The big news for us interns is the Philly trip we returned from a week ago. The whole trip was pretty great; We saw urban ministry in action, experienced some visionary urban churches, got exposed to city problems such as homelessness and immigration, and spent time with ethnic communities in their respective neighborhoods.
After spending a week back in rural PA processing the trip, two things have really stuck with me. The first spawned from our experience at a small church called Circle of Hope. This was a really cool church running on the house church idea. They meet throughout the week in "cells" of which there are over 100 all through the city. On Sundays they they come together to worship in four large congregational meetings, but the real magic happens during the week. What stuck with me about this church is they missional way they are living. They immerse themselves into their communities and they engage deeply with each other. I spent some time reading about their vision and they have a entrepreneurial business side to them. The missional church is something we've been talking a lot about over this year, and it was awesome to see it in action.
The second thing that stuck with me I experienced when we were walking through the ethnic neighborhoods. We went through Cambodian, Hispanic, and Italian neighborhoods. I was taken back to when I was in Thailand and I saw the need to engage a culture before being able to effectively communicate with them. I had the same experience in these neighborhoods. It was truly like being in a foreign culture, where many of the people didn't speak my language, and we had little in common. I realized that in order to be effective gospel witnesses in america, we really need to engage and invest in multiple cultures even here in our own country. One of the problems with the church today, is that we are very good at connecting with the people in our churches, but have no idea how to interact with our Asian neighbors. Our spectrum of witness effectiveness is incredibly narrow because we don't take the time to go beyond (in my case) our white, middle class, suburban people group. This demographic was once the dominating majority, but our numbers are rapidly being overtaken. If the current leaders of today want to continue to be valuable for the gospel, they need to get away from their comfort zones, and bring their churches with them.
All in all, an amazing trip. I hope to continue exploring what God showed me through this, and hopefully can one day be the kind of difference I saw in Philly.
