coming home

Standing in the back of Simon's truck in Zim, a young man from the worship services came up to me with a plastic bag in his hand. "This is for you. I didn't think I could ever part with it, but I know I should give it to you."

When people who have nothing give you everything they have, thank you doesn't feel like enough, but sometimes it's all we can muster. Inside the plastic bag was No Compromise: The Life Story of Keith Green, along with a note of encouragement and some Bible verses. Prior to reading the book, I knew nothing about Keith Green. I was supposed to read it.

I've been emailing with my new friend, and feel I need to share an excerpt from his email last week, despite all the horrific news coming from Zim, of persecution in South Africa for refugees and the political mess all around. It reads:

oh, we are more than hanging in here! nay, not even surviving but alive and well! it does seem strange the situation we are in at the moment as a nation. when one lifts off their eyes away from the economic woes and such things alike you'd find that the spiritual reality is great and fantastic. i am one of those who had left the country. i was out for a year and a half. came back about ten months ago. God kinda of impressed it on my heart that He is preparing for the 'exhiles' to return home. exhiles both in the natural and in the spirit. so i am holding onto the promise to see the return of the exhiles and already God has started to herald the songs of the returnees here.

Cheers to all the exiles coming home.

to fargo or not to fargo?

Fargo is notorious for wood chippers, so naturally I was a skeptic.

We spent a majority of our ride from Minneapolis to Fargo making fun of it in various ways, combined with asking each other questions about what kind of animal we would be if we lived in the land, sea or air, respectively.

When we arrived, it was as if someone had airlifted the Mall of America and shattered into little pieces, scattering every retail chain store imaginable in a neat, condensed area known as Fargo.

We discovered that Fargo has the highest concentration of restaurants per capita in the United States, mostly unoriginal and stale. However, the downtown area gets props for its free parking, old 60’s charm and Midwestern hospitality, making up for the suburban clone field lying on its outskirts.

I wish I would’ve had more interesting Fargo native experiences—then I could report something new about this sleepy town made famous by film—but I can’t.

My thesis on Fargo is this: If you want to raise your children in a safe-but-sheltered area of Midwestern America, where they will likely immediately move away from after high school and do something rebellious in college, move to Fargo.

At least you’ll never run out of places to eat.

fargo or bust

Monday I woke up vomiting with a 24-hour flu.

Tuesday I popped a couple immodium AD tablets and drove 600 miles through the night to Minneapolis, arriving at 3 a.m. CST Wednesday morning.

Wednesday was Josh's bachelor party. We walked 18 holes, ate too much pizza and stayed up too late for our own good. But it was perfect.

Thursday we drove to Fargo for the rehearsal and groom's dinner. Some of my best friends and I ended up playing pool at an old northern Minnesota bar in a town called "Downer."

Friday was Josh and Heather's wedding and reception. It went off, we ate food, did a bit of dancing, then drove from Fargo to Minneapolis, arriving at 4 a.m. CST.

Saturday I slept until noon, ate pancakes and drove through the rain back to Grand Rapids.

Sunday was the Sabbath, where everything else fades.

dope and identity

Last night I found out someone who recently met me (and two of my friends) at church thought “they were drug dealers, because of the way we looked.”

Yes, drug dealers. I guess the haircut boycott is working.

This was and is really funny. This morning, on the heels of the thought of me slanging dope, I started thinking about stereotypes. We moved into a new studio space yesterday in an interesting part of town, a district where my hairstyle is pretty tame and it would be easy to manufacture stereotypes.

And in this country, stereotypes often point back to what we do.

Or what we don’t do.

This is a stretch, but there’s a brilliant, dark and irreverent movie (and book) called Everything is Illuminated, where a young American played by Elijah Wood treks over to Eastern Europe to trace his Jewish roots from WWII. He’s guided by a family of Ukrainians, including a quirky guy named Alex who speaks brilliantly busted English.

Alex asks the American about the culture and jobs and money, like, “How much does accountant make?” I started thinking about the places I’ve been where people don’t really have jobs, because there are no jobs to be found.

Where do people find their identity, if it’s not in accounting?

And I remembered the first time I interviewed two brothers in Zim about worship.

“Hi, I’m Francis. I’m a worshiper in the house of the Lord.”

After Francis shared some meaty words of wisdom, Tinashi, standing right beside him, said, “And I’m Tinashi. I’m also a worshiper in the house of the Lord.” And I can’t help but wonder: what would our lives be like if we found our identity in the same place?

grace: two perspectives

Last night at Greenhouse, Jason mentioned that no matter how many good things are in life, one bad thing often sets us off, consuming speech and thought. Lately, I've been set off.

Story #1

While in Africa, my middle finger had birthed some sort of infection, which I let run wild for a week, unaware of how fast infections can spread.

We took care of it as best we could in Zim with the First Aid kit, but after a 34-hour overseas travel dance, it worsened. I've often said that I've been living on grace the last two years (no health insurance, my doctors include medical-savvy friends and WebMD), so going to an actual doctor isn't realistic. I talked to my parents' long-time doctor on the phone, who told me I had to get the finger checked out.

My Dad told me to go to the ER; he'd foot the bill.

"God, I need a solution here," I said, and started googling things like, "Free Health Care Grand Rapids." The Health Department rerouted me to the United Way, which did it's own Google search and gave me the number for a local clinic, The Baxter Community Center.

I told them I was in Zim on a mission trip and that my finger was jacked up. The woman seemed overly anxious to help out. "We can see you on Monday," she said. "Umm," I stalled. It was 1:40 p.m. on Friday.

"Where do you live?" she she said. I told her. Turns out it was a half-mile from my house. "If you can get here in twenty minutes, we'll see you today," she said. "We close at 2:45."

Un-showered and jet-lagged, I jumped into respectable-looking clothes, wrapped my finger, printed a map and got in the car. I'm greeted by the woman on the phone who talked about a country she visited in Africa. I filled out a simple sheet of paper, and sat in the lobby for five minutes, and stared at all the literature about Jesus plastered on the walls.

"Aaron, the doctor will see you now," she said.

After a firm handshake, introduction and small talk about Zim, the doctor looked at the finger, mumbled something, diagnosed the disease, pricked it with a needle, drained it, wrapped it, wrote a script and shared choice words about key players in Zim politics.

"This one's on the house," the doc said.

"Wow, thank you, what a blessing," I reply.

And in less than an hour, I was the recipient of a free doctor's appointment and antibiotics.

One week later, the finger is almost completely healed.

And for this grace, I am grateful.

Story #2

We're moving our business downtown this week, signing a lease tomorrow and the moving truck on Thursday. The major setback has been the parking situation, the potential for a daily nightmare. I've been trolling the city website for weeks, preying on the elusive Area 5 monthly pass, a lot close to our studio and the heart of downtown, but always booked.

This morning, I check it on a whim, and one spot was available. I call Andrew for the "go" and then the city, wondering if it's some sort of type-o.

"Really? There's a spot open in 5?" Linda, the parking woman says.

"Yes, I saw it on your website this morning," I reply.

"Has anyone sold that spot in 5?" Linda yells over the phone.

Turns out, there's a spot, and it's ours.

"There hasn't been a spot open there in two years," Linda says.

And in ten minutes, the parking crisis is over.

And for this grace, I am grateful.

short film

Below is a link to our entry for our recent 24 hour film festival we entered. We had 24 hours to write, shoot, edit and produce the short film, using the following common elements:

Theme: Passing on tradition
Prop: Remote control
Line: "We all go a little mad sometimes."
Location: Baseball diamond

We placed in the top 10, and Spish was shown on at Studio 28 in Grand Rapids. Copy and paste or click the link to watch it on YouTube:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=y1_2IH7poPY

glowing chickens

I must choose words carefully. I’m angry.

The political situation in Zim has jumped from silly to absurd, with the ruling party raiding the opposition party’s headquarters, on the heels of reports of beatings and killings and halting a cargo ship from China carrying weapons of intimidation intended for Zim.

And the eyes of the world are watching all this happen.

Two Saturday’s ago, we held a worship night in Mbare, a run-down, impoverished district in the capital city of Zimbabwe, a division with a less-than-thrilling history of racial tension and a host of other problems. I’ve often described the socioeconomic situation in Zim like this: “Imagine every major problem that a nation can have, and combine all of them. That’s what’s happening in Zim.”

Mbare embodied this. It was unlike any urban poverty I’ve seen, housing broken-down buildings rumored to contain strip-shops that transform freshly stolen vehicles overnight, among widespread rape and prostitution, African buses crammed beyond belief, fields of people wandering and bartering and buying and selling and scrounging for food. And that was just the view from a moving truck. We were told to keep watch over our equipment; a Zimbabwean woman in Grand Rapids the Korn's know was shocked to hear we’d be going there.

On Saturday morning, an illogical number of us piled into the bed of Simon’s small Isuzu truck, along with music equipment and a small trailer, and traveled through the capital to set up for the evening event, where 700 people were expected to worship.

Gennison brought his breakfast pinned between two plastic plates, but as Simon’s speed increased, ketchup started flying, as Gennison humorously tried his best to catch it in his mouth like a Three Stooges skit. Then, a hunk of sausage escaped; Tinashi immediately stabbed the runaway meat with a fork, and I snapped a photo. We all laughed.

When we walked into the Mbare church the day before to scout it out, I sensed the presence of God sweep over me. “This is going to be a good night,” we all agreed, on the heels of two amazing worship nights. We traveled to Mbare with fourteen (yes, fourteen) people in the back of Simon’s truck.

Mbare was good: Dancing, singing, breaking, worshiping, praising.

Our human expectations are beautiful and dangerous, since ultimately, we have little meaningful control. We often prime ourselves for disappointment, but on the other hand, we’re sometimes swept away unexpectedly into something bigger. What we expected from Mbare and what we experienced were different, but as people filtered in-and-out through the night, a faithful group remained until the last song was sung. And though we wanted to see more, it’s the Unseen that counts. We trust the right people were there until the end.

On our ride home, we had two trucks carrying us through the city, with Simon and Gennison playing games behind the wheels.

At night, Harare is dark and strangely quiet, a sharp contrast from the busyness of the daylight hours, where people are less concerned about going to cushy 9-to5’s with retirement plans and health insurance, and more concerned about finding clever ways to survive. But on this night, after three nights of music offered to the LORD, we were laughing, yelling, celebrating, full.

Francis, one of the Zimbabwean worship leaders, a multi-talented man of God soaked in humility, began joking about how he was really from Philadelphia, filling in details about the States he’s picked up, mentioning obscure street names and creating details of fictitious neighbors. He then somehow crafted a story of how he had moved from Ireland to Philadelphia or vice versa, with a stint in India as well.

We were a wreck laughing.

To top it off, Francis faked receiving a call from his long-lost mother on his cell phone, telling her to prepare a place in Philly for his American friends when we returned to the States.

Our stomachs were torn by his comedy.

And in the midst of all this wild laughter and unabashed joy, traveling 40 miles an hour on the floor of a truck bed, I looked up to my left, and there, glowing in the black night on top of a skyscraper, stood a chicken.

Yes, a chicken.

Oddly enough, the chicken is the symbol of the ruling political party, and we happened to be passing by its headquarters. And it was beyond fitting, that in the midst of all this tension, we worshiped for three nights in the belly of the church, proclaimed Jesus as King, and when it was over, laughed until we cried.

Because God is bigger than _____.

zimbabwe in state of war

The situation in Zim has gone sour.

Watch a BBC video here. Please pray.

kingdom come (a song)

These clothes are sitting on my floor
But I’m resting in Your sun
Thinking ‘bout the things I’ve seen
And all that is come

I’m coming home
The Kingdom goes wherever You are
I’m coming home
But the light we bring shines in the dark

We don’t need to go too far
To see the world undone
We just need the eyes to see
And the ears to hear their cries

When we strip away our luxuries
And all our fancy clothes
You will see, you’re just like me
And we are just like those

We’re coming home
And the Kingdom grows wherever we are
We’re coming home
And the light we bring shines in the dark

Naked, shameless, bare we come
Forgiven and redeemed
Washed clean of sin, now enter in
Creation’s melody

We’re coming home
We’re coming home

bigger than

It’s 5:10 a.m. and jet-lag has tagged us again. My father is twenty minutes into his road trip back to the Upper Peninsula, after two weeks of life together in Africa.

Everyone is safe, while the world’s eyes tune into BBC and CNN to hear reports of the situation in Zim, we were blessed with a fresh perspective. The first night in our hotel in downtown Harare, the capital city, we turned on the television, where breaking news reported that the military police had raided a Harare hotel looking for unaccredited journalists.

We peered out the windows, looking for signs of flashing lights. Dad assured me Mom was freaking out back home. Trying to get to the lobby to connect to the advertised WiFi, waiting five minutes for the elevator that never came, I took the cement staircase down nine flights, getting lost, hearing voices, growing paranoid. My imagination took over, filled with visions of excessively violent action movies involving empty staircases and guns.

Like a wet dog, I walked onto on floor 3 and waited patiently for the elevator. Half of me wanted to see some sort of police raid in the lobby, but there was nothing, including the WiFi. The television reported the election results would be released the next morning, but we awoke to more waiting.

And there still is no real news, though everyone knows what’s really taken place.

Nearly everything on the streets—light posts, billboards, sidewalks, trash cans—are plastered with political propaganda, and there’s a certain shrewdness and primitive approach to the method, as if the candidate with the greatest number of posters will win. But everything we saw was blanketed in peace.

There is little else to say about the elections, because there is greater change stirring in the hearts and minds of the people of Zim. Having been five months before, it felt then as if the people had hit bottom as the physical world around them crumbled, but today, hope and the fruit of resiliency are sustaining the people.

What’s happening there is beyond propaganda and politics. It’s beyond power outages and water crisis’s. It’s beyond the 2,000 people dying of AIDS each week, forcing grave-diggers to settle for three feet instead of six, performing shotgun funerals in fifteen minutes.

It’s beyond inflation, where a can of Coke was $3 million in December, and is now $180 million. It’s beyond land reforms, where we heard a story of a farmer who tried to fight oppressors taking his farm, eventually dying in a gun battle while sitting in his water-filled bathtub after intruders set fire to his house.

It’s beyond all of these problems, because God is bigger than. Real power isn't found in electricity.

An extremely joyful man named Pastor Dave told me that 60 percent of Zim believe in Jesus, and this is the statistic to celebrate. What we saw are a people on the verge of renewal, filled with a hopeful anticipation of greater life.

There are words about this fatherless nation finally restoring the strength of the family, following decades of abandonment and death. As a symbol of this renewal, my earthly father baptized me in a small, murky clay-bottom pond, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Coming out of the water, we were greeted by 120 of our Zimbabwean brothers and sisters, 28 of them who had been baptized just before me.

These youth are the “Joshua generation,” the people we believe are the vessels of Christ to restore this land, the church of today, the people who will influence every facet of life, from family and morality, to business, politics and economics.

Another man told us, “Zim is going to be the place to live, I’m certain of that. This is where God’s going to start moving in Africa. There’s something special going on in Chinoyi, people have been saying that for twenty years.”

Pastor Dave’s daughter Arelle, a genuine spiritual firecracker, sat down for an on-camera interview and told us about a “new song coming out of Africa,” part of which we believe we’ve captured in digital time capsules to share with the world.

In a place littered with uncertainty, we worshiped the Unchangeable, from a quietly powerful youth service with no instruments and only voices, to consecutive nights in a lively church in Harare, to a night in one of the poorest urban areas, where the people danced and we worshiped the LORD.

There is more to report, but we know this: God is bringing a new song out of Africa.

courier unplugged: plug

Courier is playing our first unplugged acoustic show at the Sweet Bean in Zeeland...check it out...

When: Friday, April 25

Time: 7 p.m.

Cost: Free (Buy Drinks)

Sweet Bean
111 E Main Ave
Zeeland, MI 49464

zim schedule

Below is the schedule from Vital Connections. Thanks for your prayers and support!

April 2: Depart GR. GR to Chicago. Chicago to D.C. D.C to JoBurg. JoBurg to Harare.

April 3: Depart GR. Arrive at Harare in the early evening and stay at the Crown Plaza.

April 4: Drive to Chinhoyi, set up at the team house and head out to the conference sight late afternoon. Young leaders conference begins at Hunnington retreat center. 150 attendees expected.

April 4-7: Youth conference at Hunnington. Mike, Teresa, Peter, Corky and Kim will be teaching. Pray for a deepening of the relationships between our young leaders and theirs. Topics include the person of Jesus, the Bible and its’ validity, accountable relationships, baptism and more. We have secured an eight pound inflatable wading pool to take along and will be having water baptism at the end of the camp. We expect this to be a significant time in the lives of all who are there and participate.

April 8 and 9: Ministry around Chinhoyi, ladies meeting, visit to Alaska feeding center to feed and play with the children, consultation and fellowship with local leaders.

April 10: The whole team moves into Harare for three nights of worship ministry. Set up, sound checks, practice for worship event that night. Matt and Aaron, along with Simon Smith, are producing a CD and DVD about Zimbabwean worship and will be recording and filming over three events on three nights.

April 11: Exploring Harare during the day and ministry at night.

April 12: A couple of the team will return to Chinhoyi to minister at a men’s meeting in the afternoon. In the evening the final worship event will be staged at Faith Ministry Centre in Mbare, one of the older and poorer townships in Harare. We expect the hall that normally seats 600 to be overfilled. Exciting times!

April 13: Matt heads home. The rest of the team back in Chinhoyi ministering at Sunday services at Revival Christian Centre and other fellowships. Consultation and fellowship with local leaders at the team house. Packing and preparation to move.

April 14 – 16: Relaxation, photo safari and old time African living at a rural lodge.

April 16: Return home via Johannesburg

While power outages, food shortages, water interruptions and transport difficulties are issues, we are finding more and more that these seeming necessities are not an obstacle to God moving. The Word of God and the hope of salvation is even more compelling in an environment of lack.

Please pray for Teresa, Corky, Mike, Aaron, Matt, Michelle, Amy, Kim, Simon, Peter, Stella, Pedzi, Tatenda, Traver, Amanda, Ivan, Francis, Tenashe, Lincoln, Epiphania and all of the growing team of young leaders who are banding together to build His kingdom.