call to go overseas as missionaries serving in a remote location. As they prepared and then said their tearful farewells at the airport, I sort of imagined that they would be on some sort of permanent high intensity Billy Graham Crusade. Rallies in large halls, lights and powerful sound systems, dapper suits and ties, choirs and bands, powerful appeals, tearful responses followed by mass conversions followed in quick succession by a virtual army of builders constructing steepled chapels with rows of fixed pews, pulpits and carpeted stages across the land!
I was quite startled when I realised that much of their next five years would be spent living in an adobe hut in a far, dry desert, learning a difficult dialect and making friends with and caring for a people who would never find their way into my imagined hi-tech crusade!
The Message paraphrase describes the coming of Jesus into the world like this: “... The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighbourhood.” (John 1:14).
We Western Christians are now like mission workers in a world every bit as foreign to the vanished era of Christendom. We are no longer running churches amongst people who ‘sort of’ get it but have strayed a little and need to be cajoled back to the faith of their parents.
No, as followers of ‘the way of Jesus’ we are living into a story that no-one knows anymore. Maybe we need to think: ‘local neighbourhood relationships’ rather than think: ‘doing church programmes.’
For cross-cultural mission-workers, building a ‘church-building’ or starting a public ‘worship-service’ may well be the very last things they do – not the first! The missionaries in my story spent most of their time sharing hospitality around meals, genuinely listening, chatting, and practically helping out at the point of actual need and opportunity. They couldn’t (and shouldn't) start with some pre-packaged 'witnessing' program – and they never did!
Rather they live as 'witnesses' to the way of Jesus. As a trickle of people became interested in the way of Jesus – they would meet to talk about the stories of Jesus and show these new followers how to pray – and that little community of faith began to form its own practises, songs, spiritual habits – very differently to how churches might do it back ‘home’.
What does that mean for us as 21st Century suburban planters and church-goers?
It means we Christians put on a totally different set of glasses as we look at our neighbourhood, live our lives and plan our church-community activities!
- Recognise that there are many, many people groups around us, not just one type!
- A one-size congregation and approach, will not serve all, we need diversity.
- a traditional church paradigm may not be a helpful template for these social groups.
- We need to move into our neighbourhoods and patiently form real, impartial friendships and take authentic interest in other people's social life. Jesus, for example eats and stays with ‘unclean’ Samaritans in their home town, not in the temple.
- We can’t deeply engage too many associations and neighbourhoods all at the same time, any more than a cross-cultural worker can live in 2 or 3 villages all at once. Invest deeply and intentionally.
- Our ‘neighbourhoods’ are mostly non-geographic. Interest, vocational and age groups are more often the neighbourhoods in which people live – each with their own ‘lingo,’ interests, rhythms and stories. Sporting clubs, schools, hobby groups, cultural centres, art groups, retirement villages, shopping strips, music groups, motor vehicle groups etc are the new neighbourhoods around town. Can we identify the tribes we have an affinity with?
- Participating in activities is not an end in itself, but a catalyst around which a wide web of relationships form. For example, in a girls’ basketball team, the parents, siblings, boyfriends, former players, coaches and interested schoolmates form the web. It’s not just the dozen or so players, but maybe 40-60 people who connect around the activity. They do so, not just at the courts, but also at practise, after-game dessert in cafes, BBQs at family homes and so on. Entre is contingent on being in some way a part of the team or having a significant other who is. You need to be present and 'present.'
- Usually we will be called to and need to be released to serve in the group that God has given us an affinity for. It takes real time and will require being released from some other church-based activities to make time. Christians may need, for example, to give up running the church mens’ breakfasts to really find the time to relate to the local model aeroplane ‘neighbourhood.’ Not just the formal meetings they run, but the broader, more relaxed and personal times when they and their families connect.
‘Church’ in some of these settings may never become a Sunday morning gathering with pews, pulpits and preaching! A chat around a kitchen table where bread is broken, prayers murmured quietly, and the stories of faith are read and discussed before the group heads off on their bike ride – this may become the sign of the Kingdom community in that neighbourhood.
