“If you don’t enjoy it here, go home!” That’s the advice Carlos (formerly Chuck) has for missionaries. To be an effective missionary, we don’t just need to understand the culture. We need to embrace it and enjoy it. Jesus engaged the culture he lived in. He went to...
The team I worked with in Mexico, after experiencing the power of the “Barnabas questions,” quickly recognized that they could use these questions in their work with community organizing. They regularly come alongside people to help them with community...
I like to call these The Barnabas Questions: How are you? What are you celebrating? What challenges are you experiencing What do you plan to do about these challenges? How can I help you? How can I pray for you? I introduced these six questions, originally used by...
Mexico had a speeding problem. People would go way too fast. Now they’ve solved that problem by putting up “topes” everywhere that force drivers to slow down. “Topes” are gigantic speed bumps. Some are so big the bottom of the car scrapes across it and most drivers...
When I was in Mexico recently, I attended the staff meeting at Comunidad Mosaico, a ministry that works toward transformation among the urban poor. They had a time of worship, and due to my poor Spanish skills, I understood very little that was going on. But I felt...
Without any clear benchmarks for change, it’s almost impossible to measure whether change is happening. What is transformation? What does it look like? Would you recognize it if you saw it? Here are the 10 signs of change used by the ministry I visited in...
Yesterday I wrote about the growth of urban slums. Which leaves us with the question: “What can we as the church do about it?” Yet our guiding question shouldn’t be, “What can we do to address the challenge of urban slums?” but rather, “What will it take to...
Population growth rates in urban slums are higher than in virtually any other environment in the world. Currently, 1 out of 6 people in the world live in urban slums. 1 out of 6. Every week urban areas gain another 1.3 million people. That’s 67 million people per...
I know it’s a little late to be posting a picture of a Christmas tree, but bear with me. Our church’s Christmas gift is probably just now arriving in Oaxaca, in the south of Mexico. At the initiative of one of the men in our missional house church, we at...
