How God REALLY Wants You to Vote!

A political campaign season can be really wearying for those of us who are independent voters, especially if we are people of faith.  There's no shortage of parties and political groups claiming to most fully represent the Divine.  Stressing personal morality, Republicans claim God is on their side. Emphasizing social compassion, Democrats claim God is on their side.  As if any humanly constructed movement or organization could remotely capture all that God is and all that God's heart wants.  Please...!

Admitting that I'm biased, I think the founder of our movement got it right.  John Wesley is credited for starting the phenomenon known as Methodism in the 18th century.  In 1774, giving advice to those in so-called Methodist classes and bands who were casting votes in England, regardless of how they voted, he suggested they commit themselves to the following:

1. To vote, without fee or reward, for the person they judged most worthy,

2. To speak no evil of the person they voted against,

3. To take care their spirits were not sharpened against those that voted on the other side.

Now there's a voting strategy that is closest to Christ-like!  How much of this do you see on the Right or the Left or anywhere in between?   If we all voted this way, neither Republican nor Democrat nor Independent nor anyone else would have the gall to claim to represent God.  We would simply yield to the Holy Spirit, make an informed and humble decision, and do so in love.  Then maybe this current embarrassment which is the American political scene might become something different.

Okay, that's enough from this old political cynic.  I'll see you around the next bend in the river.

Hospitality: A Program or a Presence?

As noted earlier, I spent July 10-17 with ten other people from our church on a volunteers in mission work trip to the Dominican Republic.  We came alongside Dominican and Haitian church people to work on a small place of worship for a new church start in a community called Samangola.  There's a tendency on the part of international work campers, I know, to over-idealize the cultures they encounter.  I don't want to fall prey to that.  However, even from an objective view, we were blessed and graced beyond measure by the people we encountered and the people with whom we had the privilege of working.  And we realized that they had so, so much from which we could learn.

One of those areas of learning was hospitality.  I am blessed to be a part of a church here that works hard on practicing "radical hospitality."  Our congregation has improved in welcomeness by leaps and bounds, and I am so proud of our staff, leaders, and church folks who go out of their way to make the needs of a newcomer more important than their own.  Many established churches struggle to break outside their own closed circles of relationship, and I'm glad to be a part of church people who are eager and willing to raise the bar on hospitality.  However, in our admittedly limited experience of the Jesus-followers of Bani, San Cristobal, San Rafael, and Samangola, hospitality there is not a program, an emphasis, a committee, or a spot on an organizational chart.  It is the air they breathe.  It is the rhythm of their collective heartbeat.  It is a Presence that is undeniable.  The hospitality extended to us and to those in their own culture they seek to reach for Jesus is hard to describe.  It is genuine, warm, unconditional, and energizing all at the same time.  They offer it effortlessly and joyfully.

I found myself wondering why it is this way.  Why do we read books about hospitality, have training programs on hospitality, create hospitality teams, and give instructions on hospitality, while they just live it like it's their own skin?  I'm not sure sure I know the answer, but I intend to find out.  I find myself wanting to go back and just live in their church culture for a time, maybe to absorb how the welcomeness with which Jesus welcomes us all becomes so second nature.

A couple of times in the last week people in are area have asked me, "Are you glad to be back in civilization?"   Trust me, in the area of Christ-like hospitality, many of the Dominican and Haitian Jesus-followers are the "civilized" ones, and I am the "third world" who needs to benefit from them.

I'll see you around the next bend in the river.