I’ve been out of the Twitter/Facebook universe for the last week due to a somewhat last-minute trip to Thailand. It was great to spend a week meeting people from the mission world who are using their business and professional skills to gain ministry access to and bring economic empowerment to people in difficult parts of the world. Missions doesn’t look like it used to; here are a few reflections:

• I met true tentmakers who have started sustainable businesses in the developing world that now provide them with an income, allowing them to be financially independent from the West. Yet, they still choose to maintain relationship with a mission agency for the purpose of accountability and prayer support.
• I met a pastor from an oppressive nearby country who set a goal in 2001 to plant 100 churches by 2020. He’s planted 38 so far. As is the case in many such nations, he is looking for non-traditional ways to fund the ministry of national church leaders.
• Another US pastor-turned-missionary is doing just that by helping national pastors start coffee plantations to help them become economically independent in an area where drug trafficking is often the only viable income source.
• I visited an Aussie couple who were so passionate about staying in Thailand that, when their support began to wane in the troubled economy, they sold their home in Australia and started a farm, bakery and coffeeshop where they employ six Thai nationals. They raise pigs, cattle and tilapia.
• Aussies and Kiwis are fun to hang out with. Why can’t I have a cool accent too?
• This was my second time in Thailand, but I had forgotten how good the food is. From the strange fruits that aren’t available in the US to the curry and other typical Asian spices … wow!

I’m not a fan of taxes, but there are two things I’m happy to pay taxes for: the public library (it saves our family thousands a year in books) and the national park system. Here’s a shot from Rocky Mountain National Park, where I got to mix a little pleasure with my business last week. Florida beaches are nice, but they can’t compare to the rugged beauty of the Rockies or the pastoral grace of the Smokies.

“The arts are in the dark, because nobody knows what it means to really live anymore.”

That was just one of the nuggets I gleaned from Robert McKee’s Story Seminar this past weekend in New York. Vilified by some, adored by others, McKee is considered a guru among Hollywood screenwriters, but the seminar had value for anyone in the communications world, anyone who needs to capture people’s attention with compelling narrative.

An avowed atheist and all-around curmudgeon, McKee is open with his disdain for organized religion (not “spirituality,” he assures us). However, what I found most interesting was his decidedly traditional view of storytelling and how it reflects the broken human experience. McKee has run from his Catholic upbringing, but he has been unsuccessful in divesting himself of all remnants of a biblical worldview.

His frustration with Hollywood movies is not one of style, but one of form: McKee’s complaint is that Western people can’t tell good stories anymore. Why? Because good stories are forged in the heat of adversity–something Westerners have essentially eliminated from their cushioned lives. Good stories, whether or not they end with the bad guy getting away, must be wrapped around a moral spine of the author’s belief in something. It is stories of sin, redemption, consequences, temptation and love, that people resonate with, McKee contends, not ambiguously artsy pieces, created by people who don’t really believe much of anything, who let their tales wander aimlessly toward unresolved endings.

McKee’s is an interesting insight that reveals the inconsistency of a world without God. The search of the soul for meaning, consistency and truth is a search for God Himself. As Augustine said, “We were made for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in You.”