GENEralities

When I have too many programs open on my computer they start bumping into each other as they try to make space for themselves in the available memory. As they bump, they get tangled and the computer becomes sluggish. Eventually it stops altogether so I have to reboot and start all over again.

Sometimes I’m like my computer. I have so many ideas, hopes, and plans rattling around in my mind that I overload and grind to a halt.

Last weekend God hit the reset button in my heart. By an amazing series of connections and circumstances God brought two people from Sabah half way around the world to Medicine Hat. They shared my home for a day and taught some church people and me about what being church is.

Last weekend the Most Reverend Yong Ping Chung, Bishop of Sabah and Archbishop of the Anglican Province of South East Asia, and his wife, Julia, came to visit. Don’t let the titles fool you. These are not members of some wooly-minded church upper-crust who do nothing but wave and mumble platitudes. With quiet, gracious conviction and authority they told us how to grow up as a church. How? By paying attention to God’s vision for our churches, by conscious commitment to Jesus Christ as individuals – no more nominal Christianity – by prayer, Bible reading, showing God’s love to others in practical ways and by organizing our churches for multiplication.

If you’d like to know more about how, check out Michael Green’s Asian Tigers for Christ: the Dynamic Growth of the Church in South East Asia (SPCK, 2001).

I’ve heard much of what Archbishop Yong and Julia said before. But last weekend everything fell into place for me in a new way. Using these particular Asian Tigers, God hit my reset button.

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