A Few Personal Reflections On Teamwork

Yvonne and I are in our 20th year of service with International Teams. It feels like yesterday we joined Kim Loney for our first trip into Eastern Europe, but as I look back I see many changes over the years.

One of the constants over these years is teamwork. When training new people with IT, I’ve often said that, “Long before teamwork was a management approach and long after the teamwork fad has faded, we at International Teams have been doing team.”

However, as you spend time living life on a team you discover it can be really tough! We know there are various types of teams but what they have in common is, that when it’s working, teamwork increases effectiveness exponentially!

Here is my personal, bottom line for teamwork effectiveness. That is, teamwork is built on trust. Full stop. People who choose to be trustworthy, come together as a team, with a mandate and they work hard together to build, preserve and when necessary, restore trust. That is my personal conviction and my goal, to build trust.

Go and build your team on trust!

An 'inter-cultural church'

Winnipeg Free Press - ONLINE EDITION

New life for historic West End building

By: Brenda Suderman

RUTH.BONNEVILLE@FREEPRESS.MB.CAEnlarge Image

Hundreds of parishioners from diverse cultural backgrounds attend City Church on Maryland Street.

Minutes before the morning worship service begins, musicians warm up their instruments, the pastor confers with worship participants and people dressed in their Sunday best chat with their friends in the pews.

This grand old brick church with its dark oak pews, soaring ceilings, and stained-glass windows depicting Bible stories has been a place of worship for more than a century, but what’s going on here on Sunday mornings is very new.

"What we call ourselves is an international, inter-cultural church," explains Tim Nielsen, one of two pastors of City Church, which meets in the former First English Lutheran Church just north of Maryland Street and Ellice Avenue.

"We believe we’re doing what the Scriptures ask us to do, reflecting the heart of God."

In the case of this new West End congregation, reflecting the heart of God means reaching out to new Canadians from countries such as Burma, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Somalia. Most of the 400 people connected to City Church live within a 20-minutes walk of the former Lutheran church, which closed its doors in 2005 after 100 years of worship.

The language of worship is primarily English, with Nielsen’s sermon projected on a screen mounted on the left side of the building, opposite a showy organ with white and gold-painted pipes. On most Sundays, translators huddled in booths in the cantilevered balcony repeat the message into Chin or Karen, languages of two cultural groups from Burma, and Swahili or French, for the people from the various African countries.

Although the spoken words are mostly in English, the music reflects the cultural diversity of the worshippers. After a congregational song sung in English, Karen, Chin and Swahili, two choirs garbed in traditional dress present traditional Karen and Chin music, and a pair of sisters from Burundi sings a gospel song in their native tongue of Kirundi.

Nielsen says there’s a solid reason for this ethnic smorgasbord: avoiding the trap of equating faith and language which can happen in an ethnically specific congregation.

"When the second-generation Canadians reject their culture and language (then) they don’t reject their faith," explains the American-born Nielsen, a missionary from the Christian Brethren tradition, formerly known as Plymouth Brethren.

Nielsen, 49, and his longtime friend and associate Indiana Cuncgin, 47, began this evangelical Christian congregation last September in co-operation with Grant Memorial Baptist Church. Landlocked at their current location of Waverley and Wilkes, the Baptists wanted to begin a new congregation in Winnipeg’s inner city, the original home of the large suburban congregation of 2,000.

"Our long-term strategy is to plant a church every three to five years," explains leading minister Rev. Tom Castor, who is a resident of the West End.

"We also believe the more healthy churches there are in Winnipeg, the healthier the city."

Since last September, Grant Memorial has been renting the former Lutheran church building for City Church and is in the process of buying it. The congregation has commissioned Nielsen and Cuncgin, who were already working with immigrants, as pastors of the new church, paying them a small stipend. The two pastors who raise the rest of their salaries from friends and family and other churches, work long hours every day of the week to meet the needs of their parishioners as they adjust to life in a new city far from home.

For three months, their daily duties included ferrying parishioners in minivans to and from their jobs at an agricultural manufacturer in Rosenort, one hour south of Winnipeg. Now the employer sends a bus for the several dozen employees connected to City Church.

"We saw it as an opportunity to root them in good employment," explains Nielsen of his former taxi duties.

A refugee from Burma himself who has now lived in Canada for the last 12 years, Cuncgin understands the challenges of adapting to a new culture and country and spends much of his time translating for other new immigrants as they attempt to navigate Canadian medical and legal systems.

"It’s totally different (here)," says Cuncgin, whose is nicknamed after the movie character Indiana Jones for his exploits in engineering the release of 100 Burmese citizens from a Thai jail.

"We’re totally different. We’re in culture shock."

Before his work at City Church, Cuncgin held worship services for members of the Chin community in his home, and has organized a national network of Chin people in Canada, which meets annually.

He says Chin and Karen ethnic groups are persecuted in Burma, which has been under dictatorship since 1964.

Cuncgin and Nielsen agree the most important aspect of their work in the new congregation is treating people with respect and dignity. Nearly all the immigrants have come to Canada within the last two years, and many were teachers or doctors in their homeland.

"They taught us we are equals, which we very much appreciate," says Cuncgin, who identifies with the plight of the immigrants he works with. "The City Church treats us like humans."

"Here we have refugees coming from all over the world, and they are in touch with the needs in their countries," adds Nielsen, who is nurturing leaders of different ethnic groups within the congregation.

"We have former doctors, we have principals, we have many people with different professional backgrounds. We can love and respect them."

Although the Lutheran congregation has dispersed, the ministry of City Church to people in the West End has a spiritual connection to what went on before at that location, says Rev. Ted Chell, longtime pastor of First English Lutheran Church.

"It’s rather exciting. I think there’s obviously such a need for a place that can bridge the cultures," he says, adding he is pleased to hear that the building again houses a Christian community.

"That’s a bold effort to bring people together of different languages and cultures."

We Belong to Each Other

Every seventh year you shall grant a remission of debts. And this is the manner of the remission: every creditor shall remit the claim that is held against a neighbor, not exacting it of a neighbor who is a member of the community, because the Lord's remission has been proclaimed.

Deuteronomy 15:1-2

If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.

Mother Teresa

From the Sojourners Blog

Time to redefine refugees as 'survival migrants'?

Written by: Katie Nguyen

LONDON (AlertNet) - Imagine fleeing your country and having to walk for several days before being able to sneak across the border into a foreign country that views outsiders with hostility.

Now imagine you are seven years old and making the trip alone with no food or water and just the clothes on your back.

Hundreds if not thousands of Zimbabwean minors have done just that in recent years - driven from their homes by chronic food shortages and an economy brought to the brink of collapse by recession and hyper-inflation.

Many have ended up in neighbouring South Africa, where they often face poverty, harassment and xenophobic attacks. But because most are not refugees as defined by a 1951 Convention that applies only to people who have fled violence and persecution, they receive limited legal protection.

There has long been an argument to expand the definition of a refugee to take into account the changing face of forced migration in the decades since the convention was drawn up.

Advocates of reform say warnings that climate change will force up to 250 million people from their homes by 2050 mean a rethink is needed more than ever.

However, critics say widening the "refugee" category would erode asylum seekers' rights and face opposition from states reluctant to sign up to new laws obliging them to provide protection for more people.

In a recently published paper, two academics from Oxford University have come up with a new term, "survival migrant", to accommodate groups who do not fall within the legal refugee definition.

They say "survival migration" refers to those fleeing "an existential threat to which they have no domestic recourse" due to a combination of state collapse, livelihood failure and environmental disaster.

"What constitutes existential threat? It's not just about the threat to life but the rights without which it is impossible to enjoy other rights, namely basic subsistence, basic liberty, basic security," said Alexander Betts, who co-wrote the paper.

"The existing refugee definition, in only looking at persecution, speaks to the narrowest element of security but doesn't speak to the other two," Betts told AlertNet. "Recognition of the survival migration status would ensure that civil, economic and social rights would be respected."

KINDNESS OF STRANGERS

The paper is based on a case study of Zimbabweans living in South Africa and Botswana. An estimated 2 million Zimbabweans have fled their country since 2005 - for many, resorting to the only available means of survival, Betts says.

Yet only 10 percent of Zimbabweans arriving in South Africa have been officially recognised as refugees.

As part of their research, Betts and his co-author Esra Kaytaz tracked down more than 3,400 Zimbabweans who had taken refuge in Johannesburg's Central Methodist Church, relying on the clergy's goodwill for shelter.

Among the group were more than 100 unaccompanied minors as well as pregnant women and people suffering from HIV/AIDS, cholera and tuberculosis.

"The government's main response to the church has been to try to forcibly clear the building, and local businesses are litigating to have the church emptied," the report said.

Betts says the legal quandary faced by these Zimbabweans is shared with many groups of Congolese, Somalis, Haitians, North Koreans and Iraqis, among others.

Although he said it would be tough to get states to endorse "survival migration" as a legal definition, he noted the success of attempts to protect other groups who have also been forced from their homes - in particular internally displaced people (IDPs), or those who have been uprooted within their own borders by violence or persecution.

An attempt to address the needs of survival migrants could draw upon the precedent of the United Nations' "Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement", which was drafted in 1998.

Though not legally binding in themselves, they consolidate states' existing responsibilities under international human rights law within a single "soft law" document.

The need to protect the rights of IDPs, who outnumber refugees globally, has prompted African countries to consider adopting a ground-breaking convention that will for the first time provide internally displaced people with similar rights to refugees.

"There are a number of reasons to be optimistic," Betts said. "The new realities of forced migration - climate change, livelihood collapse, state collapse - underpin the fact that the definition of refugee under the 1951 convention is not adequate. There's a growing acceptance that something needs to be done to supplement the convention."

The paper, "National and international responses to the Zimbabwean exodus: implications for the refugee protection regime", is due to be published on the website of the U.N. refugee body, UNHCR.

For more humanitarian news and analysis, please visit www.alertnet.org

Clean Water and the Water of Life in S. Sudan

Wages for the Poor

You shall not withhold the wages of poor and needy laborers, whether other Israelites or aliens who reside in your land in one of your towns. You shall pay them their wages daily before sunset, because they are poor and their livelihood depends on them; otherwise they might cry to the Lord against you, and you would incur guilt.

Deuteronomy 24:14-15