Learning to surf

I’m back! What an adventure it has been 3 weeks in the USA. I had experienced some amazing things and have plenty of stories to tell. This particular reflection however is from the end of my trip. On my way back from the USA I stopped in at Hawaii for a couple of days to fulfill a life long dream of surfing in Hawaii.
It was the off season for surfing so the waves all over were small to flat. My usual board of choice is a bodyboard but due to the small surf conditions I decided to hire an 11 foot longboard at Waikiki and go for a little stand up surfing. You need to understand that for a bodyboarder to revert to a surfboard requires a huge amount of humility.
So here I was sitting on a board that was not necessarily my wave surfing tool of choice, in unfamiliar territory, in a strange country with locals and tourist alike who were strangers to me. My usual experience of surfing is that it is a loners sport, you battle for every wave and once you claim it there’s no sharing it, and whatever you do don’t make a fool of yourself, you’re out there to impress. So the first wave I get, I stand up and find there are a dozen others sharing the wave with me, then what do I do, I get the wobbles and fall off, oh great, just made a fool of myself. Much to my surprise no-one seemed to care or really notice, in fact the atmosphere out there was friendly, encouraging and had a real community feel about it. My next wave I rode a long way with 2 locals on boards either side of me encouraging me to ‘walk the plank’ and ‘hang 10’. In this strange and foreign zone I encountered an atmosphere of encouragement and friendly community, not an ounce of possessiveness or ridicule.
We still have so much to learn from Polynesian cultures and the like, from their expression of hospitality to the way they embrace the stranger. If only our ancestors of the Christian faith could have appreciated such approaches to mission.
Often when it comes to the missional expression of the church, we prefer to encounter the world out there on our own terms, imposing our own culture and using the methods we are comfortable with. I wonder how much more receptive to the Gospel message people may be if we were more willing to become learners rather than experts, if we were prepared to be fools for God, prepared to be taken by the hand by a ‘local’ of which ever context we find ourselves in, learn new methods and use new tools.
An encounter with my new Hawaiian surfer buddies certainly impacted my outlook on mission and what it means to embrace the stranger. May we be willing to be learners.

Shalom
Mark