Friday, January 20, 2012

How do non American Christians feel when they come to American church?

This is how one felt. This is how the founder of Gospel for Asia felt when he came to America from India.
"As I changed planes for Dallas at JFK International in New York, I was overcome at he sights & sounds around me. Those who grew up in Europe and Asia hear stories about the affluence and prosperity of America, but until you see it with your own eyes, the stories seem like fairy tales.
Americans are more than just unaware of their affluence-they almost seem to despise it at times. Finding a lounge chair, I stared in amazement at how they treated their beautiful clothes and shoes. The richness of the fabrics and colors was beyond anything I'd ever seen. As I would discover again & again, this nation routinely takes it's astonishing wealth for granted.
As I would do many times-almost daily-in the weeks ahead, I compared their clothing to that of the native missionary evangelists whom I had left only a few weeks before. Many of them walk barefoot between villages or work in flimsy sandals. Their threadbare cotton garments would not be acceptable as cleaning rags in the United States. Then I discovered most Americans have closets full of clothing they wear only occasionally-and I remembered the years I traveled and worked with only the clothes on my back. And I had lived the normal lifestyle of most village evangelists.....
From the moment I touched foot on American soil, I walked in an unbelieving daze. How can two so different economies co-exist simultaneously on earth? Everything was so overpowering & so confusing to me at first. Not only did I have to learn the simplest procedures-like using the pay telephones and making change-but as a sensitive Christian, I found myself constantly making spiritual evaluations of everything I saw.
As the days passed into weeks, I began with alarm to understand how misplaced are the spiritual values of most Western believers. Sad to say, it appeared to me that for the most part they had absorbed the same humanist and material values that dominated the secular culture. Almost immediately I sensed an awesome judgement was hanging over the United States-and that I had to warn God's people that He was not going to lavish this abundance on them forever. But the message was still not formed in my heart, and it would be many years before I would feel the anointing & courage to speak out against such sin.
Meanwhile in Texas, a land that in many ways epitomizes America, I reeled with shock at the most common things. My hosts eagerly pointed out what they considered their greatest achievements. I nodded with politeness as they showed me their huge churches, high-rise building, and universities. But these didn't impress me very much. After all I had seen the Golden Temple in Amritsar, The Taj Mahal, the Palaces of Jhans, and the University of Baroda in Gujarat.
What impresses visitors the most from the Third World are the simple things Americans take for granted: fresh water available 24 hours a day, unlimited electrical power, telephones that work, and a most remarkable network of paved roads. In India, the water, electricity, telephones, and transportation operate erratically-if at all. Communication is a nightmare. We must wait days for long-distance calls to go through. At the time, we still had no television in India, but my American hosts seemed to have TV sets in every room-and operating day and night. This ever present blast of media disturbed me. For some reason, Americans seem to have a need to surround themselves with noise all the time. Even in their cars, I noticed the radios ran when no one was listening.
Why do they always have to be either entertained or entertaining? I wondered. It was as if they were trying to escape from a guilt they had not yet defined or even identified.
I was constantly aware of how large-and overweight-most Americans seemed to be. Americans need big cars, big homes, and large furniture, because they are big people.
I was amazed at how important eating, drinking, smoking, and even drug use were in the Western lifestyle. Even among Christians, food was a major part of fellowship events.
This, of course, is not bad in itself. "Love feasts" were an important part of the New Testament church life. But eating can be taken to extremes. One of the ironies of this is the relatively small price North Americans pay for food. One study showed that in the United States only 17% of disposable income is spent on food. In India, it is 67%. When you have $10,000 to spend, that 17% works out to be a comfortable $1700. For the Indian family earning $200, 67% is $134. I had lived with this reality every day, but Americans have real trouble thinking in these terms.
Often when I spoke at a church, the people would appear moved as I told of the suffering and needs of the native evangelists. They usually took up an offering and presented me with a check for what seemed like a great amount of money. Then with their usual hospitality, they invited me to eat with the leaders following the meeting. To my horror the food and "fellowship" frequently cost more than the money they had just given to missions! And I was amazed to find that American families routinely eat enough meat at one meal to feed an Asian family for a week. No one ever seemed to notice this but me, and slowly I realized they just had not heard the meaning of my message. The were simply incapable of understanding the enormous needs overseas.
part 1 to be cont.

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