Made In Detroit: A South of 8 Mile Memoir

I noticed a book on Al Mohler's Reading List that caught my attention and brought back a lot of great memories. My experience was more about "Cruising Woodward", hearing the thrilling sounds of the hot machines and checking out the latest "stuff" out of motown and the auto companies and the local speed shops! Living right across the border in Windsor though, there was a lot of similarities in our neighborhoods with those of us working in the auto industry and on our cars back in the 70's and 80's. Race relations was not a problem for us on this side of the river though. My.... how times have changed for the auto industry and it's sad to see what is happening today. Anyway this is a review below by Al Mohler of a book about a father and son that hits close to home.

That is what makes Made in Detroit: A South of 8 Mile Memoir by Paul Clemens such a refreshing surprise. Clemens, who grew up in one of Detroit's transitional neighborhoods during the 1970s and 1980s, saw the city transformed before his eyes and came to know his father as the great Gibraltar that held his family together. Clemens's father appears as a normal dad in the context of his working-class neighborhood. Dads were just there and they did what they had to do for their families. They may have been short tempered at times, but they were occasionally capable of much fun with their children and they showed their absolute dedication to family by the fact that they gave themselves to such hard work under such difficult circumstances. More often than not, they were tired to the bone, even as they had to patch a wall or discipline a son. As Paul Clemens relates, fathers in his neighborhood demonstrated a central task of manhood by doing what, under almost any circumstance, just had to be done.

He writes: "Families were fundamental to the way the area was organized, which is not to say that anyone spent much time getting sentimental over them as a concept. Families were viewed like most other things in this life, which is to say as sometimes dreary and ultimately disappointing, but preferable to a long list of even less desirable alternatives. . . Though they cursed aloud while doing so -- and, internally, likely cursed the days they'd wed our mothers and fathered us -- the men in our neighborhood, whether in hats and gloves during the dead of winter, or sweating and swearing up a storm in the middle of the summer, somehow manage to fix broken carburetors, replace drafty windows, and keep basement furnace is going a little bit longer, while their wives bought box after box of whatever was on sale and saw to it that their children didn't waste all their money at McDonald's. . ."

In his own way, in Made in Detroit, Paul Clemens demonstrates a model of respecting and honoring his father while telling the story, warts and all. His book is unique in being both gritty and sweet. I would suggest that Christian men -- and fathers in particular -- would do well to read this kind of literature. These secular memoirs, filled with both pain and promise, tell us a great deal about the world around us and, at the same time, remind us of our own calling -- even as we hear that voice through words of pain.

Happy Father's Day. Let's be sure our children hear our voices and know our love.

Broken Down House: Living Productively in a World Gone Bad

Read the Online Book Introduction HERE

Christianity and the Global Culture

My mother was a war bride who came to Canada from Holland right after the second world war and was married to my Dad, just after she got here early in 1947. She may not have been a war bride in official terms like others married overseas during the war, but our government had made special provision to facilitate soldiers' fiancees to come to Canada to be married right after the war ended. She left a country that in many respects was considered "Christian".

During the war there were Christian services started at Fellowship Houses and many families in Holland opened up their homes also for fellowship meetings for the allied soldiers who were liberating the country from Nazi Germany. My grandparents had such a home and it's where my Dad, a Canadian soldier, met the family and went for worship times and fellowship after meeting my Mom earlier at one of the Fellowship Houses. There was a family history in the Christian Reformed Church and also in the "The Brethren", similar to the Plymouth Brethren in America.

In the country, there was a strong historical influence of the reformers, Martin Luther and John Calvin and later theologians like Dr. Abraham Kuyper and then in the war years Christian heroes arose like Corrie Ten Boom and Anne Frank.

Since then the country and the culture has changed and I can't even say that of the relatives in my generation that are still there that to my knowledge any even claim to be Christian. Marriage isn't even what it was and in many cases isn't even practiced anymore. Today, the Netherlands, like much of Western Europe is spiritually just a cold, empty shell now, compared to what it was in previous generations.

I can say with some confidence that our family, that is now in North America, is still predominantly Christian. Things have been changing in our country though, in recent years. A case in point is, in the province of Quebec, which was solidly Roman Catholic and today, is pretty much agnostic. I talked to a church planter who went there with the Southern Baptist Convention and he told me that he pretty much has to start teaching the very basics about faith and Christianity like you would in pagan societies in the third world.

Justin Taylor from "Between Two Worlds" has recently posted an interview and a review of the latest book by Mark Noll, entitled, "The New Shape of World Christianity: How American Experience Reflects Global Faith". Noll raised a lot of eyebrows when he went from Wheaton College to Notre Dame, and I certainly can't say I concur with all of his views but he is one of the most respected historians of evangelicalism today and brings out some interesting facts on the demographics of Christianity in the world.

This leaves me with a definite tension concerning our faith and the impact of the different cultures of the world. Some scholars often cite the passage from Galatians 3 and especially verse 28, "There is neither Jew nor Greek", and relate it to calling for exclusively "one people of God". I definitely believe that in that specific context concerning the "law" and faith and salvation that we are one in Christ. I also believe that there is a context where God works in countries and cultures in various and diverse ways to bring about his sovereign will and plan, both in the ages past, now and in the future. We are to be engaged in that too, carrying out the "great commission", striving to reach every tongue, tribe and nation!

I would like to share an observation that impressed us when my wife and I were in South Korea last summer. We noticed a real vibrancy, enthusiasm and growth of the church there and it is worth noting that the largest church in the world, is Yoido Full Gospel Church, a protestant church on Yeouido Island in Seoul, with about 830,000 members. Also, everywhere you look where people live and do business you see lighted crosses of different colours; on apartment buildings, on top of commercial buildings and on conventional church buildings. These all mark out Christian churches.
In a country where more than a third of the population is Christian, the South Korean churches send out almost as many missionaries as the US churches, to Asia, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Latin America, Africa, Middle East and Oceania. We thank God for the early Presbyterian missionaries back in the mid to late 19th century that reached Korea with the gospel!

This is the review of Mark Noll's book by Justin Taylor:

The New Shape of World Christianity: How American Experience Reflects Global Faith:
It is as if the globe had been turned upside down and sideways. A few short decades ago, Christian believers were concentrated in the global north and west, but now a rapidly swelling majority lives in the global south and east. As [a Christian] Rip Van Winkle wiped a half-century of sleep from his eyes [after awaking this past week] and tried to locate his fellow Christian believers, he would find them in surprising places, expressing their faith in surprising ways, under surprising conditions, with surprising relationships to culture and politics, and raising surprising theological questions that would not have seemed possible when he fell asleep. [pp. 19-20]
Noll observes that "the Christian church has experienced a larger geographical redistribution in the last fifty years than in any comparable period in its history, with the exception of the very earliest years of church history. . . . More than half of all Christian adherents in the whole history of the church have been alive in the last one hundred years. Close to half of Christian believers who have ever lived are alive right now" [p. 21]. To give some teeth to these "mind-blowing realities," here are a few of the examples Noll gives, showing the magnitude of these recent changes:

•This past Sunday it is possible that more Christian believers attended church in China than in all of so-called "Christian Europe." Yet in 1970 there were no legally functioning churches in all of China; only in 1971 did the communist regime allow for one Protestant and one Roman Catholic Church to hold public worship services, and this was mostly a concession to visiting Europeans and African students from Tanzania and Zambia.

•This past Sunday more Anglicans attended church in each of Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda than did Anglicans in Britain and Canada and Episcopalians in the United States combined--and the number of Anglicans in church in Nigeria was several times the number in those other African countries.

•This past Sunday more Presbyterians were at church in Ghana than in Scotland, and more were in congregations of the Uniting Presbyterian Church of Southern Africa than in the United States.

•This past Sunday the churches with the largest attendance in England and France had mostly black congregations. About half of the churchgoers in London were African or African-Caribbean. Today, the largest Christian congregation in Europe is in Kiev, and it is pastored by a Nigerian of Pentecostal background.

•This past week in Great Britain, at least fifteen thousand Christian foreign missionaries were hard at work evangelizing the locals. most of these missionaries are from Africa and Asia. [pp. 20-21]

Also read the interview with Mark Noll HERE

A Call to the Himalayas

It was September of 2007 and our son John who had lived in South Korea for three years teaching English (as a second language) at a private ESL school (Hagwon) for children, had gone on a missions trip to the Himalayas in Nepal, with a group from the church where he attends; Life Church, in Suwon, Korea. They were separated into two teams, one working with the children in an orphanage supported by a mission, Mercy Now, in Katmandu and the other going out into the mountain villages to evangelize and meet and encourage some of the itinerant pastors there. There was a long bus ride and then trekking around some landslides and climbing up the mountain slopes to the small remote villages, high in the Himalayas.

When the team returned from the mountains and joined up with the others at the orphanage in Katmandu, there was a time of sharing and some were asked to give their stories and testimonies of what Christ had done in their lives. John was particularly moved by the testimony of one of the girls from the group at the orphanage who was from Life Church also. He prayed that he would get to meet and to know her personally, She was, Soyon Chun, a MK now living and teaching English in Korea. When John boarded the plane to return back to Korea, his prayer was answered and there was Soyon with an empty seat beside her and then a delay of the flight where the passengers waited on board for some time. The rest is history and on August 30. 2008, my wife and I had the thrill of witnessing John and Soyon's marriage in Suwon, Korea.

Earlier this year John enrolled in the Korean Language Program at Seoul National University, so that he could get a better grasp of the Korean language and culture, intending to go through the program for one year. He was about to give up his teaching job at the private "hagwon" school. Shortly after, some things happened and I'll go now to John's letter below that he posted on Soyon's blog:

The Future Is Now
Our vision and reasons for the Korean Language Program were well intentioned, well thought out, and probably the most reasonable course of action for us at the time.

Then about 2 weeks before I was to start the program, my wife and I decided to take a week and commit it to prayer. At this point our missions training would have to wait a year or two until after the Language program, but that was fine with us. Korea had become our safe home. And we felt that after a year or two in Korea, we’d be better prepared, better educated, and better suited for the mission field.

Halfway through that week of prayer we met a young married couple who had been through part of the Himalayas mission training (at our church). They were about to leave for India and Nepal for the short-term-on-the-field portion of the training. They began talking about Nepal and the fire in our hearts started burning again for Nepal and its people.

At the end of our week it was becoming quite evident that God didn’t want us to delay going to the mission field for two years. My wife recognized it before I did… or more accurately, I didn’t want to recognize it. I was starting University in less than a week, we were actively involved in church and the community, we were developing new friendships with people, we were connecting more with our family, and I was in Judo classes that I really loved. For the first time in my three years in Korea, I really felt like I was starting to connect with and embrace the Korean culture. I love this country and it feels like home for Soyon and me. I certainly didn’t want to give that up.

My wife is awesome! What I love the most about her is her big soft heart. She grew up as an MK (missionary kid) in Nigeria. She loved her time there, but still carries some deep hurts about her upbringing as an MK. If you’re an MK, I’m sure you can relate. Recently I’ve seen God do some amazing things in her life that show that she really is being healed of those past hurts. I think for the first time in her life, she’s feeling some consistency. She, like me, has come to love Korea and call it home. It’s safe and offers her stability, something I was afforded living in a small town for over 26 years, but something she has just come to find. For an MK that’s always been moving around, it’s a new and refreshing change not to up and move around so much. I think she would have been content to establish some roots here and settle down.

But at the end of that week of prayer, God really started speaking to her heart. She listened. She let go of the stability and safety that Korea offers us and suggested we radically change our life and our direction. No more delays to the calling God has for us. It’s time to start the missions training. I saw the change in her. She was teaching me a thing or two about obedience and faith and she didn’t even know it. She still struggles from time to time (like we all do), but she’s faithful and responsive to God. I love her for that!

So here I am with an itch to go back to school and improve my judo throws. I figured it was too late to turn back. I was enrolled in University, tuition was paid, in-laws were so proud of me for learning Korean, we’ve got a nice apartment, sweet car (KIA PRIDE!!!), and great life right here in Suji. Why would I want to give all that up? Why risk all that? It makes no sense.

And then I think about Peter in that passage in Luke. He says, “Master, I worked hard all night and caught nothing. But because you said so, I’ll put down the nets.”

Peter is a fisherman. Fishing is all he knows about. He fished that same spot all night with no success. It made no sense for him to throw the net back out there. But he did. And Jesus rewarded his obedience and faith. We believe He’s the same gracious God and will do the same for us if we just listen to what He’s telling us.

It made no sense, but we quit the Korean Language Program. It made no sense, but we probably offended our Korean family slightly. It made no sense, because I already quit my job a week prior to this…

But because You said so, we put down our nets.

God has since filled our boat!

I was able to quit the Language program with a 90% refund for tuition. I got my old job back and got another great job (2 jobs now) that I’ll work until the end of July, thus allowing us to pay off my school debt (finally after 10 plus years!) in less than two months and save a bit too. It looks like we’ll be able to start the 4 month training for the Himalayas as early as the end of August. Praise the Lord! And miraculously this all occurred in the span of our week of prayer.

We are excited to be starting this new journey and new adventure.

Like Peter and his companions we are astonished at the improbable things God worked in our lives in such a short time frame.

And like Peter, I think, “Go away from me Lord. I’m a sinful man.” I feel so unworthy of it all. I struggle with thoughts of not being adequate enough and strong enough to go to a place so foreign. I feel like I don’t measure up at so many things that the mission field will hold for us. Unskilled, uneducated, unready are we.

And yet the words of Jesus jump out and hit me right in the face. “Don’t be afraid.”

Peter was a fisherman. It’s all he knew. He wasn’t adequate to preach, skilled to teach, educated to witness, brave enough to stand for Christ, or strong enough to go where God called him to. He knew how to bait a hook, untangle a net, and gut a fish. But he pulled his boat to shore, left everything, and followed Him anyway.

We feel like Peter. We know a few things that we are familiar with. But if we leave everything that makes sense and follow Him anyway, God will fill our boats. Sometimes our boats may be full of water and we’ll feel like we’re drowning. Sometimes our boats may be full of the catch of men. Peter failed God miserably and he stood up for God triumphantly. I expect some of the same struggles and successes for Soyon and myself.

God’s plan seems to be constantly changing, refining, and morphing our lives into His perfect will as we seem to be dragging our feet, kicking and screaming, “No. Not yet. Wait for my time God.”

And Jesus says to not be afraid and just follow Him. We’re gonna try.

I read my blog entries from a year or two ago and the plans I had. I think about what’s happened over the past month. I keep thinking, “My, how things have changed.”

Please keep us in your prayers as we start this new phase of our lives we feel God has laid before us.


Read the rest of the story HERE.