I love reading. At any given time you will see a combination of theology, history, systematic theology, or biography books on my nightstand (or loaded on my ipad). Another genre I love reading is science fiction. I love The Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia, Harry Potter, and the Eragon series. Recently, I started reading (actually, i’ve been listening via audible) the Farseer Trilogy. This series is not “christian” in nature and I began to think whether or not I should be reading this series. In fact, over the years I’ve seen the debate take place on various forums on whether Christians should read non christian literature. As I’ve considered this questions I’ve come to the conclusion that like most things, this is a more complex discussion. In fact, the most important realization I made is that it is in fact a “discussion” and that there is not a blanket statement or answer. In fact, I think as Christians we should be aware of and educated on whats happening in the secular arts community in order to effectively share the Gospel. So, instead of stating whether or not Christians should read secular books, I’d rather point out some principles to consider in the process of deciding what you read.

Does It Hinder Your Relationship With Christ?

In other words, do you find yourself in a compromising place that causes you to be distant from Christ rather than drawn closer to Him. The challenge here is that this line and question is different for each individual person. Our story, background, experiences, sin issues, and so much more play into how we answer this question. Therefore, it is important to ask it and be honest with ourselves with our answer. If your married, your spouse is a great sounding board. Otherwise, it’s always good to have a few trusted friends to reach out too. If you find that what you are reading hinders your relationship, stop. There is nothing worth reading if it compromises our relationship with Christ.

Does it Stir Up Your Imagination?

This almost deals more with the creative brilliance of the author. As I think about J.R Tolkien and C.S Lewis I marvel at their ability to stir up imagination in both adults in children. We are instantly drawn into Narnia and Middle Earth and experience the challenges and goodness of these places as we turn each page. Our imagination is important to Christians. There is so much that is not black and white in the scriptures and to some degree we are called upon to utilize our imagination as we unpack the depth of God’s Word. What does heaven look like? What does God look like? Will we work in Heaven? These questions require a healthy imagination that is framed by the Word of God.

Is It Fun To Read?

Finally, is it fun? Do you enjoy reading it? Does it bring a sense of satisfaction to you? Does it cause you to mourn the end of the novel and anticipate the next book in the series or another book by the author? God gave us creativity as a gift to both exercise and enjoy. While the author of the narrative exercises their creative gift, we the consumer, get to enjoy it!

Question – What are some of your favorite books? What would you add to this list of considerations?

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“I just wish I could be like everyone else”

“Why do people stare at me when I walk into a store? I wish I could just fit in..”

“I hate my hair…it’s so different…why can’t it look like other kids?”

These are just a few comments I’ve heard from ethnic children growing up. In all honesty, I’ve asked these questions to myself, my parents, and to God many times growing up. My ethnicity for a long time was something that made me different from other people. It wasn’t until college that I realized that my perspective on my ethnicity was hurting me, not helping me. The reality was, my ethnicity was what made me unique. My ethnic story intertwined within an American cultural context made me so incredibly unique and provided an ability to develop a certain skill set that others may never have. Sadly, one of the realities of our society is that there are children today that are asking these questions and not seeing the immense blessing that their ethnicity is. Our perspective change in this particular matter is incredibly important. Not just for ourselves, but also for how we will parent our children. Especially, if you have biracial children like I have. My three handsome half Indian half caucasian boys typically comment on their skin color. The other night my oldest son Liam said, “Daddy, I’m brown like you AND White like mommy!”. I sat there amazed and so proud of my son. I love that he doesn’t despise his ethnicity but takes pride in it and sees how it is a reflection of his parents.

Despising Your Ethnicity Causes Problem

Putting it very simply, wishing you were something or someone else than who God created you to be will only cause problems, hurt, and heart break. The same energy that you put into creating doubt and insecurity in your life could be spent identifying and growing in the skill’s that God has given you. The problems that are associated with despising your ethnicity are not only vast, but can cause serious life altering problem.

• It can create a low self-esteem

• It can warp what your reality is

• It will steal time and effort that can be better utilized in developing the skills God has given you

• It will distract you from who you are in Christ

Your Ethnicity is A Gift

While we live in a world that is filled with racial tension, it is more important today to see the gift that our ethnicity is. Our ethnicity allows us to reflect Christ as an ambassador of the ministry of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:11-21). Christ, who was fully divine humbled himself to become human and live alongside us to bring us rescue. I love that Hebrews describes him as our great high priest who can empathize and relate to us because he walked, lived, loved, and died on this very same earth only to conquer sin and death to return to His rightful place next to the Father. In the same way that Christ can relate, our ethnicity provides us a unique opportunity to relate and minister to people around us. Growing up my group of friends were hispanic, asian, african american, and caucasian. We learned very quickly the similarities of our families which served as a bridge for me to relate to their lives. This bridge is a gift that God have us to engage our community with the goodness of the Gospel!

Learn Your Ethnic History

Our ethnic story serves as a means of motivation. As I learned about the British missionaries that came to India to share the gospel with my grandparents I was filled with a mix of emotions. If it wasn’t for this missionary couple, the Slaters, who came to villages surrounding Hyderabad, India to share Jesus to children, I wouldn’t be who I am today. I am amazed that such a huge part of my ethnic story involves a Caucasian missionary couple who not only lived in India but retired and died in the same village that they served the Lord for decades. Our ethnic story is important. For some of us it gives us a clearer picture of our own trajectory and journey. For others, it points to the saving grace of God. Who steps in, intervenes, and rescues us from a path of destruction and places us on a journey to His Kingdom (Col 1:13). Learn your ethnic story, and rejoice in the God who saves.

The post Why You Should Never Despise Your Ethnicity appeared first on Joel's Travels.

It’s that time of year again. The lights, wreaths, ornaments, mistletoes, and if your lucky; snow! Christmas is here, and with it comes the challenge some Christian parents face in regards to how to deal with Santa Clause? Do we mention Santa? Do we talk about the historical Saint Nick? How about the reindeer, presents, and Elves! When Brittany and I first had Liam it seemed like the opinions, perspectives, and thoughts were everywhere and we were faced with the somewhat daunting task of making a decision for our family. In all honesty, we are in a different place now than we were four years ago. We first made the decision that we would not engage Santa in any way. We felt that putting any emphasis on Santa would distract our kids from Jesus.

It wasn’t soon after that I listened to a sermon by Mark Driscoll about how we engage our culture. Driscoll states that we can accept, reject, or redeem culture. As I began to evaluate how we engaged Santa it seemed that our first approach, to reject, was not as practical or beneficial as we initially thought. In fact, in some ways it was harmful. Ultimately, I would encourage every parent to do what is best for their children in light of the Gospel. For Brittany and I, this meant changing our approach to redeeming the concept of Santa. When I say redeem it, I mean that we can take the concept, identify aspects that are helpful and in some ways actually point us to Jesus. In the same way we can take aspects that can be harmful and address them. Here are three reasons Brittany and I choose to redeem the concept of Santa.

Santa Provides An Opportunity to Engage Culture In A Meaningful Way

As we attempted to reject Santa, we faced the overwhelming challenge of all the Santa discussions, commercials, videos, and Santa imposters at the mall. How were we going to reject Santa but have our kids see it everywhere they turned? Then It dawned on us, what an incredible way for us to engage our culture through something that is so saturated at Christmas time! You don’t have to have any religious background to celebrate Santa. We have an opportunity to utilize Santa as a missional bridge to engage our loved ones and neighbors with the beautiful gospel message of Christ.

One of the common objections and resentment’s that I hear about Christians from non Christians is the perception that Christians can’t relate. It almost feels like Christians live in some other galaxy. We have an opportunity to show our culture and society that we are involved within culture and care about the development of culture within our society. In fact, this very much resembles how we are made in the likeness and image of God, Who after speaking all creation into existence, does not step back and out of human history. Rather, He steps into human history humbling himself to human flesh in order to engage and love humanity in the most personal and intimate way possible. As Hollywood began to produce Biblical epics and put them on the big screen I discussed how our engaging with theses movies are actually helpful and not harmful.

Related: Why I Love The Movie Exodus: Gods and Generals

Santa Provides Us With An Opportunity To Point To Jesus

Another serious problem Brittany and I faced was the reality that there was some hypocrisy in how we handled Santa. For instance, my kids love Avengers, Spiderman, Superman, Star Wars, anything that has good guys and bad guys they are into. I don’t reject these things. In fact, I love them, so I engage with them and pretend and play and we enjoy the story line of good and evil and watch how good always prevails. To take it a step further, how many of us have been to Disney Land? Here we are grown adults with our children taking pictures next to Mickey and other Disney characters. Is that wrong? No! For us, Santa falls in the same category. A fictional character similar to Superman or Batman who has some historical roots.

I love Hebrews 3 and I think as we read through the Bible we find that the common theme is simply, Jesus is better. One of the things I try to do with my boys is point out while we are watching super hero cartoons that as awesome as superman is, he is pretend and not real. However, we have a real Jesus who conquered sin and death and did real miracles who loves us! We have someone who is far better and real! As we talk about Santa and how people love the fact that he brings gifts, what a great way to say that there is someone even better than Santa. Jesus came and gave us the perfect give of salvation. One of the most important things that we can do is know who Jesus is.

Related: Seminary 101: Christ as Prophet, Priest, King

Santa Can Encourage Our God Given Gifts Of Imagination

God who is the definition of creative, gave us creative minds. It’s not a bad thing to exercise this creativity. In fact, as adults I think we have lost some of the wonder of imagination. When I watch my boys play and see them tie a towel around their neck as a cape and pick up whatever is around them as weapons and super hero gadgets I am reminded of how important imagination is for us. In fact, so much of what is in the Bible requires us to use our imagination as we wait in eager anticipation for coming of Christ. What does Heaven look like? What will our bodies look like? What do relationships look like in Heaven? Exercising our imagination now and allowing our children to exercise within some safe boundaries will only help them as they engage the scriptures.

Idolatry Can Be Found In Anything

Ultimately, the fear we had was of idolatry. We were afraid that Santa would steal the attention from Jesus and his birth. The reality is, there is so much idolatry going on in our lives all the time. Idolatry can be anything and will always rob us of the joy of Christ. The issue is never the object of our attention, rather our inner motivation. What an incredible opportunity to teach our kids that we can enjoy fun things which in turn cause us to be stirred up in our affections for Jesus.

The post Should Christian Parents Talk About Santa Clause? appeared first on Joel's Travels.

I grew up in a traditional Indian family. 90 percent of our meals were Indian food, curry, naan, white rice, and for some special occasions my mom would make her famous lamb Hyderbadi Biryani. Needless to say, Indian culture was deeply rooted and emphasized in my life. However, I always felt a tension between the culture that I went home to and the culture that I found myself living in outside of my home. While the culture in my school and community emphasized a specific way of living it seemed my home life in some areas simply had a difference of opinion and in other areas out right contradicted each other.

It wasn’t long before I experienced this exact tension in the four corners of the church. I found myself going to an “Indian” church that usually met on Saturdays or Sunday afternoons, while also going to “American” church on Sunday mornings. I found the same tension exists between these two churches. Further, I found myself smack in between. Recently, I’ve had the opportunity to be apart of some great conferences that are tackling the ethnicity and race issue within the church. It has been incredibly encouraging and helpful to sit under, listen to, and read pastors and theologians like Crawford and Bryan Lorrits, Derwin L. Gray, Albert Tate, and Matt Chandler deal with the race and ethnicity issue from a biblical framework. As I’ve listened to these incredible men of God discuss, dialogue, and inform this topic I began to consider my own context and dilemma.

The Dilemma – My parents prefer an Indian Church and I prefer an american church. How do we deal with the segregation of churches based on racial/ethnic identification.

So, there we have it. Some would argue that this is an issue that is isolated to immigrants and will not be an issue for those born in the U.S regardless of ethnicity. I would disagree. What we forget is how this issue impacts the children of those that immigrated to the U.S. Speaking as one of those children, the impact is significant. I believe I began to compartmentalize the Gospel based on ethnicity and culture, rather then seeing the holistic beauty of the body of Christ.

As I consider the reasons for a segregation of church based on ethnicity I believe it comes down to some form of comfort. The comfort of language, understanding jokes and having a common framework to build friendship upon, the similarity of being of the same ethnicity and understanding the challenges of coming to a new place. I can empathize with these reasons. However, I believe the healthiest thing for the church is not a “segregation” but an “inclusion” of all people types. Ultimately, my friend Derwin Gray unpacks the core root of the issue as he states, “The reason the church is segregated is that we don’t believe deeply enough in the power of the cross.”.

Colossians 3:11 answers how we should proceed the best. Simply put, there is not race or ethnicity but Christ is all.

Therefore, our gatherings should be reflective of the community that we live in. We should celebrate and invite ethnicity into our church building while leaving a sense of “superiority aside.

We should celebrate and invite ethnicity into our church building while leaving a sense of…
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Dr. John Piper describes it this way:

“Where people have died with Christ and been created as a new self in the image of God, this canyon (race/ethnicity)* will not stop love and fellowship.”  – John Piper

Dr. Piper is making an observation that after we have been crucified with Christ and have become new in Christ, there is no distinction, separation, or barrier. This extends into love and fellowship amongst believer.

The issue of comfort can be solved with a church leadership team that is intentionally looking for ways to provide venues to meet such needs. This may be done in the form of a community or small group. Even more important, children see the beauty of ethnicity and culture in how God designed us. Our children grow up with a holistic view of God that includes every ethnicity and culture.

This requires sacrifice. Its a sacrifice to lay what is comfortable aside to do what is best in light of the Word of God and our families, churches, and communities.

The post Bridging Two Worlds: Ethnicity and Church appeared first on Joel's Travels.

The church is made up of people. People live in cities, neighborhoods, and interact with other people. Each person is influenced in both passive and assertive ways via means of tv and social media. So, how do we engage our culture? Should the church engage culture? How can the church leverage culture for the sake of making Jesus famous?

It’s hard for me to even begin this conversation without considering Acts 17:26-29. We learn that the city, the neighborhood, and even the street that we live in, was ordained and put into place by God. If we have been placed in a specific location by God, it would be good for us to also know the cultural and social climate of that place. In short, we have to be students of our culture. I love traveling and seeing what God is doing in various cities and communities. I love hearing pastors and church planters tell me how they are reaching their communities. There is a real danger for all of us to look elsewhere to see what is successful and attempt to replicate that system, process, or plan. The real work of ministry, in fact, is contextualization. It is looking at our culture and identifying where the Gospel informs the broken and hurting aspects of our communities and neighborhoods.

The church is in desperate need of active, intentional, and balanced contextualization – @Muddamalle
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3 Ways We Can Accomplish This

Be aware of your cultural blinders

We all are predisposed or bent towards a certain way. Tim Keller calls this our cultural blinders. This issue of cultural blinders affects every area of our life, not just the church. It is easy for us to assume a cultural perspective based on one that we lived in. All of a sudden we begin to create, build, and strategize around cultural assumptions that are derived from past experience. Possibly the first thing we must do is recognize that we do have cultural blinders and then intentionally deconstruct them so that we can accurately engage the context that God has placed us in.

Pay attention to your immediate context

We can learn a lot from the very streets that we live in. Each of our neighborhoods are made of people that have a culture, past, and story. It is very common for people of the same culture or group to live near each other. Our ability to learn and understand the motivation of these people groups will be vital in our ability to speak to them in a way that is affective and relatable. It’s easy for us to begin talking and sharing and speaking from our own perspective. However, in doing this we loose the opportunity to speak in a way that is winsome and directed towards the persons actual life and context.

Make a serious effort to acknowledge and understand their objections

Its easy for us to jump right into the conversation and begin to give a defense for the Gospel. But, have we actually seriously considered, thought about, and engaged with the objection that people have to the Gospel? We live in a world that is filled with tragedy, turmoil, and seemingly constant destruction. It’s not that difficult for anyone to become negative or pessimistic about the possibility of a good God in the midst of this fallen depraved world. However, its these very objections that serve as platforms to meaningfully engage those within our community in a way that speaks to deepest hurts that they have experienced. In fact, it is in these areas that we must boldly proclaim the good news of the Gospel.

Tim Keller captures all three comments perfectly.

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Earlier in the year I wrote a post about bridging the gap between music and the Word. You can read it here.

I realized quickly that this concept of bridging two worlds is much larger than just music and the Word. It affects all areas of life, church, and ministry. Augustine is famous for his writings on what he calls the two cities in his book “The City of God”. Throughout the pages we read the tension and the contrast between the City of man and City of God.

This same tension exists today, however, we also feel it within the borders of the church and how it relates to modern day culture. With various opinions, methodologies, and preferences, it can become difficult to see what we have in common. It’s even harder to see where our differences can be bridged and become helpful.

What follows in this series are some practical ways we can begin to bridge the gap between:

Culture and Church:

The church is made up of people. People live in cities, neighborhoods, and interact with other people. Each person is influenced in both passive and assertive ways via means of tv and social media. So how do we engage our culture? How can the church leverage culture for the sake of making Jesus famous?

Nationality, Ethnicity, and the Church:

Heaven will be made up of every race, skin color, and ethnicity possible. Yet sadly, the church can be one of the most segregated places. How can the local church relate to ethnicity as it is inevitably apart of the church? What does it look like to be a multi ethnic church?

Youth Ministry and the Church:

As a former youth pastor I know first hand the great joys and sorrows that come with youth ministry. I also know the danger of youth pastors creating a “sub church” culture. How can churches embrace, engage, love, and support youth ministries?

The Goal:

That we would see what we have in common, identify areas that can be come distractions and cause divisiveness, and carefully contextualize in order to see the Gospel advanced within our communities.

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