Episode Details

Well, I’m back in the land of vegemite, budgie-smugglers and drop-bears, after two busy but invigorating weeks in the US.

I never quite managed that second ‘Postcard from America’, reality having collided viciously with my optimism. This week’s post is the next best thing: a postcard from a weary but happy returned traveller, with some brief reflections on his sojourn in a strange land.

I don’t say ‘strange land’ in any pejorative sense. It’s just that America is different in so many ways, and sometimes disorienting for an Australian evangelical Christian. At one level, there’s so much that seems familiar and immediately recognizable—perhaps because of our shared British heritage or simply because we consume so much American culture (in its popular and Christian forms).

And yet the differences also keep slapping you in the face.

Some of them are negatives. They put sweet jam on chicken-and-salad sandwiches. The coffee is mostly terrible. They never put the handbrake on when they park the car.

But let’s try to be American about this, which is to say grateful and positive.

That’s the first thing that strikes me, every time I visit the US (which I’ve done perhaps 15 times over the past two decades). The positivity. American evangelical Christians have an easy thankfulness about them that I don’t tire of experiencing. There’s no embarrassment in thanking you for the good or helpful things you’ve done, nor any awkwardness about receiving such praise or affirmation with humility.

In fact, my US colleague Marty Sweeney is sure that I keep coming back to the States each year just so as I can get my annual dose of positive affirmation, to keep me going for the next 12 months. He’s probably right. I think I get nearly as much warm and genuine thanks, encouragement and general affirmation during my two-week American trips than in the other 11½ Australian months.

Now, any kind of thankful positivity (including the American variety) can become cloying or fake or unrealistic or even manipulative. But I think my Australian instinct is therefore to dial it down just in case.

Insofar as walking and growing in the truth of Christ Jesus the Lord means ‘abounding in thanksgiving’ (Col 2:6-7), I’m always rebuked and encouraged by my American brothers to abound a bit more.

The flipside of thankfulness is generosity. I’m grateful to have received; I’m glad to be able to give. Perhaps Americans and American churches are wealthier or better resourced than their Australian counterparts. I’m sure that’s true in some cases. But I’m always bowled over by the graciousness of their hosting, the thoughtful way they provide for guests, and the generosity of the honoraria that they give to visiting speakers. We’re not talking chocolates and $50 Coles vouchers. It has been common for me to have been given a thank you note with US$1000 enclosed, just for preaching one Sunday at a church, or for delivering a single talk at a conference. (And in case you think that’s the reason I keep going back to the US each year, the money all goes to defraying the costs of the trip!)

It’s interesting to think why cultures are different; how they get to be the way they are — whether we’re thinking of churches, families, communities, or even nations. Culture is ‘the whole way we do things around here’, and it’s formed over time by a thousand words, habits, decisions, actions, structures, traditions, and so on. How did American Christian culture get to be (in general) more thankful and generous than our culture? Why for that matter did the culture of Sydney-based evangelicalism develop in the way that it did, such that a book that fairly plainly described its ministry culture (The Trellis and the Vine) should become such a fresh and powerful statement for American evangelicalism about some of its shortcomings? Who can say?

But I’m sure that the gospel and the work of God’s Spirit over time in a p