Kingdom Math

By Jonathan Kindberg

In school we are taught that 3 - 1 = 2. If you have three apples and you give one away to a hungry fellow student who forgot his lunch, you are left with only two apples for the rest of the week. Therefore the logic goes you should only give away something that you don't really need in the first place (and that it won't hurt you to lose).

This same math is applied to church planting. You shouldn't start a new church until your current one is well established enough so that "losing" some people to a new work won't hurt you. If you are, as it turns out, a new church plant yourself (such as Iglesia de la Resurrección) this means waiting a long time before you, in turn, start something new (Read: never).

Iglesia has only really been going for about a year and a half, and we are anything but "established." It seems somewhat silly to be starting a new church. But this is where Kingdom math comes. Kingdom math says 3 - 1 = 4. You grow by giving away. You gain by "losing." You receive by releasing. (And truly, in Kingdom terms, there is no such thing as "losing" someone that is not yours to lose in the first place).

So here we are foolishly starting a new church, with somewhat unfavorable circumstances (which I'll save for a future post), and with scant resources. And, in true Kingdom logic, at our first service we ended up having more people than we did the previous day at our "established" service at Iglesia! Go figure.  Even more importantly than numbers, though, the Lord met us in a wonderful way, and we were able to celebrate his miraculous work.  There were many un-churched and new faces there. Praise the Lord!

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Anglican Fever

CBN News has just ran an article and video about the Anglican Church, the drive to plant and multiply congregations, along with the attraction of Anglican Christianity (in Chicago). The article is called Anglican Fever: Youth Flock to New Denomination. Here is a link to the article. The video is below:

Reading Exodus in Advent

By Jonathan Kindberg

Advent is the season of the Church in which we remember Christ’s first coming and look ahead to Christ’s return as King and the coming of his kingdom. During this Advent at Iglesia de la Resurrección we have been reading the book of Exodus in our adult Sunday school class. I didn’t prepare a complex syllabus nor reading plan. Each week we simply gather together, read a chapter and talk about it. Reading Exodus in this way alongside immigrant brothers and sisters and seeing the text through their eyes and lived experience has been a unique privilege. It has allowed me to see Exodus with fresh eyes and gain new insights into the nature of culture, injustice, liberation, pilgrimage and home.

First, we realized that Moses was a pocho. A pocho is a derogatory term used by native-born Mexicans to describe Mexicans born in the United States who have forgotten their culture and heritage and who are usually better off financially than those still in Mexico. When Pochos goes for a visit to Mexico, they often stick out like a sore thumb and find themselves somewhat out of place. They have become Mexican-Americans.

Similarly Moses, though ethnically Hebrew, lived a life of privilege in the palace of the Egpytian princess, was wealthy and likely was culturally very removed from his Israelite relatives who were slaves. Then he spent 40 years additional years in self-imposed exile in a culturally foreign land before being sent by God to return to Egypt by the Lord. No wonder he feared that the Israelites wouldn’t listen to them. He was an outsider. And yet, Pharoah would. He was the perfect man for the job of mediating between the people of Israel and the Egyptian pharaoh. He was a 2nd generation Hebrew leader, an insider-outsider, to both the Israelites and the Egyptians and thus exactly the kind of person to lead the Israelites out of Egypt.

Mexicans born here in the United States, the so called 2nd generation, are often marginalized both within the Mexican cultural world and the white American world. They don’t fit in perfectly with either. They exist in the world of the hyphen, neither fully this nor that. Within the immigrant church led by 1st generation Mexicans they can be marginalized as well. However, they are perfectly suited to mediate both between generations and between immigrants and the American host culture.  They are the leaders of the Hispanic church of the future, and it is key that they be given voice and leadership if the church is to survive past the 1st generation.

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Life as an Immigrant Pastor

By Jonathan Kindberg

My Swedish last name, Kindberg, is about as difficult for Spanish speakers to pronounce as “ferrocarril” is for English speakers. The approximations I’ve heard are many: Kinder, Kimberly and Kindergarten, to name a few. I’m 6’1” and as pasty white as they come. I’m also an Anglican pastor of a primarily undocumented-Mexican congregation in the western suburbs of Chicago.

In many ways, I am an unlikely immigrant church pastor, until you learn that I spent most of my growing up years in Latin America as a child of missionaries. My being an insider-outsider, with one foot in both the Anglo and the immigrant worlds, while belonging fully to neither, gives me a certain vantage point from which to describe each to the other. Facilitating Mosaic, a network that seeks to bring immigrant and non-immigrant pastors together in my county, has given me the opportunity to build relationships with immigrant pastors from all over the world within my own community.

What is it like, then, being an immigrant church pastor, and one in which a significant percentage of your congregants are undocumented? It’s like being invisible. Many less established immigrant churches don’t own their own building, don’t have a large flashing sign along a major road and don’t have a church website. Thus, they are virtually unknown and invisible to the surrounding community. This invisibility also stems from awareness gaps within the Church at large. “So what do you do?” Joe asked me. We were at a neighborhood block party put on by several local churches and had just met. “I pastor a Hispanic congregation just down the road from here,” I responded. What followed was highly unusual and sadly rare: he asked me the name of my church. I’ve had this conversation over and over with people and as soon as I reply with “immigrant church pastor” their eyes haze over and they change the subject as if it hadn’t been brought up. Perhaps they simply have no categories for this and don’t know how to relate.

In my own county there are an estimated 150 immigrant congregations, but most, even by name, are unknown to the broader Christian community. I’ve seen this over and over around the country both within my own denomination and others. Our immigrant brothers and sisters are invisible to us. As an immigrant pastor, myself, I can say from experience that this hurts. Being an Anglo, however, I know that these experiences of invisibility are nothing like those faced by my Hispanic congregants on a daily basis within their lives and work places, especially those who are undocumented.

Beyond feelings of invisibility, being an immigrant church pastor is to be a jack of all trades. One moment you are helping fill out college applications for one of your youth who is the first from his family ever to apply to college and the next you are driving a parent to a PTA meeting to translate for them. You are giving advice on immigration status issues (while fending off sketchy lawyers and notarios) and advice on disciplining kids and keeping them out of gangs. You are getting that middle of the night phone from one of your parishioners whose husband was just pulled over for having a headlight out and is now in jail facing possible deportation. (This is a phone call you start getting used to.) Then you are visiting him in jail.

You are doing home blessings for families whose homes have been hexed by a vengeful coworker and praying with families after the death of a loved one. As an immigrant pastor, you are a jack of all trades, but master of none. You are the primary advocate and voice for your people many of whom have little voice and power due to lack of language and legal status among other factors and you are stretched in a million directions. I, as a bi-vocational single person often feel overwhelmed. I don’t know how many bi-vocational immigrant pastors with families do it.

So, what can we, as non-immigrants, do to help and support those immigrant congregations and pastors in our community? First, build relationships. Change starts here. Seek out the immigrant pastors and congregation in your city or region. I assure you they are there, though they may have been hidden from you until now. Visit one of their services. Be a learner of other cultures. Ask good questions! If you are a church network leader, finds ways of highlighting the immigrant congregations already in your network or find ways of including those who aren’t.

If you are a non-immigrant pastor, invite an immigrant pastor to speak at your congregation.  Find tangible ways of upholding and supporting immigrant pastors’ heavy ministry load by asking them how you or your church can come alongside them. You will be surprised at the richness of blessings you will receive from these relationships.

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A Movement from the Margins, Part 2

By Jonathan Kindberg

To do great things for God we often assume that we need great resources: power, influence, renown, intelligence and have written best-selling books. But these kinds things are usually hindrances rather than aides to God’s work. God delights, rather, in using those who are unequipped and unresourced in the eyes of the world. Those who are powerless and weak; those on the margins ignored by the rest of the world and by the Church herself. These kinds of people he uses to fulfill his mission and do great things. Why? Because these are the kinds of people who recognize that they don’t have what it takes and that they must depend fully on God. Through this God shows himself to be great. This is the story, for example, of Patrick of Ireland. An uneducated, slave boy who encountered God in a powerful way, launched the Celtic missionary movement, and despite fierce opposition from the Roman church impacted all of Europe.

Many of the folks I minister are potential Patricks. As immigrants they are often ignored, invisible and powerless in a society that benefits from their labor and yet forgets the laborer. Many do not have legal status and live in fear of deportation and of the night. Often they come from humble origins in Mexico and have little resources or education. They did not go to Sunday school growing up (much less seminary) and are just learning the books of the Bible. They are often ignored and invisible to the Church at large. And yet many have a desperate faith in God and nothing left to lose. They are exactly the kinds of people God always uses to do great and amazing things: A potential movement from the margins.

Steve Addison in his book, Movements that Changed the World, describes the key elements of movements this way: “God takes the initiative and chooses unlikely people, far from the center of ecclesiastical power. He works to remake them from the inside out. He inspires innovative insights regarding his mission and how it is to be carried out. Biblical truths and practices are rediscovered. A growing band of ordinary people emerges who have a heartfelt faith and missionary zeal that knows no bounds. Despite opposition from powerful forces within society and the existing church, the gospel spreads into unreached fields. The existing church is renewed, and society is transformed.”

If this is the case then I have the responsibility to steward and encourage a potential world and Church changing force. There are present here the elements for a movement from the margins in the making. And there’s no doubt about it in this place, day and time: we need renewal and we need a movement.

May it be so. Come Holy Spirit.

God blesses those who are poor and realize their need for him, for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs. - Matthew 5:3 (NLT)

Instead, God chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise. And he chose things that are powerless to shame those who are powerful. - 1 Corinthians 1:27 (NLT)

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