Guiding the Flock: Pastoring through Chickens

(Summary: the link between work, faith and community is explored.)

Today my friend Steve Snider introduced me to a chicken operation in northern Mozambique near the city of Nampula. The entrepreneur, Andrew Cunningham, was a pastor in Zambia. He had a long illness that left him weak for a few years and gave him a lot of time to think a pray. Strangely, he felt that God was calling him to go to Northern Mozambique and farm chickens. This is at the very least a strange call on a pastor’s life. Andrew knew nothing about chicken farming. He couldn’t speak the language and he didn’t know the place.

At the same time, God was working. My friend Steve was assigned a project to grow the chicken industry in Mozambique and so his job was to find farmers he could help. You’ll never guess but they ended up together. Strange, huh?

Meanwhile, a wealthy chicken farmer from Iowa was visiting Mozambique looking for ways to make a difference. He found a couple of worthy causes to donate to but nothing really captured his imagination and heart. He stopped in South Africa on the way back to the US for a little relaxation. By chance he ran into Andrew’s wife and daughter at a hotel and after a little conversation invited them to dinner. They never talked about chickens and everyone went home.

A little while later, Steve is wandering the USA looking for someone who knows something about chickens. He gets connected to the guy from Iowa. They are sitting talking and Steve tells him about this farmer in Mozambique named Andrew Cunningham. “Wait, did you say his last name is Cunningham?” Sure enough it’s the same family he met in South Africa.

A few weeks later Iowa meets Mozambique and the Pastor now Chicken farmer has an investor. Strange, huh?

But why would God call a pastor to go and raise chickens in a foreign land?

(A picture of Andrew Cunningham and his wonderful family.)

Andrew said to me, “What’s amazing to me is that the impact I am having as a chicken farmer is greater than anything I was able to achieve as a pastor in my own country. These people never had jobs in their life nor has anyone in their family. They are the first generation to work. We have to teach them everything related to successfully holding a job. While we are at it we teach about a good family life, raising kids, and of course living a Christian life. We are building a real community here. The message of Christ really resonates because it spoken in the midst of a loving community that cares for their body, mind and soul.”

We were walking from Andrew’s office to his home just down the hill. It was the end of the work day and there was a cluster of young men sitting on their motorcycles in the shade of a tree. Andrew stopped to talk to them and then returned to us.

“See that young man there? Frankly, he didn’t like getting up and having to report to work every day. The work experience was all new to him. His assignment was to go into the villages and help local farmers that are raising chickens for us. He is to provide technical assistance and training, answer questions, and be our representative. He did his work but without any enthusiasm. It was hard to get him out of his office into the field.

“All of a sudden, he got ‘turned on’. He saw the impact that his work was having on people’s lives. Their income was rising, their families getting healthy, wells being dug. Now he rushes to work and he is hardly ever in the office.

“God has always worked. That’s how creation began. We become fulfilled when we work. As Jesus said, ‘My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working.’ When we work we experience God in a new way. It is vital to Christian life. Getting turned on to work and turned on to Jesus is somehow linked.”

Here is the vision and mission statements of Andrew’s chicken operation:

NEW HORIZONS MOZAMBIQUE
VISION: We are God’s raving fans as we do business and farming His way
MISSION: We link with rural farmers in our community to produce THE lowest cost chicken in the world.
VALUES: We do everything:
· With Excellence
· On Time
· Without Waste
· With Joy

These are not idle statements. While I was there I met a farmer who raised 1.5 kilogram chickens in 28 days with a 1.97 food to meat conversion ratio. This is world class production.

Now that’s tending the flock!

Blowing in the Wind: The Life of a Mustard Seed

(This Lord’s Day I will share a little bit about my spiritual journey.)

A year ago when I was here I shared a couple of morning devotions with the evangelists in a village. These evangelists are the church representatives in surrounding sub-villages. They rise daily to make the two hour walk in the dark for the 5:30 am prayer time. I got up 20 minutes earlier, splashed water on my face and walked over to the church. They were always there already, in unaccompanied song as the faint light of morning was just visible on the horizon. It was beautiful.

One of these devotions I shared was about the mustard seed. It was a good thought then but it has come back to me again with more meaning than ever. In his very brief parable Jesus said,

(The kingdom of heaven) is like a mustard seed, which a man took and threw into his own garden; and it grew and became a tree, and THE BIRDS OF THE AIR NESTED IN ITS BRANCHES.

In this above quote from Luke (13:19), the whole parable is complete in one sentence. Appropriate, since Jesus is talking about this tiny seed.

When we read this, we usually think that it is about the fact of the small becoming big. This is true, but not the way we expect. To understand requires a little ancient Jewish culture. The mustard plant was actually subject to certain Jewish planting regulations. It could not be put in your regular garden because it was ‘unclean’ to mix it with other garden plants. In Luke’s version, the man actually throws it in the garden. In the other gospel versions they are bit more cautious, the seed is just planted – perhaps according to the separation regulations. Luke, who is great at telling parables, doesn’t want us to miss the point.

If you knew much about mustard, you would immediately see why. Mustard is a pernicious weed. It spreads like crazy. You don’t want it in your garden or anywhere near because it will take over.

In the parable, Jesus calls it a tree. This is an example of his humor (much like his carpenter humor about ‘If you have a log in your eye how can you take the sawdust out of your neighbor’s eye?’) The mustard plant is not a tree; it’s not even a respectable bush. But it is a large garden plant, big enough to support the birds. Oh, and that part about the birds. Notice it is capitalized above. That’s because my bible references it as a quote from the Old Testament. In Ezekiel, Israel is compared to the Cedars of Lebanon, stately and magnificent and a symbol of the country to this day. These are the cedars where birds can nest. Jesus is emphasizing his point: the kingdom of heaven is not about being stately; it’s more like a weed. You can’t control its spread as it invades gardens everywhere.

So, it is about the small becoming big, but as I said, not the way you might expect.

(The weeds – and the children – are the only things left growing in this field of maize. The rains failed this year and food shortages and famine are expected to be widespread as the limited harvest becomes consumed.)

That’s what I found last year. This year I am seeing more.

Because I am identifying with the mustard seed.

I am feeling very small: traveling alone in a large country, distant from home, distant from familiar things, on a project where it seems that I must be arrogant or crazy to even attempt. Yes, there are many days I feel very small.

Smallness is the mustard seed’s advantage. It’s how it is blown around. It’s why it’s an uncontrollable weed.

Important people in Tanzania are often called ‘big potatoes’ (kiazi kubwa). That’s a kind of seed, too. And it is a tough seed to move naturally. When I am holding on to my own way, wanting my familiar places and ways of doing things, and puffed with my own importance, then I am being a big potato and it is difficult for God to move me. It is when I become small that I am moveable. Then I become most usable by God.

I love gospel paradoxes. Smallness is the way to bigness.

(The failed crops in a poor family’s field.)

And I feel blown by the wind into strange gardens where in many ways I don’t belong. I’m being planted in ways that some might find both figuratively and literally ‘unclean’. At the same time I feel a new purity in my life that is exhilarating. I used to see purity as some kind of inner piousness. Now I see purity as something that is bigger than me that I can dwell in. It’s a place where my will is aligned with God’s purpose.

It’s a garden where weeds like me can thrive.

(Growing weeds highlight this picture of Iringa town…And for everyone a “time to every purpose under heaven.”)

From John’s gospel there is another brief parable of Jesus that pairs well with the mustard seed:

“The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit."

Here in the church hostel in Iringa town I have lain in the dark many nights, listening to the blowing wind. I often awake in the morning, yet again surprised by where I find myself.

Emmanuel, God with Us

In honor of the Lord’s Day, I thought I would like to share a little of the spiritual experience I am having here.

When people are spiritually oriented, those who have less tend to be more grateful for what they have than those who have more. This is one of the great paradoxes of life. Jesus’ words are literally true, “blessed are the poor” because the poor indeed feel more blessed.

As a spiritual person in this culture, I am exposed often to this sense of God’s great blessing, which is often described as miraculous. It has been a great joy to share in this experience with the people around me, many of whom are now praying for me and the success of this adventure to change peoples’ lives.

At times in my life I have experience ‘super-coincidences’; things that seem so improbable that I have attributed them to God. This has been happening frequently here; sometimes a few times a day. Some days the sense of God’s presence is nearly palpable. I feel God before me making a way and behind me watching over me.

Here are only a few of many examples:

• Driving in Dar es Salaam is incredibly slow because of terrible traffic. It can take 1-2 hours to get most anywhere. One day my Muslim taxi driver for the day noted that God must be with me because I took a series of unexpected phone calls from people when I was within blocks of their location. Once, we were driving past the driveway of the office when the phone rang.
  
• One day while stopped in this bad traffic I took a picture of a man’s bicycle because I had an idea for the bike factory (featured in other blogs). Hoping to sell me some of his bananas or get money somehow he highly objected and began yelling at me in the car, though he had been a few cars away when I took the picture. A policeman saw this and forced the car off the road to the shoulder. He saw a similar opportunity. He began making the international money symbol: rubbing the thumb and two fingers together. He wanted a bribe for us to continue. Unknown to me and by ‘chance’, two cars behind was Chilwa Kiliaki, a prominent local person, who has provided me a place to stay and a car to drive. Recognizing the car, she sent a man riding with her to intervene. Shortly after this she came herself, terrifying the policeman.
  
  
  

• Finding people like Chilwa that you can trust is difficult when they are from your own culture. There has come to be a practice of corruption and of taking money from donors, so this risk is real and great. One day I was given a ride by Gerald Mongella to a dinner meeting – he insisted even though I had other arrangements. Gerald is a trusted friend of many people I know and so I had lunch with him and his wife though there were no prospects for business. Out of kindness he took me to my dinner meeting. I had a great meeting. I liked the person I was meeting and his project. I was ready to begin doing further work leading to an investment. When Gerald returned get me, he warned me to not enter into business with him. Very reluctantly he shared that this business prospect owed many people money and that he was not to be trusted for he constantly lied. This in a city of 4.5 million people – and the man at the dinner meeting was from a city 200 kilometers away and just happened to be in Dar es Salaam when I first met him.
  
• Constantly people tell me that I am an answer to their prayers. They wonder how I could have found them since they never called me. (I am networking with many and walking randomly through their doors.) You might think that everyone is praying for help and so I am help to all – perhaps an answer to prayers but no real coincidence. One evening a Pastor told me no, it was more than this: that I am Jesus in their lives. The next day, three different people told me I was Jesus to them: one in the morning, one at midday and one at evening. I rejected this with all, but all insisted it was true.
  

You need to know that when you are supporting Cheetah, you are Jesus to the people whose lives we are touching every day. And the reverse is true, if you so much as give a cup of water to the least of these, you do it unto him.


The work of Cheetah is so important to these people; it brings such hope; it is so desperately needed. Some days I return to my room at night afraid that I will fail. That I will fail to receive the resources needed here, that I will fail to choose the right partners here, that I will fail to help these businesses succeed…so people’s lives can be changed.

So many have tried to address poverty and failed, how outrageous and arrogant is it to even try?

One night this burden was very heavy. I slept little and prayed during the night. The next morning after tea I returned to my room to gather my things to depart for the day. I felt God’s direct prodding to open my Bible – that he had a word for me. I let it fall open and my eyes fell here:

And if you give yourself to the hungry
And satisfy the desire of the afflicted,
Then your light will rise in darkness
And your gloom will become like midday.
And the LORD will continually guide you,
And satisfy your desire in scorched places,
And give strength to your bones;
And you will be like a watered garden,
And like a spring of water whose waters do not fail.

Amen and Amen.
(Isaiah 58:10-11)

(Below: the Great Ruaha River in Tanzania)

Arrival!

May 27, 2009

A day of travel, planes and airports completed. Then I stepped into the evening air of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, moist with the exotic breezes of the Indian Ocean.

What does it mean to arrive?

As if one has ‘made it’. As if the journey was merely an inconvenience between here and there. As if something was complete. No, to arrive is to start, or rather, to start anew. The journey continues.

The best arrivals are accompanied with warm greetings – and so I was. Chilwa Kiliaki, once a friend of a friend and now a new friend, waited almost an hour for me to emerge from the airport. Greeting me with a sign and a smile, we hugged immediately. She had prepared the way and took me to my hotel.


And so here I am in the Lutheran Hostel in Dar, thousands of miles from home. As if journeys are to be seen as going and then returning: home and away.

But that is such an unsatisfying point of view.

On this long day of travel I can’t help but think about the many journeys of my life. Indeed, I can’t help but rethink the old analogy of life as a grand journey.

Looking back I see this strange zig-zag path: a mish-mash of career shifts, changing objectives, new friends, different views on life, etc. My path could be that of a drunken soldier on a crooked road lost in the dark.

C. S. Lewis once wrote upon arriving in heaven or hell a person would look back on their life and see a straight line leading directly there. I see what he means. When I look back, the zig-zags fade and I see a straight line leading to right here and right now. Someone recently told me this is like tacking in a sailboat: the boat must go back and forth to overcome – no, use – the wind to get to its port of call. I have felt this before in my life – when what from this vantage point I was off on one of those side paths. It was a straight line to that place, too.

Maybe this is what that ancient prophet meant by ‘the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain.’ We just need the perspective to see it.

African Dance

“Lord, you are more precious than silver.” These are the words to a song we sang in Africa. We sang our songs. And we learned theirs.

The orphanage director we met said shyly, “The children ask me, ‘Why don’t you ask the rich people for money?’” She had gone through her city seeking help. She continued her explanation, “But that is not how it works. You cannot make them.”

Now hugging her heart she said, “They don’t understand.” I think she was referring to her children not understanding. She fears they will grow up full of anger. But maybe she was referring to the wealthy, maybe even to us, now standing before her.

But who can understand? Even a casual look revealed the scope of poverty to be beyond one’s resources or that of any accessible. The prophecy is at once confirmed, “The poor will always be with you.” And so one’s hand is pulled back as from a hot stove.

There is another way to look. Into the eyes.

And here is something different. Not the so-called ‘face of poverty’. Just a face.

We tell ourselves that the poor are somehow different. We are able to maintain that attitude by keeping them flat – in pictures on our TV and in junk-mail pleas. But when we see them face-to-face, our defenses are challenged.

Of course! They are people like us. They mourn their dead – but all too often. They are smart and industrious but under-educated and without resources. They feel pain and hunger; they rejoice and pray. They love but more freely. They are not two dimensional.

They are us. Why is this a revelation?

To look into the eyes is not ‘moving’. Rather, motion occurs naturally. Here in Africa there is often music and with it, joyful dancing. At first one stands at the edge like a nervous teenager at a school dance, only watching. Then your head starts nodding. Your hands start clapping. Without thought your feet are soon moving and you are joyfully dancing, too. That is what it is to look this other way – to look into the eyes.

And this is important: You stop giving and start sharing.

It is in the nature of dancing, naturally.

To say we were on a mission trip is a confusion of reality. It means we went to take care of them. Yet the most common statement made by people on such trips is that they got more out of it than they gave.

Yet that is still deceptive. This is not just a balance of trade between givers, with one delivering goods and the other spirit. No, it was literal and in every way. The words we used most by far were, “Asante sana”. Thank you very much. We said this constantly. The African’s were always giving. No, not that. They were sharing generously; even out of their deep need. We constantly felt a sharing that was joyful and energetic and caring and generous and what can be said? It defies description. It was so warm it would make us ache.

The other thing about dancing is that it is best done with partners and in a group. And that’s how it was. We were together in sharing. And so the energy of the dance was greater than the sum of the dancers. That’s how a good dance feels. The music unites the dancer’s energy and brings them to a place they cannot go alone.

It was truly a spiritual experience. We came to know something we could not learn any other way. We sang new songs in new tongues. We danced new dances.

And we saw in a new way. We learned the meaning of some other words from that prophet, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you or thirsty and give you something to drink?” It was both the unrighteous and the righteous who say these words. Neither recognizes the Lord in the needy, but one acts because they see their brother in need and so naturally they move. Not guilt. Not giving. Not apportioning. Sharing. We looked into their eyes and saw in a new way.

Our eyes were opened.

There once were two brothers. The older brother was wealthy and alone and the other poor, with many children. On the day of his death, their father divided the land evenly. That night, the older brother lay awake staring into the darkness. He said to himself, “This is not fair that our father divided the land evenly. My brother is poor and his family in need. So he is not shamed, I will rise early and move the property marker.”

The younger brother also lay awake with sadness. He said to himself, “Why should I receive this land when I already have much joy. I will rise early and move the marker to add joy to my brother.”

In the morning they met at the marker and fell into each other’s arms, weeping.
It is said that they built the city of Jerusalem at that spot. And it is in this place of sharing that we can build the New Jerusalem. It is a place of abundant generosity, collective joy, and endless song. We saw it with our own eyes.

And we couldn’t help but dance.