Dear Filipino Church

I'm home. Have been for 2-weeks, actually! And I'll apologize now for the lack of posts from our trip! But I'm here now with this reflection & some photos...


Dear Filipino Church -

With your sweltering hot chapels and their futile electric fans hoping to provide some reprieve, and your benches or floors or plastic chairs jam-packed with vibrant souls.

Worshipping with you was the highlight of my trip. 

Thank you.

You kept thanking us when we visited. For partnering with you through Compassion International to release children in your community from poverty in Jesus' name.

But thank you.

Because it's just grace that God lets us partner in your work of freeing children from poverty.

And truth is, through this partnership - you've helped free us from our own poverty. 

I know it might be hard to understand - this world is just terribly, horribly hard to understand sometimes - but in our First World, we are impoverished in terrible ways.

What makes it worse is that this First World poverty is masked behind "good" things - wealth, comfort, luxury, success.

You see -  that joy, that authenticity, that hope that you worship with is something that is few and far between here in the First World. You sing like you actually mean the words on your lips. 

It's not that we don't. We try. We really do. We earnestly try to seek God and mean what we say and we have our moments but I think it's because we don't really know what it all really means and so the result is a very somber, sad, what-can-God-do-for-me worship. We have a cushy faith; we're comfortably secure in our wealth and blinded by our options and sometimes God is just one of those options. And I'm so guilty of this far too often.

So your radical joy, your earnest authenticity, your absolute, world-shaking hope - that was the most beautiful thing to me.  

In you, I saw an absolute dependency on God and one another as the Body of Christ, a life-giving, what-can-God-do-through-me culture, a joyful, hopeful worship.

Is everything good in your life? Absolutely not. Far, far, far from.

But He is good and that is enough for you.

In the face of heart-breaking brokenness, your answer always and simply is Jesus.

The beauty of that is what I thank you for.

It's saved me from a poverty so deeply rooted in the First World culture, that escape is slim and falling back into it is so. very. terrifyingly. easy.

So dear Filipino Church, you are beautiful.

You were a taste of heaven on earth and my response to all your Thank-Yous is Thank YOU.



And I wish my letter could end there. Yet there's a whole other side to you that I haven't addressed yet, Filipino Church.

Dear Filipino Church -

With your suffocating air conditioners aiming to recreate the Canadian winter and your thousands of cushy seats or pews.

Worshipping with you was one of the hardest things I had to do throughout my 3 weeks in the Philippines.

The last thing I needed after worshipping with your country's poorest churches was to run into you. Yet I'm oddly glad I did.

As heart-wrenching as it was, every girl needs a hard look in the mirror sometimes.

And as I sang with you with tears threatening their way down my cheeks at the injustice of this all, my heart broke for you and it broke for me and it broke for the whole First World Church, and Filipino Church, tell me - why are we so easily satisfied?

Why do you and I settle for flashy lights and checklist faith when joy - heaven on earth - is found just outside our doors amongst the poor?

Tell me why we're ok with this cruise control faith. Tell me why we spend millions of dollars on studies and buildings and excursions and workshops and all of it in attempt to get closer to God when He said it right there in Isaiah 58, to the Israelites -

Yes. You seem eager to find Me but here is where you'll find me: Amongst the hungry. The down-and-out. The poor. The weary.

If you have the choice between glitz and show for God or simply spending yourself on behalf of the hungry - choose the latter. 

And yet I understand, Filipino Church. I do. I get it.

It's easier. Checklist faith is far easier. Sunday service - check. Morning devo - check. Midweek Bible Study - check. Bedtime prayers - check. Tithe - check. Repeat.

When you haven't seen the other side of yourself, Filipino Church, you might be tempted to believe the enemy's lie that this. is. all.

And I'm here to tell you that this is not all. I've been to the other side, and I'm running back to proclaim it -

There's more! There is. I know you can't see it yet but just trust me - no, trust Him when He says that if you just let go of what you're so desperately holding on to from your First World life He will place something even greater in that unclenched, empty hand of yours.

I dare you to do this. It will be bold. It will be scary and terrifying and somedays you won't want this. It will require a lot of faith. But it will be worth it.

Because you know what, Filipino Church North American Church First World Church?

Let's be done with settling for a cruise control faith. Let's be done with being ok with a flashy lights, checklist faith.

And let's take this bold, Isaiah 58 style faith head-on.


Related: 
Dear Fellow First World Christian via A Mom on a Mission [My Mama! :)]
A Letter to the North American Chruch: Because It Is Time via A Holy Experience

The People Behind the Stats

"Statistics never bleed. It is people who bleed." // Jayakumar Christian #isumsummit2014
— Craig Greenfield (@craigasauros) 28 Juin 2014

Hello from the Philippines! It has been a whirlwind and I've just been trying to take it all in through the jet lag. :)

I'm reminded of how absolutely beautiful and absolutely despairing this country is all at once - and oh how it has a story to be told and people to be loved.

I'm at least two posts behind on the blogging (let's be honest - since this post is going up several days since I wrote it, I'm way farther behind than that), but here's an attempt to catch up and somehow articulate just a miniscule part of this country's story.

Friday - one week ago today - we had the incredible opportunity to visit our newest sponsor child, John, and his family. John is from the same Compassion Child Development Centre as Jamson, who I wrote about before leaving for the Philippines, and we were able to meet him too and bring along a gift from his new sponsors! And can I just say those two are absolutely. adorable.

Let me tell you this - it really does happen like Compassion Int'l says it does. Every last bit of it. When you're tempted to err on the side of cynical, when you're tempted to believe those nasty things on the internet that people write about Compassion, when you're tempted to use skepticism as an excuse to say "NO" to a soul peering out of the window in the blue envelope, take my word for it:

It's real. It happens. It changes lives.

If you remember one thing from this post, take this: Compassion Int'l's Child Sponsorship program works and it works well. 

It allows people, individuals, souls, to stop being stats and start simply being, dreaming, loving.

Probably the most valuable thing I take from visiting Compassion's field is the way it reminds me that as much as I can regurgitate stats while advocating back home - poverty isn't about stats.

Poverty is about people. Real people. Image bearers of the Most High. People created with a divine purpose.

People like you and me. They love. They dream. They wipe their feet at the door, kiss their family hello. They're proud of their kids. They cry, they get angry, they laugh, they feel deeply. They ride the heights of hope and joy and the pits of hopelessness and despair.

My favourite photo from our visit with John is this one, of him and his teacher from the Compassion CDC sitting on the floor of his home as his parents look on:

Those are the real, beautiful faces behind those enormous stats. Two parents smiling wide at their animated son.

And I refuse to think of that beautiful family as a stat.

They're part of our family and the heights of their hopes and the depths of their sorrows and the reverence of their prayers are just like ours. They are ours.

And the sorrow I currently share with that family? It's the fact that the parents of the little boy pictured with John here are nowhere to be found:

His name is Lester. John's cousin, the son of John's mother's brother. John's best friend.

And the prayer I share with them? That this great kid would find a sponsor.

I was going to ask you to sponsor this absolutely awesome kid. He's shy, thoughtful and cute, and just looking for some hope.

Turns out, he was sponsored just a couple weeks before we left - not yet enough time for word to reach him.

And I can just imagine the joy that will be felt when he hears. :)

However, I am still going to ask you to sponsor a child. Because there are so many kids, with dreams and sorrows and hopes and joys and pain. And they need someone to believe in them. To love them. To tell them that they are loved infinitely by their Creator.

Sponsoring a child with Compassion gives children access to education, healthcare, nutrition and puts them in an environment where they are nurtured with the love of Christ and championed as more than just a stat. 

Because as we spent the day with John, Jamson and Lester, as we played tag, gave gifts, took pictures, ate ice cream and took them on their first escalator ride, one thing was absolutely sure, amongst the turmoil of their unstable worlds -

The adorable faces I looked into, the tiny hands I held, the energetic boys I laughed with - they are not stats. 

They're lives.

Waiting to be changed by someone like you.


Sponsor a child from the Philippines