Dream big

Hi Mercy & Justice team (and anyone else who wants to post!),

Here’s something I’d like to know:

What is your biggest personal ambition / dream / goal as it pertains to mercy and justice ministry? This may or may not relate to your current occupation.

You may not have thought through this before, but is there an area of particular interest in which you’d like to serve?

I’ll break my usual “wait-till-others-share” rule here to share that my hope is to work in an educational setting. My own educational experience was a huge blessing to me, and yet even in America there are lots of broken places where children slip through in the school system. This was solidified for me when I saw the movie, “The Marva Collins Story” (which sometimes plays on the Gospel Music Channel). Cecily Tyson played the real-life educator whose singular passion for educational success among children in her community made a drastic difference. I want to help open doors to hope and opportunity in places where children simply need someone to love on and believe in them. We shall see!

Come, chime into our discussion! I’d love to hear your hearts!

Angel Tree suggestions

Hi everyone–sorry I have written in so late about the Angel Tree comment I made at the last meeting. But, reading When Helping Hurts has given me some thoughts on how we might be able to improve the Angel Tree process this year.

1. I think that there needs to be an integration between those who buy the gifts and the recipients who receive the gifts. Right now, Parkwooders can pick up a tag, drop off a gift, and they are done with the process. We do this to make it easier for people to be involved, but as we have read about in WHH, we could actually be perpetuating a “God-complex” in the participants by running the program this way.

2. Instead, I’d like for us to think about whether we can change things this year so that whomever buys the gift is also the person who delivers the gift. I know this results in a higher commitment from people, but I think it is an important change for us to consider. That way, there is less of a disconnect between the gift-buyer and the gift-recipient. And if there are multiple children from the same family, perhaps a group of people could all buy those gifts together and then give them together.

3. To make this potential change easier, I am wondering it would be best to assign this task to the small groups initially. It will be much easier for people to do this in the context of a community of people who will all be in it together. Also, then the small group could try to maintain a connection with those families they were assigned and to keep the relationship going throughout the year and beyond.

4. Then if there are still leftover gifts to be purchased, we could open the rest up to the church, but still encourage the gift buyer-gift deliverer experience.

So those are some initial thoughts I have, and I’d welcome other ideas. This will definitely stretch people who are used to just buying gifts and feeling good about their contribution, but I think our role as the M&J team is to continually stretch and push the congregation to look to the next step of how we all can grow in this area. And as we discussed at the last meeting, building personal connections with those who would be considered under-resourced or disadvantaged is an important growth area for us all. Angel Tree doesn’t allow us to do this in great depth, but it is at least a start.

-Helen

M&J book study: getting to know you

Welcome to the Parkwood Community Church blog! This blog was used most recently Pastor Peter’s incredible journey to Colombia and Mexico on a visioning trip to see community projects. (We hope to hear more from him in the coming weeks.) We’re excited to revive the use of the blog.

For the next few months, the blog will be used to help foster discussion between monthly Mercy & Justice team book study meetings of When Helping Hurts. It’s fitting that we’ll be blogging after Pastor Peter’s entries, given the upcoming Christian Community Development Association conference, as well as how the book tackles questions about the effectiveness of helping communities – including times when our help is not needed or may even be problematic.

*We welcome ANYONE’s contribution toward our discussions, since we’ll be discussing more than the book, and want to include the church in our thought process.*

We’re working on setting up a general Parkwood account for folks to use to make new posts, but for now, go ahead and post on the site using Comments.

Just to get the discussion juices going, I’ll pose an initial question: Was there a turning point / moment when you started to care more about social justice (implicitly, as it pertains to the gospel)? What happened, and where did it leave you?

I’ve done enough talking for now, so I’ll hand it over – I’d love to hear from you!

Vision Trip-Day Nueve y Diez

Day 9 & 10:  True Acts of Compassion, Mercy and Justice.

DAY 9

Even though it’s been only 9 Days, I’m having a hard time remembering what I did on which day.   I thought that it was old age, I mentioned this to Bruce and he smiled and said “Welcome to Mexico!” 

This afternoon, we met up with two local covenant pastors.  One of the questions that I’ve asked all the pastors was “What are some challenges you face in ministry?”  For the most part, it always has to do with the fact there are so many people who have a hunger to learn and grow yet the pastors do not have enough time and resources.  It seems odd contrastingly that in America, it’s just the opposite, way too much resources but not enough hunger to grow and learn.  To them, the hunger pangs they have for Jesus is the same kind of hunger pangs they have for food, shelter and community.  I am humbled by their level of passion and faithfulness.

The pastors drove us to several school sites known as “Semillas de Salud” (Seeds of Health)where they have done some partnership work to serve the community mainly through medical care.  Unlike Colombia, Mexico has a strict separation of church and state policy.  So while the church ministry does not overtly pray and share the gospel, they display their love for God and serve their community through acts of compassion, mercy and justice.  A medical doctor volunteers her time twice a week to care for the children of the schools.  Church groups from the US, while they are not allowed to “proselytize” the students, come to the schools to give basic health screenings.  I asked the pastor who was in charge “How does gospel sharing happen in such partnership with the schools?”  and he said that while we don’t preach the gospel, we “show the gospel through acts of compassion and servanthood.  And if  students and family ask ‘who are you and why are you doing this?’  they would explain that they are from the local church and they do it because God commands us to serve.  The church’s hope is that through their act service, the children and their family would become curious to say “I want to know more about your God!”  The pastors concern is not about their church growth or number of people entering into their church, but about truly serving people without strings attached and ulterior motives.

Later that afternoon, we visited a ministry called “Fuentes Libres.”  It is a micro-financing ministry of ECC that gives women an opportunity to start a business so that they and their family can break out of their cycle of poverty and disempowerment.     We walked into a meeting that already started next to the church.  More than 30 women, young and old come together to pool their resources in order to fulfill their dream of breaking out of the cycle of poverty.  I asked the group “How has this ministry impacted their life?”  One by one, they shared about what business venture they started and shared about how it has impacted their family for the better.  So far, the ministries success rate is 98%.

I sat down with one of the original founders and creators of Fuentes Libres, Pastor Memo, and he said that the inspiration came from a Nobel Peace Prize winner from India.  The foundation and success of the ministry is that people are truly committed to each other not just financially, but also emotionally and spiritually.  As he was talking, I was reminded of how the first Christians came together pooling their resources and because a source of support for one another.  It also reminded me of what my parents used to do when they first came to America and didn’t have any money and lack the credit to get a loan.  They used to get together with other Korean Immigrant families to pool their money together as their own bank known as “Gaeh”. The group met every month.  Each member pays the same amount at the monthly meeting.  Depending on the lottery, one member gets to use all the money.   The system continues until every member has had a turn using all the money. Some families use the money to buy a home, purchase a car, to start a business or to pay their children’s tuition.  Just like the “Fuentes Libres” ministry and the Korean “Gaeh” group, its success is fundamental because of high level of ethics through mutual care, commitment and accountability.

DAY 10

Next morning (Friday), we made our way back towards Oaxaca with a stopover at Vincente Guerrero Educational Center.  It rained earlier that morning and we were concerned that we would get caught in traffic through the mountain roads, worse yet, rockslides would prevent us indefinitely.  By late morning, the rain had stopped.  The weather turned out beautiful and we headed out.  The rock slides on the mountain was evident the night before as road crew swept stones to the side of the road and used jackhammers to break through the large boulders that were in the middle of the road.

By noon, we got to Jalapa and stopped to see a partnership of churches, community leaders and their community to work towards organizing an educational center.  Jalapa is part of a squatter community in Mexico.  Just about a mile  away, there is a landfill.  Families graze through the landfill to gather recycling material, so they can sell it to the recycling centers.  This community is somewhat an embarrassment to some Oaxacans that they deny that such a squatter community exists. 

At the educational center, the teachers work with adults to learn some basic reading and math skill.  What was amazing about this educational center was that it attracted not only adults but also teens.  For whatever reason,  teen ministry and program has always been a challenge, whether it is in the US, Mexico and Colombia.  As I stepped out of the car, I was greeted by four lovely teenage girls.  They all said ‘hello’ to me in English.  We sat in a circle with some other adults and they began to share with me about what they have been doing and what this educational center meant to them.  My impression of these girls is that they have an insatiable curiosity to know more about the world outside of Mexico, especially from foreigners.  One of their teacher’s name is Katty Dockter, who serves as a short-term missionary with the Covenant.  It must have rocked their world to converse with an Asian, let alone one who spoke English and talked broken Spanglish!

By the time we came near our hotel, we were all a bit tired.  It had been a long day on the road, physically, mentally and emotionally.  We were hungry and by this time I was craving something different than Mexican food.  So we drove through “Gringolandia” and ate at KFC. 

Tomorrow would be a lighter schedule.  I will be putting on my tourist hat and sightsee the town of Oaxaca and her history and culture.

Vision Trip-Day Ocho

Day 8

Bruce, Amy, JoEllen and I left for the Isthmus of Tehuantepec (teh-wahn-teh-peck) which is in the eastern part the state of Oaxaca via auto.  This isthmus (small body of water that connects two larger bodies of water) connects the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico.   The Isthmus was originally founded by the Zapotec community and it’s culture still persists today although the predominant language has evolved to Spanish.  For sociologist it has become a place of interest because of its matriarchal aspect of tradition.  Its influence may have come from the Huaves people from Peru or Nicaragua shortly after the Spanish conquest.  Tehuantepec women are Mexico’s “liberated women” and are characterized as being “open, confident, assertive and friendly.  And they freely take part in business and government.”  This also spills over in the way they lead in the local church.

It was a four hour drive on the Pan-American Highway, which took us up and down the mountains on a two-lane road.  The mountainside highway is made up of an ominous rock wall on one side, a cliff-side that drops to the river, on the other.  There are hardly any guard rails and no nets to catch the falling rocks.  There was a heavy downpour of rain the night before, which created a rocks falling on the road.  And we drove, we could see rocks, stones and boulders in the middle of road.  Apparently it gets dangerous at night in these mountains, that there is a mission’s policy to not drive at night through the mountain roads.  I noticed a dozen or more crosses on the side of the road, in memory of a loved one who must have fallen to their demise.   At one point, three men who seemed like they were working for the Department of Transportation were trying to move a boulder, that probably weighs more than a ton, by sheer man power.  You can picture the oddity and comical nature of this.  Thank goodness that Bruce was driving; he worked as a bus driver at one point in his career and knew how to work the roads.

We arrived at a local hotel, that had great accommodations.  We grabbed a bite to eat at a place which in my opinion had the best shrimp and steak skewers .  Seafood such as shrimp and fish are abundant in these coastal regions.

After dinner, we went to a local covenant church called “Templo el Nuevo Pacto” that had a midweek meeting for a bible study.  The worship was very charismatic and apart from one gentleman who led some worship songs, the women were visible leaders of the church, which is characteristic of a matriarchal community.  We had come as guests and our intention was to observe and be participants in worship, but at one point, they invited JoEllen and I to come forward.  JoEllen did a quick intro of who we were and then asked if I could lead a devotional message.  So impromptu, I led a devotional with JoEllen’s help in translation and prayed that it sowed seeds of faith. 

The people at the church were gracious and we got invited to breakfast next day.  The rest of the night was uneventful.  We were a bit tired from the drive and from the heat, and retired early.  Tomorrow we have scheduled two breakfasts.  One at 9am at a church members home and another at 10:30am a restaurant with local pastors.  When I get back, I’m in dire need to get back into exercising!  Tomorrow I am pretty excited about going to a ministry that works with women and serves and reaches the community through micro-lending.