Redemptive Canadians

Right, I said that I was going to mention something about how my fellow Canadian delegates were quite crucial in helping me navigate through the journey I had at Lausanne, and how, even now, they continue to help process, narrate and heal through this experience.
I have mentioned earlier how actually spending some time ‘away’ with two brothers for lunch to discuss how upsetting the discourse was, how uneasy we were with the messaging coming from the stage, and how this was not the Jesus or the world that we knew, was really redemptive for me. Another aboriginal brother who helped whisk me away to the townships, to see how apartheid is still very alive and well, to see the brokenness in that country, and yet also, to see such great beauty and how God is still at work, despite our failings and inadequacies.
My fellow Canadian delegates have continued to pour into my life, even now. Tonight, I was at a talk given by another delegate, where he shared his distress, disgust and disorientation from having attended Lausanne, and how his pain at the brokenness of the church is still balanced by the hope and the joy of our Lord being present amongst His people. I’m not sure if the rest of the audience really “got” what he was talking about, but his words echoed many of my own from the last posting that I wrote. Others have asked me to come and speak in other venues in the upcoming weeks. In our national time away, to congregate together we realized that we, as a country, remained in unity in our shame in the discourse happening and the inequities and battles that continue to be fought within the church
It has been so comforting to know that I am not alone in my thinking. I believe that there is greater purpose in the selection of delegates who did attend. Several of the people that I know who were on the nominations list, but were not invited to attend, as lovely as they are, are still people who think in old, stale paradigms that no longer apply to our world today (that being said, I’d have to say most of the evangelicals I know still think in those ways). However, as I’ve discovered over the past few months, that those of us who were, by God’s grace, chosen to attend were kindred spirits in many ways - seeing but dimly that another way is possible, despite the strong-armed, unswerving, completely self-assured dinosaur that continues to stomp down old paths that no longer speak to our culture or our world. They give me hope that another future is possible for the Bride that we love and that we can choose different paths and that Jesus is still going to keep calling us to Himself and to take up our crosses and give up our Pharisaism daily. I can only dare to hope for myself that I am worthy of the calling to which I have been called, and that, as all of creation groans for God’s full redemption, that we hear this cry and strive to see His kingdom come and His will be done on earth.