Week 1 Winter Olympic Thoughts

Tomorrow will mark the end of the first week of the Turin Winter Olympics. Due to unforseen reasons like this past weekend's stomach flu, I've watched more of these Games, especially between 10:00 p.m. and the early morning hours, than I had expected. The older two children's sleeping challenges have also had me sitting with one or the other in the living room every night.

One of my impressions is of the influence of the Chinese Olympic team. It's only been the last couple of Olympics where the world's largest populated nation even participated in. I hadn't known that China produced world-class figure skating couples or speed skaters. The youngest athlete at these Olympics is a Chinese snow boarder who is only 13 or 14. This development in sports exemplifies the growth of China on the world scene in all areas, including world mission. I hope that at least one of my kids will become fluent in Mandarin, as I think that this will eventually become the 2nd most important language of business, after English.

Another impression was that yesterday's short program of the men's figure skating was one of the most inept that I've ever seen. I loved hearing the French announcers on the Eurosport network use very nuanced expressions like "peu brillant" to describe it. At the beginning, there were some falls by a number of the favorites. The announcers speculated that this resulted in a "pression négative" (negative pressure) on those who had little chance for a medal to extend themselves to their maximum to produce a once-in-a-lifetime performance for the gold. However, they all seemed to fall in going beyond what they were realistically capable of doing.

As more and more fell, the announcers speculated that another phenomonen took place: some coaches counseled their skaters to take less risks than that which was already scheduled. However, by playing it safe, after having already practiced at a higher rate of risk, they actually perform worse than if they had stuck with the level that had already been planned.

In ministry, there can be the danger of playing it too safe. I think that living a life of dynamic faith in Christ involves some risk and living on the edge. Ministry that gets too safe and predictable risks to take away the spiritual edge that we may have. While on the bus and metro today picking up more flyers for the March series of La Fonderie, I got back to Pete Grieg's book Red Moon Rising (Relevant Media: Lake Mary, FL, 2003) on the establishment of the 24-7 prayer movement. His following words strike me:

Looking objectively at the congregations Samie and I had poured ourselves into for the previous eight years, although they had grown, they were a million miles from the book of Acts. There had to be more to discover. (p. 52)

I also felt trapped in a life that was increasingly being dictated to me by a diary. I think there's a danger, spiritually, for many of us that if God packed up and left town today we might not notice until tomorrow, or worse. We may strategies and structures that can easily bypass the Holy Spirit, strategies for funding, strategic ways of prioritizing time and advancing the kingdom which were ignored completely by Jesus. He allowed the woman with the bleeding problem to divert his 999 call to a dying girl's bedside. He never established a Bible school and never even thought of a name for his ministry. He prioritized people without influence, offended those with power and apparently missed major ministry opportunities in order to picnic and pray. (pp. 52-53)

I'm not saying that it's wrong to be organized. God gave us common sense and calls us to be good stewards of our resources. But if our techniques for time management, people management and money management become automatic, we may well lose the dynamic leadership of the Spirit, who is like fire and wind, a bird in flight or a quiet whisper in the wake of calamities. (p. 53)