MISSIONS

If the World Were a Village of 100 People . . .

60 Asians,14 Africans, 12 Europeans, 8 Latin Americans, 5 from the USA and Canada, and 1 from the South Pacific

51 would be male, 49 would be female

25 have never heard about Jesus, 41 are evangelised non-Christians and 33 would call themselves Christian

46 are poor, 9 are rich

20 drink dangerous water

37 have insufficient water

50 have unsatisfactory sanitation

80 would live in substandard housing

7 are starving, near death

16 have insufficient food

8 are orphans

2 have no shelter at all

2 are street children

1.3 are beggars

1.4 are genitally mutilated

.4 are known prostitutes

67 would be unable to read

24 would not have any electricity (And of the 76 that do
have electricity, most would only use it for light at night.)

7 people would have access to the Internet

1 would have a college education

1 would have HIV

2 would be near birth; 1 near death

20 control 80% of the worlds resources

5 would control 32% of the entire world’s wealth; all 5 would be US citizens

33 would be receiving –and attempting to live on– only 3% of the income of “the village”

FOR EVERY US$100 GIVEN FOR CHRISTIAN WORK, US$99.10 IS SPENT ON MINISTERING TO THE 33 CHRISTIANS!!!!!!!

 

 

 

Justice and a revolution of values (Jamie)

As we’ve been looking at various issues of injustice on our ‘justice fridays’ I keep coming back to the same thought. The world is not unjust by chance, so many of the injustics of the world are deliberately perpetrated to protect the interests/greed of a few. So often it is the rich and powerful who abuse their position to exploit others. As I reflected on this I feel that what is needed is not just change in specific arenas but a shift in values, a revolution of heart if you like. I stumbled across this Martin Luther King quote which summed it up nicely:

‘A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look easily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the counties, and say: ‘’This is not just.’ The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: “this way of settling difference is not just.’ This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defence than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from re-ordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from moulding a recalcitrant status quo until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism and militarism. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors.

If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who posses power without compassion, might without morality and strength without sight.

Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful struggle for a new world this is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.’

Martin Luther King

 

What is LOVE?

Groups from our school have been going out to various locations in Auckland City and asking people for their opinion on questions like “what is truth?” and “what is love?”  Generally, this will draw a sizable crowd, start good conversations, and inspire very interesting answers.  Below are some pictures of the “what is love?” banner on K’rd, wich is the red-light area of town, known for it’s clubs and night life.

Cheers!  claire

 

A journey to becoming more like Him.

It has been awhile since we have updated you on life in Auckland so I will try to summarize what we have been up to and some things that I personally have been learning.

Week 7 we had our very own Josie Smith speaking to us about Developing a Biblical Worldview; this was a topic that was quite impacting for me. She was addressing some of the areas that we may have our views shaped by society instead of having our views shaped by the bible and the life of Jesus. Something that I was really challenged by was the idea of secular and sacred. I have developed the idea in my head that being an overseas missionary or working in the church is more sacred or better than working at a grocery store or in an office. This is something that Josie addressed. There is just as much importance and value in serving someone at a grocery store as there is value in serving those in another nation. I was so challenged by this.

Week 8 we had Mandy Hudson in to talk about Spiritual Warfare. When I have heard the words spiritual warfare in the past my view has often been something quite scary and intense, but Mandy defined spiritual warfare like this:

   “It is the dark forces behind human trafficking, child soldiers and prostitution. It is the choice to love someone who is difficult to love. It is forgiving someone. It is the choice of who I marry. It is my choice of career. It is how I spend my money. It is what I give up. It is who I hang out with. It is what internet sites I access. It is the movies I watch. It is doing the washing up in community. It is obeying leadership. It is where I choose to live. It is what I do with my Sundays. It is how I treat my body. It is what I do on Saturday night. It is who I am when no one is watching me. It is…”

Spiritual Warfare is something that we participate in everyday, it is the choices that we make, it is serving one another, it is loving those in your community and those outside your community. That was kind of a new concept to me, and I love it! It was also a time  for heart house cleaning. Just a time where Jesus was purifying my passions and replacing lies with truth.

Week 9 was on Relationships. Our speaker, Matt Dawson did an amazing job teaching on Godly relationships and what they should look like.  He shared his story about his experience with relationships and seeking God. One thing that really stood out to me was that we need to become experts at receiving the love of God, and out of that we will have healthier relationships. We also had a day where we asked the Holy Spirit to point out relationships that we felt needed to be reconciled or areas where we needed to make things right. Matt was talking how there had to be an openness and honesty in our relationships, which usually means vulnerability.

We have been having many really solid weeks of lectures and the outreach phase is fast approaching. We look forward to learning more in these next two and a half weeks and as we head out to different nations.

Till next time,

Laurissa Dueck

 

City Lights

City Lights

1st-3rd October 2009

The vision of City Lights is to create opportunities for individuals and church communities to engage with neighbours, those in their communities and the surrounding communities of south Auckland. There is a particular leaning towards the marginalized, those who are on the social fringes.

The layout of this 3-day project was simple-we began in the morning when we gathered together to receive some teaching, after which we broke into service projects for the afternoon. We re-gathered for dinner and sharing of our stories in the evening-time. Here are some of our stories to give you a flavour of what happened.

“I had such a beautiful and rewarding time with a family. We went there to help out about the garden-a big, old, wild, overgrown garden with surrounding wooden fences badly in need of repair and a lick of paint. In the process, we had the beautiful privilege of being welcomed into the family home. At first, I suspect they were a little suspicious of these strangers who were willing to garden for them and for nothing in return. But after the initial cup of tea, there wasn’t a bother on us. We repaired and painted the fence, put up a new postbox, looked at family albums and talked about the good old days-it was pretty sweet! We were able to share God’s love in such a small way and they were blown away. Hopefully this is not the last time we will see this family and I hope that next time, we will get to share the love of God with them a whole lot more.”

-Sheila

“I went to the kindergarten on the first day. We did some gardening around the school. I was a little tired beforehand and during but I had so much fun as I was working together with friends. On the second day, I went to visit a family who were Sudanese refugees. Beforehand, we went to the supermarket to buy groceries for the family as well as toys and bedding for the children. The mother is a single mother with six children. She doesn’t speak English even though they have been in New Zealand for about a year now. One of us taught her English and two of us cleaned up the childrens bedrooms. We brought the children to the Fun Day at the church. While the children were there, we put the new bedding on their beds as well as the toys. When they came home, we surprised them and wow, that was amazing! They were so happy.”

-Armin

 

Stay Dead!

Week 6 – The Lordship of Jesus                                                                                  14/09/09

Last week our speaker Mark Parker took us into a deeper understanding of the Lordship of Jesus. So you may be asking what the Lordship of Jesus is. Lordship is Knowing Jesus and having a heart like His. He challenged us to lay down our lives daily to Jesus and to die to ourselves and our rights. We need to make God first in our lives and put Him on the throne instead of ourselves. This is how we bring the Kingdom of God.

“If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me.” We need to take up our cross, DAILY! Each day I must deny myself and take up the cross. The signs of a disciple are love, obedience and fruits of the spirit.

“Ensure that the fear of the Lord stops you from sinning.”Don’t work on the fear of man, work on the fear of the Lord. If we make sure that we do fear the Lord then we will know the consequences of sinning and realise it is totally not worth it. We need to fix our eyes on Jesus not on the sin itself.

“Our generation is quick to repent and forgive, but slow to obey”. It is easy to say “sorry” then live life onwards. But true repentance is changing your mind. This leads to obedience to God’s teaching. When we repent and change our mind, it is lived out in our obedience. So really obedience and repentance go hand in hand.

On Thursday we had a ministry day based on the tabernacle of God. We took the basis of the Old Testament tabernacle and replaced it with the New Testament tabernacle of Jesus. Here is a very rough drawing of the basic tabernacle; the numbers represent certain symbols and steps to the Holy of Holies with the corresponding New Testament replacements.

By Irene Epp and Benjamin de Geest

 

The deep things! (Jamie)

Going back a couple of weeks I just wanted to put a little note on here about a week that was for many of us the most powerful week of DTS up until that time and one that started some really significant processes in us…

This week  (week 4) was truly incredible. Had anyone told me the journey I was going to embark on before we began the week I would not have known whether to laugh or cry, in fact I’d probably have wanted to run away!! The title of the week was ‘the father heart of God’ and for the first couple of days we learned from seeing that exampled by the speaker. He had a certain way of making you laugh, of making you feel comfortable, an ability to talk wisely about the deep things and all the while keeping things very real, very human. Even Christ. He reminded us that Christ was fully God but fully man; Jesus learnt discipline.

As the week progressed he taught us how we generally take our pain in on ourselves or throw it out onto others through rejection and rebellion. He explained some of the symptoms of the two responses such as sexual impurity and insecurity or stubbornness and seduction and then admitted his own history with those things. He challenged us to be real and share with each other our own histories, confessing what we disliked about ourselves and our mistakes. This was a way of learning to hear God’s voice in our deepest places instead of the rejection / pain we had internalised and expressed in harmful actions / attitudes.

What followed was two days of amazing honesty, brutal transformation and freeing healing. I was nervous to spill my guts with the group but encouraged by the loving acceptance and shared passion for life that flowed like healing balm across our wounded hearts. As I stepped out I found Jesus stepping towards me, pushing me to step out again and teaching me to find the heart I thought I had lost. It felt like we turned a page as a group and to be so real, so deep was incredibly releasing and inspiring.

 

Personal reflections (Jamie)

As requested here are couple of my summaries of our first weeks…just to add another voice/perspective to what we are learning…

Week one: Justice

This week my mind has been stimulated and my heart stirred by hearing some crazy facts about our world. Though our world is not all bad it has so much injustice and pain. It needs us. Did you know that 1 in 3 women worldwide are beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused in their lives. 24,000 people die every day of hunger or hunger related causes according to the UN. There are 27 million slaves today.

My heart has been stirred not just by hearing these facts but also by having them communicated by people who care so deeply about the people suffering these injustices. My own heart is warmed and somewhat embarrassed by the compassion and love I hear pour from the hearts of these champions of others.

I have also heard this week the stories of friends who have grown up with some horrible pains and brokenness in their own lives. Amazingly each of their stories concluded with incredible hope and joy, telling of how God had bought them out of their darkness and into healing, wonderful light. It makes me wonder how people can not believe in God when I have seen so much evidence of him in just a coupe days: normal, selfish, human hearts turned to others so completely, hearts wonderfully healed of their struggles and incredible injustices, people desperate to make a difference for Love. But then I realise that most people don’t get to ever hear or see this stuff and I don’t want what I am hearing to remain in our little classroom. So that is why I am gonna endeavour to write some notes during the busyness of dts and put them up on here. Life is crazily busy but please comment and engage in discussion if they provoke something in you…the world outside needs us to engage with Love

Week two: Intimacy and engagement

This week we’ve had some intense times thinking about human trafficking and the darker side of our world. On Thursday night we watched a movie called human trafficking during which most of the school was in tears. On Friday we had a brilliant lawyer called Denise Ritchie inform us about the extent of human trafficking. She challenged us that in the whole chain of human trafficking if you remove any link but one the chain will continue. The only way the chain is broken is if you remove demand. Strikingly this is the link in the chain to which we pay least attention. We seem to have accepted that it is men’s right to pay for sex and all the rape, abuse and exploitation that goes with that as unfortunate by-products. Perhaps we need to challenge this assumption and beyond that, our permissive culture that says we should be able to express any desire we feel, despite the potential consequences for others. Denise goes so far as to suggest that porn, prostitution and human trafficking are all links in a chain that needs to be broken, I’d love to debate that idea and how we might do so with you.

This week we also heard a lot of teaching about remaining close to God. In all the darkness of this world it is easy to lose hope, to become bitter and burnt out. In fact we saw good evidence of how easy that is for that to happen and many of us were ourselves deeply disturbed by the reality of evil in our world.

In summary we need to focus on the light to see our way through the shadows. We need to remain in Love to have a message to offer. We need to drink of the waters of life so that we have springs of hope within. We cannot hope to get to the roots of our societal problems if we do not have the courage to face the roots of our own problems.

Jamie

 

IN AND AROUND AUCKLAND

 

OUTREACH TEAMS

Pete, Janna, Laurissa, Tim, Rich, Armin, Dana

Team Cambodia are going to Phenom Penn to work with “Daughters of Cambodia” –

www.daughterscambodia.org

Andy, Ben, Sheila, Claire, Sarah, Jason, Daniel

Team India are going to Chennai to work with YWAM there:

http://www.ywamchennai.org

Josie, Tiffana, Irene, Ruth, Evelyn, Felicity, Jamie, Tyson

Team South Africa are going to work with Justice Acts in Muizemburg: www.justiceacts.org