 Hello everyone and welcome to this virtual author event. I'm Carl Stotzman, Director of Library Services at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary. Here with me helping to host the event are Brandon Board, Information Services and Online Learning Librarian and on Tennis Attang Bookstore Manager. Our library and bookstore team has traditionally hosted book signings for new books related to AMBS. Since we couldn't do this in person, we decided to do it on Zoom instead. So you're living with us on an experiment, so we thank you for your patience with us. Before we get started, let's just quickly go over the schedule for today's event. I'll introduce our guests, then we'll have some time for the authors to discuss their work on the book. After that, we'll have some time for questions you might have for our guests and you'll want to stick around until the end of the meeting doing a drawing for some really cool dance books. So one note is that we are recording this, but only the presenters appearing on the screen will be recorded. So that's how we're going to work with that. And yeah, so with that, let's begin. Today, it's our pleasure to have with us Dr. Juan Francisco Martinez and Dr. Jamie Pitts, authors of the new book, What is God's Mission in the World and How Do We Join It? Harold Press, 2020, part of the series, The Jesus Way, Small Books of Radical Faith. Dr. Martinez is president of Centro Hispano de Estudios Teológicos in Compton, California. Previously, he was professor of Hispanic Studies and Pastoral Leadership at Fuller Theological Seminary and Rector of the Latin American Anabaptist Seminary or CEMILLA in Guatemala City. Dr. Pitts is associate professor of Anabaptist Studies, director of the Institute of Mennonite Studies and editor of the Anabaptist Witness Journal at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary. My first question today is for both Dr. Martinez and Dr. Pitts. Please tell us a bit of the story of how this book came to be and how you got involved with the project. Well, I became involved this when I was invited. I have been a professor of Anabaptist Studies and of Mission Theology at Fuller Theological Seminary. After that, I was invited to be president of the Theological Seminary at Ashland Seminary. I got a stroke and that's why I can't talk. And then I ended up back in LA and I had this book I started and I needed to find someone to help me write the book. And with the people at Herald Press, we made contact with Jamie Pitts and he had been a student at Fuller Theological Seminary and I thought he would be a very great person to help me through the book. So that's how I got. I realized that the book was or the series was part of what Herald Press had done in the 1970s and 1980s with Jay C. Wenger's books. He had done a series of small books and we thought this was a very good idea and I thought they were and that's how we ended up here. Yeah, for my part I think that pretty much covers it, but just to say that I was Juan's student at Fuller and so it was an incredible honor to receive the invitation to accompany him in finishing this book project. And what I received from Juan was essentially a well-developed manuscript that I was able to essentially flesh out and then after we had further conversation about the nature and purpose of the book, Juan gave me essentially a freer editorial hand in kind of setting the tone for some of the overall presentation of the book. So what you have as Juan has just said something that he started but that I came on to and we feel like represents us together as co-authors. Wonderful. That's an interesting story. Thank you so much for sharing that with us. My second question is also for both of you. Each of you brings diverse experiences and perspectives to the topic of God's mission in the world and each of you has a distinct passion for Latin American Anabaptism. I'm wondering how did these diverse experiences and perspectives inform your own conversation about this topic and how does the specific context of Latin American Anabaptism influence your understanding of missional theology? Go ahead Jimmy. Well that's a big question. I would say in terms of Latin America, well you know as I mentioned a moment ago Juan was really my first teacher of Anabaptism and he brought a explicitly Latin American perspective to the history and theology of Anabaptism and what he taught me has you know essentially permanently shaped my understanding of the tradition, what it means to be a practicing Anabaptist, Mennonite, Christian and you know I'll just say one of the one aspect of that that really stuck with me was the economic character of Anabaptism historically and in the present that is often downplayed by Mennonites in North America or Europe. We talk about sometimes about peace in a more or less vague way but what I learned from Juan was that Anabaptists throughout the centuries and in Latin America and elsewhere have really seen economic sharing at the heart of the gospel and critique of economic exploitation as a necessary correlate of the gospel and so yeah and I'll say friends of mine in Latin America today continue to challenge me in that way their analysis, their witness, their hopes for a an Anabaptist global Anabaptist community in which we can face our economic divisions as a central part of our witness continues to really challenge me in shape how I understand mission. My Anabaptism formation in Central America came came through Simea and the reality is that in Central America where where Simea is located the the students find it hard to understand Anabaptism without putting peace economic justice and the Holy Spirit and I think the Holy Spirit was very challenging in that here were people that that understood that the Holy Spirit was what gave us the world and in the way we were looking at the world and so they were very they they also spoke of the Anabaptist mission and of how they were they were preaching that so that so that their Anabaptism was economic justice and peace but it also called people to focus on the reality of who the Holy Spirit was in their in their life and so you would be in churches where they would preach strongly an Anabaptist message but they would also call people to Jesus Christ and then they would go out and march for justice or they would go out and work with the poor or they would go out and and work against the government and they all these things were were were linked together and I think that that's this part of what Anabaptism is from the from the 16th century it was preaching teaching and and acting and I think that's what what I was taught by them by those in the carawa by those in in Honduras by those in Guatemala they were they were linking those things and I think they were they were actually doing what our Anabaptist ancestors do did and so that's where that's where from them that I saw wow this would be quite this would be quite the shape of Anabaptism where we don't have to we don't have to separate those where here in the United States we separated the you know the the Anabaptism from the the Holy Spirit or we separated from the reality of the gospel and from calling people to the gospel and so that was that was what I taught in in the class there in in full of theological seminary and that was strongly influenced by those that I saw them living it out that's such a powerful testimony from both of you of the impact of lived reality on academic theology my next question is for Dr. Martinez your work on intercultural understanding is very deep a lot of your books have dealt with that how does an intercultural perspective enhance our ability to participate in God's mission in the world well I think that if we look at that if we think about how we cross those boundaries the the gospel of Jesus Christ calls us to all all people to to a revelation seven nine and ten to be to be those who will work out the reality of being the people of God and again I saw that in in Central America I saw that when the the mosquito people from from the coast of Honduras were working with the the people from the from the from those who were Spanish Spanish oriented who who were not from Africa and how they were walking in peace and how they were working toward economic justice and and the in in Guatemala the indigenous people and the and the Spanish people and how the the how again walking in economic justice peace because that's what we need to deal with and that's why the the issues of multiculturalism is also part of what it is we would we'd be preaching about and we would working toward great thank you so much I really appreciate that deeper view of that my next question is for Dr. Pitts you have indicated a focus on post-colonial mission and new mythology how does your how does undoing colonialism open our eyes to the work of the Holy Spirit in the world thanks Carl I would say that it's the spirit who opens our eyes and the spirit one of the roles of the spirit one of the things the spirit does as we learn from the Bible is to lead us into repentance and so the spirit leads us to tell the truth about the history of Christianity colonialism uh it's certainly a complex story it's there's not a one-to-one identification across the world between the church and colonial powers sometimes there were tension between the church and colonial powers between missionaries and colonial administrators often Christianity was and I'll say in the present tense is an instrument of colonization of exploiting exploiting people and resources land and so telling the truth about that history is I think a gift from the Holy Spirit and only through truth-selling will we be freed as part of the freedom that the spirit gives so when we talk about reconciliation a post-colonial reconciliation that has to come through repentance through seeking repair seeking justice reconciliation is the the kind of long-term goal maybe even in many cases eschatological goal by which I mean we have to trust God's time beyond human reckoning the work that we have through the spirit in the spirit is is doing that work of telling the truth and seeking justice in the wake of the truths that are uncovered and you know I would say the spirit is a healer the spirit is a comforter and so uh for those who have been identified with the perpetrators of colonial violence we also are visited by the healing and comforting spirit so the work that the spirit has for us is liberating and as many have said you know our our liberation is bound up with the liberation of those who have been deeply deeply wounded and have been on the receiving end of colonization so you know as a question of Christian mission I think it's it's along with everything I've been saying it's it's a matter of the church's integrity and the church's moral integrity is deeply called into question by the history of Christian participation and leadership in many cases of uh of colonization so if we're going to have integrity in our witness uh we have to trust the spirit to take us through that history not kind of around it essentially thank you so much that's really helpful my next question is once again for both of you I'm wondering about the the book that you've created together with these different influences who do you hope will read the book um what impact do you hope it will have on the church and beyond well I hope that Mennonite youth here in uh in uh North America and in Europe in other words those people who have been formed by that uh what Jamie uh spoke of and that they they uh also have been uh have asked questions about the mission and I hope that those that we have answered some of those questions so that they will not no longer be uh running away from the mission but it will gladly uh take the mission on and so that's that's who I hope and I think that that the the books the series uh wants to speak to that people to those in Mennonite youth who will be who will ask the questions about them about the church's mission and teaching at the seminary in Elkhart for almost a decade now I have seen these youth Mennonites growing up seeking to understand God's call in their lives in their 20s and 30s or sometimes much later coming to the seminary for studies and holding these questions often a deep suspicion about the language of mission and so part of why I was excited to partner with Juan in this book was to to offer an account of Christian mission that tried to take seriously that suspicion that didn't try to say oh no no no you're you're misled everything is fine uh to say no you're right to be concerned about as I was just discussing the colonial character of much of the history of Christian mission uh the imperial character and your right to think that Mennonites uh descended those Mennonites and other Anabaptists who trace their heritage back to Europe uh are part of that story in in ways that deserve some hard truth telling as well so uh what we were trying to do is is give an account offer a picture of mission uh that would be compelling that would say you know if you if you care about the church if you're asking these questions at all you you care about mission you want to figure out you know uh what is God doing and how do we get involved in to ask that question with integrity uh and so I felt like you know and when I began to read what Juan had already put together and for this book I thought wow you know I really am his student because so much of the emphasis that he had already planned for the book before I even came up came on to the project really resonated with my own sense of what it would mean to uh paint a picture of mission that was compelling that actually had integrity that faced the hard questions without trying to kind of dodge them and say oh you know uh just tell people like Jesus everything's gonna be fine you know there's nothing there's nothing to worry about here but again to really take seriously the complexity and even the the stuff that we need to repent of when we talk about mission great well I'm hoping hoping that this helps spread the word to get some of these people involved in reading this book I'm pretty excited about it myself we have time for one more question before we open it up to the audience to put things in the q&a box so if the audience folks want to start adding questions so the q&a will um take those pretty soon um but I'm wondering um maybe either one of you can address this um what sources have you relied on for your understanding of missional theology and what books have been influential to you real realistically I need to say a lot of what I'm saying now is really uh john driver john driver has uh has really challenged me he taught at similia we published several of his books in in spanish and he really uh focused me toward this this issue and he was the person that uh also challenged the what are called in in latin america the radical evangelicals and so I I liked what he said and as you will notice in the book uh he is he is uh quoted oftenly uh and I would invite the the people that read read our book to read him to read his his uh his uh the way he read the church the way he read mission the way that he read uh uh the um um sorry um the atonement all of these uh he he put some very good things and he really worked with uh anabaptism and I don't see that kind of um is that kind of challenge uh and I would he would say the ones that would read our book I would challenge them to read uh john driver and like I said he he had a lot of influence on what would it be called the radical evangelicals uh rena padilla some ales covar uh some of these people um and so that's that's where I drew uh drew from um myself great that's very interesting thank you so much we have a lot of john drivers work in our library and I think you're asking me that question as well cross so I'll just say quickly uh the um one voice that's been really important for me over the last few years has been Vincent Harding the uh black civil rights leader who was involved with Mennonites as a pastor and Mennonite Central Committee worker for about 10 years in the late 50s and early 60s um his challenge to Mennonites uh related to politics and race um I think it still really needs to be addressed his probably the best access into his thought as it relates to Mennonites especially is a little book uh interview that Joanna Schenck did uh with Vincent Harding that was published called the movement makes us human that came out just a couple years ago and particularly at the end he has some great challenging lines um directly towards Mennonites that have shaped my thought a lot and I'll just say quickly the other another source I so I think part of the reason why I was invited into this project is because I edit Anabaptist Witness which is a journal uh focused on Anabaptist and Mennonite churches and mission and uh as part of that project for the last that I've been working on for the past seven years or so uh one of our book review editors Steve Heinrichs is the director of indigenous relations for Mennonite Church Canada and his influence on the reviews he brings to the journal the kinds of conversations he urges me to participate in and to use a journal to address uh has been extremely helpful in shaping my thought about the need to to think about these matters and face these matters in my teaching and my theology and my life so we do have a couple of questions coming into the chat um a reminder that you can also post your questions in the q and a um section uh to help us keep track of them um the first question coming in here um is can you give some examples of what healthy repentance might look like in the Mennonite church today? I would look towards Central America where people um practice what we what we have uh shaped and where some um Mennonite missionaries have been shaped by how they preached and so that some of the some of those missionaries have been shaped by what they saw so they preached and they they acted out uh the Mennonite preach the Mennonite preaching that they did and so there would be some some good um a shaping of of how we we would do that uh I think in in uh Guatemala in Honduras in in and even in place like uh Nicaragua where some of the um Mennonite conservatives had even lived out what they were what they were you know the conservative Mennonites worked in Guatemala and they were really shaped by what they by in Nicaragua sorry and they were really shaped by what they saw and so that it wasn't just the the the uh more uh radical evangelical uh Mennonites it was even the those who shaped uh they were they were shaped by what they saw in like said in Nicaragua in Belize and I was going wow you know here were people that were shaped by the conservative a uh Anabaptism or the conservative Mennonite uh Ism but here they they they were uh shaped by doing what they were what they were preaching and I was going wow uh and so I would I would look toward those kinds of people and there were others I mean there were some of these people who work in places like Africa and places that they weren't it was I just used Central America because I was shaped by it but I would I would uh look toward those places yeah and I would say quickly um I'm thinking of examples uh like the Doctrine and Discovery Working Group uh here in the US thinking about that question very hard includes indigenous Mennonites um speaking into the the process uh and I'm seeing my father has asked a similar question here so I'm kind of as I think about that question I'm sort of bleeding over into uh like this question that Doug Doug raised but um so I guess if I can take up that question Carl if you'll permit me yeah first of all say hello to my father it's great to have you on here um and you know what is what's the next step for the church you know after colonialism or once at least the I would say ongoing reality of colonialism is recognized um you know one for those again as I put it earlier for those who have been kind of benefited from the colonial system or participated in that um in a more intense way uh people such as myself I would say you know one of the first steps is to to try to listen to people have been deeply affected by negatively by by the their experience of colonization and to try to um hear what it means to accompany them in ways that they find appropriate and this is this is a aspect we emphasize in the book um and this is something that I learned from a post-colonial biblical scholar um whose name is escaping me now but if I think of it I'll I'll say it but uh who who challenged me in thinking about how we how we how we read the book of acts and the way that the spirit led the early Christians to cross boundaries and this scholar said to me well given the history of colonization do we want to always just be emphasizing crossing boundaries and it occurred to me reading the book of acts that there's times when the spirit says no and sometimes I think as Christians we we forget that the spirit can say no to us and there's cases you know recently even in the pandemic conditions where missionaries have insisted on trying to visit communities uh relatively isolated indigenous communities um knowing well maybe denying that there's any danger of COVID or other diseases uh but insisting well the spirit is leading me across this boundary uh incapable of hearing the spirits no and so this is where I think we really need to listen to people who have been most you know most detrimentally affected by colonization and say what what are your boundaries and you know what does it mean what from your perspective what does it mean to witness to the gospel um whether you're Christian or not uh what what does our what might our witness what shape might our witness take and I I say that with specific reference here in Elkhart um in Potawatomi Potawatomi territory so um in dialoguing with uh the Pockegan band of Potawatomi local Potawatomi group um one of the things that at least some voices from that community have said um is you know what churches can do now the two what uh one of the things I've heard is two you know if churches want to get involved there's two things you can do one is define groups that are really struggling economically and try to give to those groups so the Pockegan band is doing well financially but the citizen band of Potawatomi who are removed uh from this area to Kansas and then Oklahoma um are struggling financially um the Pockegan band has also said uh get involved in land restoration and ecological restoration in your area that's an if you if you care about repair after colonization ecological restoration is one of the most important things you can do so that's just an example in my kind of listening to indigenous peoples some of the some of what I've heard um as a step forward great thank you so much uh to both of you for kind of making this practical um as well um I'm um wondering if uh one of you can um just attend to um or maybe both of you um what is maybe a primary beneficial outcome of the way Christians have conducted mission in the past um we've talked a little bit about some of the dangers of colonialism and so forth um but yeah what are some good fruits that have come out of that work well I I think we we would go back as Jamie said to the people that uh received that word and ask them ask the uh the indigenous people ask the the people in in Guatemala as the people a so that we will it's not ours to say it's not ours to say boy boy look at what we did it's ours to say look at what the spirit did and look at how the spirit worked in these people and those that that testimony is theirs to give and so ask those people and say what what did the spirit do in your in in your community in your uh tribe in all of these peoples and let them answer the question uh in our in in uh in our churches uh Latino churches we give uh testimonies how has the spirit worked in your life and that's what we need to ask them it's not ours to say it's theirs to say and when we give them this we give them the uh the uh the pulpit if you will and let them say this is how the Holy Spirit it worked in our life and this is why we can give this this testimony because it was the Holy Spirit and this is why we can call you and that that's hard for us to hurt to listen to their call to say we we need to this this and this because the Holy Spirit it worked in our in our lives in our culture in our being and so because of that we can give we can give a call to you yeah that's a really profound way to say it um I think I would just in kind of elaborating or adding to that um the this one of the stories we tell in the book is a story comes out of Chapel Hill Mennonite Church just a sanctuary case uh Rosa Carmen Ortes excuse me Rosa del Carmen Ortes Cruz took sanctuary um in Chapel Hill Mennonite Church for um many months and the way that we tried to tell that story was not in the first place look at this great church that responded to the Holy Spirit and offer sanctuary although that's part of the story but we also told it we tried to focus on Rosa's uh agency her her role in the story as someone who um as a you know as a representation of Christ came to the church and asked them if they would be willing to bear witness to Christ um and so this is a this kind of an example of how um if we take this if we take our focus off of the kind of institutional center for as important as that can be to how is the spirit uh working through people like um an undocumented immigrant who uh who needs refuge uh what is her testimony what can we learn from her what can we learn from um indigenous communities this one was saying. Amen there's a lot there uh to inspire us to ask good questions um and hear testimonies that's really really important um we are at about the time when we're going to have our prize drawing and then we do have some other things floating into our q and a here uh so after our prize drawing um we will take some more time for some questions up until we get to the hour mark so we haven't forgotten about your questions and we'll still have a little more time for that after we do our prizes so I'm going to turn it over to Brandon for that portion of our program. Okay thanks Carl um well yeah just as sort of a thank you for everyone uh joining us this afternoon or or morning wherever it is uh whatever time it is for you wherever you are um we're going to do a little uh prize drawing we have three prizes that we're going to give away today so uh each one of the winners will will get a free copy of the book um unless if you already have a copy of the book that that you've purchased for yourself will give you another one from the from the bookstore so um and then uh third prize will be an ambs coffee mug second prize will be a travel tumbler for your coffee and then first prize will be a lightweight zip up hoodie so um I've got let me see I'm gonna share my screen here oh wait before I do that I will pause the okay all right and Carl if I could add one small comment to Juan's comments earlier about where you see repentance in the Mennonite church I just have to say because Sarah Winger Schenck is on here I have to give some uh support to her chapter in the liberating the politics of Jesus William which outlines her leadership of the seminary's response to uh John Howard Yoder's sexual abuse is serial sexual abuse and I say the seminary's response you know 30 years later unfortunately but uh Sarah led a very powerful experience of truth telling and repentance um that I do think uh is a model for many of us to continue learning from and she as I say writes about it in the book liberating the politics of Jesus thank you it's a plug for another good book um so you'll have more than your share of reading cut out for you if you're um on this call um so yeah um we do have another question in the q and a here um and it goes like this uh Lynette and young latinas from our congregation will leave for Central America in a month with the salt mcc program what would you say to her how can she prepare and are there some particular opportunities for a latina you already prepared if you're going back to Central America a look watch listen to the people there one of the one of the things that are uh one one of the problems is that if we for example if we are from Central America and we're here we will think that we have the right questions or that we're going to be the right and the right uh uh answers for the place where we're going if you will go with the uh with uh the saying I will listen to the people there I will watch what they will will do and I will listen to the kinds of questions that we will ask who we are asking here I will listen to their testimony and that will give you a shape of a way that you will be able to bring that back to the to North America and that you will allow the Holy Spirit to help you by by shaping you by shaping you for uh for the questions but but by shaping you by the answers we are not we are not shaped by what happens in North America let us be shaped by what happened in Central America and so I would ask you that uh go with that sense go there to learn from them and learn what they will teach you and uh that's what we that's what I would ask for anyone that would go back to the question to uh their answer to their ancestors country listen for what God has been doing here and so that when you listen to that you will be shaped by it and when you're shaped by it then you will be able to come back to North America and bring that uh that sense to North America and in fact I want a lot of Latino kids to go back to the countries to go back to the countries from where their parents came from to watch and and sense what is going on there and not to go as missionaries as the people that will be uh preaching over there but listen to what God is doing there and then you will have something to preach here amen I'll just add that I think um you know at the seminary we've done a lot of work with the intercultural development inventory tool and that has been a powerful tool for me coming to understand more deeply really the kind of dance that all of us no matter where we're from have to engage in around similarity and difference there you know we have powerful motivation especially when we cross a cultural boundary to uh to minimize the differences that are there um and there's other powerful forces uh that some of us are more susceptible to to really exaggerate the differences and to go into what intercultural theorists call polarization that say there's a kind of absolute difference here and one culture way of doing things is better just inherently better than the other and so the kind of journey or dance beyond these minimization and polarization uh I think is a lifelong journey but someone like it's described in this question who will have kind of both insider and outsider status will have both real gifts of an opportunity to um explore some similarities to learn more about herself and potentially you know I don't know where her ancestors would be from but um to learn more about Latin American culture that she shares to some degree but also as Juan is describing to really to to not just assume similarity but to be being a posture of learning and listening to to learn from the differences and to again not once we learn from those that learn about those differences to romanticize that's another tendency to romanticize and then we do kind of what they call reverse polarization oh the US is US culture is bad this Central American culture is better but to really see the integrity of these different ways of life and to appreciate them in their integrity appreciate how again we can relate in positive ways but also the differences that remain even as we learn more become friends with people in these different contexts uh are changed by these contexts not to erase the difference either um and that's you know we talk a lot in the book about a form of incarnational mission that avoids gentrification that's really what we're talking about how do you go how do you accompany people that are different from you in mission learning from them taking on in appropriate ways uh their form of life respecting their form of life their language etc without kind of taking it over and um you know colonizing or gentrifying uh that I think that that those images of kind of avoiding that the poles of minimizing the difference or polarizing the difference and romanticizing um have helped me in thinking about that all right we have time I think for one final question here uh that's come in our Q and A how do you see mission after the pandemic especially in realizing the challenge of the churches globally who impacted economically politically and mentally etc how do you see the discipleship and mission which is trauma sensitive we have to get vaccines to lots of people and we have to um think about that we we have vaccines here and our country has not let them go because our president had wanted our country to get to get uh uh vaccinated and we have to challenge that if if we have this this help for other people this help for Haiti this help for Brazil this help for the Palestinians we have to give it and we have to challenge our country and say hey wait a minute it's not about our country it's about uh the world uh and then we can talk to the people then we can talk to the the Haitians then we can talk to the Brazilians then we can talk to Palestinians when we have uh given our help and when we have challenged our country to give our help um that that's when we then we're not colonizing we're giving then we can then we can say this is our gift and this is for you and this is not with uh our uh culture or our religion with it this is our gift I would say that that would be a challenge to us because we're we're uh we are uh we want our our country to be uh uh vaccinated because we want our our passport to say vaccination on it as other countries have doing that and yes here it is I have one of those um but uh this is we we ought to have every everybody in the in the world have one of these uh and so we uh that would be my my answer I don't know what Jamie yeah that's that's really helpful and I think the endios your one aspect of your good question that I think about in relationship to what Juan is talking about is just some way the the way the American news cycle tends to be so US centric that we really often kind of don't know what's going on we don't know that Indonesia just hit you know for instance to take Andeos' home country just said a really unfortunate milestone um a new peak in cases um how COVID you know it's easy for me to talk about and many others here in the US to talk about oh now that we're done with the pandemic but for most of the world that it's not the case at all and so what does it mean for us for those of us who have been vaccinated and can enjoy the the freedoms of of post vaccine life to to think about and care for directly the majority around the world who are not benefiting from this and Juan has just given some pointers I'll add two things quickly one is the economic impact of the vaccine or the pandemic you know essentially has exacerbated inequalities that have already been growing exponentially over recent years and so part of what we hopefully will use this pandemic experience for is as an impetus to to be involved in reimagining our global economic and political structures how do we want to be involved with one another how do we want to care for one another what kind of institutions will mediate our lives as those who share this planet so those are massive questions that we that have no easy answers but often Christians have shrunk from those or just easily kind of jumped on board whatever the current institutions are but how do we critically engage in those questions since andeos brought up trauma um and the mental character of what pandemic what COVID-19 has wrought in our world I I think he is right on that uh you know trauma trauma information uh is is a must and you know one of the places I learned from this about this from is Colombia um Mennonites in Colombia have been deeply involved in post civil war trauma healing work as part of how they have pursued peace as part of how they have responded to the the peace accords over the last several years and you know sometimes it's easy to think oh trauma that's just kind of the squishy emotional stuff you deal with when all the you know the hard economic and political realities are or military realities are dealt with but part of what they're learning is they try to seek reintegration of of people who have been in the paramilitary or into civilian life is that you know once you're dealing with the trauma at at that stage there there's just so much to deal with the trauma mission trauma informed mission has to be you know built in from the beginning yes well that's a great note here to end our conversation on the possibilities for what's next here so thank you Jamie and Juan for your time it's been wonderful having this conversation with you and we hope that everyone will run out and buy the book um so Brandon just put a link in the chat to the place where you can buy it if you didn't win a copy already um and we'll hope to continue this conversation around books and coffee um and more so um with that we'll wrap up our session thanks to all of you who showed up and we hope that you'll stay tuned for more conversations that we have planned here so yeah this has been been really wonderful so thanks thanks to all of you