along the way

Road trips in the US of A. One of my favourite things to do, although they are not as much fun on my own, as I was this time. After meetings in Miami, I took a flight to Charlotte, rented a car and drove off to visit some of the people under my watch.

1068 miles in under 5 days.

At Charlotte airport I was greeted with some unexpected tourist information, just before I headed towards The Billy Graham Parkway as I exited the airport. Billy sure is a big deal in these parts. It may have been only 5 minutes away, but I never got there. Given my line of work and the influence of his life on mine, this was a case of some seriously poor planning.

Maybe on another day…

Cornelius, North Carolina
My first stop was Jennifer and Martin’s home, a walking distance from the shores of Lake Norman, a man-made lake with hundreds of miles of coastline. My first task was to figure out how to open the hatch of my car. I had already reached the all too familiar stage of rolling my eyes at myself, dropping my chin into my chest with mumblings of ‘Here we go again, Paul’s perennial problems with technology’. Finally, when no one else could help, I admitted defeat and went to Google with my question – “how do you open the hatchback on a ford ecosport?” I can’t remember a time when a youtube video has ministered to me as much as this one…

 A distant view of Michael Jordan’s palatial home created some early excitement …

… but that was eclipsed quickly by seeing the one without a home. Asleep on a bench, outside the St Albans Church in nearby Davidson, we found The Homeless Jesus.

‘The Least’ – and the last and the lost. These are the ones to whom Jesus was oriented – and so it should be for Jesus’ people. 1 Corinthians describes how the church bearing his name is identified by ‘the weak, the lowly, the foolish’ (1 Cor 1) and how it welcomes those whom others treat as dispensable and with less honour (I Cor 12).

Lexington, Virginia
Then it was a drive up alongside the Appalachians to this little town of 6,000 people where Paul and Julie are based, having pastored a Presbyterian church there for 34 years. With my American boarding school education, I enjoyed catching up with George Washington, Robert E. Lee and Andrew Stonewall Jackson (the latter two are buried here).

Believe it or not, this little town is home to two tertiary institutions. The Virginia Military Institute and the Washington & Lee College. Initially, it was just Washington College, named after the key figure in the birth of the nation. But Robert E. Lee, commander of the Confederate forces in the Civil War, was invited to be president after the war and so offering a leadership during the rebirth of the nation. After his death – and his body lies in the altar-space of a chapel, of all places – his name was added to the name of the college.

The Stonewall Jackson Memorial Cemetery caught my eye – well, the man himself standing tall at the centre certainly caught my eye. It was hard to miss him.

But I needed Paul to help me find Davy Buck’s grave, off to the side by a bush which now carries his name. Here is a little paragraph from the Walking Tour through Stonewall Jackson Memorial Cemetery:
43. Davy Buck (d. 1858)
An African-American, Buck served for 40 years as sexton of Lexington Presbyterian Church. The church was segregated, as was its cemetery. Yet because of his loyal service to the church, he was given a plot in the cemetery. It is in the far northwest corner by S. Main St.

Davy is the only African-American in this cemetery. It is easy to look back and fill with righteous indignation at this segregation in the American church. But how sure are we about the side of the divide that we’d find ourselves, if we had lived at that time? In my homelands of India and New Zealand, alive as they are with post-colonial debates marked by a stinging critique of our ancestors, how sure am I that I would not have aligned myself with them?

If we find that we flow easily with the prevailing socio-political ideas of our own time – promulgated by institutions like the media, the university and Hollywood – we are far more likely to have been people, back then, who lacked the ‘moral courage’ (to use a phrase from Cricket Australia’s recent report on the ball-tampering scandal that has been missed by the media) to stand against the prevailing colonial ideas of that time. Back then, far more often than we care to imagine, we’d find ourselves on the very side that we so detest now.

And, yes, one of the great sadnesses in America today is that ’11am on Sunday’ remains such a segregated hour…

Wilmore, Kentucky
Then it was the long trip across the Appalachians and the Alleghenys, through West Virginia and on to Kentucky. There is not much more to Wilmore than Asbury University and Seminary, both Wesleyan institutions. This was my third visit, with my first having been the morning after they discovered that an expected $1-3 million dollar bequest had turned out to be $25 million, which has since become something in excess of $50 million. My mind cannot compute that number. This Centre for Biblical Preaching and Church Leadership, as well as the Asbury Inn where I stayed, were among the projects that became possible with that funding…

But to Asbury’s credit, it does have more than a ‘bricks and mortar’ vision. They are oriented towards the global church more than most other theological institutions. For example, majority world scholars are coming and going all the time, with the two I came to visit, Femi and Mayukha, being counted among them.

Reminiscent of earlier engagements with Mennonite/Amish communities (here and here), Femi and I visited the Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill. Their withdrawal from society in a bid to create a utopia on earth strikes us as kinda odd today. It is odd. It is misguided. But there is a germ of truth in there which I respect. It is that instinct to create a distinctive, contrast community at a time when wanting to fit into our culture has so overwhelmed us, proving to be a strategy that is not doing mission much good at all.

In restoring a Shaker Village, maybe we should consider restoring tiny elements of the Shaker Vision as well. Larry Hurtado argues that the secret of the early church’s influence lay with ‘fitting in and being different’ (Destroyer of the Gods, 150). He observes that ‘a successful religious movement must retain a certain level of continuity with its cultural setting, and yet it must also maintain a medium level of tension with that setting as well … there has to be a clear distinction between being an insider to the group and an outsider’ (7). The Shakers can be faulted for losing the ‘continuity’ and making the  ‘distinction’ too stark – but might we not be faulted for losing the ‘tension’ and not making the ‘distinction’ stark enough?

Meanwhile, back in Miami, Florida – in those days before I could open a hatchback…
We were in meetings, lots of them. The highlight? I’d struggle to name anything in the total mission of God that enthuses me more than the work of Langham Literature, especially in the way it facilitates the development of one volume contextual Bible commentaries for the peoples of the world. One done for Africa (now in six languages). One done for South Asia (now being translated into multiple languages). One for the Slavic peoples … and now one for the Arabic-speaking peoples of the world. The Arabic Contemporary Bible Commentary.

I laid hands on it!

And next year? Latin America publishes one for Spanish-speaking peoples…

nice chatting

Paul

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About Me

paul06.16

the art of unpacking

After a childhood in India, a theological training in the USA and a pastoral ministry in Southland (New Zealand), I spent twenty years in theological education in New Zealand — first at Laidlaw College and then at Carey Baptist College, where I served as principal. In 2009 I began working with Langham Partnership and since 2013 I have been the Programme Director (Langham Preaching). Through it all I've cherished the experience of the 'gracious hand of God upon me' and I've relished the opportunity to 'unpack', or exegete, all that I encounter in my walk through life with Jesus.

2 Comments

  1. Fred Brunell on November 12, 2018 at 12:08 pm

    Beautiful couple of pics of Shaker buildings (the cream ones). Inspired to paint one… will keep ya posted 🙂

  2. the art of unpacking on November 14, 2018 at 10:25 pm

    Yes, they are so beautiful – look forward to the painting!

    Paul

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