This got me thinking, is there a space for micro-finance for mission and church planting? This is how I imagine it working. Let’s use an example of a family church planting in, say randomly, Sweden. They need £20k per year to live on for 3 years while starting a new church. You give to the church planting version of Kiva and then when the new church is up and running, over a few years the money is repaid recycling the funding back into the world of church planting.
Because this works mostly in the developed world where incomes and giving are high, these could attract a premium of say 10% or something that is then channelled off to cover repayments made to churches being planted in low income developing countries where church income may never get high enough to repay a loan.
Now the sum I presented isn’t micro but neither is it astronomical, and it’s a way in which mission agencies and churches which may be struggling to raise finance the traditional ways can find fresh and new partners to support mission work throughout the world.
Of course the obvious weakness is that it requires investment into rich countries in order to invest into poorer nations. Anyway it was a passing thought and the only way to get it improved is for brighter minds than mine to give it some thought! So over to you.
Ed Stetzer reviewed it in Themelios and was less than positive as ”they plod through the biblical text in workmanlike fashion.’ Liam Thatcher read it and felt that too often ‘precision gave way to pedantry’. Trevin Wax read it and was left with five nagging questions which received a friendly response from the authors. Andrew Wilson then weighed in with his thoughts on why the two sides were talking past each other.
For what it’s worth, I’m more with Frost on this one.
“What you practice at home is the show you take on the road. What you grow in your fields is what you load on the trucks. Compassing sea and land doesn’t generate a new message. The way you live when you get on the plane is going to be the single best indicator of how you live when you get off the plane. In short, don’t expect geographical location to fix anything.”
He then gave the following example,
“Say that someone says he has a real burden “for the lost” in Wango Bango. Say that the person at church he is speaking to suggests they spend that afternoon going door-to-door at student housing for the local university. There are lost people here too. Suppose further that the evangelistic ardor of the prospective missionary suddenly wanes. This is a bad sign, and it is a bad sign of what I am talking about…The first step in foreign missions is domestic mission. The first step toward Africa is right across the street.”
Now I agree that if we’re concerned about the lost abroad we should be concerned about the lost at home. But Wilson is wrong when he says, ‘don’t expect geographical location to fix anything.’ Or at least he will sometimes be wrong. Let me make a few assumptions about Wango Bango, the two big ones being that is a poor country with vast numbers living on $1 a day and that it is largely pagan. If I go there, happy in my mildly affluent Western lifestyle the chances are the encounter with grinding, merciless, heartless, child killing poverty might shock me out of my comfort zone. The generosity of my hosts will be a refrain I retell on countless occasions back home. I become less self-centred and more generous. More of what I get in goes out to supporting the needs of churches or ministries in these poor countries. In short seeing and encountering the poverty could and sometimes does change everything.
But what about the pagan bit? I might know and appreciate that most of my neighbours are lost but somehow seeing lostness in a whole new way drives the point home. Perhaps in Wango Bango I see thousands kneel and sacrifice to idols and spend their precious savings on witchdoctors and suddenly the idea of ‘lostness’ strikes home. Perhaps, seeing lostness in its clearest form helps me appreciate lostness in its vague proximity at home and suddenly the urgency of telling these lost people about the coming of a King becomes a lot more, well, urgent. So going to Wango Bango might not be such a wasted trip.
In the past I’ve been a bit critical of our Together on a Mission conferences but there has been a consistent high point every year. Without fail the Thursday night of prayer and giving is extraordinary.
It’s a genuine joy to watch people give exuberantly and generously as year after year close to a million pounds is given on one night. In fact it says something when there’s a slight air of disappointment if the total is only say £950,000!
It’s a thrilling thing to be among 5000 people praying for the nations and I think it’s to Terry Virgo’s enormous credit that prayer so fundamentally shapes our gatherings.
Last year I sat up in the gods watching thousands of arms stretched out in prayer as we earnestly sought God for nation after nation and I thought to myself, next year that will be me on the stage. And this it was!
I was really grateful to have a short chance to tell the thousands that the very next morning our family was flying to Sweden and something of the desire God has given us for this country and to plant a church in Stockholm. It was then profoundly moving to have those same thousands prayer with great passion, vigour and faith and to have people ahead of you in the journey come to you, lay on hands and pray for you as if they were coming with you. It was a remarkable privilege.
I’m not sure what the conferences of other church networks are like, what they focus on, what sense of unity and vision they have. I’ve certainly not come across or even to be honest heard of anything remotely to that. So while I think there are other conferences that will do many other things better I’m not sure I’d trade any of that if it meant missing out on that prayer night.
So it’s not too much of a stretch to say that we feel sent not just by a local church but also by a wider church family together on a mission. I hope as we grow and devolve from the centre to the regions that somehow that sense of together will not be lost.
For some great photos of the event go here
However there were and are other problems with the concept of missionary that I had back then that stands in stark contrast to what we’ve just personally experienced. The missionary, at least as it seemed to me, would leave the local church and go and work for the mission agency. The vision for the mission comes from the mission agency and is caught by the missionary who asks the church to support it both in prayer and finance.
I’ve witnessed from friends of mine working for mission agencies that over time (and not always a long time either) there is a real sense that the vision that caught them and has taken them to another country and that they’ve made significant sacrifices for in the cause of the Gospel is not fully shared by their church. In other words their vision and mission was not seen or owned as the vision of the local church. As a result prayer for the departed, so to speak, becomes peripheral and perhaps over time funding dries up.
By contrast what we’ve experienced so far has been quite different, although time and distance could prove me wrong. What we’ve experienced is a church putting forward significant sums of money, helping us, loving us and seeking God with us because our vision and mission to see churches planted all across the world is the vision of the church we left. It’s not someone else’s vision, it’s theirs, it’s ours. So we’ve not been sent by a church to a mission agency; we’ve been sent by a church to a church for the church.
Here are some of the many excellent things Hope Church did in the way that they sent us. Firstly, they quickly grasped that this is what we were called to both as a church and us as a couple. This is the mission we are on together. Secondly, as a result of that, they sacrificially gave to enable that to happen. They really put up big numbers for us, giving us around 50% of our goal for the first 18 months all on their own. They grasped that God’s mission is an opportunity for God’s people to be generous in their giving. They owned the mission by the way they gave.
Thirdly, they loved us well as we left. We had cards, several leaving parties (all great fun) and we had practical help when we needed it. Lastly and perhaps most importantly of all, they sought God for us. They were told on which Sunday we would be prayed for and they were asked to come ready to pray, ready to being something from God for us and they did. We were overwhelmed by the depth, quality and faith stirring prayers and prophecies that were brought. We freshly and powerfully sensed again God’s hand on us in this move. It made me think this is a little bit what Acts 13:1-5 must have felt like. The Holy Spirit moving the church into wider mission.
Back in March 2009 I got on my pedestal about all this talk about cities and I said things like,
“I’ve already admitted that strategically it’s hard to ignore the influence and impact of cities (however you define them) but that’s very different from creating a Biblical mandate which in effect prioritises cities over anywhere else, which is what I understand men like Tim Keller and Mark Driscoll to be advocating.”
And then along comes Trueman, albeit with a bit more wit and chutzpah, and says,
“One thing Paul and I did discuss was the current nonsense about cities being special which so dominates the popular evangelical imagination. Not that cities are not important: as areas where there are the highest concentrations of human beings, they are inevitably significant as mission fields. Rather, we were thinking of the `from a Garden to a City’ hermeneutic which jumps from scripture to giving modern urban sprawl some kind of special eschatological significance. Was there ever a thinner hermeneutical foundation upon which so much has been built? OK, there probably has been, but this is still a whopper.”
Did you hear that thump? The sound of an eminent theologian landing on a bandwagon! The rest by the way is well worth reading and even though I’m about to head off to plant a church in a city, I still think he’s right.
In our area of 15,000 people there is 1 Catholic church, 1 Elim Church, 1 Anglican church (with 2 congregations) and 1 Newfrontiers church (with 2 congregations). The Methodists closed down years ago and joined with the Anglicans, the FIEC recently joined with Newfrontiers.
Eight years ago the Newfrontiers church did not exist and now regularly gathers 80+ children and adults, many of whom are new believers plus another 20-30 in the former FIEC congregation. To me those facts alone justify church planting. Eight years ago I could have looked and said there are already 4 churches here, we don’t need another one. But there are still 15,000 people to reach with the good news of Jesus.
It’s likely that many of the 70% are living under some false assurance, some false notion of eternal safety not rooted in Christ. There are 15,000 people who need Jesus, there are 300 workers.
How you react to that very brief summary will depend largely on where you’re from and what kind of political atmosphere you grew up. Chances are if you grew up in a right-wing American household you’ll feel the rise of China as a challenge and a threat. Certainly that’s the impression you get.
However nations rise and nations fall (a lesson we in the UK have had to adjust to) and that’s a lesson that God seems happy to keep dishing out. But there’s another angle to this from a Christian point of view and I think one excellent reason to pray for the continued economic rise of China.
Actually, let me correct that, I can think of 100 million reasons to pray for the continued economic rise of China. This is a church that has been forged in the face of persecution and opposition and there is an increasing number of churches and Christians in that country. This from the perspective of the church is massive. the potential missionary impact as churches gain the resources and freedom to travel is enormous.
So here are some things to pray for:
What do you think, China threat or ally?
And then told me a story that spoke of her concern that the UK is ever drifting from the Gospel. That’s my neat summary of what she told me. Her point was that there was a great need in this country too and therefore I shouldn’t move to Sweden. It’s nice to be wanted. That or it’s a sign of the great desperate need of the UK.
Shortly after that in my next conversation I was asked how I could square the great need for church planting and mission in this country (which I affirm) and my evident enthusiasm for emigration.
My reply was this; ‘the need is not the call.’ On one level we’re not moving to Sweden because of the great need, we’re moving because we believe that’s what obedience looks like for us. What would be an effective measure of the greatness of the need? You could probably make a formula, maybe something like:
Size of population ÷ Number of Christians (or churches) x number of languages ÷ number of scriptures in each language x some poverty index = GREAT NEED
On one level if we were all to respond to need then quite simply tens of thousands of Christians in the UK should move to Karachi, Kabul or Khartoum. Take your pick, the needs are roughly similar.
I have great friends who live in Karachi, Pakistan. It’s a city of maybe 18 million people. That’s twice as many people living in one city than in the entire nation of Sweden with less Christians. How can I compare those two needs?
However the need of a Asif Karachi and Sven Stockholm is the same. Without Jesus both are lost. That fate is equal for both of them. That doesn’t change the simple fact that there ARE many many millions more of such people in places like Karachi. So there is a great need for more Christians to be involved in mission in such places.
But in His wisdom (and I sincerely believe this is God’s plan not ours) He decided that Stockholm was the place for us. The question for each of us as disciples of Jesus is ‘am I following?’ and I mean really following. It’s way too easy to just say ‘yes’ because we go to a small group or something. Usually following requires faith and courage to be obedient, realising that discipleship is an ongoing relationship of trust between the one who knows everything and the one who sometimes thinks he does but clearly doesn’t.
So what does it mean for you to be obedient to Jesus today?
But even if it is legitimate to not apply Jesus’ instruction in Mt 19:21 it’s quite a bit harder to avoid Luke 12:33 where Jesus repeats the instruction (not suggestion or advice) but this time to his disciples, the ones who will inherit the kingdom (Lk 12:32).
And yet, at least for me, it remains an incredibly difficult thing to do. Yet because this is genuinely difficult I think that reveals something to me about my heart so perhaps I need to do it. In the next 6 months or so we’ll move countries and it’s a perfect opportunity to put this into practice. But it’s hard. Right now it’s a position of compromise. There’s plenty of stuff we’ll simply give away to anyone who’ll take it. So it might not go to the poor or needy. Some stuff we’ll give to charity who will sell it and give the money to the poor (close enough). Today they received around 100 books (barely made a dent in the shelves) from us as a start.
But then there are things like the car, the motorbike which we’ll sell and then keep the cash. We will after all by going to Sweden become poor or at least poorer (ie with no source of income and dependant on others generosity) so that feels like good stewardship. Or is it living by sight? I can easily give away those things of little value but something that to me amounts to some serious cash is much much harder. But why should that be the case? Perhaps because I am of little faith, perhaps because I am afraid.
Perhaps the point, though, is not necessarily what answer I come up with (after I genuinely do believe in God’s grace and freedom in this) but that I actually wrestle with the question. Am I being obedient to Jesus’ in this instruction, am I trusting and living by faith here? After all a disciple is one who obeys all he commanded (Mt 28: 20).
Of course if this becomes a law which we must follow to become righteous then we’re in trouble. My only chance is to sell and keep on selling, I find my righteousness in my lack of things but 1 Cor 13:3 warns me against such folly. Instead Jesus (and Paul) say something very different. If we have love and I’d argue that means we have received God’s love (1 Jn 4:10) then we need not fear, for God has already given. We give because He has already given. We don’t give to get, we give because we have. Although what we have requires faith, because we have a promise. A promise that giving away now means eternal reward. Giving becomes an opportunity to put my treasure and my heart in a beautiful place – in the kingdom of Jesus.
So not exactly sitting back and chilling out then….
“It has always been the vision for our church that it would be a church that plants churches and makes disciples of all nations, that we would be involved in the mission of God in the world. The steps we have taken to form Hope Church are testimony of our commitment to do that.
However over the past nine months or so, Emma and I, have become convinced that God is calling us to once again step out in faith and be involved in the planting of a new church. Our new destination could not be any more different to our present situation but we go where the call is, and that call is to Stockholm, Sweden.
God has a habit of not letting experiences in our past go to waste and while I was a theology student at the University of Nottingham, I spent 6 months as an exchange student in Uppsala, Sweden. Now it’s time to go back.
Over the past couple of years I’ve had a number of approaches about leading other churches or planting into new towns and although none of those were right, the experience of talking through these opportunities helped us clarify in our hearts what we were looking for and what would need to happen in order for us to be able to move, if that was indeed what the Lord had for us.
At the beginning of this year (2010) I believed that the Lord wanted us as a church to make a few more international connections in addition to our support of churches in Ukraine and I made a few enquiries. One of those enquiries related to Sweden as I retained a soft spot for the country after having lived there.
Then in the spring I read in the Newfrontiers Connect magazine this prophetic word about ‘starbursts over Scandinavia‘ that for the first time to my knowledge mentioned the idea of a church plant in Stockholm. I knew that God was speaking to me but I still hadn’t said much to Emma. Partly because I have a lot of crazy ideas and I needed to know that this idea was hanging around because it was God speaking to me.
At the May leaders prayer and fasting gathering I spoke with a few people involved in this initiative and as we prayed for the nations increasingly felt that this was a burden God was placing on me. So it was time to talk to Emma. I gave her a call and got her to look by my bed where I had a ‘teach yourself Swedish’ book and basically said ‘I think God is calling us to Stockholm.’
Not too long after that another major change happened in our lives, which is significant to this story. Previously we had always described our involvement in Illuminate as an ‘anchor’ to Shrewsbury. However as it became clear that we could no longer run the shop we were moving into uncharted waters. On the day I told a friend that we either had to find new owners or close the business he shared a prophetic word with me. He saw us in the pouch of an old Roman catapult and the ropes that held the pouch down were the links to the shop, as God cut the ropes to the shop the catapult would be released and we would be flung into the far distance. I knew again that God was speaking.
Emma received some significant confirmations in Scripture as God began to reassure her He was in this. On two separate but not consecutive occasions as we discussed Sweden, the next verses in Emma’s devotional reading were two verses that had previously given her peace about significant moves in her life.
We spoke with our church oversight (a bit like a spiritual director) and told him what we were thinking and he was supportive of is pursuing this development. At the end of June I read something by Terry Virgo that made my heart race it ended with, “The restoration of the church has consumed you, but now a new day is dawning. Whereas the word ‘church’ has stirred you, let the word ‘nations’ burn in your heart – because it’s time to look at the harvest fields and it’s time to go.”
At Together on a Mission conference in Brighton in July I met with some people from the Swedish churches and a Swedish couple who have been living in the UK for the past ten years who have also independently sensed a call to church plant to Stockholm. We were beginning to form relationships and connections. It was in Brighton that I first told my fellow elder Nick what we believed God was speaking to us about and asked him if he was in faith to take on the lead role here.
This was an important moment for me, 10 years ago at the start of the adventure in north Shrewsbury, I said to God I’d give 7 years and if at that time the church had leadership to take it on, was growing and seeing people saved and added I’d ask him where next. A few years ago I did just that but as a church not all the pieces were in place, although I could see and had faith for them to fall into place in time. Right now we see leaders emerging, people being saved, baptised and added, we’re in the best shape we’ve ever been in and I think that God has used this time both to prepare me and the church to be ready. I believe that Nick will do an excellent job and is certainly in a better position for his first lead role than I was 10 years ago. I’m confident that at this time our leaving need not slow up the momentum God has given us and that wasn’t the case a few years ago. What I’m saying is this feels like the right time.
The very next meeting we were in God spoke prophetically about new arrangements as God moved people to the nations. Now prophetic words and sermons at Newfrontiers conferences are neither unexpected nor new, it happens almost every time. But this time instead of thinking, ‘that’s nice’ I was thinking, ‘this is me’. It was a massive difference.
I began to read fresh books on church planting and as I read one by David Stroud I read Gen 12:1 which leapt out to me: Now the LORD said to Abram, “The LORD had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.”
Now I’m no Abram and I’m no genius, but even I couldn’t miss this one and it made even more sense given that I now work in what feels like to me ‘my father’s house’ (we converted an old church building into offices). We continued to work on relationships with those who also felt called to Stockholm and this culminated in out ‘holiday’ to Stockholm in September, a final piece in the puzzle for us. We spoke with both my parents and Emma’s mum and they were all incredibly supportive. Emma’s mother is so supportive that in fact she is planning on moving with us to be involved in this new adventure. Those involved apostolically in our region and in Scandinavia have all supported and encouraged this step for us.
We were clear; God had given us all this and more besides, we had enough. It was time to be obedient, we were going. So it is my intention to hand over leadership of Hope Church by the end of June 2011 and hopefully (if all the practical pieces fall into place) to move to Sweden in July 2011.
For the first nine months we probably won’t be in Stockholm but based elsewhere while we enrol as students and learn Swedish and become familiar with the country from the inside and make clear our plans to move into Stockholm early summer 2012. For at least that year we will need to raise financial support to allow us live there.
At this point in time there’s many questions we don’t know the answer to, but we’re confident that God will provide for us and that is the step that the Lord is asking us to take.”
I’ll write up the process we went through soon and begin to post some reflections on that stage but this is a heads up really that soon I’ll be writing about Stockholm (and why you should move there!) and church planting and a whole bunch of other such topics.
But for now I’ll leave it there. If you have any questions just ask and I’ll try to answer them either in a comment or in a follow up post.
Opening with the bruising,
“Millions of Americans live in the shadow of churches that have become consumer Christian centres, but pastors are ruined and the mission of God is cheated when consumers enjoy goods and services from their local church.”
to the equally timid,
“God cannot receive glory in the church when pastors are always up front receiving the credit and doing the things that their consumerist congregants should be doing.”
and finally,
“These are serious issues in our faith communities if we truly believe that God desires to work through His church. We risk more than the implementation of poor practices. The very mission of God is at stake.”
Read the whole thing
So it was a provocation to me to read this the following day about how Christianity is fading in France. This line struck a chord,
“I can only think that French Christianity is indeed fading because it is upheld by families whose hearts are not deeply committed to it as part of their heritage.”
What struck me is that the author, who has no personal experience of faith, has never encountered ‘living faith’ but only religion as part of a cultural heritage. A genuine revival of faith is needed in France.
Why did the early church grow and succeed? It’s a fascinating question. Chadwick gives some support to those that love cities but also says,
“Nevertheless, the Christian mission was not directed merely at centres of power. It was consciously aimed at the common people, and the ideals of simplicity and humility were never far from the minds of those who had to propagate their faith.” (p72)
Emphasis mine. I’m not sure that those ideals are anyway close to the minds of most church leaders in the western church. Maybe there’s a connection there.
As Tim Chester writes the story of the Bible is the story of mission and yet there are gospel opportunities. If we can’t go then we must pray, this is after all not their great commission but ours ‘to go into all the world’ (Mt 28:18-20).
Worship
In every session the worship has been wonderful. The people have danced, shouted, knelt, responded with rapt attention to Jesus. The songs and music have been a great mix of anceint past, recent past and present writing, the focus unrelentingly, unashamedly on Jesus. The times of sung worship have been water to my soul. Wonderful.
Preaching
Bones Malaba, Stef Liston and Terry Virgo were our speakers today. Reaching nations, childlike seeking after God and being a Word and Spirit movement were our subjects. All solid stuff. I wondered why we needed reminding that we were a Word & Spirit movement (like that’s news!) but then loads of people poured forward to be baptised in the Spirit for the first time, so that shut me up.
End of day score: Main Sessions: 3 v Old Testament Characters: 2 (Jonah, David)
Friendship
This has been a great blessing today. I spent time with a friend I met at Newday 3 years ago and we caught up. He’s moved his family to Manchester to be involved in church there, brilliant and he was such an encouragement to me. And he made a suggestion that stood out above everything else I heard, for me to take home, think about and apply in church. Good stuff.
It’s been a good day.
For those of you interested there’s plenty of blogging on TOAM going on this year, more it seems than last year. Head over to Newfrontiers Bloggers to see the full list. Apparently Adrian Warnock says he is the ‘official’ blogger, no idea what that means but he has a good round up of the day as does my friend Dave Matthias. Tweets on Twitter here
11.30 and we kick off with worship led by Kate Simmonds from Australia. I’m not convinced of the point of the choir but the worship was tremendous. Thousands instantly focused on Jesus, glorifying him with exuberant, joyful, loud, vibrant worship. I’ve got to say I absolutely loved it.
Stu Gibbs reads out a list of nations represented (there’s a lot) and it’s clear that this is an international conference and we are an international family of churches together on a mission. That’s good.
Terry Virgo introduces ‘Bones’ Mbonisi Malaba from Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. Personally I was delighted that a young black man from Zimbabwe opened the conference. Its no good being an international family of churches if we only ever hear from white, english middle aged men.
Bones speaks on Jonah. And it was all going so well. So the Old Testament character count is underway. 1 session 1 OT character related to our vision. In this case ‘reaching the nations’.
I’ll give fuller details later but to summarise the talk – God has a global heart for the nations and big cities of this world. Example Nineveh. The final third looked at Paul from Acts 18 and used the fact that he tentmaked in Corinth, stayed long enough (18 months) and influenced the city to challenge us to do just that. A lot of city talk in evidence early on. Fair enough I guess. Bones was balanced enough to say God loves people wherever they are.
It ended with a list of the 50 largest cities and their populations being read out. Those who felt called to church plant in these major cities were invited to come to the front for prayer. 1 Session 1 response to the front for prayer.
It reminded me of a friend of mine who lives in Karachi. I gave him 60 seconds to pitch to me why I should consider moving to Karachi. He gave me the best pitch in 10 seconds. ’18 million people who don’t know Jesus’. That’s the most compelling reason to move.
So we’re off to a good start. I’m excited about world missions, we need to be on it, Jesus calls us to it, we mustn’t duck it. Bones served us well with his passion, energy and faith.
Session 2 – Stef Liston.
Their biblical argument (I’m sure you’ll correct me if I’m wrong) is as follows:
Those are the main ones I think, simplistically put. By contrast I guess you could argue
I’m not sure the Bible is neutral on the subject of cities, I think it has positive and negative things to say but the issue is whether there is a reasonable biblical imperative for mission to cities over other places.
Positives would be God’s concern for Ninevah (Jonah 4:11), His love for Zion (Ps 48:2) and of course the New Jerusalem (Rev 21:2). Jesus said his disciples should be light, like a city on a hill.
But God does seem to spend a lot of his time judging cities such as Babel (Gen 11:8), Jerusalem (Is 1:21 e.g.).
True Heb 11:16 says God has prepared a city for us, the city of God but that’s why on earth we don’t have a city (Heb 13:14).
Some cities are like Jerusalem and others are like Sodom. Choose carefully would be my advice. I guess I’m unconvinced by Keller’s thesis on this one. He argued that to culturally win a region you first needed to win the city. Militarily of course the opposite is also true. Capture the countryside and the cities will starve. Biblically, cities are important but then so are places like Nazareth.
We also experienced God’s presence as we worshipped Him, we were built up as people encouraged one another and worked out what it means to follow Christ in a difficult world. It was a good day. We were challenged and encouraged to be outward looking in our prayers, because if life really is this good with God, how can we keep it to ourselves?
All this is true, and I delight in it. At the same time, I’m stirred to continue to seek to be part of a community that ‘outclasses’ society in the quality of its life. One that respects creation, that lives on what it needs rather than living for its wants. One where relationships are built to last, not last until a better offer comes along (see Matt Hosier’s blog for thoughts on marriage), one where the poor and needy of the world find acceptance, love and compassion – as well as a nice cup of tea! One where we share, care and pray for each other. There is so much more to being the church and every additional angle challenges the poverty of communal life in our nation. I love the fact that I worship a God who changes us from the inside out, but never leaves the outside unchanged. There really is nothing like the church.
There’s an initiative that is based in the community of the trinity that takes us beyond ourselves to include others and draw them into the love of God for humanity. For us this draws us into the mess of human lives, the joys, the struggles, the trials, the tests and the triumphs. It brings with it the possibility of incarnating the love of Jesus to a broken world but it means our selfish dreams and ambitions may have to be left to the side for another day.
To pick up the dream of God and be a part of the mission of God in the world may mean we need to lay our dreams down, to consider others better than ourselves and to forsake selfish ambition. As I understand it, to have true generosity in our lives involves us in mission in the world, of making disciples and growing in love of God and love of people. The powerpoint from the talk is below or here at Google Docs
Simplicity can seem a mile away in the aftermath of the Christmas season when our accumulation of stuff as well as debt has gone steeply up.
Simplicity, first of all though is not the order of our lives but the order of our hearts. It comes from first of all knowing what we are living for, and as a Christian that means primarily following Christ with our eyes firmly fixed on living out the two great commandments to ‘Love God’ and ‘love neighbour’. This is what gives me my primary purpose and calling as a Christian. It is a universal, for whatever else may change the requirement to do these two things does not.
I may worry or wonder about many other things that I might do with my life or time or energy or resources but instead I should give more of all the above to living out these two crystal clear things that Jesus gave us to do. When it comes to following Christ the requirement is simplicity itself for on these two things, everything else hangs.
This simplicity of heart can bring simplicity of thinking and focus if we let it, setting a framework of freedom for our lives and releasing us to fulfil our potential.
It would seem strange then if that simplicity didn’t filter on down to the level of our possessions, if we are indeed giving ourselves to love god and loving people, seeing us building community and sharing in authentic mission as the people of God, taking the opportunity to be generous to our brothers and sisters and to those in need both near and far away that it that it didn’t result in a reduction of stuff and a greater simplicity in our lives.
These aims go hand in hand, if I reduce the amount of things I need and stuff I want my opportunity to be generous increases, if my heart yearns for the opportunity to give more than I am currently I may think about ‘selling what I have and giving to the poor.’ Listening to the God I love with all that I am may well lead to similar things happening.
In the end, I am sated and bloated by possessions, I buy them, insure them, protect them, care for them and repair them, then I throw them away and replace or upgrade them. All around me are hearts and souls alone, waiting for someone to protect, heal, and provide care for them. One will reap rewards into future generations and the other will disappear about roughly the same time I do. So why is something so simple, so hard to do?
I thought it would be helpful (to me, if no one else) to explore them in turn and see how it develops. Starting with the one that I think is the most important – Authentic Mission.
The church is a missional movement and the disciples were called to repeat the process that Jesus began with them, teaching them to worship, obey, love and follow God in a new way. This life of loving God and loving neighbour knew no boundaries and would stretch to all the corners of the earth. The church is both the herald of good news but also the embodiment of good news. It’s something we live and something we are.
I not only tell people I have been saved by grace but my life should now be a visible demonstration of the difference (I’m feeling a bit challenged right now). The church proclaims the love and mercy of God in Jesus Christ but also lives it out, we are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. Our deeds are meant to be seen and the effects are meant to be real and to be felt. There’s probably not too much argument about this until you get down to the details.
For me authentic mission is not always the same as personal evangelism. Authentic mission includes telling my friends about Jesus but mission goes so much further to include loving broken people, listening to hurting people, talking to wounded people. It includes living the hope we have of a creation liberated from its bondage to decay and doing our best to live the difference. To be honest looking at most churches wouldn’t make me want to go to heaven unless it was a means of escape from church!
I don’t mean that church should be like heaven but it should give me a glimpse, a taste, a hope. If I’m being transformed – that should be noticeable, and in the lives of those I lead. If I’m the temple of the Holy Spirit that shouldn’t be something you miss too easily. If my church is full of the love of God and for love of each other that should be something incredibly attractive.
Authentic mission then not only proclaims love of God and love of neighbour but incarnates it and makes it real for people. A community on a mission together may have targets and goals and other grand dreams but it must be a place that grows in love and therefore I can’t do that on my own. I can’t do authentic mission on my own. I need people around me to spur me on towards love and good deeds, I need people to help me discover the teachings of Jesus and apply them as we were commanded to do, I need people to help me love people, to help me make disciples. I NEED the body of Christ, I depend on it, I can’t function well without it.
Authentic mission is about loving God with each other, loving one another and loving the lost together. Right?
As a result there is a revision of how close you need to live to someone else to effectively share…10 minutes walk being considered too far and instead bringing that down to 2 minutes. Thoughts?
Then there are some suggestions on areas to extend what could be shared. I have some questions that are forming and I’m curious to get your thoughts. Assume for the moment that the principle is sound and the Biblical basis sure, what would wise guidelines be?
Too many laws and it becomes a burden that is heavy to bear, not enough and nothing changes or endless squabbling ensues. So for example, 5 families collectively share one lawnmower, so 4 families avoid the expense of a purchase, what do they do? Give some money away? If so how much? Give some money to the family that has the lawnmower? Should this even be regulated or watched or should it be left to each family to decide what to share and not to share and what to give and what not to give?
The end goal in my mind at the moment is threefold. Greater Simplicity - to find greater contentment in something other than stuff, to release time for relationships and to lead to Increased generosity. Giving more for mission and mercy seems to me to be the best way of investing my money. Thirdly Authentic Mission. I want to reach out to my community as a community and not just as an individual, for the Gospel to be visible as well as audible.
If moving to this common middle ground helps achieve that, then it’s worth trying don’t you think?
I believe Jesus when he said 'life does not consist in the abundance of our possessions'. I believe he offers something better. This blog is mostly about that search.
I'm also a husband, a father, church planter, keen runner, reader, and motorcyclist. These and a few other things make guest appearances from time to time.
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