Where the devil is not white

A friend from Togo wrote to me today, "we sincerely need you to pray along with us that God will establish and lay a solid and firm foundation for the work in Togo". We first met last November when I was in northern Nigeria. This determined and brave single Nigerian lady has been a missionary for some years. When she first went to Togo she was horrified to discover that in the north of the country local folklore taught that albino children were possessed by evil spirits. Many were killed, often by their own families. My friend offered to care for these children instead of letting them die and began to teach the people that an albino child, like any child, is a gift from God. This care for albino children was the trigger that began to release whole communities from their captivity to fear and superstition.

Christian churches are growing rapidly in many parts of this west African country. Amazingly some local land owners are offering to give land so a church can be built - in fact they are pleading with the Nigerian missionaries to build a church. They see the real benefits that faith in Jesus is bringing to their local communities.

Join me, if you will, in prayer for Togo and its people - and thank God for his albino children.

Generosity measured

In which countries of the world do people give the most? An interesting question. But how do you go about measuring giving?  Well, I suppose you can measure how much money the average citizen gives to charity.

With that in mind I looked at the following map which I was sent today. But it raised some questions in my mind.

 



How do Sudan, Thailand and Azerbijan all score higher than France?   I was forced to read the report to find out. The clue comes in how you measure 'giving'.  Of course I, being a Westerner, simply equated giving with pounds or dollars but the authors of this report have a much better definition. The ratings given to each of the 135 countries studied was based to the responses people gave to three simple questions:

Have you done any of the following in the past month?

• Donated money to a charity?
• Volunteered your time to an organisation?
• Helped a stranger, or someone you didn’t know who needed help?

Now that's a better definition of generosity.

To read the full report click here.

Holiness as Surprise

A colleague in Greece, an Orthodox theologian, just shared an interesting article with me tonight which I want to pass on to those who like surprises. The challenging thing about surprises, of course, is that they are not all good! But perhaps they are all God? If you are someone who likes life to be very predictable you will not enjoy this article - but, come on, who want predictability!

Athanasios Papathanasiou (right) teaches at the Hellenic Open University in Athens and contributed this article to the International Journal of Orthodox Theology on whose advisory board he serves. He talks about the surprise of the journey, of suffering, of creating the world anew and of liberation; and then ends with the surprise of the anti-superman.

"The Christian is he who is waiting, but this waiting is not inertia. The waiting Christian is a traveller, together with his God, who is not only coming, but also going"

Access the full article here.

Hermaphrodite bishops?

Or to put it another way, "Mummy, where do baby bishops come from?"  "If there are only daddy bishops and no mummy bishops where do new baby bishops come from?"

Well yesterday I had a "baby bishop" in my office, so that was a good opportunity to find out. Bishop Onesimus Park is the new Anglican bishop of Busan in South Korea and is currently in the UK to attend the annual training conference for newly appointed bishops - the "baby bishops' conference" as it is often called. Bishop Park was keen to find out about Faith2Share and how he can build networks of support with others committed to the mission of God's people as he is.

But back to episcopal gender.  Today the General Synod of the Church of England is rushing forward the legislation which may give us female bishops later this year. (Of course there have been female Anglican bishops in many parts of the world for decades but England is about to catch up.)  My question about the hermaphroditic nature of bishops is a serious one, but I speak corporately. In his great wisdom God created some creatures to be hermaphrodites but humanity he created male and female - and I guess he did it for a reason.

Gender differentiation implies gender complimentarity and complimentarity works best when there equality of esteem, status and role. An episcopate (corporate) which is uni-gendered deprives the church of the fertility and creativity that it requires to grow and thrive.

I was pleased to hear from our Korean baby bishop that at the 'baby bishop conference' they are being nurtured and fed by just as many women as men (even if the women lack episcopal recognition - for the time being).

A more difficult question.  Has our refusal to allow the birth of female bishops amounted to episcopal infanticide?