Bad News, Good News

“In order to share the good news you first have to understand the bad news.”

I must confess I had been sitting in this missions seminar wondering, “Why am I here?” Arriving late, I had stepped on a number of toes and stumbled over people’s conference bags on my way to an empty seat in the middle of the auditorium. No way to leave inconspicuously.

Then, all of a sudden, it got interesting. At first I thought the speaker was meandering, but as I got my mind in step with his, I caught a glimpse of his destination.

In order to share the good news you first have to understand the bad news.

This was exactly what I had been wrestling with for Entrust.

The good news doesn’t change, but the “bad news” in a slum in Calcutta is quite different than the bad news in an American suburb. In my own preaching and teaching ministry in the U.S., I always tried to define the contrasting backdrop of American culture to understand how to explain a particular biblical truth so people could understand. Obedience is usually a choice between embracing the world’s values and embracing Christ’s. But worldly values differ greatly from culture to culture, context to context.

There is no one-size-fits-all way to train church leaders around the world. It takes a very different sort of leader to lead a church in an American suburb than it does in, say, a slum in Calcutta. That would seem to be obvious, but so much training overseas is more American than Indian or African or whatever the context. When you hear about Christians in Africa massacring Christians from a different tribe, you wonder, “How can that be?” Quite simply, if anyone embraces the “good news” without understanding how the “good news” changes the culturally-ingrained “bad news” they grew up with – in this case, age-old ethnic hatred – then they haven’t fully grasped and been transformed by the “Good News.” That is why Jesus, in the Great Commission, stressed the aspect of “teaching them to obey all I have commanded you.”

How about you? Have you spent much time understanding the “bad news” of your own culture, sometimes so deeply ingrained you don’t even realize what it is? That is the essence of the warning Paul gives us: “See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ.” (Col. 2:8)

In order to share the good news you first have to understand the bad news.

David G. Goodman

The Battle of Black Forest

A year ago we wrote about the Waldo Canyon fires in Colorado. No one expected this again . . .Day 9 of the “Battle of Black Forest.”  

"We're fighting what we call the 'Battle of Black Forest,'" Lt. Col. Mitch Utterback said. "The first Chinooks and Blackhawks you see every morning flying from the south to the north are coming from Fort Carson." (These aircraft dumped slurry and other fire retardants from the sky to complement the efforts on the ground.)

Our Chicago friends might wonder why we ever moved to such a dangerous place! In the space of a year we have experienced the two most devastating fires in Colorado history.

The Cause: A prolonged drought and hot windy conditions turning the Black Forest neighborhoods, just a few miles southeast of us, into a proverbial tinder box. This fire scorched its way to the top of the state’s record list with 14,280 acres burned and hundreds of military and firefighters from more than ten states joining forces to serve our community.

The difference for us this time was that we were earnestly contemplating what it would be like to return to a pile of ashes. It was so close that we were encouraged to make all the evacuation preparations we could. Last time, during the Waldo Canyon fire in June 2012, we had other people’s valuables stowed in our home. This time we were deciding what to pack and had it ready to go. We know 509 homes were destroyed, 28 more are damaged, and 38,000 people were evacuated from their homes. We are reminded of the biblical metaphor of our lives being like grass which so readily goes up in flames. This world is not our eternal home and such events serve as a dramatic reminder. Our prayers are with our city – as our neighbors, just a few miles away, lost their homes and its contents. Thanks for the calls and emails inquiring about our staff who, once again, was spared.

I love the note pictured above, left behind by firefighters, apologizing for the mess they made in securing a house from the Black Forest fire. 

Entrust staff can relate to this, having a number of things in common with first responders. We willingly go where most people would not dare, only to find ourselves in very foreign, unfamiliar settings as we bring God’s love to a lost world. 

This firefighter knew one thing. Those windows were a wide open invitation for a rampaging fire to come in and wreak destruction. He had to break into that house and shut them. It was the right thing to do, but he also knew his muddy boots would be stepping on some toes (along with that pristine carpet). In the final analysis, long after the carpet has been cleaned, I would not be surprised to find this firefighter’s note framed and treasured in the very house he saved.

It is almost impossible to go to a foreign culture without committing cultural blunders and finding oneself in messy situations. Anyone reaching across cultures becomes adept at apologies, taking a posture of humility and developing the art of asking the right questions to determine the needs before making any assumptions. Sometimes cross-cultural interactions can get a little messy, but in the end it is God’s love, seen through you, that wins hearts and meets needs.

In Memory of My Father

Marvin L. Goodman, Jr.

Eulogy I delivered at my father’s memorial service:

It has been some time since I have seen many of you. Nancy and I now live in Colorado Springs where I am president of a missionary organization called Entrust, formerly BEE Biblical Education by Extension. Following the passing of my father on April 11th, I have been reflecting on the rich legacy he left behind.

I feel a certain symmetry in hearing of my father’s death while overseas on the mission field at a staff conference . . . just as my parents heard of the deaths of their parents. It is mind boggling to me that yesterday morning Nancy and I left Budapest Hungary and that same evening were here in, Winona Lake, Indiana for the visitation and now this morning at this service with you. I realize I have a privilege neither of my missionary parents ever had . . . attending their parent’s memorial service. The reality, for my sister Anne and my brother Paul (as well as for my cousin Carol, also an MK from Brazil) we received the news of the death of each of our grandparents by a tersely worded telegram which took two weeks to arrive with the final leg on a bicycle.

Email, Skype and Vonage make this a different day; perhaps we are the richer for it in some ways, but all the poorer for the loss of pioneers like my father. The church around the world stands on the shoulders of people like my father. We have received so many tributes from people saying how Dad’s ministry touched their lives. 

My parents’ first trip to Africa was measured in weeks and months rather than the relatively few hours it takes today. They traveled by ship to Europe, down the coast of Africa and finally by riverboat into the very heart of Africa.

Dad hand crafted every piece of furniture for our home overlooking the village of N’Zoro in the Central African Republic. He devised a hydraulic pumping system to supply water up the hill to our house (rather than have it carried one bucket at a time). Once for a family vacation trip to a faraway river, I remember him cutting bamboo poles and shaping nails into fishhooks so I could catch my first fish. I watched him do electrical wiring, plumbing, harvest kapok pods for the stuffing in sofa cushions Mom made, do repairs on our pickup and a thousand other things that would have gone undone unless he figured out how to do them. Yet I remember just staring at him in puzzlement when after retiring to the US, he said to me, “I have no idea how to care and maintain a house here.” “Really, Dad?”

My father graduated Cum Laude from Berkeley, and if I’d been blessed with his mind I’m sure I would have paraded it shamelessly at every opportunity, but he did not. Dad did not aspire to the limelight, but he did not hesitate to serve as a leader. When pressed into service as field superintendent, I remember how he would have traded that city of Bangui posting in a minute to camp out in the jungles introducing pygmies to a savior who loved them. There is much that could be said, perhaps needs to be said, about my father’s accomplishments. He was a career missionary where few have lasted an entire career. But instead of telling you about Marvin Lester Goodman, Jr. I will tell you about my Dad, and what this son respects most about him.

My father loved us well and I owe so much to him. My youngest sister, Suzan, once startled me by observing I was the one of us four most likely to clash with Dad because I was most like him. Of course I was the last to see it, but she was right. When I was younger it seemed to me he affected an artificial humility. Over time I came to realize he was just painfully conscious of his own failings. 

As an adult, I came to realize I still longed for the affirmation he found most difficult to give his son. A counselor and friend pressed me to talk with him about it. On the way to a hardware store I somehow told my father how at times I wondered why he could not bring himself to affirm me and tell me he loved me. To my surprise, he agreed. “Mom always tried to get me to do that more. I guess my own father never did” he said and then told me he was sorry. After that he went out of his way to affirm me and tell me he loved me. That is what I honor my father for. At that conversation he was about my age now. He was determined to remain clay on the potter’s wheel, malleable in the Master’s hand.

After retirement he began to work at Kmart. Big and strong, they had him lifting and loading things he should not have been at his age. I was so relieved when he was asked to be the Pastor to Seniors. Then Mom started to deteriorate. I learned more from my father about what it means to love in those years than in all the years before. Mom had been the one with the servant’s heart who did whatever any of us needed. In this cruel turnabout, Mom could never again do what she did best, and she gradually became trapped in a Parkinson’s prison. The love of Dad’s life slowly deserted him, but her body remained. 

Once when Nancy and I visited, Mom smiled and even laughed with us. In private, my Dad told me, she didn’t do that for him anymore. The small residue of emotion she could still muster was reserved for extraordinary moments like seeing people at church or our visit. He had lost her, but still he cared for her. Food in, food out. He cared for her. It is one thing to love that sweet little thing in a short little tennis skirt (one of my favorite pictures of my Mom when they were dating). Quite another to love the rag doll body with heart and mind locked away deep inside her.

Clay in the master’s hand. As if God had said:

“I know you want to go minister to pygmies but I need you to lead the mission field.”

“I know it makes you uncomfortable because you never saw you own father do it, but I need you to affirm your son.”

“I know you would rather see the USA in your Chevrolet, but I need you to be nursemaid to your wife.”

And he did it with grace, dignity and love. Those, for me, were some of his crowning achievements.

Read Dad's obituary here.

Mom, Dad and David

Mom in her tennis skirt