You’d think that after 9 years of working in the domain, I would have a better grasp on the question “what is mission”? But if the Christian life is about transformation and pilgrimage, it stands to reason that lifelong learning is part of the deal, so I suppose it’s no surprise that our views change as our understanding grows. I have been increasingly uneasy with a vision that places the simple “conversion of souls” at the centre of the enterprise. Before the stones start flying let me say that I’m not suggesting that this is unimportant, but rather that it is not the centre. This is where I have found Newbigin’s writings so very helpful:
It is impossible to stress too strongly that the beginning of mission is not an action of ours, but the presence of a new reality, the presence of the Spirit of God in power [...] The great missionary proclamations in Acts are not given on the unilateral initiative of the apostles but in response to questions asked by others, questions prompted by the presence of something which calls for explanation [...] Where the Church is faithful to its Lord, there the powers of the kingdom are present and people begin to ask the question to which the gospel is the answer. And that, I suppose, is why the letters of St. Paul contain so many exhortations to faithfulness but no exhortations to be active in mission. The Gospel in a Pluralist Society
This is from a man who spent most of his career as a missionary in India. It almost sounds heretical. He also makes the point that the end of the enterprise is not the successful conclusion of our projects, but the coming of Christ to reign. Jesus’ statement, “Where I am, there shall my servant be” is central here. Where is Jesus? At the frontier of light and darkness, where the acted out good news of the kingdom is pushing back the powers of evil, whatever form they may take. If we want to be with Jesus, that’s where we need to be.
All around me I see projects. When our projects succeed, we feel good. When they fail, we sink into existential crisis. Our whole reason for being seems to be predicated on our projects. This is because we see the Church as the source and agent of God’s coming kingdom, which is not so very far from the imperialism of medieval Christendom. The Church is not the source, but the sign and witness. It is here that the reality of the kingdom begins to break through in a visible way.
Mission is an acted out doxology. That is its deepest secret. Its purpose is that God may be glorified.
So why aren’t more people in our culture looking a the Church and asking questions?
Okay, so I know I’ve been silent for months. This blog has been suffering from a terrible lack of attention. But I just had to share this with you, from one of my favourite authors at the moment.
Faith enables us to be at the same time realistic and hopeful. We can be realistic, knowing that no human project can eliminate the powers of darkness as they operate in human life. This realism delivers us from the utopian fanaticisms which have condemned millions of people to misery and death in the cause of an imagined future. But at the same time we can be hopeful, acting hopefully in apparently hopeless situations, not dreaming of an absolute perfection on this side of death, but doing resolutely that relative good which is possible now, doing it as an offering to the Lord who is able to take it and keep it for the perfect kingdom which is promised. In this sense [...] our actions in the public life of the world are acted prayers for the kingdom. They do not themselves lead directly to the kingdom. They are acted prayers for its coming and as such they act as signs of its reality and so enable others to act in hope.
Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society
It’s such a shame this guy isn’t better known. What I love here is the refusal to escape into a pessimism which sees the world “going to hell in a handcart”, which leads some to retreat into a kind of “lifeboat” Christianity which refuses to engage with the world other than trying to pull a few drowning people into the boat. But at the same time there is no room for living in denial, as if heaven was already here. Yes the world is profoundly sick, and yes at this point in time we can’t actually bring ultimate positive change through our actions. But, we can rest assured that our actions are not wasted. Change is coming! It is not our actions that will bring it about, but our acts do have an important prophetic role in pointing people toward the glorious reality that is coming. I also really like the idea of viewing our actions as a form of prayer. No room for passivity here.
How refreshing to find this interview with Bishop N.T Wright in Time Magazine.
The question of heaven is a good example of how we fail to understand the clear and obvious teaching of Scripture because of the blinkers imposed by our “Christian” culture. Men have been burnt at the stake for less than Wright’s assertions about what happens after death. This is a crucial question which cannot help but influence the way we live. The “it’ll all pan out in the end” approach to eschatology and the question of what happens when you die has left many of us ineffective and unproductive in our faith. I think there’s a real need for us to get our theology sorted on this issue.
I had one of the more surreal experiences of my life this week. We had set up an English conversation & coffee event at a local community centre. Our first meeting was a great success, and we were just planning the next event when I was called in to meet with the director of the centre.
It transpired that an overly zealous member of what is sometimes affectionately referred to as the “anti-cult cult” had contacted the centre to warn them about me. I was informed that the community centre was awaiting a file of incriminating details confirming that I had infiltrated the community centre in order to brainwash the other members and drag them into my “cult”. This file duly arrived, and I went to a meeting to hear the verdict.
Yes, it was as they feared: I am a dangerous and deceitful man, and I was to be struck off the membership of the community centre without further ado.
“We are a non-confessional organisation sir”, I was reminded by the Catholic director and her yoga-instructor assistant, who rather put her foot in it when she said that as a coordinator of an activity it was impossible not to let one’s beliefs show through, and this would be in violation of the secular principles of the community centre… Whoops. So, in other words, it’s okay for Hinduism to “show through”, but not Christianity ??
I was fascinated to know what juicy bits of information there might be in my file, but they made the rather surprising decision to ferret the file out of my sight the moment I asked for it. So, no specific accusation was made, no serious investigation into whether or not any complaints had been made, just an arbitrary “on your bike”, for no apparent reason other than that I am perceived to be an e***gelical Christian (there’s that terrible “E”-word again!)
You think this is a joke, right?
It really happened.
One of the most striking things about our return to France is what a different place we are in compared to August 2004 when we last came back from New Zealand. Last time we landed in the middle of a visit from the ship Doulos to Saint Nazaire (near Nantes), new interns joining us in our project to assist a church in the north of Nantes, various projects with Christian youth, and a whole bunch of meetings and conferences in the diary. We hit the ground running and didn’t stop to draw breath for several months.
This time we have arrived in a more typical French August: eerily quiet. If you didn’t know that everyone has head for the beach or the mountains, you would wonder whether you’d stumbled onto the set of Invasion of the Bodysnatchers.
But even so, many of the people we have most wanted to catch up with have been around, and the most meaningful things that have happened since our return 2 weeks ago has been renewing contact with friends. We’ve had a more or less constant stream of visitors, which has been both surprising and encouraging, and has really helped in dealing with the odd coup de blues* over leaving New Zealand.
We have not come back with a stack of new projects to launch into, but already we see the few ideas we have beginning to take shape. Some of them are not quite cooked enough to talk about them here, but we are really enjoying having the space to step off the ministry “roundabout”, and actually ask the question, “Lord, what do you have for us to do?”, and sensing the freedom to wait for him to answer before forging ahead.
Not sure that we’ve ever been in this place before.
*coup de blues - you can probably guess: a time of feeling down.
Had a great weekend in Lower Hutt, and some interesting discussions including a chat on the subject of tolerance with a friend of a friend. We got there by a fairly circuitous route, touching on the war on terror, world peace and the role of religion in armed conflicts. But what got us onto tolerance was those statues of Buddha that were vandalised by the Taleban in Afghanistan. Intolerance was seen as the vice behind this act, and present in all the major world religions. “If the religions would just teach tolerance, the world would be a better place” was the basic idea.
This got me thinking. Sooner or later something or someone will step onto the world scene to fill the present vacuum of leadership. The chaos we see today (the war on terror, Iran, AIDS, Israel/Palestine, global warming etc.) will continue to escalate until some agency, be it a man, a consortium, or even a government, arrives on the scene proposing some concrete solutions. It is only a matter of time before these situations become so desperate that the world will be willing to accept peace at almost any price, and it is in precisely this context that this agency (let’s call it a “Man of Peace”) will come with a clear and seemingly effective strategy to unite national and international powers to to resolve once and for all the problems that plague the world.
But these solutions will come with a price tag, and it is here that the current love affair that we have with this notion of tolerance will come to a brutal end. Continue reading ‘Peace at the price of tolerance’
Have you ever noticed that there are occasions in the Bible where people act in a certain way and God commends it, and yet the same act at a different time by different people is an act of sinful disobedience? A good example can be found in comparing the census of Israel that Moses undertook in Numbers 26 with the census of David in II Samuel 24. When Moses finished the census in obedience to God’s command, God gave to the nation an inheritance of land which he has never revoked. In this way he blessed Moses’ obedience.
Several generations later we see King David undertaking exactly the same project which God had blessed in Moses’ day when he sent his commanders throughout the land to count the fighting men of Israel and Judah. The text does not elaborate on David’s motives for doing this, but we see Joab, his trusted advisor, warning him not to do it. David stubbornly continues with his project, and finishes with a stricken conscience, repenting before God for this foolish sin which resulted in a severe outpouring of God’s judgement in the land.
Is God capricious? Does he have double standards? Does he have favourites? Continue reading ‘Cut and paste church’
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