Kenya safari

I left our house on Tuesday afternoon, January 12th, at about 2:30. I was scheduled to take a 5:20 p.m. flight to London's Heathrow Airport. After landing at 9:05 a.m. GMT Wednesday (2:05 a.m. Mountain Time), I was scheduled to fly on to Nairobi, Kenya, leaving at 10:05 a.m. GMT and arriving in Nairobi at 9:35 p.m. Nairobi time (6:35 p.m. GMT, 11:35 a.m., Mountain Time).

When I checked in at Denver, the ticket agent said the flight was delayed 20 minutes and faced some strong headwinds. She doubted I'd be able to make the connection. So to ensure I would have a replacement flight, she pre-booked me on a Virgin Atlantic flight out of London that would leave Wednesday evening at about 9:30 and arrive in Nairobi Thursday morning.

As it turned out, our flight took off on time and made good time over to London. Except, about an hour from London, the captain came on the intercom: "London is experiencing snow and so we have been placed in a holding pattern that, we expect, may last up to an hour and a half. Happily, we were warned of such a possibility, so we have enough fuel . . ."

Over the course of the next couple of hours, we received updates. We were finally permitted to come in at about 10:15 in the morning. But the inch of snow was so debilitating for Heathrow operations that there were no jetways available for us to park. "While jets coming in have been slowed, almost no jets have been permitted to take off," our captain informed us.

That gave me hope I might actually make my connection.

But an hour later, when we finally got off the plane, I discovered my flight had left long before.

So I was in for an extended stay at Heathrow.

After wading through a number of customer service waiting lines, I finally made my way to one of the Virgin Atlantic business lounges at about 2 in the afternoon and made myself at home for a few hours.

One of my first obligations: to send an email to notify my host in Nairobi that I would not be on my flight that evening, but should be seeing him Thursday morning.

The Virgin Atlantic business lounge is the most pleasant airline lounge I have ever been in. Not only do they offer the standard amenities of any high-end lounge (free snacks, drinks, newspapers and magazines, showers, etc.), but they offer an amazing sit-down restaurant food service at no charge.

I enjoyed my stay.

That evening, we finally took off at about 10:30 and arrived in Nairobi Thursday morning--about 10 o'clock local time, as I recall.

Having only my carry-on luggage, I was one of the first to get to immigration.

Oh! I needed a visa. (I hadn't known.) Charge: US$25.

Okay. I hadn't brought along much in the way of US currency, but I could cover that.

Except the officer scowled: "Where am I supposed to put your visa? I have no space in your passport for a visa!"

"Well, can't you use this page?" I asked, pointing to the very last page in the book.

"I am not permitted to put a visa on that page," he said. And he pointed to the barcodes at the bottom.

"But there is room," I countered.

"I should really send you back," he said. "I am not supposed to let you in."

But then he relented. And I realized I have to get additional pages for my passport before I venture forth on another international trip.

When I emerged from the terminal, I looked for my ride.

I saw no one who looked like he (or she) was looking for me.

I walked up and down the line.

No one.

I need to go to the bathroom. Hopefully they will show up while I'm in there, and then we can leave.

When I emerged, still there was no one.

I walked up and down the line once more.

No one.

"Taxi!? Taxi?!" called several entrepreneurial spirits a little apart from the crowd of greeters.

"No thanks," I replied.

But I was perplexed.

What should I do?

I had no phone number, no way to know what I should do.

"May I help you?" a nicely dressed man asked.

"I need to find the Waine Hotel," I said.

He called information. No Waine Hotel. He brought me to a friend in a booth. We looked it up in the Yellow Pages under Hotels. No Waine Hotel.

"I'm sure that's where I'm supposed to go," I said. . . .

A few minutes later, my new friend said, "Ah! It's not the 'Waine Hotel'; it is 'The House of Waine.'"

"Oh, yes!" I said.

"I can take you there," he offered. And a few minutes later I was on my way to the House of Waine.

I had no idea what I was in for.

Half an hour later, I was dropped off at the most astonishing hotel I could imagine seeing, much less staying at. And I walked in on a meeting of about thirteen fellow travelers who had arrived the night before and were now being briefed on missions work among the Deaf.

An hour later, we were told to gather a few things together for an overnight trip to the Kichwa Tembo tent camp on the border of the Masai Mara Game Reserve in southwest Kenya.

First we took a whirlwind tour of the current DOOR facility in downtown Nairobi, ate lunch, and then boarded a small twin-engine piston propeller plane for what turned out to be a 45-minute airplane ride that ended with what may have been the smoothest landing I have ever experienced . . . on a dirt runway in "the middle of nowhere."

Several 10-passenger Land Rovers were waiting, and before you knew it, we were heading off into the bush to see what we could see.

I figure I'll let some photos help tell the story. [Apologies to photographers: I was using a Canon PowerShot A480 and was pushing its limits at every turn. Sadly, the shutter lag time combined with poor quality batteries militated against shooting dozens of photos when it would have been helpful. And, further, I often pushed my lens into digital telephoto territory . . . which almost always destroys detail. Still, I want to illustrate what I saw!]

So. Let's see. . . .

First thing that caught our eye as we were driving away from the landing strip: a large herd of elephants.

And zebras. . . .

A rhino way too far in the distance . . .

Some of the most beautiful birds . . .

And ugly . . .

(By the way: the ostrich on the right is male: he has black plumage; the females' plumage is merely a dark gray.)

Here he is running away . . .

Ugly ducks?!?

Ahhh! Warthogs . . . Lots of warthogs! (Though I didn't get very many decent photos. The warthogs always seemed to scamper off at high speed whenever we came within 50 yards . . . their tails always high in the air.)

. . . Well. Except for this one . . . and one or two of its brothers or sisters . . .

This one was rooting around on the grounds of our campsite on Friday afternoon. Notice he is kneeling on his front legs so he can get his mouth down close enough to the grass to eat!

. . . Hyenas. This one crossed right in front of our vehicle as the elephant herd we saw right after getting of the plane passed by . . .

My camera wasn't fast enough to capture more than this one shot. . . . Until we found a mother with her pups . . . but then I couldn't get that mother's head, either.

Oh, well! The pups sure are cute!

How about baby Thompson's gazelles hiding in the grass . . .

And an adult Thompson's gazelle (one among thousands we saw, though this was the only photo I took that came out well). . .

Ah! One of my favorites: the elegant, multi-colored topi:

. . . Lots of giraffes!

(See them walking across the field?)

Ah! Here's a better shot! --Notice how rich their colors are! Way deeper and darker than I recall seeing on any of the giraffes I've seen here in the States. . . .

See the bird riding on the base of his neck? . . . Here's a better shot:

And . . . take a look at this guy: one horn shorter than the other!

Cape buffaloes . . .

. . . When he began to get up . . .

. . . our driver said we had best be going. --The Cape buffalo is, we were told, the fiercest of all the animals in that part of Africa.

. . . Oh. How about lions?

Early Friday morning, I was afraid this was going to be about all we would get to see of them: four cubs hiding in the grass on top of a mound:

Can you see their heads just barely popping above the top of the grass? (The fourth one is about a fifth of the way in from the left edge of the photo, slightly in front of his "brother" (or is it sister?) at the top of the mound.)

. . . But later in the morning we came across a couple of lions just lying beside the road. . . .

Our driver suggested that, considering how inactive they were, they must be on the tail end of their "honeymoon."

After about five minutes, the male woke up and took a gander at the humans looking at them . . .

The female kept sleeping. . . .

We continued to sit quietly for quite some time just watching.

I was astonished to notice how rapidly the female was breathing. (Our driver said they pant at a rate of about 200 breaths per minute. And that sounded about right.) But what was most amazing was how hard she seemed to work for each breath. Her entire body, including her head, bobbled about on each breath!

Eventually she roused herself . . .

And a giraffe decided to walk on by . . .

. . . and the female decided to go for a walk herself . . .

"Hey! Don't leave without me!" said the male . . .

"Just thirsty, Honey. . . ."

"Good idea!"

Let's see. What else?

Hippopotami . . .

. . . and crocodiles!

Dung beetles . . . rolling their ball of . . . dung . . .

Notice that the one on the right has his hind legs up in the air on top of the ball; the beetle on the left has his front legs up on top of the ball. . . . They were rolling the ball from right to left across the field of view in this photo. . . .

Oops! The guy on the right shoved just a bit too strenuously . . . and toppled his mate!

Probably the nicest photo I got in my entire trip: an impala! --What gorgeous horns!

. . . Well, that's about all of my decent animal photos.

While we're out in the "bush," however, I'd like to point out a few items I noticed about the environment in Masai Mara.

1) Our camp in Masai Mar was at 5,360 feet elevation--very close to our elevation here in the Denver metro area . . . which means the air was pleasantly warm, neither hot nor cold (though we were only a couple of degrees south of the equator).

2) We were told that if we had come just a few weeks earlier, the landscape would have been a dry and dusty brown. They had suffered a lengthy drought that was broken in just the preceding three weeks or so by massive rain. --You can see what a great difference that rain made!

3) We think of Colorada as "Big Sky Country" (though if I remember accurately, Montana claims that verbiage as its state motto). Sarita and I have never lived in a place that has such "big sky"--unimpeded views that extend "forever." . . . Well, if you noticed, the sky in Masai Mara was huge. It beats Colorado for enormity. The landscape seemed to extend at least twice as far as anything I've seen here in Colorado.

And then, finally,

4) I was taken by the trees. Such a strange appearance: flat across the top and "naked" until just the last couple of feet of canopy:

The trees' shape is so regular, from a distance, it can almost create the appearance of a river of light beneath the canopy and above the shrubbery beneath:

I discussed this phenomenon with our guide. Obviously, the reason the trees are denuded up to a certain height is because of the giraffes.

"But considering how thoroughly the giraffes strip the leaves below that particular height,"I asked, "how can young trees survive so as to get to the height where they can grow a foot or two of canopy?"

"That's very interesting," she replied. "Actually, if the giraffes eat enough of their leaves to begin to threaten the trees' survival, the trees change their chemistry and produce tannins . . . which are very bitter chemicals and make the leaves completely unattractive to the giraffes."
*******
Okay. I'm stopping here.

Hope you found the photo tour interesting!

[NOTE: If you are reading this article on Facebook and can't use links or don't see photos, please realize it originally appeared and is still available on my personal blog.]

Ministry among Deaf

I'm back from Kenya. (I got back Monday evening.) A whirlwind tour.

Maybe someday I will talk about the transportation. (It took from Tuesday afternoon Denver time till Thursday mid-morning Nairobi time [about 33 hours] for me to get there; and then from Sunday evening Nairobi time till Monday evening Denver time [about 32 hours] to get home.)

But I'd like to talk about what I saw and learned among the deaf people in Nairobi. But/and before I do that, I want you to understand some of what I was told about where the worldwide deaf community was just 13 years ago, when DOOR (Deaf Opportunity OutReach; www.doorinternational.com) first came into being. You need to understand these things in order to appreciate how dramatic the things were that I observed last Saturday and Sunday.

Thirteen years ago, if I understood what I was told (and if DOOR is to be believed),

• There was no Bible in any Deaf (i.e., sign) language.
   
• There was no Deaf fellowship anywhere in the world in which Deaf community members led their own worship, preached their own sermons, and/or taught their own Bible lessons.
   
• There were no Deaf worship songs.

Please don't misunderstand what I am (or DOOR is) saying.

• Historically, there have been quite a number of Christian churches with Deaf ministries. . . . But think how they have been organized.
   
  • They have been led by hearing people, not by any Deaf people themselves.
     
  • The (hearing) leaders generally view the people to whom they seek to minister—i.e., Deaf people—as handicapped.
     
  • The (hearing) leaders rarely (if ever?) enjoyed any kind of deep understanding of or knowledge about Deaf culture.
     
  • Deaf churchgoers themselves had little opportunity to develop forms of worship that reflected their own culture and experience.
     
  • Moreover Deaf churchgoers have been frustrated by
     
    • poor interpreting,
       
    • lack of access to the Bible in sign language,
       
    • lack of support services, and
       
    • a severe lack of Deaf people with whom to fellowship.

Now, if you're like me, you may feel that some of these “charges” are rather unfair—almost “fighting words.” I mean, they are so harsh, aren't they, against so many well-meaning and hard-working people who have tried to reach out to the (relatively very few) Deaf people around them. Wouldn't you say?

The whole notion of Deafness, for example, not being a handicap: Isn't that crazy? It’s like blindness, isn't it? It limits a person’s opportunities. It’s a limitation—and handicap upon the person’s abilities.

Look at the statistics. (Again, I'm relying on some of the things I heard while in Nairobi.) Deaf people are overwhelmingly un- or, at least, underemployed. How about numbers like 50% unemployed (minimum) to (more realistic/likely/common) numbers like 80% to 90% unemployed (generally "three times higher than the national average in the developing world" according to the book A Journey into the Deaf-World by Harlan Lane, Robert Hoffmeister and Ben Bahan)?

If that kind of unemployment doesn't indicate handicap, I don't know what does!

But, as one of the leaders of the 1988 Gallaudet Revolution told a reporter for USA Today, "Hearing people sometimes call us handicapped. But most—maybe all Deaf people—feel that we're more of an ethnic group because we speak a different language. . . We also have our own culture. . . There's more of an ethnic difference than a handicap difference between us and hearing people."

And so, as one DOOR publication explains, "The members of the Deaf-World see themselves not as people with a disability, but as members of a language minority whose native language happens to be a signed language."

Really? Can such a thing be?

Well, consider. According to A Journey into the Deaf-World:

• Unlike expectant mothers with disabilities, expectant Deaf parents, like those of any other language minority, commonly hope to have children just like themselves, with whom they can share their language, culture and unique experiences. That is why they hope to have Deaf children. (!!! –Emphasis added. –JAH)
   
• Whenever two Deaf people meet, it seems that Sign Language develops naturally . . . which is one reason most observers believe that the Deaf culture is one that can never be totally assimilated or eradicated. Sign Language will never die out.
   
• Members of the Deaf-World commonly refer to themselves as the Deaf, in conversation and in the names of their organizations. It seems right to speak of the Deaf as we speak of the French or the British. Notice that by speaking in this manner, we are not implying that all culturally Deaf people or French people are alike. Rather, we are merely noting that they have certain defining characteristic in common.

Okay. Enough propagandizing!

What I have just told you gives you some idea of "how things were" not that many years ago. --And due to some conversations with my host and as a result of some reading he had me do before I arrived in Nairobi, I was relatively aware of much of what I have just said as I walked into the Bethel Sanctuary of the Nairobi Baptist Church last Saturday afternoon for the dedication of the first 32 Bible stories translated into Kenyan Sign Language and reproduced on DVD. (NOTE: Next Saturday, January 30, DOOR is planning to celebrate the translation of the same first 32 stories in the Kerala (India) Sign Language Bible.) [2/10/10 UPDATE: I've now added a brief post about that celebration.]

First thing that "blew me away": There had to be 300 or more Deaf people in the congregation. I had never seen so many Deaf in one place before!

And the service was led by a number of Deaf people.

 

Rather than being the recipients of hearing people's "ministry," we, the hearing, became the recipients of spoken translations of what the Deaf were saying and singing.

And while we're on that subject, I should probably note: I was told that the wide variety and large number of speakers and singers who led in this service was actually far less than what the Deaf themselves would have enjoyed had they not had so many hearing guests. Only seven dancer/singers leading in worship? Why, that's nothing compared to a normal Deaf service! Normally you might see even 50 people up front!

Something else that blew me away (and, I will confess, not very positively . . . until I had someone explain some of the reason why things were/are the way they are): During the Saturday service, they repeated the same story--the story of Jesus healing the paralytic who was let down through the roof of the house by his four friends-- . . . They repeated that story five times over without a break . . . except to get a different person or group to come up front and re-tell it.

Oh, there was some slight variation in the telling. One time it was told straight by one person. The next telling involved a group more re-enacting it. I don't remember how the telling may have differed the other three times. I just remember thinking, at the time, "How boring! How can they stand this?"

But then, when I asked about it, my sources explained:

• Remember that the only way the Deaf can master their Bible stories is if they memorize them. Repetition helps solidify their memories.
   
• Remember that most hearing people have heard these stories over and over throughout their lives. For many Deaf, this is the first time they have ever heard the story.
   
• The details of a story are very important for the Deaf—more important than for hearing people.
   
• Normally, in a Deaf service, there is actually much more interaction. Members of the "audience" or "congregation" will ask questions. The leader may say, "The men came to the house." And someone in the audience will ask, "Why?" And there will be a great give-and-take between story-teller and story-listeners.
   
• The Deaf "talk" (i.e., "sign") for hours on end. Since so few have employment, it is very common to find them staying up all night telling stories and sucking the marrow out of each narrative. They find significance in tiny details that [hearing people] would never think to talk about.

. . . And so forth.

So they repeated the same story five times over.

And their worship songs, by and large, consisted of just a few words repeated endlessly--fifteen times or more per phrase, sometimes, before moving on. And while the monotone interpretation and virtually identical expression drove me to distraction, the Deaf themselves appeared in ecstacy:

Hallelujah. Jesus.
Hallelujah. Jesus.
Hallelujah. Jesus.
Hallelujah. Jesus.
Praise the Lord.
Hallelujah. Jesus.
Hallelujah. Jesus.
Hallelujah. Jesus.
Praise the Lord.
Praise the Lord.
Praise the Lord.
Praise the Lord. . . .

I will confess, there was one song they sang--and I attempted to join in singing/signing--on Sunday that I really enjoyed. I think it had to do not only with the meaning, but with the motions:

Higher, higher, higher, higher.
Jesus higher.
Lower lower, lower, lower.
Satan lower. . . .

And on the "highers," we raised our hands progressively higher over our heads, and on the "lowers," we brought our hands down until they almost touched the ground, and then stomped our feet as if smashing Satan into the ground.

I look forward to the day when someone in the Deaf community begins to write significantly more complex and spiritually and intellectually deeper songs.

One note, however: As I tried to debrief on this subject as well, my sources noted that until a few years ago, there were no Deaf songs of any type. And when Mike Buus, president of DOOR, urged the Deaf to write their own songs (rather than attempt to translate standard "hearing" songs into sign language), the Deaf protested: "We can't do that! God can't hear us! He doesn't know our language!"

--It was (and is) the same story missionaries and Bible translators have told many times before: Until the Scriptures are translated into a people's heart language, they figure it is impossible for God to talk with them and impossible for them to talk with God.

But today the Deaf are beginning to enjoy their own hymnody, despite whatever limitations there may be in complexity and depth of understanding or expression.

Some more observations:

"Funny": The fundamental Deaf worship experience involves two things that any upstanding conservative Baptist or fundamentalist Christian church in the United States would likely find appalling. The one and only musical instrument (used for every song): Drums.

(This photo is from the Sunday morning worship at the new DOOR ministry center being constructed on the far outskirts of Nairobi in the Ongata Rongai District, a few hundred yards from the Africa Nazarene University. If you look above, at the second photo in the series illustrating the diversity of deaf leaders, toward the left of the photo, in the background, you'll see the drum set used on Saturday.)

The drum is the only instrument that creates such a sharp physical sensation that the Deaf can feel the vibration through their bodies. I was impressed with how the drum could keep the entire multi-hundred-person congregation in perfect time.

Besides feeling the drumbeat, the members of the congregation themselves often clapped vigorously in time with one another.

But then, secondly, song leaders and congregants, both, could hardly sit still while singing! No sounds emanated from most of their mouths. But their hands and arms and legs and bodies moved in beautiful movement to the beat. Or, to put it succinctly: they danced.

So two fundamental aspects of Deaf worship are drums and dance.

I wonder what kind of reception those behaviors would receive in the average fundamental Baptist church in America! ;-)

Well. I need to bring this post to a close!

Here are a few more, final pictures.

We were in Africa primarily to witness and participate in the dedication of the first 32 stories of the Kenya Sign Language Bible.

During the Saturday service, we were shown some short clips of how the Bible "works": a person signs the story while helpful graphics are displayed in the background (as shown below), or someone explains background information or provides additional explanatory material.

This photo was shot from one of the monitors in the sanctuary on Saturday afternoon.

After listening to explanations and watching samples, it finally came time to pray for, thank God for, and reveal the new translation.

Here Mike Buus (on far right) prays while the translation team and other key support personnel lay their hands on the materials about to be revealed.

The joyful reveal:

Mike explaining why there are not only DVDs, but printed storyboard books, too (to enable users to remind themselves how to retell each story accurately).

One of the deaf members of the translation team leading in a prayer of thanks to God for giving Deaf Kenyans the first Bible in their own heart language:

I'll stop here.

More later.

[NOTE: If you are reading this article on Facebook and can't use links or don't see photos, please realize it originally appeared and is still available on my personal blog.]

Woo-hoo! Sonlight/InquisiCorp goes (partially) solar . . .

It's been close to nine months since I first pushed to have Sonlight/InquisiCorp look into installing solar power. As of noon today, my dream became reality.

We are supposed to generate close to a third of our electricity using solar panels on our warehouse roof:

The monitoring system isn't fully up to snuff. ("Environmentals," for example, in the upper right-hand corner, is completely wacked-out at the moment.) But the reality is, we are generating power. And, though just about everything else still has to be tweaked to make it correct, I am told the RG PV numbers on the detail view page are accurate.

The way it was all explained to me is this:

There is some malfunction with the weather monitoring station, so the displays under “Environmentals” (on the top right) are not correct. Also, under “detail view” PV devices (on the left) showing the production directly from the inverter is not displaying either. RG PV (right below PV) is the revenue grade monitor which is an auditing device that is actually more precise than the PV/Inverter is working. The PV/Inverter numbers only need to be within plus/minus 5% while the RG PV is accurate to within .5%. Stephen and Matthew will be back within the next week to finetune these issues.

Under “Detail”, you can check power, voltage or current on the chart below those tabs. DC Input is tied to the PV/Inverter, so won’t display until they correct whatever is malfunctioning with that monitor. Mousing over each data point shows the readings for every 15 minute interval. The “Custom” tab on the far right of the chart enables us to define a date range, which should be helpful to compare to our billing cycle.

Stephen, our service rep, will forward a link that we can imbed on our website that will offer displays similar to the one at Boulder Valley Credit Union.

I look forward to having all the data available for view!
[NOTE: If you are reading this article on Facebook, it originally appeared on my personal blog.]

The Missional Church

I'm headed over to Nairobi, Kenya, this evening (scheduled to arrive tomorrow evening, Nairobi time) to join with a group of men at DOOR (Deaf Opportunity OutReach) International's Deaf Bible Translation and Training Center. We are planning to participate in the dedication of the first 32 stories in DOOR's Deaf Bible Translation project.

In preparation for this trip, our group leader asked us to read Tim Keller's The Missional Church.

I am blown away. It expresses so much of what I have felt over the years but have been unable to express. So many great insights!

It also offers some historical and cultural perspectives that help explain to my satisfaction a lot of "why things are the way they are."

Here, for example, is some of the explanation:

• "In the West for nearly 1,000 years, the relationship of (Anglo-European) Christian churches to the broader culture was a relationship known as 'Christendom.'"

Okay. And what does that mean?

• "The institutions of society 'Christianized' people," i.e.,
  
  
  • They taught members of the culture what was "good" in terms both of belief and behavior.
     
  • They also stigmatized non-Christian belief and behavior.
   
• However, as Keller notes,
  
  
  • "Christian morality without gospel-changed hearts often led to cruelty and hypocrisy. Think of how the small town in 'Christendom' treated the unwed mother or the gay person. Also, under 'Christendom' the church often was silent against abuses of power of the ruling classes over the weak."
  
  And, therefore,
   
• "For these reasons and others, the church in Europe and North America has been losing its privileged place as the arbiter of public morality since at least the mid 19th century. The decline of Christendom has accelerated greatly since the end of WWII."

These observations, alone, I thought, were well worth the reading of the paper. But Keller was barely warmed up.

• "British missionary Lesslie Newbigin went to India around 1950. There he was involved with a church living 'in mission' in a very non-Christian culture. When he returned to England some 30 years later, he discovered that now the Western church too existed in a non-Christian society, but it had not adapted to its new situation."
  

What does that mean?

• "Though public institutions and popular culture of Europe and North America no longer 'Christianized' people, the church still ran its ministries assuming that a stream of 'Christianized', traditional/moral people would simply show up in services."

And that means . . . ????

• "[T]he church in the West had not become . . . 'missional'--adapting and reformulating [what] it did in worship, discipleship, community, and service--so as to be engaged with the non-Christian society around it."

Therefore . . .

• It continued to use "stylized prayer language, unnecessary evangelical pious 'jargon', and archaic language that seeks to set a 'spritual tone.'"
   
• It engaged in "sentimental, pompous, 'inspirational' talk" that set it apart from the culture round about.
   
• It permitted itself to speak in "'we-them' language," to tell "jokes that mock[ed] people of different politics and beliefs, and [to make] dismissive, disrespectful comments about those who differ[ed] with" those on the "inside."
   
• It spoke "as if non-believing people [were] not present" in its meetings.
   
• Interaction with non-believers consisted "more . . . of exhortation (and, often, heavy reliance on guilt)" than "real engagement [with], listening [to], or persuasion" of those who might believe differently than those on the "inside."
   
• Teaching and training focused, too often, solely on such "private world" skills as "prayer, Bible study, [and] evangelism" rather than how to interface with and respond effectively to "radically non-Christian values in . . . public life--where [church members] work, in their neighborhood, etc."
   
• Churches and church members continued "to define [themselves] over against other churches" rather than seeking to exhibit primary solidarity with other Christians over against the non-Christian culture that surrounded them.

So what should the church become and do?

You can get a good idea by almost turning each one of the points above inside out . . . or reading Keller's article yourself to hear him state these and other points in a more positive manner.

Interesting to me: Keller's message almost directly parallels something I've been writing about recently as a result of a request I've been given to help start a university--a university to achieve Kingdom purposes but in a manner that reaches across cultural barriers. It also parallels a project I sought to begin six and a half years ago with Sonlight Curriculum. Here's how I recently told that story:

In August of 2003, a friend of ours who is deeply involved in outreach to Muslims in a certain limited-access country preached a sermon at our church. In it, he quoted Robert Bruce, an Irish missionary of the 19th century who ministered in Persia. It seems that, at one point during Bruce’s ministry, he wrote to his supporters back home: "I am not reaping the harvest; I can scarcely claim to be sowing the seed; I am hardly plowing the soil; but I am gathering out the stones."

When I heard this statement, it electrified me. It particularly grabbed my attention because just a few days before I had read an article in World magazine (August 2, 2003 issue) in which Marvin Olasky, one of the magazine's editors, noted that most Americans—even the "well-educated," even those who have grown up in nominally Christian homes and in highly churched areas of the country—are totally out-of-touch with a biblical or evangelical Christian point-of-view.

"What's to be done?" Olasky asked. "Biblical Christians (and orthodox believers in Judaism and other faiths) need to remember that to most leaders in media and academia we are speaking a foreign language; we need to be bilingual and to offer translation services. Media and academic monolingualists need to realize that understanding evangelical language and culture requires at least as much work as understanding a foreign language and culture. They need interpreters and guides." (From Waiting for the translation: Religious Americans will not be understood without cross-cultural training.)

What he said jibed with what I had observed among non-evangelical Sonlighters. So I was thinking about these things when my friend preached his sermon.

And as I thought about these cultural and communicative realities in the context of Bruce's statement about gathering out stones, I realized I had never thought of removing stones as a form of legitimate evangelistic or missional activity! Extending the analogy: I had never thought of soil preparation (as in: adding soil amendments or compost) as a legitimate evangelistic or missional activity, either. I had only thought about sowing and reaping . . . as per Jesus’ parable in which He talks about the seed falling on different types of soil. Jesus didn’t talk about PREPARING the soil—and so I didn't think of such activities, either!

But in normal farming and gardening, soil preparation is key.

Shortly after hearing my friend’s sermon, I was talking with our daughter when she noted that in the Sunset Garden Masters Reveal their Secrets book, one of the contributors says, "If you have a garden and a dollar, spend 90 cents on soil and 10 cents on plants."

So in that context, I began thinking: While our homeschool program, Sonlight Curriculum^®, the brand, is not well-suited to audiences other than evangelicals, perhaps Sonlight Curriculum, Ltd., the company, could create a new brand focused on a non-evangelical audience.

And so I suggested to our management team that we use most of the same materials we had put together for Sonlight Curriculum^® but modify our assumptions about the audience. For the new brand, instead of assuming our customers would be evangelical Christians (as we have for Sonlight, even though we know quite a few are not), what if we were to assume that our audience was NOT evangelical (even though some probably would be)? We could still use 80 or 90 percent of the books we had chosen for Sonlight^®. We could also use 80 or 90 percent of the work we had done developing the Sonlight^® instructor’s guides.

The main thing we would need to do is change the tone of many of our notes, questions and answers. Ask much the SAME questions, but change our assumptions about our audience. Don't use Christian language; don't assume that students will have any inkling what certain words or concepts [familiar to evangelicals, but unfamiliar to others] may mean. . . .

Even with all of these changes, WE COULD STILL BRING THE EVANGELICAL WORLDVIEW TO BEAR in the larger marketplace of ideas. . . .

To modify Bruce somewhat: "We could scarcely claim to be sowing seeds; we would hardly be plowing the soil; but [I thought] we could be gathering out the stones" of this new generation of Americans who know very little else about evangelical Christianity other than that, they believe, they should despise or reject it.

By RAISING THE QUESTIONS, and by INCLUDING evangelical answers AMONG OTHERS, we could "bring evangelicalism to the table."

Sonlight Curriculum, Ltd., has never been able to achieve that goal. InquisiCorp Corporation, the holding company we created in hopes that it might transfer some of the intellectual property from Sonlight^® to the new brand-- . . . InquisiCorp Corporation has, so far, never been able to achieve that goal.

But now, with the new university before me, and with the further encouragement of Tim Keller's article, I am hopeful that maybe, just maybe, we may be able to achieve this goal of helping to create an institution that can cross the barriers and speak into the culture in which we now find ourselves.

I pray that may be the case.

[NOTE: If you are reading this article on Facebook, it originally appeared on my personal blog.]