thinking mission

nativity

There are times when someone else has found words that can hardly be improved, so why not point people to the source. 

 

On this Eve of Christmas, as we prepare within hours to celebrate the Virgin Birth of Jesus Christ, allow these words from fellow blogger Jason Goroncy, whose blog is always worth reading, to shine new light on the invitation Matthew extends to consider the fact of the virgin birth:

 

"… here’s my response to that invitation: The miracle of the virgin conception is a judgement against the possibility of the creature producing its own word of revelation and reconciliation. It is a judgement against us thinking that we can know God apart from God’s initiative, and that we might save ourselves apart from God’s bloody intrusion into our situation."

 

You can find the full post here.

 

Have a happy and blesséd Christmas

 

David Kerrigan

making sense of Copenhagen

Articles in the media over the last few days abound with phrases like ‘Brokenhagen’, and ‘No Hopenhagen.’ Pundits far wiser than me are struggling to know whether anything useful was actually achieved.  The BBC and the Independent newspaper have useful articles but no-one believes it was anything but a lost opportunity.  One quote captures the bleak judgement: “if the planet was a bank, they would have rescued it!”  So much for the disappointment.  But what now?

 

I have been reading lots of articles over the last few days and trying to see some signs of hope, and sure enough, there are some.  OK, the gains were small compared to what was possible, but there were some gains.  However, what I have begun to realise is that in a curious way, Brokenhagen might just be a blessing in disguise. 

 

I can only speak personally, but if the summit had produced a really ground-breaking set of climate change proposals, or even a plan that was closer to what was needed but not quite the full shilling, I for one might have concluded “that’s it, problem fixed”.  And from then on it might have been business as normal. No lifestyle changes needed... no personal engagement... crisis over.

 

That’s not an option now.  The road ahead will demand a superhuman effort on behalf of millions.  It will involve a mix of lifestyle changes, table-thumping insistence, rational argument, and (I hope) non-violent protest that together make it clear that anyone elected to office in this country or others has to be serious about climate change.

 

And it will demand more of us personally (including me personally) because the easy option (let the leaders sort it out) hasn’t worked.

 

David Kerrigan

a busy week

The last week has been busy and blogging took a back seat.  But as part of the purpose of the blog is to give an insight into the life of BMS it strikes me that a glance at some meetings in the last week might be of some interest.

 

Monday 14 December:

9am: started the day with the first of three phone calls to potential new trustees for BMS.  Trusteeship is a significant time commitment so getting two positive responses was encouraging.  

4pm: Met to look at the finances of the business we set up in Asia a couple of years ago.  The recession has hit their income and we agreed some future financing.  By the way we are very encouraged by the progress the business is having in terms of outreach.

6pm: First tell-tale signs of man-flu beginning to emerge!

 

Tuesday 15 December:

9am meeting with Jonathan Edwards, General Secretary of BUGB, looking at the outline seminar programme for the Baptist Assembly next May.

11.30am: set off for Durham with Mark Craig, BMS Director of Communications for a meeting with the Northern Baptist Association that evening. Winter sniffles in full flow! Reminded Mark that these things have a 10-day incubation period, so that would take us to…? 

7.30pm: Meeting with NBA Council members excellent. Durham wet and cold.

10pm: Travelodge – wonderful value as we got rooms some months ago for £19.

 

Wednesday 16 December:

8am: meet with NBA staff for breakfast.  Good conversations before we set off south.  Mark still driving.  DK feeling like death warmed up.

4pm, arrived home.  

9pm: TV lifts the spirits watching Peter Kay as MC for the Royal Variety show - makes me laugh so much.

 

Thursday 17 December: Busy day! 

9am: catch up meeting with Peter Dunn, Director for Mission.

10am: meet with writing team to agree theme and contributors for next Mission Catalyst

magazine which we send quarterly to ministers.  

11.30am – conference call with Jonathan Edwards to Chris Ellis who is in charge of worship at next May’s Assembly.

12.30pm Christmas lunch for Baptist House staff.

3pm: conference call with Jonathan Edwards to Baptist College Principals meeting in Glasgow to talk through a theology stream of seminars for… you’ve guessed it, next May’s Baptist Assembly.

4pm Meet with Paul Thaxter, Director for Transcultural Mission with the Church Mission Society (CMS) based in Oxford.  I tried to get Paul to join BMS 10 years ago but failed.  Our loss was CMS’s gain!  Fascinating to see how an Anglican and Baptist mission agencies face similar issues. 

6.30pm – leave for home.  Illness may be abating!

 

Friday 18 December:

8.45am my turn to lead our monthly prayer meeting – used a series of Christmas cards to illustrate aspects of the significance of the Christmas events.

10.30am: staff farewell to Tom Howell, our mission teams coordinator for the last 8 years.  Very slick rendition of a song based (loosely) on High School Musical! Very funny indeed.  We wont be losing Tom completely as he and Caroline, plus Abigail, Bethany and Matthew go long-term to Uganda with BMS next summer.

11.00am: short meeting to agree we will raise money for a boat in the New Year!  BMS has a long history of boats in mission , so watch out for this in January. And no, it wont be quite as big as the Peace.

2.00pm: Conference call with Stuart Davidson, Team Leader of the South East Baptist Association, to look at ways of developing closer partnerships with Associations, same agenda as took us to Durham on Tuesday.

4pm: cleared the last of this week’s e-mails, or to be more accurate, those that cant wait until next week.

6pm: snuffling only left – might yet find energy to update blog!

 

David Kerrigan

the homogeneous unit principle

Based on the book “Landmark Essays in Mission and World Christianity” (Orbis Books 2009) this is the second in a series of reflections on key writings that have shaped mission thinking over the last seventy years.

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Its 10 years since I sat round a table in a Dresden hotel and listened as the President of the Southern Baptist International Mission Board outlined their new people-group strategy.  Their efforts would be directed towards identifying and reaching homogeneous people groups around the world.  It was an inspirational presentation, and I for one was convinced that this was a most effective mission strategy.  ‘Like attracts like.’ People come to faith more easily if they don’t have to cross racial, linguistic and cultural barriers.   It’s obvious, and to give it the highest accolade in western thought, it works!

But then came a sharp question from an African leader seated around the same table.  So many of Africa’s problems stem from tribalism, he said, and only the gospel – nothing else – has the capacity to transcend tribal allegiances and unite people in spite of their racial, linguistic and cultural identity.  Planting churches along tribal lines might ‘work’ but it denies the very essence of the gospel.  Why do you do this in my country?

Rene Padilla is a Latin American mission activist with a long and varied ministry that has combined preaching, prison outreach, work amongst drug addicts and a host of other initiatives that were instrumental in advocating for a greater social involvement for evangelicals. Writing in 1982, he voiced his criticisms of church growth theory based on the homogeneous principle.  He does so by arguing for the distinctive oneness of the church which, he states, is itself a prophetic embodiment of God’s purpose to unite all things in Christ Jesus.  He shows how the New Testament church, from the Acts 15 Jerusalem Council onwards, grasped this unique insight that we are all one in Christ Jesus, and did so in spite of generations of prejudice and fear.

His conclusions might be summarised as follows.  The numerical or quantitative growth of the church is a legitimate concern in Christian mission.  God desires all to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth (1 Tim 2:4) so we should long to see all coming to Christ, and that longing should be expressed practically.  The issue is not that men and women prefer to come to faith without crossing the aforementioned barriers.  The question is whether it is theologically defensible to package the outreach of the church in such a way that they do not have to do so.

Padilla’s conclusions are clear.  Firstly, the New Testament offers no hope for those looking for a mission strategy other than one where Jews and Gentiles, more often than not, heard the gospel together, responded together and united in faith together.

Secondly, the breaking down of barriers is an intrinsic component of the gospel and not an accidental by-product of it. Evangelism should therefore call people into a new humanity that transcends barriers of gender, race, language and culture.

Thirdly, the church grew, and did so across cultural barriers.  There is no evidence of a homogeneous church other than those who, by reason of geography, probably spoke a common language.

Fourthly, the apostles never contemplated churches made up of homogeneous units who would only express their oneness in inter-church relationships. Each congregation was to express the unity and diversity of the body of Christ.

Begrudgingly, quoting Lesslie Newbigin, Padilla says he must admit that “the witness of separate congregations in the same geographical area on the basis of language and culture may have to be accepted as a necessary but provisional measure for the sake of the fulfilment of Christ’s mission.” But he says this through clenched teeth!

Padilla concludes that the homogeneous unit principle has no backing in scripture.  He asks, what can such a principle say to an affluent suburban church hermetically sealed again the poverty-stricken inner-city, or to the church in which a racist feels at home because of the unholy alliance between racial segregation and Christianity? 

What has this to say to us today?  Most of our UK churches are homogeneous. That’s a fact.  Some are accidents of history, from a time when the overall population was homogeneous. Others have deliberately adopted a largely homogeneous identity especially, let it be said, immigrant communities.  This is understandable.  For strangers in a foreign land, the church provides cohesion and a way of preserving language, cultural values and norms.  But there is no doubt that for all their advantages, homogeneous communities do not fully embody that oneness in Christ that lies at the heart of the biblical understanding of the Church.   

But in the UK today, there are fewer and fewer truly mono-cultural areas.  Therefore every church, black-majority or white-majority, Brazilian-majority or white middle-class majority should be asking itself, ‘what are the barriers that prevent us becoming a truly representative, inclusive community?’  The answers will not be obvious at first – the hardest culture to see is your own.  So, ask others and give them permission to speak honestly.  Issues of language and culture (‘the way we do things around here’) will come to the fore, but probably the subject of leadership will also. When a church sets out on a journey towards a more inclusive identity, initially by the majority accommodating others, sooner or later the leadership needs to reflect the cultural mix of the whole body. More of this in a later blog.

A final word about BMS and its mission.  One of our focal areas at the moment is making Jesus known amongst Muslim peoples.  Many are coming to faith and developing their faith, not in traditional churches, but in Jesus Believer groups.  Think of them as cell groups of Muslim-background believers or Muslim-background enquirers, the difference being that these groups are not part of the so-called traditional church – but in their different way,  they are the church!  Guess what?  This works – like nothing else has ever worked!  And hundreds of thousands now belong to such groups in Asia, and this model is expanding in other countries too, and amongst those from other faiths too. 

The challenge for us and others is to see how this part of the Body of Christ is to integrate with other parts in the years to come. And to be honest, I have no idea whether that is achievable, or even desirable.  Rene Padilla would be disappointed with me, especially as I believe he is right!

David Kerrigan

changing climate - changing lifestyles

The UN Copenhagen Climate Conference begins tomorrow, coughing and spluttering to the start line like a soot-filled factory chimney .  Who will be there, and who won’t has been the subject of great speculation. So too the underlying science, with leaked e-mails being used and abused to suit the purposes of the thermosceptics.  Whilst every effort has been made to downplay expectations, the summit may yet make significant progress towards a far-reaching replacement for Kyoto, even if the binding agreement only comes next year.  

Politicians get a bad press much of the time.  Sometimes it’s deserved. Sometimes it isn’t. Often they are simply trying to get as much as they can out of an imperfect process, and this is one such example.  In fact its the politics more than the science which has occupied so much time and effort. 

I'm sat in Delhi airport as I write, about to return to the UK.  India is considered to be the third largest polluter in the world as measured by its actual emissions, so here you see the problem writ large.  With one-fifth of the world’s population, hundreds of millions of India’s people live in chronic poverty. 

But India is changing, and changing fast.  There is a huge emerging middle-class in the urban centres, with considerable wealth to be seen.  The October 2010 Commonwealth Games will be in Delhi and everywhere in the city seems to be under construction.  The stadiums and sports infrastructure are nearing completion, but the centrepiece is the Delhi Metro .  This has gradually begun to expand, spider-like, across the city.  Mass-transport for millions will benefit this clogged city for years to come.

These projects consume enormous amounts of energy, and cement and steel manufacturing are hardly low-carbon processes.  But such projects are essential for a growing economy, and along the way they provide employment for hundreds of thousands of people.  Persuading India to cut emissions, which it is ready to do, cannot be at the expense of reasonable economic progress.  They argue that we have had 200 years of industrial polluting to get to where we are today, so who are we to preach to others.

So how is the circle to be squared?  “The” answer will in fact be several answers. Technology promises much, not least with hydrogen cell technology holding out a possible alternative to oil-based fuels, and maybe even carbon-capture on a large scale. Recycling and low energy consuming products will make a contribution too.  But one of the main answers relates to our lifestyles.  If we fly less, consume less, and become more content with what we have rather than always have an eye for what we don’t have, the world will literally be a better place.  I don’t know about you, but putting that into practice is difficult. 

At BMS, we have started to do what we can.  Seven years ago several of our staff members started persuading everyone to recycle what we could.  They were coined the “Green Police” and the name stuck! (Thanks to Jenny, Gwyn, Doobs and a host of others!) Their dogged perseverance changed hearts and minds and made a huge difference within the mission.  Woe to anyone who doesn’t recycle within BMS today!  Everything has its place – plastic, paper, cardboard, batteries, even the tea-bags go for composting. We’ve sourced our electricity from green suppliers.  We’ve cut out a lot of face to face meetings in the UK especially, using Skype and conference calls.  We’ve offset all our air travel by planting trees in a gold-standard forestry project in Ghana, and along with BUGB and the Baptist Union of Scotland we’re moving as quickly as we can towards carbon-neutral Assemblies.  In all of this we’ve been given invaluable help by our partners  A Rocha.

But, of course, I am not suggesting that we have really cracked this issue.  It’s not just that our contribution is small – every individual, family and organisation can only make a small contribution.  The really big issue is how to adapt to a lifestyle where we consume less.  In one sense it’s easy – just do it!  “Live simply that others might simply live!”  But simple things are often just not simple.  You want to lose weight?  Eat less exercise more!  You want to be free of your addiction to drugs, tobacco or alcohol?  Just stop!  Oh, if only it was that simple.

It’s often said that the real answer is motivation.  And in this, as Christians, surely we have an advantage.  Committed to the Lordship of Christ, he is the one about whom it is said “all things were created by him and for him" (Col 1:16).  To paraphrase Elaine Storkey – the earth is the Lord’s and everything in it, and we’d better look after it because he’ll want it back in good shape!

And in addition to this, our concern for humanity, our sisters and brothers with whom we share this world, millions of whom live in poverty, should persuade us to adopt a simplicity agenda. 

So, as Copenhagen comes and goes, can I encourage you to do two things.  Firstly, remember to pray for Gordon Brown and others who will need wisdom, skill and courage to get as much out of this summit as we can.  I wrote to Gordon Brown recently, a letter co-signed by many of our international partners, and I promised him we would pray.  Irrespective of your politics, I don’t think you’ll need persuading to pray.

But check out part of our website too – we have recently developed an area that looks at the whole issue of Simplicity.   There are some great links there that are worth exploring.  Do what you can, however small, and as millions do likewise, maybe Copenhagen 2009 will prove to be more significant than the doommongers predict.

David Kerrigan

city of joy

As you leave Kolkata (Calcutta) airport you immediately experience what many visitors to Asia have described as ‘an assault on the senses’.  And in terms of what you see, you won’t know whether to stare boggle-eyed at the ubiquitous yellow Ambassador taxis, jostling for space on the race track (also known as the main road) or the huge hoardings advertising everything from clothes to gadgets.  And I do mean huge – bigger than anything you’ll ever see in the UK. 

And tucked in amongst them is an old sign that has been there for many years – Welcome to the City of Joy”. 

I am not sure now which came first, that nickname or the book, City of Joy by Dominique Lapierre.  If you haven’t read the book, do so immediately.  It is one of the most moving accounts of human resilience and triumph in the face of adversity I have ever read.  If you haven’t  seen the movie (starring Patrick Swayze), you are blessed indeed.  Avoid it as a piece of Hollywood schmaltz that completely fails to capture anything of the emotion of the book.

But back to the city, where I’m sitting today. Why is it that, in a city that has some of the poorest living conditions in the world, people can speak of a City of Joy?  The answer is found in its people, but describing the people of this beautiful city is beyond me.  Look at both ends of the spectrum.

Let me start with the poor.  Given the chance some will fleece you, and that’s what you would expect.  But this is usually accomplished with such artistry, that you would rather applaud their ingenuity than condemn their bravado.  Take the airport arrival.  A couple of years ago I landed with a friend who, while I was throwing luggage into the van, was offered a cup of tea from a tray-bearing youngster.  Such hospitality my friend thought!   I rolled my eyes upwards, as I hadn’t changed any money yet, and I knew I’d have to haggle over the extortionate cost of the cuppa!    It should be 5p but they’d start at 20p!  Upon such things the world turns.

Notice I said ‘some will fleece you’.  But the vast majority would not.  They are consummately kind and amazingly hard-working.  They would take a lost person by the hand and irrespective of the time it took, they would get you to your destination.   They will be up and working long before I wake, collecting coke-cans, or paper and by evening the cans have become a single sheet of aluminium sold on for the price of the next day’s rice, and the paper will be bundled and sold by the kilo to a middle man who will help it on its way to the paper mill it came from.  Don't come preaching sustainability here – not until you recognise that cities like Kolkata are the recycling capitals of the world.

And then there are the self-described middle-classes, and inevitably these are the people I know best. Kolkattans are sophisticated, highly intelligent, well read, truly cultured and engaging conversationalists.  And as far as I can see, if there is a passion that unites them (apart from cricket and children and all things Indian) it is eating out.  This they love to do – any night of the week you’ll find restaurants and cafes heaving with people engaged in animated conversation.

And what is God doing in this poverty-stricken / well-heeled City of Joy?  Well, this needs another book, but let me give you a taster.  There are many churches, some denominational, some relatively independent.  They worship in different languages and styles but many are thriving.  Along the way there is a multiplicity of Christian parachurch ministries – led by women and men of great faith and passion.  Most are openly evangelistic.  Many focus on society’s toughest problems – drugs, HIV, homelessness, alcoholism and so on. I don’t know another city which has such a rich tapestry of Christian ministries.  Some are innovative such as Freeset, a business offering an alternative to prostitution in one of Kolkata’s red light districts.   Others are more traditionally evangelistic and very effective. 

In the midst of it all, BMS has been present here for over 200 years and enjoy a very good reputation.  Our work here these days is not so much to run projects ourselves, but to provide support to other ministries.  Most of these resources are our people, individuals, couples, families and teams who come here either to share in the task or to learn from our Indian sisters and brothers. 

If you’d like to see God at work in power, then consider coming to Kolkata.  It will change your life and bring Joy to your heart.

David Kerrigan

the kingdom of God and the mission of the church

Based on the book “Landmark Essays in Mission and World Christianity” (Orbis Books 2009) this is the first in a series of reflections on key writings that have shaped mission thinking over the last seventy years.

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Peter Phan is a Vietnamese-American Catholic with a wealth of insights into the way the church is Asia will develop in the coming decades. In his contribution to “Landmark Essays” (A New Christianity, but What Kind? first published in 2005) he argues that the phenomenon we know as Christendom was and is an aberration of what God wants the church to be.  Rather than a church shaped by the life and ministry of Jesus, what emerged is a model of Christianity that is “papal, roman, legalistic, political and military, in short, Christendom.”  Evidently, this is a distinctively Catholic interpretation but the power dynamics inherent in the world Church today, and which influence all of us to some degree, have their roots in Catholic history, which is our history too.

Phan argues that this Christendom reached its peak in the middle ages where the authority of the pope formally superseded all earthly powers, but in the centuries that followed it emerged again and again, not least in the conquests of the so-called new world. According to Phan, Christendom was ultimately halted by a realisation that “Christendom is not Christianity and has nothing to do with Jesus and his Gospel’.  This realisation was brought about in large measure by printing press and Reformation.

Phan does not believe we will see a new Christendom emerge in the Global South, but strongly believes the Global North should not crave after that which has been lost and is being lost. In that respect he suggests that Philip Jenkins’ “The New Christendom” is flawed – for Jenkins uses Christendom models of interpretation that Phan says are simply not going to be repeated in the south. Jenkins argues that the rise of Christian consciousness in Africa and Latin America particularly, and with it the ‘declining autonomy for nation-states’ in these regions means that Christians will seek alliances across continental boundaries. “Once that axis is established, we really would be speaking of a new Christendom, based on the Southern Hemisphere.”  He speaks of the ‘not unlikely’ possibility of this new Christendom coming into conflict with Islam, bringing about a new age of Christian Crusades and Muslim Jihads, only this time with nuclear warheads and anthrax. Apocalyptic stuff, but deeply flawed, says Phan.

Drawing on documents issued by the Asian Catholic Bishops Conference and others, Phan suggests that the trajectory of Asian Christianity is not towards a powerful Church-centred Kingdom but a more authentic Kingdom-centred Church.  And by implication, this is what Christianity should be if it remains faithful to Jesus.  This analysis is striking in its implications!

A church that is Kingdom-centred (regnocentric) and not church-centred (ecclesiocentric) is one that seeks and promotes Kingdom values.  And to answer the question ‘what are Kingdom values?’ Phan points to the parables and miracles of Jesus, and to the cross and resurrection. “The reign of God is nothing less than God’s saving presence in Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit, a presence that brings about gratuitous forgiveness and reconciliation, and restores universal justice and peace between God and humanity, among humans themselves and between humanity and the cosmos.”

Phan argues that these gifts of forgiveness, reconciliation, justice and peace are extended to all but preferentially to the poor. An authentic church he says, will put the poor first and not “its membership expansion, prosperity, its survival, its good reputation, or what has been euphemistically called ‘church growth’.”

Phan’s analysis is not without its flaws.  For instance, in his reaction against the power of the church he pleads for a ‘fundamental equality among all the members” yet states that this equality “annuls neither the existence of the hierarchy in the church or the papal primacy”.  This is somewhat over-generous in my view, and seems to betray a fear of the very powers that he wishes to challenge!

But the main issue here is the focus on what it means to be a Kingdom-centred Church, or a Kingdom-centred people.  For British Baptists, I don’t think this is necessarily a new, or a revolutionary concept.  But is there a gap between theory and practice?  Let me offer just two questions that might be pertinent for Baptist life and mission, in and beyond the UK.

1.   In the run up to the millennium, mission agencies were challenged to consider how much of our work was in parts of the world that already had a considerable Christian presence, and how much was in parts of the world less-reached?  Within BMS, this certainly was part of the reason why the decision was taken to wind down our work in Brazil and refocus into the Muslim-majority world.  Does a similar question need to be asked by our churches – how much of the life of the church is truly ‘kingdom building’ rather than simply supporting the felt needs of the already Christian congregation. 

2.   Within BMS, the sharper question for us must be ‘and how do we measure the kingdom impact we feel we are achieving?’  We have rejected crude measures like ‘how many baptisms happen in a year’ as these deny the holistic nature of God's Kingdom and in any case would give a zero value to our work in countries where there is still no visible community of believers. But the question remains, how are we to be sure we are having a Kingdom impact?  Can grace, forgiveness and justice be measured?  And if so, how?

David Kerrigan