Caz Tod
I came from New Zealand to be part of Mission Year as a team member in 2004. It’s certainly been a life-changing journey and one that has taken me from team member, to assistant city director and now city-director in three cities. I have been privileged to participate in Mission Year in these different capacities, each one forcing me to ask deep questions about what I believe, why and how I live that out in the world. I am challenged daily as I endeavor to live out this radical discipleship and as I journey with team members doing the same.
Let me share an excerpt that articulates my journey.
“Not being able to use any of the skills that had proved so practical in the past was a real source of anxiety. I was suddenly faced with my naked self, open for affirmations and rejections, hugs and punches, smiles and tears, all dependent simply on how I was perceived at the moment. In a way, it seemed as though I was starting my life all over again. Relationships, connections, reputations could no longer be counted on.
This experience was and, in many ways, is still the most important experience of my new life, because it forced me to rediscover my true identity. These broken, wounded, and completely unpretentious people forced me to let go of my relevant self – the self that can do things, show things, prove things, build things – and forced me to reclaim that unadorned self in which I am completely vulnerable, open to receive and give love regardless of any accomplishments.
I am telling you all this because I am deeply convinced that the Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer, but his or her own vulnerable self. That is the way Jesus came to reveal God’s love. The great message that we have to carry, as ministers of God’s word and followers of Jesus, is that God loves us not because of what we do or accomplish, but because God has created and redeemed us in love and has chosen us to proclaim that love as the true source of all human life.”
Caz Tod's Blog
Sharing Grown-Up Faith / Dec 15, 06:50 AM
Some of my first memories of Jesus are from Joy Club, a program I attended that was run by some very enthusiastic adults during our school breaks back in New Zealand. Flannel boards, puppets, drama, singing, stories, all of which always ended with an invitation to talk to Jesus, to say sorry for all my sins and to ask him to come into my heart.
I accepted this invitation countless times, and each time it seemed so easy. I always felt good, loved and accepted by Jesus, who was now my savior and friend. My trust was real, my prayers were simple and I loved to talk about him, but then I grew up.
My world of trampolines, bikes, dress ups, Care Bears and Joy Club got more complicated as I began developing some understanding of the sermons and the possible ramifications for sin I heard from others. Instead of trust, I became anxious and my prayers got pretty desperate and somewhat selfish. The acceptance I used to feel was replaced by an incessant need to do good things to acquire Jesus’ love.
I wanted to be a Christian, to believe in Jesus, to be loved, and to go to heaven, so I stayed close to the action. I went to church and on mission trips, taught Sunday school, and ran youth group and children’s camps. I even moved my life to the other side of the world all because I’d been taught and knew I ‘should’ tell people about Jesus, but still I lived with this nagging fear and questions about what it all really meant.
One day I somehow found the courage to admit this to my Spiritual Director who asked me just one question… who is Jesus to you?
As we sat in silence that day I had my usual answer prepared in my head, but I asked the question again, and this time to my heart.
‘Who is Jesus to me? Who is Jesus to me? Who is Jesus to me?’ reverberated around in my heart for days. I read and reread verses from Matthew 11:28-30.
“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”
For years my living with Jesus hadn’t felt free and light more than it had felt demanding and difficult. Sadly, this demanding, difficult place was where I had been sharing my faith from.
Sharing faith from this place was about doing good works to acquire acceptance and a place in God, rather than sharing from an overflow of joy and peace that comes from keeping company with Jesus.
So I started ‘getting away with Jesus’ and this has allowed me to discover a life beyond the formulas of religion and the need to share Jesus with others in order to gain acceptance to a life that is authentically lived and where I share Jesus because I AM accepted and experiencing a deep joy this offers me each day.
Oh! May the God of hope fill you up with joy, fill you up with peace, so that your believing lives, filled with the life-giving energy of the Holy Spirit, will brim over with hope! Romans 15:13
As I am awakened to the presence of Jesus in me, this spirit invites and empowers me to manifest love, freedom, rest and life to the world.
This is incarnate living. This is God being revealed through me. This is preaching the good news of Jesus in all my living. Not because I have to… but because I want others to experience life giving energy, hope and assurance.
We can do a lot of good for people. We can give them food, clean their yards, provide clothes, and tutor kids, but being a follow of Jesus means that we should have a joy, freedom and rest to talk about. Are we keeping company with Jesus so that we are fill to the brim with hope that we can’t help but share?
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Caz Tod is Mission Year’s Atlanta City Director. This post is part of our 15 Dreams blog series supporting The 15 Campaign. Dream #14: We dream of a world where others come to know Christ.
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Hospitality in Brokenness / Nov 16, 07:57 AM
I’m the kind of person who stays up way too late and goes to extreme efforts the night before a guest arrives to clean, straighten, wash, launder, and hide the signs of my disorganization, or get rid of any evidence of the way I REALLY live.
I tell myself I do this because I want my visitor to feel comfortable and welcome, but if I am honest, what I really want my visitor to do is to believe that I am organized, tidy, and put together. Somewhere between growing up and now I’ve believed these things make me a person others will want to be around, but if I let them see my dysfunction, or the fact that I didn’t have time to vacuum, they’ll judge me incapable of keeping up with life. This fear of judgment stops me from having people enter my space, causes me to isolate myself, and to exclude others.
I am convinced that there’s something about the way we are willing (or not so willing) to be hospitable to our own selves, to our own disorganization and dysfunction, that’s connected to the way we are or aren’t able to offer hospitality to others in all of theirs.
The reality of being human means that we are imperfect and broken, yet sadly, we believe that we can somehow overcome this based on our own efforts. We try to think, will, and work ourselves beyond our own brokenness, and as a result, expect others to do the same. If we live according to these assumptions it becomes easy to exclude, to segregate and to eliminate whoever doesn’t fit or has yet to learn how to hide their brokenness.
I believe that this aversion to our own brokenness is a kind of violence. It’s a damaging violence to us because it encourages us to build up defenses that sustain individualism and work against community. It’s what leads neighbors to hurt one another, leads the privileged to abandon the marginalized, leads to division within the church and leads to war between countries.
So I wonder a lot about what it would mean if we were able to embrace our own brokenness and offer ourselves compassion and acceptance, whether we might be liberated to gift radical hospitality to others no matter what their own life or circumstances might be?
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Radical Hospitality is Dream #5 in Mission Year’s 15 Dreams series. These posts are supporting The 15 Campaign as we celebrate 15 Years of radical hospitality together!
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Encouragement from MLK / May 6, 08:14 AM
The first trimester of Mission Year is September through December. This is when folks come in and their eyes are opened to a world that’s often very different than the one they’ve known before. It’s where they discover that their formulas, and their skills that had proven so important in the past are not so important or as ‘right’ as they’d thought.
Then they go home for Christmas break and discover that home isn’t the same for them anymore. Folks often realize that they can’t be home and just forget what they’ve seen and learned. This causes a lot of unrest and lots of questions about where they fit in the world now. They don’t quite fit in their Mission Year world, but they no longer feel so comfortable at home either.
January is the beginning of the second and middle trimester. This is often the hardest time of the year. The excitement and newness has worn off, and yet it’s still a long way from the end. Team members can feel unsettled, confused and often come face to face with their naked selves.
This past January, I sensed my team members were truly in this place and so asked the Divine for ways to move them towards truth, life, and hope. I felt drawn to offer the words and life of Martian Luther King Jr.
We visited the MLK center, we read his writings and listened to a sermon he preached, and discussed it all together. We learned about his life, his dreams and the actions he took to move towards them.
We then looked at our lives, our dreams and thought about what it would take for us to get there too. As a part of one of our trainings I ask the team members to reflect by writing Haiku. These are simple, yet beautiful prayers and declarations.
Conviction sets in
Spirit is willing to know
Do I go from me?
Injustice threatens
Live in constructive tension
Tireless effort
Tension, justice, strife
Forced to demand own freedom
Tension, justice, peace
Injustice, heart-ache
Tension, creating chaos
Marching on to hope
Living for others
‘Creative Altruism’
Finding self in loss
Extremist in love
Jesus came to die for all
So all are equal
Why do these tears fall?
Do not think that I have left?
For I work through you
Injustice is here
What can we do? Nothing? No!
Stand up, fight, believe
Me, an extremist?
I do not see myself as
I can start right now
Though we may be few
We will not be discouraged
We are committed
Courage of the past
Even in a new struggle
Can still bring justice
Caz is the City Director in Atlanta.
Mission Year Worship Event / Jan 26, 06:53 PM
by Caz Tod, Atlanta City Director
Working for Mission Year, as assistant city director and city director, for the past five years has offered me the chance to witness close to 120 people journey through a year with our program. Each year I hope for the same things for my people… transformation in and through them, a greater awareness and a deeper love of God, others and self, and a new view and understanding of service, sacrifice and simplicity.
To get to walk with folks and witness the transformation is a privilege, and to get there often means that I use every ounce of discernment I can muster, be firm, and steadfast, while also being gentle and loving. I find myself calling things out in people, and maneuvering my way through varying types of conflicts.
Directing folks through Mission Year requires me to be committed to team members individually, and as a group, all the while upholding the integrity of the program. This can take some real balancing and it requires a lot of listening, a lot of encouragement, a lot of provocation, a lot of negotiation and stick-to-itiveness.
There’s been plenty of moments over the years that I have said things that I know were audacious, challenging and I am sure difficult to hear. I have often second guessed myself and worried I pushed to hard or too far. I’ve watched people cry, been yelled at, and even called a few harsh names. I recently began to wonder if I was really in the right place, doing the right thing with the right intentions and feeling like it was my responsibility to make the transformation, awareness and understanding come.
Last month I attended the Philadelphia Mission Year Worship event where Ra Mendoza, one of my alum, shared with us her journey through songs written during and after her own Mission Year. Hearing Ra’s songs that night moved something deep in me. I cried many tears as I listened to her sing her story filled with questions and wrestlings, sadness and joy, confusion and hope. I found her declarations and promises to stay, to go, to be, to trust and hope, to listen and speak were a beautiful gift. It’s the transformation, awareness and understanding I hope for.
The gift of the evening was the reminder that this work of transformation is NOT mine… that my job is to companion folks and offer the best of who I am for this part of their journey and that’s it. The work of the Divine begins well before folks arrived in my city, under my watch and will go on well after I say goodbye.
I Sit With You – written by Ra Mendoza
I sit with you,
after the day, after the year.
The tears roll down my face.
When I think,
that you’ve brought me here.
Ask me to stay I’ll stay.
Ask me to move I’ll move,
I’ll do anything for you.
Ask me to wait I’ll wait,
coz the only thing I need is to be with you.
Oh, you leave me speechless when,
when I think back on those times
I so clearly felt you move.
Oh, and it’s those moments that keep me ,
that hold me on my truth,
that keep me to you.
The Gift of a Year / Nov 5, 09:59 AM
When team members come to Mission Year they all come from some other place. They come from some other community, from their own families with joys, hurt and brokenness. They come from different experiences, different value systems. We put them together in a house (or trailer) and tell them to build community. Of course, that’s the most simplistic way of explaining the process, and those of us who do this work know that there is much more that goes into this, but essentially that’s what we do.
It’s been my experience that one of the biggest surprises for team members is to find that the people they’ve been shoved together with for the year are so different to them. I think there’s this idea that if they’ve all signed up for this program you’ve done it for the same reason as me. So… the first weeks of Mission Year, team members live in this happy honeymoon period where everyone is glad/excited to be here. As time moves on, folks get tired, are forced to eat meals they don’t particularly like, have to listen to music they wouldn’t chose and discover that not everyone is here for the same thing or with the same expectations.
These discoveries are not easy or comfortable. Mission Year knows that this happens and we help this process by asking team members to fast from technology, making it more difficult to be connected to life before now. We give them lots of suggestions and lots of tasks to do as a group that will force deeper conversation, and interactions where they can’t pretend that they’re all the same. We do it not because we enjoy seeing people awkward, uncomfortable and disappointed, but because it’s important for team members to come to a new, truer place together.
This process is a time of letting go of what they thought this experience, or these people, and this city would/should be and I believe is one of the most important things that happen in the first trimester. Once folks can get to this they can then really start to build something real… together.
We have just reached the six-week mark in the Mission Year year. This officially brings the beginning to an end… and what we’ve discovered over the years is that at this point what we need is a new beginning. One where we commit ourselves to each other, for the same reasons and from the same place and we do this through creating a covenant together.
Creating a covenant is a new starting point, a new base line to begin from. It’s not a set of rules to keep or be punished by, but a point of mutual commitment that grants us the right to ask questions and challenge each other. It’s a place of deeper understanding and authentic love.
In a world that is used to causal connections and functional friendships we don’t have a lot of experience opening our inner live to others and so a covenant like this requires trust.
As I watched 20 people commit themselves to each other and to working out the values Mission Year teaches I was moved again by the gift of this program.
The gift of being shove together with a group of people, in a particular neighborhood with one goal… to work out how to love God and people well. The gift of time, and space to ask deep questions and live your way to the answers. The gift of letting go of preconceived ideas and living with someone that is different than you and discovering that you’re not that different.
This gives me hope… that maybe people living like this, where we’re not so different would change the world!
