Grace Matters

Africa…or Duke?

“I will not pray for clarity. I will pray for faith” Mother Teresa

In November, after a long journey of discernment, Donna and I decided to stay put in Durham, North Carolina as our next chapter of life and service. I accepted an invitation from Dean Greg Jones to work to establish a Center for Reconciliation based in the Duke Divinity School, beginning in January.

We seriously explored relocating to Africa, including conversations with the Mennonite Central Committee, whose people have a faithful Christian presence amidst deep social conflict and the poor. Our decision largely boiled down to whether the next step of our life’s journey should be an abrupt change of direction—to Africa, back to grassroots work on very different ground—or continuing with budding relationships and possibilities, from local to international, around the mission of reconciliation continuing to open up from a base in Durham.

It was very difficult to give up Africa. After telling Greg our decision, I expected my exhilaration to build. Instead, dissonance set in. Donna’s and my July Uganda trip helped us see, “Yeah, we can imagine a new chapter in a place like this.” We had come to long for our family to live a period together outside the U.S. The loss of the Africa dream became very painful and real.

But a deep peace and excitement has come, which we receive as gifts from God. Someone wrestling with a decision once said to Mother Teresa, “Please pray that I have clarity.“ Mother Teresa answered with the words above.

Following are some vignettes which give us faith about our decision.

Durham: From the Black Wall Street, to New “Strangers,” to Red Sox Hats

Durham, North Carolina and its 200,000 souls make up a fascinating place, very vibrant and “for real.”

Nearby Chapel Hill and “cookie-cutter” Cary tend to sneer a bit at us here and our tumultuous, less-in-control life. But Durham has a diverse racial and economic mix, a long black-white history, a historical black middle class (America’s so-called “black Wall Street” was once here) as well as numerous "‘hoods," a huge influx of recent Latino (mostly Mexican) immigrants, blossoming downtown life and growth (including some stellar restaurants), and the eclectic elite “outsiders” that Duke University tends to attract, visible partly via surprisingly numerous Boston Red Sox hat-wearers (“eclectic” is used loosely; my friend who teaches in political science is a distinct Republican minority versus my left-leaning friend in the English department. More interesting is their amazingly good friendship).

For four years my relationship to this stimulating terrain has been somewhat distant, being a full-time student in a demanding theological program. Donna and I are eager to experience our city afresh, to connect ourselves and our family more deeply to the passions we bring from our Mississippi and Voice of Calvary roots, joining with others to create spaces of hospitality, mission, relationship, and church across boundaries of race and class, Duke and Durham, Blacknall Presbyterian (our church) and Walltown (nearby inner-city neighborhood), etc.

A significant focus of the Center for Reconciliation will be local. I am eager to listen to, learn about, and engage the Durham landscape and what “reconciliation” means in this place.

A Completely Unexpected Companion

A few years ago in Vermont, praying whether a certain project was “mine or the Lord’s,” I sensed these words: “I will show you what I want you to do by the companions I give you.” I have held onto this, seeking to be attentive to how the Holy Spirit may be opening up new life, common vision, and “next steps” within particular relationships.

It is astonishing to me how new companions and our growth in friendship have shaped our steps: people like Greg Jones at Duke; friends in our church; then the leadership team of the Lausanne Reconciliation Project and our Rwanda journey; then the group of 50 from 25 countries, the wondrous week we shared in Thailand, and our unfolding global partnership.

But nothing emerged anything like this recent, huge surprise—the gift of working together side by side with Duke Divinity School faculty member Emmanuel Katongole to establish this Center for Reconciliation.

Emmanuel is Ugandan; a Catholic priest, active in a local parish; a theologian; teaches courses on Africa, the church, and social challenges (Rwanda genocide, AIDS, emerging forms of Christianity); was part of our Lausanne Project, in both Rwanda and Thailand; and hosted Donna and me in Uganda in July, when we visited his village, met his mother and family, and celebrated a new school he helped pull together. Most of all, Emmanuel has become a dear friend and brother in Christ with whom I share a deep bond of common convictions.

How could we have imagined this: American & African, Protestant & Catholic, practitioner & scholar, Mississippi & Uganda, white & black, drawn together first through friendship, now as daily colleagues to give birth to a place of deep theological and practical engagement with reconciliation?

Emmanuel and I were roommates in Thailand. Late one night, after a long and rich conversation, me telling him about Spencer, him telling me about his beloved mentor, it struck me: “Leaving Durham means leaving this growing friendship with Emmanuel....that will be hard.”

For the first time I began to think that if I took on the challenge of a Center at Duke, how wonderful to have Emmanuel as a colleague. After returning to Durham, through a simply amazing set of conversations and circumstances, Emmanuel came to believe he was called to join in establishing the Center. He has been released from teaching next semester so we can focus full-time together on discerning the Center’s vision and initial initiatives.

This journey of life with God...who can plan it out?

A Center for Reconciliation at Duke: The Year Ahead

There is something very right, I think, about leaders of a Center for Reconciliation coming from Christian communions which are, in a word, divided.

That Emmanuel’s and my Catholic and Protestant communities do not celebrate the Lord’s Supper together is a deep pain for me, the visceral sign of a tragically divided church in a broken world. This grounds the Center not in Christian triumphalism, but in humility and lament. And it grounds true reconciliation not in activism first, but hope in Christ and in God's mission to reconcile to himself "all things" (Col 1:19-20).

Yet there are many things Emmanuel and I CAN do side by side: Wash one another’s feet. Draw hope from listening to God together. Pray with Jesus in John 17 for Christian unity, and for visible signs of hope. Seek to be a catalyst, creating transformative intersections between pastors, practitioners, and theologians, reflection and action, power and the margins, church and world, always with the greater faithfulness of the church in mind. Acts of prayer, service, and mission across the world's deep and historic barriers of division are no small interruptions of grace.

We will not be quick to “launch” the Center. 2005 will be a year of discernment, of numerous conversations, travels, research, and reflection to shape what such a Center will and will not be in forwarding teaching, research, and programmatic initiatives. Not only racial reconciliation will be a focus, but also other destructive conflicts and social divisions, both overt and more hidden, from Durham to America to international.

Risks and challenges lie ahead. Yet along with friends in the Lausanne Reconciliation Project, at the Divinity School, at Blacknall, I share a sense of awe, that somehow all of us are responding to something God is doing. God seems to be willing something into existence, something which we must not be quick to name or control or "manage." Companions are being drawn together around common convictions and mission.

The words of Spencer’s mother often come to mind these days: “I sure don’t know what God is doing. But I’m glad to be part of it.” As one friend said of hearing how Emmanuel and I were drawn together, “It’s a bit scary.”

Stories of God "Arriving" in Thailand

From meeting people “almost killed” … to seeing the hope of God's "shalom" in a new-born baby … to 48 Christians from the world's worst conflicts dancing to “If I Had a Hammer”… What kind of Forum on World Evangelization was this, over ten fall days in 2004, in Pattaya, Thailand?

To speak of God "arriving" we must not use God’s name carelessly, as if we see what God sees, or where God "is." Christians confess that the Holy Spirit goes before, seeking to guide, prompt, interrupt, disturb. Yet certain moments cry out for the recognition of grace. If they are, indeed, signs of God’s workings, of God "arriving," we must not name them too quickly, as if we know what is coming, where we will be taken, and whether we will be willing to let go of control and go. And so begins this story...

Two nights before I left for Thailand, on September 23rd, some friends gathered at our church in Durham to pray. One said: “Chris, I have an image of God saying, ‘I will arrive.’” Driving to the airport the next day, I told Donna, “I think I’m going into a new beginning of some kind.” Little could I imagine how these images would play out—God arriving, a new beginning.

Day 1: “What Am I Getting Into?”

Meeting in a hotel complex next to the ocean in Pattaya, among 1,500 Christian leaders from nearly 130 countries, our Issue Group on Reconciliation brought together 48 leaders from 6 continents and 25 countries.

We began by telling our stories of pain and hope from the world’s most difficult and broken places. Two people in my small group (from Burundi and Sudan) told “when I was almost killed” stories. Another told about being arrested (Indonesia). Another about being cast out by his home church for engaging the other side (Northern Ireland). “What am I getting into,” I wondered with a chuckle, “hanging out with this group?”

PHOTO: Singing Praise to God: Grace Morillo of Colombia, kidnapped by guerillas for 60 days … James Odong of Uganda, abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army as a boy … Bishara Awad of Bethlehem, Palestinian Christian … David Porter of Northern Ireland, who talks to terrorists.

Day 3: A Bigger Vision Than We Imagined

On days two and three, we moved from our stories to reflecting on and inserting ourselves into God's story as witnessed in Scripture. We discussed a major Paper, "Reconciliation is the Mission of God,” drafted by the leadership team, describing the church's complicity in the world's brokenness, the biblical vision of holistic witness, signs of hope, and recommendations to the church world-wide.

After several hours and some sharp debate, we agreed it was a powerful document—“the makings of a treasure for the Church,” as one participant said. With gravitas, moderator Sam Barkat called for people to stand if they wished to affirm the Paper's convictions about the mission of God as reconciliation.

Everyone came to their feet. Sam drew us into a circle, asked us to grasp hands, and called upon three people to pray. One was Father Luke Veronis, our only Orthodox Church member, perhaps the only one at the 2004 Forum.

The next day I ran into Stefan Stankovic, a young Pentecostal pastor from Serbia.

“Yesterday when we prayed in that circle, it was a very significant moment for me,” he said. He noted that in Serbia, Orthodox and Pentecostal Christians are bitterly divided.

“When Father Luke prayed, it was the first time I have ever heard an Orthodox priest bless something evangelicals are doing. And because our hands were clasped in that circle, it was the first time I have ever felt blessed by an Orthodox priest.”

At our closing celebration on Day 7, Luke and Stefan sat next to each other—talking earnestly, laughing, worshipping. Throughout the week, grace seemed to press upon us, stretching our vision, uniting strangers across divides.

PHOTO: Luke (second from left) and Stefan (third) at our closing celebration.

Day 4: A Birth & a Bombing

Emmanuel Ndikumana’s wife was due to give birth any day in Burundi. Still, she and their church exhorted Emmanuel to come to Thailand (his was one of the “I almost got killed” stories). On Day 4, he received joyous news from home of a new baby girl.

That day we had a major conversation on the biblical understanding of "shalom." After the day's sessions, I walked back to the hotel with Emmanuel and Celestin Musekura of Rwanda.

We asked Emmanuel if he had decided on the baby’s name.

Emmanuel thought, then said, “Because of what God is doing in the midst of our group this week, we will name her Shalom.”

The next day he announced this to great applause. As our group pledged to pursue “shalom” in our places of life and conflict—the biblical vision of justice, righteousness, and peace—Shalom Ndikumana would be growing deeper into Christ with us.

Yet pain was never far from the room. The next day, Ngul Pau, a Baptist pastor from northeast India, received word that a bombing had killed 60 people near his city. His wife was nearby only a few minutes before, barely escaping.

Day 6: The Sound of Reconciliation

On Day 1 I tried, and failed, to work a song from a CD into my opening message which beautifully blends a South Africa gospel choir's political chant for peace with an Oxford chorale group’s Renaissance hymn. “Oh, well,” I thought. “The sound of reconciliation wasn’t meant to be.”

On Day 6 came our week’s closing celebration: joyous, foot-stomping singing and clapping, testimonies of breakthroughs and thanks, fervent prayer, and a ritual of forgiveness. At one point, Ken Gnanakan of India grabbed a guitar and led us in "If I Had a Hammer” (adding the line “… I’d hammer out reconciliation all over this world!).

Julia Duany of Sudan (let that sink in—Sudan) jumped up, pulling a couple other African women to dance with her. As Julia cried out a sharp "Ee! Ee!" of joy, one of the African sisters danced reluctantly, then with increasing enthusiasm, to this exuberant song—which does not, however, mention Jee-sus.

I think she felt she had enjoyed herself too much. After the song, running to her seat, she giggled and cried out, "When I get back to my church, I will have to confess!"

Later, it came to me: we didn't need recorded music to make “the sound of reconciliation.” It erupted from our group that last night with no planning, in spontaneous joy in one another, people living amidst the world’s worst conflicts. I received it as the sound of celebration of the coming kingdom, breaking into our midst.

On a wall at the front of the room was the Covenant we had unanimously adopted that morning, telling of coming to Thailand as strangers and leaving as committed companions, arriving at shared convictions, binding to each other in prayer and future work, even giving birth to a “Global Reconciliation Network.”

We walked up one by one and signed our Covenant, declaring that Thailand was not the end of the story, but only the beginning.

Day 7: The Church on Her Knees

Every Issue Group was to give a final report to the entire Forum, 31 5-minute presentations over 3 hours, with a focus on "action agendas." Talk about dull. What could possibly capture our group's wondrous journey?

In the middle of the night, I had an inspiration. I turned the light on and wrote down the words: Action. Sign. Symbol of our story and call. I sketched a picture of what I saw on the stage. The next morning I shared the vision with the group. They embraced it, and we began to prepare.

On Day 7, our turn came. Fourteen of us walked onto the stage, carrying basins, towels, and pitchers of water. We took chairs in an arc, sitting in groups representing deep divisions.

As Sam Barkat and Jeanette Yep introduced each group, they stood: Hutu and Tutsi from Rwanda. Catholic priest in collar, Protestant minister, and Orthodox priest in his long black robe. Messianic Jew from Jerusalem and Palestinian Christian from Nazareth. From America—Asian, black, and white (me). Finally, male and female. With each group, applause began to erupt from the audience.

As our narrators told of our group's story over the week, each cluster began to wash each other’s feet.
“This is a foot washing, not a performance,” we had told each other. Each group had prayed, prepared spiritually, talked about what we were about to do for one another. When we finished, we stood and grasped hands as the Forum heard of our Covenant to bind in future mission.

I walked off the stage focused, not thinking about the audience. But Beatrice Mwaka, a Ugandan from Coventry Cathedral in England, grabbed me from behind.

“Chris...look! They’re all standing.”

I looked out. Believers from across the world were on their feet, a standing ovation. Coming off the stage, the fourteen of us embraced with many tears. Soon I heard of people in the audience who had begun weeping in their seats.

I'm not sure what would have happened had there been an interruption to the program, an invitation to silence, confession, prayer. Something quite astonishing, I’m sure. Even a bit painful perhaps. Yet I want to believe—I do believe—that before our eyes, God issued an invitation to become the Church on her knees, drawing us across the boundaries that fragment the world and the body of Christ, to wash one another’s feet.

We must, however, be willing to be interrupted.

Depature: The Beach, New Birth, and a Bracelet

In the fall of 1998, nine months after Spencer died, I ran into an old friend. I told him about the pain of leaving Mississippi, of walking into the unknown from the joy of 17 years in our Jackson neighborhood and church.

He listened carefully. Then my friend said, “Chris, the future will be even better."

Even better. How could that be? How could we ever taste what we tasted in Jackson, living each day with such a profound sense of "calledness,” sharing pains and joys? Even better. How could my friend fix his mouth to say that?

Even better. I thought of those words when, before departing Pattaya, I went down to the nearby beach. I thought of all the joys, crises, and breakthroughs of that week. Of the birth of "Shalom" Ndikumana. Of being given 50 new friends across the world and our pledge to an on-going global mission. It was "the birth of a family" said Nabil of Nazareth.

There on the beach, I received the week as God giving new life to my call to the ministry of reconciliation. New life arising out of these years of pain and loss, of walking into the unknown and now seeing steps leading right onto that stretch of sand.

Before returning home, I bought a bracelet in Bangkok. I wanted a physical symbol, a constant reminder, of God "arriving” in Thailand, giving new life to my call. Of course it won't be "better." But I believe it will be just as good in a different way.

In 1998, I held onto my friends words. And I continue holding, receiving them as a declaration of hope.

Back Home: Preaching Side by Side … Again

PHOTO: Co-convenors Moss Ntlha (South Africa) and Celestin, and dear friend and leadership team member Sam Barkat (right).

Celestin Musekura of Rwanda and I were two of the three convenors of our Thailand group. Four weeks after Thailand, Celestin came to Durham. We preached together at our church, Blacknall Presbyterian, and told the Pattaya story.

It was fun and exhilarating. Seven years after speaking side by side with Spencer by my side, now I was standing with an African, preaching a message of reconciliation.

Before the service started, Celestin said, “So after I speak, I sit down and you’ll come from your seat to speak, right?”

I smiled. “That’s not the way we do it, brother," I said. "The best way is 'tag team,' to stand side by side the whole time and go back and forth. It’s quite effective . . . Spencer and I learned that.”

Another taste of a different "even better."

Rwanda: Our Auschwitz?

“ ... numerous priests [and] pastors ... supported, participated in, or helped to organize the killings ... In most communities members of a church parish killed their fellow parishioners and even, in a number of cases, their own pastor or priest”
— In God's Name: Genocide and Religion in the Twentieth Century

My photos to the left ("3 Rwanda Journeys...") enter a pilgrimage into Rwanda's pain, told via three journeys: A Memorial, a Village, and a Church. CAUTION: many photos and their stories are graphic. Yet there are images of hope, too, quests for healing amidst the horror.

This July, 10 years after the genocide, I joined 15 reconciliation leaders for six days in Rwanda's beautiful rolling hills. If you didn't know the history, you'd think, "What a calm place." As the leadership team for a larger group of 50 from across the world who will meet in late September in Thailand, we went to deepen our understanding of the challenge of Christian reconciliation in today's world.

Of Rwanda in 1994, it has been said that "the blood of tribalism ran stronger than the waters of baptism." That spring, over 100 days of systematic ethnic killing, 800,000 to a million people were slaughtered, mostly Tutsis killed by their Hutu neighbors. Tens of thousands were killed in churches, where they ran to take refuge. Two extremes must become thinkable at the same time: the rapid and celebrated growth of Christianity in decades prior to 1994, and the vast violence that year on the very same turf. Much killing was intimate and door-to-door, neighbors killing their neighbors, by machete and club.

Both Auschwitz and Rwanda reveal not only the awful human guilt of two "Christianized" nations, but an awful prophetic failure, both internal and external. Genocide doesn't drop like a meteor from the sky. It takes many years to build the social habits whereby eventually a Tutsi can be called a "cockroach" and Christians are unable to say anything differently, and the world doesn't lift a finger. Up to 1994, American evangelical accounts of evangelism in Rwanda are celebratory. After, there is a puzzled silence.

One Rwandan leader said to us, “What is a church? In Rwanda, it’s very hard to define that now.” What was the church before genocide, what was it during, what has it become after? And how does this speak to our own ways of being Christian in this world of intensifying social divisions?

See the images we saw as we wrestled with these questions.

Uganda with "Father Emma"

After the intense work in Rwanda, I flew from Kigali to Uganda with Duke Divinity professor Emmanuel Katongole for 6 days in his country. Donna met us in Kampala.

Click "Exploring Uganda" to the left and join our journey...

Here's how we ended up in Uganda:

Part of my unexpected Duke chapter has been engaging more of the breadth of this diverse church that the Holy Spirit has spread througout the world. I have also hungered to see divides dismantled between Christian worlds of academy and street, practitioner and theologian, theology both thought well and lived well. Emmanuel has been a wonderful gift in all this.

My first memory of him is my second year at Duke. A guest speaker lectured on South Africa's racial healing challenges. Emmanuel was asked to respond, and he said more in 5 minutes than the lecturer said in an hour! Two of his most enaging qualities are getting behind what is taken for granted, and engaging the concreteness of life. As I have often heard him say, "But what does this theology mean for my mother, and her village?" I knew I had to take his class.

I eventually took two, "Africa: Church & Nation-State," and "Faces of Jesus in Africa." Later I took a class on "The Church Struggle & Apartheid" with Peter Storey, former president of the South Africa Council of Churches. The classes and relationships with Emmanuel and Peter drew my heart and imagination toward Africa, and deeper reflection on the challenge of faithful Christianity in today's traumas of social upheavals and conflicts.

As our friendship grew, I invited Emmanuel to join our Lausanne Reconciliation Project, and he accepted.

Among his books and writings ("Beyond Universal Reason," "The Sacrifice of Africa"), I particularly recommend his provocative piece, "Greeting: Beyond Racial Reconciliation," in the Blackwell Companion to Christian Ethics.

But here's the thing: Emmanuel is educated in Uganda, Rome, and Belgium, with a PhD in Philosophy. Yet while at Duke he is "Dr. Katongole," in Uganda he is "Father Emma." This is the Emmanuel Donna and I were with in Uganda, accosted throughout Kampala by ordinary people, grabbing his hand, giving an update on an ailing family member, asking for his prayers.

It was a great joy to be on his ground, to visit his village, to enjoy Uganda's rich culture and people together. "But what does this theology mean for my mother, in this village?" is a pretty good question for the church to ask.