Home Thoughts From Abroad

As part of our MAGL course in Colorado Springs, we were ask to prepare a summary of our “journey” with the Lord. This is Steve’s:

I was born in England, shortly after the war, the third of three children. That’s me on the far left in my new Christopher Robin coat. My father and mother both served in that war and expected that at its conclusion life would return to normal. It did not. Life remained difficult for ten years, and jobs offered meager wages and few chances for advancement. Post-war rationing that was short of vegetables and fresh fruit meant that the children were often sick. My father was an illegitimate orphan, my mother had lost her fiancé when he was shot down in the war. They met and married in two weeks, which was not uncommon in those troubled times. After they were married, they were separated by the war for five years. Hardship was nothing new to them. But they longed for a better life for their children, and immigrated to Canada in 1955.

My parents did well in Canada. My father was intelligent and industrious and was soon Managing Director of a medium-sized engineering firm. My mother was artistic and creative and found outlet for her talents in drama. Our middle class neighbourhood offered me opportunities for intellectual and musical growth. I joined a band as its lead singer, I wrote articles, songs and poetry and excelled in literature. My older brother graduated with two Master’s Degrees in Art and Film and became the leading expert on Canadian film.

My parents were moral and faithful people. While professing no personal faith, my mother was a lifelong Anglican and ensured that all her children attended church. My father remains in my mind the most morally upright man I have ever met. He also professed no personal faith in Christ until confronted with his own imminent death, but he was ethical and decent and schooled his children in the notion that “the truth will set you free.” I could have had no finer ethical guide to my life.

Following graduation from Teacher’s College at the University of Toronto, I took a job and settled in London where I met Pam. I had finally comes to terms with my own relationship with God, and accepted Christ by faith in 1976. Two months after my salvation I met Pam in a nightclub in London, Ontario. Before the evening was through I knew I had met my soulmate. Although it took Pam a little longer to come to the same conclusion, after a courtship that lasted fifteen months, were we married on March 11, 1978. With two well-paying jobs, good friends and good health we embarked on having a family with the highest expectations.

Despite some financial setbacks, such as losing our first house when the mortgage rate hit 19 percent in 1981, we were the objects of much blessing with three beautiful children, a good church home and a stable income. We began considering how we might give back to the Lord, and inspired by reading Daktar, by Vic Olsen, offered to go to Bangladesh for a year to teach and work at the mission hospital there. We dutifully went on deputation, and setting aside a good portion of our own money arrived in Bangladesh in July 1986. It was to be a disastrous year.

Pam contracted a local variant of hepatitis and rapidly lost both health and weight, finally stabilizing at around 78 pounds. The mission board saw no value in the teaching ministry I wished to have among the local children. They confiscated the salary I had set aside for that year, doling it back out to us in dimes, and removed a huge percentage for administrative fees. They refused to process our entry visas so that we were held as virtual prisoners in the country where we went to serve and couldn’t leave if we wanted to. We returned home broken and hurt, and determined to have a ministry among young people that would prepared them for the difficulties they would face on the mission field. Of the twelve young people in this group, ten entered missionary or pastoral service and all are still there.

We also undertook to renovate an older home that allowed us to live close to our church so our children could attend a Christian school. Our church ministries, jobs, renovations of the home we were living in and care for aging parents took its toll on our own marriage as we had precious little time that wasn’t serving someone else’s needs. We remained faithful to our church, which in return became increasingly spiritually abusive to us. We eventually left, but we were determined to continue serving the Lord in missions. We knew that we would never again put ourselves or our finances in the hands of a missions board, and began looking for an overseas ministry that would allow us some autonomy over our own finances.

A year serving at the Black Forest Academy in southern Germany was the payoff for all this hard work. We eschewed deputation and worked out an arrangement with Gospel Missionary Union to manage our own finances. The year was an expensive one, but filled with godly service, adventure and travel as our children were by now old enough to go for weeks on end in our camper and tent. Assuming leadership of the Junior High School at BFA seemed a natural progression for me and the year was productive and encouraging for our own ministries and our family life.

On our return to Canada we hunkered down for the final few years of our children’s adolescence. We gave up house renovation for these years, moved into a newer home that allowed our teenaged children a measure of privacy, and concentrated on raising our teenagers and developing our careers. During this time we saw our oldest son married shortly after the turn of the millennium. We also saw our two younger children enter university, graduate, and move west to Calgary to find work.

But we never lost sight of our own missionary vision, and shortly after our son’s wedding I got a chance to go to Malawi to teach teachers. Although organized by the Canadian Teacher’s Federation, a secular organization, the trip afforded me plenty of opportunity for personal witness and the development of my teaching and leadership skills. I took another missions trip to Serbia in 2005, and Pam also went overseas to serve as well on a couple of occasions. Every fall we planned a retreat on the shores of Lake Huron to talk and pray over the Lord’s will for our full time service.

Following one of these retreats where we were both convicted by the Holy Spirit that the time had come, I resigned from my teaching position in Ontario after 32 years and got ready to go overseas. We sold our house, and maximized our final house renovation that allowed us to buy a small apartment condo to retain a Canadian address and identity, sold off the majority of our belongings and flew off to Malaysia to undertake a new position at Taylor’s College in Kuala Lumpur teaching English literature.

Despite my misgivings at such a dramatic change in venue and teaching responsibilities, I found that my age and experience were not only welcomed in this new environment, but were seen as huge assets. My students enjoyed my avuncular ramblings and fatherly advice almost as much as they enjoyed the eclectic illustrations of my lessons. I became mentor to junior staff and my reputation for serving others lead to new and unexpected opportunities outside of teaching.

For the past 18 months I have forged a new position within the larger Taylor’s Group as Project Coordinator for Corporate Social Responsibility. The role has afforded me wide latitude to encourage Christian social enterprise and develop partnerships that further Christian efforts to care for their communities. I have catalogued and captured all of this activity on a website that continues to grow and connect all those who want to help with community service projects. This position in turn has led to the opportunity to take my Master’s in Global Leadership

My wife and I embarked upon our Master’s degrees in order to be more effective for God. Although I have taken two deferred salary leaves in my career, I did not use these opportunities for personal advancement, but rather sought to serve the Lord. With our children’s education, weddings and mortgage down payments behind us, we are finally in a position to afford our own education. Although initially enrolled in a degree in Intercultural Studies, we both jumped at the opportunity to segué into a degree in leadership as being more in keeping with our experience, talents, and opportunities for service. We find that taking these courses together gives us ample fodder for fruitful discussions, and helps to focus our ministries more intentionally on root causes and solutions, and the ability to see the larger spiritual issues as play in the problems we encounter. It has been a time of tremendous spiritual and personal growth and we have grown both closer to God, and closer to each other as well.

As our time in the East has grown, so has our family. We now are the proud grandparents of four growing grandchildren. Although our passion for serving God has not dimmed, recent events in our daughter’s life, and recent sickness in our own, has brought us to the place where we recognize that our ministry will have to be relocated closer to North America. We are now actively looking for ministry in the Caribbean, Central or South America. I will attend a job fair in San Francisco later this month, and Pam has several applications out to regional NGOs in need of her experience and training in health care. Although the easiest point of entry for me during this transition is through teaching, I am trusting that this degree and the concurrent courses I am taking for my principal’s qualifications through OISE in Toronto will allow me to have a ministry of leadership in an international or missionary school in the future.

I am sixty-five, and have been a Christian educator for almost forty years. This is a good stretch by any human reckoning. However, the Lord does not reckon as man does. In Ruth Tucker’s wonderful chronicle of missionary activity, From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya, we find the inspiring story of Eliza Davis George, the first Black missionary to Africa. When her mission board called her home at 65, Eliza refused to retire, started her own mission board, and continued her work in Liberia, planting one church a year for the next 27 years. When she finally retired in her nineties, the nationals she had trained carried on the work. She died at 100 years of age. I dare to believe at 65 that the Lord is not done with me yet either. I do not wish to outlive my love for God, nor do I wish to live longer than my useful service for Him. I am grateful for all that He has done through me in the lives of others, and ask only that I be allowed to continue to use the talents He has gifted to me to further His kingdom for as long as He allows. This is my prayer.

I had not planned on getting an iPhone for Christmas. My wife is sweet, but not THAT sweet! Besides, I had just bought myself a cute little Azus Zenphone 4 which fits nicely on my belt. Unlike my hip and much more tech-savvy son, I have no Apple addiction, and have been content to simply use whatever device comes my way. Taylor’s College in Kuala Lumpur, where I have worked for the last eight years, was kind enough to provide me with a Dell laptop many years ago with XP Professional as a platform. I used that happily for many years and only recently upgraded to Windows 7.

A couple of years ago we were all issued with iPads to facilitate a move to a more electronic pedagogy, an initiative that has had mixed results. We are certainly a lot more tech dependent in school than we used to be. But the phone market is very fluid over here, and Apple does not dominate like it does back in North America. At any rate, with my iPad in daily use, it is not like I am unfamiliar with the brand. And of course you would have to be a Tibetan monk to have missed all the hype and hoopla that has accompanied the release of each new iPhone since its first release seven years ago. Don’t you listen when my wife tells you I have no patience!

But exactly how I got my hands on one is story all by itself. Allow me to relate it to you. I report directly to the CEO of Taylor’s Education Group, the entity that owns the College where I used to work and several other schools as well, including the university, where I am now located. During the past eighteen months I have managed to forge an entirely new direction for this company, and taken them into corporate social responsibility in a much more integrated way.

A website, which has been the principal vehicle for linking together all the various community service projects together, is now up and running. Its construction has occupied a huge chunk of my time for the last year and a bit. You can have a look for yourself, if you are interested. There have been other successes as well, but I don’t want to beat my own drum, just to tell you a story about a phone.

CSR is a bit a new thing over here, and it has been a tough sell, to say the least. My CEO has been very supportive of my efforts, and he appreciates the fact that I don’t bore him with the details either; I just get the job done. He always takes the time to thank me for what I am doing, and today he gave me an iPhone by way of thanks. To his credit, he did try to give it to me in time for Christmas, and it is rather more my fault than his that I was across town at the time, and he had to leave before I got back to the office. Today he got back. Getting me the phone was near the top of his agenda.

My CEO is a very rich guy. I know that some people don’t like him for that reason alone. Personally I have no problem with wealth, and always thought it was more important to God what you did with you money than whether or not you have any. It is for that reason that I admire Bill Gates and rather dislike Steve Jobs. But I will happily take his phone, and appreciate how and why I came to have one. It is fitting that this should happen on 9 January. See? I’m not so out of touch as you may think.

I have been a teacher for a long time. To some that is a declaration of incompetence. G.B. Shaw famously declared that “those who can, do; those that can’t, teach.” I’m afraid that is the view of many, and perhaps you might have your own negative views to throw onto the pile. I admit that I have met and taught with some so-called teachers that would have been far better off training Dobermans, with whom they shared many personality traits. For myself, I have always found teaching to be the most intellectually rewarding thing I do, and far more challenging than most realize. I have also continued to push my own intellectual boundaries as far as I have been able. Taking an additional qualification (AQ) course through OISE at the University of Toronto this last term has been part of that push.

Frankly, I would just have soon put this off until another term. But I am in the midst of looking for a new job, and I needed to show that I am keeping current. So, like the other two courses I took this term, with Fuller and AOIC, this one turned out to be unavoidable. It also turned out to be hugely demanding. It the first place each forum post – and there were two a week – required an enormous amount of reading and viewing, probably in excess of three hours each. Then you had to post your reflections on this material and respond to your colleagues’ posts.

Given that there was a cohort of 50 students each posting their reflections and including their own suggested readings and videos, it all got to be too much. By the time the course was over there were three thousand posts to read and respond and watch videos and read articles from. And that was in addition to the readings and assignments of the teacher, who has been doing this for years and had a incredible rich treasure trove of resources to rely upon. Then there were the assignments, only one of which I will post on Google docs in case you are interested. See https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B5hmBgyBYRnfXzNIYjcyZWFsRVU/edit

In the middle of all this work, I got really, really sick, and as a result of that illness and stress had an accident. You might think that the result of all of this would be that I hated this course. Not so; in fact I loved it and would willingly take another if it were offered. It was great to be reading solely about educational materials again, and there was a certain synergy among this and the Fuller course I was taking that expanded understanding in both areas.

While recognizing that a cohort like this is a skewed sample, as only the motivated take these courses, there was a tremendous amount of knowledge and insight being offered and I was greatly inspired by my teaching colleagues who represent some of the finest examples of practical pedagogy anywhere in the world. Barb Knechtel, who taught the course, is a veteran like myself and still completely committed to excellence in all its forms. I learned a tremendous amount from her.

But I must confess, all of this took its toll on my health and ability to concentrate on just keeping myself safe in what can occasionally be a dangerous city. I am willing to admit that I failed to sufficiently count the cost that all these courses would have on me, and I was about to pay the price. In more ways than one.

There are a couple of Christian Bible Colleges in Kuala Lumpur that offer courses at the Master’s Level. The colleges here occasionally offer courses from visiting lecturers, and it was through this venue that we were privileged to sit under Dr. Ajith Fernando, Sri Lankan National Director of Youth for Christ and author of more than 20 books just last year. This year we signed up a course on a Christian view of social justice being taught by a very prominent leader in the Christian social justice movement, Amanda Jackson, the Head of Advocacy for the influential Micah Challenge. We were very fortunate to get her to Malaysia at a very busy time in her schedule. Nevertheless, as a previous post explains, I had no idea when we signed up for this course that I would be taking two other courses at the same time as well, or I wouldn’t have signed up. Then I would have lost out on a very significant learning experience.

The course was called ‘Speak Up or Stay Silent.’ Those of you who know me well know that ‘silent’ is the last thing anyone thinks of once they have met me. Poor Amanda had a hard time getting a word in! But it was wonderful being able to interact with Asians over this issue, many of whom struggle with the traditional deference to authority, even when that authority is clearly unjust and oppressive. The readings, as has ever been the case with our studies over the last two years, were deeply unsettling to preconceived notions of easy acquiescence to the status quo. From the deeply spiritual Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, by Quaker Ron Sider, to Generous Justice, by Timothy Keller, we were challenged by a more Biblical understanding of just how costly to Christ our compliance with injustice truly is.

In addition I worked through some of the supplemental readings by Walter Wink (Engaging the Powers) and David Korten (The Great Turning), monumental works of scholarship that have shifted the ground under my complacency with structural social sin. Perhaps in a later post I will explore some of these ideas. For now I will simple provide a link to the Google doc where my essay for this course may be found. Just click on the link if you are interested https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B5hmBgyBYRnfeEVYWXk5ZjBXSzA/edit

I even got to stretch my dramatic muscles in this course, as we were challenged to think through what any Biblical character might say on the issue of speaking up or staying silent. I chose my old (literally) hero Caleb, and came dressed and spoke in character, much to the delight of the class. Asians share my love of drama! As a special treat, we had the pleasure of Amanda’s company on a day off during the course and got to hear of her heart for social justice and her desire to see Christians have a greater impact in the development of the Millennium Development Goals for this hurting world. For all the burden of the work, Pam and I were both richly rewarded in fellowship and understanding.

Part of the reason that I have been so busy is the number of courses we have been taking for our Master’s. Pam and I recently changed our program at Fuller Theological Seminary from a Master’s of Intercultural Studies to a Master’s in Global Leadership, with an emphasis on Intercultural Studies. The difference is more than one of semantics. It is also a difference of six fewer courses, which at the current rate of progress, is about a year and half. It is also $10, 000 US less in expenditure. Each. We were easily convinced.

The downside was that instead of taking the semester off, which given my other responsibilities at work I was more than inclined to do, I would have to take a course to stay with the ‘cohort’ design of this program. The coursework was not particularly difficult. I find that now I am finishing up my second year in this program that I have no trouble keeping up with the readings. We both have Kindles, and most books are now available in e-book formats. Although I still relish the look, smell, and feel of a ‘real’ book, an electronic book is not only cheaper and easier to obtain in Asia, it is also easier to highlight and cite in the multiplicity of essays, book reports, and forum posts needed to complete online courses at this level. Kindle now has a website that compiles our highlights by text, in order, with hyperlinks to the text to see context. For students and scholars this is indispensible. I don’t know who is the genius at Amazon that came up with this, but if you are reading this I would like to buy you a drink.

We very much enjoyed getting to know the members of our cohort. We were subdivided into smaller groups for the forums and feedback that constitute the bulk of the interaction in this course, and I felt like I got to know them each a little by the time the course was over. We also like the fact that we will be working with this cohort for the next two years. We even get to meet them this coming January in Colorado Springs when we fly there to fulfill the residence requirement of this course. By then we have to have read half of the course material assigned. Another six books in the queue.

At approaching two hundred books in our Kindles, half of them for these courses, our tiny minds are just exploding with new ideas and concepts in Christianity. From Brueggemann to Boyle, Hiebert to Korten, Bryant Myers to Walter Wink, it has been an exhilarating ride. The conversations these readings have inspired between Pam and I have been very rewarding as well. But after this course, and the two other I took simultaneously, I am now mentally exhausted and need a little breather. Looking forward to a little light reading. Think I’ll try Dallas Willard’s Renovation of the Heart and Darrell Johnson’s Experiencing the Trinity over Christmas. That should be a nice break.

Regular visitors to this site may have noticed that Steve has been curiously silent of late. Bless you for noticing. I have not abandoned my obligations to whatever posterity may bring in our wake. I assume, I hope correctly, that these reflections over the last seven-plus years have been of some value, even if only to myself. Perhaps they have been of some value to you as well. Perhaps someday our grandchildren will read these pages and gain some insight into what constitutes a godly life.

My absence is easily explained, as the following half dozen posts will show, by a term that has been intense almost beyond endurance. I know in every fiber of my being, that God has called me to my present responsibilities. Yet I also know, that despite all the gifts He has placed in my care, like Paul, “We have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves.” Sometimes, in order to remind us that this work is of Him, and not ourselves, He allows us to be “Afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body” (2 Cor 4:7-9). Such has been my lot this term.

The burden of this term did not sneak up on me unawares. I saw it looming in the distance even as far back as the first of June, when I returned to Malaysia for my second year as Project Coordinator for corporate social responsibility for Taylor’s Education Group. I had already spent half a year in getting the outlines of a website together and building the framework for it in Sharepoint, a Microsoft product more suited to internal communications than external. The two great advantages of Sharepoint were that it cost nothing to use, as Taylor’s already had a license, and it could be easily ‘migrated’ to a more visually appealing and socially accessible site once it was constructed. As a previous post indicates, that internal site was launched at the end of July.

There were many, perhaps even the majority of voices, that advised me that I should be satisfied with this product and simply release it to the public, rather than keep it ‘hidden’ behind a staff and student login. I would not. It was not what I had envisioned, and it was not the site that our visionary CEO Dato’ Loy wanted. I took the product to him and asked for his permission to engage the services or a competent web vendor to translate this draft site to something that would show off his university, colleges and schools in the best possible light. It was a remarkably easy sell.

It was to be an incredible amount of work: web vendors to be vetted, ICT departments to be engaged and brought on side, marketing departments to be mobilized, community service coordinators in six other institutions to be consulted, cajoled, and encouraged to participate. There were hundreds of pages of text to be written and rewritten, hundreds of images to be selected and uploaded. Starting in August and finishing just three weeks ago, it has been by itself a huge undertaking. But as you will see in the following posts, it was hardly ‘by itself.’

Nor is it ‘done’ in the sense that there is still much to be edited in this new format and piles of new text and images pouring in daily. Despite its many features – the map is one of my favs – there are still things I want to add, such as a video marketplace, where participants can pitch for support, embedded right into the site. But it is done enough for me to finally get some much needed rest and recovery, and done enough for me to finally invite you, gentle reader, to have a look for yourself. This is the result of perhaps two thousand hours of labour. May God bless the labour of His servant in this, and may it accomplish the purposes which He intended.

Please see the IMPACT site at http://csr.taylors.edu.my

We had the great privilege of being invited to the marriage of  Raksmey, the young man who heads up the TWR Cambodia Youth Team to his sweetheart Rathmony. It was a wonderful celebration, a beautiful blend of traditions that honoured  both the Khmer culture and the Christian culture. The ceremony, which began at 7:00 a.m. was held in the chapel of the Phnom Penh Bible School and of course included breakfast and lunch.

The morning began with the community tradition of each guest carrying in a gift of fruit or food to present to the families of the bride and groom.

Both families then “met” and with the services of an intermediary, negotiated the terms of the marriage. When both families agreed that the marriage should proceed, the mother of the  bride brought her out to present her to the groom’s family. The members of the families where then introduced to one another and the congregation. With all of this settled we broke for breakfast and the first of many changes of wedding outfits for not only the couple but for the wedding part as well.

The next session of the ceremony was a pretty traditional western style wedding with a processional, the couple in white and Dad walking the bride down the aisle. After the vows, exchanging of rings and charge to the couple by their pastor; the marriage was sealed with a demur little kiss on the bride’s forehead.

While the next change of clothing took place, the stage was rearranged so that family and guests could present best wishes and a token gift of money to the happy couple.

After lunch, we broke for the afternoon while people went home to prepare for the evening reception which is all about eating, socializing, music and dancing. For the women this was the time to get your make-up done and dress in the most amazing outfits. The bride and groom again changed outfits regularly throughout the evening.

Having arrived home earlier than planned from our Redang trip, we were able to get a good start the following day for a day trip to Melaka. Our little rental car is a pretty comfortable ride so the three hour road trip went pretty smoothly. We stopped a few times along the way to snack on some local fruit and see some scenery. It was a little tricky to find the central area of town and we were quite amazed at how the city had grown since we were last there seven years earlier.

Malacca was a major trading port for ships from India and China. The Portuguese conquered Malacca in 1511. Later the Dutch took over in 1641 until much later the British empire ruled Malacca. The state finally obtained independence with the then “Malaya states” in 1957. There are still many reminders of this rich history to be seen.

We found ourselves parked just at the beginning of Jonkers Street, the famous Chinese shopping street so we wandered happily until we came to the town square. took the obligatory photos at Christ Church and then toured the ruins of St Paul’s Church enroute to visit a replica of the Melaka Sultanate palace. The design is based on the description of the palace from the sixteenth-century ‘Malay Annals,’ or ‘Sejarah Melayu.’ It is the only building of its kind in Malaysia, and it provides a rare glimpse of the ancient Malay kingdom that once flourished here. The palace houses the Malacca Cultural Museum, which includes many artifacts of that kingdom.

The rains held off while we walked along the waterfront and enjoyed tea at a little shop before we headed home. We decided to swing by Putra Jaya on the way home even though it would be dark. We arrived to find the place packed and the main street blocked for a large eFormula One event. Got totally lost attempting to find a back way in but did get there and it is every bit as beautiful at night with the bridges and buildings all lit up. We even managed to find the mall and had dinner at TGI Fridays.

Our time together went by way too quickly but we did have one final evening sharing dinner at another of our favourite outdoors dining spots; Oasis. In spite of really miserable weather, Al and Shelley are pretty laid back and took it all in stride. We were sad them off but excited that they would have four days to explore Singapore. Thanks Al and Shelley for taking the time to visit with us and for all of your encouragement and support during our stay here.

With three days booked at the hotel and four sets of snorkel equipment we were thrilled to find that although the name had changed, this was the same hotel we had loved seven years earlier. It is a beautiful hotel, on an incredible island and was fully staffed in spite of the fact that there were a total of eight guests, including us. Sadly it rained, almost literally, the entire time we were there, By the second day we decided that the waves were calling to us and it was warm and there was no lightning.

Steve rustled us up four boogie boards and we spent the next two afternoons riding the waves. We all had some pretty amazing runs. It was so sad to know that the beautiful coral reefs and colourful fish we came to see were only feet away but completely unreachable because of the rough seas. We had internet access, plenty of books, tons of snacks and drinks and a deck of cards and great friends with us. Not at all what we hoped for but it was fine in spite of Shelley falling on the steps and landing on her computer. And they got to experience monsoon rains up close and personal- enough for a life time.

It was evident that the weather was not going to change and it was now too dangerous to take a speed boat so we opted for the public ferry. It was an enclosed boat, large enough to seat over 250 so a safe option. It was a pretty wild ride with swells that appeared to be a couple of stories high. Almost two hours later, we were pretty ready to celebrate when the town jetty finally came in to sight. For a price, a significant price, we switched to an earlier flight that got us home to KL by early afternoon. When we looked down on the floods in Kuala Terengganu, we felt very fortunate to be heading back to a much drier KL.