Category Archives: Missionary Thinking

“go ye” and Gandhi

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Gandhi greeting a little one

 

 Jarrod McKenna‘s Wednesday’s with Gandhi: “May it not be that ‘Go ye unto all the world’ message has been somewhat narrowly interpreted and the spirit of it missed? It will not be denied, I speak from experience, that many of the conversions are only so-called. In some cases, the appeal has gone not to the heart but to the stomach.”

-Speeches and writings of Gandhi: p.336, Feb. 14 1916

Gandhi’s reflections come out of his horrible experience as a child in India seeing people convert to Western ways in ‘Christian drag’ and not to Christ.

Some thought on mission and ‘go ye’

  1. Have others too experienced people “Go[ing] Ye…” but not making disciples, that is, students of the nonviolent way of Jesus?

Gandhi 'going ye'2. The biblical passage which Gandhi is referring to is Matthew 28:18-20. In part it reads, “teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you”. Is it the ‘mission’ of the God revealed in Jesus if we are not teaching people the practicalities of what Jesus taught? If we teach a theory of atonement and neglect to teach ‘converts’ to live Jesus’ way have we really made disciples? If we don’t teach giving to the needy in secret (instead of calling a press conference), to pray for God’s will of justice,peace and joy to be done (instead of our will or the will of our nation), to seek first God’s transforming presence (instead of careers or our agenda) to first remove the plank from our own eye (instead of judging others) and to love our enemies (instead of bombing them) have we really made followers, students, disciples of Jesus?

3. Gandhi talked about “so-called” converts where the appeal has gone not “to the heart” but “to the stomach.” In your experience do evangelists today invite people ‘take up their cross’ and follow Jesus in the way of love come what may? Or simply appeal to peoples stomachs?

4. What might it look like to prayerfully seek to embody an alternative to the “so-called conversions”, the “appeals to the stomach” and “go[ing] ye” without calling people to obedience to the ‘royal law’ of Love?

For going deeper:

what difference to mission might it make if we were to spend time meditating on Matthew 28:18-20 inlight of Matthew 5-7 while praying for a ‘conversion of the heart’. Gandhi read the Sermon on the Mount daily for his mission, how much do we for Christ’s mission?

Because Size Matters

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That’s right fellas – we all knew that anyway didn’t we…

I was pondering yesterday what the ideal size would be for a church.

My raw thoughts:

If there are a couple of thousand of you then you can do some incredible stuff with the resources you have. You can run quality programs, administrate well and deliver services at a level that a medium sized church just can’t compete with. You may struggle for a sense of community when you gather, but then ‘small groups’ may resolve this. Your gatherings have the potential to be very attractive and for those in the saucer you may have the most appeal by far. Maybe ‘huge’ is the key?

If there are 50 or 60 of you then you can all know each other to some degree and retain a sense of family, but you also have enough resources to do some things well. You can’t deliver what the megachurch can, but you know that and you wouldn’t choose to try and emulate them. You can have a very robust community if you are content to operate at that size and don’t struggle with ‘congregation envy’.

If there are 4-14 of you then you have a different animal again. You don’t need any kind of public facility nor do you need to meet at the same time each week. You can’t do many of the things normally considered to be ‘church’ in larger gatherings, but you can develop the feeling of being an extended family very well. You can flex easily, adapt to circumstances and maximise communal interaction.

Perhaps the only things that disturbs me is when a church sets out to be what its not. The ‘say g’day to the person next to you’ thing in large churches as a way of ‘building community’ only seems to highlight what is absent in a Sunday service, while watching a bunch of 50 elderly people try to emulate Hillsong is equally cringeworthy. I’m not sure what the equivalents are in a small gathering – maybe having a preacher speaking to 10 people could looks pretty dopey. (I have heard of a house church that set up the sound system, chairs in rows, data projector etc all in a lounge room… that’s different 🙂 )

So is there a size at which church functions optimally?

Or is it just a case of it being great that we have diversity because then people can slot into the community where they feel most at home?

The reason I ask is because it seems that our mission is almost always to grow bigger and by that I mean 50-100-200-500-1000 etc. I am yet to find a church that consciously says we want to grow and develop, but 50 is our max or 100 is our max before we plant/multiply or whether you call it.

Its partly why church planting has been such a lame duck in our own denomination – because no one is ever ‘ready’ to part with people to start anew.

Mission Beyond the Saucer

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I was having a coffee with Rory a few weeks back and he made an observation that has been really helpful to me in framing up what we believe we are called to do as Upstream Communities and in a broader sense with Forge as we train missionaries for the western world.

He was asking me to describe what we do and as we were talking said,

“It sound a bit like this to me…” pointing to the coffee cup on the table.

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“If the cup is the ‘church’, then most churches tend to reach people in the saucer – those who are nearby, who are already seeking, maybe those who are needy and requiring help. They come because they know its a ‘church’.

It sounds like what you are doing is intentionally moving beyond the saucer to try and connect with those around the ‘table’ who are not needy and may not even be that interested.”

I thought it was a great analogy and have used it plenty of times since, because it does feel very much like what we do, and it also helps us to come to grips with why our work is slow and at times seems to be unfruitful.

I have been asked many time why I don’t just pack it in and ‘go back to church’, because we had more ‘success’ in that environment. But the question is actually quite a foolish one, a taunt that if we paid attention to would do more harm than good to the cause of mission & the gospel here in Australia.

I have no problem acknowledging that for some the existence of church in its regular public form is the way they find their way to faith / God or whatever they discover. For ‘saucer’ people ‘cups’ make wonderful sense and are very accessible. When ‘saucer’ people do Alpha courses it is usually because they are open and seeking and as a result they often make significant faith decisions in that context. There’s no question we need ‘cups’ for those who live in the saucer.

However we also need those who are committed to connecting with the folks who live well beyond the saucer, who are unlikely to find their way to the ‘cup’, or who may have an aversion to ‘cups’ or previous bad experiences at the hands of ‘cup’ people. They may not even know that ‘cups’ exist or if they do they see them as having no bearing on their own lives.

Its important to realise that these are not evil debauched heathens who are destroying our societies with their wicked ways, but in fact are more than likely to be good decent people who feel no need to find their spirituality in the Christian story. We have often said the hardest people to reach are those who are happy, moral and satisfied with their own life – probably a majority of our society. And if they aren’t happy at the moment they will be when they make their next purchase!

I haven’t met anyone yet who would say it is a relatively easy task to reach beyond the ‘cup’. As I speak with local pastors of churches large and small no one is able to tell me of ‘great success’ in communicating the gospel to those beyond. There is no question that some ‘cups’ service the ‘saucer’ better than others, and grow accordingly but for those trying to connect personally outside the saucer the road is long and slow. I was discussing this with a pastor of a large pentecostal church last night – a church that is doing good work and making progress with saucer people.

On an organisational level they see some progress there as they are a well run church with some excellent programs, but at a personal neighbourhood / friendship level they are equally perplexed about how to connect the story of Jesus with their friends who like them, respect them, but just don’t feel a need for faith…

There’s a part of me that says ‘that’s life and its ok because people are free’ and there’s a part of me that says ‘that’s life and its not ok at all!’

I reckon our challenge is to walk that line Peter speaks of – always being prepared to share the hope we have but with gentleness and respect.

shining the divx online

When I say ‘Church Growth’

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What do you think of?

Almost inevitably it seems that our minds turn to larger ‘churches’ – larger gatherings of people in one place on a Sunday. ‘Breaking the 200/500 barrier’ and similar language seems to be the domain of ‘church growth’.

Why don’t our minds automatically think of multiplication?

Why don’t we automatically begin imagining many many simple communities reproducing and ‘growing’?

Are our imaginations captive?

Could there be many ways to be the people of God on mission and see the church ‘grow’?

Time to ‘re-imagine‘?…

rei.jpgcat in the hat the free download

Absolutely Categorically Impossible

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I sometimes hear people say “you can be a Christian and not go to church…” its not a new concept, but I am increasingly finding it frustrating to hear.

I would want to say ‘of course, you don’t have to attend Sunday worship events as we have always done’, but as I read the scriptures I would say it is impossible to be a Christian outside of community. The whole ‘one another’ passages become absurd! The nature of God as trinity and we ‘being one as he is one’ loses all meaning.

Now – sure there are exceptions to every rule (where a person is isolated by distance etc) but I would argue that you haven’t really ‘got’ the whole discipleship thing if you choose to not engage with other followers, if you simply see it as a ‘me and God’ deal.

In this more fluid time in church history where there is opportunity to re-imagine and express faith differently this has increasingly become a non-negotiable for me. I really don’t care how you express that community, but I do care that you do it. I say this because occasionally I come across people who don’t regard community highly and who ‘float’ with no group of people they are deeply engaged with.

As I have gone along I have been working on a personal definition / understanding of church and currently this is it: “a covenant community of people who help each other follow Jesus and continue his mission in the world.”

I added ‘covenant’ (yes – I know its a churchy word – but its also a very good word!) because I don’t think it’s sufficient to catch up with people here and there and regard that as church. I fear for the discipleship of those who ‘float’, who never get known by others enough to be loved and challenged, confronted and corrected, or to be able to give those things to another. It seems quite selfish to me…

I am happy for you to push back on that if you wish

The ‘Pioneering’ Plant

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Sherry and Geoff discussed this idea of ‘pioneering plants’ with us while they were in Perth and today Sherry described it on their blog. She writes about permaculture and a book she has been reading on the subject, then goes on:

“i came across a particular recommendation in the book that interested me greatly. i think it serves as a useful, earthy anology to the apostolic work of the people of god. in a section on succession planting, the manual defines a type of plant called “pioneer species.” these plants are “selected shrubs, which can live in degraded soil, improve soil nutrients, and protect seedling trees, and are planted initially”

apparently, as other species are planted after these first inhabitants the stability of the ecosystem is strengthened. so the ability of an ecosystem to survive is based to a significant degree on the first type of species planted, a pioneering species. these initial species must be able to weather the compromised conditions of “degraded soil” in order to make the surrounding area more inhabitable for future plants.

I wonder if some of us in missionary ventures can learn from this analogy. Maybe a key quality of the pioneer is the ability to survive in difficult soil and to enable it to be more fertile for those who come after…

Thanks Sherry!

“Wot!? Every Week?!” A Missionary Concern

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A few weeks back I went into Sir Charles Gardiner Hospital for a sleep study. That’s where they wire you up with about a thousand electrodes and then make observations on how you sleep during the night.

It was in response to this dilemma, which was particularly bad around this time last year. I still have ‘period leg movement disorder’ but its not as frequent. (For a couple of months Danelle and I slept in separate beds!)

Anyway, I arrived at 7.00pm with my copy of Simon’s book, God Next Door and a bottle of red. (I figured I might need a bit of anaesthetic to actually sleep with all those electrodes stuck to me…)

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Fortunately I wasn’t the first one to get rigged up, because once you’re wired you can’t sit up or move around. I read thru to around 8pm when ‘Jill’ came in.

Now sometimes I just grunt politely thru these experiences, because I know I will probably never see the person again and I don’t have the energy for a genuine conversation, but tonight I felt like chatting and I was also aware it would take at least an hour to get wired, so I might as well get to know the person. Jill also seemed to want to talk…

And it was a much more interesting conversation than I had bargained for, partly because Jill was a Notre Dame Uni grad, had studied theology and was in a place in life where she was feeling the tug of God on her life. Jill was 23 years old, her mum had started attending church recently and had been ‘born again’. Now she was trying to get Jill to attend also – a large ‘Word of Faith’ church in Perth. Jill was intrigued by God, was curious about my book, was feeling she ought to go to church even though her partner wanted nothing to do with it all, but was struggling to come to terms with it all.

When I asked her what held her back do you know what it was?

“I am worried they might expect me to front up every week.’

Now get this – because its important – this is what some people feel – probably more than we know.

I might have to be there every week for the rest of my life!

Quite honestly, I would ask much more of Jill than a weekly meeting, but the sheer notion of somehow getting caught up in something she couldn’t get out of, worried her. The thought of a regular weekly commitment was disturbing a young 23 year old. I don’t think that would be abnormal for someone like her. Its a comment that is worth paying attention to, especially for those of us who have grown up believing weekly church attendance to be a fairly normal thing to do.

I don’t think there is anywhere in society where we make a weekly commitment and follow thru on it for the rest of our lives. (I realise that for many these days ‘regular church attendance’ is fortnightly or even every 3 weeks.)

When I say I would ask much more than a weekly meeting, I mean that I would be asking Jill to become committed to a community of people – to go way beyond fronting up once a week and to form significant give & take relationships. That is even harder and at times it makes me despair for the future of a faith that is inherently communal. (I really don’t believe you can live the life Jesus calls us to outside of a faith community.)

Jill explained that she probably would go to church with her mum (on her birthday) but her apprehension was clear. I wonder how many more are like her?

It makes me wonder how (if) we can re-calibrate community life so that there is genuine connectivity, authentic discipleship and significant relationships, but without the necessity of a weekly meeting…

In his book Liquid Church, Pete Ward argues for this kind of community, deeply committed, but also fluid. But then Ward also suggests we ‘play to’ consumerism and try and make the best of it rather than fight it…

I tend to feel that if we do away with a regular weekly gathering, then, because of the ridiculous busyness of the world we live and our own laziness and inbuilt disposition towards individualism, the chances are we would quickly fragment. In a perfect world we would all live close, hang out and have deep relationships, but in the real world of suburbia it just doesn’t happen like that.

So, I will continue to hold up a weekly gathering as a bare minimum for what we expect of people who call themselves a Christian community. But honestly if that’s all it amounts it to – if that is the best we can do – then I have lost all hope.

By the way my period leg movement has been defined as ‘idiopathic’, in other words – “we haven’t got a bloody clue what causes it…”

Relating to Strangers Keeps Society Strong

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So reads the title of Hugh Mackay’s Saturday column in the West Australian (Click on the image below to read the full story)

In this short piece about the nature of community Mackay describes the fragmentation of western society and the loss we suffer because of our individualism, transience and busyness.

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He goes on to say that ‘community’ is more than just developing friendships and looking out for others who are like us. He calls this ‘tribalism’. He suggests that caring for the stranger is more of a mark of real community and it raises the ‘moral’ quotient of society as we actually build bonds that are beyond simple friendship as good as that may be.

Its quite a counter-cultural message in a self centred world where most people find it hard enough to care for their friends!

If you don’t believe me then listen to an expert…

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I’ve offered some of my thoughts on kids in mission but I must say that it is my beautiful wife who really is the expert here.

On Monday she presented a session at our Forge intensive entitled ‘Risk & Reward – Families Together in Mission’ where she spoke about what she has learnt about nurturing healthy family life while being engaged in missionary work.

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Our good mate Darryl Gardiner gave her a shove in this direction last time he was here and I’ve been nudging her ever since. Danelle would not see herself as a ‘speaker/teacher’, but she has some great stuff to say and is a fantastic communicator. Some people aren’t cut out for the weekly bump and grind of teaching, but cut them loose 3 or 4 times a year and watch out.

If you want to be inspired in this whole area then listen in!

But What About Your Kids?!!

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In venturing out from the familiarity of the established church environment to start again and re-imagine church, one of the core issues for Danelle and I to consider was how we would look after our children away from Sunday schools, kid’s ministries and youth groups. It’s a question overseas missionaries have been facing for years, but for most in the western world it just seems normal practice for children to learn about faith through the various mechanisms in church.

While these different ‘aids’ can be helpful and can assist parents with the discipleship of their children they can also be used as a substitute for godly parenting and thoughtful engagement with the faith development of our own kids. I am grateful that over the last few years I have been able to participate deeply in the lives of my children as they have grown to know Jesus. They are still only 6 & 4 years old but it has been great to see their faith develop and a real, albeit childlike, love for God emerge.

It was a short time ago that it dawned on me just how vital our input and role modeling is to the children we raise. On a Monday morning after making the kids breakfast I let them know I was going to spend some time in my study ‘talking to Jesus’. They have seen me do this each day and it is just part our routine now.

My 6 year old daughter Ellie, asked ‘Daddy can I talk to Jesus with you some day?’

‘Sure honey’ I answered. ‘Finish your breakfast, grab your Bible and come in!’

I began wondering what to do and how to teach my 6 year old daughter to speak to Jesus…

She arrived five minutes later with her ‘Bible for Little Hearts’, a children’s book with one verse per page. As she sat on my lap we read two verses and discussed together what they were saying to us. We then took some time to pray for the people we know. She would pray a sentence, then it was my turn and so on. After that we would stop in quietness for a minute or so and ‘listen’ to Jesus, seeing if we could hear the voice of the spirit speaking to us. (Inevitably Ellie hears God telling her that he loves her!) The whole process took just 3 or 4 minutes, but I found she came back quite regularly in the mornings to sit with me and ‘talk to Jesus’.

Then a morning came when I was heading out for breakfast and I couldn’t spend the time with her. She was concerned, wondering what she would do, when I heard her say ‘Its ok dad, I know what to do now. You can go’. As I walked out the door I saw her sitting in my office armchair with her Bible open reading a verse of scripture. It was wonderful to see that she had ‘got it’ and didn’t need me there. But the most encouraging bit was yet to come…

When I got home that afternoon my wife told me that shortly after I had left, her little brother Sam came in and asked if he could speak to Jesus too. So, knowing what to do now, Ellie placed her brother on her lap and began to teach him the same process I had gone through with her. They read scripture, prayed for friends and listened to God. She was discipling her 4 year old brother and teaching him how to encounter Jesus. I was reminded again that discipleship is not rocket science. (Danelle secretly took the photo below!)

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I realise the teenage years are still a way off and they are always testing times, but my conviction is that the time we invest in our own children’s discipleship is the most critical time of all. We may be privileged to be part of churches with excellent programs or we may have other adults who love our kids and lead them to Jesus, but at the end of the day the biggest privilege and the greatest responsibility still rests with us.

The dislocation we have experienced as a family has actually been the catalyst in helping me discover the joy of investing in my own children. I know there are some who worry for us, that we lack the resources of a larger church, but quite honestly, I am confident that the best people any child could have to help them on a faith journey are the ones who love them most!