THE MATATU'S FLIPPED

This article was originally published in CATALYSTSPACE Aug. 11, 2011
by Palmer Chinchen




“I DON'T WANT TO MISS MY FLIGHT.”

If I’m honest, that was my very first thought when I watched the matatu (Kenyan passenger minivan) crammed with seventeen or eighteen people get hit, flip, and roll onto its roof, which collapsed.

Sociologists call it the phenomenon of noninvolvement. Researchers have found that bystanders often have this odd tendency not to respond to someone in dire need. Sometimes it’s out of fear, sometimes it’s simply stage fright—the worst is when people do nothing because they think it’s somebody else’s problem.

We can spend a lifetime living that way.

“WHAT YOU DO MATTERS.”

When I saw the matatu flip, that was my second thought: Palmer, you keep telling people that what they do matters!

Too often we think what we do or how we live doesn’t matter. We think it doesn’t matter when we spend $348 on True Religion designer jeans. We think it doesn’t matter when a church in Dallas is spending 115 million dollars on their new building.

It matters…

…because the way you live every day is a picture of your soul.

So I urgently yelled to my Nairobi taxi driver, “Stop!”

He jumped out with me and ran to the crumpled van and began easing people over the shattered glass. Within just a few minutes everyone was out, and miraculously no one appeared seriously injured.

Just when I started to think, “Bravo, Palmer—see, good thing you stopped,” my driver shouted, “They’re killing the other driver!” I spun around to see an angry mob stoning and beating the driver who had hit the matatu … to death.

“SOMETIMES YOU MUST ACT in order to stop the very worst things from happening.”

That was the heart of my message in twenty-three cities last fall, when I was the speaker on the Hungry for Love tour with Sanctus Real, Leeland, and The Afters. “You must act!” We keep thinking somebody else will, but Christ left this work of the kingdom to you!

There’s two lives to be lived. One is the life you live every day. The life that many times ends up becoming a tired rut sapping you of every last ounce of creative passion. But then there’s the life you dream of living. That’s the second life. For many it’s the life-unlived.

So I write this today to inspire you, to challenge you to abandon your comfortable routine and discover the exhilarating life God has waiting for you.

Back to Kenya: Without thinking, I sprinted toward the mob. They call it mob justice in east Africa. But it’s not just; it’s sick vigilantism. I knew without a doubt they would kill him if I didn’t act.

When the matatu flips, you must act.

DISPASSION

After visiting dozens of churches on the Hungry for Love Tour I came home discouraged. Generation-excess has moved into the suburban church.

In one large church the pastor proudly stated, “We just spent a million dollars on this sound system!”

I about choked. What in the world are we doing spending a million dollars on a sound system? And why do so many churches need I-Mag (Image Magnification). That’s the awesome technology that projects a really big picture of your preacher on a screen.

Here’s the simple truth we miss: just because we can … doesn’t mean we should.

I say all this because the church’s focus must turn out. We’ve focus far too much of our effort and resource inward.

How will we ever rebuild countries like Haiti, or stop the spread of malaria in Africa, or free girls from sex-slavery in Thailand if we keep building kingdoms on street corners in the suburbs – instead of taking the Kingdom of God to the world.

The matatu’s flipped.

ONE LIFE MATTERS

Forcing my way to the middle of the raging mob, I dropped to my hands and knees over the man’s head, thinking, At least they’ll have to hit me first.

“Stop, stop! Please stop!” I yelled.

“Get out of the way—we want to kill him!” the angry young men shouted back.

“No,” I answered loudly but calmly as I looked up. “Nobody’s going to die here today.”

As they slowly dropped their stones and backed away, I helped the beaten man sit up, then carefully pulled him to his feet and brought him to the rear bumper of his van, where we sat until the mob was gone.

What I’m not saying is that Palmer Chinchen is a hero. I’m not. I simply try to live the way I tell others that Jesus told us to live—like your life matters. What you do matters.

So let’s stop being so self-indulgent and stop growing inwardly focused churches, and realize that God can use your life—your church—to change what is messed up out there.

You see, if I wait, if I don’t act—if you wait, if you don’t act—the man on the side of the road dies … literally.

GENERATION JUSTICE

This article was originally published in NEXT-WAVE, July 18, 2011.
by Palmer Chinchen

I have a name for this generation.

No one’s been quite sure what to call the emerging generation. Some call them the Millennials, or Generation Next (that’s makes no sense, every generation is the next), Generation Y, Generation 13, Generation I, Generation Digital Natives… but none of these labels say what this generation is most about… Justice. They are. And that’s why we need to start calling this generation of 18 to 28 year-olds by a new name, Generation Justice.

I know this is true because I’ve watched how they live. They are most about pursuing justice for the marginalized and being a voice for the silenced and oppressed. They want to repair this world and make it beautiful like Eden. They live out the mercy of God.

The contrast to prior generations is striking. I went through college with the Yuppie Generation. We were a self-indulgent lot. Everyone wanted to drive a Beemer, wearing a Member’s Only jacket — with the collar popped on their pastel Izod.

Not this generation. They wear Tom’s shoes because Tom puts shoes on bare feet in places like Bolivia. They’ve made scooters cool again because you can ride a hundred miles on a gallon of gas. They embrace simplicity because they want to share more with people who have less. That’s the heartbeat of Generation Justice.

I say that with confidence because of twenty-something year-olds like Jennifer Preyss. Jennifer is a young, energetic reporter for the Victoria Advocate; Texas’ oldest newspaper. Last year Jennifer traveled to Malawi, Africa and spent several weeks loving and caring for orphans.

In October — still bothered by the extreme poverty and the lack of simple basic needs like shoes — Jennifer read about The Grove’s Barefoot Sunday. She was captivated, compelled, and certain God wanted her to hold a Barefoot Sunday in Victoria, Texas — then send the shoes to children in Malawi. Jennifer says she “stalked” me on Facebook until I answered. Her urgent plea read something like, “Palmer, I want to hold a Barefoot Sunday for the entire city of Victoria! Can you help me?”

It sounded audacious. I told her I would do my best. But her plans seemed lofty, and South Texas was a long way from Chandler, Arizona. I was a skeptic.

Jennifer kept working. Her passion was infectious. Three more reporters in their early twenties joined her cause. A date was set, February 27th. A goal was established, 1,000 pairs of shoes.

When I showed up in Victoria, the night of their Barefoot Sunday, I saw how Jennifer had inspired a city. She and her team had rallied participation from 20 churches, 4 schools, 2 colleges, and a Synagogue. An entire class of second graders insisted on going barefoot when they took their shoes off for Africa. The reporters drove around the city picking up piles of shoes in newspaper delivery trucks… after their deliveries.

On Barefoot Sunday Jennifer ended up with a mountain of more than 5,000 pairs of shoes to send to Africa.

Right now Generation Justice is flooding the U.S. Government office for Nonprofits with applications. Their aim is not to grow massive aid or charity organizations. They are far more organic than that. They are simply living their passions. They are responding to the needs of desperate people that grip their heart. A recent report on volunteering in America reveals that this generation has fueled a national spike in volunteers, “Led by teens and young adults accounting for almost half the increase, about a million more people volunteered last year.”1

Every time I visit my son at college I’m reminded of the pervasive mercy spirit of Generation Justice. The walls of every hallway are littered with posters promoting the students’ causes. Students recently held a Live on a dollar a day week. They erected cardboard shacks in the middle of campus and slept there for a week to champion the need to end extreme poverty. The last time I was there it was Barefoot Friday, because students were giving their shoes away. A sophomore named Christian has founded Beacon of Light. On Wednesdays at 5 o’clock her student volunteers crowd into her cramped dormitory kitchen to make piles of pb&j sandwiches. Then load into cars, drive downtown, and give the sandwiches away to men and women who live hungry on the streets of San Diego.

Something very spiritual is happening.

Generation Justice has taken to heart Jesus’ kingdom-cry to feed the hungry, give clean water to the thirsty, put clothes on the naked (and shoes on the barefeet), and care for the sick — and end the pandemics.

Salad Days

Developmental psychologists refer to these years (18-28) as the critical years. Because The most important things we do with our lives are often determined by the choices we make, the values we form, the decisions we follow, the affections we develop, the allegiances we create during the critical years.

Shakespeare, Saturday Night Live writers, and Wheaton College students call them the Salad Days. These are the best days; the days in which we grow and flourish and thrive.

In the critical years you hold life by the tail. The world is yours for the taking. The doors are all open. You may live in any city you choose. You can take any career path you like. You can marry whoever you like… well, not really – but you get my point.

So much of who we you are is defined in those few developmentally important years. Think about your parents for a moment and the music they listen to. I can bet cash money it’s not Lil-Wayne or Usher. Your mom is still playing her Michael Bolton cassettes and your dad’s waiting for Kiss’s reunion tour.

In her seminal work on this formative life-stage, The Critical Years, Sharon Parks writes about the motion of faith. She argues that this period is a unique and identifiable developmental stage. Parks writes, “A Central strength of the young adult is the capacity to respond to visions of the world as it might become. This is the time in every generation for renewal of the human vision.”2

While at Harvard, Lawrence Kohlberg (considered the preeminent thinker on moral development) once taught a course on moral choice. Ethicists, who studied the effect the course had on students moral reasoning, reported that these young adults sense “a deep obligation to relieve human misery and suffering if possible.”3

This is why Jason Russel, Bobby Bailey, and Laren Poole founded Invisible Children. These three aspiring film-makers, in their early twenties, traveled to northern Uganda because they were disturbed by the atrocities taking place in Dufar, Sudan.

While looking for a way across the border they found themselves in the middle of a human tragedy. Thousands of children who feared being abducted by Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), to fight as child soldiers, were walking miles and miles every night from their rural villages to seek refuge in the towns of Gulu and Lira. The concrete floors of bus depots and hospital basements became their beds.

The three friends couldn’t believe what they were witnessing; literally, a flood of children filling the towns every night. Why hadn’t anyone told them? Why was the world silent?

They began to film the atrocity, produced a documentary, founded an organization, met with government officials, and called the world’s attention to the tragedy in northern Uganda. People, churches, schools, and governments have responded. The tide has turned. Kony is on the run. Children near Gulu are again sleeping in their own beds at night.

Do you see why I say it’s Generation Justice that is leading the charge to rescue children in places like Uganda — places like hell on earth?

The Rest of the Gospel

From my vantage, the Americanized version of the gospel is incomplete. We’ve focused our attention on an intellectual relationship with God, and for the most part we’ve neglected his call to live out this gospel of the kingdom – show mercy, pursue justice, love the marginalized, and free the oppressed.

I fully realize that it is good and necessary to have a mind after God. I have a PhD, I get it. But simply knowing your systematic theology doesn’t do it. Jesus flat out told the Pharisees they had no clothes. He was fed up with their pseudo-religious intellectual piety.

I think it’s the trophy hunters in Africa that got me.

I’ve spent about half my life in Africa and I can’t tell you how disenchanted I’ve become with the trophy hunting preachers. They come from churches and mission organizations to preach in villages and ask for a raising of the hands. Then they return to their country exclaiming a count of how many souls were saved.

Really?

They’ve missed it. They’ve missed the rest of the gospel! They miss the part when Jesus says, “care for them, feed them, love them, free them.” They never ask about the babies dying of malaria, why the stomachs of the malnourished swell, or who will care for the toddlers orphaned by aids.

They came to take a trophy, not to bring a kingdom.

But Generation Justice has heard the cry of the ancients like Micah and Amos and Isaiah, and they’ve started to live out the words of Jesus.

And they have begun to bring Christ’s kingdom to earth, just as it is in heaven.

That’s why as I type this sentence, eighteen year-old Allie Cestmat is in Malawi going village to village, with our team from The Grove, putting 8,000 pairs of shoes — from places like Victoria — on bare feet in Africa.

Citations:

1. Mark Hrywna, Young Adults Fueled Spike in Volunteers. Non Profit Times, July 29, 2009. Accessed at http://calservenetwork.blogspot.com/2009/07/young-adults-fueled-spike-in-volunteers.html

2. Sharon Parks, The Critical Years (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1986), 30.

3. Carol Gilligan, Moral Development: In the Modern American College. (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1981), 139, as quoted in Parks, 105.

ALL-STAR SHAME

(This article was first featured on the front page of the HuffPost on 7/11/11)
By: Palmer Chinchen, PhD

It’s all about shame.

That’s the motivation behind the Maricopa County (Phoenix, Arizona) Sheriff announcing that he will assign his chain-gang to weed duty outside Chase Field during the 2011 All-Star Game.

You read correctly, his chain-gang.

The first time I passed the sheriff’s chain-gang, when I moved to Arizona, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Women in prison-striped uniforms hoeing weeds … chained at the ankles, with shotgun-toting deputies standing watch. I was shocked. It looked like a scene from 1950s rural America.

My soul ached to the gut. Yes, these women may have committed crimes that deserve incarceration—but not this dehumanizing humiliation. I hurt for them. I wanted to cry for them. My thought was, “Palmer, you must do something …” So I hung a U and got out. I approached the deputy and asked if he would give a message to the sheriff. He listened patiently as I said, “Please tell your sheriff that in Chandler, we do not want women humiliated. In Chandler, we believe that every person should be treated with dignity and respect. In Chandler, we want this practice stopped.” He was kind enough to say he would pass my message along.

Starting with the opening pages of Genesis the Bible explains that all people inherently carry the Imago Dei (Latin for, Image of God). “So God created human being in his own image, in the image of God he created them” (Gen. 1:27). Because of this central theological truth every person has great value and dignity.

I think this is one of the reasons Jesus stopped the mob of men from stoning the adulterous woman, this is why he insisted the woman “famous for her sins,” be allowed to come near to him. This is why he focused much of his attention on the lame, the outcaste, the least, the sinners, the marginalized, and the despised. And this is why he insisted that those in his kingdom care for prisoners (Matt. 25:36).

You see, all human beings have great worth. Regardless of race, gender, ability, wealth, religion, or nationality, all people deserve dignity and respect. This is not simply a Christian theological argument, this is a moral position. To publicly humiliate and shame anyone is immoral and unjust. It’s wrong at every level.

Who among us would stand idly by while a person maliciously scarred da Vinci’s Mona Lisa with graffiti? We would scream NO! Stop!—we would take action because this painting is deemed beautiful and priceless. How much more beautiful and priceless is the life of a woman—even one in chains!

Why are we silent?

Maybe our silence is the greatest crime here.


It’s time to speak up. Like the prophets of the Old Testament, you and I are called to be a voice for the silenced; yes, even the ones in chains.

The King of wisdom Solomon writes, “Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all” (Prov. 31:8) He says, “Because we are precious in his sight” (Psalms 72:14). Then Solomon writes theses stinging words, “Don’t hesitate to step in and help. If you say, ‘Hey, that’s none of my business,’ will that get you off the hook? Someone is watching you closely, you know – someone not impressed with weak excuses” (Prov. 24:11-12 msg).

We point back in history, to another continent, and chivalrously boast, “I would not have been silent when that happened to millions of prisoners.”

Then why are we silent today?

We wait for our local or state or even federal government to do something while we say nothing.

Last week it was 117 degrees here in Phoenix. Our sheriff finds some twisted pleasure in keeping his inmates in stifling, unairconditioned tents. The women said it was cooler outside than in their tents. I don’t leave my dog outside this time of year, literally. But we said nothing.

He shames men by dressing them in pink underwear and pink slippers and we say nothing.

If you are on your way to the All-Star Game, would you stop and say something? Would you tell the women in striped jumpsuits and chained at the ankles that we are sorry, and they are beautiful. And tell them they are loved, if by no one else, by God himself. Then give them a bottle of cold water or a ballpark frank -- and give them dignity.

The women in the tents say it’s so hot at night they can’t sleep. God can’t sleep. I hope you can’t either.

It’s a sham and a shame, an All-Star shame.

GOD CAN'T SLEEP

5,000 & COUNTING

I keep trying to tell people that their one life matters. You matter. How you live, what you do matters. If you’re not convinced, let me tell you about Jennifer.

Jennifer Preyss (pronounced Price) is a young, energetic reporter for the Victoria Advocate; Texas’ oldest newspaper. Last year Jennifer traveled to Malawi, Africa and spent several weeks serving with Children of the Nations (COTN), loving and caring for orphans.

In October -- still bothered by the extreme poverty, the lack of simple basic needs like shoes -- Jennifer read about The Grove’s Barefoot Sunday. She was captivated, compelled, and certain God wanted her to hold a Barefoot Sunday in Victoria, Texas and send the shoes to children in Malawi.

Jennifer says she “stalked” me on Facebook until I answered. Her urgent plea read something like, “Palmer, I want to hold a Barefoot Sunday for the entire city of Victoria! Can you help me?”

It sounded audacious. I told her I would do my best. But her plans seemed lofty, and South Texas was a long way from Chandler, Arizona. I was a skeptic.

Jennifer kept working. Her passion was infectious. Four more reporters joined her cause. A date was set, February 27th. A goal was established, 1,000 pairs of shoes.

On Victoria’s Barefoot Sunday I preached three services at The Grove, then hurried to the airport with Dan Angermiller. Dan returned from Malawi with a similar passion to Jennifer’s, and founded Lightfeet Project; his efforts to collect shoes for Africa and Haiti.

We landed in Houston and our good driver Erica kept her foot to the floor trying to get us to Victoria by 6:30. When Dan and I walked through the doors of Renegade, the appropriate name of the church hosting the event, Pastor Bard met us with a giant Texas smile, handed me a wireless mic and said, “Ok Palmer, you’re up, this is the bands last song.”

That night I saw how Jennifer had inspired an entire city. She and her team had rallied participation from 20 churches, 4 schools, 2 colleges, and a Synagogue.

An entire class of second graders insisted on going barefoot the whole day, when they took off their shoes to send to Africa. A high school junior, Keaton Warren, said, “What good are shoes without socks?” So he started his own sock drive. More than 2,000 pairs of socks came in on Barefoot Sunday. And I loved this, when shoes piled up all over the city, the Advocate newspaper sent their truck out to do shoe pick-ups -- after their newspaper deliveries.

When I spoke that night I had the privilege of applauding the efforts of everyone in Victoria. I told them about the places their shoes would go, like Liberia, Malawi, and Haiti. I told them how valuable one pair of shoes is to an African orphan. I told them how a pair of shoes moves a barefoot high school student in Africa from going to school full of shame, to walking to school full of dignity.

After the closing Barefoot Sunday event, as we surveyed the mountain of shoes, Jennifer gave us a count… “We’ve blown past our goal, Palmer, you’re looking at 4,700 pairs of shoes!”

Do you see why I say one life, like Jennifer’s, really can make a difference?

The next morning the shoe count jumped past 5,000… and counting.

Sanctus Real :: Feed-blog

Sanctus Real :: Feed-blog

David C Cook Announces Winner of the True Religion Missions Trip Scholarship

Megan Boudreaux from New Orleans, LA, has been selected as the winner of the True Religion Missions Trip Scholarship. Palmer Chinchen, author of True Religion, and David C Cook, publisher of True Religion, sponsored the $1000 scholarship that was awarded to Megan on November 8, 2010. The award will be applied to a mission trip Megan will be taking to Haiti with Hope for Haiti on December 5-10, 2010.

Megan, a native of Lafayette, LA, believes God placed so much compassion and love in her heart at the age of seven when her father passed away. Megan is a graduate of Tulane University and has been on many mission trips including Honduras, Uganda, Ukraine, Mexico, and Haiti. Megan has worked in Haiti and planned medical mission trips for a hospital in Baton Rouge. Megan’s first impression of Haiti was, “It was unlike ANYTHING I had ever seen before. I knew I had been blessed with a burden for orphans and children.” After spending time in Haiti and having the privilege of loving these children and seeing Jesus in these orphans’ beautiful eyes, Megan knew that Haiti is where God wants her to be. As Megan says, “I’ve been forever changed by the children of Haiti.”

You can learn more about Megan and her work in Haiti on her blog at http://blessedwithaburden.wordpress.com.

About True Religion by Palmer Chinchen: True Religion: Taking Pieces of Heaven to Places of Hell on Earth examines the idea of living a life sacrificially poured out for Christ. Chinchen believes that those who are willing to give their lives away to change the world will find their own lives changed forever through that process. He challenges believers to love the Lord with all their mind and soul, with all their strength and heart, and as this love is poured into the work of Christ, believers will experience God moving them in a unique direction that will carry them into new and exciting areas of service. For more information, visit: www.truereligion.com.

Headquartered in Colorado Springs, Co, with offices in Elgin, Illinois, Paris, Ontario, Canada, and Eastbourne, UK, David C Cook resources are published in over 150 languages, distributed in more than 80 countries, and sold worldwide. For more information, visit www.davidccook.com.

Audra Jennings
Senior Media Specialist
The B&B Media Group