Yes - Sept-Dec 2007 - Subversive Continuity

\

yes September – December 2007 Church Mission Society

subversive continuity mission and leadership today

\

The Great Wall of China May 2008 CMS operates in many countries where Christian mission work is severely restricted. Join us for a life-changing opportunity to support God’s work in these dangerous contexts. Trek along the Great Wall, visit local mission partners, and raise sponsorship money for CMS. Help us continue to share Jesus and change lives in some of the world’s most challenging places.

10th – 19th May 2008 Cost: £1350 + sponsorship raised Email: challenges@cms-uk.org Tel: 01865 787518 Web: www.cms-uk.org

sharing Jesus, changing lives

\

Trinity Edition

O

ur theme in this issue is leadership in mission. On our cover is an artistic representation of DNA. Deoxyribonucleic acid is widely discussed in popular conversations. It’s the set of genetic blueprints, the primary instructions that construct the elements of life. DNA enables continuity while ensuring that every organism is unique.

DNA has become a helpful image to use to explore the future of missional leadership.

Missional DNA, says Graham Cray on page 14, is a way of speaking of “the various elements with which God has gifted his church.” It’s what makes mission possible. It helps explain how and why mission can constantly adapt to new cultures or epochs while remaining essentially the same.

6 korea’s hidden story 4

From our correspondents

9

Tim Dakin: do you deliver?

12 What’s your Dream?

14 Enchanting the heart of mission 16 Staying and Following 18 Ruth Padilla deBorst:

Unlikely Reversals

19 Jeremy Woodham:

The Giant Jacuzzi of Sound

At the heart of Great Commission (Matthew 28:8-9), is the imperative to “make disciples”. As Graham Cray says, the key to evangelising once more the northern hemisphere is a re-discovery of the essentials of discipleship, a way of living that’s an alternative to the plausibility structures of Western society. Here is an agenda for a new kind of Christian leadership. Ruth Padilla deBorst at the other end of the magazine shows how the operation of this DNA has always resulted in subversive Christianity.

The way missional DNA works is illustrated in our two main international stories in this issue. The 150th anniversary of the Diocese on the Niger, as witnessed by our very own Jeremy Woodham, offers an example of the Gospel locally applied in a unique cultural context; and yet here it bears a striking family resemblance to global Christianity and the faith of the saints of every age.

Korea is another example. This is the centenary of the 1907 Korean Revival that propelled thousands from that country into mission. It is common DNA which makes it possible for CMS to join with indigenous movements in other parts of the world and give 21st century mission a new face – mission from everywhere to everywhere.

John Martin

Editor john.martin@cms-uk.org YES Magazine Trinity Edition. Published by CMS. General Secretary: Canon Tim Dakin. Editor: John Martin. Designer: Gareth Powell. Printers: CPO. Printed on Arctic the Volume, a sustainable paper that has been accredited by the Forest Stewardship Council. Cover image by Gareth Powell. Views expressed in YES are not necessarily those of CMS. CMS is a community of mission service: living a mission lifestyle; equipping people in mission; sharing resources for mission work.

CMS supports over 700 people in mission and works in over 50 countries with offices in Cape Coast, Nairobi, Oxford, Seoul and Singapore.

Church Mission Society, PO Box 1799, Oxford, OX4 9BN. Registered Charity Number 220297.

Isobel Botth Clibborn, turning sadness to smiles in northern Uganda

\

from our correspondents CMS partners report from around the regions From Southall, Dave Bookless witnesses Easter celebrations by a Christian minority dwarfed by the Sikh festival of Vaisakhi The streets were filled with 30,000 plus people celebrating, handing out masses of free food, playing loud Bhangra music, all with a wonderful party atmosphere. At our multiracial church we were celebrating Palm Sunday with our own more modest procession, but people really felt they were there in Jerusalem with King Jesus as we shouted out words projected onto a big screen - “Hosanna!” “Praise the Lord”. Then, shockingly, the words on the screen changed, and suddenly everybody was shouting “Crucify him!” before they’d realised what they were doing.

We stopped and reflected on how easy it is to go along with the crowd – to worship Jesus when others are, but to keep silent or deny him when the crowd changes. In Southall, London, we’re often a tiny Christian minority going against the flow in terms of what we believe, but actually the same is true across the UK today. The news in recent months has, to me, been full of signs that society is becoming increasingly intolerant of biblical values.

Western society seems to still believe we can keep aspiring to yet higher standards of living, consuming ever more. In our Christian environmental network A Rocha we’re aware we’ve got an enormous way to go, but really believe it’s time for us to “go against the flow” in terms of our lifestyles.

Simon Walton attends a Tanzanian funeral and discovers how easy it is to offend cultural sensitivities I sat for 90 minutes outside a house on the ground in the midday sun surrounded by a group of women playing drums. As more and more people arrived, the crowd spilled over onto the road, up the road and round the shady walls of neighbours’ houses. Greetings were subdued, but conversations never took flight as eye after eye turned on the doorway out of which they would bring the body of the father, husband, son, brother, cousin, friend and businessman. No one asked why it was taking so long. No one questioned why the lorry had been left in the middle of the space set aside for the service. No one asked outwardly why the man had drunk insecticide. His widow, indistinguishable in her washed out wraps, sitting behind the clergy and with her head down throughout, did not attract attention although my thoughts were on how she would survive, educate her secondary school-aged children and how generous the many attending family members would be when his business assets were divided up. The preacher was fiery but announced the church would receive a percentage of the collection for the family. Later, I felt no option but to challenge.

But culturally I did things wrong – I messed up and brought conflict where there should only have been forgiveness and comfort.

“Only when we give up significant rights, like the right to be understood in our own language, can we experience rich belonging” Isobel Booth Clibborn on the human cost of Uganda’s war I’ve recently visited northern Uganda – the area that’s been terrorised for the last 20 years by the Lord’s Resistance Army.

Here’s some sobering facts: more than 80% of the population now live in Internally Displaced People’s Camps, 1.6 million people or more. Over 20,000 children have been violently abducted. One huge area of need is care for children who had been abducted and taken to the bush for years by the rebels. They were forced to do unspeakable things to their families and each other. When they escape or are rescued they have a brief period of counselling and then struggle to pick up their lives. Girls had an even harder time as they came back often with children and were not easily accepted back into their families (if they even have families left to return to).

Jane was nine years old when she was abducted and was in the bush for 10 years. She managed to escape with her baby. The boy she was given to as a wife also escaped after and they have decided to stay together with their children. They are being supported to start up a business and given literacy and numeracy skills. Susan was 12 when she was abducted while collecting water near her home.

She spent a year in captivity and was forced to walk hundreds of miles. She was forced to kill people and used as a “wife”. She was pregnant by the time she was rescued. She continues to live in fear.

Jordan: tension between deep tradition and change. Photo: Malcolm White/CMS

5

After six years working in Jordan, Malcolm White finds the region ever more volatile At around 3.26pm on Sunday June 10, we touched down at Heathrow airport. The journey from Amman in Jordan to London only takes about five hours, but the moment of touchdown concluded a longer journey of over six years since first leaving Britain for Jordan on a cold wintry evening in February 2001. During these years we have all had to learn to live with the realities of terrorism – from the 9/11 attacks, to attacks in London and Amman during 2005, and now in London and Glasgow the previous month. There is also a greater sense of tension across the Middle East now than when we first set foot there. Almost the first thing we did on arrival in Jordan was to contact Mona Salti who became our first Arabic teacher, and our encounter with that extraordinary language would last until the very last day. Only when we give up significant rights, like the right to be understood in our own language, can we experience rich belonging. It was fascinating to spend six years in such a culture, from which both Old and New Testaments emerged. Some of the most moving moments of our time in Amman took place in homes with groups looking at familiar scriptures and seeing them in a whole new light. The gift of friendship is so precious. The future for Jordan surely lies in managing the tension between deep tradition and rapid change.

\

Korea: the hidden story Approaching the so-called hermit kingdom is the untold mission story of our times, says John Martin.

Korea, for years “the hermit kingdom”, opened its gates to the outside world in 1884. As for Christian expansion, Pyongyang (now capital of North Korea) became the epicentre. The Presbyterian and Methodist churches took a lead. The Anglicans were never as numerous but at the time of the bitter civil war’s division of the peninsular in 1953, there were about 60 parishes in what’s now North Korea.

In January 1907 a revival broke out. It propelled Koreans into international mission – including to Japan, China, Mongolia and even as far away as Africa. Today, estimates of the numbers of South Koreans involved in cross-cultural mission range from 10,000 to 16,000. Many of them come from mega-churches, mission one-stop-shops with vast programmes, recruiting, training and supporting people in mission. The Saemmul Presbyterian Church, sender of the team tragically kidnapped in Afghanistan

in July, is just one of many examples of this. One reason why the Anglican Church in Korea invited CMS to open an office in Seoul, capital of South Korea, is the desire to become more evangelistic and missional, at home and abroad.

The point was re-iterated by the Primate of Korea, the Most Revd Francis Park when I spoke with him.

“We need CMS to help us with the two things it does best, evangelism and work with the poor.” It has a massive mission opportunity at its doorstep: the prospect of reunification. What’s certain is that if reunification goes ahead there will be huge opportunities on both of these fronts.

The story of the Korean Revival is being celebrated in this centenary year. Much of the expansion of the Korean church was down to lay initiative. By the turn of the 19th century a pattern of Bible study

Sungnyemun gate, Seoul, Korea. Photo: John Martin

7

classes had spread throughout the peninsula.

Alongside these cells a pattern had evolved for an annual festival in the first two weeks in January. It was at one of these gatherings in January 1907 that revival broke out. One eyewitness reported, “After prayer, confessions were called for and immediately the Spirit of God seemed to descend upon the audience. Man after man would rise, confess his sins, break down and weep, and then throw himself to the floor and beat the floor with his fists in a perfect agony of conviction.” The revival spread like a bushfire. The spirit of it lives on. Fervent prayer meetings, starting at five in the morning, some with a thousand attending, are still part of the spiritual life of Korea.

communicate. That would be OK. If we could create a government with one system that would be welcomed, but perhaps variety would be better.”

Sunday worship at Seoul’s Anglican Cathedral of Saints Mary and Nicholas is renowned for its liturgical beauty. Hospitality is a hallmark with groups of worshippers cooking a free lunch for 200plus regulars. Over 100 attend the after-lunch Bible class. Then 450-plus people turned up for a special Music and Mission Festival co-sponsored by CMS. Lively youth bands from about 15 parishes created quite a contrast. Mozart in the morning, congas in the aisles at night. But that’s the diversity of Korean Christianity.

On a simple plaque just inside the entrance of Bong Chun House of Sharing there’s a sign in Korean that reads in translation, “Helping is not so much sharing an umbrella but getting wet together.” Outside this doesn’t look any different from neighbouring blocks of flats but behind its doors is a uniquely Korean approach to Christian witness and service in urban neighbourhoods.

The government of South Korea has an entire Department of Unification and it’s headed by an Anglican Priest, the Revd Dr Jae-Joung Lee. His three main concerns, he told me, are: how to resolve the nuclear issue and build a permanent platform for peace, how to boost economic cooperation between North and South, and cultural exchange. There’s been progress including the reopening of a North-South railway and road link: a programme re-uniting families with 200 visits since last September. Although this represents a major shift, it will still take a further 60 years before every Korean family can see their relatives on the other side of the border.

When Germany re-united it all but bankrupted the nation. In Korea the wealth disparity is vastly greater than Germany’s: the GDP per head is US$300 in the North versus almost $20,000 in the South. Dr Lee says, “The next five years will be very important.

A lot depends on how we prepare ourselves. The most important factor is not the date of reunification but the method of reunification. Maybe each side will be able to keep its own government, but it will be possible to visit each other, trade and

He has another concern. How will the churches treat the opportunity? “I’m concerned that some of them will be more interested in gaining new adherents than really telling people about Jesus.

Maybe we need a kind of church where competition between denominations doesn’t get in the way.”

In November the Anglican Church will sponsor an international peace conference. CMS is among international groups invited and General Secretary Tim Dakin plans to be there.

Bong Chun House dates back to the 1980s when the Anglican Church in Korea started to search for new ways to reach out to the poorest people in the city of Seoul. Today the Anglican Church in Seoul runs no less than eight Houses of Sharing. There are two more in Pusan diocese and one further in Taejon diocese.

The clamour for competence in English knows no bounds in Asia. In July, the Financial Times reviewed the economic prospects of the region’s top five cities: Hong Kong, Mumbai, Shanghai, Singapore and Seoul. Of these Seoul could get to the very top of the league, but with one caveat. Walk into just about any tourist restaurant and you’ll immediately discover why. Most young Koreans take English at school but few actually speak it fluently. English is the lingua franca of international business and this disadvantages Korea’s prospects.

A booming economy means a lot of social change.

One example is people marrying later and older women marrying younger men. A report from the National Statistical Office says that out of the 11,009 marriages of women aged 35-44 in 2006, 34.8 per cent wed younger men. Divorce is not possible in Korea and this spawns scores of ubiquitous motels that couples can rent for an hour

“Germany’s re-unification all but bankrupted the nation. In Korea the wealth disparity is vastly greater than Germany’s” minimum, a trap for the unwary traveller. Thankfully the Doulos Hotel, with mission links, offers a good value alternative.

One way Koreans are seeking to boost Englishlangauge skills is through themed English Villages.

These are springing up all over Asia, most famously in China, and as a mission bridgehead may be to the 21st century what the fee-paying school was to the 19th and 20th. There are two in greater Seoul. The one we visited was a campus for school pupils aged from 10. In the course of a week on site children have an opportunity not only to speak English for much of the time. They enter into an English cultural experience through cooking, science, newspaper production and much more.

Fully qualified teachers are drawn from Englishspeaking countries including Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa and they attract a lot of commercial sponsorship, including Microsoft.

My evangelical instincts leave me ever ready to share “a word in season” and one way that works is asking people about their name. So when a young Korean at the English Village told me his name was John, here was my cue. “Do you know what your name means?” I pressed. “Yes, it means toilet,” came the reply. For once I was lost for words. Had some smart Alec expat teacher from Australia or USA been pulling his leg? Or masked by characteristic Korean inscrutability, had he learned Western wit?

The Old Palace quarter. Photo: John Martin

\

9

9

Do you deliver?

Tim Dakin considers the example of the life of Roland Allen.

It’s a question not just for pizza parlours, trainee midwives and strike-hit postal services, but for leaders in all walks of life: do you deliver?

A results-led view of leadership looks for outcomes and doubts the presence of effective leadership if there are none. Put simply, results should be SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound. Smart leadership produces SMART results.

This kind of approach might have found an unexpected supporter in the missionary Roland Allen. He was born in 1868 and served in northern China with the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG as it was known then) from 1895 to 1902. He became a vicar briefly in Chalfont St Peter in England until 1907. After this he served as a voluntary priest, earning a living by writing. He lived in Kenya from 1932 until his death 15 years later.

He was someone who got fed up with the Church of England’s institution – it didn’t produce results, or the right results anyway. But then neither did the mission societies, both SPG which Allen belonged to, or CMS which he also criticised.

Allen was a radical. He didn’t just want results; he wanted the right results. This was because he thought that the delivery of the right results depended upon the proper delivery of the Gospel.

In connection with the Lord’s Supper, Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 10:23: “For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you.” For Allen there are two principles to Paul’s missionary methods for “handing on”, both of which emphasise the role of the Holy Spirit: 1. Paul preached a Gospel, not a religious system of laws, by which the life of Christ was imparted in the gift of the Spirit; 2.

Paul soon withdrew from a new community of converts in order that the local church, as the Spirit-bearing body, might discover the fullness of Christ for themselves.

For Allen the key test of leadership is not SMART results, but the presence of the Spirit and growth in the life of the Spirit. Another way of putting this

is discipleship. A leader has delivered if they have their hand on the Gospel in such a way that people have received the Spirit and have begun to learn and live in the Spirit. The outcome of mission is Spirit-inspired discipleship.

This might seem irresponsible, but Allen was not unaware of the need for other requirements for discipleship. He believed that handing on the Gospel should include the Bible, the Creeds, the Ministry and the Sacraments. He thought that bishops were responsible for ensuring that this happened (including the appointment of new leaders) and in doing so they also connected the new community of disciples with the wider Church.

Allen was not too keen on the training and education of new Christian leaders, but he was keen on new Christian communities getting on with evangelising their neighbours.

With hindsight we can see how Allen’s approach has been adopted by Pentecostal and indigenous churches worldwide. The massive impact of these movements on world Christianity is a sobering reminder for us today as we ask the question: do you deliver? May Allen’s leadership be an encouragement to us all to seek the Spirit anew.

Christians live in their

own countries a s t h o u g h t h e y w e r e o n l y

sojourners … pass their days upon earth,

but they are citizens of heaven… l i v e i n p o v e r t y, b u t … possess an abundance

of everything.

The Christian

T h e DNA o f d i sc i p l e s h i p

From the Letter to Diognetus, c. 200 AD

is to the world what the soul

i s t o t h e b o d y.

www.cms-uk.org 11

\

What’s your Dream?

Richard White reports on how Dream groups are helping people do mission in the workplace and other hard places.

A couple of years ago I ran a six-week course for a small group of people in a local health centre. It was billed as a “mind:body:spirit” course from an explicitly Christian perspective. The course was linked with Dream, a network of small groups that I pastor, in the northwest of England.

Julie, who was already connected to Dream, came on the course with a friend and loved it. So much so that she was inspired to have a go at running it for some of the staff in the primary care trust in which she works. In one sense it was an obvious step because Julie’s job involves training.

But in another it was a hugely brave move. Julie would never consider herself an evangelist or a pioneer. She boldly went for it and after some initial resistance was given permission.

Her first step was to create a spiritual space once a

week in the staff room. It was just a small area, with a reflection and a simple activity such as lighting a candle or writing a prayer request. Having created some interest and trust, she then advertised the six-week course.

Half a dozen people, none of whom were particularly attracted to church, came along.

They quickly bonded and the group became a place to support one another in the stresses of working in the NHS, as they journeyed together in a spirituality centred on Jesus. Someone raised the issue that they rarely took the lunch break they were due because of the pressure of work, and so they decided together to regularly eat a shared lunch together. By the end of the six weeks it was clear that the group wanted to continue meeting together. A new, tiny, fragile Dream group had been born.

13

It would be great to say that the group then grew and multiplied. Instead, yet more restructuring led to the members being moved into different locations.

They are currently trying to work out how they can continue to meet.

A maternity ward had a poster with the words, “the first few minutes of life are very dangerous,” on to which someone had added, “the last few are pretty dodgy too!” New life is fragile, small, precious, exciting, scary, messy, painful, joyful and dangerous all at the same time.

It’s exactly the kind of new life that we are longing for, working for, and beginning to connect with in small missional communities all over the country.

“It would be great to say that the group then grew and multiplied...”

A church in the midlands that is taking very seriously Jesus’ call to the poor and broken and has set up a rehab programme for addicts and alcoholics in their community, through which people find freedom as they also find a place to belong and encounter Jesus in a small group.

A group of churches in Yorkshire are cooperating to see a network of youth cells across their region.

A large church in Merseyside that is aiming to devote half of its time, energy and money to new forms of small missional community, has already planted them among the disadvantaged in a nursing home, a school, a craft club and a café.

A network of cells exists in the Merseyside police force. Police cells usually mean bars on the window.

But for many of the staff it’s now also a small group where they can refocus on God’s presence with them at work and the purpose he has for them in mission there.

In Dream, there are small groups in university, school, homes and an artist’s studio. All very diverse, but with common shared values in being Christ-centred, open, relational and seeking to take risks and experiment.

All of these stories could be made to sound impressive, strong and established. But that’s not the truth. They are signs of new life that is usually fragile and messy. Reading Jesus’ parables of the Kingdom, it seems that’s the way it’s often meant to be.

And because they are often fragile they need all the support and encouragement they can get. All of the examples above, along with so many others, are from Anglican churches. That’s why it has been fantastic to be able to re-launch Anglican Cell UK, a network of churches, groups and individuals who are learning what missional small groups look like in our different contexts. As part of that network, 23 leaders, including people from all of the stories above, are generously acting as ‘consultants’, available to advise, mentor and encourage others involved in similar work.

You can read stories about the work of Anglican Cell UK at the website which forms the hub of the network, www.anglicancelluk.org

\

Enchanting the heart of mission again To evangelise the global North again, the first step must be a new vision for discipleship, says Graham Cray.

If the Church is to evangelise the North, teaching and practising discipleship must be our most important long-term priority.

In his excellent recent book The Forgotten Ways, Alan Hirsch, an Australian missiologist, identifies the elements of the missional DNA with which God has gifted his Church. Discipleship, he says, is the “single most crucial factor that will in the end determine the quality of the whole.”

Making disciples is at the heart of mission. It is the central command of the passage many call ‘the Great Commission’ (Matt. 28.8). The imperative is to “make disciples of all nations.” The commission on the mountain was not the graduation from discipleship but the next stage of it.

In first century Palestine potential disciples sought out their hoped-for rabbis. Jesus, by contrast, called his disciples. First century disciples stayed with their rabbi until they had advanced sufficiently to be able to attract disciples themselves. Jesus’ call is to lifelong discipleship, which involves helping others to become not our disciples, but his disciples.

The commission in Matthew is not an add-on or postscript to that Gospel, it’s the climax of it.

Disciples are to be taught to obey everything Jesus has commanded throughout the Gospel. Whether that be the Sermon on the Mount, the teaching on marriage and divorce and the value of children, or the teaching about wealth and the exercise of power. The whole Gospel becomes a manual for the making of disciples.

So, for example, in the life of the Church we cannot afford to be vocal about sexual sin and silent about corruption, or vice versa. The long-term object of mission is Christ’s likeness in every aspect of life.

Paul speaks about being “in the pain of childbirth until Christ is formed”. In Ephesians he is emphatic that “the measure of the full stature of Christ” is only achieved corporately (Eph. 4:13-16).

I believe much of our evangelism in the North will have to begin with ethics, not treat it as a postscript. So, then, discipleship is both the object of mission and provides mission with its integrity.

The purpose of discipleship In his important new book The Mission of God, Chris Wright argues that the commission in Matthew is the fulfillment in Christ of the commission to Abraham, what Paul calls “the Gospel announced in advance to Abraham” (Gal. 3:8). “Go and make disciples of all nations. Go, and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

Christian goodness or spiritual fitness is developed not primarily for our own sake but for God’s and other people’s. Discipleship is for the sake of the world because it is for the sake of God’s purposes in the world. Discipleship is world-transforming. It’s not withdrawing from the world.

The task of a mission-shaped church is inculturation, the transformation of societies from within. It’s being the salt of the earth and the light of the world. But to be a blessing we have also to be appropriately distinctive.

Much of Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians is about being distinctive in order to be a blessing. At the core of his discipleship teaching here is a call to move focus from personal interest to putting the interests of others first.

Paul’s approach can be seen from two perspectives. The first is a call to involved distinctiveness. A countercultural community will seek common ground with its society whenever possible rather than withdrawal from it. It will, however, be distinct in morality. Paul’s conviction is that the Gospel has the power to transform both lifestyle and eternal destiny. Yet distinctiveness is never for its own sake. It is for being a blessing.

Paul’s second perspective is what I call subversive engagement, a proactive community doing good in

15

its society because the good can last, while at the same time subverting some of the society’s social values which cannot last.

There is no conflict here between evangelism and social engagement. Paul is asking the Corinthians to go against the norms of their surrounding culture. As Ben Witherington comments in his book, Conflict and Community in Corinth, “Roman society was not concerned for neighbours but advantageous networking.”

Discipleship in contemporary context So what is the context in which we are called to involved distinctiveness and subversive engagement? First we need to be ready to name the idols of our culture. One of the idols of today is rampant individualism. The right to individual choice is regarded as a core value.

We have moved from believing a story about making the world better (however deluded the myth of progress) to a story about making ourselves up, where personal identity, truth and meaning are merely social constructs about which I may exercise my consumer choice.

Such a society makes disciples.

Consumerism makes religion seem unnecessary or turns it into a consumer experience. It commits us to ‘small gods’ that, like those in Terry Pratchett’s novel of the same name, grow in power as we give ourselves to them.

Just as Northern culture is a disciple-making process, shaping individualist consumers, so the Church needs to be a community developing Christian character and the capacity for discernment.

Character is established by consistent choices.

Walking in the Spirit – “the long obedience in the same direction” resulting in cultivation of the fruit of the Spirit. Discernment – learning to read the present in the light of the future.

We need to take stock of the mainstream answers our faith offers, not the latest trendy ideas. God has given his people everything they need to follow him.

As Samuel Wells put it, “What the Church needs is not more from God, but the grace to receive everything that God has already given.”

Graham Cray is Bishop of Maidstone. This article is based on a plenary paper given at Wycliffe Hall Oxford.

Image sourced from www.flickr.com from Tiger Balm

\

Staying and Following Richard Sudworth sheds some light on the debate around whether multi-culturalism is dead.

Anne is in her 70s and has never lived more than a mile from the house she grew up in. She will tell you of the day when she saw her first non-white person: a girl from Kenya who came to be in her class at school. She is full of wonderful stories about her home parish that I now live in: stories of picking fruit from the allotments along the riverbank and hiding in shelters during the night-time raids on Birmingham’s munitions factories in the Second World War. She will tell you of the Sunday school that used to meet in the local primary school because upwards of 500 children could not be contained in the church hall.

Times have changed. This same parish is now home to a large Pakistani-background Muslim community. Alongside the majority Muslim neighbours, Sikhs, Hindus, Irish, and now Polish and Ukrainian, middle class and working class, all rub shoulders together. We each enjoy the fruits, flavours and spices of the cultural mix that is not untypical of a British inner city.

The vicar, preparing his sermon on a Friday afternoon from his study, can watch the hundreds of men pouring into the mosque opposite the church during Ramadan. Anne, as she has done for years, helps with the Sunday school. Our Christian youth and children’s work runs into dozens not hundreds, these days.

What kind of missional discipleship makes sense of this landscape? Indeed, is it sensible to continue to talk of discipleship as “missional” in such a mixed context, attuned as we are to the background noise of fundamentalist violence?

17

Lauren is fourteen. She is from a Christian family and lives in a market town that now serves as a comfortable commuter settlement for professionals.

She knows one non-white person and no-one, as far she is aware, that holds to another faith. How is the church of which Lauren is a part meant to disciple her for the wider reality of life in Britain?

What do we model and form in the lives of Christian young people like Lauren?

Aside from a re-appropriation of the imperative to stewardship of creation in an era of perilous climate change, there surely can be no greater priority for the Church than to be equipping itself for a Christlike engagement with other faiths.

Archbishop Rowan Williams has suggested that discipleship is composed of two interrelated dynamics: “staying” and “following”. The “staying” is that dimension of our Christian life that endeavours to be continuously rooted in Christ, praying at all times, attentive to God’s presence and his Word and sharing in his Body in the sacraments of the Church. The “following” suggests the costly movement outwards in self-giving love, ultimately modelled and enabled by the Cross.

An integral part our staying has to be our attentiveness to the Bible. As we equip and form Christians in our churches, a rediscovery of the multi-faith world of the Bible needs to be a key thread of discipleship.

The Old Testament themes of exile and lament need to be brought into specific use by churches facing the bewildering diversity of Western society and the vigorous and articulate faiths of many of our neighbours. There is grief work to be done; the loss of safe and secure realities to be lamented.

This is part of Anne’s story; but it is not the whole part. For in the experience of exile, there is hope and the vision of a new future and a transformed city that is not a rewind to the good old days.

During an average week, you will find Anne serving cups of tea to Muslim, Sikh and Hindu mums in the church nursery project, listening to them, praying for them. In the ashes of the privilege we have lost, we can claim a rediscovery of our call to be a blessing to all people.

The Gospels, too, offer us resources for serious

“There is grief work to be done; the loss of safe and secure realities to be lamented” reflection on our multi-faith context. Jesus’ specific ministry to Israel is littered with intriguing exchanges with a Roman centurion, a Canaanite woman and Samaritans that begin to point to the global trajectory of the Kingdom that he is inaugurating.

These exchanges reveal Jesus unafraid to root himself in the story of God’s exclusive relationship with Israel but radically and provocatively welcoming and embracing faith and grace wherever it is evidenced.

What is exciting for me is that I believe there are so many untapped opportunities for exploring lessons from the Bible for our multi-faith age. Our text was largely written by and for a people following God in the midst of diversity. As we read it anew from our increasingly marginal position in society, I expect we may reclaim anew a far more troublesome and prophetic presence, not hectoring from power, but speaking with the unguardedness of love.

It is no accident that in Britain, and in so much of the West, Christians are living as neighbours with people of all faiths and none. This is no aberration or oversight on the part of God. What good purposes, what future and hope are intended by God for our present situation?

Richard Sudworth has written a new book, Distinctly Welcoming: Christian Presence in a Multicultural society, to be published by Scripture Union in October price £8.99. Visit Richard Sudworth’s blog, www.distinctivelywelcoming.com

\

ruth padilla deborst

Unlikely Reversals Can anything good come out of Nazareth?

Nathaniel’s bewilderment (John 1:40) – his disbelief that something good could possibly come from a place other than the one officially recognised as powerful, prestigious and particularly blessed – is not unique.

His is the voice of bias and presumption that has echoed throughout the history of the Church, from the Rome of the first Christendom to the monasteries of the Middle Ages, from the enlightened and reformed first nation states to the ‘civilising’ British Empire, from the cross and sword brandishing Conquistadores to many massevangelists and current crusaders against the “axis of evil”.

The assumption has been that these centres own the pure Gospel, the inspired theology, the appropriate ecclesiology and the right ethical answers to the questions of the Christian life in the world. But Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?

According to the Gospel account Philip will not take scepticism for an answer. He challenges Nathaniel to get up from his comfortable, shady spot under the fig tree to see for himself.

Happily Nathaniel does get up, goes and sees.

His face-to-face encounter with Jesus rips off the blinders of prejudice. All he could do now was follow this King along with other men and women of unlikely backgrounds. Along with them he would come to live within and proclaim a new paradigm, the unlikely, even preposterous, reign of the Servant King who affirmed, “Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter into his glory?”

Nathaniel, as Christ’s followers throughout history, would have to come to terms with the baffling fact that time and time again the Sovereign God of history works, not primarily out of power, wealth or prestige, but rather out of insignificance and weakness.

Younger siblings like Abel, Jacob and David are upheld in the biblical accounts instead of the expected elder ones. Foreigners are portrayed as heroes while the sins of prestigious national leaders are exposed. Women, those second-class citizens

like Deborah, assume leadership in situations where men have failed. The entire story of God’s gracious action in history is marked by unlikely reversals.

The climax of God’s restorative action, the grand liberator, is described as follows: “He was despised and rejected by others, a man of suffering and familiar with pain.” The son of a young country girl and a simple carpenter in a lost province of Judea, far from the religious establishment of Jerusalem, and yet further from the imperial seat of Rome.

Someone with no home of his own, no social security, Jesus lived the life of the poor. He hung out with nobodies, touched the untouchables and affirmed their right to live.

Jesus tore the masks off the gatekeepers of his day. But he did so not with big armies or the backing of wealthy supporters. Instead he “took up our pain and bore our suffering, he was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth” (Isaiah 53). Not in the least a mismanaged plan nor a failure of execution, the humiliation, surrender, piercing pain – in sum the Cross itself – was God’s design, his chosen mode of action all along.

Nathaniel’s confession rings loud and clear down through the centuries. Now what form does that confession take from the global Christian Church of the 21st century? How are we to proclaim the reign of the triune God today?

The map of Christianity has been re-drawn. The church of the majority world has become by far the majority church in the world. But the economic map shows not the slightest change. Wealth is ever more concentrated in fewer hands; with the exception of the ruling elites of many nations, those hands are mostly in North America and Europe.

How long can Christians in the global North simply go about their business untouched by the plight of fellow human beings – including millions of brothers and sisters in Christ – when that plight is avoidable and depends, at least partially, on their lifestyle choices, their tax contributions and the policies they have a say in constructing?

Ruth Padilla deBorst is on the international board of the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies. This article is based on a paper given there.

19

woodham’s world

The Giant Jacuzzi of Sound Among the usual obscenities scrawled on the walls of the airport loo in the Nigerian capital Abuja (“Blessing Toto is sweet - call her on ...........; If you want a good _____ call...”) are some rather more serious graffiti: “Let us rise up and pray for Nigeria.”

“Nigeria up! God will choose a strong new leader for Nigeria. Obasanjo is a fake.” The name of the former president in this last scribble marks out this splurge of relatively sober political graffiti as the result of election fever in the spring.

There are also at least three instances of “Jesus saves - wise men still seek him.”

The seriousness and apparent lack of irony of the political graffiti, as well as the earnest Christian rebuffs to the surrounding obscenity, chimes with a sense of pride of place and delight in belonging that marks out our first couple of days in Nigeria.

I’m here to cover the celebrations of the 150th anniversary of the Diocese on the Niger, with its direct link to the mission work of Samuel Ajayi Crowther (see the last issue of YES).

So on to my first ever experience of church worship in Africa. It comes as I walk into a cavernous, halffinished parish church with Bishop Ken Okeke and Canon Tim Dakin, General Secretary of CMS (and my boss). The sound of more than 500 women at the Women’s Conference held by the Diocese would make Phil Spector’s wall of sound come tumblin’ down. This was more like a giant jacuzzi of sound, washing around us and buoying us up the aisle.

I am unexpectedly grinning from ear to ear. It’s the all-encompassing sound of incontrovertible joy – and it brooks no argument, even from weary travellers.

Again, delight in belonging: all the women are clad in dresses made from the same cloth – specially designed gold and red – with 150 years of the Diocese on the Niger emblazoned on them. The spectacular sight is the kind you’d be lucky to see in England anywhere outside the Olympic opening ceremony.

Later in the service, at St James’ Church Awada, in Onitsha, eastern Nigeria, we sang the Diocesan Anthem.

Set to a magisterial tune, I thought you’d like to see the words.

Lift high the banner, above let it fly; Diocese on the Niger, laud to the skies.

First in the East banks, the Gospel did know Bless we, He whom through Crowther, made it so.

Mother and Nurse of many infant Sees Teacher of doctrine, unsullied by grease Captain of Knights, in the Lord’s martial train Niger! Oh Niger! We hail you again!

LUX FIAT! Being a guest of honour is a weird thing. Obviously Canon Tim is the main man – head of CMS today, the agency which brought the Gospel to Nigeria and is now synonymous with the Anglican Church here. But being welcomed and honoured as a representative of CMS, of “the ones who brought the Gospel to us” made me understand a bit more of what the Bible means by our inheritance in Christ. Here am I, being welcomed and lauded.

Yet I have done nothing to deserve it. In fact I have done many things not to deserve it. But still because of something done 150 years ago, I am a guest of honour, because of the CMS inheritance.

Call me a dunce (actually, on second thoughts...) but it wasn’t until we were being welcomed in that first church service that I understood why these week-long celebrations are such a big deal. As the Anthem indicates, it’s not really the foundation of a diocese that’s being celebrated. Nor is it the CMS Niger mission. It is the 150th anniversary of the arrival of the Gospel of Christ.

Advent.

Itʼs a time when many people are looking for more than a carol service theyʼre looking for a reason to hope.

This Advent, your church can share the hope of Christ in your community with Share the Light, an exciting new Advent mission resource from CMS. Share the Light involves three easy, yet powerful steps: • Giving a candle to a friend.

• Promising to pray for them for a year.

• Inviting them to a special Advent service “Families came to church for the first time ... and continue to attend regularly.”

“I think the light of Christ broke into the darkness, especially in certain famiies. One woman was baptised and her husband gave a testimony.”

Why do Advent when you can do mission this Advent?

To find out more about the FREE Advent resource, contact Phil Evans Tel: 01865 787515 Email phil.evans@cms-uk.org www.cms-uk.org/advent

sharing Jesus, changing lives

sharing Jesus, changing lives