Whazzup Message--Mission to Oz

Mission to Oz, by Mark A. Tabb (Moody Publishers)
© 2004 Mark Tabb
Excerpt distributed by FreshMinistry.org by permission of the Author and Publisher

Chapter 1
I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore
Anne could never get used to the smell. An odd combination of smoke, animal
feces, dust and sweat, the odor hung in the air everywhere she went in this African village
where her daughter and son-in-law lived. “About halfway through the trip I thought I was
going to lose it, I just couldn’t take it any longer,” she said. “Of course, no matter how
much I complained nothing changed.” Her daughter hardly noticed the smell. When
Anne would say something about the odor, Jennifer would take a half-hearted sniff in the
air and say something like, “Oh, you get used to it after a while.”
Anne’s husband, Leroy, hated the altitude. He’d thought he was in decent enough
shape for a fifty-year-old man. Then he stepped off the plane in Addis Ababa in the high
plateau region of Africa. The elevation sucked the wind out of him. Every few minutes an
aching in his chest forced him to stop to catch his breath. “I was ready to go home after
about two days,” he said.
Then there were the African children, each of whom seemed in desperate need of
a tissue with which to blow his nose. “But, said Anne, “all the Kleenex? in the world
wouldn’t have done any good. With so much dust blowing everywhere, I don’t
understand how anyone could ever breath normally.” A photo of the children with Anne
shows them huddled around her, each one doing their best to hug her while others clung
to her hands.
Anne and Leroy learned all about their limitations during their two-week stay in
Ethiopia. They discovered how American they truly are. Everything from the food to the
language to the poverty of east Africa overwhelmed them. “I hoped we could work with
Jennifer and Adrian while we were there. I thought there must be something we could
do,” Anne said. “But most of the time I felt like I was in the way. Almost everything I felt
I should do was wrong, from the way I talked to the people to the gifts I wanted to hand
out. I thought I was being compassionate by giving candy to the children. Adrian told me
I wasn’t doing any of them any favors.” She paused. “I thought I knew what to expect
over there, but I didn’t have a clue. It truly is a completely different world.”

WHERE DID MY WORLD GO?
Anne and Leroy climbed aboard a 747 that became a time machine, transporting
them to a world that has barely changed over the past thousand years. Another sort of
time warp has changed your life and mine. Without climbing aboard an airplane we’ve
been transported to a different culture than the one in which we grew up. One morning
we awoke in a world locked not in the past, but in the future. No one is really sure what
to call this place. Even the most popular name, postmodernism, says more about what
this world isn’t than what it is.
Nothing looks familiar here, and the moment we think we have our bearings, the
world changes again. Marketing expert George Barna has said that every three to five
years this culture completely reinvents itself, with the process compressing with each
passing cycle. (George Barna, The Second Coming of the Church, Word, 1998, pg. 2.) It
appears that all of the foundations of the past appear to have crumbled. In this strange
new world even the definition of the simple little word is is in question.
The new world assaults our senses, especially our sense of right and wrong.
Personal ethics are just that, personal. Most of the natives of this land gave up the concept
of transcendent, eternal truth long ago. Like beauty, truth is in the eye of the beholder, a
matter of taste, not absolutes. “Does it work for me?” is the question of the day, not “Is
this right or ethical or moral?” Being true to oneself is the highest good, the ultimate
virtue.
That’s not all that makes us uncomfortable in this world. The people here…
they’re different. Some of their ideas leave us baffled. Natives of this land value
experiences the way earlier generations valued material wealth. Because of this, many
people live in a state of perpetual boredom. We try to tell them there’s more to life than
being entertained, but they don’t listen. Most of us wonder if they listen to anyone. They
aren’t swayed by the opinion of experts. To the natives of this postmodern world, the
experts might as well be dead.
Everything around us has changed. The new world swallowed our old world,
leaving us dazed, confused, isolated. And most of us want to find a way home. We feel
a little like Dorothy on the day she walked out of her black and white house and entered
the Technicolor world of Oz. If only we could click our heels and wake up in our own
bed in our own little Kansas, we would feel much better. That’s how Anne and Leroy
felt during their two week stay in the African bush. It was a nice place to visit, but…
Anne and Leroy could go home. We don’t have that option. For those of us old enough to
remember watching Neil Armstrong step down onto the lunar surface, the world in which
we grew up no longer exists. There is no going home.
Now what?
Either we can continue to be a stranger in a strange land, or we can adjust. We
can whine and complain and wish the good old days would return, or we can accept the
fact that God knows what He is doing, roll up our sleeves, and carry on His work in this
world and this culture He has allowed to flourish.
The only real difference between Anne and Leroy and their daughter’s family was
a sense of call. Adrian and Jennifer didn’t step off the airplane and find life in the bush a
particularly pleasant experience. The poverty of the people, both materially and
spiritually, broke their hearts. But leaving Africa has never been an option for Adrian and
Jennifer. They committed themselves to making whatever adjustments necessary to
become effective ambassadors of Christ to the people of Yasow because God called them
there.
I don’t know if I ever heard God call me to reach out to natives of postmodern
culture. He did something much more subtle. Without my knowledge and without my
consent, He planted me in the postmodern world. The new world is now my home, and
yours. By sticking us here God also gave us a job to do. Whether we like it or not, we’re
now ambassadors of Christ to this world. We are in the truest sense of the word, on a
mission to a postmodern Oz.
Understanding the culture is only the first step toward impacting it with eternal
truth. As we try to come to grips with the change that surrounds us, we must move out of
the safety of the familiar. Don’t worry. It isn’t as difficult as it may seem. All of us,
regardless of our age, have been affected by the shift from modernity to postmodernity.
There’s a little postmodern in all of us. Reaching the natives of Oz isn’t a matter of trying
to be something you aren’t. On the contrary: Authenticity is the key to effectiveness in
Oz.
I don’t know about you, but I’m excited about what lies ahead. God is at work
here. The massive shift in our culture didn’t take him by surprise. He has now placed
you and me in a new world filled with new challenges and new possibilities. Once we
recover from the initial shock we will discover there is no better place to fulfill his
mission.

For more information on Mission to Oz, go to:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0802442935/freshministry




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