To be honest...given the opportunity to back out of this trip (like maybe the airplane door wouldn't close and I could get off and run back through the airport to my family) I would have. Last time I was India I was 21 and single. I could set off on an overnight train through the unrest in Rajestan, bound for Mumbai with only 80 rupees and a hotel address scribbled on a scrap of paper... and think it was fun.
This time was different. I knew exactly how it felt to leave my dear wife and my four children. Less than 3 years ago I'd been gone for 4 weeks teaching English in Bangkok, and the memory of the gut-wrenching loneliness was like a phantom pain that accompanied every thought of being away from my family. At least this time it was only for 3 1/2 weeks.
But none of those feelings can negate that this trip, nor the Thailand trip, were from God.
So that's what I'd like to share here; what God did in my heart through this trip to India.
Ethnodoxolgy - the study of drawing praises to God from
all peoples.
Cross-cultural worship ministry - to raise up the sounds and songs unique to each people group God has created in bring Him more and more worship.
I attended this YWAM seminar because it brought together some of the things I love and want to learn about. World music, worship, recording, church-planting.
I went to seek God's direction for my life and for our family. Was there a place in the world that we belonged, as missionaries, that I didn't know about?
I traveled with my friend Belinda, who oversees all of YWAM's Schools of Worship worldwide. I was grateful to be moving through airports, customs and security with a YWAMer with 30+ years of international travel experience. 4 hours to Newark under the shadow of NYC's skyline, then 15 hours to Mumbai. There we met Pete Sifuentes, the 'Father of the Schools of Worship' (a fitting title for a very fatherly leader) and Asam (whose name sounds like he is, awesome) the School of Worship leader from the YWAM base we would be staying at. A two hour taxi ride later we we're on the mountain top village of Lonavala pulling through the steel gates of the campus at midnight.
Asem led me through the dark to my concrete room with barred windows next to some kind of waterway that smelled like, well, like waterways in India. Left alone, and hungry, that old feeling of loneliness bent its force on crushing me. "Here it comes," I thought.
But God sent angels to shut the mouths of those lions that night and every night after. There was something in the spiritual realm that was more powerful than what I had been dreading. Something about being on a YWAM base made a difference. There was a note with my name on my door. There was a welcome bag with snacks and card with a verse that I KNOW had been prayed over and was specifically for me - because that's what we do as YWAMers.
(The lions' mouths we're shut but rarely does the Enemy just give up after using the most obvious attacks.)
We'd arrived early because Belinda was leading the school. So I had a couple quiet days to myself to read and begin exploring. My roommates showed up. Richard Gassana from Rwanda, and Sujith Babu from south India. More about them later. Took my first auto-rickshaw trip into the market area with Wasu and Karen Lafferty who was quite familiar with travel in India.
Monday morning came with 16 or so students (U.S, Rwanda, Kerala, Nagaland, England, Punjab) and 5 staff(U.S, New Zealand and Switzerland) diving right into
the Kairos Course. Kairos is an intensive 9-day course on worldview, missions, the over-arching story of the Bible, and the history of Israel, and of the church's answer to the Abrahamic call - which we crammed 4 1/2 days. Even those whose native tongue was English (and for most it wasn't) were left reeling.
Summary of God's word to me through the Kairos course: Slow Down. I'm on the right track with God's heartbeat for the nations and ache for the Unreached in my own heart. But...slow down...and don't force it to happen. Because I'd end up leaving my family in the dust, not even prepared myself. Continue to teach and nurture God's desire for all peoples worshipping Him; in students, in churches, in my kids.
Weekend One.
Saturday took a wander into town with Pete and Stephane from Switzerland (School of Worship Leader at the Burtigny base who also has planted SOW's in West Africa. Condescended to lunch at McDonalds. A boy outside tried to catch my attention. Barefoot, ragged brown stained clothes that identify the laboring poor. I waved him inside. I could at least buy him lunch. There's so many beggars that most we have to ignore. But really Jesus... did you engage EVERYONE who came to you? Anyways. There was no turning back now. But the boy wouldn't take lunch. He wanted something else. So after my Indi McSpicy (real name) , Pete, Stephane and I continued on the 1/2 km walk into the main business district with our Shadow. The only English word I could make out was 'cycle' as he pointed back the way we'd come. An hour later we we're back to where we'd met him. I told the guys to go on back to the base without me, I was going to see what our Shadow really wanted. He led me a few block more to a hole-in-the-wall bicycle shop and pointed to a little used bike with balding white tires. I talked to the unsmiling shopkeeper who told me he had indeed told the kid he could have the bike for a discounted 450 rupees - $7. We had the kid show us he could actually ride. Which he did with a huge smile on his face. We called his mother in and through the shopkeeper's interpretation I asked if it would be ok if I bought him this bike. I was in too deep to back out now, but I didn't want to get the kid in trouble with his family by buying him a bike when they might not have had enough money for food. Went ahead and bought it. Left the shop and the mother looked at me raising her cupped hand to her mouth. Gave her another 100 r-. I pointed up and said, "Yeshua, Yeshua!"
I hate being a foreigner. It's so confusing.
Sat afternoon - Sunday evening. Wow. I casually accepted my roommate Sujith's invitation to travel to nearby Pune to visit some of his former DTS students. "Be prepared to maybe share a little when we go to church," he says. Walked 1/2 hour to the train station, because auto-rickshaws are ridiculously priced in this tourist town. 1 hour wait for the train. 15 rupees (25¢) ticket on the Local. Thankfully we got a spot on the hard wooden benches. Every stop more and more people pressed in til we we're one block of swaying flesh sweating in unison. Before it got too thick there were beggars and chai wallas, a lady selling guavas and a man selling power packs for smartphones, a old blind man with a one stringed instrument, and a gruff and pushy man in a woman's sari, demanding alms. I guess I'd be grumpy too if I was a eunuch! Made it to Pune to stand on the side of a very busy road within inches of traffic flying by for an hour before Obed and Tony picked up up in a new car with plastic on the seats and the AC blasting. It was during the drive to the church compound we found out there was a Saturday night service. It was a half hour before the service we found out we we're expected to preach for an hour. That night. Shoulda saw that coming. Thankfully the Holy Spirit needs no prep time, and he ministered well to the hundred or so people who came that night. Sujith is well loved in this congregation, actually in all of India. His brother is an evangelist who travels all over world, but Sujith is known as a great worship leader in India. And he is.
Found out that night we had another hour to preach in the morning service. It was nice to have a little time to prepare. Still, morning came quickly. After an hour of LOUD rock worship in Hindi and English, I dragged my unwilling flesh and gurgling stomach up on the platform in front 500-600 people to talk about some of my encounters with God in cross-cultural worship and of a Jesus who came, at the cost of his life, down to our level just to be with us. 25 min I talked. (that's how long our pastor at home preaches - I've seen the timer on his smartphone). Tried to lead the congregation singing "Holy Holy Holy I want to see You", in Spanish (!) They provided me with an acoustic guitar which was tuned well - a half step down - and one of my nightmares became reality. Sujith came to my rescue on the keyboard, then preached for 1 hour. The pastor wrapped up the service with another 45 min. Sujith immediately went into conducting a song-writing seminar for the worship team for 2 1/2 hours. A late afternoon lunch, and a weary train ride back to Lonavala.
Head bouncing against the bars of my train window I watched the slums slide past as we rumbled past the city limits. So many thousands of lives barely scratching out an existence. I've tried 4 or 5 times to write the next sentence but I can't put squalor into words. Because it is people, with unique lives and stories to tell. An amazing thing about Jesus is He didn't stay in Heaven and just send money to fix the problems on earth. He came and dwelt among us in our poverty. That's what I want to do. Someday.
I've gained another brother in Sujith. We will minister together again.
Week Two: Now we dive into more of the Cross-cultural worship ministry for a week on Ethnodoxology with Paul Neeley.
It happens a lot. Let's say in rural Africa. The church is planted by Western missionaries. They only know western church. Western music. So the new African church looks, sounds, and smells western. The young people love the keyboards and electric guitars. But the community could care less. "Must be a white man's God," they conclude.
Until a man like Paul Neeley comes along and helps the church compose scripture songs...in their own culture's style with their own instruments. And the community, hearing the local drums they've heard all their lives, can't help but get up and dance. They're drawn in. They find that Jesus not only came for them, He loves to hear their songs and see their dance!
What do you think folks, in heaven with people from every ethnic group surrounding the Son of God that we'll all sing to Him Hillsong songs in English? No! Or maybe we'll have one new language to sing together? Maybe some of the time! Can we see the infinite creativity and fun in the heart of God in all the different languages and songs and clothing and foods? The reason Jesus hasn't returned yet is because at the feet of the Father are still missing certain groups of people who've not yet heard the Good News. Approximately 6900 of the world's 16,700 distinct people groups have no viable witness to Jesus. Definitely no reproducing indigenous church. When the firstborn from those last 6900 come to the Father He will sigh a happy sigh and say, "I'm so happy we're all finally together, I've been missing your songs! Son, hey Son! It's time, go do your thing. We got a wedding feast to prepare!"
At least that's my interpretation of Matthew 24:14 "And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations (Gk - 'ethne'- people groups), and then the end will come." And Revelation 7:9-10 "After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and people and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, "Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!" (Ooo great song! Petra - the Rock Cries Out, 1989)
So besides Paul's fascinating examples of indigenous scripture songs he's been able to draw out in 40 different places around the world... we also had our seminar staff sharing their stories. Wow!
I've only a few stories in my pocket of how I've seen God move through worship in a cross-cultural setting. But I've got a big pocket waiting to be filled. .
During Paul's week, Ruth from England led worship for the class using some of the very Hindu elements of the Diwali Festival going on at the time - rangoli, incense, candles, but doing it for Jesus. Westerners loved it - we we're being contextual worshippers! Indians we're a little creeped out. These we're the sounds and smells of the demonic parts of the culture around them. Passionate discussion ensued on how to identify where you are on the continuum from Contextualization (Gospel purely expressed through local culture) to Syncritism (Gospel tainted by incompatible elements of local culture). We didn't arrive at answers that really satisfied us during class.
Looking back now I would say the determination is not for the foreigner to make. We must leave it to the national and the Holy Spirit to make that judgement.
Other elements of the following two weeks:
'
Stand and face the music.' Pete led a time each day where we picked one person to stand and receive as many affirmations as we could in 2 minutes that always became 5 minutes.
Work duties. It's YWAM - we can't pay someone to make us food, we have to do it ourselves. I chose breakfast work duties. 6:30 am. Sometimes it was only white bread, jam, a banana and chai (always chai) and 12 people on breakfast prep. Other times it was stir fried spagetti, or deep fried chipati with lentil mush. And chai. We had fun as a breakfast crew, often waiting till the rest of the base had eaten to sit and eat together in the open dock door under the day's first warm rays of sunshine.
I learned an
important lesson on the breakfast crew. I was the foreigner. So when I wanted to add a little extra salt to the pancake batter I was not allowed. When it looked like I might burn the scrambled eggs the spatula was taken away. Internally I rebelled. "Who do you think I am that I can't make pancakes or scramble a few eggs? I've got four kids at home!" God was chuckling because I had thought I was going to be pretty good at living in a foreign culture without pushing my own ways. I was thinking church-planting. God was thinking breakfast. Got it God. You're right. Gotta lay down doing things my way. Even pancakes. We had a good chuckle God and I.
Chai breaks. At tensies and foursies.
Snacks. It's YWAM. We have good snacks. Especially if there's any Swiss folk.
 |
| Spicy! All iz well, All iz well! |
Lunch and dinner. Lets just say our snacks we're making up for the flavor and variety of the base meals. After lunch there was a Cantina where you could get a Coke and BANANA BREAD among other things. A lot of rupees went down that hole.
Base worship. Amazing times of loving God in many different languages. Sometimes a full on dance party. On the plane Belinda had said, "You just wait, these Indians know how to worship." I was slightly confused and offended ("What, don't I know how to worship?") She was right. There's a reason India has the most Schools of Worship and its not just population. It doesn't take them a couple songs to "warm up". When it's time to worship they are ready to engage with God. That's a generalization of course but it's true for most. I even got to lead base worship once with fellow students Kamal. We only used 4 languages. I had to stuff my thoughts of my leading being evaluated by the seminar staff there who'd lead movements in worship that impacted nations, and wrote songs the whole world sings. But those were lies that needed to be stuffed and extinguished. They may be renowned, but we knelt together all as servants before the same God. He's the famous One.
Weekend Two: Class trip further up into the mountains to an overlook. Not sure if the atmosphere is dusty or hazy with the smoke from burning garbage, but the air is brown.
Week Three. David Garrett of New Zealand was our teacher. Except he himself didn't do much teaching. Rather he made space for the Holy Spirit to teach. It was very different from the previous weeks. And very good. He'd start a session with having some musicians place instrumentally and we'd all begin to worship and pray. Sometimes David would feel the Lord moving us to focus on one thing or another, or a specific scripture. He reminded us that worship is warfare. That we need to declare that Jesus Christ is the Son of the Living God! He encouraged us to pray in tongues for 30 min each morning. Other than that David didn't teach much, but boy did God teach, and heal and set free!
For me, there was a moment during one of these worship sessions where I realized I'd been spending all my spare moments trying desperately to connect to the fickle base WIFI or get my Indian SIM card to work on my phone so I could communicate with Renée or the kids. I felt so bad for leaving them. I ended up with less and less energy for other people. God spoke gently to my heart. Here's the response I wrote, "
Father, Forgive me. For yearning more for my family than for You. For pursuing comfort more than Your heart. For spending so much time trying to connect unsuccessfully to the Internet and not to Your heart. I haven't been fully here. A big part of me constantly longs for Renée and the kids. I would've taken any opportunity to not come. But You never opened that door. I've obeyed, but not with my whole heart. So is that even obedience? Renée even encouraged me in a note to BE here. Love the people. Love the food. The country. Love being with like-minded people. But I haven't wanted to. I really have to push myself to engage people and to be open to Your heart God. Your eyes. There's so much beauty swirling around me in the praises of Your people. But I'm not in harmony with it all when I'm anxious and pushing for what I want. Mostly to talk with my wife. Wasu forgot to put money on my SIM card, now her relative has died and now she's been gone for days. WIFI isn't working for me. I feel stripped of what is dearest to my heart. Because You want to be dearest to my heart. You will not forsake my family. But I try to bear them up even now when only You can. So I release them to You."
As cheesy as it sounds, when the tears dried and I walked outside the sky was bluer, the birds sang sweeter, and the flowers were more colorful. People I'd never talked to before started to say 'hi' to me and I had energy and the interest to reciprocate! Praise God!
Week Three ended with a Love Feast (YWAM for fancy celebration dinner) and Graduation. Speeches. Pictures. Goodbyes. Had a day and a half to sight see and complete the incredibly annoying search for souvenirs. Then 23 hours of travel back to my beautiful family, a Five Guys burger, the Peanuts movie at a theater and then back to home...
Together.
But I'm not done.
There's more random pieces to the puzzle that are important to get out of my mind. Here they are in no particular order:
{if you've made it this far please keep reading}
What I love about YWAM after being to another base:
- we're not an organization, we're family. We share DNA. As family we may have our dysfunction, but we will love each other.
- students worshipping and praying through the hallways.
- intercession
- teachers who pray over their students
-always praying for a teacher before they begin
- shared work to keep logistics going
- good snacks
- multi-ethnic worship
-a place for the local church to retreat and be replenished (500 pastors were there one week for a church-planting seminar!)
-School of Biblical Studies students with their noses in the Bible while Discipleship Training School students are have a 'soaking' time. (worship)
-every base has a Pablo.
-AND, when I commented to the base director, "Oh, you're the base director, Jose," Jose replies, "No, I'm the servant of the servants."
Traffic.
One of my favorite things to do is to just walk down the road. What an adventure! Cars and motorbikes flying by within inches. Like you could reach out and touch death yet it just flows around you like water. Doesn't matter much which side they drive on. Big trucks with "Horn Please" painted on the back. To NOT honk is very rude. Cows. Blessed highway-wandering cows.
The train.
1 block away from the base. Its whistle had multiple notes. My classmates like's to identify if the whistle happened to blow a harmonic fifth. Musicians!
And most importantly people:
Richard. My roommate from Rwanda. A father of 5 grown children and many many orphans who found shelter with his family when they returned to Rwanda after the war. One of his daughters wrote him while he was in India saying, "Dad, I want you to write a book. Actually two. One about your life story. But first write a book about how you raised us." That says something. I listened very well to this man. He is a man of peace. He is not hurried. I want to be like him. I want to make sure my children know they are a priority in my life. More than ministry. More than my missionary aspirations. I think someday, by the Sanctifying Spirit I will be like Richard, because there was a day long ago, when he was like me.
Joyce. Joyce was a wonderful mother to us all. She not only worships with classical strains of violin and flute, but prays prayers of intercession through her instruments. She once traveled the who perimeter of the US playing and praying over our country. Another time, in that most restrictive of nations, NK she played at every monument to the Supreme Ruler 'til she felt the blood of the martyrs in her fret hand.
But one thing Joyce said to me was very interesting. In Paul's class we'd broken in to 4 groups to write a song from Ps 117 - in one hour. Our group's song started out with a Middle Eastern flavor then morphed into Pharel Williams. Don't ask me how, but it was fun. And I took the lead when we presented it to the class. Joyce pulled me aside afterward and asked if I'd ever thought about pursuing performance in music. She liked how I called the audience into the song. Performance is typically a bad word in the worship world, but I was beginning to see how important it is to be good at the talents God has given us. When I write songs they are for performance more than congregational singing, but it's all meant to lead to worship. Karen Lafferty told us the first people she led to the Lord were in bars where she was performing. This from the lady who wrote Seek Ye First!
Thank-you Joyce. I feel much more freedom to pursue skill in guitar and voice now. To not just be content to have enough to get by musically so I can lead worship.
Benny Prassad. Benny was introduced during a whole base meeting as not needing an introduction because after Jesus we all knew Benny Prassad. I didn't. Benny is Indian with dreadlocks. He holds the world record for having visited every country in the world in the shortest amount of time. But that's not the point. He shared a message on being faithful with the small things. Like our time. Or our health. (Sorry Lord for that Pepsi I drank earlier. Probably why I'm still up at 1:54 am still writing this blog.) Benny told the story of a time when he'd been double booked for concerts - one was for a music festival in Dubai where he'd play for the governor and have a huge platform for sharing the Gospel. The other was a kindergarten class in India, that couldn't pay him. He chose the kindergarten because they'd booked him first. So the festival in Dubai changed their dates and he did both! The takeaway for me was to not grasp so hard for what I don't have - a calling to a certain field, a title, a position - but rather be faithful with what I do have. A wonderful marriage. My four little things who are not getting littler. Some skill worship leading that can be developed. New students every few months who I hope to impart some new passion for worship and missions. Nurture what I already have. Be faithful in the little things because in God's eyes they are not little.
Michael. Mike is an American. A former student of Paul's, he lives in India with his wife and two sons. Had some cool stories about working as an ethnomusicologist in Sri Lanka. But the thing about Mike was that he was more Indian that my Indian classmates. The way he dressed, talked, bobbled his head, sang in Hindi, wrote songs in Sanskrit, played the sitar. He showed us a picture of his whole family on one bicycle.
That's Indian. They lived in a Brahmin, high-caste neighbor hood, in one of the most religious cities in India.
Here's the thing. Mike is doing exactly what I thought I wanted to do, and maybe still do. He's living the ethnodoxologist missionary dream! His neighbors want to know more about this Yeshua he's singing to in their language and style.
And here's the other thing. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt... my family does not fit on one bicycle.
Seriously though, I know we are not ready to do what Mike is doing. Moving from Grand Marais to Minneapolis was hard enough. We are not as a family spiritually, emotionally, physically (God {please} damn diabetes!) ready. Someday we will be. But maybe it'll look different for us. Maybe I just need to accept the placement God has given me instead of looking for another one.
Dale. A Navajo from Page, Arizona. Dale joined us for the last week. A North American Indian among East Indians. Dale had just come from Calgary, Alberta where he was working on a Native translation of the Bible. It's in English, but the kind of English most American Indians actually use. Wyclif Bible Translators are facilitating the project, but Indians are doing the translating. I loved listening to Dale as well. He talked of the parts of Navajo beliefs that reflected God. He talked of the philosophy of life centered on Beauty and Harmony. He talked of Creation and the Fall and Redemption in different words. But I realize the scripture words I read; the phrases that sound like TRUTH to me, are also not the words they were written in. The TRUTH lies not in the language, but in the Person of Jesus Christ, who uses the languages as tool to express Himself as the Word. I grew to love the Native American more. I began to think of how I could draw out more worship in the Lakota language when we go to Pine Ridge, SD in the summer. I thought of asking Dale if I could spend more time with him and the Navajo believers. I asked if there was something someone like me could do to help. I learned "help" is an offensive word. It implies they need lifting up from their status to mine. It causes as separation between helper and helpee. If we are going to influence another culture for Christ, Dale said, we must come in quietly, gently, as learners, supporting what God is already doing in people's hearts. Not necessarily leading. Rather coming behind, at at the most alongside.
Dale played the flute. The wooden Native American flute with its haunting, mournful cry that resonates so deeply in me. Twice Dale led us in worship with the flute while Sylvain Freymond (there's another man to tell you about! He's one of the foremost songwriters and worship leaders for the French speaking world. And there are more countries that speak French than any other language!) played keys. And the sound of the flute painted the yearnings of my heart. Ok that's getting a little too poetic for me. But I did love it.
The day we left for the airport, Dale, Sujith and I had some time to check out some caves excavated by Buddhists for a temple. There's a Hindu shrine there now. It's a steep walk up a thousand or so stone steps carved into the mountain. The steps are flanked with shops selling trinkets and the appropriate items for worshipping whichever of India's 30 million gods was enshrined at the top. Dale and I saw the shrine, looked at the Buddhist-carved temple in the side of the mountain. It was spiritually strange to us. Further around the mountain the three of us found a smaller simple cave. It was maybe 20'x30' with a low ceiling. Dale says, "Let's proclaim the name of Jesus in this place," and pulls out his flute. The notes bounce off the walls and reverberate through our bodies. An Indian asks if he can record. A couple German businessmen step inside. Dale moves into Amazing Grace and we worship Jesus in that place.
And I'm tearing up. So Amazing Grace is where we'll end.
