A change in American Christianity

I want to tell you a story of some believers on the other side of the world. This is another one of the many stories I got from block class (most things recently seem to be coming from there). My teacher tells of a group of believers who met together to pray, and when they were done and had no time left, they came to the conclusion that the had too much to pray for in the short time they had set aside. And so they came up with the idea of once a month, spending all of Friday night in prayer.

My teacher asked, "All night? And what time did they finish?" He was thinking that all night meant maybe till 12 - 2 A.M. or something.

The man responded, "9 the next morning."

My teacher had another question. "What happened then?"

The man: "When we finished at 9, we realized that we still had too much to pray for... so we decided to meet EVERY week and spend the whole night in prayer." And he went on to say that they had been doing this ever since.

This is one of those true stories that is so convicting. These people literally spend HOURS each week in prayer. And I spend how much??? How about the average American Christian? I wonder what would happen if I spent more time in prayer? If my whole campus spent more time in prayer? If my church and your church spent more time in prayer? If every American Christian would spend more time in prayer?

It seems that yet again there exists another aspect of the Christian life that some believers around the world have gotten right, and that we here in America have lost or never figured out. Maybe this is where it starts if we want a change in American Christianity?

Cross-Cultural Kismet

Hello, Humans (or should I say Hello again, fellow bipedal earthborn creature)!

Okay, so I'd never actually heard of the word 'kismet' before, but the online thesaurus says it means fate. But it's always good to learn new things, so you and I have just learned its meaning. And my fate for this semester is to be studying linguistics, ethics, and - you got it - cross-cultural classes (aka missions block class). That might also be a slight reason for the seemingly random introduction to this blog post. No, I haven't totally lost my marbles by becoming a second-semester senior about to graduate from college. I'm getting this from my teacher, actually. Our first day of class he welcomed us humans, and before today's daily quiz he addressed us as bipedal earthborn creatures. But what can you say. We are a small class of good friends that are excited about everything cross-cultural.

And let me tell you already, this is going to be one good semester. I love my classes. And the last two days in Practices of Cross-Cultural Ministry, our teacher has brought cross-cultural snacks for us to enjoy in between lectures (what else do you do with a small class and a 2 hour daily class). Yesterday we got Brilliant brand cakes from somewhere in Asia. And today we got Jelly sticks from China. They didn't taste too bad, but I had a hard time getting past the texture. My teacher introduced them to us as "flavored snot tubes" because that's the closest thing he could think of that described the texture. Think grape jelly put a bit more thick. Yeah. And my teacher is an interesting personality if you haven't guessed already.

Aside from the weird foods, I've actually been learning a lot of practical information that will be very helpful for me as I prepare to live in another culture for most if not the rest of my life.