The Fireside Cafe

Our Russian Adventure

I intended to blog about our trip to Russia while we were taking it, but I could not get the blog to update for some mysterious technological reason.  I'll try again to make it work on the next trip.  So, I will skip the anecdotes about our flight delays and how the Russian domestic airline was exponentially better than the U.S. domestic airline, the frustrating hours that I spend at the airline service counter, and our unexpected stay in New York City.

To summarize, the Russia part of our trip was outstanding.  Krasnodar is a beautiful city of a million residents that we easily navigated on foot and enjoyed exploring.  Krasnodar gets its name from Catherine the Great, who founded the city.  A statue stands in the city center where it was once pushed aside for a statue of Lenin.  The Lenin statue is now gone.

Krasnodar is not quite as modern as Moscow.  Still, the entire area is gearing up to host the world for the 2014 Olympics in nearby Sochi.  We found beautiful parks, a vibrant city center, and a lot of culture in the city.  The weather in this part of the Black Sea region is similar to Texas so we were right at home with heat, humidity, and afternoon thunderstorms.  That just made the ice cream (made with real cream) that we bought from the street vendors taste better.

Nikolai's orphanage is 120 miles from Krasnodar in the village of Archangelskai.  A driver from the orphanage picked us up at our hotel for the 2 1/2 hour trip.  We met with the orphanage director, psychologist, and a government official who explained his background and medical information.  When we were finally able to meet him he greeted us and then went into a bout of 5-year old shyness.  I have no doubt that our speaking to one another in English only added to his anxiety.  The orphanage officials were baffled because he had been excited all morning about our visit.

 We tried again after his afternoon nap.  Kelcie, our 16-year old daughter, broke the ice with him and he began to warm up to us.  We played cars with him, gave him a small stuffed lion to sleep with, and he took us on a tour of the well-maintained orphanage.  He has a quick smile and a good personality.  I did manage to get a hug out of him before we left, and we left him with a photo album with pictures of our family and our house.  The orphanage director has also allowed us to send him weekly e-mails.

The government officials with whom we met responded well to our request to adopt.  Having Kelcie with us was a plus in addition to the fact that we have already adopted from Russia and Sean is doing so well.  We were able to provide proof of how we would treat Nikolai, as well as the importance that we would place on his heritage.

Now we are in the process of completing all of the documents required for an adoption hearing in the Russian family court.  Once those are completed, notarized, and apost  illed (a document from the the state that authenticates the notary) then we send them to Russia for translation and the judge sets a date for our hearing.  Right now, we hope to return to Krasnodar in late June or early July for court and then bring Nikolai home with us in mid-July. 

The adventure will continue.

Visas - not the credit card kind

I once wrote about adoption that it is "not for the fainthearted."  I describe the process as knocking down a row of dominoes one at a time.  We are at that point in the process where we do what we need to do at the moment whether it makes sense or not.  Papers have to be signed and notarized.  Then another paper, called an apostille, has to be obtained from the State to authenticate the notary.

Yesterday I drove to Houston to apply for our entry visas.  For those unfamiliar with visas, this is a document placed inside your passport that gives you permission to enter a country for a specific purpose (tourism, work, etc.) for a specific period of time.  American citizens can enter many countries in Europe without a visa, but Russia requires you to obtain permission to enter.  The process allows them to control who can enter, how long you stay, and keep track of you while you are there.  Staying in the country after your visa expires leads to legal consequences.  To be fair, Russian citizens go through a similar procedure to enter the U.S.

Countries can be fussy about who crosses their borders.  I remember that when I lived in Africa, Tanzania and Kenya would not let visitors from one country enter the other.  Because of apartheid, some African nations would not allow someone with a South African entry stamp in their passport enter their county.  So, South Africa would give us "loose-leaf" visas to stamp, otherwise we would have to obtain a duplicate passport just for traveling to South Africa.  But I digress.

The Russian consulate conducts this application process daily between 9am and noon, so I left Weatherford at 3am.  I allowed enough time for a couple of stops and Houston's morning traffic, so I managed to arrive right on time thanks to Iris, the voice on my GPS unit.  A polite Russian gentleman pointed me toward a chair in front of the window where visa  business is conducted.  The window was closed.  Others who arrived after me were pointed toward the waiting room chairs with the simple explanation of, "Line."

After about 45 minutes the window opened and a helpful Russian woman assisted me with the application.  She explained that the expedited visa process takes 3 business days not counting the day of application.  Since Monday is a Russian national holiday, our visas will not be ready until Tuesday afternoon at 4:00.  If we wanted them returned to us by FedEx then they would not be picked up until Wednesday morning to be delivered on Thursday before we leave on Friday.  She was uncomfortable with that slim margin of error.  With all due respect to the Federal Express Corporation, I agreed with her, took back my FedEx envelope and made plans to return on Tuesday to pick up our passports with visas affixed.  Everything else was in order; applications printed on two sides rather than two sheets of paper, black ink with block letters and one letter per block, every question completed, photos affixed, blank pages available in the passports, and a money order for the processing fee attached.

I was out of the consulate at 10:15 with another domino knocked down.  The adoption process is wearying, but temporary.  The real goal is the relationship with our son that will last for a lifetime.

In my younger days I imagined entrance to heaven in a similar manner.  I would wait in a line in a lobby before being called to a window to present my application that I would nervously hope was correctly completed.  Somewhere in the process a giant video of my life would be played for everyone to see with appropriate emphasis given to the embarrassing moments.  For some reason, I envisioned that a certain measure of shame for my mistakes was required before my heavenly passport could be stamped and I could slide with relief through the pearly gates.

I have, I think, a more healthy understanding of grace these days.  The blood of Christ covers my shame and stamps me as his own.  I don't know all the details of what will take place.  I just know that I won't be worried about FedEx, filling out the application in black ink with block letters, putting the photo in just the right spot the right way, having a money order rather than a check or credit card, or sitting in front of a window waiting for somebody to help me.

I stopped long ago of thinking about heaven, and discipleship, as a fill-in-the-blank process of seemingly endless checklists that knocks down a series of dominoes.  I see it now as a relationship with Jesus Christ who has welcomed me, shame and all, into his presence for eternity.  No visa required.

Nikolai

Last summer my wife and I began to discuss adopting a second child from Russia.  We adopted our son Sean in 2004 when he was 9 months old.  Now that he is 6, we thought about having a little brother for him.  Of course, having two little boys in the house at my age will present quite a challenge, especially when you add a teenage daughter to the mix!  Eventually, we decided that we have the means, the opportunity, and the desire so we should proceed.  Sean has been a blessing to us (as is Kelcie) and we simply feel that God has put this desire in our hearts.

Ultimately, my heart is touched by these facts gleaned from the website of  Buckner International Adoption:

A recent UNICEF report states that there are more than 750,000 children and teenagers living in institutions in Russia. The annual number of children left without parental care has more than doubled over the last 10 years, despite falling birth rates.

Some 10,000 young people graduate from the state-run orphanages every year. And at least 40 percent of these graduates eventually end up in prisons, while one in ten will commit suicide.

Last week, Lottie and I accepted a match with a 5-year old boy named Nikolai who lives in Krasnodar, Russia.  Krasnodar is located in the Black Sea region near the site of the 2014 Winter Olympics.  We have been granted some limited information about his background and health, and we have consulted with a pediatrician who specializes in international adoption.

After accepting the match, we were invited to visit Nikolai's orphanage on May 17-19.  Lottie, Kelcie, and I will leave on May 14 to travel from DFW through New York and Moscow to arrive in Krasnodar on the 15th.  We'll have a day to rest and explore Krasnodar before we meet Nikolai on Monday.  We'll get to see him a couple of times each day for three days while also meeting with orphanage and government officials about our formal request to adopt him.

The procedure will call for us to return home, submit more paperwork, and wait for a court date to appear before a judge in Krasnodar requesting adoption.  A lot of things could happen before then, most notably another Russian family requesting to adopt him.  We want what is best for Nikolai, and pray that God will grant that for him whether that is to live in our home or that of someone else.  At this point we want to be faithful to what is right in front of us, which is to proceed with the next step.

Friends have stepped forward to take care of Sean while we are away.  I don't think he could manage the long trip.  At the same time, this will be his first time to be away from both parents since his adoption.  He is excited about the possibility of being a big brother (at least in as much as he understands it at the moment), and has Nikolai's picture over his bed to look at before he goes to sleep.

The final detail for our trip is securing our Russian visas.  We are sending off for them today and will hopefully have them in plenty of time.  I'll post more information as the trip gets closer. 

Advent - God on the move

In the second chapter of C.S. Lewis's book The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950), Lucy stumbles through the back of a wardrobe into the imaginary country of Narnia. Although it is summer in England (where the wardrobe sits), it is winter in Narnia. Lucy soon meets a Faun, Mr. Tumnus. Tumnus tells Lucy that Narnia is under the control of the White Witch, and then says; “It's she that makes it always winter. Always winter and never Christmas; think of that!”

But Aslan the Lion, the true king, returns to break the spell of the White Witch, and as he does, the melting of winter begins.  As the story progresses Lewis tosses in small indications of the ice melting away and green grass appearing from underneath it.

Emilie Griffin suggests that the source of this melting comes from Lewis’ own conversion experience described in his book, Surprised by Joy.  Lewis describes his own change of heart, “I felt as if I were a man of snow at long last beginning to melt. The melting was starting in my back—drip-drip and presently trickle-trickle. I rather disliked the feeling.”

Griffin writes, “Lewis’ figure of snow melting is a good one, I think, to suggest how a person’s long coldness of heart may be changed, bit by bit, into a warmer, living heart for God.  Small wonder that Lewis later used this figure of snow, enlarging it to a whole snowy kingdom under the White Witch’s spell. When the snow of Narnia melts, Lewis is suggesting how winter in our hearts gives way to a springtime of faith.”

“It’s a simple but powerful metaphor: winter cold suggesting the deathblow of evil in human lives; and springtime to suggest personal transformation and the redemption of the whole human race.  Because his cold heart had been warmed by the love of God, C.S. Lewis extended the metaphor to Narnia, and thus we see the melting snow when Aslan is on the move.”

Advent and Christmas remind us that God is on the move.  The characters and events leading up to and surrounding the birth of Christ demonstrate God’s patient hand working out His plan to melt away the consequences that sin could hold on our lives.

There were some for whom God could not work quickly enough.  Seeking political redemption they impatiently stepped ahead of God to bring about what they thought would be His will.  For them winter was a time of contempt for everything that controlled them, with the exception of what controlled their hearts.

Still others were not yet prepared for God to work at all, at least in the way that He chose.  They had become acclimated to the winter and deftly learned to use it to their own advantage.  A spring thaw did not fit into their plans which they assumed to parallel with God’s plan.

But for those who had “ears to hear” they realized that God was on the move.  The prophet heard it, proclaiming that the prevailing darkness would be chased away by a great light.  John the Baptist heard the ice cracking when he proclaimed Jesus as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”  The apostles heard when they exclaimed, “Truly you are the Son of God.”

I suppose that is why we never tire of telling the Christmas story.  It reminds us that God is always moving, working for the good of those who love Him.  Christmas teaches us that the winter coldness that grips the human heart will give way to springtime, the cross, and the empty tomb.  Personally, I am not concerned that Christmas will be forgotten in our culture, at least by those who know that God is on the move.  Merchants, the keepers of correctness, and those who are still caught in winter’s grip might forget.  Or maybe what they forget is just a commercially sanitized version of the story.

But for those of us who take the time to listen we will hear the echoes of faith, love, hope and joy that resound through Advent.  For those of us who will raise up our candles on Christmas Eve in witness that the Light has come to chase away the darkness, Christmas will always be alive.

From my family to yours, I wish for you a blessed celebration of the birth of Christ.  May you be reminded of how God has moved in the past, and that He continues to move in the present.  And may you be filled with all of the hope and joy of knowing how He can move in your own life.

Punching holes in the darkness

This nondescript white house sits directly across the street from the student center on the edge of the University of Vermont campus in Burlington.  Six years ago, the house was purchased by Baptist student workers Doug and Carol Parker.  The Parkers rent out rooms to six male students (some believers in Christ, some not) and carry on discipleship work with students on the UVM campus.

Both Doug and Carol are former workers in the Navigators organization, but now are associated with the Green Mountain Baptist Association and the Baptist Convention of New England.  They are grandparents, but at a time of life when conventional wisdom would assume that they should pass on student ministry to someone younger the Parkers are busy building relationships with UVM students.

The University of Vermont is not a Christian stronghold, but the Parkers are busily punching holes in the spiritual darkness on the UVM campus by letting God use them to influence students with the gospel.  You will not hear them complain about the difficulty of the work, the lack of resources, or the other agendas on campus that work against them.  They will just use every opportunity presented to them to make a difference in the next generation.

Praying for the Catamounts

My friends Kurt and Larry flank the Catamount statue on the University of Vermont campus.  Today we toured the beautiful campus in Burlington.  While making our way around the campus and discovering the variety of influences that exist here, we talked about the need to see students as people with individual stories.  Many of them are far from God, and we prayed for the power of the Holy Spirit to be at work on this campus through the lives of Christian students and the surrounding churches that mentor and spiritually nourish them.

A Missional Journey

I grew up at the front end of enormous changes in Southern Baptist life.  I was not aware of the shifts that were beginning to take place at the time.  As a PK (Preacher's Kid), I was immersed in the rhythms and rituals of Baptist culture from the very beginning.  I received my perfect attendance pin for Sunday School with the bars that attached to it for succeeding years.  I attended Sunbeams, RA's, children's choir, Wednesday night Bible study, January Bible studies, and tent revival services.  I read (and sometimes even studied) my assigned parts for both Training Union and Church Training, and made macaroni art in Vacation Bible School.  I knew that church was "the Sunday night place to be."

Baptist life had a monolithic feel to it.  Every church that I was familiar with used the same instruments, sang the same hymns, and used the same literature.  Even the order of service could be transfered from church to church.

I remember the first inkling that I had of church controversy  in my childhood when I heard the hushed whispers of adults discussing the first woman who wore pants to church on a Sunday night.  It was not a scandal, but it certainly breached a general sense of propriety and, well, who knew where something like that might lead?  Little did I know that Southern Baptists would be mired in controversy for all of my adult life.

I was nurtured in those churches by good people who loved Jesus and taught me the stories of Scripture, but as I grew older I found that most of my contemporaries lost their attraction to the church.  I did not drift away from church as many of my friends did, but I shared some of their restlessness.

I sat alone on a Florida beach under the moonlight when I was 19 years-old asking God if full-time ministry was truly his will for my life.  The silence only confirmed the answer that I knew I was already avoiding, and my journey took a turn that led me to missionary service in Africa and theological training in seminary.  That journey was one of constant discovery as I sought to find my place of service.

I remember sitting across the table from a fellow seminary student as he questioned me about my call.  He inquired, "Was I called to be a pastor?"  I didn't know.  I enjoyed preaching, teaching, youth ministry, recreation ministry, mission trips; God's hand seemed to be in all of those things.

"But what is your CALLING?"  He seemed to be as concerned about this as he would if I could not remember the exact day and hour that I had trusted Jesus.  The idea of ministry calling for him had to be definite rather than unfolding.  For me, I was content to know that God knew the details even if he wanted me to still walk in faith.

There is a point when you are working a jigsaw puzzle when the picture in the puzzle starts to appear.  You can't see the whole thing yet, but you can identify elements of it.  The picture started appearing for me during doctoral research on faith development.  I discovered the element of church life that had made me restless.  I had been trained to be a good church member, but not so much to be a fully devoted follower of Jesus Christ.  It still startles me to suggest that there is even a gap between the two.  But I knew that was what my generation missed in the faith experience.  We were more interested in "being" than "belonging."  Knowing how to play by the rules in the church does not necessarily equate to a vibrant walk with Jesus Christ.

Fortunately, even when I was stumbling along God was forming me, using mentors and experiences to teach me, and guiding me to the place where he wanted me.  It was a missional journey; learning to answer God's call to be out in the world as a disciple of Christ and drawing others to experience his grace.

I still love the church, even with all of its crises, conflicts, and characters.   People are introduced to Jesus Christ, taught, nurtured, encouraged in the local church.  I sense a restlessness in churches to renew our call to make disciples; equipping people and helping them understand what it means to be a fully devoted follower of Jesus out in the world. 

If you understood everything I said in the first paragraph of this post, then you understand the lingo of Baptist culture from some of the past 50 years.  The problem is that so many of our neighbors do not understand that language that so many of us still find familiar.  This is the first in a series of thoughts on missional thinking; the kind of process that we will have to undertake in order to communicate to our neighbors the story of Jesus Christ.

Please join the conversation with your own journey and ideas.

Reflections on Vermont

Since arriving home, our team has decided to take a few days to reflect on our experiences and then meet again on Thursday.  We plan to bring a report to the Parker Association Executive Board in June detailing what we hope the association will do in Vermont.  For now, here are some personal reflections about the trip:

1.  The needs are great, but so are the opportunities.  The general population of Vermont is resistant to the gospel but I am not sure they are necessarily MORE resistant than the people of Parker County; just resistant in a different way.  People in our own communities, even in our own churches, can be just as resistant to an authentic expression of the gospel.

2.  Vermont is not a place to be conquered.  Sometimes we approach our evangelistic efforts with a "warrior" mentality that leaves the impression that we are there to conquer people with the gospel.  Certainly, we want people to experience victory in their lives through a relationship with Jesus Christ, but the goal of our work in Vermont will be to let Christ love them through us.  The most effective evangelistic strategies in Vermont focus upon the building of relationships, developing credibility, and allowing room for the Holy Spirit to work in the lives of the people.

3.  We are often victims of our own expectations.  Discouragement settles in on church planters in Vermont because of expectations that they will have a self-supporting church in 24 months.  Realistically, the process takes much longer.  I appreciate the way that the DOM tries to measure "impact" rather than just looking at numbers.  I think we would all benefit from thinking in that direction.

4.  The Green Mountain Association is looking for true partnership.  They are interested in ways that they can help us fulfill our own vision rather than just receiving from us.  I am excited about the "strength-to-strength" type of partnership that will benefit both associations.

5.  The greatest benefit to our association may well be the chance to broaden our horizons and adjust some of our thinking patterns.  Working in Vermont will, I believe, help people from our churches to think "missionally."  We will be able to more clearly see our own communities as mission fields.

This will be an exciting opportunity for us to experience and think about church planting and missions in creative, new ways.  I am looking forward to it.

I will post more after our team meets on Thursday.

Partnership Missions - Friday

Friday morning our team drove with Terry Dorsett (GMBA Director of Missions) to Burlington, the largest city of Vermont and home to the University of Vermont.  Burlington has a thriving downtown with a central street that has been turned into a pedestrian walkway lined with cafes and shops, as well as a waterfront on Lake Champlain.

We met Robby Pitt at a Bagel Shop on Church Street.  Robby is a church planting strategist for the New England Baptist Convention and pastor of Daybreak Church in Burlington.  Robby has planted churches in Colorado and Virginia, and considers Daybreak to have been his biggest challenge.  Like all of us in the ministry at one time or another, Robby was a victim of expectations from others and himself that were not reasonable.  Expecting that the new church would be able to use mailouts and advertisements to grow to 150 members in the first year, Robby experienced serious disappointment.

Through a process of building relationships and involvement in the community, Daybreak is growing and healthy, but simply does not fit any pattern for growth that might be imposed from other areas.

Robby took our group to an area south of Burlington in Chittendon County; the towns Shelburne and Charlotte.  This is one of the next places that GMBA has targeted for a church start, and Terry hopes that Parker Association will feel led to participate.

After a mid-afternoon lunch, we made our way back to Barre to spend some time discussing what we had learned and prepare for the trip home.  Later, I will post some thoughts about the trip as a whole and where we might be headed for the future.

Partnership Missions - Thursday

We began our Thursday with a team meeting in which we debriefed about our experiences the previous day.  We agreed that we were all inspired by the passion and commitment of those who minister here in Vermont.  The ministry here is not easy, but they demonstrate a high sense of calling and God is honoring their faithfulness.

At every opportunity, we take time to pray for each church we visit and each pastor that we meet.  Our hosts on Thursday were Johnnie and Lahoma Loar, Mission Service Corps volunteers from Wedgewood Baptist in Fort Worth, TX.  Our first stop was the town of Northfield, which is the site of GMBA's next church start.

Trey Cates is currently an intern at Faith Community Church in Barre.  He is a recent graduate of Southeastern Seminary.  He and his family moved to Vermont last winter, and they are making plans to move to Northfield to start a church there sometime next year.  We walked through part of the town and heard some of Trey's vision for the church over lunch.

We visited two other established church sites in the afternoon, and met another pastor in Montpelier along with his pastoral intern who is doing Men's Ministry for the association.  We had supper last night with the Butler family.  Bob Butler serves as pastor the Macedonia Baptist Church in Plainfield.  We worshipped with the Macedonia church last night at their mid-week prayer and praise service.

Thursday was a full day, which I must admit included a stop at the original Ben and Jerry's ice cream factory.  All I can say is that the stop was well worth it.

On Friday we are headed to the Burlington area to meet the church planting strategist for the New England Convention.  So far, we have looked at churches which are in various stages of the planting process.  Today, we will turn our attention to Chittenden County and the need for churches in this key area of Vermont.  We will talk about the needs for a church there, and pray about the opportunity for Parker Baptist Association to assist.

We have been joined by Steve Seaberry, the Partnership Missions Coordinator for the BGCT.  Steve provided travel expenses for us from his budget out of the partnership between Texas and the New England Baptist Convention.  This is his first trip to Vermont as well.

Tonight our team will gather together over dinner to discuss what we have learned and think of ways in which Parker Association can be part of what God is doing here in Vermont.  I look forward to sharing what we have experienced with those of you at home, and I also look forward to more you experiencing what we have found in Vermont.

I will write more today if I find an internet connection during the day.  Otherwise, I will post again tonight.