugar. When we got back to Orlando we incorporated hot tea into our morning ritual. In Toluca tea became more than a ritual. With temperatures regularly in the low 60s, and sometimes even in the 50s, inside our house and with no heat, it was a life saver. Our favorite tea purveyors are Twinings (loose leaf Lady Grey, Earl Grey, and English Breakfast), The Spice Merchant in Wichita, KS which has a fabulous selection of loose leaf teas (their Masala Chai was a staple in our Monday night discipleship group for years), and Adagio.com (Tims one mystical religious experience actually happened over a pot of jasmine pearls, but I dont credit the tea with that, though the aroma is amazing). Tim passed out On an all night flight from Miami to Santiago, Chile, I stirred from my Tylenol PM induced sleep when Tim left the seat next to me. Oh good, I can finally straighten my legs, I thought and stretched out. Knowing that as soon as Tim returned I would have to squeeze back into my allotted space, I didnt go to sleep completely. I was thinking that he had been gone a long time, when I heard a voice announce over the loud speaker, Would any medical personnel please report to the flight crew. I thought, Oh, Tim must have gotten caught behind some kind of incident near the bathrooms. But when he still hadnt come back a few minutes later, it began to dawn on me that I should go see if Tim was the person in need of medical assistance. I stumbled to the nearest bathrooms and there, stretched out on the floor, his legs held up in the air by a steward and his pulse being taken by a physician, was Tim. The doctor diagnosed it as a classic vagal faint and recommended Tim have some studies done. A barrage of tests showed nothing unusual.

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Weathervane The earliest recorded weathervane adorned the Tower of the Winds in Athens built by the astronomer Andronicus in 48 B.C. It was made in the shape of the Greek god Triton, presumably because by blowing on his conch shell he, like the wind, could calm or raise the waves. The word "vane," from the Anglo-Saxon word fane meaning "flag, probably refers to the banners which flew from medieval towers in Britain, Normandy and Germany to show archers the direction of the wind. The cloth flags were later replaced by metal ones, decorated with the insignia or coat of arms of the lord or nobleman, balanced to turn in the wind.