home again after plenty of plenaries and a powwow part 1

Well, it's been a whirlwind! The last week has been largely spent in plenary sessions and in work groups. Plenary sessions became kind of heavy... lengthy discussions over such seemingly insignificant items as the addition of quotation marks surrounding the word confession and whether the word "hierarchies" should be changed to "power structures". So much work to cover! One would think that over the course of two weeks we could get all of our business completed fairly easily. This was totally not the case! Saturday morning there was a mad scramble to rush through a pile of business, it's funny that when we are in a time crunch nobody is terribly concerned with wording.
A global gathering is a cool place to be during world cup. It seems during every game there are fans of both teams surrounding the televisions. As for me, I stood between Cameroonian fans and Dutch fans while the Dutch scored the game winning goal. My brothers and sisters from Cameroon were most gracious while the Dutch fans hooted and hollered.
Tuesday was a challenging day for me... Richard Twiss was the keynote speaker. His real name is Taoyate Obnajin meaning He stands with his people, and he is a member of the Rosebud Lakota/Sioux tribe. His testimony is a powerful one of encountering the living God. (I picked up his book "one church many tribes" in case you are interested in reading his story in detail). He made many points that I was and will continue to be challenged by. He shared how so often over the course of his days as a new Christian he was put under pressure to leave behind the former become a new creation... and what well-intentioned people were really saying was "leave your Indian ways behind, you have a new identity in Christ and it is not Indian." He spoke of how the Bible was used to demonize many aspects of his culture... drumming, dance, ceremonies, etc. Rather, we have imposed our cultures understanding of worship and theology to become the way that Christianity SHOULD be expressed... the right way. All of this has left me wondering, How would our worship change if we truly lived in a diverse country? If the drums of our First Nations brothers and sisters had been welcomed in the church from the first moment we landed on this soil, would our worship be richer? I certainly think that it would, there are many aspects of Native culture that feed my soul. Is there still a way to gain the blessing of that diversity in our worship? That I'm not sure of... but it certainly won't happen by sitting around waiting. So God, what's the next step? Maybe it begins with owning up to some very great sins. Sins that denied the humanity of North America's indigenous peoples. Sins that not only permitted, but actively participated in the genocide that took place in this land. Sins that denied (and continue to deny) the very gospel that we say we believe. God forgive us!