My favorite phrase is “the leading causes of life.” It was conceived by Gary Gunderson and Larry Pray, and I’ve written about it several times. Gary is Senior V.P. for Health and Welfare and Director of the Center for Excellence in Faith and Health of Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare in Memphis.  Larry is a pastor in the United Church of Christ and Senior Pastoral Scholar for Methodist LeBonheur Healthcare. They co-authored the book, Leading Causes of Life.

Their phrase endures, for me.

But another phrase is making the rounds in conversations in the denomination in which I labor: the “Death Tsunami.” It’s intended to describe the impending demographic change that will happen over the next several years as older members pass away.

It’s meant to be prophetic. Behind it is the thought that if these older members are not replaced with a younger group the days of the denomination itself are numbered.

I’ve been bouncing these two phrases around in my head, asking which excites me, gets my creative juices flowing, makes me want to get involved in making things better?

Guess which one does it for me?

I know the death phrase is meant to attract attention to a real problem. But it frames the future in such an inexorable way I just can’t get a handle on how to respond to it. As Gunderson and Pray write, “If death defines our efforts, then it will win every time.”

Hearing this, I want to start singing Joe Diffie’s country music song, “Prop Me Up Beside the Jukebox (If I die).” That’s about all the energy I can get for this framing of our collective future.

On the other hand, I can get energized about looking for the leading causes of life. It makes me want to search out those places and people who are creating, causing change, moving forward. It’s energizing to seek out what gives us life, makes it purposeful, gives it meaning. We are on a journey toward life.

For too long the mainline denominations have wallowed in their narrative of death. They’ve come to believe it, and they’ve allowed others to confirm it. Well, I don’t.

I believe we belong to each other and to God. This is the essence of our connection. In my denomination this means that the local church, annual conference and general church have the capacity to do more together than any of us can do alone. This gives us the capacity to transform the world for the better if we claim it and live it.

And that leads us to what Gunderson and Pray call coherence. Coherence is that web of blessing that defines our roles as human beings. It calls us beyond ourselves to become involved with others. It gives us life, they write. We are not alone and all about ourselves. We’re in this together.

In a world of rampant narcissism, the Christian faith calls us to become servants to those most vulnerable, in need and without voice. How counter-cultural is that?

And that call leads us out of helplessness and despair to agency. We can change and create change. We are not the inevitable victims of the tsunami of death. We are the agents who can bring, with God’s help, new life, new meaning, new purpose and hope to the dry, arid places that seem without the refreshing waters of renewal and healing.

And when we act in this way–moving toward life and toward others–we are blessed and we become a blessing. We sense that we are accountable to those who have come before, those who will follow and those with whom we share the invigorating journey called life.

So, like Joe Diffie, “I wanna go to heaven but I don’t wanna go tonight.” And “I ain’t afraid of dying, it’s the thought of being dead” that perplexes me. So I’m not giving in to the tsunami of death talk.

Instead, I’m looking for life through connection, coherence, agency and blessing, and I see these at work in the stories of this denomination everyday.

Let’s seek the leading causes of life.

I roasted a small batch of Indian Monsooned Malabar coffee beans this afternoon. I love that name.

As I’ve written before, I’m not an afficionado. I’m a rank amateur hobbyist. But this bean is one reason I enjoy home roasting.  It lets my imagination run wild. In researching the name, I found that the method for aging these beans is a story in itself.

The beans are picked at maturity and shipped to the Malabar region of southern India where they are dried and exposed to the monsoon winds along the coast.  Various web sources report the coffee originally shipped from Malabar ports to Europe under sail. In the dank, wooden hulls of ships traversing the Cape of Good Hope, the beans were exposed to salty, humid sea air that caused swelling and changed their characteristics.

Green coffee beans left, Indian Monsooned Malabar right.

During the weeks-long journey they turned pale, lost acidity and developed a mild, musty flavor when roasted. Europeans took to it.
With the construction of the Suez Canal and steamships, the beans arrived in Europe faster but lacked the transformation that occurred during the slower voyage. The Europeans didn’t like it.
To capture the original taste today, the beans are transported to the Malabar region where they are stored until the monsoon season and then spread onto warehouse floors or tables and allowed to dry in the humid monsoon air for several weeks.  They are raked or turned by hand during this period to expose them uniformly and prevent spoilage. This reproduces the transformation of the old sea voyage.
The result is a distinctive flavor that, apparently, you either love or hate. I’m in the love group.

Rwanda Bourbon green coffee bean left Indian Monsooned Malabar right.

It’s called musty, but that carries an unfortunate negative connotation, I think. It’s a mild, unique flavor, not sweet, not acidic. That’s as far as I can go.

But in my mind, I’m standing at the southern tip of Africa, watching the penguins on shore and peering into the distant horizon where a three-masted sailing ship is buffeted by the high seas. It’s making the turn westward, a load of bagged coffee beans in her hull.

In a few months, the rich aroma of roasted Malabar beans will fill the air of a London coffee house where friends have gathered for conversation and businessmen are making deals over cups of fresh, hot coffee. They sip unaware of the labor of the long, dangerous journey that has brought them this simple pleasure.

In the aftermath of the tragedy of 9/11, when the United States and the world were grieving, mainline denominations called for prayer, inclusion and reconciliation. In an ad near Ground Zero, The United Methodist Church proclaimed, “Fear is not the only force at work in the world.”

When the South Asian tsunami brought massive death and destruction to the people of the Asian Rim, the mainline voices said that it was not the work of a vengeful God. Instead, they said, God was in the suffering, standing with those experiencing great loss. The churches called on the world to assist, and people around the world did exactly that.

The voice of these denominations helps to shape public perceptions not only of themselves as denominations but also of God and the nature of religious faith. It is an important role in a world of harsh, extreme voices of exclusion and hate.

Yet, communication in most organizations is viewed as a back-office service function. When budgets are tight in nonprofits, especially religious groups, the first cuts are in the communications staff and their budgets.

For as long as they have been making these cuts, mainline Protestant denominations have been in decline, but they have not made the correlation that reducing communications capacity equates with abetting decline and losing their voice in the public conversation.

I frequently make this point when I speak to groups, and I often see heads nodding in agreement. But the reduction in communication capacity continues nevertheless.

Communications functions today are strategic assets, not back-office functions. The world is engaged in multiple conversations, and if the old-line religious organizations are not engaged as well, they become irrelevant. We know this, but somehow we tend to remain mostly on the sidelines.

The new media environment has undermined the old authority structures that allowed for a more definitive word to be spoken by religious denominations. Those messages could be pushed out. But the new environment is a conversation. The audience is not passively waiting to hear the word. The conversation takes it own direction, often framed by those with a self-serving agenda and ideology.

To the degree that they are aggressive and capture attention, they shape the conversation and move it forward. This is why I often make the point that communication is a strategic asset. The ability to frame the conversation in order to shape how society addresses the most important issues it faces requires more thought than merely assembling collateral materials, getting page views on a website or amassing Twitter followers.

It requires having a clear, engaging message with which to encourage interaction and conversation. The mainline voice needs to be heard because historically, in its various expressions, it has been a voice for justice for the powerless and vulnerable. It has been a voice for an inclusive community. And it has stood for humane values in a dehumanizing, isolating culture.

This voice is needed, but it won’t be heard without more careful strategic thought and adequate staff and resources to project it into the global conversation. I continue to make the claim that the voice of the mainline denominations is needed because it is a humanizing, reconciling and clear voice for peace, justice and a more holistic and humane global society.

Communications – our voice in the world – should be the last ministry that mainline denominations consider for reduction.

FBI Updates Most Wanted Terrorist List

Upon hearing of the death of Osama bin Laden, the Rev. Ken Ehrman of Minnesota sent an email blast to members of his local church inviting them to come that evening to discuss how they felt about it.

Given such short notice, he had no idea how many might respond, but 20 people came. They discussed the ambivalence a lot of us are feeling at the awkward celebration of the death of another human, even one so infamous as bin Laden.

Beyond a remarkable testament to Rev. Ehrman’s pastoral leadership, I think his act also points to something I felt need of but was missing in my own reaction to this news–a way to process my feelings, to deal with great uneasiness.

There is something that says I should not be dancing and singing in the street in the face of loss of life. The whole of the Christian story is about renewed, redeemed and restored life.

Bin Laden’s actions and words were utterly evil. He was an instrument of death. He spoke for death. And this is an offense to all that is decent and good and uplifting. It stands in stark contrast to all that we hope for and believe we should pursue as people who follow one who said, “I am come that you may have life and may live abundantly.”

There are some who will contend that in killing bin Laden, redemption is completed. And others will make the case that vengeance is justified. Many will make a biblical case for it.

But there is that lingering, haunting passage of scripture in which Jesus tells Peter to keep his sword sheathed when the soldiers come for him. His way is not to exact vengeance nor to live by the sword. But to lead toward life.

What, then are we to make of our ambivalent feelings? And how do we come to grips with them?

I think Rev. Ehrman got it right. We come together as a community of faith. We pray. We share honestly and openly our humanity, our doubts, our fears, our frustrations, and we lay them before God. We ask for strength and wisdom. We seek to support each other. We seek understanding. And we seek to learn more about The Way, as the early Christian path was known.

I think a faithful response is reflective and prayerful. Humble. Life seeking. For we have within us the same passions and hubris that can lead us to take as well as give life. And this capacity should make us very humble and cautious of our driving emotions.

Above all, unlike bin Laden, I believe as followers of Jesus we must seek the leading causes of life, a phrase my friend Gary Gunderson has popularized, lest we behave with the same disregard for the sacredness of life that we so deeply and strongly reject.

The Buddha was wearing a Rolex. He was filling my room. Expanding slowly but steadily. I could not get my breath, and I felt as if he were suffocating me.

I was in a hotel room in Cambodia shortly after the Pol Pot regime had fallen and Vietnam had invaded. I had read a story in National Geographic prior to travel in which a Buddha in the ancient city of  Angkor Wat had been defaced by someone who scratched a crude image of a Rolex watch on his wrist. I’ve never actually seen this Buddha, but the image stuck in my subconscious.

A couple of days earlier, our film crew had stood at the edge of a killing field, the mass graves of victims of Pol Pot’s murderous reign, as a worker unearthed human remains and counted skulls. The grass was ankle high, and I was eaten up with mosquito bites.

I had contracted malaria. I recall awakening throughout the night feeling hot. I lay on the tiled floor of my hotel room because it felt cool to my cheek. In the morning my colleagues got me to a health clinic run by a humanitarian organization, and I was given medications that soon brought me back to a more normal state. The Buddha left. But I’ve never forgotten him.

I was fortunate. My co-workers recognized the signs of malaria and got me to medical care quickly. The medications and a skilled physician were available. Unlike the circumstances that confront millions of people sick with malaria on the African continent, neither cost nor travel were barriers to getting treatment.

Many of those who deal with the disease, particularly mothers, don’t know what causes malaria. They have no access to medicines or health services. Lacking knowledge, they act too slowly, if at all, and their loved ones die. Others seek out herbal healers who proffer remedies that risk damaging the kidneys or livers of the sick.

Bishop Nkulu Ntanda Ntambo says in the documentary, “A Killer in the Dark,” the deaths that result from this lack of knowledge are so common that his family simply considered the rainy season the season of death. The family, living in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, moved from one village to another when death struck.

But “A Killer in the Dark” also shows how community health workers who train families to use bed nets, clean up their environment and reduce standing water can stem the progress of this disease.

It also shows how the disease can be overcome as it was during the construction of the Panama Canal. The French abandoned the canal due to the toll of malaria on workers. When research finally connected the disease to infected mosquitoes, abatement measures were carried out that allowed workers to complete the canal.

The effort to combat this disease is continuing, and the documentary shows how the efforts of faith-based groups are making a vital contribution to reducing its deadly toll.

Moreover, the methods they use empower whole communities to act so they can enhance and improve community life. No more will these communities accept with resignation that malaria deaths are a natural part of the changing seasons, a part of the cycle of life and death over which they have no control. It is possible to imagine no malaria.  And to make it so.

Pauley Perrette, of NCIS fame, provides the narration for the United Methodist upcoming TV special called “A Killer in the Dark: An Extraordinary Effort to Combat Malaria.” The program, which will air on many NBC affiliates May 1 (check local listings), documents the daily struggle in Africa against malaria and highlights the work of Imagine No Malaria to wipe out a devastating disease that’s killing 2,000 people every single day. The program is presented by the National Council of Churches under the auspices of the Interfaith Broadcasting Commission and is produced by United Methodist Communication.

As I lay on the hood of a Land Rover, propped against the windshield and gazing into the marvelous night sky above Luuq, Somalia, I heard a swooshing sound followed by an explosion that shook the earth. My reverie was quickly broken.

My friend, cinematographer Burton Buller, came out of a tent and exclaimed, “They’re shooting at us!”

They weren’t shooting at us, and he was joking, but they were shooting over us at a bridge not far away.

We were in a refugee camp situated between opposing Somali forces in the Ogaden rangelands, documenting conditions the world cared little about and would as soon ignore.

I thought of this as I considered the deaths of British photojournalist Tim Hetherington and Getty photographer Chris Hondros in a mortar attack in Libya yesterday. Two other journalists were injured.

Getting the story, even under circumstances that are life-threatening, is a driving force for many journalists. They are drawn to the power of storytelling, the conviction that the world must know what is happening, especially in places where life hangs in the balance.

They have an unexpressed desire to make a difference, especially for those who lack the means to tell their own story. They enable others to speak of their experiences, hoping that perhaps the world will care, the policymakers will work for change, the guns will be silenced and the people freed to pursue their lives.

We need the storytellers. They remind us of both our capacity for inhumanity as well as our capacity for human decency. They hold before us the mirror of our humanity. And in doing so they remind us of our worst, and best, perhaps, in the unexpressed hope that by knowing each other more deeply and fully, we can become more truthful, just and dignified. We can become the people we say we want to be when we are at our best.

But to tell this story they must be in harm’s way, for it is in these places, places of extremes, that the drama is played out graphically and with the risk of ultimate resolution – where life or death weigh in the balance.

The Committee to Protect Journalists says 16 journalists have died this year – 44 in 2010. Journalists are under attack in Libya. Throughout the Middle East Spring, they have been among those who pay the price for the wrenching changes that are being pressed on authoritarian, corrupt regimes.

Yet they continue to tell the stories. They continue to remind us who we are and who we aspire to be. Let us pray for them all and be thankful they are reaching out to us, holding up the mirror of reality, and sometimes making the ultimate sacrifice that we may see and know, and care.

As some of my readers know, I always travel with enough technology to ensure that no matter where I am, I am never out of touch with what’s happening in the world or back home.

John Wesley on horseback

John Wesley reportedly logged more than 250,000 miles on horseback during his career, traveling around England to share the Gospel. I can’t help but wonder, what would the founder of Methodism have done if he had all of the high-tech tools that I have today?

The man who viewed the world as his parish would be delighted at how easy it is to connect with Methodists in far-flung places like Mozambique or Vietnam. With his Facebook account, Wesley would have thousands of friends. Of course, since he wrote his journals in code, he might be tempted to do the same for his Facebook page, which could be challenging for the rest of us.

I have no doubt that Wesley would be ahead of most clergy in using the Internet and social media. A man who knew the power of the printing press, he would ensure that all of his churches had a Web site. With his love for the music of the church, he probably would have an iPod loaded with Bach and a ringtone on his phone that played, “O For a Thousand Tongues.”

One thing is certain: Wesley knew the power of communications and made the most effective use of the media of his day.

Methodism’s great communicator would be using every tool at his disposal to spread the faith, build up people and speak prophetically to the issues and injustices around him. In the 18^th century, he excoriated slavery in his writing, but today, he could use video storytelling and new media to attack this blight on humankind. With Twitter, he could tell people in real time about the conditions he encountered in the coal mines of England.

Twitter would also enable Wesley to share ongoing updates from the road, apprise his followers of upcoming sermon topics, and exhort truants to attend Sunday school or class meetings.

And can you imagine what Wesley could do with video conferencing? He could potentially address multiple churches at a time on Sunday mornings, hold Bible study on a mass scale and give a keynote address at the next Council of Bishops meeting.

Being the founder of a connectional church, Wesley would immediately see the value of using LinkedIn to build a network of believers. An avid reader, he would carry his extensive library around with him on an e-reader such as Kindle or the iPad.

If I could meet Wesley, I would show him one of my favorite new gadgets, the Livescribe smart pen. This handy device enables me to record meeting conversations and keep digital notes for use in my blogs.

Perhaps I could get him to sing a few measures of “O For A Thousand Tongues.” John Wesley singing Methodism’s signature song – now that would be a ringtone.

I got up this morning to an email that referred me to an article in the NY Times in which a representative of Malaria No More says the organization is about to close up shop. Why? Because malaria is coming to an end. Say that again? No more malaria?

Yes, according to the spokesperson for Malaria No More, their mission is accomplished.

No, the mission is not accomplished.

The fact is, children are still dying of malaria at an unconscionable rate. The provision of bednets over the past decade is reducing the incidence of malaria, and for that I am grateful. But bednets are no panacea, and they certainly have not ended this disease of poverty. What happens in three years after the current nets have deteriorated and are no longer effective?

More lasting solutions are required

• Income generating work is needed so that people can afford to replace the nets.
• Environmental reclamation and water management are necessary so that mosquitos have fewer breeding places.
• Continuing research into potential immunization and effective treatment is still needed.
• New medicines are required as the parasite develops immunity to existing combinations.
• Training of community health workers to recognize and treat symptoms at the outset of the disease must be carried out.
• More community health clinics are needed.
• Rehabilitation of underfunded hospitals and national health systems and support for their overworked personnel is required.
• Topping off salaries of competent health personnel so they don’t seek jobs in the developed world is necessary.
• Communications programs to inform mothers and fathers about how the disease is contracted, what they can do to prevent it, how to recognize it before their children are too sick to respond to medications are needed.
• Preventive measures such as residual indoor spraying are needed for those times when people are not in bed and under nets.

The Malaria No More spokesperson called this organization’s efforts “a project.” No, a project is making a garden planter. Ending a disease of poverty is a lifetime commitment. Preventing the deaths of 5 million children a year is not a project in which you decide after you’ve tired of it, you claim victory, fold up shop and go on to something else.

I can only imagine what those researchers who have dedicated their lives to this disease are thinking about today’s proclamation.

And this raises another significant point. One-off projects that appeal more to the self-interest of the donor than to the larger problem are not the solution to long-term diseases like malaria, diseases that have plagued humankind since we started walking upright. This is why I’m very skeptical of the anti-institutional rhetoric that surrounds entrepreneurial, individualized social do-goodism. You know, one person can change the world stuff. Maybe, maybe not.

Institutions are cumbersome, bureaucratic, frustrating and maddening. I’ve criticized the institutional church as much as anyone. But it gets the job done at scale when it comes to missions such as ending malaria. It will be present with dying children and weeping mothers for the long-term, long after I’ve gone, long after the disease du jour has passed. And with strategic partners, the institutions we call mainline denominations have the capacity to cover a continent. This is scale that will make for lasting change. In this battle, nothing less will do.

Institutions Provide Scale, Sustainability, and Systemic Change

So, hate ‘em or love ‘em, institutions are necessary because they are the way we organize to achieve scale, sustainability, long-term presence, endurance and systemic change. It’s fun and easy to kick them in the shins, they are so vulnerable to such attacks. But one-off projects that don’t seek to create lasting change, empower people to develop their own solutions, and create a living wage so they can enjoy a measure of security are just one-off projects. They vanish as quickly as the fog in sunlight.

The real risk here, however, is that a premature claim that undermines the current progress to end malaria is dangerous to the extreme. This happened once before. In the 1950s malaria was almost wiped out. The world pulled back and decreased funding. A strain of malaria developed in southeast Asia that was more virulent than the prevalent strain. This new parasite ravaged the developing world, gained a foothold and has been depleting Africa of its children, its economic gains and its health care systems for the past sixty years.

We cannot pull back from this fight and allow that to happen again. It would be disastrous.

And so friends, don’t think for a moment that the fight against malaria is over. I hope I’ve even motivated you to join this fight that takes the life of a child in Africa every 45 seconds. I hope you go to the Imagine No Malaria website and send $100 or more to help The United Methodist Church train community health workers, create and train hospital boards of directors so they can re-create more effective hospitals and health delivery systems, purchase and distribute more bednets, create agricultural development and similar programs to help people earn a living wage, educate parents about preventing malaria and recognizing its symptoms, provide medications to rural clinics at the end of the road where poor people have no other healthcare.

This fight is a long way from being over, and it isn’t a project. It’s a commitment to a healthy life for all of God’s children. And we need to see it through–to the last child, in the last village at the end of the road, and beyond.

(April 2, 2011–An afterthought. How could such a claim as this escape the fact-checking and editorial process at the New York Times?)

(April 5, 2011–Since I posted this on Saturday, April 2, the staff of Malaria No More issued a statement saying the organization has never claimed “mission accomplished,” is not closing its doors and will only close after the goal of of ending malaria deaths in Africa has been accomplished.)

As I write, rebels are moving into Abidjan, Ivory Coast after having taken the capital city Yamoussoukro, 143 miles north. It’s a fast-moving story, virtually invisible on U.S. mainstream media. However, it’s exemplary of the new media landscape and the resources it makes available to us.

I’m particularly concerned because I have friends in the country. A colleague has just concluded an interview via Skype with five employees in a radio station in Abidjan that our organization funded in a partnership with others in The United Methodist Church. Gunfire was audible in the background.

Besides direct contact, the most reliable sources of information are international news organizations providing updates from the scene. France 24 English language service is originating video and audio coverage from Abidjan.

As I write, I’m watching France 24 on an iPad with its live video stream, reading email from various sources and monitoring Twitter. I’m also surfing the web viewing Reuters,Yahoo and BBC to double check what I’m seeing on Twitter. While U.S. news organizations are not covering the revolt, these global counterparts are providing on-the-scene updates.

In this circumstance, non-profit information services are filling in some of the blanks. Staff of United Methodist News Service are in direct contact with church officials in the country and are monitoring and updating information as it’s available. I’ve also read releases from Medecins Sans Frontieres, AlertNet and the U.S. Catholic News Service.

This is a circumstance in which as concerned citizens we must seek out a variety of news sources. We must approach the news with a degree of skepticism and check multiple sources. I trust some sources more than others, of course, but in a fluid story it’s not unreasonable to verify reports as best we can. And we are blessed with multiple sources, most of them online.

This is the new media landscape.