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How did your wife feel about it? And how did the kids feel about it?

Linda's my hero. She's remarkable, and she's always cared about the poor. Part of my regret is that she doesn't have a house with the lush gardens and the garages and the size, the rooms, and she's never complained once about the home we live in. We bought a house here, it's a remarkable place. It's a little cottage. It cost us $40,000. We bought it in '97 and fixed it up. She's never complained once. She considers this our home. My children have felt wonderful about the move and have hit the ground running. We've had some awkward moments. People are distrusting of white people, but it's understandable.

You write, "Nothing kills momentum in a ministry of mercy like confusing a motive of serving with saving." What do you mean by that?

We have a tendency in the evangelical church to think that we're doing the saving, versus seeing Christ as the one who saves. Should the church save the poor, the lost? The question is, should Christ save the poor? Should Christ save the lost? We are his instrument, but that gets confused and therefore we have expectations that people are going to respond, when in actuality all we've been called to do is to be obedient.

You have a phrase that you like to say at the end of your talks. "Go out and make a mess."

A lot of people don't like that because they think being messy is not what Christians are about. I would say that being messy is everything that Christianity is about. You can't be a person who finds a savior if you're not a person that needs a Savior. And once we find a Savior we have a habit of thinking that's done. Now I'm saved, everything works out. The truth of the matter is, I got worse once I came to Christ. Most of us, if we really are honest would say, I'm still an imposter, I'm still pretending, I'm still a Pharisee, I'm still full of self righteousness. Those are the things the gospel challenges every day in our life. I'm saying to people, it's okay to be a mess. That's what your nature is. Trust Christ with it. Quit trying to make him like you, and give in and trust him.

The mega-church model is built around a principal called homogenous units—the idea that people of like mind and cultural experience like to congregate with each other. Where do you see the Bible differing from our practice regarding the poor and racial plurality?

I think that the North American church has been given the American Dream and a marvelous opportunity economically. There's no greater place on earth to live. At the same time, mono-cultural experience is biblically not the highest expression of the demonstration of the gospel. If we look at heaven and say "on earth as it is in heaven," we see the plurality. Nowhere on earth is there a plurality like the North American continent. We have a melting pot that has, unfortunately, embraced the myth that the dominant-cultured people are better people. We've embraced it subtly, but the church has bought it hook, line, and sinker.

What has happened over the course of the last hundreds of years is that white people have congregated together and they've separated themselves from the growing plurality. Now, it's not so evident in the northwest where there are other cultural challenges and hatred that goes on, but the gospel has to attack at those points of contest. And that's where we've got to dismantle this idea that being together with all the same kind of people is God's desire. It's the desire of the North American church to make money and to get bigger, but growth isn't always the way the gospel works.

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July (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48