So, I think I shall take a break from my typical blogs that simply relate what’s going on here and write one about something I’ve been thinking about a lot here: the church. Some of you might know that last summer, during my time working with Mission Indy, I started to wonder what the church should look like and if the typical American church was even close to where it should be. Well, a lot of these questions have resurfaced in my time here as I’ve noted the differences between the church here and the ones I’ve seen back home.
My questions started when I realized I hadn’t seen obvious evidence of community outreach or service in one of my churches here. I still want to ask them what they do with subjects like poverty, homelessness, social justice, etc. And, since I started wondering these things, they have had an evangelistic musical for the community and I did find out that they have a type of food pantry. But more than that, I realized that there is a big difference in the way they do things here and the way we (generally) do things in the States.
In many American churches, if we wanted to do something about the needs of a person or group of people, we would set up an event to help them or maybe create a program/ministry to meet their need. But here, it’s much less about an event or a program; it’s about the relationships between the church members. I’ve heard several stories about when people in the church had big monetary or physical needs, and the members of their small groups or other church friends chipped in whatever they could until the need was met. That’s how it seems to work here: they take care of each other. The reason they can do that is because they have a relationship and from that relationship they find out about the needs of their friends and, in love, they meet the need.
Maybe they don’t have as many programs or events, but they do have a body of believers that (in many instances) provides for the needs within that body. The motive for someone to join their church wouldn’t necessarily be an event, a flyer, or a special program offered; it would be the love that an outsider would witness when seeing the believers interact. Besides, what good is an event or a flyer if behind that is simply a bunch of individuals that don’t necessarily have a deeper relationship than just going to church on Sundays?
Before I continue, I do want to give two disclaimers. I know a ton of awesome believers in the U.S. that show this kind of love and care, and I have many great relationships with people from my church that have been amazing blessings to me. And, on the other hand, the church here definitely isn’t perfect. In a small, relational church like the one I go to here, there is a fair share of church drama and gossip that comes with everybody knowing everybody else’s business.
Still, I think that we Christians in the U.S. have a thing or two we could learn from the church in this culture. I think we would do well to invest deeply in the relationships we have with our fellow believers, taking to heart God’s commands in Scripture to love one another, serve one another, meet one another’s needs, care each others’ burdens. I think we would do well to focus more on that than on events or ministries (but don’t get me wrong, those can be awesome tools for the Kingdom, too). But how amazing would it be if people came to our churches and were drawn to our God because they, too, wanted to be part of our community where they saw people who truly loved each other, who enjoyed spending time together, who selflessly took care of each other, and who simply shared life together? Like I said before, the church certainly isn’t perfect here, but I see more evidence of that community aspect here than I’ve seen in most American churches.
So I started thinking about how these concepts I’ve learned and witnessed here could be applied in my church back home, and U.S. churches in general. As I was thinking, I ran into two main obstacles: the cultural differences and the prominence of big churches in the U.S.
First, the cultural differences between Argentina and the U.S. are fairly obvious. A first small thing is that it’s culturally expected to greet almost everyone or everyone in the room with a kiss on the cheek when you enter. That automatically forces some kind of interaction and physical proximity of the people at church that often blooms into conversations that are elementary in forming relationships. But more generally, this is simply a more relational culture. In many instances, I’ve noted that time, schedules, and tasks to be done take a quick backseat when two people strike up a conversation. It’s simply a fact that a relationship carries more weight than a to-do-list. On the contrary, the life I myself have lived and experienced in the U.S. is much more task and schedule driven. To change a planned schedule, to start an event late, or to leave a task unfinished for the sake of having a conversation or building a relationship just doesn’t happen, or at least not NEARLY as much as it does here.
Again, such a relational culture can have its downsides (like my Argentine professor who literally told our class she was going to fail two students because they did something disrespectful and made her mad). But still, I think a lot of Americans, including the majority of American Christians, miss out on the richness of relationship and life lived together for the sake of following their master schedule or their to-do-list. I know I have. And, as I said before, those very relationships are the basis of our being able to care for each other and show the love of Christ to one another in real and meaningful ways.
The second obstacle comes with the big churches that seem to be fairly prominent in the U.S. Until I left for college, I attended the same church faithfully for 18 years straight. But because it is a bigger church, I know there are other people who had also gone to that same church all those years and I had never met them. What’s the problem with this? It’s way too easy for people to be able to slip into church, shake a couple hands, sing the songs, and listen to the message, then slip back out without every sharing even a minute of conversation with another believer. How can relationships be formed in this setting when members of the same congregation don’t even recognize each other? How can we know who is hurting and needs us, how can we serve and love one another, how can we “rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn” if we go to a church so big we’ve never even met? The answer that my home church has given is small groups, or “Life Groups”, and I have seen some awesome things happen in those groups. I’ve seen groups that have become like families, that share life, that look out for each others’ needs and even call each other out when they are living in sin. But what about the other 50% (my estimate) of the congregation that doesn’t belong to a small group? Where do they fit in?
I don’t know. The truth is, I don’t know how to take what I’ve learned in Argentina from the relational culture and relationship-based church and put it into practice when I get back home. I don’t know how the obstacles of a time and task driven culture and the big churches can be overcome. I don’t even know exactly what it would look like for us to be the church God wants us to be. But what I do know is that I don’t want to stop asking these questions, I don’t want to stop looking for answers, and I don’t want to forget what I’ve learned in my time here.
So, feel free to chime in to the conversation or correct me or throw tomatoes at me or ask your own questions. I’d be happy to hear it all.
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Cultural Randomness...
Alright, so I'm feeling too lazy to write a coherent blog, but I thought I'd throw out some random facts about Argentina...some might be myth busters, some I might have already said, and some might provoke the thought "Who cares?" So, in no certain order, here we go.
- Argentine food is nothing like Mexican food. They don't eat tacos or burritos and in fact most of them hate anything spicy. (Hence the fact that one of the first things I will do when I get back is hit up at least one good Mexican restaurant and eat my fill of chips and salsa.) A while back, there was a very large amount of immigration from Italy, so they have a good amount of pastas and pizza.
- Speaking of nationalities, Buenos Aires is a lot more diversified than one might think due to a large amount of immigration at various points in history. During my time here, I've met people from German, Italian, Japonese, Spanish, and French descent, to name a few.
- Argentina currently has a female president: Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. She almost always wears her hair down, which for some reason strikes me a little weird after seeing so many U.S. women in politics with short haircuts or pinned up long hair.
- In Buenos Aires, they have people who work as knife sharpeners that a lot of times ride around on bikes playing a type of flute to let people know that they're in the neighborhood in case they need their knives sharpened.
- In Buenos Aires, part of the rest of Argentina, and a few parts of the surrounding countries, the people use a verb form for the informal "you" that basically no other Spanish-speakers in the world use. It's called "vos" and apparently came from the people here misunderstanding the Spanish plural form of you - "vosotros". Basically, upon arrival, I had to re-learn verb conjugations that had been pounded into my head since first-year Spanish.
- In Buenos Aires, they also have a dialect (basically a whole different vocabulary) called lunfardo. Most of lunfardo is derived from Italian and a lot of it sounds nothing like official Spanish.
- Here, they say they don't speak "Espanol" (Spanish) but rather "Castellano" (Castilian). The funny thing is, my friend who lived in Spain for two years say that Spain Spanish is actually "Castellano" and Argentinian Spanish is a messed-up form of "Espanol".
- Here, the typical greeting is a kiss on the left cheek, and it's usually polite to greet basically everybody in the room or at the even that you know, and anyone you don't know but happen to be near when you come in.
- When saying goodbye, they say "chau" (pronounced like the Italian "ciao") instead of "adios". When talking on the phone or writing an informal email, a typical closing is to say "Besos" or "Besitos" (literally, kiss) which refers to the traditional kiss on the cheek they would give if they were talking in person.
- In Buenos Aires, I'm pretty sure there is no legal "right turn on red".
- The day has 3 meals and one "snack" - breakfast before starting the day, lunch around 1, merienda (tea-time) around 5 or 6, and dinner around 9 or 10. My family eats dinner around 8 or 8:30 but everyone else thinks that's weird and super early. The latest I ever ate dinner (at a friend's house)...well, we finished at 1 a.m.
- When they say they "drink milk" they hardly ever refer to actually drinking a glass of milk. What they almost always mean is drinking tea with a little milk, coffee with a little milk, or hot chocolate made with milk. They also find it weird that we sometimes (in the U.S.) eat eggs and meat for breakfast.
- Argentina is known for it's good beef and it used to be that steak or beef for dinner was more common than chicken because steak was cheaper. Now, there's some political hullabaloo between the president and the beef producing farmers/companies, so the price of beef has risen a lot :(
- The tango actually started in the bad parts of Buenos Aires and was danced by the equivalent of today's gangsters or "tough guys". At one point, the music of the tango itself was illegal in Argentina.
- Peanut butter is very rare here and most everyone I've met doesn't like it. That's why I am greatly appreciative of my parents who brought me two jars of peanut butter, three types of Reese's, Butterfingers, and Tagalongs :) :)
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
The Semester Begins
So before I pick up where I left off, I would like to direct your attention to the top of the page where the description of my blog says that these are my random “but hopefully frequent” recordings... feel free to laugh at that. I had a good chuckle myself when I realized that “hopefully frequent” had turned into about once a month, if that! What can you do…
Anyway, back to the “important” stuff. In my last blog, I mentioned that my new semester of classes had started while my parents were here. Unlike the intensive Spanish courses I took during January and February, this is more like a normal college semester in which I get to choose from a list of a decent variety of courses. For requirements, and just my general preferences, I chose Latin American Literature, Latin American History, History of Argentine Economics, Ethics, and Tango which consists of one class that tells the culture and history and the other class that actually teaches the dance. Of course, all these classes are conducted entirely in Spanish. So here’s the rundown on how all of those are going:
• My literature class I’m actually enjoying a lot. The professor is very reasonable in her expectations and knows how to teach students that still don’t speak Spanish all that well, and we’ve read some really some really good stuff that I actually enjoy reading.
• Latin American History…well, I think this is the epitome of a boring lecture course, plus the professor basically only talks about the economic factors, so I still feel like I know almost nothing about Latin American History.
• History of Argentine Economics - I thought I was going to enjoy the class a lot because the professor has a very charismatic personality, but it turns out her teaching skills are rather lacking. It doesn’t help that I didn’t know anything about econ to begin with, so I’m hoping to just make it through the class.
• Ethics is an extremely interesting class. We’ve studied different schools of thought about what “ethics” has meant throughout history, which has been really informative in that I can see in those schools the roots of many worldviews that are still present today. Plus, thanks to my background at Covenant and Grace, I’ve enjoyed analyzing all these from a Christian worldview.
• Tango…well, tango has been interesting. In the actual classroom part, we’ve had three different professors. I really enjoyed the first one and learned a ton from him, but the guy we have now is our dance teacher and he doesn’t know as much about the history or how to teach it. As for actually dancing, I’m having a complete blast, which is surprising because I had never before been interested in really learning how to dance. The only problem is the girl to guy ratio is at best 3:1, so most of the class is spent waiting around to see if a guy will ask me to dance and hoping that whoever that guy is at least somewhat know what he’s doing.
The interesting thing about this semester has been my schedule. The classes only meet once a week for two hours, I don’t ever have class before 11 a.m. and on Mondays I don’t have class until 5 p.m. Plus, unless we have to make up a class from a national holiday, I never have class on Fridays. I’ve enjoyed this schedule in some respects because, if I actually get up on time, it gives me time to run in the morning, enjoy a longer time for devos while I eat breakfast (it’s amazing how much of a difference it makes when I take time to focus on God before I start my day!) and some days get some homework done before I head to the university. The only thing that I don’t like about the schedule is that it’s too easy to oversleep since I don’t have to get up for class, but then I just feel like I’ve wasted over half my day.
Another thing I like about this schedule is that on some days I get to eat lunch or the ”merienda” with Ana and Cacho, and I’ve really enjoyed the time I’ve had to talk to them and here stories about their childhood, Argentine traditions, and a myriad of other topics that come up at meal time. One day, I had had a really good talk with Ana after breakfast, and she asked if she could write down my birthday to remember to tell me happy birthday in the years to come, then said, “Because, you know, you are leaving such a beautiful footprint on my heart!” That totally made my day and made me so happy to have been given the opportunity to share these months with this sweet old woman that has become like another grandma to me! Then, the other day, Cacho just basically said out of the blue, “You know, when you leave, we’re definitely going to miss having you around here.” Again, it totally warmed my heart!
Another change that has come with this semester is that all of us American girls have started meeting for “Life Groups” with Abi, one of the young women who helps out a lot with the youth group. Every Thursday we grab a snack to eat after class and then share in studying the Word and a time of prayer. At first, I thought I wouldn’t like being in a group with only us “gringas”, but it’s actually been a blessing and a really cool time we get to share together.
The last big change with the start of the semester is that our times to play soccer have now been moved inside on a hard floor (about the size of a basketball court) and we’ve started playing with more of the guys from the youth group. Playing in small spaces has been interesting since my favorite thing about soccer is being able to run and I practically don’t have room to do that, but it’s still been fun. One funny story is the first time I played, someone had passed me the ball and I lost control of it so had to change directions, inadvertently making my defender slip and fall on his butt, then (again by accident) I nutmegged the goalie for my first goal of the game. The guys were all impressed but I just laughed to myself knowing I hadn’t done anything on purpose! Another funny fact is that someone told me is that one of the older guys that comes to play goalie once played rugby for the All Blacks, a team from New Zealand that is one of the most famous in the world! The last funny story from “futbol” was after the second time we played, this time only with Anne and I (two Grace soccer players) with a bunch of guys, and one of them looked at me and said, “Jugaste mal hoy.” (You played poorly today.) I just blinked and was like, “Um, okay,” then just had to laugh because of how nonchalantly he said it…oh gotta love the Argentine directness!
Before I end, I’ll just give you all snippets of a few other humorous or interesting happenings from these weeks:
• Not leaving youth group until around five a.m. one Saturday and getting to Bailey’s house where we would spend the “night” only to find her host dad already leaving for work.
• Going to Recoleta (a part of town with a famous and huge cemetery), walking the wrong way, not really caring because we got some good coffee, arriving 10 minutes before the cemetery was going to close, seeing a somewhat creepy “living statue” and ending the day with some delicious “facturas” (pastries).
• Going to a birthday party of one of the youth group guys, meeting friends who aren’t from the church who wanted to practice English, and getting in a discussion about religion with an atheist (who after a million complicated arguments on our part, got stopped dead in his tracks by the question “Do you believe in good and evil?”).
• Playing the game “Telephone” in Spanish with the youth group.
• Making s’mores with Anne’s host mom (something she had always wanted to do but never could because she could never find marshmallows until my parents brought them from the States).
• Making brownies for the birthday of Felipe (a guy from youth group) which we thought didn’t turn out amazing but he absolutely loved them.
• Going to see Mati (yet another youth group guy) play in his band which is called Remake (yes, in English).
• Having a youth group lock-in from 8 pm to 8 am, which made us laugh because that’s only a few hours longer than normal.
• Ana teaching me how to make tortilla (no, not for burritos – here "tortilla" is an egg-based dish similar to an omelet) and a little bit about how to make empanadas!!
• Walking down the street and seeing a bus driving sitting at a red light, head on the wheel, taking a nap.
Well, in the legendary words of Porky the Pig, “That’s All, Folks!”…at least until next time. We can all hope that next time won’t be a month away, but hey, let’s not kid ourselves… :)
Anyway, back to the “important” stuff. In my last blog, I mentioned that my new semester of classes had started while my parents were here. Unlike the intensive Spanish courses I took during January and February, this is more like a normal college semester in which I get to choose from a list of a decent variety of courses. For requirements, and just my general preferences, I chose Latin American Literature, Latin American History, History of Argentine Economics, Ethics, and Tango which consists of one class that tells the culture and history and the other class that actually teaches the dance. Of course, all these classes are conducted entirely in Spanish. So here’s the rundown on how all of those are going:
• My literature class I’m actually enjoying a lot. The professor is very reasonable in her expectations and knows how to teach students that still don’t speak Spanish all that well, and we’ve read some really some really good stuff that I actually enjoy reading.
• Latin American History…well, I think this is the epitome of a boring lecture course, plus the professor basically only talks about the economic factors, so I still feel like I know almost nothing about Latin American History.
• History of Argentine Economics - I thought I was going to enjoy the class a lot because the professor has a very charismatic personality, but it turns out her teaching skills are rather lacking. It doesn’t help that I didn’t know anything about econ to begin with, so I’m hoping to just make it through the class.
• Ethics is an extremely interesting class. We’ve studied different schools of thought about what “ethics” has meant throughout history, which has been really informative in that I can see in those schools the roots of many worldviews that are still present today. Plus, thanks to my background at Covenant and Grace, I’ve enjoyed analyzing all these from a Christian worldview.
• Tango…well, tango has been interesting. In the actual classroom part, we’ve had three different professors. I really enjoyed the first one and learned a ton from him, but the guy we have now is our dance teacher and he doesn’t know as much about the history or how to teach it. As for actually dancing, I’m having a complete blast, which is surprising because I had never before been interested in really learning how to dance. The only problem is the girl to guy ratio is at best 3:1, so most of the class is spent waiting around to see if a guy will ask me to dance and hoping that whoever that guy is at least somewhat know what he’s doing.
The interesting thing about this semester has been my schedule. The classes only meet once a week for two hours, I don’t ever have class before 11 a.m. and on Mondays I don’t have class until 5 p.m. Plus, unless we have to make up a class from a national holiday, I never have class on Fridays. I’ve enjoyed this schedule in some respects because, if I actually get up on time, it gives me time to run in the morning, enjoy a longer time for devos while I eat breakfast (it’s amazing how much of a difference it makes when I take time to focus on God before I start my day!) and some days get some homework done before I head to the university. The only thing that I don’t like about the schedule is that it’s too easy to oversleep since I don’t have to get up for class, but then I just feel like I’ve wasted over half my day.
Another thing I like about this schedule is that on some days I get to eat lunch or the ”merienda” with Ana and Cacho, and I’ve really enjoyed the time I’ve had to talk to them and here stories about their childhood, Argentine traditions, and a myriad of other topics that come up at meal time. One day, I had had a really good talk with Ana after breakfast, and she asked if she could write down my birthday to remember to tell me happy birthday in the years to come, then said, “Because, you know, you are leaving such a beautiful footprint on my heart!” That totally made my day and made me so happy to have been given the opportunity to share these months with this sweet old woman that has become like another grandma to me! Then, the other day, Cacho just basically said out of the blue, “You know, when you leave, we’re definitely going to miss having you around here.” Again, it totally warmed my heart!
Another change that has come with this semester is that all of us American girls have started meeting for “Life Groups” with Abi, one of the young women who helps out a lot with the youth group. Every Thursday we grab a snack to eat after class and then share in studying the Word and a time of prayer. At first, I thought I wouldn’t like being in a group with only us “gringas”, but it’s actually been a blessing and a really cool time we get to share together.
The last big change with the start of the semester is that our times to play soccer have now been moved inside on a hard floor (about the size of a basketball court) and we’ve started playing with more of the guys from the youth group. Playing in small spaces has been interesting since my favorite thing about soccer is being able to run and I practically don’t have room to do that, but it’s still been fun. One funny story is the first time I played, someone had passed me the ball and I lost control of it so had to change directions, inadvertently making my defender slip and fall on his butt, then (again by accident) I nutmegged the goalie for my first goal of the game. The guys were all impressed but I just laughed to myself knowing I hadn’t done anything on purpose! Another funny fact is that someone told me is that one of the older guys that comes to play goalie once played rugby for the All Blacks, a team from New Zealand that is one of the most famous in the world! The last funny story from “futbol” was after the second time we played, this time only with Anne and I (two Grace soccer players) with a bunch of guys, and one of them looked at me and said, “Jugaste mal hoy.” (You played poorly today.) I just blinked and was like, “Um, okay,” then just had to laugh because of how nonchalantly he said it…oh gotta love the Argentine directness!
Before I end, I’ll just give you all snippets of a few other humorous or interesting happenings from these weeks:
• Not leaving youth group until around five a.m. one Saturday and getting to Bailey’s house where we would spend the “night” only to find her host dad already leaving for work.
• Going to Recoleta (a part of town with a famous and huge cemetery), walking the wrong way, not really caring because we got some good coffee, arriving 10 minutes before the cemetery was going to close, seeing a somewhat creepy “living statue” and ending the day with some delicious “facturas” (pastries).
• Going to a birthday party of one of the youth group guys, meeting friends who aren’t from the church who wanted to practice English, and getting in a discussion about religion with an atheist (who after a million complicated arguments on our part, got stopped dead in his tracks by the question “Do you believe in good and evil?”).
• Playing the game “Telephone” in Spanish with the youth group.
• Making s’mores with Anne’s host mom (something she had always wanted to do but never could because she could never find marshmallows until my parents brought them from the States).• Making brownies for the birthday of Felipe (a guy from youth group) which we thought didn’t turn out amazing but he absolutely loved them.
• Going to see Mati (yet another youth group guy) play in his band which is called Remake (yes, in English).
• Having a youth group lock-in from 8 pm to 8 am, which made us laugh because that’s only a few hours longer than normal.
• Ana teaching me how to make tortilla (no, not for burritos – here "tortilla" is an egg-based dish similar to an omelet) and a little bit about how to make empanadas!!
• Walking down the street and seeing a bus driving sitting at a red light, head on the wheel, taking a nap.
Well, in the legendary words of Porky the Pig, “That’s All, Folks!”…at least until next time. We can all hope that next time won’t be a month away, but hey, let’s not kid ourselves… :)
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