Читать книгу Nail Scarred Hands Made New - John Shorack - Страница 4

Our neighborhoods are dear to us. Across five continents, InnerCHANGE team members have forged relationships of such intimacy with neighbors, and together celebrated personal moments so dear, that it has felt like we were experiencing ministry more than “doing” it. So we have been cautious in discussing the sober reality of violent crime. Furthermore, we have seen that those who have never experienced life in our landscapes can too easily misconstrue the issue of violence in slums, barrios, and inner cities around the world as the issue confronting missionaries.

John Shorack’s book, Nail Scarred Hands Made New, is searing in its honesty about the danger of violence and the impact of loss in pursuing solidarity with Christ among the poor. But it is also a book that is lavish in its hope and insightful in the way it identifies Christ’s redemption steering along the jagged edge. John writes that in order to thrive on tough mission terrain, one must move beyond the category of “mission worker” to embrace a deeper relationship as mission partner with Christ, whether at the edge of the cliff of offense described in Luke 4 or at the edge of the manger of vulnerability in Luke 2. In a book that combines tender memoir, scriptural meditation, and theological reflection, John stakes out new ground for people who are earnestly seeking to pursue Jesus to the margins. It is not simply what is being said here in this book that is powerful. It is what is being lived.

I am fortunate in that some of my very closest friends are colaborers in InnerCHANGE. We are an order among the poor that is part mission, part tribe, part family. I have known John Shorack for more than twenty years and have had the privilege of mentoring him as a leader in much of his first decade serving with us. We have always been open, honest, and very tight. So when he first began to sense the Lord leading him and his family to Caracas, I struggled a bit. I was concerned not simply because a move to Caracas meant a move away from regular physical contact but also because our explorations in the hillside slums above that capital city revealed that we would have to anticipate a level of violent crime we had not encountered before. I was especially concerned because John lost his father to the Vietnam War when he was a boy, and the impact of that loss was incalculable for John and his family.

So the possibility that John could walk in his father’s footsteps and be taken from his wife and three children at a tender age was all too real. Did I talk about this with John? I can no longer remember. But spoken or unspoken, the possibility that John could die in Venezuela and leave his three children fatherless was understood. John has been threatened violently and robbed many times in Caracas, yet he has continued to show great trust and fortitude. And yet, as he makes clear in this book, he and his family have thrived and glimpsed a depth of security and intimacy in Christ that could perhaps have been gained in no other way.

It has been more than twenty-six years since I moved to a unique place called Minnie Street in Santa Ana, California, and founded InnerCHANGE. Within a few months of relocating there, I realized I was on sacred ground that called for a New Testament Jesus. There was both so much need and so much opportunity for the gospel. And yet, Minnie Street was so far removed from the reach of the church.

One afternoon while I was sitting at my front window listening to the sounds of hundreds of children down in the courtyard, I was conscious of my inexperience in the face of such need. More important, I was conscious of my inadequacy in the face of such a privilege; that I should be allowed to minister in such a place simply overawed me. In that moment, I prayed earnestly in my simple apartment that God would bring better people than me to that street, better people than me to InnerCHANGE. God has answered that prayer time and again since that afternoon. Nail Scarred Hands is evidence of the fruit of that prayer.

John Hayes

General director of InnerCHANGE