cries of a Seagull

the doormat...

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 07:06:43 +0800

Need I say more...?

9/11 and the hazaras

Sun, 11 Sep 2011 11:39:08 +0800

An easily-overlooked consequence of 9/11 and the so-called ‘War on Terror’ that followed it, is a dramatic change in the fortunes of the Hazara people of central Afghanistan. Claiming descent from the ancient Mongols and mostly adhering to Shia Islam - though there are some Christians among them - they have been subject to withering persecution and massacres down the centuries. In recent years these were carried out by the Taliban, who committed appalling atrocities against them. The Taliban’s ethnic policy was summed up thus in their own words: ‘Tajiks to Tajikistan, Uzbeks to Uzbekistan, and Hazaras to the graveyard.’* This collective death sentence against an entire people came to a juddering halt with the allied intervention and toppling of the Taliban in late 2001.

Since the end of Taliban rule in Afghanistan, the Hazara have enjoyed a hitherto unknown freedom and opportunities in education and employment, as the picture above attests. I have several Hazaras in the classes I teach at Mongolia International University. Chatting over the dinner table with people whose very ethnicity invites a bullet to the head can feel somewhat surreal. Yet, highly motivated and very eager to learn, they dream of a better country back home, and look forward to playing their part in making it happen.

At a time of international fatigue with the conflict in Afghanistan, it should be remembered that the Hazara are today living lives they could not have dreamed of ten years ago. Shunned by much of Afghan society, but resourceful and with a reputation for hard work, they could yet be the brightest hope for the future of Afghanistan, and an end to decades of war there.

picture from pastmists.wordpress.com
*quote from National Geographic

the dashboard prayer-wheel

Sat, 3 Sep 2011 18:25:24 +0800

Negotiating Ulaanbaatar’s roads, whether as a pedestrian or as a motorist, is never dull. Small wonder then, that some see these little prayer wheels, not as an accessory, but as a must-have. Solar or battery-powered, they sit (and spin) on many a car dashboard in Ulaanbaatar.

Exactly what they represent in the folk Buddhism of the culture here, I’m not sure. Insurance, perhaps? If so, that will be the closest most UB drivers get to actually having a genuine policy! No kidding.

the flying vodka bottle

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 15:43:50 +0800

Waste disposal takes a number of forms here in Ulaanbaatar. One involves discarding unwanted items from your apartment window, regardless of what, or who, or how many, may be in the street below. Empty noodle pots and plastic bottles are just some of the projectiles that take flight from apartment windows here. The other week I was within a few feet of being hit by a vodka bottle. Mercifully, I was alerted to the approaching danger by the bottle clattering on the metal roof of the shop nearby as it descended. No harm done!

Even heavier items have been known to be disposed of in this way. I kid you not! But while injuries and fatalities are easy to imagine, I’ve not heard of any. People seem to have a way of avoiding these dangers, just as they seem to avoid falling into the numerous manholes here whose covers have been stolen for their metal.

Needless to say, life here is never dull!;-0

End note: One of the saddest and most ironic aspects of life in a country where people are said to live at one with nature - is littering. The city is one of the most littered places I have seen anywhere! This despite the presence of rubbish bins on the streets. The river here was cleared of litter recently; it was pristine for no more than a couple of days. And the countryside, which still maintains its majesty and beauty, is strewn with all manner of junk: empty vodka bottles, beer cans, cigarette packets, plastic bottles, bags, etc, etc, mostly by the road/track-sides. While the rising levels of litter indicate increasing prosperity, they also point to a deep breach in the ‘contract’ between people and the land they are said to love.

Picture courtesy of foodieheaven

funny, but sad...

Mon, 15 Aug 2011 17:59:39 +0800

The video speaks for itself. That so many are caught up in this stuff is a tragedy...

money isn’t everything...

Wed, 3 Aug 2011 21:21:25 +0800

OK, I admit. I get tired of leaders whose only reason for meeting me, it seems, is money, usually for some project or other. It is not just that I feel commodified in terms of the money I represent or may be able to get my hands on. Nor is it because there is such a small pool of financial resources that I can call upon, which is also true. Nor is it because the needs are often real - and great - which is often true as well.

But it goes to the heart of what we are about in Russia, Mongolia and other parts of Eurasia. Let me illustrate: in many years of travel in these parts I have seen massive church building projects which have taken years to complete, or where work has ground to a halt for lack of funds. I can think of two such church building projects in the town I have just visited in Russia - buildings that have been in construction at least since my first visit there no less than seven years ago - and which are still not complete. And they are far from isolated cases. The problem seems to lie in trying to replicate models of church that may ‘work’ in other places, but have little connection with the local context.

A Culture of Dependence
When the Iron Curtain fell 20 years ago, Russia and the former Soviet Union represented the new frontier in mission. The spiritual hunger that accompanied the fall of communism was palpable. Missionaries came in the early days with tons of cash, and churches were started. Among those were the prosperity teachers - heretics who taught that the sky was the limit in terms of the personal wealth and comfort that God seems to owe each one of us - seemingly with no effort on our part. Great damage was done to the cause of the Gospel here. The advent of this ‘prosperity gospel’ - which is really no gospel at all, was an extreme example of one of the greatest curses that has fallen on local church culture here - dependence.

Certainly there was rampant spiritual hunger in the early days. But how did we feed it? A Siberian leader lamented to me once how people were clamouring for Bibles in his town around two decades ago. Distributions ran out as there simply weren’t enough to go round. But all that has changed now. Other things are filling the spiritual vacuum, with disastrous consequences. The result, for many churches, is unfinished and unfilled buildings. What they have takes money to maintain, which draws resources away from the mission they were intended to facilitate. What they don’t have, many are still looking (to the west) for - in hopes that are even more likely to be disappointed in given the current fiscal and financial turmoil in many countries.

Big is Beautiful?
There was, it seemed, one way to ‘do church’ in those days, and that was to do it big. That was what early post-Communist church leaders were taught, or had modelled to them. So came the auditoriums, or at least plans for auditoriums, that were to be the focus of ministry. Why? The reason was that this is what ‘successful churches’ and ‘effective mission,’ were all about. It played well to the donors who poured money into these projects. All this had to work, because this was what they were doing at home. Now I am not against large churches per se. That is my background, and it is through one of these that I came to be where I am now. But I do have the downer on churches that are not rooted in the local culture, whatever their size.

The big church idea played well too, to the early church leaders of the post-Soviet world who themselves operated on the Communist idea of ‘big is beautiful.’ To be a hit, you had to make a splash, and buildings were one way to make that splash. The practice was pray to God and look to the west. That’s an oversimplification, but I won’t apologise for it. Indeed, one mark of your success as a leader lay in your ability to pull in a stash of cash from foreign donors to this end. And one mark of the worth of foreigners lay in the cash that they represented. I don’t pull in a stash of cash, so am valued accordingly by those with this mindset. I don’t mind.

Such people are not priority for me, nor for Radstock, because as long as they hold that mindset, they don’t represent the future of the church in these parts. It sounds brutal, but it’s true.

The Tap runs Dry...
For donor churches that operated on the basis of ‘mission by proxy’ this approach enabled them to salve their consciences thus: ‘You have the need, we have the money, problem solved... (until some other worthy cause comes along).’

It was assumed the tap would never stop running. But it did, or at least it was reduced to a trickle. The fact that this model of church is not locally reproducible passed many by. Where are locals, especially in the regions, going to find the cash to build more of these buildings in their contexts? Where indeed, especially when you consider that Russia and Mongolia are no longer the new frontier in mission? They don’t create the buzz they once did, even though some of the most unreached people-groups in the world live in these parts.

They will remain unreached if the means to reach them revolves around large church buildings, which even if built will represent a considerable drain on the financial resources of the local church community. Such buildings are in any case inimical to the many ethnic groups in these parts for whom the locus of community and spirituality is the home. That principle holds good whether we are talking about the gers of the Gobi, or wooden cottages in the forests of Udmurtia. It is easier to get people to step over the threshold into ‘church,’ if that church is in the home of people they know, than if the church is in a great building that might just as well be inhabited by aliens. Basically we came, we told people how to do church - ie. big - gave them some cash, laying the expectation for more, then lost interest. We sold them a pup.

Tackling with the Wind, or against it?
Even if we hadn’t lost interest, the charge could still be laid that many of these churches are essentially western creations based on western money. They are not ‘local.’ That is bad in enough in Russia, where historic churches, both Orthodox and others, had their own reasons to be suspicious of this outside influence. It is another thing entirely in Mongolia, where all forms of church are seen as foreign-driven and financed. That has to change.

The problem is not so much that many of today’s leaders are the ones who first emerged after the fall of the iron curtain. It is that so many of them have not changed their thinking about how to develop and resource ministry. And they are in danger of transmitting these bankrupt ideas to the next generation of leaders. If they know nothing else, that is what they will try to pass on, even though the funding or ‘sponsorship’ stream has all but dried up.

The truth is that Russia today is a very different country from the Russia I first knew in the 1990‘s. She is significantly more prosperous than she was then, even though the structures of power mean that her wealth - drawn largely from the exploitation of her natural resources - is concentrated among a few. The perception that arose in the Western (church) mind was of a country that is no longer in such great need, even though many of her people remain in desperate need.

Here in Mongolia, the rapid monetization of this country’s natural wealth could see a similar trend develop over the next ten years - of donor ‘fatigue’ as average incomes rise. But at the same time, the already yawning gap between those at the top and bottom of the economic ladder is set to widen still further. How will local churches seek to take forward the Gospel in such a situation? Call in yet more outside funds that may never come, or seek the Lord for local solutions? Looking again at Jesus’ feeding of the 5000 would be a good place to start. Such meagre resources amidst such huge need. But what does Jesus say? ‘You give them something to eat.’ I mean, what shear barefaced... ...! But would He say anything different today?

Hard and prayerful reflection on this event in salvation history will serve the churches here well.

What kind of leaders today, what kind of churches tomorrow?
The question has to be asked, therefore, as to what kind of leaders are now emerging in these countries. There are hopeful signs of change, of leaders who recognise that church has to be locally self-sustaining and locally reproducible. I am not against financial donations to churches in less privileged places, by the way. The New Testament provides us with a sound basis for clearly purposed, time-limited, targeted help for churches in need, through accountable relationship. The New Testament even goes on to commend the abundant generosity of those who gave beyond their means to serve the needs of others elsewhere.

No church in these parts, however needy, would suffer from serious, prayerful consideration of the principles here. Generosity, not dependence, is what makes a church fruitful.

Furthermore, people need to reflect hard on what it is to be ‘church.’ If church in the New Testament use of the word was simply a gathering of people, and they were taught that where two or three are gathered in Jesus’ name, he is there among them, then church can happen anywhere, without big bucks to support it.

Thinking small is the best way to think big, especially in cultures that are increasingly hostile to the Gospel. Small and mobile is the surest route to survival and multiplication. Only a few with the right connections can build something big. But many can build something small. And if I were a betting man, I would wager that building small is the best basis for multiplicational growth and survival in harsh times. The ger churches of the Gobi are necessarily small. Thirty is an uncomfortable maximum when it comes to seating space. It is easy to see when a new church is needed. And gers don’t take a lot of maintenance. Experienced hands can set one up in four hours. The apartment churches of northern Siberia similarly don’t require much setting up. An apartment contains all the facilities that an apartment church needs.

So what do growing churches in these parts really need? Somewhere bigger to meet? ‘No,’ according to a government official across the other side of the world in Communist Cuba, who once said to a group of believers when they were looking for permission to a build a church building: ‘Why do you need a building when you have apartments you can meet in?’ I couldn’t have said it better myself.

The ‘area’ I look after is mostly post-Communist, rather than pre- or aspiring to be, anything else. This means that large buildings - which may be assets in other contexts - can easily become liabilities as so much money goes into building and maintaining them. And what if some government official were to decide one day to change the locks? That is not as unrealistic as it may seem, in countries of Communist heritage without regard for due process of the law. Property can be ‘nationalised’ on a pretext. What will become of all the ‘investment’ then, and of the believers whose lives have revolved around it?

the drivers of fear (2)

Sun, 26 Jun 2011 19:43:11 +0800

The recent attack in plain sight on a friend of mine in Ulaanbaatar once again brings into focus the vulnerability of foreign workers here. While we can’t be certain that his assailant was a member of Dayar Mongol (All Mongolia), that possibility can’t be discounted either. Currently, members of Dayar Mongol, a far-right group here, are said to be gaining entrance to foreigners’ apartments posing as maintenance workers, and then beating up the occupants. A few days ago I was landed a punch as I headed to the shop to get some milk. No words were exchanged, but my ‘crime’ was almost certainly that of being a foreigner.

The sheer absurdity of these groups’ adoption of the Nazified swastika as shown above (the symbol has a much longer history here), and their adoration of Adolf Hitler - who once vowed to destroy the Mongols as a race - is something I have written about previously, and warrants further inquiry.

But that this stuff is on the rise shows a worrying trend. Mongolia is at a delicate stage in its development. Her mineral resources are being opened up at an eye-watering rate - in my view, too quickly. But at the same time her politics and the distribution of economic and social power are rotten. This combination of resource exploitation and rampant official corruption makes for a combustible mix ahead of parliamentary elections next year. Don’t forget that official corruption makes victims of everybody, and ordinary Mongols feel it deeply. Add to that the perceived foreign (and especially Chinese) encroachment on Mongolia’s resources, and it becomes easier to see why so many Mongols are both resentful of the current processes of change, and fearful for the future. Every day I see the signs of growing anger and resentment - not often verbally expressed, but a powerful undercurrent nonetheless.

Construction is going on everywhere in Ulaanbaatar - mostly office and apartment blocks. Much of this is on the back of the mining boom. But whether ordinary Mongols will get to share in this bounty in a meaningful way over the long term is a very open question. The wealth gap appears to be widening. Every day I see numbers of working-age men - mostly young - milling around with apparently nothing to do. The attraction of groups such as Dayar Mongol, with their promises of identity, belonging and especially power to the otherwise alienated and powerless, is not hard to imagine.

Then there is the increasing popularity of traditional Mongolian shamanism - a religion whose ‘brighter’ side is packaged for Western audiences, but whose darker effects are all too obvious to those of us who live here. Shamanism’s dark arts have their own appeal to young men here of little power and few prospects in life. Power in execution and fear in response are its twin hallmarks. Initiation as a shaman requires neither books nor study, so it is easy to see its appeal. Indeed, many families now boast their own shaman, and the numbers are said to be increasing rapidly. Thus turns the cycle of power and fear here.

These developments, among many others, bode ill for the immediate future of Mongolia, and it is time for the church here to rise up united, to be bold yet vulnerable, to declare the peace that can only come from and with Christ. There is much to pray for...

snow had fallen, snow on snow -  and it’s may!

Fri, 6 May 2011 11:13:05 +0800

So the lyrics in the carol go - except there’s no mention of the month. Does this picture seem strange to you? Well it’s not really that strange at all in this context. Large parts of Mongolia today lie under a blanket of snow, and this was the view to the mountains from my balcony this morning! Conditions are a lot worse out of town.

This week saw a heavy snowstorm and driving wind in Ulaanbaatar, followed by another day and night of falling snow.

Welcome to spring in Mongolia! Well, kind of. Or as a friend here put it to me recently, Mongolia doesn’t really have four seasons. It has two, summer and winter, of which the latter is by far the longest. The periods in between are marked by battles of the air masses - warm versus cold. So at this time of year, temperature variations normally connected in other places with change from one season to the next can happen in the same month here - even the same week! In other words, snow in May may seem strange, but here at least, it isn’t that strange at all.

Just as I put my winter things away, they had to come out again. I remain fascinated and intrigued by many aspects of life in Mongolia - not least the weather!

For latest weather reports for Ulaanbaatar, check out the weather widget on my homepage.

a national hope

Thu, 14 Apr 2011 22:40:13 +0800

Mongolia’s national anthem, composed in 1950, and with a distinctly Soviet flavour, expresses much of the hopes of a nation facing many current challenges.

Behind the faces and the costumes are this country’s dreams, and its children (well, some of them). Some of the lyrics seem to betray the country’s Buddhist and shamanistic spiritual heritage. But don’t forget, the church is here in the mix in this great land. And churches and church-based businesses have so much to offer this beautiful country at this crucial point in its development. Pray that they may be salt and light in this generation in Mongolia...

the seduction of vision

Thu, 14 Apr 2011 20:22:35 +0800

‘Where do you see yourself / your ministry in five years’ time?’ ‘How do you see your ministry developing over the next five years?’ Those who have sat through ministerial reviews and other such assessments, as I have, will be well-used to questions of this sort.

My preferred response goes along the lines of: ‘Well in five years’ time I don’t see myself having to answer stupid questions like that one.’ My actual responses, being more considered of the context, have tended to be more restrained. To my mind, however, there is a fundamental problem with this line of inquiry.

Honestly, where do we get this talk? It seems more akin to a cultural context where vision is reduced to a set of hopefully realisable goals that can be worked out beforehand, than to normative experience for the followers of Jesus. In such a worldview, vision becomes little more than strategy. In effect, ‘This is where I am going and these are the means I am going to use to get get there.’ Was this ever so in the Body of Christ? Is this vision in the Biblical use of the word? Nothing I read in Scripture points in that direction. But so much store is set by questions like the ones above, and our responses to them.

Similar could be said for so much church activity. Meetings to determine a ‘deanery vision’ in times past often induced in me a state of anticipated boredom beforehand - an expectation that was, sadly, rarely disappointed. How many hours do we spend (and have I spent) in committees, poring over ‘vision documents’ and strategies, only to end up with polished statements which few of those who need to understand, do understand, and still less actually own?

One unfortunate result is that ‘the vision’ comes to represent something that is either unobtainable, insufferably boring, and often both. Even worse, this very activity can be a substitute for actually stepping out, taking the risk and doing the thing itself. How does this square with the description of vision as ‘a picture of the future which inspires passion?’ I have yet to experience ‘vision by committee’ that comes anywhere close to this. Sad too, because this way of determining ‘vision’ is entirely absent from the New Testament mandate for the church.

Moreover, because of the confusion of vision and strategy in many minds, people will often ask for the former, when what they’re really after is the latter. While this fails to appreciate the differences between the two, the more critical problem is that it fails to make room for God’s action in each. It also betrays a lack of personal responsibility for vision-seeking on the part of the enquirer. Vision is first and foremost about engagement with Him. It can’t be discerned, caught or otherwise outside of that vital engagement. And it is not something that can be worked up in discussion. Discussion and action come out of vision, not the other way round. The active part is stepping into it, and the faith aspect is taking the risk, knowing that most of the ‘landscape’ is not known at that point. Vision then, is rather something that you step into, and the strategy - or such strategy as is needed - is determined along the way.

So many of the overarching storylines of Scripture begin with the actors having little or no idea of the detail, or of how things will turn out within any given time-frame. I give three examples here:

• God’s call to Abram in Genesis 12 to leave country, people and family, and go ‘to the land I will show you.’
• Paul’s dream in Acts 16, in which a man from Macedonia is heard saying, ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us.’
• The annunciation of the birth of Jesus to the virgin Mary in Luke 1.

All three instances called for a quantum step into the then humanly unknown by the main actors: Abram is called to leave his father’s household, people and country, and journey to who knew where. This is absolutely counter-intuitive, especially given the abundance today of travel opportunities to any place we desire, and gigabytes of information on the internet on what we might find there. So much of our world is known today in a way that was not possible then. The downside of this is that we may expect to have a surfeit of information at our finger-tips before we even start. And where such information is lacking, that is often taken as a cue for caution.

The significance of Abram’s call can easily be lost in cultures where family ties have little importance in the organisation of economic and social relationships. For Abram, it meant leaving everything that had supported him and given him meaning and security up to that point. And for what? Yet he stepped into the vision that God gave him.

I saw something of this in a young and physically disabled church planter in the Gobi Desert some time back. She had started a church in her family ger in her teens. The church grew significantly. Then her pastor asked her to relocate to another part of the Gobi to start a new work there. A totally new situation (for her), and no close family support. But off she went, and another church began.

Paul and his apostolic team were at a place of decision in the second of their missionary journeys: hemmed in by unspecified obstacles here and there, yet compelled onwards by the Gospel. Then into the midst of what must have been a crisis, God speaks, and they set off for Macedonia. Notice the number of committee meetings that were involved in that decision, the time taken, the research that was done into the planned destination, then that strategy document that they passed around before they got on the boat!

I jest, but the point is made, is it not? The Gospel’s expansion from Asia to Europe, and the next chapter in the growth of the early church is accomplished without these ‘necessities’ of modern church business. As Luke put it: ‘We got ready at once to leave for Macedonia...’ How fleet-footed are we when it comes to stepping out for God today? Isn’t it enough to stand on the words of Jesus when he says, ‘Don’t worry about tomorrow... Let tomorrow take care of itself... If this was good enough for Jesus, why is it not so for us?

Mary, in response to the message from the angel, said: ‘I am the Lord’s servant. May your word be fulfilled.’ She was probably in her early teens, just coming out into the world of her time. She willingly stepped into something that would have been enough for her to be executed for adultery. And though Joseph, her husband-to-be, would not go that far, he still made plans to break off the engagement. And that’s not to mention the many other griefs that must have assailed her as she followed the life and ministry of her Son to his cross and beyond.

What is it that we really want? So much thinking about vision is based on gaining more of what we have now (since that is what we can plan for), rather than an engagement with God that puts us on the threshold of a new paradigm. All these three stepped across the threshold into a new revelation of God, his character and providence. If we want to do vision well, we need to recapture the Biblical way of doing it. It’s possible, and in thousands of miles of travel, I have seen churches stepping out like this. Gutsy, punching well above their weight, stepping well outside their ‘comfort zones,’ and seeding new churches as a result. In fact, some of these churches don’t have ‘comfort zones’ to step out of. May they be our example in a world where the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are still so few (Matthew 9:35-37).

Stepping out in this way does not guarantee ‘success’ as the world and much of the church would understand it. In his second letter to the Corinthian church, Paul provides us with a helpful list of the things he had to contend with as he stepped over the line for Christ. If we think that is not normal Christian experience, then we need to consider that it is in fact normal for many believers and churches outside the First World today. Have they got it wrong if they step out into what God has called them into, only to end up in prison in places that I can’t mention here? You answer the question. Or, in the final analysis, is it we who will be found to have got it wrong, if we have failed to take the risk of stepping into the heavenly vision? Who ended up condemned in the Parable of the Talents if it wasn’t the one who took the bag of gold entrusted to him and covered it with earth? The servant who took no apparent risk with his ‘talent’ ended up realising the worst of all possibilities.

Biblical vision is worked out of, and dependent on, vital relationship with God. If we’re hesitant about this way of doing vision, there may be more fundamental aspects of our relationship with God where things are amiss. Let’s be prepared to get before God, get the vision, and then step with all due haste over the threshold into the vision itself. It could not be more simple, yet its outworking could be anything but simple. But then there is no better gateway to lives well-lived for Him.