Our First Trip to the Mainland!

The last couple of months, we have been trying to confirm and plan our first Furlough trip for this summer. We are in a unique situation as missionaries on the Kona Coast. While we are bi-vocational, and receive a housing allowance from the church, it is still absolutely necessary to raise support (like most missionaries) in order to do the work God has called us to do in one of the highest cost of living locations in the country. We are so grateful for every one who has connected to our story and work, and furlough is a great opportunity for us to share (in person) all that God is doing and continues to do in Kona. Needless to say, we're really excited to see you and wanted to share where we will be speaking.

Furlough Schedule

June 27-28: Chicago/Bourbonnais area (Place TBD)

July 4-5: Southside Church of the Nazarene; Richmond, VA

July 12: First Church of the Nazarene; Nashville, TN

July 19: Hasting Church of the Nazarene; Hastings, MI


While we have scheduled several churches for Sunday mornings, we are hoping to gather with several smaller groups during the week or weekends for more personal engagements for us to share our story with you; and also to celebrate what God is doing in your life and the life of your community. If this is something you're interested in hosting, please let us know!

We'll be sharing more in the near future – both about furlough and ministry updates/stories – but for now, we are excited that furlough will be a time for us to connect with you, perhaps rest a bit, and see family (some of whom have never met Micah). See you soon!

Ordination Testimony

Joy and I just returned from District Assembly where I (Eric) was ordained as an Elder in the Nazarene Church. I was blessed to have Joy kneeling with me and Pastor Ryan Fasani praying a blessing over me. I was asked to write a brief, one page, testimony for the ordination service this past Wednesday night. It was not used during the service, so I thought I would post it here for anyone interested. Enjoy!

Ordination Testimony

Eric Paul

April 8, 2015

I received a call to ministry at a young age. My grandparents were Missionaries on a Navajo Reservation in New Mexico. Grandpa was a giant in the community, not only standing taller than most, but respected as one who had, for years, given himself away wholeheartedly to the people and community who desperately needed life and hope. It's amazing the kind of work that can be done when you step out of the way for the sake of another. He died when I was ten years old. A month later, my call to be a missionary was confirmed and I was baptized. 

While the direction of my life was known, I had no clue how this story would be told; where I would serve or even in what role. Pastor? Missionary? Teacher? Something altogether different? While in school I became convinced that God's call is always a call to discipleship first. Like Peter at the water's edge, Jesus calls and because it is Jesus and no one else, I follow. All of life is directed toward this person and is formed by that life. The life of a disciple is a life on the way to discovering the Kingdom of God all around us. To walk and pray Heaven on earth. And Jesus' path seemed to always point toward the edge of society, to the fringes, to the poor and powerless, to those abused, left-out, and forgotten. Jesus' life tells us that the Kingdom of God is found there and with those people. And so, I understood a part of my call would be a constant seeking of the Kingdom of God on the margins. 

Phineas Bresee understood this downward movement of the disciple when he said, "Our church is a missionary church. It knows no difference between home and foreign fields- for all fields are near." And when I read these words from our founder Bresee, I knew that there still might be a place for me within the Nazarene Church: "The Gospel comes to a multitude without money and without price, and the poorest of the poor are entitled to a front seat at the Church of the Nazarene." 

Christ's love meets us all uniquely. I struggled with the church for many years, even as a Pastoral Ministry major at Olivet. In a way, all pastors should. There's a marked difference between what God desires for us to be and do and the modern state of the church. I walked through church doors, looked around, and didn't see Jesus. When I saw the church, I couldn't tell the difference between Christians and the rest of the world. It seemed self serving, existing for its own sake rather than for God's mission in world. We were just as violent, power hungry, and greedy; only we hid under an umbrella of grace while not allowing that grace to teach us a different way. 

And yet, Christ's love would meet me. It would meet me in the steadfast commitment of my wife, who ironically was on staff at a church. And soon after, Christ's love would meet in the face of the poor of Nashville, who I witnessed struggle for life and yet taught me so much about faith and dependence. Christ's nonviolent love met me in the streets of Palestine, where I saw Palestinian Christians opposing racism and violence in midst of state oppression. And in all these places, there was a steadfast commitment to the church. It seems to me that God created the church to be different, to be holy, to show the world a different way to live altogether. And then I realized that Jesus' proclamation of the Kingdom of God doesn't make sense without a people who gather around that message. And it's these people, the gathered we call the church, who are participating to bring about something entirely and utterly new to our communities. And I want to be a part of that newness.

Ordination is my commitment to the pursuit of the Kingdom of God through the Church of the Nazarene. It is the answering to a call, and it is not everyone's call. But it is mine. So, I'm thrilled that my story has brought me to this moment, and under the recognition and affirmation of my calling and gifts in and for the community. So, I ask for your continued prayers and support as we all learn to give ourselves away to those around us.

Lessons in Culture and Discrimination

I (Eric) participate every month in a gathering of social service agencies and community members to discuss community relationships and needs. It's a cooperative group that intends to communicate openly about community issues and work together for a more healthy Kona. This video was passed on to all members, and we thought it appropriate to post it to the blog. We think this conveys well the kind of discrimination that takes place on the islands toward a particular minority group. I work every Wednesday in a gardening project with friends from the Marshall Islands. We know there is some foul language, but the point of the video is important enough to post.

Renovating Holiness Essay

Last year, Pastor Ryan and I submitted an essay for the new book Renovating Holiness that explores a younger generation's understanding and experience with holiness and sanctification. Below is the essay that was published. It is at times more theologically driven this most of our blog posts. You can check out the book here.

“Holiness Now: Resurrection and Shalom on the Big Island”

Ryan Fasani and Eric Paul

Hanu (hah-noo), an unwed mother of two young children, is a ‘local’ here—she’s of Polynesian descent, grew up in Hawaii, and considers the culture of the Big Island normative. Hanu conceived her first child as a teenager.  Under the pressures of motherhood, part-time employment, living in a multigenerational home, and being single, she chose to complete a GED rather than high school. Her current boyfriend (and father of her second child) works for a hotel when not serving scheduled, three-month stints in jail. Cost of living here is beyond their means and they suffer from health complications and family dysfunction. We have found Hanu’s story very common.  As pastors on the Big Island of Hawaii, we ask: What does holiness look like for Hanu?  

The doctrine of holiness is the church's articulation of Christ’s life being enacted, through the power of grace, in the world.  The life of holiness is the embodiment of that truth.  However, our observation is that the doctrine has largely ignored the Christ who came preaching the Shalom Community as the Kingdom of God, and thus has not been helpful for realizing embodied holiness.  We contend that holiness is the embodiment of Shalom in a particular place with particular people—where Christ’s life has become our own.  Consequently, holiness is both contextual (to a particular place) and communal (to a particular people).  We find it helpful to use the biblical vision of the Shalom Community (Micah 4) to understand embodied holiness, which is to say that the biblical vision of a particularly placed people will help us better understand how we ought to envision holiness for Hanu here and now—in our community. 

Hanu and the Holiness of Our Past

Holiness has been taught as a moment of entire sanctification rendered by the grace of God in an individual's heart.  Nazarene understanding of where sanctification occurs is indicative of where we locate sin: in the heart of the individual. This is why the adage “justification is what God does for us, sanctification is what God does in us” is so fitting. Sin is rooted in the human heart, and therefore, sanctification also takes root in the human heart. Unfortunately, with this understanding, holiness can only be understood in contrast to an individual’s (non-communal) breech of (non-contextualized) faithfulness.

In this way, the Nazarene church has focused on Hanu and her boyfriend’s litany of personal sins: premarital intercourse, criminal activity, poor financial stewardship. The Good News for Hanu, from this perspective, is that God forgives and can do a sanctifying work in her.  The bad news is that it leaves unaddressed a majority of Hanu’s life and therefore a majority of the healing God desires.

The scriptures are clear that God alone is a holy, self-giving God, and desires to sanctify Hanu's whole realm of existence (Colossians 1). Locating sin and sanctification in the heart of the individual certainly offers the potential for a narrow “inner cleansing” but it ignores the totality of God’s desire for reconciliation, which includes the breeding ground of Hanu’s sin. We simply cannot separate the experience of holiness from all that is implicated in the holy self-giving of God.  We contend that this self-giving and the Kingdom preached by Christ are all-encompassing—implicating the complex web of relationships and influences in Hanu’s life. Where Hanu lives, her social and familial network, and the cultural structures that govern her life are all environments of influence and sinfulness.  Sanctification, then, must be dislodged from the very limited locale of the heart so that it can be realized as broadly as God desires.

But Hanu’s life (and sinfulness) is unlike anyone else’s. So too should sanctification be unique to her experience.  Sanctification must be conceived broadly enough to included Hanu’s whole sphere experience and particular enough to be realized in her immediate, unique context. Hanu’s story teaches us that holiness is necessarily both communal and contextual.

The Shalom Community of Micah 4

Holiness, far from only being the state of a believer’s heart, is God’s move to restore the intricate web of relationships—personal, social, political, economic, etc.—in which we all participate. But if God is actively restoring these relationships, then we must be able to speak in terms of restoring concrete interpersonal, socio-political and even economic relationships. Inversely, we must speak of the brokenness-needing-healing in each of those relational arenas. We must speak of communal brokenness, and the communal context of restoration.  Scripture is ripe with such articulation.  Take for example Micah 4:

In days to come…

²   many nations shall come and say:

‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,

   to the house of the God of Jacob;

that he may teach us his ways

   and that we may walk in his paths...’

³ He shall judge between many peoples,

   and shall arbitrate between strong nations far away;

they shall beat their swords into ploughshares,

   and their spears into pruning-hooks;

nation shall not lift up sword against nation,

   neither shall they learn war any more; 

⁴ but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees,

   and no one shall make them afraid;

   for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken. (Micah 4).

In general, the prophets proclaim words of disaster and optimism, grief and comfort, apocalyptic end and future hope. But they refuse to divorce “spiritual health” from the totality of health in communities. When we read and engage prophetic literature, we must read it through a totalizing “lens of life”: no aspect of the human experience is excluded from the blessings and ultimate judgment of God.  As such, three important aspects of Shalom are apparent in this prophetic vision.

First, this is a religious text.  God, judgment, and a divine voice along with particular references to “the God of Jacob” and “Lord of hosts” are all clear references to a religious tradition known as Israel.  But the vision itself is hardly “religious,” as if religion were a sector of life distinct from economy or politics.  Instead, God’s restoration is concrete and practical, a matter of worship and work.

Second, Micah gives us a broad picture of what the Kingdom will look like and it’s not only the restoration of individuals.  The restoration encompasses individual estrangement from creation, poverty, starvation, and violence.  God’s sanctifying power reaches into every facet of communal existence.

Third, the prophetic vision is a universal hope but not a universal reference.  In other words, the particularities of a this-world, communal context are evident.  Though there are references to “nations far away” and “many peoples”, the peaceful community envisioned is not like every community—it is a particularly placed people.  They are familiar with an agrarian lifestyle (“ploughshares”), which is to say they are not nomadic and make a living through cultivating soil.  They have a history of combat and wield a particular arsenal of weapons (“swords and spears”).  Among them are orchardists (requiring “pruning-forks”) and vintners or winemakers (“sitting under their vines”).  They may have a history of being the underdog, likely a reference to their small size (“strong nations far away….make[ing] them afraid”).  We get the image of an agrarian community with a non-aggressive foreign policy or expansion tactic, relieved to finally put up their weapons to more fully invest in peaceful and satisfying pursuits of stewarding creation.  

The holiness vision of Micah 4 is not limited to God’s sanctification of the human heart; instead it is a holy restoration of all the complex facets of a particular community, in and between the concrete lives of neighbors in a particular place.  Holiness is communal. Holiness is contextual.   

Holiness Now

So how does Micah 4 help us understand sanctification for Hanu? Micah clearly understood the distinctions of the envisioned community.  In order to envision redemption and sanctification, we need to know that which is broken (needing healing) and unholy (needing to be sanctified).  We can start, then, by better understanding unique brokenness and sin in Hanu’s context.   

Many of Hanu’s relationships are strained or broken, creating immense stress, anxiety, and fear.  The consistency necessary for marital health is abruptly interrupted every few months when her husband is in jail—vacillating between single parenthood and dual parenthood.  Her living environment is not conducive to conflict resolution because of the proximity to multiple adult family members. Discussions often turn to arguments, arguments to abuse.  And each sphere of relationship is negatively affected by her material poverty. 

She also suffers from multiple socio-political systems in Hawaii that have failed: a food system that promotes disease and unhealthy bodies, a punitive criminal system that dismembers families, an education system that cannot accommodate unique family needs, an economic system that exacerbates poverty, a governmental aid system that serves as a disincentive to gainful employment, and a cultural system that is often ethnically oppressive.

As we learn more about the complexity of Hanu’s brokenness, we begin to see multiple interlocking spheres.  When one sphere is stressed or broken, the pain (or sin) reverberates into all other spheres. We believe that God cares and longs to restore the brokenness in each of these interrelated spheres so that Life and sanctification may be fully expressed.

The question of holiness could be posed thusly: what if these relationships could be healed?  We contend that this is the abundant, shalom life that God desires.  When we abandon the belief that sanctification addresses the sinful heart alone and begin to believe that the self-giving holy God that we worship desires the complexity of our existence to heal and be made new, then we begin to harness the imagination of Micah and the Shalom Community.  Sin, we believe, is a “heart issue” and a “systems issue” and a “relationship issue” (Ephesians 2), thereby making sanctification holistically relevant and necessary.  

For years, the local church created specific programs to heal suffering in each sphere (i.e. food pantry or ESL classes).  But, in Hanu’s case, her experience and suffering from sin is unique to her context, rendering generic programs partially effective at best.  Because Hanu’s sin is both internal and systemic, she suffers from a web of brokenness, rendering charitable, one-dimensional solutions too narrow and mostly unhelpful.  The only “solution” we can imagine for Hanu’s convolution of sin is the slow and gentle inclusion into a worshipping body that takes seriously God’s call to Life and holiness in every facet of existence. 

As is the case in Micah 4, only a self-giving community bent toward holiness can envision and ultimately realize holiness for Hanu’s broken context.  Only a community of shalom can realize a radically different (set apart, holy) way of life together—from the way we consume and clothe ourselves to how we interact with the broader market economy, from the way we nurse our babies to the way we adopt unwanted children, from the way we embrace a diversity of cultures to the way we worship one God, from the way we use our ploughshares for farming to the refusal to bear arms. These are part of the Shalom Community—these are all part of Hanu’s sanctification. We find that we can not talk of Hanu’s holiness apart from the holiness of the community in which she lives. Imagining and enacting such a community contextualizes Hanu’s life while caring for both individual and communal growth in Christ.

What We're Reading

A glimpse into our free-time in the past few weeks. You can click on the picture to learn more about the book:

Kid Pictures

Balance

Sometimes taking a new job is a direct correlation to dissatisfaction at a current job. We are not happy with how things operate, or have a personality conflict with a boss. Maybe the hours aren't right or the "work" unfulfilling. The reasons are plenty.

Two years ago Eric and I were wrestling with a job offer in Hawaii. If you've been following our blog through the years, you'll remember that this was indeed a wrestling match for me. I did not want to go. In one of our video-chat interviews, Pastor Ryan asked what my ideal job would be. I remember something like, "If you could dream up the perfect job, perfect work/home balance... what would that be?"

Admittedly, my imagination was a little out of practice. But I remember describing the job I was currently holding, in Nashville. And somewhere in that conversation he said, "Oh, you already have it. You're not looking for a change?" Nope. Eric and I had a great balance of work/family. We were both engaged in fulfilling work. For the first time we were living and working in the same neighborhood, a deep conviction of ours that we had just managed to bring to fruition a few months prior. I was using my giftedness and my passions. I had jumped in with both feet to answer the question, What does it mean to live here? To be part of this community? 

Fast forward a few months, we did indeed take the call to move to Hawaii (shocker, right?). My training is in education and in my experience, those jobs have been easy to come by. Maybe not the "perfect" job, but a job nonetheless. Wrong. Eric and I worked to find a good work/home balance, surely, we could implement what we had already learned. Wrong. We had a second child... but people do that all the time, it wouldn't be that different. Wrong. And I had the recent experience of jumping into a community, meeting moms, and making that city a home. New city, same expectations. Double Wrong.

I've come to identify some of this as naivety. Some of it as LIFE. And some of it as ignorance of the new 'job' as missionary. From the outset, we knew our first year would largely be making Kona our home. I've learned that knowing in my head I'm making Kona home and feeling in my heart I'm making Kona home are two very different things. Some of making Kona home has involved the work of attending community meetings, meeting community workers, becoming familiar with social services, and other things that feel like work. Then there's the other part of making Kona home... the part that collides with my ignorance of what it means to be a missionary. I probably should have had someone scream at me, "Don't even think about jumping in with two feet! Observe for a while. YOU, my friend, are an outsider." My unrealistic expectations lead to frustration that could have been lessened with more realistic expectations.

Recently, at a Christmas gathering, a long-term missionary with a few decades of ministry experience told me something I didn't expect to hear. She said, "In my experience it takes 4 years to make a new culture your home. And if there is NO language barrier, it could be lessened to 3 years." WHAT?! I've been marinating on that for the past 6 weeks and it is helping change my attitude. I am viewing the work we've done so far as progress in the bigger picture instead of an unmet expectation. And when I think about it like that, I am so incredibly hopeful for our future; for the future of Mission:Kona Coast. Because the reality is we have done work this year. Formational and foundational work that will help us build a strong ministry. Heart work and marriage work and family work.

Eric and I have recently hit a new stride, we have a fantastic balance of sharing work and kids. We have more energy (likely related to no longer having an infant). Instead of identifying a hurt in the community and logging is as head knowledge, we are beginning to get involved and get our hands dirty. Don't get me wrong, we've been busy. We did jump in with 2 feet in our local church context. As with any church, there's always work to be done. But now we are becoming more comfortable in our community. And as we form new and deeper relationships we are starting to match passions with needs. Sometimes it's overwhelming. Sometimes our vision is still a bit blurry. But we're doing it. and that's pretty exciting. And though this looks nothing like my unrealistic (and naive) expectations, it is prayerfully and faithfully pursued.