ANGLICAN FRONTIER MISSIONS - Comments

If you could ask the author

If you could ask the author any question, what would it be?
I'd like to ask him if he now thinks the case for indigenous mission has been more clearly stated than ever before. He obviously is working more as a Strategic Coordinator than an actual on the ground cross-cultural missionary in the strictest sense. This whole book seems to lift the curtain on much of what gets in the way of effective missions, although I do agree that he came to some very important, and apparently lasting, conclusions.
Are there any next steps that you would like to take (either the ones listed above or some other step)?
I've recently (within the last several days) been reaquainted with a good friend who happens to have been selected as a member of an exploratory team heading to... Haiti. Over lunch I told him a little of New Wineskins, and the conversation here on the Book Club forum, and just some observations I've made. He doesn't believe in coincidence, neither do I, and so we're planning to get together once he gets back around Christmas, to talk and pray about how I might fit into their initial short term forays. Who knows, I am certainly open to it!

Agreed

In reply to Week 5: Building a Home, Parts 2-3:

James- you and Fisher had the same reaction. I agree. It wasn't very uplifting and concerning section of the book. After reading this chapter, I really struggled with whether to keep this book on the reading list. We did in the end because there were still some helpful issues and points to be made and perhaps our own convictions would become more certain in the process. -Kiim

This was a confusing segment

In reply to Week 5: Building a Home, Parts 2-3:

Deleted a duplicate entry!

This was a confusing segment

In reply to Week 5: Building a Home, Parts 2-3:

This was a confusing segment to read, it left me with many questions.

I found myself asking what much of this had to do with following Jesus in ministry to the Haitian people. I understand the fears that he had, but the question and answer section was not helpful to me at all.

They seem to have arrived in Haiti without the same vision, and mission, in mind. Perhaps this is why they eventually returned to the states.

Thank you!

In reply to Week 5: Building a Home, Parts 2-3:

Thank you for taking the time to post your comments. I also struggled with this chapter-- for many of the same reasons as you did. I am curious to hear what you think of the upcoming chapter. For me, I sighed some relief. Kent Annan seems to come to some resolution and made spiritual discoveries that rang true. For example, he discovered that living sacrifically (and native-like) can become an idol. One can easily feel self-righteous and that discovery leads him to grace and the acknowledgement that so little good resides in any of us.

I'll be interested to hear your thoughts on his Revelations chapter.

Chapter 4, part 2 and 3

In reply to Week 5: Building a Home, Parts 2-3:

I find this book fascinating but increasingly frustrating and irritating. Yes, Kent is sharing his innermost feelings and experiences with us, the reader. But I keep wondering about the wisdom of what they are doing there. He shares that his wife, Shelly, "is unhappy with the house, with the price, with living in Haiti, with me." Sometimes I get the feeling that this young couple are living out this experience to fulfill Kent's call and not necessarily hers. He then goes into all his fears, mostly about her safety and the dangers he feels are lurking around every corner. I recognize those fears: they are the ones that I used to have about my loved ones before I learned to surrender them to God. I am having a hard time finding God in this situation that Kent is describing. His fears are the "awfulizing" that so many of us can succumb to when we are not trusting God. Yes, it seems that trusting God in this very challenging situation in Haiti might be difficult. But being in Haiti has to be a call and not just living out an experience. As Kent describes the many frustrations of building a house (which involves such difficult travel to and from their office), I wonder what are they really doing. Are they doing something that is sustainable for the long run? Have they gone through all this torture just for living in Haiti for one more year? Maybe I am just not being sympathetic and I am comparing what their experience is in a war torn country to what we experience in a third world region of Asia. I find that he seems disdainful of the people who are living in the more comfortable compounds, but I bet the ones that have made their every day lives more livable are the ones that can stay for the long term. I guess that you can see that this book is challenging me, and I find myself justifying why we live in a more comfortable place than the village people. But it is not our call to live in a primitive village setting; it was our call to come here and live for the long term and establish ourselves so we could build a team and bring others to this remote place.

As I struggled with their decisions as to how they are setting up their lives in Haiti and then their decision to escape the country during the extreme political turmoil, I was tempted to peek at the back cover where I learned that they are no longer living in Haiti, but are continuing their ministry to Haiti by living in south Florida, from where Kent travels to Haiti for his work with Haiti Partners. On one hand I felt vindicated that they couldn't sustain their lifestyle for the long run in Haiti and had to leave. But on the other hand, I know that often in frontier missions that people have to live in a strategic city nearby in order to do their work in the country where their people group resides. Yes, many places where there are UPGs are too dangerous to live in, and if one were able to live among the people for a while, one could gain a passion and an understanding of the people they are called to help. Yes, Kent has a long term call to Haiti and he is living that out. I look forward to reading the last two chapters of this book to see how it plays out. I do appreciate his honesty and from this kind of honest description of their adventure, we can glean a lot about the challenges that missionaries can encounter when going to the ends of the earth.

LOL

In reply to Week Four: Building a Home (Part I), pages 80-100:

How true!

What parts did you find

In reply to Week Four: Building a Home (Part I), pages 80-100:

What parts did you find interesting? funny? challenging?

I find it interesting, and funny, that most of the world does not view time, or money, in the same way that the West does. I'm not exactly sure what this says, about the world or us, but I have my opinions. And I find it very funny that building a $3500 home in a third world country seems to produce nearly as much stress as building a more expensive one here.

Chapter Three

In reply to Week Three: Chapter three:

Do you have a favorite quote from this chapter?

Not necessarily favorite, but provocative: "But as an expatriate here, I have breathed more deeply since escaping the cynical. distracting pull of marketing." p. 55. I know what the author means. My needs have been somewhat modified by what is actually available. But every culture has its marketers and my white skin automatically brands me as a deep pocket, (literally! They no longer use metal fireplace tongs to extract the contains of my pockets like they used to. Maybe I'm more cautious, maybe they are more welcoming)

Did this chapter remind you of anything? Did you ever give up something only to find something even better?

As my wife has referred to in an earlier post, already in our life, God has seemed to honor his promise (“'I tell you the truth,' Jesus said to them, 'no one who has left home or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God will fail to receive many times as much in this age and, in the age to come, eternal life.'" Luke 18:29-30) Selling our home in America and buying one in mountainous Asia seemed to us drastic, but we were also in agreement that this was God's word for us. And we see in retrospect His perfect timing (In America - at the height of the housing market and just months before the bottom dropped out; and in Asia - while prices were low before our area became much more popular).

And in both America and Asia, God has led us to so many wonderful people who are so generous to share their beautiful houses with us.

Then there are the children. Being separated from our children and grandchildren is hard. But Skype video conferencing helps. And the new children we have in the Lord in Asia are a real blessing.

What part of these two chapters did you find most interesting, inspiring, or challenging?

I liked the author's transparency in sharing his struggles, doubts, failures, pride, etc. His ambivalence in dealing with the Albanian woman's request for help with her cancer (p. 82) rang true as we are often confronted with needs way beyond our resources. Yes, we know our Father owns the cattle on a thousand hills. But is He ready to sell them just yet and fund this project or that request?

RE: the sections on rats and cats: we must always establish priorities. I don't like spiders (we're talking about the 4 in. variety) but I also don't like mosquitoes, but mosquitoes are ubiquitous and spiders eat mosquitoes.

Farmer

Chapters One and Two

In reply to Week Two: Chapters one and two:

What relevance does any of this have to frontier missions?

Two quotes from the book are relevant here: "Imbalance of money and power fundamentally changes relationships." P. 45; and "Our citizenship and shiny skin give us a weird kind of celebrity." p.47 We find this all the time. Being the only foreigners and the only Caucasians in town, we have no choice by to stand out. This may give us priority seating, it may also subject us to racial (or political or economic class) prejudice or the strong emotion of xenophobia. Working in frontier missions we must remember one of the first and basic tenets I was taught about cross- cultural work: Always come as learners. We must never act on our logical first reaction: "I have so much to teach these people about life, about hygiene, about relationships, and about how Jesus wants them to live!" God is already here, He is already at work among these people. I need to shut up and watch, I need to identify that spark that He has planted in their hearts and fan it into flame. Yes, we draw a crowd. Yes, people want to hear the gems of wisdom we have practiced over and over. We can come to believe that we really are the answer to all their problems. But we know that is blinding hubris. We need to be friends who laugh with them and cry with them and sit with them.

The song, "Who Will Be Jesus to Them" by Bruce Carroll has this chorus: "Wounded people everywhere and when they look at us do they see Jesus there? Who will be Jesus to them? Who’ll show the love that restores them again?They do not need a judge they need a friend. Who will be Jesus to them? Who will be Jesus to them?" This is what our job is.

Farmer