One of the downsides of being a pastor’s wife is that you can get kind of apathetic about your faith. Jon is an amazing preacher but for some reason I listen better when he’s not the one preaching. (Don’t ask me why — I feel guilty about this.) I do read my daily devotion and Scripture every day and all that; but I rarely feel *EXCITED* about my faith like I used to.
Yesterday, I was scouring the list of churches in the Lutheran World Federation looking for pictures to use as the header on my Blogathon site. Granted, I couldn’t really read what was going on with the Chinese and Korean churches because they didn’t really have English translations but I did see a Lutheran church in Tokyo that had many services happening with even a noon service during the week. Duuuuude! Other churches in Asia had outreach to foreign workers in their countries and I saw worship services in probably 13 different languages listed on the Australian Lutheran website. We do a fair amount of Spanish and Chinese ministries in the US but not Croatian, Estonian, Finnish, Thai, and others.Â? With the Latin American churches, I could kind of understand what they were talking about and their level of service and outreach was one that my denomination (the ELCA) only *wishes* it could attain. Again… duuuuuuuude!
Africa was definitely the most humbling. Many of the national churches didn’t have websites and this frustrated me until the Almighty whapped me upside the head with a 2×4 and said “Uh Jen… most of those people don’t have Internet access!!!!!” (Hey… making websites for African Lutheran groups: this could soooo be a new missionary thing for me.) The ones that did were just awesome in what they did: ministry to street children, AIDS ministries (especially in Kenya and Tanzania), agricultural assistance, etc. I know that the ELCA does provide quite a bit of aid in those areas (as does Lutheran World Relief, for whom I am Blogathonning) but I was just gobsmacked in how the national churches themselves were working in peacekeeping, poverty eradication, empowering women, and even amputee welfare and support. (This last one was in Sierra Leone where rebels chopped off limbs of men, women, and children.)
One of the things that irritates me about my fellow Americans is that we fail to really think about what’s going on internationally unless it affects our pocket books, is harped on daily by the president (i.e. IRAQ! AFGHANISTAN! 9/11!), or is an exotic place where we want to travel. One of the things I loved about the area where we lived in Minnesota is they had a Global Missions gathering which met monthly and heard from different people who had been out in the mission field and had done work with Christians outside the USA. I swear… I was excited to be with those people when we worshipped and fellowshipped because they were educated about the outside world and they genuinely cared about things like the Diamonds Without Blood initiative in Sierra Leone. (This is why I don’t have a diamond on my wedding ring.)
Maybe it’s just me, but it seemed like people cared more about things in the outside world when I lived in cities. Part of it could have been the non-homogenous population (i.e. not everyone is white) and the presence of different ethnic groups which had festivals and such. Part of it could have been that people interacted globally in business. Whatever it was, it wasn’t the “us” vs. “them” sentiment that I occasionally find here on the Hi-Line.
Anyway… the work I was doing yesterday made me excited to be Christian and Lutheran for the first time in a very long time.
