Consuming Jesus

In April of 2010, many people gathered at Allen Temple Christian Methodist Episcopal Church for “An Evening of Prayerful Repentance and Reconciliation.” Dr. LeRoy Haynes, Jr. and Dr. John M. Perkins led us in a time of worship and celebration and prayerful solidarity that God’s people might become one in the Greater Portland area. Ever since then, many Christians have been meeting in different locations to encourage and exhort and equip the multi-ethnic Christian community in the greater Portland area. There have been ups and downs along the way. However, I now feel that we are gaining traction with these gatherings.

We are now giving a title to our monthly gatherings involving various churches. We are calling our gatherings “The John 17:23 Network.” The aim of The John 17:23 Network is to encourage, exhort, and equip the multi-ethnic Body of Christ in the greater Portland area to fulfill Jesus’ prayer in our midst that we might all be one.

We held our first meeting for the 2011 year at Trinity Full Gospel Pentecostal Church on January 30th. Pastor William Turner, the Senior Pastor of Trinity and his church’s choir, Pastor David Stevens, Senior Pastor of Central Bible Church, Pastor Cliff Chappell, Senior Pastor of All Nations Church of God in Christ, and a large gathering of people from various churches came together to pray and worship and encourage one another to seek to live into Jesus’ prayer in John 17. Many shared after the celebration how encouraged they were by the event. Our prayer is that such gatherings will energize us to run the marathon race of breaking down divisions and entering into the fullness of Jesus’ undying and reconciling love for the church.

Please stay tuned for updates regarding the upcoming meetings. Please see the attached document with details of the January 30th meeting as well as information regarding the meetings in February and March. Thank you. God bless you!

Paul Louis Metzger

The following post is a response to a question concerning my recent article at Out of Ur regarding Pastor Mark Driscoll’s critique of the movie Avatar.  For the original article in Out of Ur, please refer to the following link: http://www.outofur.com/archives/2010/07/driscoll_avatar.html.
At one point in the article, I write: “The movie Avatar was not simply a movie to Pastor Driscoll. Nor was his critique of this movie simply poor cultural critique to me. It was a symbolic statement of total blindness to what the Western powers have done and continue to do in our day to indigenous peoples and their habitats globally all in the name of progress.”  This statement gave rise to the following comment by “Melody”:

‘…total blindness to what the Western powers have done and continue to do in our day to indigenous peoples and their habitats globally all in the name of progress.’  Paul, could you give three specific examples of this?

Here is my response to Melody’s comment:

Hello, Melody.  Thank you for your question.  I will seek to provide numerous examples past and present, and from different angles, after first outlining different aspects of what I mean by oppression in this context.

Oppression takes place in various ways, including the following: first, through direct military confrontation by Western powers that involves annexing domains and taking resources, as in the colonial period; second, through Western powers’ fostering dependence among indigenous peoples and developing countries coupled with enticing developing countries to open their doors to foreign markets, which at times leads these developing countries to take lands and resources from their own indigenous peoples to build industry; and third, by failing to overturn the structures of evil that carry on from the past into the present. When I speak of “total blindness to what the Western powers have done and continue to do in our day to indigenous peoples and their habitats globally all in the name of progress,” I have this multi-faceted view of what I call “oppression” in the blog article in mind.  In what follows, I will engage these three points.

The way in which the Western powers function today is often quite different from previous times–here and abroad (as I stated in my Avatar article, the movie is a “page right out of American history”; while there are multitudes of pages to American history, the Manifest Destiny ambitions often present in US expansion fill scores of pages–see for example the video “How the West Was Lost: A Good Day to Die” {1993}).   One church leader in a developing country told a friend who’s worked with indigenous peoples internationally that “They used to come with machine guns.  Now they come with briefcases.”

My friend mentioned to me recently that in places like Rwanda and Cambodia indigenous people are displaced from land for the sake of big business. While it may be locals displacing the indigenous people, it is often bound up with efforts to cater to Western businesses and expansion of markets, as well as historic patterns of influence by the West that have inspired local manifestations of the drive to control weaker or more vulnerable populations and use their resources for one’s own good.  While I favor international trade and affirm God’s calling on humanity to steward and cultivate creation, it is also important that we are intentional on protecting the rights of the poor and marginalized as we pursue trade that is truly free.  Trade that is truly free ensures that the poor and marginalized do not fall through the cracks in the pursuit of ecomonic development.

I should say at this point that Western powers are not simply military powers, but also corporate business powers.  Globalization has strengths and weaknesses, and it is extremely important that governments have in place safeguards that protect the marginalized and weaker parties here and abroad. Given the biblical, orthodox doctrine of original sin and total depravity, we should never favor unregulated free trade: power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Recent movies draw attention to the reality of how Western powers put pressure on developing world countries, and in a variety of ways.  Highly regarded film critic Emanuel Levy writes of the movie Blood Diamond, “Though mostly set in Sierra Leone in 1999-2000, ‘Blood Diamond’ clearly wants to draw attention to broader issues and other locales, namely, the exploitation of Third World countries by Western powers such as the U.K. and the U.S. While the scarce resource in this tale is diamonds, the same exploitation could be depicted in the case of other scarce natural resources, such as rubber, gold, oil, which more often than not results in a tragedy for the country in which they are found.”
http://www.emanuellevy.com/search/details.cfm?id=5195

The movie Hotel Rwanda draws attention to the post-colonial situation in which Western powers largely abandoned Rwanda when the conflict between the Hutu and Tutsi people erupted into civil war and genocide (According to the BBC, the Belgian colonialists were responsible for increasing tensions between the groups: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1288230.stm).  The movie also intimates that a sense of dependence was created, and when the Western powers exited Rwanda, the infrastructure collapsed still further.

It is not simply Western political powers and market forces that create such dependence; churches do as well, as when largely white mega churches speak of “adopting” villages in Africa or inner city African American churches.  In contrast, John M. Perkins rightly charges that we must replace charity with community development.  Community development involves working among people, drawing from their experiences and looking to support them rather than drive them, helping but also being helped by them, ministering relationally in a particular region together with them.  A friend of mine from Africa who is ministering in Haiti with a North American ministry providing holistic care is challenging North Americans and others from the developed West to minister with a Christ-centered approach that views the Haitian people as being as valuable as people from developed Western countries.  This more redemptive approach that my African friend espouses entails asking Haitians what they believe is necessary to effect change and not patronizing them.  “Patronizing them” involves telling them what they need to do rather than partnering with them to confront the crisis.  The Haitians have told my African friend that they often feel as if they are treated as projects by Americans and other people from developed Western countries, and that the end game is producing a product that can be exhibited as a trophy back in the developed West.  This is a subtle form of oppression–not like the overt hostility of Avatar, but nonetheless still dehumanizing.

Like in Avatar, the Haitians may not have the technological and technical resources, but they do have strong relational bonds–they have one another.  In addition to my African friend, a pastor from a mega church that has a significant ministry in Haiti has conveyed the same point to me.  Both individuals have claimed that they have rarely if ever experienced such profound relationality.  My African friend said that he did not need to be known to be loved in Haiti–he was sucked in and loved and ministered to, even though he had come to minister. We have so much to learn from such people, and so should not go trying to fix them, but to partner with them, joining them in our shared search for significance and life in the midst of horrific suffering.

Mention was made above of the need to overturn longstanding structures of evil.  Native peoples in what became the United States were often forced onto some of the poorest land, and some reservations are on land used as key sites for storing nuclear waste.  See a recent AP discussion on the storage and cleanup of nuclear waste that bears directly on Native peoples today at
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iM3xkapqBxYkFxJyYO4QIGDf4TK
gD9GV63180. Also, see an earlier article on a related topic at http://www.umich.edu/~snre492/kendziuk.html.  To the extent we benefit from the evils committed in the past and present against such indigenous people, to that extent we ourselves are culpable.

Lastly, Western consumers–myself being one of them–find it very difficult not to fall prey to furthering oppressive structures in impoverished communities worldwide, where sweatshops are created to produce goods at far cheaper costs and at far greater benefit to American consumers–and at great cost to the employees in those lands.  While one may say the people there are better off than they would otherwise be because they have these jobs, their well-being is certainly not up to the humane standards we prize.  Nike, Wal-Mart and other companies have had to face front and center these concerns, and these issues require resolution and reform in many spheres of industry and business worldwide (see the following articles:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/27/business/global/27nike.html and
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/oct2008/db2008109_219930.
htm).

I should add that the West is not alone in this and related problems.  See the following article for a multi-faceted discussion of China on the environment:
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/11/13/think_again_green_china.
See also the articles on worker abuse in China:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/05/business/worldbusiness/05sweatshop.html and
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/06/opinion/06tue2.html.
Lastly, see the article on ethnic minority oppression in China:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jul/08/china-protest-uighur-deaths

While the West, and America in particular, has done much good across the globe at various times through such efforts as world relief in times of crisis and in restoration of devastated countries after times of war as in the Marshall Plan for the restoration of Germany and also parallel efforts in Japan after WWII, our history is nonetheless a checkered one.  We must be alert to both dimensions if we are to further good practices and guard against destructive patterns and tendencies.

I trust this helps, Melody.  I need to sign off due to my travels.

All the best,
Paul Louis Metzger

Paul Louis Metzger interviews the Rev. Clifford O. Chappell, who serves as senior pastor of St. Johns All Nations Church of God in Christ, Portland. The interview furthers the discussion of an Opinion column that Rev. Chappell wrote for the Oregonian earlier in the year.

PLM: What moved you to write that column?

CC: I was hearing a one-sided debate in the media supporting the position that racism does not exist, and that all too much is being made of it. The Opinion piece was my attempt to speak up and state my position that racism is alive and doing well in this country. I was especially moved after South Carolina congressman Joe Wilson’s outburst during President Obama’s speech to Congress, which I believe was directly rooted in racism. Former President Jimmy Carter was the only leading statesman who spoke up and addressed it as to what it was, that it “was based on racism.” He took a lot of heat but held his position and I applaud him for his stand.

PLM: What was the main point of your column?

CC: My main point was to demonstrate that racism exists in all facets of our culture. People are either aware of it and don’t know what to do anything about it, or they are in complete denial.

PLM: What types of responses did you receive to the Opinion column?

CC: I received many responses from across the full spectrum of beliefs. From very positive “Thank you for writing the article” to “It was a great article” to some very nasty and negative responses.

PLM: Were you surprised by the responses? If so, how so?

CC: No, I was not surprised at all by the responses. As indicated in the article, I am fully aware that racism is alive and well in this country and the responses only supported what I wrote. I believe that racism is still such a big issue that most people can’t even recognize it; it’s like trying to observe an elephant while standing only one foot away. It just doesn’t look like an elephant from that vantage point.

PLM: If you were to write a follow-up column, what would you say?

CC: My follow up article would be an attempt to raise the consciousness and awareness of racism. It is the lack of these sensitivities that causes people to be in denial.

PLM: As a pastor dedicated to pursuing a multi-ethnic church vision, what would you say to the blog’s readership?

CC: I recently got my wife a bouquet of flowers just to say, “Honey, I love and appreciate you.” The arrangement was a beautiful mix of assorted flowers where each enhanced the beauty of the next. As I studied them I was reminded of the multi-ethnic church. If we can see our individual differences as a bouquet that enhances the beauty of our diversity instead of as something to divide us, we will begin to see the real beauty that God intended, and celebrate our diversity as we worship and serve our God.

In early April, Drs. John M. Perkins and Paul Louis Metzger will be teaming up to speak at a handful of events in the Portland area.

Friday, April 9th An Evening of Inspiration: Breaking Down Barriers
Location: Emmanuel Temple Church
Drs. Perkins and Metzger will speak in this introductory event for the Saturday New Wine New Wineskins conference.
Link: Go here for more information

Saturday, April 10th New Wine New Wineskins Conference – Owning the Pond Together: Developing Communities through Entrepreneurship
Location: Eastside Foursquare Church
The New Wine spring conference will feature keynote addresses from Dr. John M. Perkins, Dr. Paul Louis Metzger and Pastor Eric Bahme and and idea party hosted by Tony Kriz. Drs. Perkins and Metzger and Pastor Eric Bahme will assist us in understanding the key role of entrepreneurship and micro-enterprise as it relates to community development.
Link: For more information and to register, click here

Sunday, April 11th An Evening of Prayerful Repentance and Reconciliation
Location: Allen Temple CME Church
As a part of their Drum Majors for Love, Truth and Justice partnership, Drs. Perkins and Metzger will join Dr. Leroy Haynes Jr. to lead a focused time of seeking God’s transformation of the broken relational structures that have erected barriers between the white church and African-American church.
Link: Invitation from Dr. Metzger

We’re excited to tell you about the 2010 Duke Divinity School Summer Institute (presented by the Duke Center for Reconciliation), “The Ministry of Reconciliation in a Divided World” will be held May 31 – June 5th. It will be five days of reflection, formation, renewal and going deep for Christian leaders.

The Duke Summer Institute is not a conference for the many but a learning space limited to 200 Christian leaders to go deep. Over five days of renewal and learning with Christian leaders from across the U.S. and world – through worship, shared meals, plenary sessions, and in-depth cohorts – you will be led by world-class theologians and practitioners of reconciliation and justice ministry. In 2009 there were participants from 23 states and 7 countries. Your fellow participants this summer will include a cohort from east Africa, senior leadership teams from national organizations, several groups from cities and Christian colleges and universities, and leaders from the grassroots to churches to national and international organizations as well as lay Christians concerned about their families, communities and places of worship, work, and life. Scholarships are available through April 9th. Applications will be accepted online through May 7th. Click here for more information and to apply.

Our post for in the trenches comes from Curtis May. Curtis is Director of the Office of Reconciliation Ministries for Grace Communion International.  We’re excited to be able to have Curtis share about what he does with the Office of Reconciliation Ministries (from here on referred to as ORM).  Below is Curtis’ description of his involvement with ORM.

At ORM I counsel Christians and non-Christians alike on issues of conflict, disputes and broken relationships in general. We have 27 chapters in 5 countries – the U.S., Canada, Ireland, England and Scotland. Our work has extended into Africa and the Philippines as well. Our Vision is: ‘To put the teachings of Jesus Christ into action by advancing relationships between people of different beliefs and points of view.” Our Mission: “To respond to situations of racial or ethnic tension and to help build lasting, harmonious and accepting relationships.

Our Core Values are guided by Scripture:

1. Reconciliation as a ministry given to us by God (II Corinthians 5:18-19)

2. All humans made from one blood (Acts 17:26)

3. The inclusive mission/vision of Jesus (Luke 4:18)

4. Neither Jew, Greek, male nor female, but all one in Christ (Galatians 3:28)

5. Practical demonstrations of love and faith, including literature resources such as our book, Mending Broken Relationships (James 2:16)

In fulfilling our mission we conduct workshops, seminars and give presentations on the topics of reconciliation and conflict resolution throughout the United States and occasionally overseas. We see the need to stand in the gaps that divide people.

ORM has worked with police departments, city halls, schools and other organizations to participate in the mandate of Jesus “that they may be one” (John 17:20-23). We specifically emphasize this message of oneness as we work among churches in the spirit of interdenominationalism. As Dr. Paul Metzger points out so poignantly in his book Consuming Jesus, the church has a huge problem of race, class and consumerism.

We have received a number of awards and certificates for our work, including the key to the city of Memphis. (Please see “Awards” on our website at www.ATimeToReconcile.org.) We also work in inter-faith settings with Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Ba’hai.

Dr. Metzger recently had an article posted on the Out of Ur blog examining and contrasting the types of community formed around the coffee bar and the Lord’s Table.  It is a helpful reflection on the type of communities we are seeking to raise up in our churches, and well worth the read.  You can read the article here.

What do you think about the difference in the sort of communities created around the coffee bar or the Lord’s Table?

Do you have any thoughts or ideas on how we use space to represent the values of our communities?  Share your ideas in the comments here.

Greetings All! During my recent visit to Disney’s Epcot in Orlando Florida, I managed to catch a glimpse of the future, which I’d like to share with you.

Now, Epcot isn’t your average no-tech, smells-of-grease-and-stale-popcorn theme-park. Rather, it is nothing less than Disney’s projection of what an idealized future might look like. Epcot doesn’t just give visitors a chance to jump ahead in time; it also includes the functionality of sending a postcard from the future back to your present-day self. (Ok, the photo of my future self had a giant hole in his head, but I’m chalking that up to a minor backwards-compatibility issue.)

So you ask: “If you could really see the future, Daniel, what would the future hold for me?”

Well it depends…

For those of you who are white, the future is clean, bright, metallic, polymer, automated, digital, and completely Energy-Star compliant.

It’s a little different for us minorities. See, we don’t have a future, or at least one in which we’re represented in any way more significant than say, soylent green. Sadly, somewhere, before the monorail gets to Disney’s “Future,” there’s a stop where we all get off (or maybe the monorail doesn’t stop).

To those who haven’t been there, Epcot is divided into two halves separated by a lake. At the entrance to the park is the “World of Tomorrow,” where all the high-tech future-oriented rides and attractions are. Across the lake is a collection of period sets collectively referred to as “The World.” This is where you can stroll through exotic locales like China, Japan, and Morocco without even leaving the park. .

Visiting “The World” was actually one of the best parts of my trip. Disney gathers people from different countries and brings them to Epcot to crew these destination sets. At first, I couldn’t quite shake the feeling that I was touring a zoo for humans (one where I was part of the exhibit). But once I got over it, I found that talking with people from around the world and getting their perspective was very much worth the price of admission.

Midway through the day, I crossed the lake to continue my visit in Epcot. And then it hit me. “I’m going from ‘The World of Today’ to ‘The World of Tomorrow,’” and boy did tomorrow look different.

In The World of Tomorrow, I crash landed on Mars in “Mission Space,” failed a brake test at “Test Track,” and glided over the Golden Gate bridge in “Soaring.” I even took a 30 second ride on a Segway. I thought to myself, “I kind of like this future.” That was, until I climbed aboard “Spaceship Earth,” located in the iconic Epcot Ball.

Spaceship Earth traces human development from the Paleolithic Age to the Future. As you’re leaving “the Future” a camera snaps a picture of you to send to your present day self. This is, apparently, where future Dan lost half his skull. It’s also here where my concerns about Disney’s version of “Tomorrow” really solidified. And it wasn’t just in my head, or missing from my head…whatever.

The ride started out with a diorama of cavemen fighting a mammoth. Of course, all the cavemen were white. Weird, right? But it’s easy to understand when you remember that Ice Ages only happen to white people. Thank God for that because I’d be really cold in an ice age, not being able to grow facial hair or an Austin Powers-like chest rug (it’s all in the genes, or maybe, not in the genes as it were).

Next, we got into the accumulation of world knowledge, which apparently was stored, in its entirety, at the Library of Alexandria. After that, the Renaissance further increased human knowledge, along with the Enlightenment. And from there we were off to industrialization, computerization, and the future.

Apparently no one outside of Europe and North Africa had any influence whatsoever on human history as a whole. Well, that’s not really fair. There were two black guys (or maybe one was Arab) who sorta helped out at Alexandria. But then we actually got to the future. And everyone looked like Lady Gaga?

Somehow, we colored people aren’t in Disney’s version of the future, but white people are. In fact, when it comes to the World of Tomorrow, white people are like cockroaches after a nuclear winter. And that’s a good thing for white people, because, not only do they survive, but they get to inherit the earth, too. Though, I hope white people like white, because in the World of Tomorrow, the upholstery is white, the walls and ceilings are white and you can wear any color of outfit you want as long as it’s white. Disney’s interpretation of culture in the future is necessarily vague (having to be conveyed by mannequins and repetitive animatronics). However, those that do make it to the future seem to enjoy the pastimes of today’s privileged, like sports (value of leisure), not having to drive for themselves (value of autonomy via automation), and instant food extruded from machines (value of time and instant gratification). Bottom line: white folks might like some aspects of Tomorrow, but they should spend today stocking up on all that good “exotic” food, because I’ve been to Disney’s version of the future, and it ain’t servin’ chitlins, sushi, fry bread, or tacos.

So is this a giant diatribe against Disney? No. Disney actually did a very good job of illustrating a dominant culture (in this country) view of the future. And for that I’m grateful. Plus, Test Track was pretty fun. Epcot’s “World of Tomorrow” is a pitch perfect example of what educator Tim Wise refers to as “universal perspectivism,” as in “the way I see it is the way everyone sees it.” Thus, it’s perhaps unintentional, but only natural that, in a theme park devised by white people, only white people would appear in Disney’s version of “The Future.” Unfortunately, this little oversight implies that somewhere on the path to Tomorrow, minorities step off in a big and permanent way.

The very fact that a strong dichotomy exists between the diverse World of Today and the monochromatic World of Tomorrow within Epcot betrays the presence and execution of universal perspectivism. If that viewpoint were true, there’d be no need for The World of Today as part of Epcot. The fact that not everyone sees things the same way, or even wants the same thing, forms the foundation, literally, for half the attractions of Epcot. That, sadly, is something the other half of the park seems to ignore quite successfully.

Consider this: Although China and Morocco were represented in “The World” of today, they had no place in Spaceship Earth’s representation of human development. Where would whites be without their appropriation (perhaps misappropriation) of the Chinese Hu Yao, a.k.a. “gunpowder?” Certainly the vast European empires which began in the 1500s and covered the globe in Spanish, German, French, Italian, and British flags five centuries later were founded in large part on this technological advancement. What about Arabic lettering? I mean, who wants to do long division in Roman numerals? It isn’t just that minorities don’t exist in the future, but apparently they didn’t exist or contribute in the past either. That’s universal perspectivism at work.

Put succinctly, Disney’s futuristic World of Tomorrow without the diverse World of Today is technically competent, and environmentally sound, but bland, boring, repetitive, incomplete, and yes, unbiblical.

Maybe we should take comfort in the message of someone who really has seen the future and brought a little of it back to us. In Revelations 5:9 (TNIV) the Apostle John tells us:

And they sang a new song, saying: “You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased for God members of tribe and language and people and nation.”

Thank God every tongue and tribe will be represented in the new heaven and new earth and that we all have the privilege of being in this version of the future. Thank God that our Creator’s vision of Tomorrow is both more expansive and more inclusive than Disney’s, because writing this essay has really given me the hankering for a gyro, or maybe some Chinese BBQ pork, or a steak quesadilla. Come to think of it, a nice hot bowl of nabeyaki udon sounds good too…

So, I’d ask you, my readers, to think critically whenever someone talks about “the future” or even “the past.” Whose take on the future are we talking about; whose history? Who’s starring? Who got left off the box office poster? If someone tries to sell you a version of the future that isn’t inclusive of “every tribe and language,” you might want to turn the packaging over and check the expiration date.

In this essay, Kelsi Johns writes with her usual simple profundity and keen eye to the blood, sweat, and tears of true discipleship.  She reflects on her own experiences to draw out what it means to live the gospel rather than simply preach the gospel from a safe distance.  To love is to risk, and as Kelsi explains, the church is called to show the same “messy, generous, limitless love” that God has shown to us in Christ.  Community development, Kelsi asserts, must begin with developing relationships, with truly loving our neighbors and serving  with and among them, rather than just to them.

True Community

This thoughtful reflection piece from Barbara Echo-Hawk provides us a window into the world of segregation which she experienced while growing up in the 1960’s. While reading it, consider ways in which we still face segregation of various forms, and what we can do to expand our horizons and engage redemptively in the process of reconciliation in our own day.

One Saturday at Picadilly’s