This past summer we had a group of thirty high school kids and sponsors from LifeSpring Christian Church in Cincinnati stay with us at Keele. They came to Toronto looking for a multicultural experience and a chance to help us serve the community.

It was a wild and busy week. Many of our youth, including my kids, bonded with the Cincinnati group – so much so that they camped out with them for most of the week and lamented their leaving. It was encouraging to see the friendships and fellowship flow. It was also great to have the group help our youth with a door-to-door food drive for the local food bank. The food drive was a big success and it helped to stock the shelves of the food bank at a time when their supplies were critically low.
On the multicultural front, one of the highlights of the week was a visit to the new Hindu BAPS Swaminarayan Temple. To say the structure was impressive, inside and out, is an understatement. I’ve never seen this level of craftsmanship before—period! There are no metal supports or concrete in the complex. In fact, there is not even one nail in this enormous structure. It is made entirely of interlocking stone based on the old school temple building ways perfected in India centuries ago. Each stone was hand-carved in India and then shipped to Toronto where the entire structure was then assembled and finished by volunteers. It took 5 years and untold man-hours, not to mention $40,000,000 to complete. As you can see from the accompanying photo, the work continues even now.

Equally impressive to me were our young tour guides. I would say they were 13-15 years-old, and like any kids you’d run across in Toronto, maybe a bit better behaved, but you know what I mean, they were Canadians through and through. Yet they were also tour guides for the temple and part of the religious community represented by the temple. Their skill in explaining their culture and religion was impressive. Their style was simple, friendly, and matter of fact. It was strange, and quite frankly disturbing to hear them talk so casually about worshipping idols. At the same time, their sincerity was obvious and worthy of respect.

I particularly liked the part of the tour in which they talked about some of the Indian symbols that were carved into the various pillars throughout the temple. They explained, for example, the significance of the elephant. The elephant is powerful, but also a vegetarian, thus it stands for power in the context of non-violence. My favourite symbol was that of the lotus flower. The lotus flower grows in swamps and thus it is an image of purity and beauty growing in the midst of decay. So, the lotus is a symbol that reminds us that it is our duty to have a beautiful life in a world that is often decaying and corrupt. I realize this is a Hindu symbol but, man it preaches!

Toward the end of the tour, our guide talked about how each stone was placed and cleaned and polished by volunteers. The entire community built this impressive structure together. He showed pictures of mothers, fathers, and children, washing and tending the stonework. I couldn’t help but imagine the sense of community, belonging, and identity this sacrifice of time and effort brought to the congregation at this temple. It was a powerful testimony and reminder to me about what’s possible when people get together, work together, sacrifice together and focus together on a united dream. When that happens the results are always impressive.

I walked away from the temple with mixed feelings. There was much to admire, but much, as a follower of Christ, that disturbed me as well.

The thought that I keep coming back to, though, is simply this: What if the Church were as serious about sacrificing, serving, participating in, and uniting over the common goal of building the Kingdom of God as this group of believers were in building a Hindu temple? What if we took the same pride and care in building something that would last beyond our years. What if we were about leaving a legacy that would inspire those who come after us? What if we were just as clear in communicating in natural, simple, effective ways, the importance of our relationship with Christ? What if we all saw ourselves as a lotus of beauty in a world of decay? What could we accomplish together, with all hands polishing and cleaning? What if we were more serious about allowing God to build us into His temple? Now that is a dream worth pursuing!

“Together, we are his house, built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. And the cornerstone is Christ Jesus himself. We are carefully joined together in him, becoming a holy temple for the Lord.” (Ephesians 2:20-21, NLT)

Farmington is as small-town Maine as small-town Maine gets. Actually there are other smaller towns in Maine, but as a snob from Toronto, they just don’t appear on my radar. Farmington is, you guessed it, a farming community. It is one of those towns that you tend to drive through to get somewhere else, even though it is the hometown of Chester Greenwood, the inventor of earmuffs and that’s nothing to sneeze at!

Our family knows of Farmington only because we’ve stayed there a few times coming or going between Toronto and the Maritimes. This time around we noticed fewer motels and less activity. This small-town seems to be getting smaller. At least that was the consensus until we came across a sign that suggested a different trend.

The sign was positioned in the most prominent part of Farmington. Even I couldn’t miss it! Its message was a bold one to say the least–“God still plans to make Farmington His New Jerusalem—soon!” I had to read the sign a few times to make sure I was reading it properly. I mean, I guess I am out of the heavenly loop. I didn’t get the memo that explained, first time around, that Farmington was the place God had chosen for DD (Divine Development) and now I was being told that this was STILL God’s plan. Maybe I should pay closer attention to my email? Still, I should have guessed there was something special about Farmington when such a small town has a WalMart.

At the same time I felt a bit disappointed. I’ve been preaching for years that we could think of the most breathtaking images we have ever seen, multiply them by a billion and still not have any kind of a concept about the majesty of our heavenly condos. Well if Farmington is it, the New Jerusalem is going to be slightly more modest than my imagination led me to believe. Do cutbacks go that high up? Maybe it’s just that God hasn’t started phase one of His ‘Extreme Home Makeover’ yet and I need to reserve my opinion for a later date. Regardless, that sign certainly caught my imagination. I couldn’t get its message out of my head. I wondered about who was behind it.

My first thought was that it was some group lead by a self-proclaimed prophet from the Jimmy Jones School of Evangelism located in Waco, Texas. If you’ve been in Christian circles for any length of time, you have probably met one or two of these people. They tend to worship on their own, having forsaken their Babylon (the established Church), and they tend to have a real good handle on what God wants you to do.

I met someone like this not once, but twice. One meeting was in Charlottetown, PEI. The other occurred after just after moving back to Toronto. What are the chances? Anyway, his deal was that the Apostle Paul was the antichrist and that Armageddon would happen in Quebec and somehow the Hell’s Angels and former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney were in on it. He was very adamant that all of this was revealed to him as he studied the Word.

Don’t misunderstand me. I am not making fun of this individual. My heart went out to him. He really felt called to proclaim this message sacrificially and he clearly lived a life of single-focussed service that puts most people, including myself, to shame. If he would have allowed me to help him, I would have.

My second thought was a bit more positive: what if the sign is a vision statement? What if, by faith, the Christians in Farmington have this plan that is so outrageously ambitious that those who drive by shake their heads and go, “no way, not here!”? Hey, it’s possible! After all, small towns have a good track record with God. Didn’t Bethlehem win the bid for Jesus’ birth over Jerusalem, so why not Farmington? What if those who paid for this sign are also paying for the vision through prayer and love and sacrifice?

To be honest, my cynical side makes me lean toward the first option, but what if? It makes me curious about what I will see next time we travel through Maine.

When was the last time you and your congregation took such a God-prompted, ginormous step of faith that it made others scratch their heads and laugh? Has that ever happened to you or your congregation? If it hasn’t, why not? Have you even asked God for that kind of a vision? I’d love to be part of a church that was radically determined to do things too big to be accomplished on their own. I’d love to be part of a church that makes people laugh and shake their heads and say, “How did they do that?” I’d rather be part of a church with audacious vision than one with contented dreams. Let’s face it: I blend in better with nuts, if you don’t believe me, just look at my friends!

One of the things that I noticed upon returning to Toronto back in 2001, was the proliferation of tags, graffiti, and the assorted sprayings that adorn, or perhaps, better said, obscure many public surfaces. You can’t go by a newspaper box, mailbox, street sign, electrical box, or unprotected building without seeing something scribbled on it.

As I write today, we have some minor tagging on our church building. Some on our brick and some on our emergency exit doors. I know I have to get to work and clean that up soon or more will collect. Graffiti is like pigeons or seagulls. Once there is one, others follow and the mess only gets bigger!

I have read that both urban graffiti, as well as, litter have a huge psychological impact on a neighborhood. The more garbage and graffiti the higher the crime. Why is it that people feel the need to mark their (or at least what they think is their) territory? Is a tag a poor man’s monument? Do I look at a tag and go, oh, “Bif” or “Lester” is a great guy, after all, this stop sign was merely a serviceable stop sign until he came along and defaced it?

I take comfort in the fact that graffiti has always been a part of urban life. In World War 2, US soldiers often wrote the “Kilroy was here” slogan wherever they went. I also know that you can find ancient graffiti in Pompeii and elsewhere, much of which were political or editorial comments of one sort or another.

Perhaps tags and graffiti are a way, however destructive and ugly, of proving one’s existence. It seems to me, though, that public defacement for the sake of scribbling your initials, is just plain nasty and selfish. I wonder do taggers ever actually tag their own homes?

Still there is another side to this spraying scenario. Not all that is deposited in the community is ugly and destructive. Since coming to Toronto, I have also found amazing works of graffiti art. Piece large and grand and colourful. Some in secluded areas, public yes, but not in the open, more like in the alleyways and back of buildings. Some beautify abandon buildings others beautify garage doors. The picture accompanying this blog was taken by me in our neighbourhood and it is just one of several pieces that I have photographed and put on my flickr site. There is no doubt in my mind that some of this kind of creative, expressive work is wonderful and welcome. It doesn’t destroy public property, it respects public property. It doesn’t profane, it breathes life and communicates. Some of these pieces of street art, as I call it, make our alleyways art exhibits and they deserve to be appreciated and seen. It is a way of sharing ones’ life in a creative, expressive way.

How do you leave your mark each day? Does it contribute to what is beautiful or ugly? Is it selfish, or giving? Does it deface what is beautiful or does it enhance with new life? What are the effects of your emotional graffiti? Each one of us is part of many communities, we all contribute something, whether we want to or not. At the end of the day are you a tagger or an artist?