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We have been thinking a lot lately at Crossroads about vision, and how to capture the 'essence' of the kind of church we are trying to be. Our history lies fairly close to the 'seeker' movement of the 1990's: if you ask long-term Crossroads people what kind of church we are, many would use terms associated with seeker sensitive ministry and the passion to reach unchurched people. But we have also been wrestling with questions of depth, clarity and discipleship and, like many seeker churches, with the challenge of resourcing not only those who seek but also those who find! We have many seekers coming to our services, but we also have many finders... and they are hungry to grow in their faith and explore engagement in mission. In the hunt for a new paradigm that captures, in a single phrase, our response to this dillemma, our best effort so far is 'Transforming Church' (or 'transformational' if it makes more sense that way). Why transforming? Because the journey of faith, whether you look at it from the perspective of first steps or the vantage point of many years expereince, is a journey of inner and outer transformation. We are changed by our encounter with God in Christ, and through that change empowered to change our world. As we have been saying at Crossroads for a while: 'changed people change people, and the people they change change the world'...
This is very much a work in progress, an attempt to put words around the we see way God moving in this uniquely international city. No robots, no intergalactic war, but an army of transformers being changed and bringing change...
If you are interested in sponsoring the up-coming bike2bless event in France, you can now do so via the web.
Click here to visit my on-line spnsorship page, or make a note of the address for a later visit: http://www.justgiving.com/gerardkelly1
Thanks to those who have already started the ball rolling... Let's roll it all the way to Camembert and back!
There are probably some people in the world (and in our churches) who never ask such questions. But there are millions of us who do, and all the more so if we long to encounter the real Jesus: Jesus not as a religious symbol but as a real event in history. Like Thomas we want to see and touch, not because we doubt but because we so long to fully believe. It is for us that Anne Rice writes, and I for one am grateful.
On June 19 to 22, a bunch of us from Amsterdam will join a UK crew for bike2bless - a 200k sponsored cycle ride in Normandy. The aim is to raise funds for work with children and young poeple in Croatia (Slavonski Brod). Here is a brief video promo... contact me if you want to join this jamboree and are willing / able to find sponsors!
So where have I been these past few weeks? Well, life at Croissorads has been busy, challenging and fun! We moved from doing two services each Sunday to three. For the most part the transition is going well, though it does 'put the squeeze' on our worship times!
Since last posting we've also made a quick but very enjoyable two-day trip to Normandy, visiting Bill and Jan Gordon at Bethanie Christian Centre ( http://www.centre-bethanie.fr/ ) and Francis and Diane Dognon at the (relatively) new "La Source" church in Lisieux (http://eglisedelasource.fr/). We've known both these couples, in different contexts, for more than ten years, and it is a great joy to see how God"s works are growing in Normandy...
After a great weekend of Easter services at Crossroads we travelled to Skegness for a week of Spring Harvest, which was really good. I did Bible teaching from 'Second Isaiah' and Chrissie led an alternative celebration with the lovely Pete and Nicki Sims and the also lovely Dave Westlake. I came back to the Netherlands after one week, but Chrissie went on to do a second week, this time at Minehead, leading the PRAYERhouse team.
Not long after Spring Harvest I had the joy of flying to Beijing for just four days, to work with Mark and Carrie Tedder (http://www.worshiplanet.org/ ) on a worship event, 'The Door', at Beijing International Christian Fellowship (http://www.bicf.org/ ). A team of nearly sixty people - musicians, sound crew, video crew, stage peoplle etc - gathered from across the world to work alongside local musicians and volunteers on what turned out to be an excellent worship event: I was able to contribute poetry, including one piece written in China specifically for the project. A music CD and DVD will be released in June.
Below is a pretty bad picture of me in Tienanmen Square, and a better one of the whole project team... and here is the text of the piece - 'The Door' - I wrote in (and for) China:
may he who opens doors
no man can shut
be your door-keeper
may he who drives his very kingdom
to your doorstep
who dares you
to dive into your dreams
be your deliverer
may he who never slams the door
on sympathy
nor hinders wholeness
who never turns the lock on love
the sentry at the entry-way of mercy
who thrives
at the threshold of kindness
be your key-holder
may he who stays behind closed doors
to seek you
who calls you to closeness
and invites you to intimacy
who sings in secret rooms and quiet streams
find your embrace
may he who knocks
and won’t stop knocking
who leans with all his weight
to wait for you
hear your steps coming
your voice of greeting
the latch loosening
your rusted hinges
opening
may his eyes find yours
a welcome visitor
and may he
walk you
to the narrow door
the door for the sheep
to the open door of heaven
and bring you through
Well its been a while... My last post was dated Jan 14th, and here we are almost half-way through February. Wow. It's been a frantic month, not least because we've gone at Crossroads from running two services each Sunday to running three, and the transition has been a lot of work. The fruits, though, are so far tasty and wholesome. All three of the new services are well-attended, alive and dynamic. It is a joy to be part of such a vibrant faith-community, and to see so many people taking the opportunity to engage with God.
I'm not sure its going to get much quieter in the coming few weeks, so the posting may be slow for a while yet: and we're in the process of building a new blog to be integrated with the Crossroads website when it goes live in a few weeks.
In the mean-time, J and B Scotch have caught up with our choice to capture the concept of Christian mission as a mirror-ball. Their global 'Start a Party' campaign is a great follow-up to the 'Missio Dei' series. What an invitation to us all - to start a party that will really change the world...
This month sees the launch of an unexpected new web-site hosted by German NGO 'Europe for Christ'. Christianophobia.eu details definitions and examples of behaviour that is 'phobic' (irrationally fearful) of Christianity. It also suggests responses, urging Christians to "participate in the public square with self-confidence". The site quotes Jewish scholar Joseph Weiler, a professor of international law at New York University, who says "European 'laicité,' as distinct from American secularism, is not simply an ‘I don't happen to believe in God.' It is a kind of faith in itself. It is a positive hostility to religion, which in Europe means Christianity. This is why I did not hesitate in my book to speak about Christophobia." The term has now been used in both European Union and United Nations literature.
Of particular interest on the site are the quotations from journalists and scholars who have noted the rising tide of 'Christianophobia' across our continent - see examples here.
Though it may seem at first to be a gimmick, the site has a very serious purpose - to draw attention to instances in European politics and public life where the rejection of Christian input is founded not on ration
al argument but on irrational fear, and to promote the reasonable acceptance of the Christian voice. "The attitude in Europe is becoming very hostile", says site founder Gudrun Kugler, "We work on the issue and publish these cases in order to alert. Our work is not about self-pity. It is about solutions which must include the
political level. Christianity constitutes a large part of the humanism Europe is famous for. It gave much -- and it still has a lot to offer."
Premier Radio, the UK hub of a Christian radio, TV and magazine network, have published a fascinating four-page report on 'why people believe'. You can read an introduction here or directly download the summary in .pdf form here.
The two authors of the report - a clergyman and a human-rights lawyer - interviewed a wide range of believers, and from their converdsations identified 500 'reasons for believing'. The report explores the most significant of these, in terms both of theism in general (why believe in God at all?) and of Christianity in particular (why this faith above others?). It makes for interesting reading, not least because it reflects actual reasons for belief. This is 'embodied apologetics' - a series if insights into the faith-choices people make rather than a stream of abstract theory. As such it is refreshing. Our era is far more open to authentic experience than to logical possibility. A single clear reason for one person acknowledging the existence of God has more power today than a thousand arguments for its theoretical possibility.
Seth Godin's new book 'Meatball Sundae' is neatly summarised on the marketing blog Brand Autopsy. The book warns companies against trying to mix 'old marketing' paradigms with 'new marketing' content. It reiterates many of the ideas of 'Purple Cow', including this one - the most transferable of all Godin's principles.
"Today the advertisers big idea doesn't travel well. Instead, the idea must be embedded into the experience of the product itself."
A huge insight for churches. If the average experience of your existing member is neither interesting, challenging, exhilarating nor remarkable, there is little point in paying a webmaster to promise newcomers that their's will be. If it is all four, you probably won't need the site.
As Douglas Rushkoff said almost a decade ago - "just make a good product, tell us what it does and let us decide whether we want it or not".
Listening to the BBC World Service today (as mad dogs and Englishmen do - going out in the midday sun is not currently an option), I was introduced the the concept of the 'Slash Generation'. This is a term used to capture the way the new generation describe their work-life or career in terms of several slashes - "I'm a musician / DJ / game designer". I think the idea orginates with Marci Alboher in the USA, whose website heymarci.com tracks the development of the concept and whose book, below, fleshes it out.
This is a concept well worth exploring in the context of Christian mission. All the team involved in the Bless Network are bi-vocational: we have a policeman-slash-church-planter, an IT specialist-slash-charity-manager and several missionary-slash-local-church-workers. The model has enabled us to grow a missional network without over-burdening it with huge central personnel costs - and it has many other advantages.
At Crossroads, too, we have many 'slash' workers on our team: part-time staff who have other jobs, either running their own businesses or pursuing employment in a more secular field. I can think of at least four who have three or four components to their slash careers. The juggling is not always easy, but there are real gains to be had in terms of motivation and personal development, as well as avoiding the creation of an 'other-worldy' bubble of church employment. The concept of 'tent-maker' missionaries has long been established in societies where open, full-time mission is impossible: but it is now emerging as a significant model for mission in Western culture.
I sometimes describe myself as a pastor / writer or a missiologist / poet. When my youngest son was asked in a school asignment last week to say what his Dad does for a living, he really wanted to avoid the whole pastor or church-leader conversation, so was happy to go for the 'writer' tag. The slash, so to speak, saved him.
The 'slash' concept also points, very importantly, to the blurring of work / leisure distinctions. Where e-bay traders who are over 40 might describe what they do as a hobby, the young tend not to - it's just one of their slashes. In fact the word hobby is disappearing from our language, with its implication of leisure activities pursued with no external purpose. I'm not a teacher whose hobby is stamp collecting, I'm a teacher-slash-stamp-trader.
To the extent that this shift nudges people towards more creative whole-life-planning, and attaches renewed importance to secondary (perhaps vocational) pursuits, it is very good news for Christian mission. How might the Kingdom grow if all young Christians were encouraged to include at least one missional or vocational commitment amongst their slashes?
