8 posts tagged “mission”
I'm really enjoying Philip Ball's 'Bright Earth'. The sub-title, the invention of colour, is a little inaccurate as the book is actually a history of pigment and its use in painting - hence 'bright earth'. But it really is fascinating. Ball traces the developments of pigments across the ages, and the ways in which each new breakthrough in chemistry and colour theory has relfected (no pun intended) on the art movements of the day. The relationship of the Impressionist movement to the growing availability of pigments and the growing understanding of light and colour in late 19th Century Europe is enlightening (again, no pun intended.. but why are so many of the words we use about knowledge actually words about light?). I'm reading it because I want to explore the nature of the church and of God's mission in the world in terms of the colours that make up light... a development of the idea of 'prismatic church' - so far the metaphor is holding up well and I am finding the book both enjoyable and stimulating. A rare opportunity, in a life filled by default with books on faith and mission, to stray into an unrelated field and learn from it.
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...
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...
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?
Sometimes the way we invent or discover new words (and re-invent or re-discover old ones) can greatly impact our behaviour. Words shape our future and illumine our present. Before the word is spoken, we are confused; uncertain. We have too many options and not enough clues. Then a word is given breath (and sometimes it is just that: a single word, unaccompanied and unadorned) and clarity comes. We speak possibilities into being.
I blogged last week about the new word (at least new to me) 'metanational', and in the course of writing about it and reflecting on it I discovered it had brought along a friend.
The unexpected guest was the word 'ethnicities', which I realised can be hyphenated as ethni-cities. What are ethni-cities but cities increasingly defined by the many ethnicities to whom they have become home. Amsterdam is such a city: the world's most ethnically diverse urban jungle.
I am attracted to the hyphanated term ethni-cities because it makes possible the simple expression of a vision that has the power to change the face of our continent: the vision of building 'metanational churchs for Europe's ethni-cities'.
Is this what God is showing us here in Amsterdam, that metanational churches are part of his plan, and that ethni-cities are the best plce to build them?
If so we may need to re-visit some of our most preciously-held church growth ideas. The Homegenous Unit Growth principle for a start (whose wonderful abbreviation HUG is either highly apposite or deeply ironic, depending on how you view Donald McGavern's work). The HUG principle isn't thrown completely out the window by the metanational church, but it isn't invited in through the front door either. And our understanding of atractional vs incarnational mission, and of the relationship between language and culture might also come up for review. What of the place of 'youth churches' and similar 'mission-shaped churches' if metanational and metacultural diversity is our goal?
Might metanational church be the best expression and proof available to us of the Christian story being, in the memorable words of Brian Walsh and Richard Middleton, an 'anti-totalising narrative'? Pehaps this is too high an aspiration: but aren't metanational and meta-cultural unity, at the very least, goals worth pursuing?
We have been exploring the question 'Who is my neighbour' in some depth at Crossroads in recent weeks. The 'missio dei' - the mission of God - is captured in the call to 'love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbour as yourself'...
I was enjoying a few moments of study and preparation today in one of my regular third places - Bagels and Beans, just across the road from Amsterdam's Van Gogh museum - when I came across the following paragraph from John Piper, (from 'Desiring god', p282). It was buried in a paper I had written for Spring Harvest in 2003. The language of this passage still catches my breath. Can we really aspire - in a culture in which the pursuit of our own satisfaction has become our primary stregnth and focus - to love our neighbours to this degree?
Piper:
“Jesus commands, “As you love yourself, so love your neighbour”. Which means:
As you long for food when you are hungry, so long to feed your neighbour when he is hungry. As you long for nice clothes for yourself, so long for nice clothes for your neighbour. As you desire to have a comfortable place to live, so desire a comfortable place to live for your neighbour. As you seek to be safe and secure from calamity and violence, so seek comfort and security for your neighbour. As you seek friends for yourself, so be a friend to your neighbour. As you want your life to count and be significant, so desire that same significance for your neighbour. As you work to make good grades yourself, so work to help your neighbour make good grades. As you like to be welcomed into strange company, so welcome your neighbour into strange company. … make the measure of your self-seeking the measure of your self-giving. The word “as” is very radical: “Love your neighbour AS yourself”. It Means: If you are energetic in pursuing your own happiness, be energetic in pursuing the happiness of your neighbour. If you are creative in pursuing your own happiness, be creative in pursuing the happiness of your neighbour... Jesus is not just saying: seek for your neighbour the same things you seek for yourself, but seek them in the same way – the same zeal and energy and creativity and perseverance. Make the measure of your self-seeking the measure of your self-giving. Measure your pursuit of the happiness of others by the pursuit of your own. How do you pursue your own well being? Pursue your neighbour’s well being that way, too.”
Beautiful.
