In Search of Kingdom Living

Today, I felt sick as I woke up for Urbana. I stayed in my make-shift bed on the floor a lot longer than I wanted and got up late. I popped a few vitamins, ate a granola bar and went off to meet Elsie and her UW crew. We were going to meet up with Shane Claiborne and talk about community.

It was pretty neat sitting in the America Center with Shane and just shooting the breeze. We talked a lot about the structures of community and how to better facilitate the interconnectedness of community. Shane described the Simple Way as being like an onion in terms of its structure. There are no hierarchy/levels of decision making and leadership, but rather, there are different parts/layers of the onion. They practice consensus by one – where the community seeks consensus and allows for one person to have a different opinion, while everyone else will mostly agree about the decision for any given issue.

Another thing that came to mind was the sheer diversity of the people in Shane’s comunity. Would it ever be possible for my own community to have such diversity? Shane did point out the Bonhoeffer quote about community that I really must take to heart – The person who loves community destroys it, while the person who loves people create community. It was a great talk, and it helped me with my articulation of a communal theology. I’m thankful for Shane’s life, his ministry, and his willingness to share with us.

I ended up having lunch with the UW crew and some new friends (who were also friends of Shane’s) named Brian and Devin. We had lunch at this crepe place that served these gigantic crepes that were so good. After this lunch, went to my SECOND lunch with uncle Danny and auntie rachel. We had bar food at the renaissance grande and basically caught up with each other’s lives. They gave me some timely advice about persevering in my spiritual journey and to test the waters of my developing urban ministry passion. At the end of our meal, they prayed for me and we said our goodbyes. I’m thankful for their ministry in my life, as both of them have taught me in various ways since I was a little kid.

I dropped by the Asian American lounge and most people seemed to be fellow students. Too bad, I wanted to speak to an asian staff to talk about the asian cultural issues that I seem to be wrestling with so much.

I went back to the bookstore and exhibits and bumped into a bunch of UTCCFers and the yuens, bought a few more books, and went back to the hotel to crash… for 20 mins. Soon afterwards, I headed back to the dome (I missed the broken bread meal, heard it was basically like oatmeal/congee) and it was the start of the main session.

This time, worship included the Chorale of Reconciliation from montreal. Tim’s wife, Angela, was one of the singers, hopefully I can connect with them before I leave St. Louis. The first speaker was Ray Bakke, I was looking forward to his talk since I saw his picture on the urbana pamphlets. He shared about his life learning from the cities in the world and it was such a good affirmation about what God is doing in cities across the world. The next speaker was Saul Rauz, he shared similar stories that were very pointed to the need for urban missions, expect with a mexican flavor. I’m finding it to be an interesting experience by just listening to the speakers and soaking in their words. I tend to write lots of notes (and then blog about them afterwards), but this time taking Tebbe’s words to heart of focusing on God’s voice. I guess a biproduct is this alternative focus is the lack of material for this blog, but that’s miniscule compared to my growing relationship with the Lord.

The nightly prayer was done by a deaf person who signed the prayer. It was tremendously moving and I learned how to listen with my eyes and prayed along with her. I pray that we can all learn to listen with our whole beings to each other and to God so there will be less miscommunication in our lives.

After the session, there was an extended time that was focused on HIV/AIDS. Kay Warren shared a short testimony about how she met a woman with HIV, who would crawl to meet her (because she was so weak) and greet her. There was a surprise video from Bono who gave a short sharing to encourage us ‘Urbanites’ to work out our faith, especially through the lense of aids. His challenge is for us to be the generation to end it.

The last part of the night was when the rap group The Cross Movement led worship through their hip hop styles. Much like Urbana03 with the similar hip hop evening, it was great to see so many people get out of their comfort zone, and freely worship in a style of music that they enjoyed. I even saw an elderly korean woman ‘waving her hands like she just don’t care’. On the flip side, you couldn’t really hear the lyrics well, and many people couldn’t worship through rap so they decided to leave. When our worship is very much culturally bounded, it is tough to worship together. How can we address this issue?

When I got back to my hotel, I had to do some bus stuff with Dan to help ease our departure on january 1. I’m praying everything goes smoothly – if even one person is late, it’ll put us back significantly. After our ‘business’ talk, we got to chat about my urbana experience, especially how it relates to my future.

So far, I’m thinking that this Urbana has offered more ideas and possibilities, and prompting me to be more creative and daring with my life… but still no solid leads/answers. Need to pray/discern/seek God a lot more.