Sunday, March 18, 2012

Calling and Leading: Some reflections

I have been spending some time with a small group that came to Cambodia with Interserve for two weeks of exposure to medical mission. They were all considering whether medical mission work across cultures in Cambodia or elsewhere was for them. A great group who really engaged with everything they encountered along the way.

I reflected with them about call and leading. For me call is what happens when we decide to be Jesus’ followers. We are of course saved by grace, but there is no doubt that God has a plan for each of us to be a part of what God is on about in the world. This is our calling and I think it should remain broad, general and encouraging. But clearly it is not an option or a choice for us to decide on. It is part of the package we ‘signed on for’ when we decided to be followers of Jesus. Keith Green had a song with lyrics:
Jesus commands us to go,
It should be the exception if we stay.
These words have inspired generations of people to be part of ‘mission’ in other cultures and countries, but I’m sure left many more feeling they weren’t obedient and desperately trying to explain to others and themselves that “we all can’t go”? Keith Green’s passion and all-or-nothing approach inspired my generation but perhaps his legacy got confused in the ‘go’ and what that really meant.

Today, mission is used everywhere in the church, and perhaps it is overused and thereby in danger of losing its meaning (“If everything is mission, then nothing is mission” - Stephen Neil) but what it does do in many circumstances is make people open to how they can serve God where they are. That is, to intentionally and strategically seek to bear witness to Jesus and his ways.

Leadings are the various directions that God takes us along this journey of following his calling on our lives or our discipleship to Jesus. God leads us into various expressions of our overall calling during our lives and these are the tasks, roles, places, and ministries that we are involved with in our local communities and across the globe. God leads us where he wills and we choose to follow. We should do some discernment with our faith community, our friends and mentors. We should pray and seek clearly God’s leading for our lives. In a sense this process is constant for all who “seek to follow Jesus”, certainly something we do regularly along the way, and should be a part of the regular life of Christian communities.

Is this just ‘playing with words’? Perhaps, but the importance of the distinction becomes clear for me when people say “I don’t feel ‘called’ to mission work” (ie cross cultural mission in Cambodia). This can then lead to them thinking they are not called to ‘mission’ in general. Indeed perhaps they are not ‘lead’ to mission work in Cambodia but they are called to mission – it’s part of their discipleship. The question for them is where is God leading them to serve.

So, we are called to follow Jesus as disciples. He is the one leading us to serve in mission.

Monday, March 5, 2012

Siem Reap

Siem Reap, the home of the famous Angkor Wat temple complex, now welcomes around 2 million tourists a year and is bursting with luxury hotels, restaurants and entertainment clubs. Yet it remains one of the poorest provinces in Cambodia. Where is all the money going? I guess there are some local people working for minimal wages cleaning hotels and serving in restaurants but on the whole the money leaves the province into the hands of foreign owners or wealthy national business people. There are some serious flaws in that old ‘trickle down’ theory.

This was all starkly illustrated to me recently while on a visit to the Siem Reap provincial referral hospital with a group of doctors and medical students from New Zealand. The hospital is a 2 minute walk down the road from the key tourist strip. It’s like going from one world into another. One minute we were strolling through a trendy tourist area with scantily clad foreigners breakfasting in the open air cafés. The next we were amongst weary, confused families camping outside dilapidated wards. They looked tired and anxious as they cooked their food on little clay pots and hung their washing on any tree or post they could find. Many had spent more money than they could afford just getting their sick family member to the hospital. They then needed to pay for any procedure or medicine deemed necessary which often means selling assets or going into debt. If they can’t pay they will have to pack up their ailing loved one and head home. This major regional government hospital is very poorly resourced. They reuse gloves and needles in some wards to keep expenses down. Patients are denied blood transfusions if they cant replace the blood through a donation from a family member. There is an x-ray machine but no CT or MRI scan and very little in the way of other diagnostics. Many of the staff are poorly trained and often struggle with low morale due to their pitiful wages and lack of professional support. The intensive care unit has no ventilator machines, the nearest one being in Phnom Penh, 6 hours away by road. That’s a long time to bag air into someone who is not breathing adequately on their own. Unusually someone that sick will simply be left to die.

One of our IS team members has been working at this facility training and equipping the midwives to improve maternal health and bring down the high number of unnecessary maternal deaths. It’s been hard, frustrating and at times heart breaking work but things are starting to turn around as she gently guides and models different approaches and encourages the very poorly paid midwives to do the best they can.

I wondered how many of the tourists had any idea about the misery just down the street or thought about where their dollars were going.

If you are planning a visit to the wondrous temples of Angkor, pack a box of surgical gloves and think about sparing a litre of blood. The provincial hospital welcomes donations.