prepped and ready?

The hospital in Moscow was full of children with birth defects and soldiers missing limbs. As I spent time with person after person, helping medical missionaries, I had another glimpse of why I was on the trip.

The bare feet of the teenager in Ethopia were bleeding. As I took off my New Balance running shoes, handed them to her, and jogged back to the hotel in my socks, I had another glimpse of why I was on the trip.

From helping choir members memorize hymns in Spanish for Mexico trips, to learning triage for the Russian medical mission, my preparation for journeys always has centered on what I would be doing to help someone else. The fact that I would be helped and changed by going was very present, of course. Building a church for poor parishioners certainly helped them, but the impact on me was profound.

This London thing is different.

I'm not going with a specific goal, other than to learn.
My preparation is not a physical skill set, a polished sermon, or a box of Russian biblos.
My preparation is only my own heart.

It was easier to learn how to take someone's blood pressure.

street cred

How would you define street credibility?

Gritty life experience, truthfulness, keeping commitments, facing reality, enduring hard times, running with a gang?

Shakespeare's 16th century version of street cred might be:

Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove:

My boss describes credibility as a track record of delivering on your promises and telling the truth about your failures.

However you describe it, I had a little of it in Houston. Enough to function semi-successfully as a pastor in an inner-city mission church. Part of the street cred came from my willingness to be poor and welcome anyone who came. Part of it came from the commitment to both live in the neighborhood and spend an enormous amount of time there. Part of it was that I genuinely cared about people. And part of it was longevity -- 20+ years in the city, all of it as a part of a church, 13 years pastoring.

And then I left.

There are many consequences in leaving a tight-knit community, some of which intensify when you relocate across the country.

One consequence is that whatever street cred you had doesn't travel well -- the Streets of San Francisco have their own identity, and there is no immediate trust.
Listen to a Texas saying, "I don't care how you did it up Narth," and you understand.

One of my prayers, preparing for London, is for opportunities to develop credibility here at home. 7 miles square, the boundaries of the streets of my city. Bigger than it sounds.

The beer mats

I live in San Francisco, California.
I love my city.

Yet in the midst of her beauty are houses where sons and daughters are trafficked for sex and money.
Along her streets the homeless sleep in filth.
Mutilated bodies of loved ones are found in her lovely parks.
And the Golden Gate bridge is one of America's favorite places...to commit suicide.

What am I going to do about it?
So many choices.
I can try ignoring the pain around me.
I can pretend the homeless man isn't my neighbor.
For a while, at least.
I can write the editor of the paper and decry the fact that our duly elected politicians aren't putting a stop to the rough trade in the city.
I can even tithe at church on Sundays, trusting that the ministers will pay attention to the poor.

Or I can go to London, another city filled with beauty and sin.

In May, I'm travelling to the UK to meet with a group of artists, justice activitists and missionaries. All in the same room, possibly drinking the same beer.

This motley crew is asking the same questions I'm asking about helping others, and I want to learn from them.

Some of them have started a campaign against sex trafficking by providing free beer mats in pubs. Back in the States, we would call them "drink coasters." On the front of the beer mats are sexually suggestive come-ons such as "Tiffany has been a bad, bad girl." On the back of the mat is the photo of a mutilated young woman, punished for trying to escape her life as a sex slave.

No word yet if people are ordering more pints.

The theory behind the marketing is to educate the consumer.
Perhaps if more people know about sex slavery, some of them will help stop it, even if that help is simply taking one's business to a self-selecting, I-can-take-it-or-leave-it adult prostitute.
After all, there are so many ways to have sex.
We don't have to shackle children for it.

Will I return with a campaign against human trafficking?
I don't know -- other people with greater wisdom and resources are already at work:
www.ijm.org, for one.
Maybe I'll come home with a greater sense of how to connect with people in need through local churches.
Maybe the artists will teach me how disciples of Jesus can meld art more fully with worship.
Maybe the missionaries will show me a new way to live like I mean it.

But I'm certain I'll return changed.
And the hope and promise of any changed life is that it will change others for the better.

Two final things today.
First, web links to a couple of the folks involved with the trip. This is not a complete list. Protest4 did the beer mats. Rob and Aimee are behind Doxology.

• http://www.protest4.com/
• http://www.robpepper.co.uk/
• http://tallskinnykiwi.typepad.com/
• http://www.cms-uk.org/
  
• http://www.seminext.org

Second, scriptures illuminating the journey.
To paraphrase Matthew 25,
Jesus said: " I was hungry and you gave me no meal, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was homeless and you gave me no bed, I was shivering and you gave me no clothes, Sick and in prison, and you never visited.'

His disciples said, "Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry or thirsty or homeless or shivering or sick or in prison and didn't help?'

And Jesus replied: "I'm telling the solemn truth: Whenever you failed to do one of these things to someone who was being overlooked or ignored, that was me--you failed to do it to me."

That homeless man asleep in the doorway, yesterday's newspaper half-covering him, is my neighbor.