An Unexpected 'Missions Handbook'

Have any of you come across Anne Fadiman's book, "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down"? If not, may I commend it to you... partly because it's a fine book and partly because I would love to kick it around with some fellow readers.
It's not a Christian book, and it's not written as a missions handbook, but... The book tells the story of a Hmong family living in Merced, CA. Their youngests daughter, Lia Lee, develops grand mal epilepsy (the Hmong term for epilepsy is "the spirit catches you and you fall down") and begins to intersect with Western medicine, with tragic and heartbreaking outcomes for everyone involved. For example, the docs keep taking blood and spinal fluid samples from a girl whose parents do not understand that the body can replace these fluids; they are understandably alarmed... the docs at one point have the girl on six different meds, all of which need to be taken at different frequencies throughout the day--and expect the parents, who cannot read English and whose way of telling time is dramatically different, to comply with these instructions. The book is NOT saying 'Western medicine bad, folk medicine good'; it's a much more nuanced and ambiguous matter. Anyway, I found it a fascinating, if unintentional, mediatation on mission work in our cross-cultural, postmodern environment.
Any takers?

Centripetal or centrifugal?

That's "center-seeking" or "center-fleeing". You might think "center-seeking" is the preferred option, but-- I've been viewing with some of our church members the Bob Mumford DVDs from ACM last October. Last night we saw his third presentation, "Finding New Direction." For those who were there, this was the "spiralling inward" vs. "spiralling outward" talk. Here, centripetal (center-seeking) is NOT the way we want to be moving--that's the death spiral, me/us continuing to spiral in upon ourselves. Instead, like the light and life of the Father, we want to be moving/spiralling outward, following Jesus as he moves outward in mission.
So there's about twenty of us watching this last evening. As we were discussing it afterwards, one of my elders said something like, "I'm pretty encouraged--I think we're a pretty 'outward' church." Then one of my deacons immediately responded, "I disagree. I think we're pretty wound up with ourselves." The question/s I'd like some help on: (1) while both comments likely contain some truth, what kind of specifics would indicate to you that Covenant Church in Arlington, MA was moving outward in the right kinds of ways? (2) What's the right balance between "each one" and "all together", i.e., can it be healthy for a church to focus on equipping its members to being moving outward wherever they are but not have a single primary focus (in the sense of a specific task, ministry, project, 'mission', etc) that the church as a whole engages? And please, by all means, make some connections between the immediately prior posts and comments about prayer!

Praying, personally

Slight redirection of this conversation: where are you particularly encountering God in prayer these days? This is not meant as an 'accountability question--"So, how's your prayer life?"--but more to give us a chance to share with one another places, times, ways where our encounters with God are particularly fresh, pointed, "alive," etc. I'm using "prayer" fairly broadly here, to include the variety of ways in which we may be experiencing ourselves drawing near to God, and God drawing near to us.

Thinking about prayer...

Happy New Year to all. I'm up past my usual bedtime, since Wednesdays are indoor soccer night, and I need to power down after 90 minutes of running about like crazy without having much of any effect on the actual outcome of the games! I guess I primarily function as the "cone" around which everyone else dribbles... Anyway, I thought we could check in on how 2007 might be shaping up for us, at least as far as we can see at this point. Our church is entering 2007 with a 24/7 prayer vigil. This is the second time we've done this, and it's really an amzing experience... As I've mentioned, we've got some great family events in the spring (a graduation and a wedding)... I've found myself wondering about prayer: what happens, what is about, what do I think I'm doing when I pray, and what is actually happening (as opposed to what I think I'm doing!) It's all the usual questions: God doesn't need us to tell him what to do. How is praying a way of taking part in God and what he's doing? Since God already knows my heart, is the idea of "pouring out my heart in prayer" a way of reducing prayer to therapy? I'd be interested in your thoughts: what are we doing when we pray?