For the past nine years, I have the privilege of teaching Being the Word on the Street: Developing Intercultural Competency. The class is delivered in three movements: our past lineage, our present relations, and our future imagination.

Our Past Lineage: We begin our study by reading the works of three historians: Ron Takaki’s A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America, Nell Painter’s The History of White People, and Ibram Kendi’s Stamped from the Beginning: A Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. Each of these authors exposes our shared history in the United States as it relates to race, illuminating how public policy, policing, education, and healthcare have been shaped by racist and racialized ideas. This is our lineage and it impacts how we live together, and how we see each other.

Our Present Relations: Jeff Chang’s We Goin’ Be Alright: Notes of Race and Desegregation and Ibram Kendi’s work are profoundly helpful in teaching us about the current state of race in the U.S. and our ability or inability to relate to each other. The second movement builds awareness of four different levels of at play in all human interactions. Our relating is far more complex than simply person to person. Human difference is informed by Systemic forces that influence our ways of knowing, Organizational culture (s) that develops unspoken meaning-making mechanism, Interpersonal communication dynamics and intrapsychic, deeply internal views of the self and the other. Students begin to connect how history we share and the varying levels of relating inform every human interaction.

Our Future Imagination: Finally, with the help of some wise guides from the community, we explore a theological and sociological imagination for relating across differences as equals. Eric Law’s The Wolf Shall Dwell with the Lamb: Spiritual Leadership in a Multicultural Community explores the power dynamics across differing cultures and offers simple strategies to facilitate communication and understanding across those differences. With this is our text we begin to engage in conversation with leaders who have built bridges and are creating truly miraculous symbiotic multicultural discourse

At the end of each term, students are asked to create a presentation that explores the history of the United States as it relates to diversity, how this history has shaped our identity and impacted community, and how we as a community could imagine a new future with each other. I find myself often struck by the creativity of these projects and humbled by the deep listening each student has done to build the presentation. The following two projects are examples of the work of our students are doing as we explore what it means to work towards cultural credibility and strive to be a therapeutic presence in a world of difference.

The Impact of COVID-19 on the BIPOC and Unhoused Communities of Seattle

by Milli Haase, an MATC student

“This project was an opportunity for students to create a visual experience – to capture the ways racism was / is constructed and continues to impact communities, all while drawing on course resources. Ron’s invitation provided for a more visceral experience. Given the recent outbreak of COVID, I’m grateful that Ron allowed me the space to connect the outbreak to Seattle’s own racist systems, to show that this outbreak is really unveiling our own violent structures for what they really are. Yes, it is true that nobody is born hating another person because of the color of their skin. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love (Mandela), and also: racism is the very system we have been born into and benefit from. We are not born into a world in which we are not racist until taught to be. Rather, we are born into a world in which by systemic default we must actively engage to be anti-racist.”
-Milli

A Journey Towards Cultural Credibility: Informing Anti-Racist Living

by Christina Bergevin, an MATC student

“This presentation was the culminating project for RLM520 – Being the Word On the Street: Developing Intercultural Competency; the second class on multicultural narratives and American racism that I have taken at ÌìĂÀÊÓÆ”. Thanks to Dr. Ron Ruthruff for introducing our class to challenging authors, dynamic community leaders, and sobering conversations that begin to shape and grow the theological, historic, and cultural understanding needed in the work of racial justice and anti-racist policy.”
-Christina

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One of my concerns (here at home in progressive Seattle and at ÌìĂÀÊÓÆ” of Theology & Psychology) is that don’t just manifest themselves in swastikas, hooded robes, bad cops, cover-ups and white nationalist ideology. Overt supremacy causes us, those of us who consider ourselves progressive, to psychologically suppress and distance ourselves from our own bias and supremacist characteristics. Our impulse is to say, “We are not like that!” However, this psychological dissociation never allows us to get to the covert seeds of racism planted deep within all of us who are part of the White majority.

A while back I was at a party in my neighborhood. I struck up a conversation with a young Black woman. As we introduced ourselves to each other, she told me she had come to Seattle to work in the medical field. I’m ashamed to admit it, but my first thought was that she must be a medical technician or a traveling nurse. As we talked more, she told me she was an OB/GYN. While Linda and I walked home, I shared my deep embarrassment over my initial assumption. I am limited by the stories that I have access to, my bias, and my blind spots.

In the middle school my sons attended, 97% of the student population (students of color) were referred to as “minority.” The 3% of the student population who were White were still referred to as “majority.” The mental model where the most are called minority and the few are labeled as the majority is crazy-making in the message it sends. It’s a wonder that any of these children passed the state math exam. Minority less than
 majority greater than
think of the impact!

As a White man, I hold within me the and individual achievement. These myths infer that I “know” and I can help. However, these mental models interfere with the posture I must take to deconstruct my own racist ideas. The way forward begins with weakness and vulnerability. These are counter-intuitive to power and privilege.

What if I admit I don’t know and I can’t help? Can I sit in the liminal space that “I don’t know” creates? Can I continue to go through the painful and disorientating process of unlearning the power that affords me the confidence to always have an answer? It starts with “I don’t know.” It’s hard for White men to access the social narratives and psychological categories necessary to live into weakness and vulnerability when we have been called the majority. It’s hard to live into the ambiguity of who I am and move into places where I don’t know where I fit in when so much of me has been afforded the privilege of self-determination.

To admit that I don’t know means that I must be in proximity to people who see the world differently than me. I must live in the middle of other narratives that decenter my own. Doug Hall, one of my professors in my doctoral program, claimed that one of the challenges for White men doing justice work is the painful process of “unlearning” power and all you think you know.

My life must be lived in and with difference, which exacerbates the feelings of vulnerability and discomfort that whiteness has been socialized to avoid. This will shake my social identity. Seattle White progressives are great at listening to public radio and accessing public libraries. But, public transportation? No thank you. Public schools? Not my kids. The position of proximity is one of vulnerability and illumination.

I cannot read my way out of the problem of my perceived power and the deconstruction of white superiority. It won’t happen at one protest or one church service. The protest march or the BLM sign in my front yard might make me feel better when I feel powerless to prevent police pushing their knee into the neck of George Floyd; however, these events serve merely as an inoculation if only done in isolation. These moments of crisis serve as an indictment—revealing how far I am from the problem and from a network that is building systemic change.

Where do I live? Where do I shop? Where do my kids go to school? Proximity illuminates the issues and affords me the gift of stories other than my own. Deconstructing the isn’t simply about having more diverse friends. It means living in a way that sees and feels the impact of police brutality, the opportunity gaps in education, and the inequity of politically underrepresented neighborhoods. Until those problems become my problems, nothing will change.

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“Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.” –Mark 8:34-35

Have you ever been in a relationship with someone who was too demanding? Perhaps they wanted so much of your attention that you felt like you were slowly vanishing? This kind of codependency can be toxic. So what do we do with the demands that Jesus extends to His followers? Does He ask too much of us? Does following Jesus require us to be self-deprecating?

“Does following Jesus require us to be self-deprecating?”

Consider this passage from the middle of the Gospel of Mark, the climax of the story. Jesus asks His disciples who people are saying He is and what they think about his mission. Then He asks them who they think he is. Peter answers, and his answer is right on. But as one of my Pepperdine theology professors would tell us, small theological boats should stay close to shore. Peter should have quit while he was ahead.

Jesus begins to elaborate on Peter’s answer, and Peter quickly corrects Him, earning sharp words from Jesus. But the story doesn’t end there. It ends with an invitation. You can’t follow Jesus by doing anything less than losing your life. Jesus is saying that through weakness, powerlessness, and death grow victory, strength, and life. That what might look nonsensical or like a stumbling block or scandal actually holds the key to being a follower of Jesus and being part of transforming the world we live in.

When I first presented these ideas in a course I was teaching, my students challenged this self-denial. Many of them were familiar with relationships that seemed to suck the life out of them and asked why endorse a Christian idea that simply enables unhealthy relational dynamics? And they were rightly cautious of a “depraved” view of the self that, in the name of self-denial, felt simply like self-deprecation. I am a Christian so I have to give up everything including myself. So the question is how does this spiritual call of denial not become codependency or self-deprecating?

Let me clarify. Codependency is what we call it when someone attends to the desires and needs of another person at the expense of one’s own needs, often found in relationships. Codependency is often found where addiction and violence are present.

Self-denial can often end up taking a form of self-negation that leads to a kind of passive-aggressiveness and codependency. Codependency is a system of homeostatic behavior—an attempt to keep things in balance by overlooking what is really happening—that manifests in a broken or unhealthy family or community in order to avoid disrupting the status quo. It staves off a crisis that could lead to important change by suppressing the true desires of individuals who are in relationship with each other. But if the way of the Cross is about how self-denial exposes the powers that be for what they are, then I don’t believe that dying to self is about codependency.

“Codependency is what we call it when someone attends to the desires and needs of another person at the expense of one’s own needs.”

The Cross asks individuals to lose their lives in a much different way. It demands that we all enter into the vulnerable space of declaring what really is—and there is a lot of risk in doing this—rather than clinging to how we hope things are. In a broken system, this truth-telling feels like death, but it is the only chance of gaining new or resurrected life.

The Cross is not the way of self-deprecation. It doesn’t tell us that we deserve nothing good and beat down the human heart as unlovable or unworthy. But it does ask us to be honest about where real life is found, and where artificial life has been manufactured as a coping mechanism to distract us from finding that real life.

Here’s what I think happens: We don’t really believe we deserve or understand how to find the good, so we hedge our bets and attach ourselves to the “good enough.” The Cross exposes this covert despair. It asks us to die to the safety we hold onto. When Jesus tells us to pick up our crosses, we are denying, not the self God created us to be, but the self that falls victim to visions of authority that promise us triumph. The public spectacle of Christ crucified tells the truth about the uselessness of power and invites us to live out the same truth as we take up our own crosses and follow Him.

Jesus invites all of us into a new way of being human. For some this could mean telling the truth in a co-dependent system where equilibrium is maintained through damaging self-denial. For others, the Cross could mean denying the American dream and exposing the lie of materialism, exposing systems like Rome that hoard power and oppress others. The spiritual journey of the Cross means illuminating the truth, letting go of illusions, seeing things the way they really are and being willing to forgive.

The Cross, then, is a grace to us. A bad day for being human becomes the first day of a new created order. The Cross invites us to live in the world by dying to illusions that don’t really sustain us, and to self in its most narcissistic form. Mark 8 is an invitation for us to make space in our lives, to refuse the emptiness of power and trust that the way of Jesus is the way to truth telling and real life.

But it can be a lonely place. The disciples fled from this lonely place more than once, and so do we. But we are always invited back in, to learn from Jesus how to save our lives by letting them go—to make space for others through our own death and entrance into relationship, with Jesus and the world He loves. This is where the power of God lies: letting go of our hoped-for outcomes and sitting in the space of powerlessness with ourselves and for the world.

Modeling this letting go is the only way to shake ourselves loose of the natural urgency we feel to save our own lives. This kind of vulnerable love is a crazy tightrope-walking love that must have full assurance in the one who sends us out to invite the world to come with us on the journey—to let go of the illusions of life for real life itself.

Can we choose this way of the Cross and faithfully believe that it is in death that we and others are set free? Not with our great doctrines, not with our spotless image, but by dying to the images of power that hold us captive, dying to contempt and accusation and rivalry. Risking our lives on Jesus’ promise that this is the only way we will find true life.

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Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and look at my hands. Put your hand into the wound in my side. Don’t be faithless any longer. Believe!” -John 20:27

Last month, I walked the streets of Guatemala City with a group of students from ÌìĂÀÊÓÆ”, guided by Joel Aguilar and Hector (Fito) Sandoval. We were there to enter a conversation with local leaders, wondering together: What does global partnership look like? And how does our shared history as Christians, as well as North and Latin Americans, inform this conversation?

I know Joel pretty well as a former student of mine, and I had met Fito the last time I was in Guatemala City. I knew they would be great teachers and trustworthy guides. I also know a bit of the history of Guatemala: political coups, imperial powers, religious xenophobia, racial prejudice, and economic manipulation has touched every facet of Guatemalan society—and much of the culpability sits with North Americans that look a lot like me.

The scars of Guatemala’s deep wounds were evident in every community we entered. As Joel walked us through the National Cemetery, leading us past tombstones and mausoleums, he told us the story of what he has titled the four wounds of Guatemala: war, poverty, racism, and religion. This wasn’t the first time I walked through this cemetery and heard Joel articulate these wounds and the history surrounding them. But this time, I felt a huge wave of guilt and shame as we walked through the cemetery. The lies that kept North Americans safe, secure, and wealthy—and the harm those lies did to many families of people like Joel and Fito—were being exposed in a class in which I was the professor of record. This was sobering to me.

During the rest of the week, we were guests in many different communities. Joel and Fito introduced us to beautiful people who told hard and courageous stories, stories than exposed deep hurt and revealed resilient hope. Maria, running an after-school program in a gang-infested neighborhood, cried as she spoke of the beauty and hope of children. Then there was Rudy, who gave up his church to pastor kids on the streets—rejected by the church, accepted by street kids. Women in a domestic violence center sat up straight, looked us in the eye, and told us what they ran from and what they dreamed of.

Fito took us to his home for lunch in a poor community whose economic survival depends on a garbage dump. Fito told us that his community was like the little girl that Jesus raised from the dead: Jesus said she is not dead, just sleeping. Fito assured us that like the little girl, love wasn’t dead in his neighborhood, just sleeping. Love simply needed to be woken up.

Then every night, after long days of conversation and site visits, Joel and Fito would gently debrief this disorienting and sometimes dissociative experience for their North American colleague and his students.

I have been to Guatemala a number of times and have established deep friendship with some incredible Guatemalan colleagues, but this time I felt like I met the incarnate Christ—Jesus, standing before me in love and humility, asking me if I would put my hand in his wound.

I felt like I met the incarnate Christ, asking me if I would put my hand in his wound.

Every day Fito and Joel, without accusations or shame but with a simple invitation, asked us to walk into one more neighborhood and bear witness to what we saw. Would we believe?

Every day the students who accompanied me accepted the invitation, they listened well and asked good questions, and they entered communities as guest and learners.

It became clear to me on this trip: engaging global partnerships begins with friendships. Friendships where students and teachers are willing to trade places, where truth is spoken in love, where guilty people are forgiven and shamed people are healed. Where some courageously tell the story of their wounds, and some listen well, resisting the impulse to run to a solution. This might be where global partnerships begin, and in the process, this might teach us more than a little about what it means to be human.

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“We have to step outside of our comfort zone and the walls of our school for that kind of conversation to happen,” says Dr. Ruthruff. “We have to step into places that are unfamiliar and that expose our own locatedness and woundedness.”

Here, we continue an excerpt from Dr. Ruthruff’s 2010 book, , about an earlier trip to Guatemala and the people he encountered there. You can read Part 1 of this story .

We got into the warden’s office and a long conversation in Spanish ended with smiles and handshakes. Joel said that the warden claimed that he was happy to have religious services for the men, and was incredibly glad that a doctor from the United States was investing in the young men of Guatemala, because he, like me, was hoping they would be rehabilitated. He told one of his guards that we should be given access to any inmate with whom we wanted to talk. We thanked him for taking time to meet with us and granting us such access. I guess I was earning my keep. My status as an American and my credentials meant the prison warden wanted to impress me. This was embarrassing, but I knew that I was a man of privilege and I might as well use it for something good. We left the warden’s office and I started to think to myself, This isn’t so bad.

Wardens like to impress visitors, especially European-American ones from the US. He might have been genuine in his concern for the inmates’ rehabilitation, and the prison seemed safe enough. Lots of guards, clean-looking warden’s building, and well-manicured grass. About this time, we reached another gate. We left our IDs with another guard who sat in a shack. I started to feel uncomfortable with the thought of leaving my passport while at the same time going into a prison. The gate we were about to enter resembled the original iron gate that we first entered through. This one, however, was twice as big and wrapped with barbed wire. I reluctantly relinquished my passport and walked through. I heard the creak of the gate and, as it closed, I realized all the uniformed men were standing outside the walled area we were passing through. I was struck suddenly with cold, sobering thoughts, All the corrections officers on the perimeter of a prison.

I stood with Joel, Alvin, David, and a lot of men looking for their mothers, sons, daughters, or wives. As we walked through the prison yard, I looked to find the guards. Thoughts of my passport being sold before I could get back to the gate distracted me.

Some of the male prisoners played soccer. Some cut large coconuts with even larger homemade machetes. Others sold soda pop and thirst quenchers. Now this is where I have to admit that stereotypes and profiling get in the way of reality. I looked at the machetes and food and drink available with little security and I immediately landed on Hollywood images. I began to wonder if this was like the movies. What I didn’t know until later: all this freedom was earned by men, many of whom were a few steps away from freedom and moving back into the community. This wasn’t atypical, and chaos didn’t rule. But all the images were strange to me and I had no point of reference to interpret or understand. I was not in a context I understood. As we approached a large building that I assumed was the housing unit, a man came running toward David and Alvin. He hugged them both. I thought, This must be who we came to see. I was then introduced to Roberto. I tried hard to pay attention to the introduction. I pushed away the thoughts of my passport being sold and attempted to focus.

All the images were strange to me and I had no point of reference to interpret or understand.

I knew a little of Roberto’s story. The chaplains had briefed me regarding the details of Roberto’s predicament. Chaplains had met him in another prison. Roberto was a high-ranking gang official. In the previous prison, Roberto had become frustrated with the lack of activity provided for the inmates and began to create a document that would address the spiritual, physical, and education needs of his brothers in the prison. Back home, before I had come to Guatemala, Joel had given me a copy of the document. It was incredibly thorough and well written. One could easily see Roberto’s organizational skills. The only problem with his plan was that the prison administration loved it. They loved it so much that they began to delegate to Roberto other administrative tasks. Soon his gang affiliates became suspicious of his allegiance to the “police” and ordered him killed, thinking he was turning against them. He was crushed by their accusations and then had to make the most difficult choice of his life—ask for a transfer or die.

Roberto spoke only Spanish and Joel was very kind to keep me somewhat up to speed as we began to have a conversation together. We pushed a few dogs out of some plastic lawn chairs and sat down while Roberto brought each of us a Gatorade. (Remember, our wallets and IDs were hopefully back in the guard shack.) Roberto told us of his transfer and of the incredible loneliness and depression that came with his being moved out of the gang unit and being labeled a traitor. In the middle of his loneliness, he had begun to read the Bible and had asked God to give him a purpose to live. Roberto said that he thought of suicide many times. But as he prayed to God, he also thought about the poor in Guatemala and the lack of resources available to help them. He was especially concerned about those with major medical problems.

An amazing story followed. The prison he was currently in was a city unto itself. As I sat there, sipping an ice-cold Gatorade, he began to tell me that when he first arrived he realized that there were many cottage industries established by the inmates in the main yard. There were soda pop and beverage stands, live chickens for sale, and a variety of food items for sale that supplemented the prison-issued rice and beans. Roberto noticed that they had everything except a tortilla stove. He began talking with the other Christian inmates and, through the missional network, obtained the stove. They began to sell tortillas to the other inmates. They produced volumes of tortillas that generated several hundred dollars of profit. They started to think about where they could donate the money.

Cell phones are everywhere in the Guatemalan prison system. I guess it’s a lot better than the U.S. system, where inmates call collect or must create a bank of minutes to be used with pre-approved visitors. I am sure lots of phone companies benefit. Roberto and his fellow inmates started making calls, searching for churches that knew of children who were sick with cancer. After lots of phone calls, they finally identified two needy families who had children with terminal illnesses. They made arrangements to invite the families to the prison and then presented all the money they had raised from the tortilla stand to them. They told the families that, even though they were in prison, they realized they were blessed, and if they were truly Christians they must share this blessing with others.

The strategy to purchase an oven, sell tortillas, and find recipients for the profits involved complex and elaborate planning. As Roberto told the story, he was so proud of the great project that they had created. He looked at me and said in Spanish, “Even though we are in prison, as Christians we must care for those that have less than we do.” I sat there listening to the story interpreted into English. I continued to listen as Roberto shared about his plans to do even more. I thought back to the human services plan that Roberto had authored. He was truly a gifted organizer and administrator. When there was a break in the conversation, I took the opportunity to quickly look through the Spanish Bible sitting on the table next to us. I was looking for the story of Joseph in Genesis 18. I found it, but in this Bible, it was the story of Jose. After finding the chapter I asked Roberto, “Have you ever read this story?” He shook his head and said, “No.” Through Joel I began to recount the story.

“Roberto, I saw the proposal you created to give your fellow inmates more access to recreational, religious, and social services. I have listened to you share about your tortilla business that you created to raise money to help families with very sick children. The business you developed not only helped children, but also gave the inmates in this prison a sense of purpose. Joseph in Genesis 18 was also a gifted organizer and administrator. He not only saved his family, but the entire nation of Egypt through his administrative gifts. Roberto, you’re like Joseph.”

All of a sudden, Alvin became incredibly excited and began to share something with Roberto. Since they were speaking in Spanish, I was in the dark. Alvin kept grabbing the Bible and telling Roberto something. Roberto kept laughing and clapping. Joel began to tell me what was happening. Alvin knew the story of Joseph as well. As I had begun to compare Roberto’s gifts to those of Joseph, Alvin became filled with the Spirit and started to preach the following message:

“Roberto, you, like Joseph, have a gift that made your brothers jealous. Joseph’s brothers threw him in a hole; your brothers threatened to kill you. Joseph was sold by his brothers into slavery; you were banished from the former gang prison, sent to another prison meant for those who have nowhere else to go. But God gave Joseph favor. What his brothers meant for evil, God intended for good. This is your story, Roberto. God has brought you here! Formerly you were in a prison cell with 125 fellow gang members and now you’re in a prison where you have influence over 500! God has taken evil and made it good for you!”

The story of God’s faithfulness to both Joseph and Roberto is a divine connection we all had the privilege to witness. We experienced that “thin place” in the supernatural, where God’s light is revealed in a very dark place mysteriously. During that afternoon visit, we all had participated in the telling of the story of Joseph and the story of Roberto. God used me to bring the story to the table, but Joel had interpreted, and a former gang member had illuminated and contextualized the story in a profound way. Two gang members, a missionary, and I unwrapping a piece of Scripture together in a Guatemalan prison—amazing!

As I rode away from the prison, I thought of all of us who had sat at the table. I thought to myself, it truly takes a whole community to tell the whole story of God. Joel, Alvin, David, Roberto, and I had all contributed in the mysterious God-moment. The profound story of God beautifully interwoven and connected with a story of a man, banished from his gang of brothers only to find  himself in the story of Joseph. Thrown into a prison of refugees only to organize, administer his gifts, and bring hope through his abilities. The whole story of God can only be experienced in that way when we’re together as a whole community.

It takes a whole community to tell the whole story of God.

Today, I continue to wonder how often we as Christians hear only part of the story. What are the parts of the Bible to which we are blind, based on our limited experiences of God? I also know that most of our Christian communities could benefit from hearing voices like Alvin’s and Roberto’s. These men are not usually invited to the community to share their theological perspectives or experiences. Who have we ignored in God’s community, and how has the story of God been limited because their voices have not been heard? My time at the prison would have been much different without Alvin. I continue to challenge myself with this and other questions, in an effort to experience God’s complete and whole community: Who are those people in our church that need to be invited to speak? Who are those who are not currently being invited to share their stories of God?

The Least of These, by Dr. Ron Ruthruff, is excerpted with the permission of in Birmingham, Alabama.

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“We have to step outside of our comfort zone and the walls of our school for that kind of conversation to happen,” says Dr. Ruthruff. “We have to step into places that are unfamiliar and that expose our own locatedness and woundedness.”

Here, we share an excerpt from Dr. Ruthruff’s 2010 book, , about an earlier trip to Guatemala and the people he encountered there.

I recently visited Guatemala City, where 4 million people live. Joel, one of my doctoral students, invited me. He and I met at a training put on by a group called the Center for Transforming Mission (CTM). CTM is an organization that equips young leaders to serve youth and families in tough places around the world. Joel became the Latin American Director. When Joel was going through Bakke Graduate School, I was a professor for an independent study class. The curriculum meant he attended New Horizons Ministries’ volunteer training—to observe lay training and to do pastoral care with high-risk young people. Joel hoped to gain methods to enhance the ministries of Guatemalan leaders working with gang-involved youth and street youth. Joel serves as Director of the Strategy of Transformation (the name in Latin America for the work of CTM because of its partnership with Christian Reformed World Missions).

Strategy of Transformation is “the Barnabas”—encouragers to the Guatemalan grassroots leaders who are serving their own people in really hard places, like gang-involved youth, street youth, and those in prisons in Guatemala City and its surrounding area. My visit to Guatemala was to be the final phase of his independent study. While there, I would observe his work in his context and discuss how New Horizons’ training strategies fit within it. We would delve into how training, practice, and theological reflection could further equip the chaplains and youth workers Joel’s work supports, and enhance his volunteer training program.

My son Clayton gave me a fun-filled caution as he dropped me off for my flight to Guatemala: “Don’t go down any dark alleys and make sure you practice safe theology.” He knows inner-city challenges, not typical tourist attractions, draw me. Clayton loves to make fun in that way because he, too, has learned from living in our own neighborhood that places we feel are unattractive, unsafe, and unfamiliar can actually be places of immense beauty, comfort, and community. Unsafe cities provide an undeniable sense of God’s power. Amidst people’s pain and suffering we find the beauty of God’s grace. In fact, cities provide places for incredible learning because these are places where brokenness cannot be masked by superficial beauty and a false sense of order.

Amidst pain and suffering we find the beauty of God’s grace.

Once in Guatemala City, I had the incredible privilege of seeing beautiful, powerful places and people. I spent time on the streets with street kids, and met an incredible man named Italo. He spends his nights driving city alleys, seeking children who make themselves scarce during the day. These children survive by inhaling cheap glue in order to suppress their appetite—and their pain. Italo welcomed each kid with an incredible greeting, “Hello, beautiful creations of God.” He hugs, plays, and dances on the streets with them. Their eyes once dulled by deadly inhalants come alive when he reaches out to them.

I also met Tita, a woman who runs a school for children in a community full of tin shacks built on the steep hills of a ravine. She serves the La Limonada community of about 55,000 people—35,000 of them children. This city within the city is thought by many to be a place of shame due to the immense poverty its conditions reveal. There’s no clean drinking water, there are major sanitation problems, makeshift electricity, and the neighborhood is considered very dangerous. 250 kids now attend Tita’s two schools. When she walks the streets, women, men, and children all run to greet her with a hug and a smile. As she walks, she stops to kiss each child. She has no formal education; she tells me she was educated on her knees. When I asked her about the requirements for volunteers who would serve with her, she said with a laugh, “Give me crazy people who love Jesus.” She is the Mother Teresa of Guatemala City and everyone in the neighborhood responds to her loving embrace.

As a result of a consultation on street gang outreach in 2005, the group Joel directs was asked to help spearhead a gang chaplaincy initiative into the maximum security gang units of Guatemala’s prison system. While I was there, we visited a young man who had just become a Christian, and who at the risk of losing his life was walking away from gang affiliation. He was being transferred from a prison that housed his fellow gang members to a prison specifically designed for men leaving the gangs and those inmates who had never had any gang affiliation.

In the prison system, gang members are at the bottom rung. Gang members are usually housed in separate prisons on isolated units with other members of their same gangs because of the way they are demonized (or marginalized) by society at large and even within the walls of the prison system. Even if you’ve walked away from gang activity, everyone is skeptical of you. Inmates of the prison system who have never been involved with gangs consider it an honor to kill an inmate who’s been a gang member. It doesn’t matter if you’re a current gang member or a former gang member; it’s sometimes considered a badge of honor to assassinate an inmate who’s been affiliated at one time or another with a gang. The young man had changed prisons, left the gang, and converted to Christianity—he was still a long way from being safe.

I went to the prison with Joel, one of the chaplains in the chaplaincy initiative that he serves, and a young ex-gang member, turned Christian, whom this chaplain was discipling. Every time former gang members walk back into the prison system, they place their own lives at risk since they are no longer affiliated with their gangs and, therefore, have no community to protect them. This adds to the danger of their potential death. Joel and the group he directs try to support the Guatemalan chaplains in their own ministries with resources, some training, and a place in the missional community that is his network.

I was dependent on Joel and the Guatemalan men that day. Their English was much better than my Spanish and we began to discuss where we were heading. Alvin told me, “This is the end of the line. These guys who have left the gangs or have been thrown out would not last a day on the streets. Life in the prison is much safer than freedom on the streets.” The man that we were going to see could not trust a single person in his world. He had risen to power and in doing so had threatened some other members in the gang structure. The details of his departure from the gang were foggy. The man we were to visit had attempted to create better living conditions for the men in his unit, interacted and worked closely with prison administration, and now was out of the gang unit and all alone. Somewhere along the line, his gang brothers that he was advocating for felt like his allegiance to the institution was a form of betrayal and threatened his life.

Alvin began to tell me his story. He was from a very poor neighborhood and had only been a chaplain about a year. At this point, his English speaking fell short and Joel began to interpret Alvin’s story. He grew up in the garbage dumps of Guatemala City. An infamous Central American gang had recruited him at such an early age; he really couldn’t remember how old he had been when he had joined. He grew up in an area with no plumbing, hospital, or schools—sustained on dangerous homemade electricity. His gang was the closest thing his neighborhood had to a police department. The gang protected his family and became his brothers. He told me that by age 15 he was tired of the wars, the politics, and searching from something else. He told me, “I met a preacher who told me all the evil could be washed away by Jesus. I gave my heart to Jesus and I promised to follow His ways.”

One of my dear friends and mentors, Tony, tells me Christians are more than admirers; they are Jesus followers. He always quotes Sþren Kierkegaard. He claims there is a big difference between Jesus followers and admirers. He says admirers always keep their distance but followers move close enough to be transformed by the experience. Alvin would make Kierkegaard and Tony proud. He’s a true follower. He went on to tell me that, sometimes, if you are truly converted, your gang won’t kill you but will let you live a religious life separate from the gang. He explained that you had to present your case to the leader and confess your faith. The gang leader would then decide as to whether your faith was authentic or only a mere ploy to get you out of some element of gang trouble.

Admirers keep their distance but followers move close enough to be transformed.

As I continued to listen, I was amazed at how Alvin told his story of life and death in such a simple and matter-of-fact fashion. To my mind, it was like, Oh, by the way, I left the gang and they decided not to kill me. I asked, “Alvin, how did you decide to make this public confession? Why didn’t you decide to just be a nicer gang member? You know, keep your faith personal? Jesus is a personal Savior isn’t He? Why weren’t you more cautious? This is your life you’re talking about.” Alvin looked at me and in the same matter-of-fact tone said, “I read the story in the Bible about Paul being in prison. He wasn’t afraid. He said to live is Christ, to die is gain. I believe the Bible.” Alvin’s voice became filled with joy. “I read it and I knew I would win either way. If I live, I’ll tell everyone that Jesus washed my sins away. If I die, I am with HIm. See, Ron, I win. You win either way.”

I was embarrassed as I questioned whether or not I really believed that verse, I know I didn’t believe it, at least not the way Alvin believed. He knew Philippians 1:21, “For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain.” Paul pens these lines while he is in prison in Rome. Some scholars argue Philippians is Paul’s last correspondence before he dies. Alvin believed this like Paul believed it. He was filled with conviction.

As we continued our drive toward the prison, we passed open fields. Beautiful greens that turned almost blue in the Guatemalan sunlight. The beauty of the countryside made me forget where we were heading. How could the prison be that bad of a place when the scenery was so gorgeous? We finally arrived at the huge structure that was our destination and parked in a dusty pothole-filled lot. I stood in front of a stone structure that looked like it was built in the 1800s, thinking, this is really a prison. It looked nothing like the prisons back home.

A line was forming outside a ten-foot-high iron gate. All of us walked toward the line: Joel, a missionary from Michigan; Alvin, a former gang member and a man who hoped to become a chaplain; and me. I sure didn’t feel very theologically astute after my car ride with Alvin. He had already taught me a lot. The line was filled with old men and women, small children, and well-dressed younger women. Some of them fathers, some of them mothers, some of them sons, daughters, wives, or girlfriends—all were waiting to visit someone in prison. Men don’t often visit other men in prison, at least not in groups like ours. Immediately, we were pulled out of line. We definitely stood out.

Joel explained to the guard that while we didn’t have a chaplaincy pass for this specific prison, we wanted to visit a young man that he knew from another institution. Joel told the guard that we had an American who wanted to visit the prison. That was me. We were rushed off to the warden’s office. We passed the front of the line and I was wondering if this was a good thing. On our way through the gate, David, the other chaplain, walked over and had a short conversation with an inmate. When he caught up with us, Joel asked him how he knew this guy. David told us that this guy was a warden just three or four weeks ago. Now he was doing time like any other inmate. David commented that he had probably forgotten to pay somebody off. This place seemed crazy and I didn’t know the rules.

Stay tuned next week for the second half of this excerpt, in which Dr. Ruthruff writes about a particular conversation that invited him to wonder about how our isolated, personal faith might miss out on the whole story of God. The Least of These, by Dr. Ron Ruthruff, is excerpted with the permission of in Birmingham, Alabama.

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When I was young I lived in my imagination. My mother raised me by herself, and she was wonderful. I lived in my imagination because my playmates were few and infrequent. This led to many imaginary friends, like Pete and Frank. They were two of my closest buddies and were willing to reenact Civil War battles, in which we would fight for the Union cause of freedom, and Vietnam skirmishes that would always end in our being saved or saving the buddy next to us. Frank and Pete were always faithful, brave friends, and I could not have imagined any better.

My mother was a courageous, strong woman, who was terrified that something would happen to her only son, the only living memory of her husband, my father, who died too early and left his wife to protect her little boy. I was three years old and my sisters were grown when this crisis hit my family. It’s also when I started living in my imagination, because risk was to be avoided at all cost. My mother worked a lot, and fear became a guiding force that babysat me in her absence.

When I was probably five or six, my mother’s sister Erma and her husband Frank visited us from Michigan. My Aunt Erma was beautiful in a 1940s Midwest sort of way, and Uncle Frank was big and strong and kind, like you would expect a man from Iowa to be. We took a few day trips, one to Diablo Dam. I still remember it was a beautiful spring Washington day. I remember what I wore, because it was what I always wore: a gray felt cowboy hat, blue jean jacket and jeans, a two-gun toy belt, and suede cowboy boots. My uncle Bill always called me “Tex” because little Ronnie always wore six-shooter guns and boots. I wore those boots until I wore a hole in the sole the size of a 50-cent piece.

The moment that stands out in my mind that day happened in the parking lot, or maybe at a viewpoint near the dam. I was being pretty squirrely. The two-hour drive in the back of my mother’s 1968 Dodge Dart had almost paralyzed me, and the minute I stepped out of the car, I needed to get the wiggles out. With a burst of energy I ran toward the lake that lay below the dam overshadowing the parking lot. As I galloped to the edge of the overhang, my big uncle Frank reached out and grabbed my jacket with a kind but cautious “Be careful, Tex” grab. I don’t know if I was in imminent danger. I don’t know how far the drop or how deep the water, and I don’t know how many times my mother told the story afterward, but it was enough that I soon lost count.

According to her, the drop was deadly and the white water tumultuous, and as the gravel kicked away from my boot, it tumbled over the edge like feathers being dumped from a pillow. My life had been miraculously spared that day, and my mother spared the horror of losing both men in her life. She never mentioned my uncle Frank as she retold me the story, the strong hand that caught me regardless of how rambunctious I happened to be. My mother felt it was her job to keep me safe and vigilant and on the straight and narrow, by any means necessary. Lesson learned. Do not get too close to the edge. To my mom, this was the principle directing her life and experience of faith: getting it right, staying away from the edge and as far away from the world as possible. In many ways, if I am honest with myself, much of my wounding and my strength is tied to this story. It is also the catalyst for writing this book.

Now as I look back, I have to admit that much of what I write is reflections on places and people that have revealed to me faith, hope, and love—faith, hope, and love in places where brokenness abounds and, as crazy as it sounds, grace is far more obvious. As I truly rub elbows with folks on the train, in my neighborhood, and in some amazing places I will never totally  understand, I see in our joy the story of God’s desire to be with us, and in our pain, what we call injustice, I see the absence of God. But a strange absence, making room for something divine.

So I invite you to read, not the book, but the places in your own life where, simply living life in all its complicated mess with other human beings, you see God, and you see the absence of God, and in humility you declare the way things are and the way things are supposed to be.

As you walk with me through the pages of this book, I encourage you to let the place where you live reveal the best and the worst in you. I ask you to resist the impulse to fix things too fast, rather wait—wait!— with those who are suffering. It could be the most caring thing you do declaring, in your inability to help, that life is indeed hard and easy answers are usually wrong. I challenge you to look for the Kingdom of God in strange and awkward places; it usually grows as something that doesn’t look all that heavenly. Trust that you are being sent into the world and believe that the world needs acts of mercy, systems of justice, and communities that have the courage to set bigger tables. Remember the journey we are invited on is a journey where life dies when we hold too tightly and blossoms when we let go.

The real question of the book is how far we are willing to go in this walk with Jesus. Are we willing to admit to others that we too have faced wilderness, desert, exile? Do we walk into death thinking that new life is formed there? This is a ridiculous invitation unless you really believe, I mean really believe, that losing your life is the only way to find it and that Resurrection is real. A Resurrection that does not push us into the afterlife, but pushes us back into the world, with confidence, courage, fear, and trembling to live our lives honestly for the world’s sake, trusting in the power of grace, mercy, compassion, and justice, believing that this journey is not just for the world’s sake but that in this walk we save our own lives as well. We walk to reveal that the love of God, lived through Jesus, sustains us even in death!

With all respect to my dear mother, who did what she thought was right to protect me, it is my hope to live a little closer to the edge. To learn to live as an honest, just, and merciful human being. I believe that the story of Jesus is the story of a God who risks everything and invites us to do the same. It is with all faith and assurance in this holy and human story that I take a step a little closer to the edge, maybe uncomfortably so for some. My desire is to consider how good news calls us to love radically and, as an act of deep trust in the story of God, live a bit more recklessly for the sake of the world. Here’s to walking a little closer to the edge and trusting that a hand has already caught me.

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This new position comes after years of transition and disorientation. Five years ago, I left the place I loved: New Horizons Ministries. I had served marginalized young people for 27 years there. In that time, I completed my B.A., M.S., and D.Min. degrees, met and married my co-worker, and raised two sons—I literally grew up there. The kids I served had been my teachers and the place had been my seminary. Serving and loving those young people and working with a group of people united to care for kids some labeled delinquent or incorrigible was an amazing journey. I had learned what it means to have a job you are so passionate about that you never really feel like you have to work.

Then so quickly—27 years quick—it was time to step out into what felt like nothing. My wife, Linda, was launching Street Bean Espresso and we both decided me working contractually and completing my first book might be the best way to support her new adventure employing these young people and creating a beautiful cafĂ©.

We were both leaving all we knew for what we could not see. It was a crazy and terrifying time. We had left what was familiar and home for what felt often like wilderness.

Soon, I was given the opportunity to build on what I loved: doing theological training and spiritual formation with grass roots leaders who feel called to love their communities. I was ordained as clergy with the Center for Transforming Mission, now the Street Psalms community, a group filled with men and women who, like me, saw those that they served as their teachers and their community as their seminary. Through Street Psalms I was able to serve in some amazing places: teaching in Guatemala; Kenya; and a little closer to home in places like Anchorage and Fairbanks, Alaska; Cincinnati; Portland; and in Seattle.

As amazing as these opportunities were, there was still a lack of stability and centering that New Horizons had given me. During this long period, some days felt like we were sustained with daily bread; other days felt like we were treading water.

During this time, Linda, myself, Tali Harriston, and Lina Thompson created a theological round table for young leaders who desired to talk about justice, beauty, and community. These weekly conversation became a beautiful place where Linda and I found great friendships with young leaders and began to understand the deep connection between spiritual formation and hospitality.

This Tuesday night group became the centerpiece of our community and our call. The group lasted 28 months. Linda and I continue to hang out with the amazing people that came to our home during this time. They are an incredible sampling of the pain, frustration, brilliance, and courage of young people trying to live and love in the Rainier Valley, the 98118 as the kids in my neighborhood loving call it.

I have always loved cities— especially the 98118 where Linda, our sons, and myself have lived for 25 years. I love cities because of all they teach me and reveal to me in their complexity. I see the transcendence of God in the lives of those who we call neighbors and friends. I have found that spiritual formation seems to have a lot to do with walking out into what we cannot see.

As I step into my role as Associate Professor of Theology & Culture, I bring all these experiences and loves with me. They are what have prepared me for my new role as faculty here more than anything. My hope is that I can now give away all that we have been given and to bear witness to the truth I have found in my experiences. My hope is that I can help students walk out into unfamiliar disorienting places and have them remain hospitable, open, and willing to see those they encounter there as their greatest teachers.

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