Paul spends some time with villagers deep in the jungles of Borneo, where he uncovers the story of a massive man-eating crocodile that once terrorized the community. But the village chief took care of the problem …
Outrageous Soccer Dream
WHAT COMES AROUND goes around.
Interesting news today… Has it already been nine years since my friend Timo shared with me his dream of launching a youth soccer league? His passion for youth soccer “had me at hello.” Indonesians live with a love for the game, but a decade ago there was no grassroots movement to foster the talents of Indonesian youth.
We took out an ad in the newspaper announcing the launching of Liga Charis. This, the first ever youth soccer league that we know of, would give boys a chance to unleash and hone their talents. We stood in front of a crowded auditorium filled with curious and excited soccer fans from all around the city. The game of soccer would emerge from within our own communities and would impact the way soccer is played across the nation. Liga Charis would bring a new character, and a quality to the game built on fair play, teamwork and a faithfulness to the fundamentals.
One man stood up and asked, “Why are you doing this for us?”
“Because we care about youth in our city,” Timo answered. “And we care about the future of Indonesian soccer.” Forty two teams signed up. A soccer ministry was born. Today, talented young men come from afar to live in our city and receive coaching. Since that first year, several copycat leagues have sprung up, to our delight. After all, imitation is the greatest flattery. Over twenty of our players have now gone pro and dozens of others are in the pipeline.
This month, the Indonesian soccer federation is holding its first ever “Soccer Congress.” Rather than meeting in megacity Jakarta, they have chosen Malang, citing our city’s “commitment to the development of youth soccer.” The rivers of time flow quietly into tomorrow… dreams become reality and take on a life of their own.
I had to laugh when I heard that Timo hasn’t been invited. The Soccer Federation has no idea that our city’s movement of soccer originated as a dream in his heart.
Timo, my friend… a toast to your dreams!
No Kingless Kingdom
In my town there lives a king who is building a castle.
Seriously.
We usually think of castles as ancient European fortresses but this one is newly being built from scratch in the hills of Malang, Indonesia. The rocks for the walls and ramparts are being brought in from a quarry out of a volcano about an hour away.
The castle is huge and imposing, frightening the townsfolk who live in the upscale neighborhood that surrounds it. In a curious sort of mood one day, I strolled onto the unique property and the architect in charge was kind enough to give me a tour. He walked me up the long staircase of the tallest tower, and from there I could see our entire city. Impressive.
That day I also met the king of the castle, the owner, and he was also proud enough of his work in progress that I got a second tour. The king told me he made his fortune in the energy industry, winning many lucrative contracts with the government, and is now enjoying the spoils of his labor. He’s half Indonesian and half Yemenese, and spent a large portion of his life in Germany. Maybe that’s where he got the inspiration to build himself a castle one day, right from the birthplace of the famed Castle Neuschwanstein, which was the model for Disney’s Cinderella Castle.
He’s not a real king of course, but as I walked around his property people sure treated him like one. After the tour, the kind king invited me to get into his Mercedes Benz and take a ride to his daughter’s private school, which was in preparation mode for an upcoming event. I did so and tried to get to know him better through the load blasts of his hi-fi stereo belting out Elvis Presley tunes.
Whether we were inside the castle walls or outside in his kingdom, I noticed something. When he walked into their space, people stopped what they were doing and listened to him. In his presence everyone—important or inconsequential—oriented themselves toward the king. On all of their facial expressions was written the question, what can I do for You, Your Highness? Not one person ignored him and went busily about their work.
It got me thinking about the kingdom of God. We are charged as the king’s servants to advance His kingdom, to bring his life and rule and joy and peace to the broken and dying and hopeless still shackled in enemy territory.
Yet even as we go about that noble purpose, it’s easy to forget all about the king. We don’t live in a kingless kingdom, to quote a phrase from my friend Steve Hawthorne, but we can sure act like it sometimes. We go about our Christian work, dutifully building the kingdom of God, yet forgetting there is a king in the center of the kingdom. The king of Malang gets more respect and attention from his workers than the King of the universe gets from me a lot of times.
Are we orienting ourselves toward the King? On our facial expressions is the question written, what can I do for You, Your Highness? Do we welcome the King’s interruptions into our lives?
Maybe that’s why I feel so frustrated sometimes. I see assignments that the King brings into my lives as things that block my goals and clutter up my agenda. I am too busy with the work of the Lord and completely forget about the Lord of the work, as I’ve heard it put before. That’s crazy.
.
Advancing the kingdom AND loving the king. That’s what real kingdom life is all about.
Forgive me My King. Re-orient my life toward You. I open myself to your interruptions. I want to stop what I’m doing when you enter the room and see your face, hear your voice and do Your will. I once again open my life to Your Kingship. I love loving You.
Tele-seminar with Eric Bryant
Paul interacts with long-time friend and author, Eric Bryant, in this thought provoking teleseminar.
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Raising of the Cross
Rembrant's "The Raising of the Cross"
Rembrandt is considered by some to be the greatest of all artists in the history of western civilization. Any way we look at him, he is a timeless giant in the arenas of creative expression. Rembrandt was a master of painting light and blending color. As one looks at a Rembrandt, it is easy to marvel at his talent. Yet we must look behind his paintings, beyond the museum walls into his life. First, Rembrandt and his wife, Saskia, experienced the excruciating death of their two month old firstborn son. Incredibly, a couple of years later they lost another baby when she was two weeks old. Not long after the birth of their third baby, Saskia died from tuberculosis.
It is worth studying the progression of Rembrandt’s creative expression in those years. We begin to see the torments of his soul released into his canvas. Through tears of anguish he painted away from the brilliant rich colors, instead creating art that draws us into deeper waters, into the warmer colors of sadness, even despair. In Rembrandt’s work we see some of the most captivating expressions of the human face ever painted. He became known as the first great artist to ever paint impoverished beggars, street urchins, and slum dwellers. In the eyes of his subjects, we find the search for meaning, the discovery of grace and the renewal of hope. They grasp our hearts and won’t let go. This giant among painters will always be immortalized in our hearts for painting “Raising of the Cross” in which he portrays himself as responsible for crucifying Jesus.
Imagine looking into Rembrandt’s eyes. What would you see reflected there? The most captivating eyes in the world are not any particular shade of brown, green, blue, black or hazel. They are the eyes of any person who has been hammered beneath mighty waves of desperation, only to have an intimate encounter with the suffering, death, and resurrection of the Christ. These are the eyes of an enduring and radiant soul.
— By Paul Richardson
The Divine Artist
I ENJOY WORKING WITH PAINTS, mixing colors, experimenting with the effect they make on the canvas. In the past, I worked with acrylics and water colors. Now, finally, I’m beginning to experiment with oils. Oils are more difficult, but they offer so much more potential. One difficulty with oils is that they take so long to dry. Recently, my daughter Katie picked up one of my paintings. She felt horrible when she realized that her fingers had smudged up the paint. I told her not to worry about it. After all, the painting should have been dry. It had been sitting there for days!
With some of us, God is painting with oils. Metamorphosis doesn’t always happen overnight and God is a patient artist. Sometimes it takes years for the Spirit’s artistry to mature within us. As I look back on my life, I am now conscious that God has been moving to create within me since I was a child, and this process will continue until God’s work has been perfected.[1] Admittedly, I’ve been running interference, too often choosing to trust in myself. My fear and pride clogs up the Spirit’s movement. Faith releases his artistry within us. Perhaps this is why the Scripture sometimes makes use of imperative language when referencing our responsiveness to the Spirit. Paul writes, “Let us keep in step with the Spirit.”[2] To the Corinthians, “Eagerly desire spiritual gifts.”[3] To the Ephesians he exhorts, “Be filled with the Spirit.”[4] And to Timothy, “I remind you to fan into flames the gift of God which is in you.”[5]
Perhaps most importantly, faith ignites the creative artistry of the Spirit of God in the human soul. The expressions of the Spirit speak for themselves, calling others into a deeper awareness of God. They are all the assurance the people around us need to know that the Creator is living and active within us. Like notes on a score, they are God’s heart-song to his creation. As we are captured by the Spirit, love welcomes other people into our hearts and moves our hands to serve them. Joy flows into other cubicles at the office. Peace swirls through a staff meeting and people become uncomfortable with their anxiety. We discover a newfound patience with those who previously stirred such anxiety within us. Kindness comes tumbling out into our eyes as we tell stories to our children at bedtime. Faith is a river that flows from our hearts, watering the arid ground of our worries. Gentleness defines our response to someone in pain.
I’m excited to get to know the person God is creating in me. Someday I won’t believe that I used to be afraid to speak out for my convictions. Any invitation to offer the living hope in my soul to others will be seen as a fantastic new opportunity to share in God’s creative process! The discord, the old jealousies, the addictions and the spiteful bursts of anger are being caught by the Spirit’s fire, burned into ashes, and blown away. The fear that once caused trembling hands and shaking knees drifts away. A new person is being created and is emerging within. My new self is “being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator![6] Be filled with hope and live this day with a bold faith. Even now, God is in the process of remaking you. Your maker is not finished. He knows precisely what he created you to be, and he “who began his work in you will carry it on to completion.”[7]
Paul Andrew Richardson
East Java, Indonesia
[1] Hebrews 10:14. [2] Galatians 5:25. [3] 1 Corinthians 14:1. [4] Ephesians 5:18. [5] 2 Timothy 1:6. [6] Colossians 3:10. [7] Philippians 1:6.
Social Entrepreneurship
Social Entrepreneurship
My doorbell rang this morning at 4 AM. I was expecting out-of-town guests to show up at 6AM, and I figured it was them coming early, way too early. I jumped up in my bed-headed and confused state and greeted the three visitors waiting patiently at my gate.
They had just traveled all night in a chartered minivan from the resort island of Bali, which is one island over and 10 hours away from Java, where I live. They came this week to learn from our team on how to start an outsourcing business, something we did three years ago in Java. All three of them have a heart to see people lifted out of drug addiction and the sex trade industry of Bali, and they know that people who escape that degradation need a steady job to stay free. Prostitutes simply don’t have a lot of other job options, even if they somehow able to pay off their debts. They need gainful employment for the long haul. My three new friends are determined to give people like that new opportunities.
Welcome to the world of Social Entrepreneurship. It’s a blending of the best in business with a heart for community development. It’s fueled by people who launch small start-ups to give others a leg-up. I first learned this concept in 2006 when I read Thomas Friedman’s excellent book, The World is Flat. Friedman contends that the world has been flattened by globalization so that people from any walk of life have access to success, thanks to the internet. He writes, for example, about how people in India used to dream about going to America and striking it rich, and now the visa application lines to the U.S. embassy are noticeably shorter. No need to embark on the New World because the whole world if flat. Not only does he trace the history, good and bad, of a world economy but he introduces us to some people who were harvesting the best out of globalization for the world’s poor. He calls them social entrepreneurs, these people who are teaching a man to fish rather than giving a man a fish.
I was intrigued, as I had lived in Indonesia for many years and had given away many fish. They sure go fast. I remember after a natural disaster here once giving everyone in a village a kilo of rice, and they immediately asked for more the following days. I always felt so limited with how to serve the poor in a more sustainable way. When I read that book a light came on. That’s it…I want to be a social entrepreneur.
We started brainstorming with some members of our English Club on how to start a business here that would give poor people better access to internet-opened opportunities. We kicked around a few ideas and finally settled on starting a graphic design outsourcing business. Our focus became doing high quality PowerPoint presentations at affordable prices. Our promise to clients was to us send us your notes, and we’ll take it from there. Slam bang presentations delivered back to you within 48 hours. Our vision was crafted as “empowering the poor through excellence in business.”
In February of 2007 PowerPointPartners was born (we’re now in the process of changing that to Presentation Elevation). That was three years ago, and since then we have had nearly 300 people go through our free graphic design class for the community. All of them get life-changing jobs skills and the crème of the crop become our employees, which now numbers seven Indonesians. This week’s free graphic design class, taught by its former graduates, features 20 street beggars, all more eager to learn new computer skills than even the fried rice we offer them. It will be fun to see if some of them have the self-motivation and determination to escape the cruel clutches of poverty. We can only provide a ramp for them; it’s up to them if they will take it.
I’m having the time of my life. I’m enjoying running a business that has an eye on more than profit margin. We define success not only in items of profitability, but how many people we can empower out of poverty. The most fun is going into our office and seeing one of our young workers, who just a year ago was unemployed and struggling financially, now creating a stellar presentation for a prestigious Western business. How cool that my partners in Bali are trying this same audacious idea. I wish and pray them well and look forward to the day when former drug addicts and prostitutes get off the streets of Bali and into great jobs.
Sounds fun? Do you want to be a social entrepreneur too? Have you already started? I think we should form a tribe. In this blog I’d love to hear your thoughts below.
Assimilation
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Paul and Mike talk about assimilating God’s word into our lives.