September 2008

September 2008
Dear friends and family:

As you know our family has been in the US for the summer, taking a much needed furlough and vacation from the ministry in Venezuela. Among the visits we’ve made in August, we spent one week at Camp Cedar Glen in So. California at a gathering of InnerCHANGE missionaries worldwide. We had a beautiful time worshipping God, getting re-connected and re-affirming our “family ties” as a missionary community. In fact, the retreat was a chance for us to take a deeper look at what we mean when we describe ourselves as a “Christian order among the poor.” I want to take this chance to give you a glimpse into this, too.

InnerCHANGE was founded in 1985 when John Hayes moved himself onto an overcrowded and overlooked street in Santa Ana, CA, teeming with Cambodian refugees. Shortly after we joined InnerCHANGE in 1992, John Hayes began describing InnerCHANGE’s calling as both missionary and prophetic. What he meant by that was that our ministry among the poor has two faces, if you will. The missionary face displays the mercy of God in the streets and byways of the world’s forgotten places, raising up disciples of Jesus and forming communities of His kingdom. The other face, what we call our prophetic current, is simply, yet profoundly, using our lives to call the Church continually back to God’s intentions for the poor.

The Samaritan in Jesus’ parable embodies these two currents beautifully, reaching out in mercy and ministering God’s love to the injured in the road, while also prophetically, with his actions, providing the priest and Levite with a sovereign opportunity to examine their ways and they hearts.

Interestingly enough, in the late 90s our founder discovered that we as InnerCHANGE were also the injured one, the needy one in the road. In a very real sense, the intensity of the ministry, the pain and sorrows that we’ve encountered along the way, forced us to move deeper into what we’ve now recognized as our third current; the contemplative current.

In fact, we’ve discovered that it’s the dynamic interplay of these three currents – the missionary, the prophetic and the contemplative – that best expresses the unique gift we believe God has given us and best explains what we mean by “Christian order among the poor.” (Historically, Catholics orders have called that unique ‘gift’ given to a community its ‘charism’ – in case that word is familiar to some.)

Why share this with you?

From our journey as InnerCHANGE, spanning now almost 25 years and only hinted at above, you can see how we the missionaries have needed time to understand more precisely what God has been crafting us into. As our friends and family, standing with us all these years, we know it hasn’t always been easy for you to understand what InnerCHANGE is either. Yet you’ve always believed in us! Thank you!

Please remember us in your prayers as we turn a big corner in September when our oldest daughter, Johanna, begins her studies at Seattle Pacific University and the rest of us return to Venezuela.

Peace,

John and Birgit