Who picks the pieces?

Broken and still discovering the ropes with JC, one thing is for sure; This is not a once and for all deal but it is a process. People come in and out of your life, some once some several times and through it all it is your response to them that determines whether the brokenness proliferates or diminishes.
My birthday yesterday was a case in hand. Though hurting physically 'plusier' FB birthday wishes and love made me almost forget my pain killers. God does indeed use people to patch us up...

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Choking Communities

Are you Choking Communities? How do you view and speak about otherness, when in angst, burnout or culture shock? Unknown or hidden prejudice easily comes to the surface when pressure builds up in Intercultural settings. Southern hemisphere residents reference colonialism when faced with any form of presumptuous and condescending superiority. Some expats , in asserting their presumed superior paradigms , refer derogatorily to ‘inner city’ or ‘third world’ paradigms. I once heard a tired and frustrated Caucasian missionary talk of ‘ Negroids ’ in Africa. Though venting in anger, her desire to put them in ‘their place’ was evident . I doubt she was aware of dominionism’s effect on her worldview and the cognitive dissonance lived out. This ‘power over’ approach is exhibited when academics refer to lack of training to "Band-Aid" dilemmas while skilled but nonacademic experts ...

Loose them N Let them Go! Prophetic ponderings in times of Crisis

As N’djamena smoldered in civil unrest and as Nairobi burnt in tribal strife, some well meaning Missionaries and believers sent me 'interesting emails;' Some claimed that the chaos were the result of the 'eschatological and escapist gospel of salvation and not the transformational gospel of the kingdom). Others lamented our poor Kenya's lack of discipleship that was evidenced by the post election violence . They all wondered what’s was wrong with Africans either in western condescension or global south hopelessness of inferiority? Etc… I started pondering… An outreach team of well-meaning Europe ‘trained’ students wanted to play games with kids because teaching the local church on 'Gods Character and Nature' was not ministry’. A westerner that recently graduated from our Bible School confessed he didn’t feel he could release his ministry to locals because; a) They would mess up and lose it's Christian aspec...

Post-Exilic Literature as a template for Community Restoration

The study of post-exilic literature posits community decline as a ‘miss-take’ of community objectives. This is mostly due to predominantly myopic leadership and consequential breakdown of community. Narrow vision leads to egocentric looking out for ‘ number one. ’ Many development proponents have referenced the biblical book of Nehemiah as a template for community restoration. While I concur with the gist of their proposition, I cannot help but note the vicious cycles of temporal healing and relapse of communities. Sometimes the golden years last a generation but when that generation is gone then the relapse takes the community back to square one. Intellectual solutions have the bane of smart sound bites because a lot of the proponents do not have boots on the ground and advocate for theories they have not tested. Picture this, a single mother in Uganda has raised a f...

PATCHED-UP

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