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Posted in Dreaming
by Seth Barnes
on 7/5/2008
Here in Chicago where we watched what must have been a hundred fireworks displays in various communities from our hotel window. Karen and I just returned from launching a new World Race team in the Yucatan. We will be the team's coaches for the year. One of the unique things about the group is there is a team of three married couples on it. They are already having a blast and highly recommend the experience to other couples.
Tara Bruce wrote a blog about why she and her husband Josh are going around the world. She makes the case that the World Race is an excellent venue for married couples to dig their foundation deep in the Lord through a radical, faith adventure. 
Why would married couples want to go on the World Race? At first consideration it might seem harder to go on the World Race as
a married couple, because according to the world you have so much more
to leave behind. We’ve been on cruise control to obtain the American
Dream since our inauguration into adult-hood. Society places you on
that path and to veer off course you must fight a battle of
expectations.
My
husband and I graduated High School, went to college (both college
athletes), got married, established great jobs, bought a house and two
cars, and even got a puppy named Azure.
Next stop on the road to
“success” would have been having children, which would have made both
of our parents happy. But, something in us knew that there was so much
more to life then the typical 9 to 5 job and the accumulation of
possessions. In the end these belongings and expectations of who we
should become just began to weigh us down.
We decided to trade all of these assets in for a life of simplicity.
Why, you might ask? Because if you look at life with a completely
different perspective and instead of thinking, “Oh, the things we will
lose,” you say, “With nothing left in our hands, we have the most to
gain.” We are free once again to pursue God’s dream for us, without
anything or anyone tying us down to the ordinary and mundane. Too long
we had been listening to the world’s ideals hoping that we would come
alive as we trekked along the course everyone else had charted. But, I
can say that even through four years of marriage, going to seminary and
working for a church, we were not living life fully alive. We knew
there was more.
We can’t think of a better opportunity than the World Race for us to
live the radical and inspired life of adventure that we were created
for. After letting all of these things go, there is freedom and now we
have the opportunity to grab hold of what God intended for us all
along. This is such an ideal opportunity for us as a married couple.
We get to watch each other come fully alive and transformed. Not only
will we take joy in what God is doing in us individually, but we will
see the love of our life being changed into the likeness of Christ. We
will be free to love each other without the world’s pressures getting
in the way. And, not only that, but because we are married the World
Race will impact our future children as well by the changes God
inspires in us.
Tara's second blog on the subject is also great. Follow Tara and Josh via their blogs this next year. Maybe it's time for you and your spouse to step out into the unknown to see what God has for you. If so, consider the World Race. For a short inquiry form click here .
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Posted in Abandon
by Seth Barnes
on 7/4/2008
I wanted to whine this morning. Karen and I got a bad cold (she in Cape Town, me two days later here in the Yucatan). So we were running a little ragged. It’s been a crazy week – we flew from South Africa to Atlanta, stopped a day to do laundry, and then took off for the jungles of Palenque, Mexico.
En route I got a call from my coworker and buddy Clint Bokelman. He gave me the early notice on what quickly became international news. Our team in Jamaica had been robbed at gunpoint (see yesterday’s blog).
Fortunately Clint and his team are quite capable and handled the thing wonderfully. So Karen and I were able to turn our focus to launching our July World Race team. We’re committing ourselves to a new model – where a couple like ourselves acts as spiritual parents to a group of 32 World Racers for the next three years, beginning with this year.
All our planes connected on time and we got great seats and the training went well, but there’s something inside me that still wants to say, “Look at how tough all this is – somebody notice me.”
Why is that? I mean, we’ve got a great life and God has given us wonderful ministry to do. We trained these young people and invested ourselves. And when my throat needed prayer this morning, Kara boldly came up, placed her hand on it and prayed for healing. Result: I made it through the day, voice intact.
I have no real need to be noticed or garner sympathy or accolades for my service to God. If I’m being poured out and made to stretch a little then maybe that’s his grace taking me beyond the confines of my distressingly needy flesh.
Whining is never a winsome trait, even when we don’t give voice to the demands of that wretched little tantrum-throwing child inside. Most of the whining I do is internal – stupid temptations that stop at the door of my mouth. My guess is that I’m not alone in this (and even that is an ironic consolation). More of us need to commit to the privilege of being poured out.
(P.S. Pray for traveling mercies as we fly to Chicago and then attend Chad and Erin's wedding. After that, it's on to Santa Barbara).
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Posted in Fighting your enemy
by Seth Barnes
on 7/3/2008
Maybe you saw this news story on Tuesday:
American Christian group to end goodwill mission from crime-ridden capital
KINGSTON, Jamaica - A U.S. Christian group said Tuesday it will find a new location for its goodwill trips to Jamaica after 39 young missionaries were robbed at gunpoint in the crime-prone capital of Kingston.
The American missionaries from the Georgia-based Adventures in Missions were robbed Monday by two gunmen who broke into a Salvation Army school for the blind where they were volunteering, said school official Major Ward Matthews.
"They're just glad that no one pulled the trigger," Matthews told The Associated Press.
Yes, folks, that’s the organization I founded, squarely in the international lime light. Wonderful. Not the first time either – several years ago in a horrible nightmare experience in South Africa one of our missionaries was killed in a botched robbery.
How do you respond? We knew Kingston was dangerous, but, for goodness sakes, we were working in a school for the blind. We had been bringing hope there. You want to tell these people, “Have you no shame?!” Indeed, that is what our partner Major Matthews said, "It's shameful that we all live in fear, and that friends from the United States who come to help us improve our work among the poor are targeted."
The larger question is, “What is to be our response as Jesus-followers to the violence of the world?” In this day and age of litigation and risk arbitrage, it’s become a confusing issue. But if you look at how Jesus lived, how his disciples lived, and what he said to prepare them for their first short-term mission trip, you can see that it shouldn’t be confusing at all. Here are just a few things he said in that revolutionary, Patton-like speech we find in Matthew 10:
- Be on your guard against men; they will hand you over to the local councils and flog you…
- All men will hate you because of me…
- When you are persecuted in one place, flee to another
- Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.
- Anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.
Jesus’ revolution is a revolution of love and sacrificial risk. We are its inheritors and stewards. We can’t back down from the fact that by taking our message of love to risky places, we may suffer. I don’t say this cavalierly. I’ve put my own life in harm’s way multiple times as I’ve served Jesus. I’ve sent my own children around the world and asked them to take risks that most parents would consider unacceptable. The fruit is that they own their faith and their prayers have authority.
The Muslims consider it a privilege to be martyred, but many of us Christians love life too much. In contrast, we western Christians have built up our assets and allowed our affections to be compromised - we have a lot to lose. So those of us who want to teach others how to take spiritual risks as I do have to worry about lawsuits. Honestly, the pendulum has swung too far on this issue in America.
As for me, I’m going to follow Jesus’ advice. When they persecute us in Jamaica, we may flee to another place, but we’ll be back!
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Posted in The Poor
by Seth Barnes
on 7/2/2008
 One day while in Swaziland, we visited a grandmother named Flora who sat alone outside her hut. When we asked her about her family, she said, “All my children are dead.”
We asked Flora and her mother, GoGo Nhleko, to take us to the graves of their children and grandchildren on their homestead.
They got up and began to slowly walk to that place of pain. Arriving at the mounds of dirt, they fell on their knees and wept.
How do you respond to seeing something so sacred and deeply personal? Love. Tears. Brokenness. We had prayed, "Lord, break my heart for the things that break Your heart" and it was happening. All we could do was kneel alongside them and cry and allow our hearts to break for them...and with them.
We all sang the hymn "It Is Well" more as an act of faith than a statement of reality. It is not well in Swaziland. It is broken beyond belief. Death and sickness is heavy, it is everywhere... in every family it seems.
What do you say about a country where the average age of death is 31?
A country where nearly half the adult population will get AIDS?
A country where the orphan population rose 75% in the last four years?
 Solutions in such a nightmarish place require short-term gap-filling coupled with a long view. In the last half a year, our AIM staff have established 15 care points in the area from which we provide more than 1000 children with their daily nutrition.
But the grandmothers and children who have survived need so much more. What about education? Jobs? Care for the orphans? It can get overwhelming.
Into this gap of hopelessness, heroes like Jumbo & Carike Gerber and Pastor Gift have jumped.
Plans include better nutrition in the feeding programs, self-sustaining projects that promote job creation, orphanages and church planting efforts. But our most important work is just loving orphans – hugging them, playing with them, and speaking life into them.
It’s true religion. If more of us practiced it, perhaps we’d have a better view of religion.
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Posted in The Poor
by Seth Barnes
on 7/1/2008
As detailed in Sunday's blog, Karen and I just returned from Swaziland.
Here was one of the more heart-rending visits we made:
Pastor Gift ushered us into one typical homestead. The only light came
from sun leaking through chinks in the walls and the low doorway.
Lying
on a pallet on the packed earth floor was the shriveled form of a
skeletal woman underneath a pile of blankets. The skin on her face was
stretched taut over fragile bones. She was dying of AIDS, (though it
is starvation that will finish her off as she is now too weak to manage
food). Unable to sit up, she welcomed us with her voice and her eyes.
“I’m ready to die,” she told us. “I know Jesus and know that he
will greet me. But here I am alone. Few people come to visit me.” We
asked her to be ready to welcome us with a hug when we get there, as
she will likely be there first.
And now we were not white foreigners
visiting an African woman, but we were brothers and sisters in the same
family, happy to share moments together and touched by the real hope of
being reunited on the other side.
One of our team members, Debi Ferrarello, describes how we ended
our time there: "Deeply moved, I touched my sister's face, shoulder,
hands, and prayed a blessing upon her. Paraphrasing a recurring line
from William Young's The Shack, I looked deeply into her eyes and told her, "Jesus is especially fond of you."
As a group, we sang a serenade of love for her and for our Father,
of worship and of praise. God's love transcended culture and
language.
In the humble chapel of a mud hut in the African bush, a
dear sister soon to be with Jesus and an unlikely band of Americans led
by a Swazi pastor and his wife, God's glory shined."
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Posted in The Poor
by Seth Barnes
on 6/30/2008
As detailed in yesterday's blog, Karen and I just returned from Swaziland. Here's the story of a visit we made:
Pastor Gift's wife, Philele, led our little group as we approached the first homestead for a visit. A "homestead" consists of a dirt clearing surrounded by a few dwellings of straw, wood, and mud. We walked into the circle of huts. A few small children played in the dirt. Random chickens pecked and crowed. Goats and a skinny dog wandered around.
 The matriarch, a wizened woman of indeterminate age, sat on the ground, her legs outstretched. She had a pile of reeds assembled before her. She would pick up an individual reed and strip away a thin sliver – the first step in weaving a mat like the one she sat on. They call these grandmothers “gogos.”
As she nodded a welcome, children ran to bring small wooden stools for us to sit on. The children then positioned themselves behind us as we sat in a semi-circle around her.
“I am Gogo Gumbi,” she said, and invited us to sit on wooden stools in front of her.
She pointed to the three children who sat nearby, “These are my grandchildren. Their mother has died and now I raise them.”
Philele translated as we began asking questions. "Who lives here with you?"
"What are you making?"
She answered each query patiently, but briefly, with no explanation.
We asked about her life and how she survives. "It is hard to find food," she answered, "but it wasn't always like this. Years ago, everyone had a garden. But the rains stopped coming. Now the sun scorches everything we try to grow."
With food so scarce and goats so abundant, we asked if they used goats milk. The gogo looked startled and the children erupted in laughter---deep belly laughs. Milk a goat? How absurd! Collecting themselves, the children explained that no, they do not milk goats. But they DO know that goat milk is good for people trying to quit smoking!
She was uncertain about ages of her children and grandchildren. What are years in a cycle of endless days? She remembers that her some of her children were grown when they died. She was not sure of the ages of her grandchildren but thought of them in terms of size and stage of life.
As she answered our questions, her face was impassive, her voice almost a monotone.
Then I asked, "What do you believe about Jesus?"
It was a simple question, but it opened a door. She shared about the pain of losing her husband, siblings, and several of her children to death, but how Jesus carried her through and gave her both comfort and hope. She opened up to share her grief, and as she did, her voice wavered and tears began to fall. Patti responded by going to sit with her on her mat, touching her. There was a bond that transcended physical touch.
Gogo Gumbi indicated with
her chin out the grave sites of her family members buried just behind the huts.
"Can we go
there?" I asked. I suggested that we offer a blessing for the memory of her two daughters, so we all walked over. She replied without words, drawing herself upright and walking to
the area marked by stones. There she knelt on the ground in front of the
graves and moaned.
We prayed. I suggested we sing a song. Patti led, "It is well with my soul." Philele guided us through the next verse in the Siswati language.
Gogo Gumbi wept, we all prayed and sang, and it was indeed well with our souls.
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Posted in Orphans
by Seth Barnes
on 6/29/2008
Karen and I are jet-lagged after flying all night across the Atlantic. I’m writing this while in the JFK airport on the last day of an 11-day trip to Africa, most of it in Swaziland.
I suppose when Dante wrote The Inferno, he never conceived of a place like Nsoko, Swaziland. To get to this little piece of hell, you take the one-hour flight from
Joburg to Manzini and drive south an hour till you hit the verdant
sugar cane fields blanketing the valley floor all the way to the lap of
an escarpment.
The view is spectacular and paradoxical given the death wave that has slaughtered the population in the area.
If Swaziland is the world epicenter for the AIDS pandemic (with the lowest life expectancy of any country – 31 years), then Nsoko is the showcase for just how bad it can get.
Along with Gary Black, we led a vision trip there this past week. Only outside intervention will help the people of Nsoko. All that’s left are grandmothers and children.
The adults in the area are mostly dead or dying, a statistic that leaves you cold until you follow Pastor Gift around. As we followed him into the homes of some of the grandmothers, we found ourselves confronting the personal horror of the devastation AIDS has wrought. Grandmothers wept as they recounted the deaths of their children. Wives wept as they told the stories of their recently deceased husbands and described the sense of agonizing loneliness and pain that was now theirs to shoulder.
Pastor Gift and his wife, Philele, are amazing ambassadors of grace - feeding children, organizing projects, encouraging the grandmothers, and doing whatever needs to be done.
 Since they got involved less than a year ago, children are starting to eat again. The 35 grandmothers in the area have organized themselves.
Hope is returning to a devastated land. We saw signs of it in a number of places during our time there.
I’ll share more observations from our trip in days to come.
If you're a college student and interested, consider spending part of this fall in Swaziland. And if you're an adult, come with us on a vision trip this fall back to Nsoko.*
*Dates still to be established, but probably Octoberish. If interested, send me a quick email.
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Posted in Dealing w/ junk in your life
by Seth Barnes
on 6/28/2008
If you go back far enough in our Barnes family tree, you'll find a
great-great grandmother who brutally squashed a budding romantic
relationship. Reminds me of the scene
out of the movie, The Notebook. The
pain of her manipulation must have been horrific.
Fast forward a couple of generations to the present - I
loved so many things about my extended family, but in part because we were a
family of Type A’s, we didn’t manage conflict well.
I learned that it was unsafe to speak my mind
and developed a bad habit – I became passive-aggressive. Better to shut down rather than risk World
War III with people stronger than me.
The problem is, that kind of behavior makes for poor leadership. As a leader responsible for telling the truth no matter how
ugly it may seem, some time ago I saw my dysfunction and determined to
change. The Bible asks us to tell the
truth in love, but actually learning to do that is tough. Conflict can be
painful.
As I became more and more involved in mediating other
people’s disputes, I saw that burying the conflict only made the day of
reckoning worse. The original issue
becomes encrusted with the barnacles of other complicating factors. You begin to formulate arguments and have
conversations in your head.
This kind of behavior can create huge, gaping wounds in a
person’s mind. Unless the wounds are treated
through a round of truth-telling, they become infected and begin to create
passive-aggressive habits, habits that eventually undermine your character.
The way back to healthy living is through the pain. You have to try to tell the truth in
love. It will hurt for a season, but
only the truth can set you free.
Hey, all of us have got dysfunction of one sort or another in our families, and if you're like me, some of it may have seeped into the way you relate to other people. You know it's not how you want to be, so maybe today is the day to decide to take action. Take
some time to ask God to reveal the tough conversations you’ve put off. Ask him to show you what to say and when to
say it. He’ll give you a doorway through
the pain.
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Posted in Living Free
by Seth Barnes
on 6/27/2008
A confession: I watched the movie There Will Be Blood last month. The critics all raved about Daniel Day Lewis's performance. When I checked Plugged In for sex, violence and language, it wasn't bad. Minimal amounts of each. It had been nominated for a Best Picture academy award. I thought I was safe. I love movies, and while I try to stay away from most R-rated ones, occasionally a movie like Dead Man Walking is redemptive and worth watching.
 And therein lays the problem - nothing redemptive about There Will Be Blood. Lewis's character, Daniel Plainview, is as wretched and evil a human being as you'll ever see. Watching him put his deaf 11 year-old son on a train by himself left me feeling as bad as any murder scene.
Spending nearly 2 and a half hours in the company of evil is not entertaining, it's just dumbing down your inner man. If it's true, "as a man thinks, so is he," then I'm just a little more spiritually calloused this morning.
I can hear some saying, "Come on - you're being prudish. It's a cruel world out there - we need to toughen up. Also, aren't you being legalistic - Jesus set us free."
To which I say, "Fair enough, but the Bible says, 'Live as free men, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as servants of God.'" (1 Peter 2:16)
Living in our modern world is like navigating a boat in shallow, reef-filled waters. We were made to enjoy the ride, but the reefs can take you out. If you're like me, it's the subtitles of life that can slow you down. Choosing to watch someone do wrong things (in a movie or in real life) may not be the same as doing it, but it can pollute the pure flow of spirit-inspired thought in your brain.
Maybe that's why Paul says, "Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things." (Philippians 4:8)
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Posted in Culture and Faith
by Seth Barnes
on 6/26/2008
Our online magazine for spiritual misfits Wrecked for the Ordinary is gaining some traction and providing some quality content. I highly recommend you check out this week's issue. Here are some snippets of the content:
Animal Abuse and Sin by Karen Swank
I started my "dream job" this week at a Christian shelter for abused women and their children. Part of my training is a big stack of reading on the psychology, sociology, patterns, and problems of abuse, including deep exploration of biblical perspectives on it...
 Idolatry of the American President by Kelly Ramsey
This is a plea to the American public. More specifically, it is an outcry to the body of Christ. It is a reminder that in this day and age, our hope and trust do not, must not, and can not lie in the office of the Presidency of the United States. Our hope lies in our God, and God alone....
 Voices in Culture: Ever Stays Red Interview by Lauren Deville
"When you are given a gift, you have to use it. You have to deal with the responsibilities and dilemmas of it. You cannot run from it..." Those words echoed in my head this past weekend when I had the privilege of working with the up-and-coming band Ever Stays Red...
My parents became dissatisfied with the institutional church when I was younger. Although I attended Christian school through eighth grade, they thought it best to try something a little more unconventional, maybe even a little radical...
When I first met these widows, I was so guarded. I wondered if it was even possible to have real friendships with women so completely different from me. What does an HIV positive woman in abject poverty have in common with a healthy woman from the wealthiest country on the planet? With a prejudice I didn’t even know I had, I doubted that real friendships would ever be possible...
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