Poorer, Poorer. Slower, Slower. Smaller, Smaller.

“As my extended family gathered around the Thanksgiving dinner table before the market crash in 2008, conversation with cousins flowed about friends making big money with technology start-ups: “more, more; faster, faster; bigger, bigger.”

A hail of laughter greeted me when I quietly muttered that my ambition was, “poorer, poorer; slower, slower; smaller, smaller.” – Bob Sabath [quoted from an post on Sojo.net]

Click here to read: Poorer, Poorer. Slower, Slower. Smaller, Smaller. – Bob Sabath | Gods Politics Blog.

I don’t find it embarassing, nor do I feel it’s a lack of faith in God’s provision and power, to say that I’ve become more enamoured with smaller, slower things. I would not even chalk it up to age – now that I am turning 50 in April.

It’s mainly that I have lived through enough initiatives, organizations, programs, movements, and projects to have discovered that my particular gifts are best expressed in what might be described as ‘smaller’ and ‘slower’ and ‘poorer.’ And, actually, I believe this hard-earned insight can be found in much of God’s work throughout history. Certainly we know that Jesus worked in a way that was tremendously counter-cultural, and would certainly be in our day. He came to serve. He was born in a backwater town. His kingdom is not founded on any of the power systems or cranked-up business models of his day or ours.

Can I encourage you in this? Even we who are or have been leaders and servants in organizations, businesses, and churches need to be constantly reminded of the power of slow, poor, and small.

Here’s why I’m thinking of this as I write; I’m on my way to a conference in Europe. I am leading a team of media trainers for a multi-day video production training session. The students will come from all over Eurasia. We have people from Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, and other countries that are very closed to the gospel. They want to learn how to visually communicate the good news of Jesus in effective ways to many people groups who have never heard it before.

This conference will never compete with the great public events of our day. It doesn’t even make a blip on the evangelical Christian news screens or blogs. But, I believe what will happen there will prove our faith and will bear fruit for the Kingdom of God in its own peculiar kingdom way. I have been exchanging e-mails with a group of participants in the training – a couple dozen people. When I read their e-mails, where they are working, their desire to learn, and the opportunities they have, I have a strong sense that God is doing it again. He is taking the weak things, the despised things, the things that are not (1 Cor 1:28) and using them for His glory.

Cost-Effective Compassion: The 10 Most Popular Strategies for Helping the Poor

What I find interesting, and telling, is that none of these strategies are really incarnational. That is, they don’t involve us getting too close, too involved, too personally invested, in the people we are trying to help.

My family talks about this stuff often, and we desire to become more and more effective at doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with our God (Micah 6:8).

Here’s an interesting article about some of the ways we (typically middle-class Christians in North America) try to help the poor and oppressed. Most importantly, some folks tried to analyze the real impact of these popular ways we try to help. [Click the link below for the article.]

Cost-Effective Compassion: The 10 Most Popular Strategies for Helping the Poor | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction.

My family pursues a few of these strategies, hoping it will make a real difference. What I find interesting, and telling, is that none of these strategies are really incarnational. That is, they don’t involve us getting too close, too involved, too personally invested, in the people we are trying to help. The gospel, as communicated in the Bible, is inherently incarnational. Could not God have just ‘written a check?’ Perhaps not. So, Christ chose to renounce his privilege and position and distance from the people with the problem – us.

In my family’s discussion of all this, we are finding ourselves more and more drawn to what we know to be the truth; while some help can be offered from a distance, true understanding and true transformation most often requires us to come alongside those we desire to help. This article shows how complex some of these situations really are. Unless we are part of the context, we will almost certainly miss that complexity and come up with a solution that is only partially effective, or one that even makes problems worse!

We are thinking about how we can free ourselves from our self-centeredness, our need for security, approval, or just our stuff – to become free to incarnate in a more fully Christlike way among those who Jesus came to serve and save.

First Festival Screening for “Street Language”

Green Bay Film Festival Logo

We’re pleased to begin our film festival run with Street Language screening at the upcoming Green Bay Film Festival, March 23-25. More news coming. If you’re in the area, check out this great festival. [Better attitudes, and you won’t get smashed by paparazzi like that other fest in Utah!]

 

First Trailer for “Street Language”

Jacob lives an unseen life in the midst of the crowded city. In this moving short film story, a teenage street kid finds the strength to open up his life after a wounded stranger opens his eyes to the possibility of love and beauty around him.

Here is the first long trailer for my most recent film, Street Language. If you enjoy it, please support our work by purchasing a DVD – just click here to get to our store.