Diwali, Decolonization & Discomfort
…And Indifference
Well, hello there. First off - apologies for the radio silence. It’s been a crazy few weeks of work-related travel across Canada and the US.
Since my last post here a couple of months ago, I’ve had speaking engagements in Toronto, Minneapolis, Vancouver and Texas.
Next week, I join Paul Baloche on his Christmas Tour1 across the Canadian East Coast. I’ll be speaking right before the intermission each night at all 6 tour stops over 7 days - Halifax, Moncton, Ottawa, Oakville, Cambridge and Richmond Hill.
As a communicator and fundraiser, speaking engagements like these are my absolute favourite. Because I have exactly 10 minutes to persuade someone attending a concert to become a monthly donor (or Freedom Partner) with International Justice Mission. Oh, and the vast majority of these folks have never heard of our organization or work before. It’s a team effort that requires multiple smarter colleagues to weigh in on my script, flow and delivery before each event / tour. It’s the quite literal “Sell me this pen in 10 minutes” challenge - except instead of a pen, I have the honour of pitching the world’s best product: rescue for millions and protection for half a billion people from violence globally.
Just this year, I’ve had the honour of helping bring in over 600 new monthly donors for IJM Canada & US via speaking engagements like this. Having a front row seat to God moving people to join his work of making all things new is powerful. And it never gets old.
But believe it or not - those speaking engagements aren’t the most challenging ones that I do.
The most challenging speaking engagements I do as a theologian are the ones where I’m invited to bring my full self and challenge people by gently poking holes at our neatly packed western theological frameworks (specifically, frameworks inherited from colonizer and slaveholder theologians that make us resist justice movements of the Spirit in society and the Church) in a way that points us to Jesus of Nazareth - a brown, middle eastern, Jewish-Palestinian, colonized, refugee heretic from the wrong part of town.
That’s exactly what I was invited to do at two very different spaces in Texas this past week - a progressive church in Austin and a conservative evangelical academic conference in San Antonio.
The Sunday I taught at Restore Church (the church in Austin pastored by my dear friend, Zach Lambert) also happened to be Diwali - the Indian Festival of Lights: a festival of light (good) defeating evil (darkness). So I taught on Jesus’ words on light, darkness and witness in Matthew 5.
The feedback at Restore Church was overwhelmingly positive but my personal favourite was, “I couldn’t believe someone was saying the challenging things you were saying in an American church and I absolutely loved it.”
Going into the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) with a similar talk, I knew that things would be different. Because unlike the kind people at Restore Church Austin who are accustomed to being challenged for the sake of our marginalized neighbours - the academics, theologians and church leaders at ETS are simply not.
I appreciated my seminary professor (Dr. Glenn Kreider) inviting me to speak on the Christianity & Culture panel on ‘Reforming Christian Justice’ to do just this. But I had a strong intuition that I’d need some backup going into this. So I tweeted this in a moment of wrestling the night before:
Sure enough, this was me a couple of days later:
Still, I have zero regrets. The longer I do this, the more I’ve developed thick skin and found solace in St. Ignatius’ Prayer of Indifference:
“Father, I am indifferent to every outcome except your will. I want nothing more or less than your desire for what I do as a leader.”
I have to remind myself that there’s a reason why God has *me* where he has me doing what I’m doing right now. And if I don’t do that, I’m being unfaithful.
Here’s my Diwali-themed sermon from Restore Austin this past Sunday where I go into the history of Colonization and how the Church was always meant to be the light against injustices like Colonization and its effects in our postcolonial world today:
Until next time!
Buy your tickets here: https://uniteproductions.com/events/. Let me know if you’d like to join me at an exclusive pre-show event for the Oakville and Cambridge nights.