Books Can Help Save the World.

Seriously, they can. God even wrote a really long one for us.

For a couple years now, I’ve been asking myself what can be done to encourage more reading. I tried to make the case in the Orlando Sentinel that voters must read up on current issues if we are to make desperately needed reforms in public policy. I took aim especially at conspiracy theories making the rounds at the time. In the meantime, those myths haven't faded and new ones have emerged. But trying to talk anyone out of crap they read on the internet or hear on the radio is a lost cause. In my experience, misinformation and ignorance cannot be fought. Instead, it must be replaced by reading.

I was very encouraged by an excellent post by blogger Justin Zoradi about how vital reading is to personal (and I would say, spiritual) growth. He writes,

I’ve noticed a unique trend among my friends who’ve thrived in their 20’s and 30’s. These special people have continued to seek out challenging books and ideas, allowing their beliefs and opinions to grow and evolve.

He later cites research showing that readers are better able to empathize. Last week, a friend sent me an article from The Atlantic making a similar case for reading fiction in particular.

What if you don’t have time to read? Anyon who has time for facebook, blogs, or the evening news has time to read. A couple years ago, a pastor at my church in Orlando brought a stack of at least seven books of varying length on stage and told his congreagation that the average reader can finish all of them in a year if he read at average speed for only fifteen minutes every day. Fifteen minutes. I’ve gotten through a couple books myself just by using the time on the city bus.

Chances are you won’t learn any deep life lessons by starting with the Harry Potter books as Justin suggests, but I can assure you that they’re enjoyable enough to ease you into the habit. For nonfiction, I recommend Tim Keller’s The Reason for God, and True Enough, a political book that sheds light on the sources and allure of misinformation.

Are you ready to read? If not, what’s holding you back?

For now, I'm just trying to lead by example. I guess I'd better take my own advice and shut down my computer because The Book of Man, Christian Outdoor Leadership, and The Hobbit are calling my name.

I Love Corella

This summer I lived in Logroño and taught at an English day camp in villages mostly in the south of Navarra. We taught at a different village every week. It was a demanding job, but overall it was a great experience. I feel more confident than ever as a teacher.

Every village was unique in its own way, but our last one, Corella, will always have a special place in my heart for two reasons. First, I probably had the best relationship with my students that week because they were my oldest, most mature group. They even gave me and Jenna "I love Corella" t-shirts. The students were disappointed when I told them I can't go to Corella's festival on September 23 because I'll be in Germany that weekend, but I promised to wear my Corella t-shirt in Germany. The second thing that struck me is Corella's bike friendliness. The number of bike lanes is astounding for a village so small. Unlike Pamplona, all of them are painted on the street rather than squeezed on the sidewalks. The school's halls were adorned with posters promoting cycling around every corner. I definitely want to ride down there some time and actually use those spacious bike lanes.

Now I´m back in Pamplona. I don´t start my conversation classes until next Monday so I have almost nothing to do for the next week. I´m going to try to make the most of my "vacation" first and foremost by putting some quality time into studying Spanish. I thought there was no way I could pass the DELE this year, but I figured that if I study consistently for two months, I might have a shot. If the Spanish government continues the program for full time visiting teachers from the United States and Canada next year, a DELE C1 certificate would make my application far more competitive. I think that my level is already good enough, but the certificate would really prove it.

It May or May Not Be the End of the World as We Know It but I Feel Blessed!

Seeing the people, he felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd. Matthew 9:3

Monday being a holiday in Spain, I had three whole days this past weekend to read, pray, reflect, and very briefly describe my experience over the past year and this summer.

I had two short-term paid internships this past school year- as an English TA at a high school/middle school and teaching (really more listening and correcting) English conversation classes at a language school for government employees. I learned a ton about Spanish people and culture in both places.

This summer I’m working at summer day camps in villages all over Navarre. I’ve really enjoyed getting to know a different group of students every week- most of them, anyway. I’ve finally gained the confidence to apply for a full time teaching job in Spain if the visiting teacher program is extended for the 2012-2013 school year (though I really need to buckle down and improve my Spanish enough to survive an interview). I moved to Logroño for this job.´It´s a nice town. The coffee is certainly better here, but I´m definitely looking forward to moving back to Pamplona.

Another highlight of the summer was the Into the Wilderness retreat in the Italian Alps. Anthony Testa taught on foundational principles in Christian living that week through climbing, hiking, whitewater rafting, and other activities. I’d heard several similar teachings before, but never quite like these. The one on fear really got me. I’ve been afraid to tell anyone that I plan to stay in Spain a few more years because I don’t know what curve balls the government will throw next. But I’ve finally been able to let go of that fear of being disappointed. After all, I have a visa for at least one more year.

As a foreigner in a country with a 21% unemployment rate, God has blessed me immensely with my two pseudo-jobs. Now that I know what to expect, next year I can more effectively balance my schedule so I can spend more time on the university campus we're committed to serving.

I’m really looking forward to getting back into ministry in Pamplona because I think we as Christians have a unique opportunity- actually, more of a duty and privilege- to be a light especially now as the world goes nuts (again) -the indignados still at it in Madrid, deadly riots in London, and political crises in the United States and Europe with the possibility of another financial crisis.

John Piper wrote that it is important to “develop a wartime mentality and lifestyle.” I agree wholeheartedly, but nowadays I see this “wartime mentality” channeling itself primarily into civil wars- it saddened me when I read that Sojourners and the Family Research Council, two Christian political organizations with opposing viewpoints are running competing television ads, very much like secular political campaigns. Over the last few years, it seemed that the church was learning from its mistakes and refocusing. Books that like UnChristian and Jesus for President that challenged the status quo were really encouraging to me. But now it turns out that there is nothing new under the sun.On the other hand, once in a while a Christ follower makes such an impact that even a prominent non-believing columnist cannot resist praising him, though he usually stops short of trusting in and following Jesus himself.

I’ve focused much more on reading than writing lately (just started Donald Miller’s A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, good book so far). These gloomy reminders of the sorry state of the world are what brought me back to this blog. We have a spiritual crisis on our hands for sure. We always have one in a fallen world. I also firmly believe that the intellectual crisis inside and outside the church which I wrote about last year is dragging us down. Christians, myself included, are clearly not immune from the divisions that Bill Bishop describes so well in his book The Big Sort. I know that keeping an open mind is a constant struggle for me.

The world has always been burning, and I'm not excited about the especially intense recent reminders, but I am excited to see what God will do through it. I think that God will teach me and many others very much through it. I look forward to sharing what I learn and the joy of another year of ministry in Pamplona. Stay tuned.

Oh, and I email an update letter every two or three months so if you're interested in getting that, let me know.

CELTA

Before I back came to Spain, I was excited, but more than anything I was afraid of being in class all day for five days a week. The CELTA course has been every bit as much work as I expected, but I will almost certainly pass.

I arrived on November 2 without incident. I was most worried about the layover in New York City- I noticed just a week before that I was scheduled to fly into La Guardia and out of JFK. I caught the bus to JFK with plenty of time to spare. Even though it was just a layover, it was cool to just be in New York City. Only one thing- I thought the bus driver was going to kill somebody. But when we got onto the freeway, I saw that his too-close-for-comfort driving technique had plenty of company out there. Amazingly, there was a lot of honking, but I didn’t see anyone get hit.

I sat next to an imam on the flight from JFK to Madrid. God has a knack for placing me next to interesting people. It took me a little while to figure out that he was not Spanish, though the fact that he was the only person around speaking English on his cell phone should have been a good clue. We had a good conversation about interfaith dialogue, which he promotes through organizing trips to the Middle East and Europe for students of diverse religious backgrounds. He told me, “The future is not just Muslim or just Christian. The future is interfaith.” Interfaith dialogue is a good thing, but it could lead to relativism. I wanted to ask him if he thought all the major world religions are as true as Islam, but I thought it was best not to go there. I’m pretty sure the honest answer would have been “no.”
I actually kind of felt at home in Madrid. Hearing those Spanish voices and just the overall feel of the Madrid Barajas Airport just gave me an indescribable sense of familiarity that I had forgotten while in Orlando but which returned quickly. Ryanair also brought back memories. I really felt like I was in Europe again when I opened my copy of their complimentary magazine.

I found the right bus at the Palma de Mallorca airport and took it into town. The walk from the bus stop to my flat was much longer than it needed to be because I did not plug the whole address, c/31 de desembre 9, into Google Maps. Most street addresses don’t have a number before the street and after so that confused me. The lady from International House arrived at exactly the moment I set my bag down on the sidewalk in front of the door. I had braced for the worse after reading a document from the school, “Accommodation in Palma is expensive relative to the rest of Spain. However, it is not necessarily of a higher standard. Whilst International House tries to make accommodation as comfortable as possible for CELTA candidates, you should be aware that in Spain it is not necessarily normal to have a lot of space, natural light, central - heating, air-conditioning or total silence at hours we may consider to be quiet times, in your bedroom.” The flat looked very old, but it was much larger, cleaner and in better shape than I expected. I met my flatmates later that afternoon- Madelyn from Sweden, Erica from New York City, and Douglas from England.

The course started two days later. I really wish I had known what I learned here in the first week alone when I taught the English Clubs at UPNA or at the CNAI camp in Lumbier. For example, asking, “Do you understand?” is not the best way to find out if your students really grasped what you just taught them. Also, reading aloud in class (which I’ve done several times as a student and a teacher) is not effective because the students get terrible pronunciation stuck in their heads. There has been a lot of focus on giving brief but clear instructions and achieving specific aims in your lessons. We spend the morning in TP (Teaching Practice- yeah, that cracked me up at first) followed by a feedback session in which we give and receive feedback on the lessons taught that morning. We all had to teach a total of nine lessons, two or three per week. The first lesson was twenty minutes long and the next six were forty minutes. I have to teach one more time on Monday for sixty minutes. I really can’t complain about how it’s turned out. The instructors are excellent, the class only has ten students, and I love my classmates.

Of course I expected a diverse group, but I was still captivated by my classmates. Danielle, who is originally from Illinois but has been bouncing around the world her entire adult life, walked straight to class from a boat that brought her from southern Spain just that morning. Matthew, who showed up in the middle of the first day of class, had come straight from volunteering at an orphanage in Mexico. Erica has worked for the Pew Center and done volunteer work for the Red Cross cleaning up after Hurricane Katrina. She’s been living in Ireland for the past five months. Douglas is from England but has lived in Germany for fourteen years and taught ski lessons. This group reminds me of a documentary I saw a few days before arriving in Palma called Encounters at the End of the World. Part of the film focuses on the people who work at this base in Antarctica. I love how their occupations were labeled: “cook/filmmaker” “forklift driver/philosopher.” Possibly unknown to most of suburbia, there is a subculture of globetrotters who don’t really call one place home. They move from one place to the next to experience a smorgasbord of cultures. I knew coming in that it would be a very secular group as, though they are not as hostile to Christians and Christianity as is widely believed. Nevertheless, I thought it was best to tread likely.

With most of my lessons behind me, I finally don’t feel so crunched. A few times over the past month I’ve felt extremely frustrated so I’ve had to stop and remind myself why I’m doing this. Matthew gave me a pretty good reminder at the end of the second week. When explaining his convictions to one of our classmates, he showed me that I was not the only person in the class living for God. Everybody at the table was floored by how well he knew the Bible. I’ll have that knowledge and experience to draw from someday, but for now I have an hour-long lesson to plan.

Summer '09

I was hoping to be teaching English in Spain by now, but during my last short-term mission trip in Pamplona in May I discovered that the process is far more involved than I originally thought. I talked to a guy at a language academy who wanted me to get some kind of training before he would consider hiring me so when I returned to Orlando, I looked into an English teaching course called the CELTA. For a number of reasons, I decided to take the course on Palma de Mallorca, an island off the east coast of Spain. I will be leaving Orlando November 1, and the course begins on the fourth. After the class is over, I will stand a much better chance of getting a job in Pamplona. But before heading over there, I’ll stop in Barcelona for three days because I can’t get anything done in Pamplona during the holidays and I’ve never really explored Barcelona. I will spend the following two weeks in Pamplona looking for a teaching job. Then, with a work permit and all my required documents in hand, I will apply for a visa at the Spanish consulate in Miami. Barring a major holdup in Pamplona or Miami, I will be back in Orlando December 17.

Of course, all of this requires money so I had to find a job when I returned to Orlando. I probably filled out about a dozen online applications and never heard anything, but SeaWorld granted me an interview the day I walked into the human resources office and hired me a week later. You know those people who ask you to stop and take a picture when you into any theme park? It is my job to sell you the picture. It turns out to have been a real blessing. I love the people I work with, especially the Taiwanese who were there over the summer. In the meantime, I joined H2O Church, which meets in downtown Orlando. I joined a “life group,” which is pretty much what Gator Christian life calls a “home group.” Overall H2O is very different from GCL for a variety of reason, but I have met some awesome people there and have continued to grow alongside them.

Orlando now feels like a big playground because as a SeaWorld employee I get free admission to SeaWorld, Aquatica, both Universal parks, and Busch Gardens. Thursday was my last day before I quit so I went to Islands of Adventure to ride the rides I’d skipped in the past and sneak a peek at the Hogwarts castle that now rises above the rest of the park, albeit covered in scaffolding. The Back to the Future music brought a tear to my eye because it simultaneously moved me and reminded me that the ride no longer exists in Orlando.

When I haven’t been working or at a theme park, I’ve been reading. My parents’ house does not have cable and lacked internet access until about a week ago, which was mostly a good thing. I will have read twelve books by the time I leave. I’m finishing the last of the Harry Potter books now. I figured that I should read them now that the theme park is being built and I’m about to take a class taught primarily from a British perspective. I think it is awesome how the wizards are able to live with mobile phones, televisions, computers, or even ballpoint pens. After reading a New York Times editorial by columnist Nicholas Kristof, I picked up The Life You Can Save. The author makes the case that extreme poverty can be eliminated if only a fraction of the residents in the wealthy countries donated a negligible sum. It really forced me to think about all the luxuries I enjoy and how I can be a better steward of what God has blessed me with.

The other half of the books I read has strengthened my walk with God. A book called Pagan Christianity? caught my eye at the library because of the title and George Barna’s name on the cover. The other author’s name, Frank Viola, sounded kind of familiar. It made sense when I found out he lives in Gainesville. In a nutshell, the book promotes something called an “organic church,” a simple house church just like in the first three centuries of the church. The authors argue that most of the commonly accepted church practices- worship teams, sermons, seminaries, tithing, etc. - were man-made inventions that came about centuries later. Reviews have suggested that church history is not as cut and dry as Viola claims so I am a bit skeptical of those sections, but there is a very good chapter on interpreting the Bible. Because we only have Paul’s end of the conversation of between himself and his church plants and those letters are arranged in order of length in the modern day Bible, the context is often lost. Lifted out of their cultural contexts, you can make Paul’s letters say anything any number of things. That’s how we got the entire Left Behind series. Viola has written a book intended to provide a context for each letter, but I would like to find a book by a different author so I am not too influenced by just one author. I’ll probably wind up picking up his book anyway just as a starting point.

Next I read The Reason for God, which I first heard mentioned at H2O about a year ago. I love how the author, Timothy Keller, reads many of the same publications that I’m familiar with such as The Atlantic, Time, and The New York Times. Furthermore, he defends the faith without compromise from the perspective of a New Yorker, not a Bible Belt preacher. In his chapter on science, he drew heavily from The Language of God so I read that too. The author, Francis Collins, who is also head of the Human Genome Project, defends theistic evolution. I loved the book, but I wish he would have been more specific. Probably attempting to keep the book short and sweet, he sums up very controversial points in a mere paragraph and hurts his case. But his critics (at least the ones I’ve read so far) don’t seem to have a very strong case either. I guess that means I’ll have to dig a little deeper. One question always leads to another. It almost seems that the more I read, the less informed I feel.

I really wouldn’t mind doing this every summer. I have a cozy little room in my parents’ house on the south side of Orlando. It is not nearly as isolated as my grandparents’ place on the east side, where I lived for two years in high school. If I can teach English in Pamplona during the fall and spring and work at a theme park during the summer, I would be thrilled. There will be plenty of ministry opportunities in both places (though, I probably didn’t pursue them here in Orlando this summer as much as I could have). Spending the summers in Orlando would be a good way to ease my parents’ pain too. My dream job for next summer is to be a character in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. But I need to try really hard not to get too far ahead of myself because I still have some worksheets to finish and things to pack before starting a possibly grueling CELTA course.

After Dark

I went to an evangelical event called After Dark tonight. I wish I had been able to see the whole thing two weeks ago so I would have been more excited and bold in asking my classmates to go. I knew it would be cool, but I did not know how exactly it would differ from other presentations of the gospel. They promoted it all week on campus. I saw black and yellow t-shirts, balloons, and fliers everywhere I went.
My favorite part was the introduction to the gospel message. The main speaker, Joe White, told us he was going to talk about an important historical figure who we had never heard of and who had probably never been the subject of any book or movie- the soldier who built Jesus' cross. In the flashy video introduction, the text mentioned that he was living in the midst of a "great empire" at "a turning point in civilization." Then we saw Joe hacking chunks of wood off a beam to create a slit in which would rest the smaller beam of the cross. Debris littered the stage. While he hacked away, Joe, speaking for the soldier, told us about the brutal execution procedure and what he thought about Jesus. He said that he only knows about one Son of God, and that is Caesar, but people say that Jesus Christ will rise from the dead on Sunday, and if that happens, then he will believe. Then Joe broke character and, with clips from Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ playing behind him, described Jesus using many words but in the end decided that just one of them fit: indescribable.
This is the first time I have ever heard the gospel presented in a way that explicitly put it in the context of the Roman empire- at least the first time I can remember. I was happy to see it. This is a blog I have been meaning to write for a long time. After Dark was the push I needed.
A couple months ago I finished a book my dad gave me called Jesus for President. He loved it and thought I would too. I was not disappointed. It really brought a lot of things into perspective. I am currently reading The Politics of Jesus, which JR Woodward of Kairos first recommended to me at Colorado LT in 2007. Several other books I have read draw from it. There is a page or two in Jesus for President about what the cross meant in Roman times- it was the way to execute anyone who questioned the empire's authority and supremacy.
This brings me back to Joe's role playing exercise. As Joe was attacking the beam, I reflected not only on Jesus' sacrifice, but also on the meaning of the cross itself. Its brutality was displayed publicly to discourage dissension. When Jesus said to his disciples in Matthew 16:24, "If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me," He was not speaking metaphorically, as I originally thought. He was telling them that they could be put to death for what they stood for. Many of them actually were martyred. That makes the Christian life in the United States today look easy, not to say that going against the grain is encouraged here either.
In some ways, whether we realize it or not, we have adopted a mindset eerily similar to the empire that killed Jesus. When somebody criticizes our government or way of life, we do not nail him to a cross, but very rarely is dissension viewed as constructive criticism. The most popular terms include "anti-American" and "communist." The same goes for religion- the world often calls us Christians "bigots," "close-minded," or worse. The intolerant Romans wanted to show Jesus and His first followers who was boss. Then Jesus turned around and showed them. But he did it by rising from the dead and ascending to heaven. There is no record of Jesus encouraging his disciples (or us) to retaliate with violence, hatred, or name-calling because He wanted us to be very different from the Romans who killed Him. Let's remember that every time we see the cross.

It's Beginning to Feel a Lot Like Christmas

I know Christmas is coming for two primary reasons. The first is that I am freezing my butt off. Second, I feel like I've done more Christmasy stuff in the past couple weeks than the past two years combined. Last Wednesday I joined a few dozen guys at the Hilton to serve at the girls' Christmas tea. I didn't do much because there were more guys than there were tables. My table was at the very front, but it was empty for the first few minutes. I wound up fighting Tyler for it when the ladies finally filled it. When we weren't praying or serving, Dirk wanted to argue about something; not anything specific, just something to pass the time. I thought it was funny that a lot of guys asked Jessica if we would be serving sweet tea Sonny's style. The thought never crossed my mind. This was a ladies' tea party for crying out loud, not tailgating or a barbecue. I have long felt that even though I was raised in the same country, I come from a culture distinct from that of my friends here. That only drove it home. Anyway, the tea was very nice and Christmasy. Best of all, there were plenty of leftover brownies, cookies, and other pastries for us to munch on after we were done serving.

Yesterday I joined the home group to watch the SEC Championship game at the Dicuses' house. The picture projected onto the wall was so big that the players were as tall as myself in real life. I was a little scared at first because it was a close game through the beginning of the fourth quarter. ESPN reminded us that Tebow had never won a game after trailing in the second half. That didn't help. We eventually gained and maintained our momentum. I really wanted to play Texas for the national championship so I could trade trash talk with Angie and Amy over the next month. But Oklahoma destroyed Mizzou so Texas is stuck in third place. Oh well.

I had volunteered to bring cookies for the Christmas party that followed. It was my first chance since I came back to try out the chocolate chip cookie recipe I had started using in Pamplona (I couldn't cheat and buy refrigerated cookie dough over there). I spent at least an hour gathering the ingredients that morning. Sweet Bay did not have M&M's for baking, and Publix did not carry the holiday colors yet. The cookies had to look somewhat Christmasy. I wound up buying the regular M&M's from Publix and only picking out the red and green ones for the cookies. After all that work, they did not come out as well as I had hoped so I was a little nervous about bringing them to the party. The batter was too thin. I think it was because I used light brown sugar. The stuff I bought in Spain was darker. Nevertheless, about three quarters of the cookies were gone by the end of the night. Maybe they were not so bad after all. I am really looking forward to giving it another go. Maybe I can use the orange and blue M&M's, and bring them to the Dicuses' when we play for the championship.

We kicked off the party by caroling around the block. I had not been caroling since my freshman year of high school when I went to the fancy retirement home with SCYWORD. Those were some of the nicest old people I had ever met. Anyway, our song sheets had a few errors and sometimes we did not know which verse to sing, but it did not matter. It was a lot of fun for us, and the few people who heard us really enjoyed it. We then returned for some food and a gingerbread house competition. I tried to write "Feliz Navidad" on one side of the roof. I wrote feliz in M&M's and with the z backwards. I wasn't able to fit Navidad underneath. Instead I wrote "x-mas" with the discarded gingerbread edges so it read "feliz x-mas."

This morning was Gator Christian Life's Christmas service. I cannot remember anything from either of the Christmas services my first two years except the lights lining the aisles, but I think this one will stay with me for a long time. The theme of the service was keeping Jesus in focus during the Christmas season as you celebrate as a family. The Villorias, Trujillos, and Gordons went on stage, kids and all, to tell us about their traditions. Mark Trujillo told us about a box of paper ornaments they use to teach their daughters spiritual lessons related to Christmas. Everyone laughed and awed as the girls shyly and reluctantly answered Mark's questions. If I did not know any better, I would have thought the Villorias' youngest son was trying to emulate the sound of flatulence with his mouth as his parents tried to explain their family's traditions. I had such difficulty concentrating on what they were saying that all I can remember is that their kids open one present on Christmas Eve. The Gordons showed a video of their children performing the nativity story that drew a roar of laughter. The highlights included Joseph riding on a giraffe and a dog under a white towel playing the sheep.

This emphasis on family came at a pretty good time for me. I have long been frustrated because I feel I am being told to be "content," but at the same time the whole wife and kids thing is pushed as the ideal life that a good Christian is supposed to have. At the beginning of the semester, I threw my Daylights devotional on the floor because I was so tired of it. Why would I want to read about how to raise kids? I'm not even out of college yet! I've hardly read it at all since. While my peers are virtual parents-in-training, I've been more cautious, trying not to assume too much. Having a family of my own seems like such a long way off, and not so important in the midst of classes, exams, work, football, and figuring out what God wants me to do just over the next year. But perhaps that is no excuse to just ignore any opportunity I have to learn from godly parents. I would certainly like to be one some day. It's time to take notes so I don't have to cram in the last minute. As for Christmas traditions, I will cross that bridge when I come to it. The pastors gave me some great examples, and I thoroughly enjoyed learning from them. Also, maybe it's time to give Daylights another chance. I like the cover of the winter edition. It looks very Christmasy.