Carried Along by the Spirit in El Paso

By Jonathan Kindberg

“The seventy-two returned with joy and said, “Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name.” Luke 10:17

In January 2012 a Greenhouse team from Chicago (William and Anne Beasley, Jens Notstad and I) went to El Paso, TX to lead a workshop for the Southwest Diocese In-Formation on church multiplication. It was quite exciting to see a whole Diocese desire the expansion of the church. I was also there for the formal launch of Rey de Paz, a Hispanic congregation at St. Clement’s church led by catechist Ken Hanna, who I have been coaching. It was a great privilege to partner in these ways with the folks of St. Clements and the Diocese of the Southwest!

Overall this trip was an amazing experience of being carried along by the power of the Spirit.

A story from the weekend:

After the training, on Saturday afternoon, Ken Hanna and I went out to do house blessings as a missional outreach to Hispanic families in the area. We had been praying for a person of peace that could help bridge us into the homes of folks in the community and God sent us Chewy*, a 19-year-old finishing up his GED at a local community college. Chewy knew everyone in the neighborhood and ended up taking us to 6 families’ homes ending with his own. Whenever someone opened the door and saw Chewy they would smile and let us in. Never underestimate the power of the Lord to use unlikely people to spread his Kingdom.

The first home we went to became a pattern for what God did throughout the afternoon and evening. Dolores* and her teenage daughter, Rosa let us in and began sharing their story with us of a difficult life in El Paso living on the verge of poverty and often depending on local churches and non-profits for food and clothing. After sharing a bit of their story we sang some songs and began reading the story of Zacchaeus in Luke where Jesus also invites himself into someone’s home unexpectedly.

Just as we were starting the reading the dad pulled up in the car outside.

“Oh good! He needs to hear this! He is hard-hearted toward the word of God,” said Dolores.

Juan, the dad, walked in and had no idea what he was walking into. Before he knew it, he was sitting down and getting a full blast of the Gospel. He was wide-eyed and engaged. Something was happening. We then asked if we could pray for the family before we blessed the home. We lined up the family and laid hands on Juan, and immediately he began crying. His wife and daughter are bewildered and unsure of what was happening. The Spirit was touching his heart, and he expressed the desire to begin to walk with Jesus as a whole family. As we left they promised to come to Rey de Paz for the next day’s service, and sure enough, Dolores was one of the first to arrive. Later Chewy told us that in all his years of knowing this family he had never seen Juan cry.

As we see in the book of Acts, it is when we move out on mission that the Spirit shows himself in new and powerful ways, confirming the message that is being preached. Much of the wackiness in the church around the Holy Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit stem, at least in part I think, from an emphasis on the Spirit in contexts devoid of mission. The modern Pentecostal movement, which began at Azuza Street, started not in a sanctuary full of people calling out for the Holy Spirit, but was birthed in the context of mission among the poor and it led to the planting of churches all around the world. It is a fire that still is burning and spreading to this day.\

Praise the Lord for his answered prayers and for the work he did in El Paso! May the Spirit continue to bless, encourage and expand the church there! Soli Deo Gloria.

*Names have been changed.

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Multiethnicity: A North American Missional Mandate

By Jonathan Kindberg

“As many lament the decline of Christianity in the United States in the early stages of the twenty-first century, very few have recognized that American Christianity may actually be growing, but in unexpected and surprising ways [especially via the growth of the immigrant church]. The American Church needs to face the inevitable and prepare for the next stage of her history – we are looking at a nonwhite majority, multiethnic American Christianity in the immediate future. Unfortunately, despite these drastic demographic changes American Christianity remains…disconnected from both [this] global and local reality.” (Soong-Chan Rah, The Next Evangelicalism, p.12).

Thanks to Philip Jenkins and his book The Next Christendom, many have come to realize that the center of global Christianity is no longer the west, but the global south. The majority of World Christians are non-white. As Anglicans we have known this reality for some time given our close connection to the Global South and their rescuing of us from the collapse of the Episcopal church in recent years. As a young participant at the Global Anglican Future Conference in Jerusalem in 2009, this statistic was visually made clear to me, by the dark sea of of bishops and priests present representing the Global South.

What most don’t realize, however, is that this same dynamic is underway in North America and very soon will also be the reality. Not only are “the great majority” of immigrants who are coming to the US Christian in background, but immigrants in general is one of the groups that is most open to the Gospel and is seeing rapid numbers of new churches started throughout the country. Christianity in North America is changing. In recent years, the denominations who have not seen an overall decrease is membership have to thank the the growth of immigrant churches in their midst. The big “C” Church in North America will soon be majority non-white as will be the culture in general. By 2042 the majority of US residents will be non-white. Unfortunately, the overall lily white Anglican church has not awakened to this reality and our demographics do not represent the change evident in our society. This must change if we are to stay relevant. This must become a moment of transition for us.

During his investiture, Archbishop Bob Duncan made the astonishing, prophetic call for 1000 new churches to be planted during his ministry. This call has changed the subject of conversation in the Anglican church towards mission. Much has been accomplished in the last two and a half years, but much work remains. If we are to truly reach 1000 churches – or more importantly than the numbers truly impact our surrounding society – we must become a multi-ethnic movement, we must plant both multi-ethnic churches as well as churches among specific ethnic and immigrant groups. Until now we have missed some of the most fertile soil for the gospel and a large percentage of our country’s demographic. There are encouraging signs that there is an openness to this: ¡Caminemos Juntos! and Jubilee are two signs that change is underfoot.

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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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