Thursday, February 22, 2007

We all knew that winter had to come back again. Last night as I was blogging, the snow was coming down hard, leaving a nice fresh new dusting this morning. And now, they say there's a winter storm on the way for tomorrow afternoon and into Friday. The respite was good while it lasted, but winter hath no end, I'm afraid.

Surprisingly, not much to report today. Went off to missions conference again, where Floyd said something else I didn't really agree with, but I'm sure you're tired of the long-winded postings this week, so I'll spare you. Got a chance to look at a bunch of other exhibits, too. What struck me was that all the mission organizations tend to sound a lot alike, just with different names. All had fancy signage, all had handouts, all had resources, and all had need for workers. Some organizations put a lot of money into recruiting, while others have small posters that look handmade.

The hardest part about it is that they all do something really valuable and all have their particular niche. In a lot of ways, I think it would be really great if we could just pool all the resources going into missions together and stop duplicating a lot of the work being done. Not that there are two or three missionaries competing for the same lost tribe, but that there's probably a lot of redundancy back at home with offices, staff, resources, and the like. All I'm saying is that it might be less of a logistical problem if we realized we were on the same team and worked together instead of competing for the same smallish pool of workers.

It seems to be the M.O. of Christians to spend more time proving something to each other than actually doing the work of the Gospel. We posture and push within our denominations over small points of doctrinal interpretation (of which I am guilty, especially in the area of women in ministry leadership), we spend countless scholarly hours on writing books that support our particular take on baptism over and against the practices of another denomination, and we quibble and fight within our congregations over really silly things like the way the letters on a sign are leaning (I have experience with that one--I only wish I'd made it up). What if we took that energy and focussed it elsewhere? How much more and better work could we be doing if we looked outside instead of in?

I know, the solution isn't simple, is it? It's at the very least more complicated than I've presented it. *Sigh.* But what if? While I've been here, I've had time to think about the what if, and it's exciting. I really hope that I never lose that sense of expectation over what could happen, because too often I allow myself to get caught up in the intricate details of minor problems and forget that there's a whole world that needs to hear the message I bear. Am I going out there and proclaiming it? Not remotely. There has to be more than this.

Well, that section turned out to be a little more self-reflective and melancholic than I imagined. Oh well. I had some incisive social commentary to share based on a particularly disturbing news story happening in these parts, but I'll leave that for tomorrow.

Right now, I'm going to break this week's trend of epic posts and hit the hay. Thanks for stopping by yet again. See you tomorrow.