Running Without Shoes: The Church In Cambodia
We just finished School of Missions and while we were there I noticed something kind of amusing.School of Missions is an annual event held at Evangel University, in Springfield, MO by the Assemblies of God World Missions department. Typically, our missions agency works on a five year cycle; general appointed missionaries (like us) spend four years on the field (in Cambodia for us) and then one year back in the USA raising money for the next four years. So, theoretically, every missionary would be back in the states once every five years. During that year they are back in the USA they are required to attend a two week event known as School of Missions. It is a time of classes and seminars and meetings designed to help missionaries keep up on changes in the missions agency itself, new trends and changes in churches in America, and to provide fellowship and networking among like minded people around the world. This year they had about 750 missionaries attending (about 130 of those were new missionaries preparing to go to the field for the first time). Overall it is a very good time for our entire family; they have a kids program running the whole time as well that our kids love. And the thing I noticed was about Alex, our 8 year old son.
To properly set the stage let me go back about 4 years. Back then Alex had some interesting personality traits that had us a bit concerned. He couldn’t stand to have anything dirty in any way. He wouldn’t even set a toy down on a carpet inside our house because he was afraid it would get dirty! He never wanted to be dirty himself either; he would wash his hands numerous times each day. We were beginning to become concerned that he might have obsessive compulsive disorder. But, thankfully, he grew out of it. Over the last year or two it was more common to pick him up from school and rather than being spotlessly clean, he looked like he had been involved in digging a tunnel somewhere.
The other thing you need to remember is that missionary kids tend to be a bit different. They grow up living in a different culture, where different things are accepted and expected. Then mix in international school. Our kids, for example, go to an international, English speaking school that was set up primarily for missionary kids. It’s been great, but it definitely throws them for another cultural loop. The teachers at the school are primarily from Australia, New Zealand and England. The kids in their classes are from Korea, New Zealand, Australia, England, Cambodia, Singapore and a few other places. So the school has it’s own culture as well. And then our home has it’s own culture; we are American in many ways, but yet we don’t always fit in so well among the general American population. As a rule, as evangelical Christians we are more conservative than most Americans, yet as missionaries living in another culture and working with media to find new ways of connecting with people around the world we are often a good bit more open to “different” people and new ideas than a large percentage of the people in most churches. So our kids are growing up in this multi-cultural mix, and consequently they end up developing a pretty unique combination of traits from the different groups and cultures they interact with.
So, back to School of Missions. On one of the last days they have the kids programs do a special presentation for all the adults, so that parents get an idea of what their kids have been doing. The kids were supposed to dress up, so we had Dmetri and Alex get ready to go. Well, Alex didn’t have any nice shoes in our room; he hadn’t needed them before that, so they were in the trunk of the car. Because we were already running a little late, Lisa and Dmetri started heading for the meeting while Alex and I went to the car to get his shoes. He had been wearing flip-flops all week (standard tropical missionary footwear), and he left those in the car and put on his nice sandals. Yeah, I know, I said he had to get his nice shoes out of the car so that he would be dressed up and here we are getting sandals, but that’s missionary kids! So he gets his nice sandals on and we start heading for the meeting. As we came around the corner of the building I could see Lisa and Dmetri a good ways ahead, so I told Alex to run and catch up so he wouldn’t be late. He started to run, and when he was about 15 yards in front of me he stopped, took off his sandals, picked them up, and ran the rest of the way barefoot.
Yes, that’s the end of my “funny” story. So what was the point? Well, two things really struck me at the time. First, was how much Alex had changed. From being a strong candidate for OCD, to running around barefoot on a college campus. He still has his issues, but they are different now, and thankfully not quite as dramatic. Second, it seemed to be a very Cambodian thing to do. It didn’t seem to fit the stereotypical churchgoing model of a preacher’s kid in a conservative evangelical church. But all that is just fine by me. When Alex picked up those shoes and started running I had a big stupid grin plastered across my face. And that isn’t all that different from the church as a whole, and especially the church in Cambodia.
The Cambodian church isn’t too much older than our boys. It was just in the early 1990’s that it got going again. And in the not too distant past we would look at some of the problems and issues within this new church and wonder how they will ever make it. Yet many of those problems and odd behaviors are now long gone. They still have problems. But they are new problems. They are growing, and just like our kids, they have a unique culture and perspective. They grew up in Cambodia, they have been reached by, and work regularly with missionaries from 7 different countries (and that’s just counting Assemblies of God missionaries. The reality is there are missionaries from dozens of countries.). Plus, the gospel presents a whole new set of principals and priorities. We can’t expect them to look just like us. They are unique. And just like I get a big grin on my face when I see Alex doing something uniquely Alex, or Dmetri doing something uniquely Dmetri, I’m sure God has a big smile when the Cambodian church does something unique to them.
posted by Troy In Cambodia @ 10:02 PM
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