269 Mandarin

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Mandarin”, originally shared on June 21, 2023. It was the 269^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   I’ve been trying to learn Mandarin Chinese for about a year now. What does learning a language have to do with sharing the Gospel in a world that seems indifferent and even hostile to it? Today, we’re going to find out.

   I served a church in Monterey Park, very part-time recently for about 10 months, and I started learning Mandarin Chinese.

   I started learning because I wanted to show respect for the most spoken language in the community, to try to build bridges for peace in a time of rising tensions with China via the most spoken language in the world, to speak with our mandarin speaking literal neighbors at home, and to see if I could find some way to encourage what seems to be a growing Christian community both outside and within China itself.

   I started late last June. A native Mandarin speaking man in the congregation agreed to help me, but with one caveat. He said that, after age 30, it’s impossible!

   I thought, “win-win!” If I didn’t learn Mandarin, well, it was impossible. If I did learn Mandarin, I will have accomplished the impossible!

   I studied with apps, with printed material and on YouTube during the week. I asked him my questions after worship during the fellowship time on Sundays.

   And I was encouraged because at the beginning of my time learning Mandarin he said that if I studied for two hours every day, I would be able to carry on a conversation in three years. After I studied for 6 months or so, he said that if I studied Mandarin for two hours every day, I would be able to carry on a conversation in two years. And, after I had been learning a little longer, he said that if I studied for two hours every day I’d be able to carry on a conversation in a year.

   Progress!

   One time, he told me that my attempt at writing Mandarin characters was at about a third-grade level.

   I took that as being very encouraging!

   On the other hand, I know that my progress has been slow.

   Last Christmas, the English-speaking congregation that I was serving held a joint Christmas Eve worship service with the Mandarin speaking Lutheran congregation that meets in the same building. Some of the service was in English and some in Mandarin.

   Each group brought food to share afterward.

   I was standing by a pot of soup made from a Taiwanese recipe and a woman from the other congregation was standing nearby. I thought that, by then, I had made some progress. I attempted to strike up a conversation in Mandarin saying, “I speak a little Mandarin, but I don’t speak very well.” She looked at me and said, “I’m sorry, I don’t speak English.”

   In other words, my Mandarin pronunciation was so bad that the woman thought that I was speaking English!

   I’m continuing to attempt learning Mandarin now, but things like that happen to me often. My abilities are so limited that when I am in the presence of native Mandarin speakers, and I’m trying to think of the right words in the right order with the right tones, all of which are necessary, I sometimes freeze up. I don’t converse, I just say whatever trivial things come to mind, or I say things that apparently sound like I’m speaking in another language.

   That’s not so different from the way many of us, me included, come across when we try to share our faith.

   Sure, there’s the cultural thing. I’m a Lutheran of Norwegian descent and we still tend to exhibit some stereotypical Scandinavian reserve. I once heard someone ask, “What do you get when you cross a Lutheran with a Jehovah Witness? Someone who goes door to door but doesn’t say anything.”

   But stereotypes can be overcome. And there are many other factors that make it a challenge for Christians in the west to share their faith. It seems that the doors to the hearts of the people of the world are locked by sin, by ignorance, by pride, affluence, fear, and many other things.

   Jesus is the key that opens all of them, but God always uses some means to make that happen, and often it is through us.

   When people who are not Christians come to visit our worship services, we might as well be speaking another language. Our church culture locks them out. Do we share a Christian experience, or are we only using religious language? Do we offer a path for people who are outside the faith to help them move past our in-group jargon, or do we have no expectation that they will encounter the life-transforming power of God?

   One verse in the reading from the gospels that will be read in churches all over the world this coming Sunday points us to the answer, Matthew 10:24-39; it is the last verse,

³⁹ Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.

   If you visit a mainline church today, across denominations, most of the people you see will be older. At the same time poll after poll find that young people in general have a very positive attitude toward Jesus, believe in God, and have many traditional beliefs about God.

   Some say that the church has no relevance to young people because of their perception of its social values. But if that were true, “progressive” churches would be booming.

   It’s not Jesus that is the problem. It’s us and Church culture, our massive buildings and our human traditions. We want new people to adapt to us, to appreciate us.

   New people want to be engaged with the transformative power of God. They want to be a part of receiving the real transcendent power of God that cannot be found anywhere but through God’s Church.

   Cultural change is hard, especially when decline leads to fear, but in some ways, it’s the easier path. One of the arguments for starting new churches has been that it’s a lot easier to have a baby than to raise the dead.

   The Church is the Body of Christ and nothing will prevail against it as a whole. I certainly don’t think that it needs to be demolished and rebuilt. But it does need some fundamental renovation.

   What needs to change? Here are five things that, in my opinion, need to change:

   First, when I retired, my family and I spent almost a year as church nomads. We went to a different church almost every week. Most were Lutheran churches, many were churches of Sally’s denomination, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)/UCC denomination, and some were other kinds of churches. In many of those churches I could see why someone would want to join them. They had a great preacher, or a wonderful small groups ministry, or a wonderful choir, band, youth program, music program, school, or social ministry. But there was not one where I could see how someone would come to faith in Christ. There were no expectations or preparations for people to come from zero to faith. There were no mechanisms for it. That needs to change.

   Second, church culture is as foreign to people who were not raised in the church as Mandarin, or some other unfamiliar language. Acronyms, colors and seasons, candles and Bible readings, sacraments, jargon, and more lock people out. Will they stay long enough to use the key? Will they know the fundamentals of the Christian faith; will they know the creeds and what they mean? People tend to live up to expectations. If ours are low, that needs to change. 

   Third, the early church required three years of instruction before a convert could receive communion. People only see the meaning of stained-glass windows because the light is shining through them. How well do we prepare people to know the light that is Jesus Christ that is given to them?

   Fourth, people join and remain members of churches for many reasons. People find their need for belonging, for their identity, for reinforcement of what they think of themselves, for affirmation of their political and social views. What is the number one way in which churches describe themselves? “We’re a friendly church.” Churches, however, are Christian communities. Are we? Do we point people to Jesus in everything we do. Are we, as has been said, beggars telling other beggars where to find food? Are we consumer churches or missional churches? Do we have something that no other community group can give? If not, that needs to change.

   Fifth, you’ve probably heard is said that the church is not a museum for saints. It’s a hospital for sinners. But I think that the church needs to move beyond a passive open-door evangelism. We need to more resemble the paramedics than the hospital. We need to go to where the broken people are and invite them to receive the healing living relationship with Jesus Christ for which we were created. If we are not prepared to “Go”, that too needs to change.

   It’s not rocket science. We all have a question: “Have you heard about Jesus?” (Increasingly people have not. Many only know Christians from what they have seen in the media.) And we all have a story. It’s “How I became a Christian” or if we can’t remember a time when we weren’t Christians, “Why I remain a Christian.”

   We are all called, equipped with gifts, and sent to be ambassadors for Jesus. We aren’t Jesus. We point to Jesus. To paraphrase something by a rabbi that I once read, when I come to the throne of grace God isn’t going to ask me, “Why weren’t you Rick Warren?” God is going to ask me, “Why weren’t you David Berkedal?”

   Our Gospel reading from Matthew 10:24-39 today reminds us that God is not the most important thing in our life. God is everything. God reforms everything about us, renews everything empowers everything, defines everything. It is God alone that makes ministry happen.

   We have a message to bring to people in our time who want above all else to find themselves. They are going to have a rude awakening. But those who lose their life for the sake of Jesus will find it. The key words here, the ones that we proclaim, are for-the-sake-of-Jesus.

   We need repentance and renovation. We need to change a few things.

   And we can start right where we are. It’s not about a change of venue. It’s about a change in attitude. It’s about excitement for whose we are and what we believe and about the lack of the answer to everything that is plaguing our culture today.

   Our biggest challenge is when churches present ourselves as having Jesus and present Jesus as the one having all the answers.

   But the gospel, the good news, is that Jesus doesn’t have the answer. Jesus is the answer.

   Christian faith is dynamic, it comes from the one true living God and it is transformational.

   In China, Mandarin is called “the common language.” The common language of Christians is the Holy Spirit and in it and through it God speaks to the hearts of every person.

   Living the Christian life is like learning Mandarin. It’s hard and sometimes it seems like we are making no progress. But all that matters is the gift of faithfulness, that our true selves are found in God’s hands, as we see in Matthew 10:24-39,

   ²⁴ “A disciple is not above the teacher nor a slave above the master; ²⁵ it is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher and the slave like the master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household!

²⁶ “So have no fear of them, for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered and nothing secret that will not become known. ²⁷ What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops. ²⁸ Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, fear the one who can destroy both soul and body in hell. ²⁹ Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. ³⁰ And even the hairs of your head are all counted. ³¹ So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.

³² “Everyone, therefore, who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven, ³³ but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven.

³⁴ “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace but a sword.

³⁵ For I have come to set a man against his father,
and a daughter against her mother,
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law,
³⁶ and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.

³⁷ “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me, ³⁸ and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. ³⁹ Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.