New Blog Site

Due to a whole heap of reasons, I have moved the blog to meyerblog.com
This site will no longer remain active.

Its been fun!

Emergent thinking in Australia . . . Where is it?

Where is emergent in Australia?

Apart from some pretty interesting avenues of thought pursued by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch, which I think at its basis isn't really emergentesque but more like new construction on a familiar foundation, I haven't heard of much in the old homeland.

I was pretty shocked to hear Mike Frost speak about the theme of exile remaining a key Biblical thread - and as a major metaphor as to how believers should think of themselves. I agree. I think after working with refugees, the idea of displacement or exile as Frost puts it, is a helpful way of understand the context in which we relate to culture. And BTW, with him, I resonate with the idea that the message IS the medium.

What equally shocked me though was the realisation that Forge appears to be more of a revamping of a pretty conservative ecclesiology than what I was prepared for. I suppose an easier way to restate that is that Forge seems to look back to identify the high point for Christian ecclesiology and that Emergent thinking doesn't believe such an era exists.

Only fools try to define something like a movement or conversation - and being no stranger to that, here goes:

From what I understand of the emergent conversation Christianity will work best wherever it finds itself in the world when it maintains with a loose grip an open, safe, humble, theologically strident, egalitarian, collaborative, questioning and contextualised community of faith. The last term indicating that it cannot and should not have a clonable form.

Using that as a really poor definition - I just don't hear many Australian voices speaking to that?

Part 4: The Medical Fascination

In case you're unaware, I'm trying to document some differences, between US culture and other cultures that I've been part of.
These are totally subjective observations so please excuse my awkwardness if I overstate or generalize.

One area that really stands out for me is the US preoccupation with medicines and health.
Juxtapose this with stats which place the US in the unhealthy basket in areas such as sugar intake, obesity, heart health. Yet, seemingly due to the cultures sensitivity to health issue, life expectancies are still high.

I have never been part of a culture where drug are advertised on mainstream television. Or where citizens are told to ask their doctor about "Valtrex" or "Thermysen" as though they are foods or everyday products. I've had people not visit our home when they heard that one of our children had a 'cold' in case they caught it. That kind of makes sense. But forgive those who, not raised in such a culture, find that it communicates a "I like you, but only when you are well" kind of feeling.

Americans know much more about drugs and procedures and food content than anyone else I know. I think that is great, but probably frustrating if you are a doctor. I imagine that in some spheres, a little information can be dangerous. I'd love to get some input here as to why this is the case. Is it a slight mistrust of those in the medical profession? Or is it more of a sense of entitlement to understand areas of life that many other cultures leave to professionals.

Once again, I am not saying this just a negative thing. Physicians are human and make bad judgment errors that may have been avoided if someone had just had the confidence to question the expert.

Maybe the attitude toward medicine belies a deeper principle at work: that Americans like to believe that their opinions count in any arena no matter how informed/uninformed or relevant/irrelevant they are?

Comments are back!

I just re enabled comments after getting a few like "Hey - love your blog. Come and have a look at me . . naked, §%%&!, *?&%, . . .
You get the picture.

Lessons from relativity

Over the past weeks a group of us from Solomon's Porch have been meeting to watch a lecture series on quantum Physics. So far we have been recapping the history of classic physics, wading back through history going through each of the monumental discoveries, how they came to be, and discussing some of the philosophical and spiritual implications along the way. One of the primary ideas that relativity insisted upon is that there is no such thing as absolute speed or time. That these terms are always relative to some point of reference.

I so appreciate the way emergent type thinking doesn't fall into the fallacy of the great divorce (in this case referring to both the church and science's insistence that they are incompatible). If the old adage that all truth is God's truth - then how could this ever really be?

Last night we looked at Einstein's special theory of Relativity (1905). For the very first time I think I understand how the time can lengthen relative to the speed of light.

For me the big insights have been tracking scientific theory with theology. The time Einstein was thinking about special relativity also effectively marks the time Christendom toyed with relative theology. That moral and religious absolutes were a construction of humanity and shrank God to small perspectives that made us feel good about how we could explain him.

Not knowing a whole lot about string theory and therefore, where exactly we are heading with this lecture series - I cant help but look forward to tracking how the expanse of modern scientific theory has influenced how we explain and understand creation and therefore God.

Part 3: Individualism

I have lived in Germany, Australia, Singapore, Austria and now here in the US.

Much of my time in Germany and Singapore was as a child. My comments from here on in a based entirely on one years observation of living in Minnesota. They are no doubt incomplete and flawed.

One cultural quality hightened in the US as in no other country I have experienced is individualism.

The US owes much of its ingenuity and accomplishment as a super power to this quality. Employed well it amplifies the strengths of each citizen - and makes it a source of pride rather than shame. Maybe the easiest way to clarify what I mean by contrasting it.

Our kids went to public school in Austria. There, the status quo was the aim. To fit in, to do well, but not excede or fall behind. Dress was smart, but never outrageous. New ideas were often met with "Why should we change?", "What would you know?" Maybe because Austria looks backward to its glorious and safe past and not so much to the future (unsafe) there appeared to be very little esteem for the radical, or the untested.

US culture appears to reward radical and inventive thinking and action much more than any other culture I have been part of. And, I like it. Especially in the area of theology and art. There is great freedom and patience for people to explore ponder andhypothesize.

The downside seems to be a lack of experienced community and need. So many of our everyday relationships begin with need.
I need help, I need freindship, I need peers . . .
Individualism reduces the smallest cultural unit down to the individual. So then logically, if I need something, I am the first one to supply the need. It makes for really small circles of influence, or circles of shallow influence. It is my experience that Americans tend to have more 'friends' but not many if any very deep friendships. Maybe 'need' has some influence here.

Maybe to have 'deep' relationships our first step is to declare need?

Part 2: So . . . how do you like it here?

Of course as western foreigners here we often get asked 'the grading question' that every culture I'm sure asks of those who are invited in to their home culture.
"How do you like it here?"

If you reflect on it a minute, it really is a difficult question to answer. I began by answering truthfully. It didn't take long for me to work out that the person asking the question rarely wants to hear exactly what you think. It is more one of the quiver full of standard questions that any native born asks the alien among them.

Of course the real inquiry behind the questions is "What do you think of us?"

That has helped me to answer the question both truthfully and appropriately. I was reading Jenell's blog this morning and she thought over the whole idea of perfection. Why, for example, high achieving students when presented with a grade of 97% will often beat themselves up over the 3% they didn't get.

The same principle is at work with "the question".
No matter how well you try and answer the question, it will be the missing 3% that people will walk off with in memory.

One year in

We have been living in the US for just over a year now.
I am thinking about posting some impressions and misconceptions that I have discovered by living in the US. For me, the US is the 5th country that I have lived in. 'Lived in' by my definition refers to any time span more than a year. In some sense, my time frame is arbitrary, but I am convinced that anything less is more of a short term stay. It really does take at east a year for some of the intricacies and frustrations of functioning in a foreign culture to work themselves out in character. It always made me laugh when some of the short term missionaries we had come and stay with us would question our summary of what it was like to live as an evangelical in Austria for example.

They had little experience of the meta-narrative with which to compare. This is one of those areas where post-modern analysis of how little entitlement we possess to stand on our opinion as binding that makes complete sense to me.
There is no such thing as a homogeneous experience of foreign culture.
The relativistic principle that everyone's experience is valid to themselves holds weight here.

That said, so much of what we experience as foreigners has direct correlation to what we react to as individuals. ie. When someone says that this culture makes them feel lonely, maybe what they are really articulating is that the way they react to the culture makes them feel lonely. In this respect, cultural reaction can tell us far more about ourselves than we can ascertain about the culture itself. As is so often said, living in a foreign culture is a great leveler. It exposes within us some of our greatest strengths and our most glaring weaknesses, regardless of intellect or social standing.

So when I find myself complaining about some aspect of the foreign culture I find myself in, am I really able to lift myself to a place of objectivism whereby I can 'grade' the culture or is it more of a 'reaction' spotlighting some internal deficit on my part?

Part 2: The Welcome Question?

Purpose driven Meth?

Tom sent me this article from the New York Times.
It appears that the woman who was held hostage gave her captor more than just a good dose of Rick Warren - like Meth Crystals!!!
Ooops - there we go - being a Jesus follower isn't as neat sometimes as we think.


Celebrated Hostage Gave Crystal Meth to Captor
By EDWARD WYATT
Published: September 28, 2005



Ashley Smith, who was held hostage in her apartment in March by the man now charged with murder in the Atlanta courthouse shootings, was hailed as a hero after she disclosed how she had persuaded her captor to surrender, partly by reading to him from the spiritual best seller "The Purpose-Driven Life."

But in a memoir released yesterday, Ms. Smith also recounts that she gave the kidnapper some of her supply of crystal methamphetamine during her captivity and that she did not tell the police for some time afterward.

In the memoir, "Unlikely Angel: The Untold Story of the Atlanta Hostage Hero," Ms. Smith recalls that Brian Nichols, who has been charged in the death of three people shot at the Fulton County Courthouse and a fourth killed elsewhere in Atlanta soon before her kidnapping, asked her if she had any marijuana. She answered no but said she did have some "ice," or crystal meth.

Ms. Smith says that at the time, she was fighting an addiction to crystal methamphetamine that had previously led her to spend time in a psychiatric hospital and to lose custody of her 5-year-old daughter.

She says she last used crystal meth about 36 hours before being taken hostage. Though Mr. Nichols used it and invited her to do so, she refused, she writes, and has not taken drugs since the episode.

"Suddenly, looking down at my drug pouch," she says, "I realized that I would rather have died in my apartment than have done those drugs with Brian Nichols. If the cops were going to bust in here and find me dead, they were not going to find drugs in me when they did the autopsy. I was not going to die tonight and stand before God, having done a bunch of ice up my nose."

The book, written with Stacy Mattingly, is being published by William Morrow and Zondervan, units of HarperCollins Publishers. Zondervan is also the publisher of "The Purpose-Driven Life."

The book's drug revelations were first reported yesterday by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Two weeks after the arrest of Mr. Nichols, Ms. Smith received $72,500 in reward money from various law enforcement agencies, including the F.B.I. and the United States Marshals Service. Richard Kolko, a special agent at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, said in an interview yesterday that the disclosure about Ms. Smith's supply of crystal meth was unlikely to affect her reward.

"The woman did a brave act at a desperate time," Mr. Kolko said. "The F.B.I. has no reason or inclination to go back and retrieve the reward."

Book Help?

I have two weeks study leave at the moment and I am research the way Israel looked at the Alien, the Stranger, and the foreigner in the Pentatuech looking to bring some implications as to options on how we can engage those who are other or foreign (like me!)
The book I am after retails at a hefty US$90 - that is way to much for a simple guy like me.
If anyone out there has a copy I could borrow for the next two weeks - it is worth a beer to you.

The book is:

Van Houten, Christina, The Alien in Biblical law, (JSOT Press: Sheffield, 1991)

Beverly Meyer 1936 - 2005

My mother died last week.
It was a protracted ending to a vibrant life.
I can't do any better than offer the eulogy I wrote for her funeral as a summary of who she was:

"First of all, please accept my family's profound gratitude for honoring my mother with your presence here today.

With sadness, presence is a gift which Sue and I and the boys are unable to extend. I rest firm in the confidence of mum's judgement that it was best to come and enjoy her when she was 'well' rather than to be among you today.

So mum, we're not here - but how so much more I wish you were.

When I think of mum, one ironical idea seems to encapsulate her essential nature - LIFE.

Mum did things in a lively way. Sometime they were lively for all the wrong reasons, but lively they were.

One time during school holidays, Greg and I were bored stiff, and mum had run out of ideas and patience. I think I was about 10 years old. Greg and I hatched a cunning but cruel plan. We sat in one of the upstairs bedrooms where we were living at the time - Troon Pl, Frankston. Imagine the camera panning in to reveal two boys behind the safety of a closed door, hunched over one of those old, flat, mono tape only recorders. The kind with the flip up cassette carriage and the buttons along the front. We took turn after turn recording between 7-10 minutes of us calling her name out loudly as if we were calling for her. We then set a timer for play and snuck downstairs out of direct sight looking and waiting for a response. The first 7 recorded whines of "ma- aaaa - hm, mum", met with polite replies like "Yes - what is it" to "What do you want". The next 8 to about 15 then moved on to "RIGHT - speak again and you'll cop a belting you'll never forget" I think she lasted 3 minutes before we threw in the white towel - she was nearly in tears and still hadn't caught on to what had transpired.

No gathered falseness, no calm repose - just flat out reality pulsing with life.

There was more challenge in our entanglements than wrath. There was nothing dull about growing up with Beverly Madge.

I remember sitting in a shared bath with my brother when I was 4 or 5 years old. Mum would get us to sing songs into a tape recorder for dad who was working on oil rigs then. Saying silly rhymes and listening to her try and sing Perry Como songs really badly. Or dancing in the living room to James Last and then later ABBA. There was LIFE. I remember her trying to get us to speak to her in German after we returned from living in Germany. We never really did and she would get so frustrated. I pinch myself when I realise how I, like mum, have tried in vain to get my own children to do the same.

For mum, life WAS relationships. It's a life lesson I own now myself. The she invested deeply in others and made herself vulnerable enough to receive richly from friends she made along the journey.

She had a great sense of humour, which we have both inherited in the much the same one inherits large thighs or a big nose. Observing her watch anything by Peter Sellers was as funny as watching the movie itself. It makes sense too: In mums eyes not much humour equated to not much life.
But then there was also a less public softness to mum which she deliberately downplayed. Sacrificial giving, volunteerism, middle of the night pickups of cousins in danger of domestic violence - time after time after time - that hardly anyone knew about.

And not least for my family - support without conditions when I announced a life choice to serve in ministry, even though it would mean removing 3 of her grandchildren. She flew 4 trips across the globe to be with us in Austria and another planned to come here to the U.S. before the tests came back positive. When many weren't prepared to offer it, mum did. She voted at times like that with her presence and I cannot begin to explain how supported and we we all felt as a family because of her.

I remember the day grandma died. Not mums birth mother, an aunt - but a mother and so more to mum.
She was devastated and we couldn't work it all out. Grandma was in heaven, we were taught and heaven was a much better deal than earth.
Today, history, without much mercy, repeats itself as I see my son looking at me the same way I looked at mum.

When he is older and asks the question "What was my Omi really like" How will I answer?
She was unreasonably loyal and protective, patriotic, spirited, fun, moody at times, self-sacrificing, moved to act by injustice, opinionated, passionate, confident in Jesus, strong - and so much a euphemism for LIFE.

Noela - as an absent son for much of her end days, I'll never forget the way you stepped in and cared for mum. What a beautiful picture of Jesus you are - thank-you on behalf of the family. Dad, as I shared on the phone - I can't imagine what you are feeling today. We are thinking of you - and we remember mum with joy

Simon . . . for Sue, Karl, Nikolaus and Jonathan"

How serious are these things?

. . . and would I have posted if I came up with a low score?

Your IQ Is 125

Your Logical Intelligence is Above Average Your Verbal Intelligence is Genius Your Mathematical Intelligence is Exceptional Your General Knowledge is Genius

A Quick and Dirty IQ Test

Azureus port forwarding on an Apple extreme basestation

After a hour or so of web search frustration, I worked out how to port forward on a basestation.
First step is to find out what the IP address of the machine is. You can click on the apple in the file menu-about this mac-more info-network. The IP address you are after will look something like that which is highlighted in yellow:


Then open your airport admin utility. Click on configure-then the port mapping tab. Click add and fill out the remain last section of the IP address you copied previously. Make sure the public and private port are both designated as port 6881. In my case the IP address was 172.16.1.2 (see below)


Click OK and make sure you click the UPDATE button in the lower right of the window. This will restart the basestation with port 6881 mapped correctly.



That's it. Open Azureus, use the configuration wizard if you want and enjoy all the green smiley faces!

wealth in australia

I just read an article in this morning's Age that shocked me even though it really shouldn't have:

Money really can't buy happiness
By Tim Colebatch
Canberra
July 7, 2005

Only 5 per cent of Australia's millionaires consider themselves prosperous, and half of those on high incomes say they cannot afford to buy all that they need.

The Australia Institute has revealed survey findings suggesting that more money is not necessarily making Australians feel happier, or richer.

According to the Melbourne Institute's household income survey, only 5 per cent of Australians earning more than $100,000 a year see themselves as prosperous. Twelve per cent of them think they are "just getting along", or even poor.

The survey found similar views among people with more than $1 million in assets. Most Australians who considered themselves prosperous had neither high incomes nor many assets.

There was little difference between rich and poor Australians in their satisfaction with life overall - but the lower people's income, the more likely they were to be "totally satisfied".

The co-authors of the paper, Clive Hamilton and Claire Barbato, said 21 per cent of people living on less than $25,000 a year declared themselves "totally satisfied" with life. But this declined steadily as incomes rose. Of those earning more than $100,000 a year, 13 per cent were "totally satisfied".

Dr Hamilton said yesterday that many contented retired people lived on low incomes, while many on high incomes felt more pressured. In a separate survey by Newspoll, 62 per cent of Australians said they could not afford to buy all the things they really needed. This included 48 per cent of high-income earners, suggesting that new needs invent themselves as old ones are met.

In the week following Live 8, and another 15,000 people in Dafur dead from persecution, disease or starvation - God have mercy on my country.

ruminations on lyrics

Without doubt my favourite album is "The Unforgettable Fire" by U2. I first heard it as a senior in high school at a time where I thought no one thought like I thought or felt like I felt. I still find it hypnotic. One of favourite "I" times is cranking it up on my iPod sitting alone on the beach watching a thunderstorm crackle on the horizon.


But then comes "The Soul Cages" by Sting. Written during his mourning of his fathers passing. As I await the passing not of my father but my mother, the lyrics are speaking to me once more. I remember the first time I ever thought of what I would say to my father if I knew it would be our last meeting. In an obscure village in the middle of Austria driving down the windy road from a refugee camp to our home - I listened and sang as loud as I could. No one heard but God. It was both intimate worship and loud complaining.

In the confusion of the reassessment of his relationship with his stand-off father, Sting writes these words using the metaphor of sea and storm:

Did I see the shade of a sailor
On the bridge through the wheelhouse pane
Held fast to the wheel of the rocking ship
As I squinted my eyes in the rain

For the ship had turned into the wind
Against the storm to brace
And underneath the sailor's hat
I saw my father's face

If a prayer today is spoken
Please offer it for me
When the bridge to heaven is broken
And you've lost on the wild wild sea
Lost on the wild wild sea...

Put much better than I ever could . . .

Enneagram Type

It must be the week of personal tests.
I just finished an Enneagram type test. This is how I tested, but with a four wing making me "The Iconoclast":



free enneagram test

What is your world view - quiz

I just finished a quiz on worldviews. This is how I tested:

You scored as Emergent/Postmodern. You are Emergent/Postmodern in your theology. You feel alienated from older forms of church, you don't think they connect to modern culture very well. No one knows the whole truth about God, and we have much to learn from each other, and so learning takes place in dialogue. Evangelism should take place in relationships rather than through crusades and altar-calls. People are interested in spirituality and want to ask questions, so the church should help them to do this. Emergent/Postmodern 75% Neo orthodox 64% Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan 57% Modern Liberal 54% Fundamentalist 46% Classical Liberal 36% Reformed Evangelical 25% Roman Catholic 25% Charismatic/Pentecostal 18% What's your theological worldview? created with QuizFarm.com

Is this true?

Miroslav Volf writes:
"If the claim that Christ 'died for the ungodly' (Romans 5:6) is 'the New Testament's fundamental affirmation', as Jon Sobrino rightly states in Jesus the Liberator (Sobrino 1993,231), then the theme of solidarity, though indispensable and rightly rehabilitated from neglect by Moltmann and others, must be a sub-theme of the overarching theme of self giving love. Especially when solidarity refers to 'struggling on the side of', rather than simply to 'suffering together with', solidarity may not be severed from self-donation.
All sufferers can find comfort in the solidarity of the Crucified; but only those who struggle against evil by following the example of the Crucified will discover him at their side.
To claim the comfort of the Crucified while rejecting his way is to advocate not only cheap grace but a deceitful ideology" Exclusion and Embrace


When I first read this, I wasn't sure if it was semantics playing with me or whether he was really on to something. What is the difference between 'on the side of' and struggling with'? Don't both speak to identification? I think what Volf is differentiating (using an oversimplified example) is the difference between the dictionary meaning pointing to the mental assent side of voicing and experiencing unity in solidarity by signing a petition against something, versus the on the ground protest march type of Solidarity. If I read him correctly, then the first italicised section becomes clearer.
The context of this clip is a discussion on how the cross plays into the self in relation to the 'other'. What Volf is effectively saying here especially in the last paragraph, is that to sign the petition on behalf of our enemy is only part of the journey Christ wants us to embark on in reconciliation. To follow his 'way' means to go out on the street with them? How does this play into the whole realm of giving? Is there some sense of exchange?

The voiceless spoke here . . .

grafiti.jpg
Originally uploaded by macgreiner.

. . . and here

Unfortunately both times they were on our garage. Someone said that Grafiti is the language of the voiceless. Well, this is not true grafiti then. These are the markings of a small intellected group of dudes called a gang. Judging by what my 6'4" 260 pound neighbour screamed when he saw it, these markings will soon be the language of the #!§&%less.

grafiti2.jpg
Originally uploaded by macgreiner.

Death Sucks

As I type, I am sitting next to my sleeping mother.
Tomorrow is the last time I will see her. She is entering the latter stages of a struggle with cancer.
I watch her breathe and wonder how many breaths she has left. She doesn’t know that I am here, and in many ways it makes no difference. It is therapeutic to me to know that I spent my last hours with her in a position that is so familiar to me as a refugee worker - presence. nothing but presence.
Soon my father will be the only one who has known me since birth, who knows my story in its entirety. My mind keeps racing keeping a lose count of the hours I have left, what haven’t I said that I should have said, what will regret later not having done.
It all sounds so selfish I know, and I suppose it is.
She is in no obvious pain, apart from the pain of existing if that makes sense.
I kind of feel guilty that the whole issue of where she is headed once she breathes her last, isn’t front and centre in my mind. I’m pretty sure she knows Jesus in the same way I do. I just sense intuitively more than anything else, that “the Judge of the earth shall do right”

One last thought on the whole christians and death zeitgeist.
What do you say to someone who is confronting death whether in the first or second person? I know it is difficult to work out what to say and how to be a blessing. Thankfully not many have come at me with that line most hollow. “Don’t worry she is going to a better place”
The inference is that death is good because it is the pathway to something better. There is a reason death was not present in creation. There is a reason Christ sweated blood at the prospect of his own death. Death is the enemy to life. Life was what Jesus invited us to.
Death is not good.

What is a miracle?

My generation, not unlike those who have gone before, have done a great job of hijacking particular words - Gay, cool, fundamentalist, etc In one way its a sign of heathy and vibrant society that we can morph terminology to fit context and meaning. In some ways it can be frustrating.
Does the word MIRACLE fit in there?

"It's a miracle I found a parking spot"
"The Twins won - its a miracle"
"They were miraculously healed from cancer after the chemo and drug treatment"

If your definition of miracle is limited to the suspension of God's natural laws, or the direct intervention of God in any moment in time - then perhaps it does. God is so unbox-able that I feel some true miracles are slipping our attention.
Somewhere along that spectrum of thought - our bikes that were stolen have been found again!
In what can only be described as both a suspension of natural law and possibly God's direct intervention in a moment of time, a phone call from the St. Louis Park police confirmed that our two stolen bikes had been recovered and were still rideable.
Praise the Lord indeed!

Theory of Reciprocity

Humour me for a minute.

I've been walking down a track of thought concerning these these three elements: refugees, dignity and ministry. (I'm happy to be part of an org. that doesn't think they are mutually exclusive!) There are a few influences here - discussions at work and the need to sumit a thesis for credit work.

The deeper I consider these links on a procedural rather than propositional level, the more evident it appears that there is a natural law wrapped up in ministry. That is, ministry comes or evolves to entirety when we allow the effect of what we offer (as opposed to affect of what we give) to reflect back on us. I feel the need to explore on a deeper level the whole idea of ministry as an exchange. (BTW way, there must be a better noun than ministry to define this)

I am definitely not talking about prosperity doctrine, or the tickling of selfish desires here. Consider the following real example that I have experienced countless times.

A refugee invites you to come and speak with them, be with them - to be present without any goal or aim other than to be together. During the 'exchange' it becomes evident that they are serving you food that will mean they they will go without later on, without you knowing, due to their poverty. Our natural instinct as followers of Jesus is to spare them this hardship by politely refusing their offer of exchange. We figure that we are doing them a favour.

Most missionary training (that is worthwhile) will communicate that in such circumstances, the right thing to do is to accept the exchange because culturally it is impolite.

Why?
Is that a cultural point?
Or with more thought, is their maybe a universal at work here?

Just maybe when we limit our ministry to only be being the givers and 'they' being the receivers - we inadvertently break the cycle of what I will clumsily call reciprocity - that one of the ways God allows us to minister to each other is by allowing the circle of reciprocity to run by being receivers as well as givers.

I talk, they listen they talk, I learn.
I offer transportation, they arrive at the destination, we are together, I benefit.


As we struggle to harness our learning in International teams, the difficulty for me come with defining exactly what the word benefit in the sentence above, looks like.

I'd love to hear your thoughts as to whether you agree the extent we complete this the cycle of reciprocity is directly proportional to the amount of dignity we bring.
As well as the whole idea of exchange.