How is evangelism like a mammogram?

Our VLI class in evangelism has been discussing the need to be culturally sensitive. And I came across an article today that explains this perfectly -- in the context of explaining why some women get mammograms more often than others!
The article was available online from Reuters, quoting from the journal Cancer, June 1, 2004.

To improve mammogram rates, it is important not to lump together all women of the same racial or ethnic group, according to Magai.

"For example, there are various sub-groups of black women, including U.S.-born African-Americans, Jamaicans, Haitians, Trinidadians, Nigerians, South Africans," Magai told Reuters Health.

"To assume that they all share identical social histories and cultural values, beliefs and attitudes would be a mistake, yet much medical research is not yet aware or tuned in to this kind of intercultural variation," she said.

To encourage more women to get mammograms, "we must understand and address the particular groups we want to reach in their own cultural language," Magai said.

So if we just make a small change in that quotation, and replace 'mammogram' with 'evangelism', we'll have a good approach!

Another interesting lunch

This lunch was with two other co-workers, 'A', a Hindu and 'M', a Moslem. I had arranged the lunch because 'M' is from Turkey, and I wanted to hear her say something in Turkish, and try some Turkish food with her, in anticipation of my vacation to Turkey in September. 'M' paid for my lunch, showing me true Turkish hospitality.

I was glad it was a buffet, because I would never have ordered the lentil soup, since it doesn't sound appealing to me, but it was extraordinarily good. I still don't know how to say it, though. The guidebooks say that they even serve it for breakfast, so I asked 'M' about that and she said "No, Never. Well, not in Istanbul. Maybe in the rural areas. Yes, probably in the country". That's probably a sequence that will hold true for other topics, such as the need for women to dress respectably, with arms and legs covered. I want to be respectful of local customs.

'A', the Hindu, commented that we had three religions represented at the table, and noted that this would only be possible in some places in the world, and 'M' jumped in and acknowledged that since Turkey is 98% Muslim, you would be unlikely to see this combination at one table. And I have found that except for 'Mosque' the phrase-books don't have any words about religion, because it doesn't even come up.

The 'T' project continues to inspire!

Last fall, my VLI classmate and I did a servant evangelism project where we went to local merchants and cleaned their bathrooms. That one event continues to bear fruit. 'M' has returned to one of the shops, and is building relationships with the people there. As for me, I had mentioned this to my New Age co-worker at the time, and she was fascinated by the story (sort of like watching a snake, or picking a scab -- interested and horrified at the same time.)

Anyway, when I had lunch with a couple of co-workers, my friend 'C', the New Ager, asked whether I had had any other unusual church outreaches. So then 'R', the Moslem, became curious, and asked about it. The surprising result was that she decided to go to her local Catholic Church and ask if they had any community activities she could join in.

I was so amazed I couldn't believe what I was hearing. My confusion was then compounded by the fact that she tried to explain that her husband goes to Mass a couple of times a year, but in her beautiful Bombay English accent, I thought she was saying 'Mosque' instead of 'Mahss'.

IT'S SPRING!

After a long, hard winter, Spring is here. But everyone I meet keeps saying "it's unbelievable". I look at it the other way -- I thought the winter was unbelievable. Today is an example of what is supposed to happen in Spring!

But all joking aside, it was a beautiful day, and I was so grateful. And then I thought about my own reaction, and realized that I need to exercise my awareness of gratitude. So I tried to be observant of God's good gifts today. And here is what I learned:

• I am healthy and strong (when I walked into the nursing home this morning, on my own two legs, I was reminded to not take that for granted)
  
• If you have a good personality, people will still like you even if you get old and lose your memory, and have no idea who they are.
  
• Sometimes forsythia and daffodils are exactly the same shade of yellow.
  
• Pink and red actually do go together after all -- when it is a pair of cardinals in a deep pink flowering tree.
  
• Spring smells different from Winter. But it also smells different here from in the Adirondacks. In the Adirondacks, it smells like thawed earth. Here it smells like flowers.
  
• Sometimes I just don't have the capacity to be grateful. Such as when the 75 year old man drove up on the sidewalk to ask me out. Sigh.
  
• Ice cream is a wonderful gift from God. So it's important to eat it often, in order to be fully appreciative.
  

HAPPY SPRING!

Did I really say that?

In VLI, we are studying evangelism. So I've been trying to be aware of people around me, and to notice conversational openings.

I had lunch today with two co-workers. 'C' is a nominal Christian who is drawn to New Age concepts, and is engaged to a Hindu. She is very interested in Yoga, and meditation. 'R' is a Muslim, who attended a Catholic school as a child. She automatically recites Muslim prayers when she is scared, but remembers reciting the 'Our Father' in school.

The conversation turned to Yoga, and the benefits of meditation, and the difficulty of clearing one's mind. I tried to say that the difference in Christian meditation is that one doesn't empty one's mind, rather one focuses on God. But that distinction didn't end up communicating at all, because C felt that Om is the same as God. So I decided to try a post-modern, experiential approach.

Sitting there in the middle of the corporate cafeteria, I contributed that when my mind is too cluttered to meditate on the Lord, I pray in tongues. I asked them if they were familiar with the phrase, and then tried to explain that praying in tongues is a way of switching from a mind communication to a spirit communication. It opened up the conversation to a real dialog about different types of prayer. It's not that they necessarily understood what I was saying, but they were interested to find out that there was a dimension of Christianity that they had never heard of. I still can't believe that I told them that speaking in tongues is like Yoga. I'm not sure whether it was inspired or whether it was heresy.

We actually discussed 5 different prayer languages: Arabic, Hindi, English, Latin, and tongues.

I was still recovering from that conversation this afternoon, when I left work early to take a Jewish friend to the Alpha celebration dinner. I was a neurotic wreck during the whole thing, obsessively noticing every time someone said the word 'Christian'. She was pretty stressed, but handled it graciously.

Clearly, the day had not included enough languages. On the way home she compensated by sprinkling her conversation with Yiddish.

No unwholesome talk

In Ephesians 4:29, Paul writes:
Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths...

This little verse is quite a challenge to me. I used it for one of the sermons I had to write for VLI, and so of course I felt repeatedly convicted. My temptation at home and with my friends is to be sarcastic, and my temptation at work is to be negative and defensive. I'm always afraid that I'm being a bad example of a Christian.

So I was interested by something that happened at work today. T, my new boss, was frustrated at not finding one of the developers we were looking for, and he said "shoot", or "darn" or something like that, and then turned to me and said "you know, I try to clean up my language when I'm around you". So here I was worrying that it would look bad that I sound pessimistic, and all the time what people were noticing is that I (usually) don't curse.

And then I realized that a former boss had also had the same reaction, and had announced one day that he wasn't going to curse in front of me any more. The man really struggled, but I have to give him credit for a valiant effort. Occasionally, when he just couldn't stand it, he would warn me first -- "Ann, cover your ears!"

What's funny about all this is that I've never asked any of these guys to stop cursing. They just decide on their own that it's not appropriate.

But my next personal discipline will be to stop taking the name of the Lord in vain. I never realized until recently that I was doing this, and I'm not even aware of it, so I'm not sure how I will stop. So I will use my former boss as an example, because if he was able to change his habits, so can I.

What do you get if you mix 7 Indians, an Indonesian, a Brit, and an American?

It's either the beginning of a joke, or it's a description of a little gathering we had after work.

There were two purposes, the first was to say goodbye to one of the consultants who will be returning to India tomorrow, and the second was to collect donations for the march of dimes.

Since the guest of honor had not yet arrived, 'S' was making conversation, and commented that often the consultants go on vacation single, and come back married. A few acknowledging grins ensued, and then a discussion of arranged marriages. Several were strong proponents. 'P' explained that his own marriage was arranged.

I had an immediate flashback to the one other thing I know about his wife. She is said to be a good cook. One day 'P' called me over and kindly offered me an 'Indian donut' that she had made. He told me that it was not sweet, and that it perhaps had a surprise in it. I was happy to have the opportunity to try something special --- but when I got to the 'surprise' I realized why Dunkin Donuts is probably not going to roll out a line of pastries flavored with chunks of jalapenos.

But in the meanwhile, the conversation was continuing, assisted by a pitcher of sangria. They explained that the advantage of an arranged marriage is that your family knows and checks out the other family, so you are less likely to be faked out by someone. I mentioned that you would really have to trust your family, if they were going to pick your mate for you. They all thought that was very funny. But they admitted that some of them now use a hybrid approach which they feel gives them the best of all worlds -- their families check out the candidates, but they retain veto power. 'P' claims that their divorce rate is only 2%, because they take their marriage commitment seriously. We all agreed that that's way better than the American averages.

So then I tried interjecting a monkey wrench into the conversation, and informed them that in my religion we also behave differently from the rest of America, for example, we don't live together before marriage. It seemed a new idea to them that all Americans were not the same.

It may have looked like an evening of Sangria and Tapas, but it was actually bridge building.

Even English isn't understandable any more

It started with an email inviting me to a conference call for work.

The only problem was that the email said that the meeting was at 16:00 GMT+1.
So first I translate 16:00 to 4pm, and then I try to figure out where GMT+1 is, versus where I am.
I know that we're usually GMT-5, but we just changed our clocks for daylight savings time.
Does GMT+1 also change their clocks, keeping the time difference at 6 hours, or are we now 5 hours apart, or is it 7?
So I went on the web and found a site that would figure out what time it was in NY. But for that site, I had to indicate which time zone was using daylight savings time.
So I had to find a different site. No problem. Except the website said it was 13:00 and I knew that had to be wrong.
So I finally let my pride bite the dust and asked a co-worker. The answer was 10am.
Unfortunately, I had another conference call at 10, but that one is pretty quick, so I decided to dial-in to the short one first, and then join the international call.

However, the phone number started with the city code, and I realized that I needed to dial the country code first. I tried dialing 01 which didn't work (I think that's actually the US code) and I needed the other country code.
Then I realized that while I knew that the other country was in the GMT+1 time zone, I wasn't sure where I was calling. But some of the people are stationed in Zurich, so I figured Switzerland, but then I needed the Swiss country code, which I didn't know.

Would you believe that I actually started dialing random combinations of ones and zeros followed by the city code and the phone number, and the pin number, and I actually got through.
And then I ended up in the middle of the call, in the middle of the project, and didn't have any idea what they were talking about.
The good news[!] is that this is a weekly call, so I get to try again next Wednesday...

What do you know about St Paul

tonight, on the ABC network special about Jesus and Paul, Peter Jennings asked people on the street (in Rome) what they knew about St Paul. It would be interesting to know what the full set of un-edited responses was. The responses that made it onto the show were unanimous -- "I don't know".
I felt like a little kid who was eager to be called on in class, but the teacher was ignoring her and calling on the other kids. After all, we're in the middle of a VLI class all about Paul. So I retaliated by talking back to the TV. My upstairs neighbors might have heard the following scraps:

"He was from Tarsus -- and by the way, did you know that's in Turkey?"
"He was Jewish, knew Greek, and was a Roman citizen, which made him uniquely qualified to spread the gospel across the known world"
"Not just Jewish, but a Pharisee, educated at the feet of Gamaliel"
"Taught that gentiles did not have to be circumcized, or follow Jewish law, to be followers of Jesus"

I had such mixed feelings about the program. On the one hand, it was pretty amazing that they even aired the program at all -- 3 hours in prime time on a major network. On the other hand, there were only about three sentences in the whole program that evidenced any faith. However, the back-door benefit of the academic approach is that the historic reality of Jesus and Paul came through clearly. So perhaps some viewers will find that sticking in their minds, and causing them to consider Christianity.