It’s my turn to share reflections on our transition to Egypt. It has been wonderful, exhausting, stretching, and surreal all at the same time. There is so much that comes at me in a given day that it is hard to describe. Egyptian culture is very top-down driven—everyone needs to check their decisions and issues through the guy at the top to cover their posterior. Added to that is that the church model of leadership has also been top-down. So to bring the idea of leaders equipping and releasing team in a very collaborative way is an idea the leadership wants, but the practice in everyday life is slower in coming.
The absence of senior level leaders poses challenges that have felt like much of the time like drinking from a fire hose and being the Mississippi delta—everything seems to flow down to me. A friend from Spokane wrote me recently, “I hope you’re not continuing your old habit of trying to do everything and please everyone.” Though the system wants to push me that way many days, I have found a steady and consistent small, still voice from God (after I reach my saturation point) that says, “Stay true to who I have made you to be and what I called you to do.” At our leadership retreat this weekend, the leaders prayed that I would know everyday what God wants me to do and leave the rest. It’s nice to have leaders tuned into that idea on board with you. This has also been the most responsive elected leader board that I have ever worked with. Our retreat this weekend was very much an experience of unity of spirit and casting vision that was motivational for all of us!
We were right on the verge of bringing in a candidate for Director of Administration when he suddenly pulled his name when his aging parents became ill. So now I’m back to square one, but then it all happened in such an eerie way that I have to stop and ask God what He is doing. It has been my desire to add senior staff from somewhere besides America to make us a truly international church. So I wait to discover what this startling turn of events might be, in what seemed to me to be my administrative lifeline and rescue boat hitting an iceberg and sinking.
Ministering to so many cultures has been amazing. I told our British worship director that I don’t know if I could ever go back to just a one culture church. The synergy and learning from different perspectives is amazing. I am awestruck to think that we have usually about 2-3 years to transform their spiritual perspective and ignite the passions of people from all over the world before sending them back to their home countries. (About 30% of our congregation turns over every year). I have never seen a church that balances growing deeper through small groups and growing outward through outreach that incarnates the presence of Jesus to affluent neighbors and under-educated and under-resourced refugees. I also think this has been the best worship service of any church we have been in. This Fall we are trying what we started at Garland to offer contemporary services that have somewhat different flavors. So far the responses have been very encouraging. We even want to offer some of our ethnic groups chances to lead worship in their own cultural styles every few months.
Alex meanwhile has hit that 2 month culture shock wall. He wants to go back to Spokane really bad. It started right before his birthday when he realized he wouldn’t have his close friends with him to celebrate. He has a couple of new guys he has as friends, but the social groups at school annoy him. His school is 30-40% affluent Egyptian and also has a sizeable affluent group of kids from oil families from the US. Couple that with the social brutality of a typical high school and you have lots of opportunities to grow—and be miserable in the meantime. This all has brought back my own memories of how much I hated Brownsville, Texas when I moved there right before my senior year of high school in 1971. Yet that year in south Texas did much to shape me spiritually and just introduce me to the cultural dynamics that I now experience on a much broader scale.
In the meantime, we are planning some tourist trips. This first week of October will mark the end of the Islamic feast of Ramadan and the October 6 holiday celebrating Egypt’s revisionist history view of their battle with Israel in the late 1970s. Ramadan has been interesting to watch things slow down during the day as Muslims eat or drink nothing (including water) from sunrise to sunset. Then at dusk they eat about three times more calories than they would normally and have one more feast right before sunrise. They tell me that in other parts of the Middle East that it is quite this food oriented. They spend more time with family and friends, so it’s like Christmas (without the commercialism) for a whole month. Next year Ramadan will begin about 11 days earlier. Anyway, this coming long weekend, we will take a trip to the picturesque White Desert toward the Libyan border to drive off-road vehicles and camp under the stars with our own Bedouin guide. Then in mid December when Travis and Brett come, we hope to take a week to go down (450 miles south) to Luxor to the Valley of the Kings and Queens to see all the temples of another site from an ancient kingdom capital (there are about three different capitals and concentrations of antiquity sites).
For those of you wondering about recent news of kidnappings, etc., that took place in a more remote area considerably south of Luxor. The security in Egypt is huge because they need the tourist income to survive as a country. Most expats feel safer living and moving around here than in the big cities of America. Remember to check the website www.maadichurch.net if you want info on the church. Bye for now!
