The Ancient Future Church

The Richardsons and Grace Community announce “Real Royal Words: Eternal Love Through the Lens of the King’s Speech”

The academy award winning film, The King’s Speech, captured the imaginations of many. It continues to warm hearts today. The film is, at its heart, a moving tale of the debilitating effects of love deprivation (as seen in King George VI) and how they are overcome by love in action (as experienced in his speech therapist, Lionel Logue).

At its heart the Christian Gospel is about a love so great that it breaks the chains binding us to our past and freeing us to become the person we were originally created to be. It is a moving tale of the debilitating effects of love deprivation (as seen in us, especially in our inability to love God and neighbor well) and how they are overcome by love in action (as experienced in God coming to us in Jesus).

The King‘s Speech, regardless of its timeless beauty, is fleeting. Regardless, the film can help us access and experience Real Royal Words that communicate a King’s speech that changes us, not just for a moment but eternally.

Join us in our home, 3272 Lynwood Drive, for three Wednesday nights beginning August 15^th from 7:30 to 9:00 pm. We will enjoy coffee, dessert, fellowship and hearing afresh the love of our Maker. In the end we will be better equipped to love our spouse, children, friends and neighbors!

To RSVP e-mail me back at johnrichardson@ancientfuturechurch.org or call me at 205-807-4907.

PS We do not have room for childcare in our home but we will gladly run the series again in September if only one member of a couple can make it this time around.

Less than a minute. Worth the time to answer the questions above.

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Just home I am from two weeks in Rwanda. That followed a week in Mexico with Madison. The stack of mail is high. The height of the grass is too. I am considerably behind in marathon training. A few days will be devoted to tackling the immediate and reconnecting with my family. They are the true missionaries as they pay a considerable price to allow me to answer God’s call to serve. Dow has told me hundred times he “miss-ed” me while I was in Rwanda. Talk about melting your heart. I asked Dow if he knew what I was doing while I was away. In a matter of fact manner he said, “You were telling people about Jesus,” as if they would be obvious to anyone. Dow turns four Monday. Family begins to gather today. He will have, I pray, my undivided attention.

Much is swirling through my mind. Look for some summary next week my time abroad. The common theme is power, specifically the power of God and His Word proclaimed.  It was so evident and so far-reaching there. Is it lacking here? Or perhaps I am overlooking it? Regardless, I want to see it. I am beseeching God to manifest the same power in church planting, in Lynwood Park, in Brookhaven and in this metropolis of Atlanta He has asked us to call home.

The Rwandan Adventure Draws to a Close – Day Eight

On Saturday the 4^th we traveled to Murambo where a crusade (often called a “convention” here) had been in the works for months. The road was interesting to say the least. A bridge near the town was out the last time Bishop Mbanda came for confirmations. This compelled the Bishop to trek down a mountainside, through a valley and up the mountain once more, with a hundred people from the greeting party in tow. No running water. No electricity. The town was pitch dark when we left. The generator running the powering the crusade has long since been powered down.

As we arrived, the crowd was gathering. You will see in one picture about ½ of the 3500 folks that were there an hour later. After some African Tea and breakfast for those indulging, we headed to the platform. The theme of the crusade was “Could this be the Messiah?” drawn from the story of Jesus meeting the Samaritan woman at the well. The lesson was read and the Bishop introduced the theme with choirs leading us in worship throughout. I then preached with an interpreter for some forty minutes before inviting those who wanted to come into the open arms of this Messiah that was willing to meet them where they are to come forward. Many did as you see in the photos. The crowd of those coming forward swelled over the next 20 or 30 minutes.

There was a powerful testimony given by a man who had no arms. He sang and danced. As the story developed, it took an unusual turn. I am sure many were like me and thought this man a genocide survivor. No. He was betrayed by people he knew, one a cousin, over jealousy of what the man had. He went on a walk one evening with his cousin and was ambushed by several with machetes in hand. When they began to flee leaving him for dead he looked to see what his cousin had suffered. To his horror he saw the cousin running away alive and well with the other men and with a machete in hand. The man, after recovering, asked to see one of the perpetrators in prison that he might forgive him for what he done. That he could forigive was a wonder. That this man could sing to the Lord even more.

Amidst the joy of new birth and the story of immense suffering, there were some lighter notes. On that front the highlight for me personally (other than the rejoicing going on in heaven for the lost being found) was the Bishop joining me on the platform with the Hosanna choir for some rather animated “liturgical dance.” (see sample here: VID-20120804-00001). If I can get the longer video to load, you will find a link herein.

There was more music and another very productive invitation (show of hands) before we broke for lunch. In the afternoon, we heard from a Ugandan seminary professor, the Vice Mayor of the Murambo, and young woman from Musanze. She had a great story about trusting God and men abusing “spiritual gifts.” She went to God in prayer when five different men prophesied she was to marry them. And He exposed the fraud to her.

The crowds sat in the sun throughout the day without complaint. They came of their own volition. They were not even tempted with an offering of food. It is amazing to see faith so vibrant in place most would not know existed without a helicopter or plane. God is at work even to this day!

The Rwandan Adventure Continues – Day Seven

Today I visited a community deep into this land of a thousand hills. There is no running water here. There is no power, at least not electrical. But there is a growing worshipping community. It is fledgling at 2,000.

They worship in what must seem like a cathedral to them. The structure was built through the generosity of one man in Birmingham, Alabama. The people use a car battery to power worship on Sunday mornings. Women of the church were outdoors making straw mats to cover the concrete floor. The simplicity of it all is gripping.

I also learned more about Bishop Mbanda’s pre-school program. Less than three years into his episcopate, he has created 200 of them, each connected to a local worshipping community. They serve 23,000 children. They meet an incredible need. Daily parents must tend crops in order to eat, by subsistence farming or getting there beans or bananas to market. The children out of necessity are often left at home. They are subject to injury of course in this unattended state but the much greater risk is physical and sexual abuse.

The pre-school programs allow the children to be protected from and nourished physically through food. A Christian in Memphis created a chicken farm here in order to provide each child one protein rich egg per day. Some of the communities have rallied resources and extended the program through the afternoons. Families are asked to pay 500 Rwandan francs per child per month. Fear not. That is $1.

Think about the way in which God can multiply or offering. $100 a month will provide 100 kids with two teachers, protection and Gospel based care. More on this later.

The Rwandan Adventure Continues – Day Six

Today was the last day of the Pastors Conference. It was a joy. The conversation was particularly engaging. I taught “TRANSFORMED” beginning with a thorough exposition of 2 Corinthians 3.

We looked at the ministry of the law, its glorious ministry which brings us what? Wait for it. Death! Any reasonably self-aware person reads/hears the law and despairs as he knows there is no hope for himself. Like the Apostle Paul he can only draw one conclusion, “Wretched man that I am.”

Then we looked at the ministry of the Spirit which brings life, freedom and transformation. Instantly, even as the Rwandans read, the lights went on, the bells went off. The three part series came together. God is happy to meet us where we are but He is not satisfied to leave us there. He, by the transforming power of the Holy Spirit, will help us to achieve the law which would otherwise destroy us. God was cheered. There was laughter and joy when the pieces came together.

We moved on to application. Here is where it became sticky and exciting. We so easily revert to the law. In African nations pastors must regularly navigate incorporating a polygamist, who has come to faith in Christ, into the life of the church. It is so easy to simplify what must be done. We create church rules. The polygamist must be the husband of one wife. So he has to abandon the others. And the children of the other wives cannot be baptized because they are not part of the marriage covenant. This is the teaching of the church in a neighboring country.

I said so if a man comes to faith we celebrate that but punish all wives after number one and their children. I asked under what warrant of Scripture are we as pastors and churches meant to rob women and children of their provision. Mind you the Rwandan clergy were not advocating this position. They wanted to understand how I would apply grace and law in this situation. I made sure I understood. “So a canon of the church says a man is relieved of providing for and raising his children if he comes to faith so that he can comply with the one wife rule?” “So what about raising children he produced in the knowledge and love of the Lord?”

I said this is a place where the canons are in conflict with the scripture because they don’t contemplate the complexity of the situation. God could not possibly expect women and children to be abandoned to the streets and destitution. And you cannot become the husband of one wife by divorcing the other four. That may comply with the letter of the law but not the spirit of the law. If we apply this canon we produce orphans, who seem to be regarded rather highly by God. We would be working against God. We must find a pastoral response that regards all the parties involved. Real life is messy just like it was with the woman at the well.

Another church canon came up. Some churches teach that the church is not to bury the unbaptized. They asked, “What if a child dies at birth?” I said “have a pastor’s heart.” I then recounted a story of blessing and baptizing a still born baby. I called him by name. I said I knew theologically that it did not make much sense. But that did not matter at the moment. I said a woman had just gone through the pain of child birth knowing the baby was dead. I wanted to bring some love and kindness and mercy to this grieving family. So I took the baby into my arms and baptized him. I said this baby is in the Lord’s hands. This was the first step in moving beyond a tragedy for these tender souls. It was not time to check the regs.

I closed saying something like this: It the time of Jesus, people were burdened with RULES that did not matter and guilt from transgressing good and holy LAWS which did matter and good and holy laws they could not keep perfectly. God’s response was to love. He freed them from religion declaring in Jesus that faith was a matter of the heart and emancipated them from sin and death through the atoning sacrifice of Jesus. He then sent the Holy Spirit to transform us and make us more like the only who keeps the law. All this is to say, he loved people, and showered compassion and grace upon his people, every last one of them, knowing full well they had not and could not keep the law. People matter to God. They should matter no less to us. When in doubt, show mercy, extend grace. He did! And thank God! For that is how I managed to get into the Kingdom!

The Rwandan Adventure Continues – Days Four and Five

Days four and five have been spent teaching new Rwandan pastors.  Each has less than a year of ordained ministry under his belt. They lead multiple local churches that form a parish. Some pastor 100 Anglican believers and others are already pastoring 2000. All fifteen of the newly ordained are participating.

We began the first day with a conversation about ministry context. What challenges do they face? The first challenge they identified was the overwhelming number of religious people as compared with those who are following Jesus. The second challenge they identified was the absence men from church life.  Wow. You would have thought they were describing church life in the US. Of course their description is sadly appropriate for both.

My goal was to present a means of communicating the whole of the Bible in three major themes. The teaching is dubbed “Bound, Released, and Transformed: The Christian Life in Three Movements.”

The takeaways for the Rwanda pastor yesterday were the concept of the attractiveness of “forbidden fruit” and concept of sins of commission and omission especially as related to Romans 7 and doing (commission) versus not doing (omission) we find in Paul.

The takeaway for today was simply the overwhelming grace of God that He would make alive people who were bound and dead. I struggled to adequately describe “freedom in Christ” and in the sense of Release. Several pastors were inclined to return to the law. They had a good laugh when I asked “you foolish Rwandans, who has bewitched you?” There was a hearty, and yet somewhat disorienting for a few, conversation about what Old Testament laws we no longer follow, from circumcision to observing the Sabbath. Some wanted to retain the tithe (10% as a command) while admitting the others (like kosher food and boiling a kid in milk) were appropriately jettisoned. As expected they struggled for a reason to make the distinction. We explored the discontinuity between the Old and New Testaments (or Covenants) as opposed to the often overstated continuity.

It has been most edifying in both directions. I look forward to teaching “Transformed” tomorrow.

Helpful Context for Understanding My Work In Rwanda

Bishop John Rucyahana is the man that God used to get me to Rwanda in the first place.  Relationships have flourished ever since.  See a PBS special on Bishop John here:

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/episodes/april-17-2009/rwandan-reconciliation/2708/

The Rwandan Adventure Continues – Day Three

The Genocide Memorials are always difficult. On my first visit to one I had to exit the building rather quickly when I came to the tribute to the children, the record of the slaughter of the innocents. It was so difficult to accept the reality of the depths of our human depravity. I knew it intellectually. But seeing it up close and personal is another matter. More difficult was imagining the pleas of children, pleas for their very lives. I ache for my children when they are awakened by a bad dream. These children lived and died a horrible reality. Their plight can paralyze the onlooker momentarily. Perhaps it should cripple permanently.

Rehearsing the history is not possible. Volumes of books cover the story. Suffice it to say the colonizers (Germany first but primarily Belgium and France) created a government and economic system of injustice, one that of course benefitted them, the colonizers, having pitted Hutus against Tutsis. These were a people who had peacefully coexisted and intermarried for hundreds of years. The photo herein of their government issued ID’s shows how one people of one nation were separated into three tribes. Ultimately the vast majority (Hutus) came to resent the ruling class (Tutsis) which had been created out of whole cloth by the colonizers. For those who sought to profit from owning Rwanda and the Rwandese it was easier to control 15% of the population than 85%. And they had to share less of the spoils.

Many people don’t know that the genocide began in earnest in 1959 when 80 to 100 thousand were killed. Families of friends of mine fled then, many to Uganda only to grow up in refugee camps under the regime of Idi Amin. The “final solution” was not imagined until the late 80’s and early 90’s. In April of 1994 the Hutus killed their own President and blamed the Tutsis in order to justify the carnage that was about to begin. Within an hour of his death, the systematic elimination of Tutsis began in every part of the country. A well-rehearsed plan was being executed. A little over three months later a million people were dead, most hacked to death with machetes. The west stood idly by. We refused to help. We left the pleas of the innocents unanswered. Personally I was so busy making the best of my own life I don’t recall knowing it was going on as it was happening and I would like to think I am particularly sensitive to third world stories having lived there. By the way, “Hotel Rwanda” as nauseating as it is to our sensibilities is more offensive to Rwandans for the opposite reason. The movie makes fairly pristine that which literally caused rivers to run red.

By now you may have turned away. The story, and the US’s part in it, is something we would rather not hear. We cope by shutting down. I did at first. My next response was to embrace it all, the whole of the bloodletting reality and contemplate the myriad number of ways in which I could respond. This means of addressing the issue moved me from healthy skepticism to cynicism. What’s the point? Can anyone make a difference given the gravity of the injustice and the unending need it created? Efforts are futile it seems. It is bubble or despair, denial or passivity.

Now I see it in yet a third way, through the lens of grace. I actively love those God puts in my path and upon my heart. I meet needs where I can. I make myself available to share the burdens and celebrate the joys. I do life with those I did not know or care about before. I won’t change the world. None of us will. There is no final solution while depravity lives. But I won’t sit idle. With each new believer, depravity dies a little bit more. And God has profoundly impacted some, perhaps many, through me but none of them has been impacted as much as I have. Every experience is meant to produce more of the image of Jesus in me. And in this case if I can do nothing else I can weep like and with him for the loss of the innocents.

The Rwandan Adventure Continues – Day Two Postscript

Here are some visuals that are striking.

A volcano with smoke coming out of two places. It destroyed the city of Goma in the Congo in 2002. I saw homes, built since, upon the cooled lava. Occasionally you can hear gunfire form where I saw the home. I did in 2009. The perpetrators of the genocide continue their work right alongside other thugs in this lawless nation (the Congo).

A man and three sons pushing a bike loaded with five gallons of water up as steep hill. They probably had five miles and twenty hills to go. The things people must do to get “clean” water we wouldn’t call potable.

A man carrying a SUV size battery upon his head. You see woman every day balancing goods and produce upon their heads as they walk. Occasionally men. But a car battery? That’s a first.

A refugee camp. When the genocide people fled the Congo for a variety of reasons. Some were fleeing prosecution. The gig was up and justice was coming. Many fled persecution. Not knowing when the genocide would end, people took up residence in neighboring countries (just like people are fleeing Uganda and Ebola as I type). A great number have remained there since 1994. The violence is now so great there that people are fleeing here to this peaceful country. The camp was probably some 25 miles inside the border half way halfway between Kivu and Musanze.

People navigating mountains on bikes. I know. I know.  I have a dear friend who rides regularly. And the hills of Birmingham provide considerable challenge to him. But rarely (actually never) does he navigate 4200 feet in elevation with hundreds of pounds of goods being taken to market or purchased in the market and being brought back home. Did I mention the 53.5 miles in between?

Today I made my way through the Kigali Genocide Memorial once again. It will take a bit more time to put those more somber thoughts together. I posted three photos on Facebook. Those alone are griping. Imagine what it was like to walk over the 259,000 bodies buried there in no more than a couple of acres. The last vault remains open. It was covered in fresh flowers. Man’s capacity for evil is infinite.

Covet your prayers!