INTRODUCTION: FROM HOLLAND TO HANOI

The heat and humidity greeted us as we stepped off the plane and set foot on the tarmac of Hanoi’s Noi Bai International Airport. It was May 17, 1997, the day of our first arrival in Vietnam as a family and the day before our oldest daughter’s third birthday. Four suitcases and four carry-ons had to suffice for our family of four in our move from the West to the East. (We arranged for the rest of our luggage to arrive later.) Our new teammates picked us up and then dropped us off in the old French Quarter of Hanoi at a hostel on Metal Street. The ancient streets with narrow homes were named after the craftsman guilds and the products that were sold on each street. Metal Street today still sells mostly metal products.

I was sweating profusely, not just because of the hot and humid air, but also because I had started to run a fever. By nighttime the fever was so high that I had become delirious. In my nightmare, I envisioned the bed with large teeth, opening its mouth, ready to eat me! Jumping out of bed, I ran to the door and opened it to escape unto the streets. Holding the doorknob, in a spark of clear thought, I realized that if I’d run away, I may never make it back again. I will surely get lost on the old streets of Hanoi at night. Quickly, I shut and locked the door, fled into the bathroom, and hid myself in the bathtub in fetal position.

CHAPTER 1: LOVE HANOI: THE JOURNEY

It’s not fair Lord! This is not America, this is Hanoi! I was frustrated, agitated, upset really, that the Lord let me read another inspiring book from the USA with ideas that were seemingly impossible to implement in my context of Vietnam’s capital city, Hanoi.

The book To Transform a City by Eric Swanson and Sam Williams tells the story of Love Boulder. Pastors from around the city of Boulder, Colorado, had been meeting together to pray for church planting opportunities in that liberal university city, which at time, did not have one evangelical church. The Lord spoke to them with just two words: Love Boulder. “It was not about reaching Boulder, converting Boulder, changing Boulder; it was about loving Boulder.” The pastors ended up meeting with city leaders and with the mayor, asking them how the churches could help with the urban issues of Boulder, and started collaborating in community development projects, to the glory of our Father in heaven (Matthew 5:16).

CHAPTER 2: LOVE HANOI: THE CONTEXT

Having lived in Hanoi since 1997, it has been fascinating to witness the transformation the Doi Moi (renewal) policy has brought to the city. Most people in Hanoi have improved their lives as a direct result of Doi Moi. The orphans and foster children my wife and I helped in our first three years working at Friendship House now have their own families, homes, jobs and businesses.

Although Hanoi’s old quarter is still quaint and shows the influence from the Chinese and the French, the city is rapidly expanding and modernizing. Countless office towers and apartment buildings mushroom throughout the city. Traffic has changed from predominantly bicycles to mostly scooters and numerous cars, including SUVs, Mercedes, Bentleys, Rolls Royce, and a few luxury sports cars. Pricey smart phones are popular while fashion has become a priority. Students are sent overseas if the family can afford it.

CHAPTER 3: LOVE HANOI: THE STEPS

Nehemiah and the citizens of Jerusalem rebuilt the city walls within 54 days! Rebuilding society took Nehemiah the rest of his working career, with great persecution and aggravation, but also with great exhilaration and celebration. The project did not launch overnight, although you might get that idea when reading the abbreviated introduction. The organization of people did not go without its challenges (the nobles refused to join the effort and worked counterproductively). The sustainability apparently had failed, which Nehemiah discovered after he had returned from a few years’ break.

The Love Jerusalem campaign, if I may call it that, was a process with many steps and stages. So will your Love [Your City] initiative if you were to start one.

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CHAPTER 4: PRINCIPLES

Little did I know how much my life would change when my Lutheran missionary friend gave me Ray Bakke’s book, A Theology as Big as the City. In it, Ray journeys through Scripture from Genesis to Revelation, revealing how much the Bible speaks about cities. With personal anecdotes from his 30+ years of pastoral experience in inner-city Chicago, it was easy to connect to the reinterpreted ancient urban stories. As the Senior Associate for Large Cities with the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization, Ray visited over 200 cities between 1979 and 1995 before writing this book.

As I drove my scooter through the busy city streets, I started to look at Hanoi differently. It dawned on me that in the ten years of ministry in the city, I had never looked at Hanoi from a theological perspective; I had never considered what the Bible has to say about the whole city. Sure, I had a theology for missions, for church, for social work, for worship, and even for marketplace ministry, but not for the WHOLE city. Over time, I came to realize that, to my embarrassment, I was a consumer of the city, not a contributor. I used the city for my ministry agenda but had not considered how I might serve for the benefit of the city. This was a significant paradigm shift for me.

CHAPTER 5: POSTURE

I was really, really nervous. The international reception hall seemed filled with police uniforms. It was the first time I visited Hanoi’s Chief of Police, Major General Nguyen Duc Chung. With me were Pastor Nelson Annan (Canadian), Pastor Jinggoy Caballero (Filipino), and Pastor Paul Bui (Vietnamese, who acted as my translator). With the chief were the head of Hanoi security police (like the FBI), officers of the religious department of the city police, and a handful of other policemen and -women.

It was not the first time I had found myself meeting with uniformed police. In 2012, I had met with the General overseeing the Protestant office of the religious department of Hanoi police. Entering the Police Headquarters and being guided to a small office with uniformed officers, I was quite nervous then too! Gratefully, I had remembered what I had learned from the Love Boulder story, when the pastors had asked Boulder’s mayor how they could love their city. Thus, after introductions and a short speech by the General on the freedom of religion in Vietnam, it was my turn to speak.

CHAPTER 6: PROCESS

In the early ’70s, Naim Ateek had come to Saudi Arabia as a little boy. His parents were among the thousands of refugees who had fled the Lebanese civil war. Through contacts in Jordan, they ended up in Riyadh, Saudi’s capital city.

Naim turned out to be a brilliant student and quickly made it to the top of the class. He was soon recruited by Saudi’s largest oil company. Through hard work, diligence, and a succession of promotions, Naim ended up in one of the company’s top positions. As the VP of Security and Finance, he had a very influential position, often working closely with the company’s president. This had its benefits, although the president could be very temperamental and unpredictable. Naim had to constantly be on his guard when in the president’s presence.

One night, while staying at the company’s luxurious resort, Naim flipped on the news after a long and grueling day of meetings. The TV program suddenly caught his attention. The news reporter was covering a story of the current state of Lebanon, his country of birth. Naim couldn’t remember the last time he had given a thought to his homeland.

CHAPTER 7: PARTNER

“The risk was unacceptable!,” the pediatrician said as we discussed the Long Bien cleanup project in hindsight. “The bacterial infections from that sewer water could have seriously harmed someone,” he insisted, and I couldn’t have agreed more. I had heard that a doctor had been sent by one of the schools to make sure that none of their students would be at risk and that he had been quite upset with the lack of hygiene and apparent recklessness of the organizers to expose volunteers to such health risks. Yet, we had and still we did an amazing work!

Keep Hanoi Clean is an initiative started by an American young man who’d been teaching English in Hanoi, like so many other young adults like him. However, as he fell in love with the city, James Kendall could no longer stand the heaps of trash spoiling Hanoi’s charm. In 2016, James decided to take matters in his own hands and started cleaning up streets, parks and canals (although they were more like sewers!). Hanoians were amazed, stunned, impressed, upset, thankful, and inspired. Some started joining him and Keep Hanoi Clean (KHC) was born.

CHAPTER 8: PEOPLE

It was hard to believe my eyes as my wife Linda and I witnessed hundreds, even thousands, come forward in response to the gospel presentation at the Love Hanoi Festival. Who would have dreamt or imagined?! That we could experience this after 20 years of service in Hanoi was richly rewarding. It was an event, of course, but it became a moment that I and over 30,000 other people will treasure for a lifetime and into eternity. But it did not start there.

It started with a team of leaders working together in humility, valuing others above themselves, for the purpose of God’s kingdom breaking through in our city. What a joy to partner with the staff of BGEA, who demonstrated “the same mindset as Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2:5). My heart was filled to overflowing, flooding my eyes then and even now, witnessing over 200 pastors holding hands in a circle during the festival’s worship celebration service. Not all is perfect, but we have come a long way from a church that has survived three wars in 100 years. At the end, it is all about people. From one to three, then 12 to 72, and then from 120 to thousands.

CHAPTER 9: LOVE [YOUR CITY] TOO!

I still remember my first conversation with Dr. Brad Smith, President of Bakke Graduate University, when we spoke over the phone as I was contemplating embarking on the doctoral program to support the launch and development of our Love Hanoi campaign. To me it sounded impossible, ridiculous, unbelievable when he challenged me to consider writing my dissertation with the city government as my audience; that my final project would result in a citywide gathering of leaders from every domain, including government leaders, during which I would present my paper to them. “Yeah right,” I told him, as I could not believe such an outcome would be possible. My reply to Dr. Smith was that I would just begin and be faithful in the process, wherever this may lead to. The rest is history, and you have read some of that history in this book.

As HIF was inspired by the Love Boulder story, today other international and national churches around the world have launched or are about to launch their Love [Your City] campaigns: Love HCMC, Love Danang, Love Bac Giang, Love Phuket, Love Bangkok, Love Dubai, Love Havertown, Love … ? We probably don’t even know who is thinking about it or has already started. Perhaps, after reading this book, you also would like to launch your own Love [Your City] campaign. Whether you are a pastor, Christian leader, student, missionary, or whatever your role may be in God’s kingdom, together with others, by the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, you can begin today!