yes - lent 2009
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Mission spirituality - good for all of us...TRANSCRIPT
Mission spiritualityGood for all of us...
Speak only if you can improve on silence...
Jesus did not leave an
organised host of followers, for
he knew that a handful of salt
would gradually work its way
through the mightiest empire in
the world.
Philip Yancey
There is not a place to which
the christian can withdraw
from the world, whether it be
outwardly or in the sphere of
the inner life. any attempt to
escape from the world must
sooner or later be paid for with
a sinful surrender to the world.
David Smith
it is not in our choice to spread
the gospel or not. it is our
death if we do not.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
if we only have the will to walk,
then God is pleased with our
stumbles.
CS Lewis
it seems what is required
of us is not new ideas, but
obedience to those God has
given us already.
John V Taylor
The spiritual life does not
remove us from the world but
leads us deeper into it.
Henri JM Nouwen
social development is spiritual
warfare as we battle against
‘the principalities and powers’
that uphold the systems of
social evil.
James Pender
What should young people do
with their lives today? many
things, obviously. But the most
daring thing is to create stable
communities in which the
terrible disease of loneliness
can be cured.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr
prayer does not fit us for the
greater work; prayer is the
greater work.
Oswald Chambers
if my private world is in order,
it will be because i have
chosen to press sabbath peace
into the rush and routine of my
daily life in order to find the
rest God prescribed for himself
and all of humanity.
Gordon MacDonald
i am no fool to give up what
i cannot keep to gain what i
cannot earn.
Jim Elliott
co
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yes lent edition. published by cms. General secretary: canon Tim Dakin editor: John martin Designer: seth crewe
printers: cpo printed on a sustainable paper that is elementary chlorine free and can be traced to bona fide sources.
cms: sharing Jesus, changing livesviews expressed in yes are not necessarily those of cms.
church mission society, Watlington road, oxford, oX4 6BZ registered charity number 220297
04 from our correspondents
05/6 cms news
07 Interview: Jenny mcintosh by naomi rose
10 unlocking the Bible’s grand narrative by christopher Wright
12 10 habits of mission spirituality by sue Hope
14 mission spirituality for kids by Dr Keith J White
16 The view from the road by Dr cathy ross
18 returning mission to the majority by mark oxbrow
20 crowther centre news
22 recommended Daily dosage by Tim Dakin
23 notebook by John martin
John [email protected]
3 yes lent 2009
Mission spirituality: yesterday, today and everyday“We are being made to expect too much. We are taking
too much. We are scrapping too much. We are paying,
and compelling others to pay, far too high a price.”
The writer of these words could have been analysing
the causes of the current economic crisis. in fact they were penned nearly 40 years ago by John
v Taylor in his groundbreaking book Enough is Enough (scm press, 1975). one of Taylor’s ideas
was to encourage christian people to explore life in community. He wrote: “i believe that the small,
purposeful commune, dedicated to a particular kind of witness, has immense potential today as a
new form of missionary presence in many situations that are impervious to more traditional forms
of mission.”
This issue of yes goes to press at a point where cms has committed itself rediscovering life as a
spread-out community, living out the kinds of principles that Taylor foreshadowed more than a
generation ago. These things have always been at the heart of christian discipleship.
in the new cms Daily resource, members of the community are invited to regularly consider how
the following key points of mission spirituality are being worked out in their lives:
How have I recently explored boundaries?
How have I recently met the stranger?
How have I given hospitality?
How have I received hospitality?
How have I been missional?
What am I doing about living simply?
What has been a recent source of spiritual nurture?
mission spirituality is for everyone. in this issue we pick up on some of its dimensions. chris Wright
takes us to the biblical roots. susan Hope shares examples of mission spirituality in practice. mark
oxbrow shows how it’s not merely the preserve of the Western world. and Keith White shows it’s for
children too.
4 yes lent 2009
Jean and paul Dobbing write from nepal
Tescoisation and happiness“credit crunch”, “economic slow down”, “global downturn” and “financial crisis” are all terms we’ve
been hearing recently in the international news. Then, just the other day, a fellow scot used the term
“Tescoisation” to describe what appears to be happening in many parts of asia.
people here in nepal mostly have never heard of – and are not much impacted by – these terms. most
don’t have mortgages, pensions, insurances, stocks, shares or investments. That isn’t to say that nepalis
aren’t becoming more global, and some more prosperous. many have mobile phones, surf the net and
go abroad for work and study (especially to labour in Gulf countries). This seems to happen in tandem
with what is essentially a premodern type of existence, where most live from the land without much
education or good health facilities. life is more “hand to mouth” for many living around us. one of the
main changes to impact people this past year has been the price hike of staple foods such as lentils and
rice, and many still cook with wood.
some friends have commented to me about nepali people that “they seem happier and more content
than many at home are. They’ve got less to worry about.” How to compare or judge the happiness of
another, especially from such a different world? We know that many here suffer from grinding poverty,
ill health and have had little or no opportunity to be educated, yet perhaps do not suffer from the
pressures of time and money that many in the West do.
are they happier than someone in the uK hit hard by the current credit crunch? We don’t know. We
suppose that there is some kind of a middle ground that some have achieved – whether it’s in nepal
or the uK, but is elusive to most. it does strike us, however, that the more simple your lifestyle is, the
less affected you are by outside factors. perhaps many people here are less anxious about tomorrow
because they are too busy managing for today.
Bible translation: finding the right word as the Bible is written in three languages, when translating it into one it is important to connect the key
ideas by translating them consistently. ideas that appear in one place in Hebrew, another in aramaic and
a third in Greek, may not look connected. But they can and should be translated in the same way in the
local language wherever possible. This helps the reader recognise themes in the Bible and lay the basis
for biblical reference books that may be developed in the future. since a new translation of the new
Testament is planned for 2009, we need to make sure that it won’t be too different from the old when
that finally comes out. The key themes that are shared between them need to be recognisable as such.
one example of this is the idea of the redeemer. The Book of ruth contains a vivid picture of the role of
the Kinsman redeemer – Boaz – who buys back into the clan the property that the widow naomi was
forced to sell, and marries her bereaved daughter-in-law into the bargain.
so far we have a verb meaning to ‘buy back’, which can be used as a ‘key term’ for redeem. But we have
no noun for redeemer, so recently we visited the local university in search of one. in the end they came
up with a rare word that meant ‘buyer backer’. Will it catch on? We will find out very soon when a group
of widows meet to hear the story. To them, the way God worked in the lives of naomi and ruth could
speak volumes. if only it could be expressed in terms they could understand.
..from our correspondents...
a mission partner (name withheld) writes from a top-secret location
Jane Shaw writes from lahore
Making ends meet in pakistanso how is it in pakistan at the minute? according to the newspapers we are trembling on the brink of
possible war with india. During christmas lunch in the gardens of the local christian hospital, the air was
hideous with the screeching of fighter jets, apparently patrolling the skies over lahore. There have been
one or two small bombs going off in lahore, in government areas. But otherwise all seems calm here at
present, unlike the Tribal areas and frontier province. The anniversary of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination
passed off peacefully; the next potentially difficult time is the muslim commemoration of ashura, next
week, when shias take out mourning processions and it can be an occasion of sectarian violence.
The christian celebrations of christmas have been noted with interest and respect by the media, both
newspapers and television, with many pictures of candlelit services, worshippers outside churches,
decorated christmas trees and so on. i was greatly encouraged by this evidence of religious tolerance
and mutual respect, but one friend suggested that since the news from india is all of christians being
massacred, tortured and forcibly converted, pakistan’s leaders wish to emphasise to the world that
pakistan is different – that here christians are respected and can worship freely. Whatever the motivation,
i pray that this freedom and respect will be maintained in all parts of the country.
The greatest affliction for most people currently is “load-shedding” – frequent and unpredictable power
cuts because not enough electricity is being generated to meet demand. low water levels in dams
constrain hydro-electricity generation, and non-payment for fuel imports has led to shortage of fuel for
thermal power stations. for many people no power means also no water, as it is either pumped direct
from tube wells or has to be pumped up to roof tanks from ground level supply.
now there is also a shortage of fuel for transport, with long queues at filling stations. Without power
or water people can’t wash or cook, can’t iron clothes to wear, and without fuel cannot travel – so
getting to work is difficult and church attendance also suffers. in the current cold weather lahore is also
experiencing thick fog, which has led to many throat and chest infections as well as travel difficulties.
and with the price of food continuing to rise, many pakistanis find it very difficult to make ends meet;
according to one report, 40 per cent of pakistanis live below the poverty line.
5 yes lent 2009
To find out more and keep in touch with all our mission partners, log on to www.cms-uk.org/linkletters for the latest reports
..and all the latest newsTea and empathy From Phil Simpson, CMS Asia director
in addition to developing a creche for the children of sex workers in pune, india’s red light district, cms co-mission partner Dr lalita edwards also has a special ministry to the local hijra or kinnar (eunuchs), whom she calls “my special people.” she befriends them and serves them however she can. They call her uma (mum or aunty).
on a recent visit, i met penna, Koelli and Keralla; all three have come out of the sex trade. in her small one room flat over a cuppa chai, penna showed me pictures of her dancing days. With all her make
up, she looked like Greta Garbo. Then, she earned 10,000 rupees a night dancing. But she wouldn’t go back. now she has a sense of peace and purpose. at one point she sang me a song: Koi bhi chore mujhe, Jesus kebhi nehin chorega (‘even if others leave me, Jesus will never leave me’).
Keep up with Phil Simpson’s wanderings and musings on his blog:
wandering4loveofgod.blogspot.com
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Dr lalita edwards
6 yes lent 2009
all in the familyon 20 January, at a special general meeting held at cms in oxford, cms members voted overwhelmingly – 99 per cent – in favour of cms integrating with sams (south american mission society). sisters virginia patterson and caroline Baynes were particularly happy with the result. virginia and her husband michael were sams mission partners in argentina from 1963–80 and from 1995–2002. caroline and her husband simon were cms mission partners from 1963–80 in Japan.
Buddhist encouragementmark Berry’s pioneering work in Telford was recently the subject of a BBc radio 4 programme presented by Jolyon Jenkins. among the feedback mark received was this email from a Buddhist:“i have just listened to the BBc programme The most Godless Town in Britain and found your views very refreshing. i was attracted to the programme on the BBc’s listen again service, mainly because i was brought up in Telford, rather than out of any spiritual curiosity. Though i do not share your christian beliefs, i found myself agreeing with a lot of what you said. i thought your openness and willingness to discuss spiritual issues was very a refreshing change from the more established christian churches. as a Buddhist i was interested that you also used meditation in your practice. Despite Jolyon Jenkins’ implicit scepticism, and his attempt to conflate your ideas with the things like crystal healing, i thought you gave a very positive message. i very rarely comment on radio or television programmes, but thought i would like to wish you well for the future of your project.”mark comments: “for me [this] embodies some of the generosity we try to engender in our encounters with others... the author clearly acknowledges our different beliefs but is generous in spirit...”Keep in touch with Mark and the Safespace community: www.markjberry.blogs.com
prison breakthroughon prisons sunday in november 2008, the Bishop of liverpool, said, “The fundamental question facing our society is whether we see prisons as warehouses to store the incorrigible or greenhouses to restore the redeemable.” cms partners with a charity called Zarebi, in the republic of Georgia, which is developing constructive training activity in a prison in rustavi, about 30 miles south of the capital, Tblisi. The prison holds nearly 2,000 men. However, apart from Zarebi’s computer training programme, there are no opportunities for education, work or vocational training for prisoners. This is the case in most Georgian prisons.recently, prebendary Bob payne, a prison chaplain with 37 years’ experience, visited the rustavi prison as a consultant for cms. He was challenged by the sight of so
many men with nothing creative to do – circumstances so far from what God would have them be. Bob was very impressed by merab Bolkvadze, the founder of Zarebi, and his commitment to improving the situation. He works 30 hours a week as a minibus driver to support his family so that he can lead Zarebi. it was also encouraging to discover others who wanted to follow merab’s example, particularly within the Georgian orthodox church, including Bishop anthoni Bulukhia, a former prisoner who is now an orthodox church leader in western Georgia. as the church in Georgia has flourished in the years since independence from the soviet union, so too, it is hoped, will the work of Zarebi in bringing dignity and purpose to prisoners. cms is glad to be part of this effort to convert warehouses into greenhouses.
The greening of RattanabadFrom CMS mission partner Maurice ConnorBoth the threat of environmental degradation and the splendour of God’s creation are vivid in rattanabad, the village in the sindh, south of pakistan, which was our home for nearly seven years. Though birds, reptiles and insects adorn the irrigated, densely farmed areas, their numbers and variety are rapidly diminishing. people even dig up roots of trees for fuel.rattanabad serves as base for several christian-led development organisations. We invited the leaders of these organisations to form a committee to establish and run the rattanabad environmental project.The leaders of these well-respected development projects have felt challenged by God to do something to restore people’s relationship with the environment. as christians, they look to Jesus for inspiration – he being the ultimate creator, restorer and sustainer. i feel that finding out what he is doing, and then joining in, is vital to this area of God’s mission.all five organizations are now running rural development initiatives. Two of the five have a specifically environmental element.one leader, padre shamoon, was inspired to protect a mature tree by building the conference centre he runs around it. The trunk is the centre-piece of the entrance hall and the branches provide shade for the roof. more significantly, it stimulates positive conversations among visitors. another development expert, Zahid, is pioneering organic farming on his land, which adjoins his organisation’s compounds. The rattanabad environmental protection project committee has chosen to officially protect the area within which the five organisations’ compounds lie. land will be used for organic farming, experimenting with coppicing the local trees, increasing biodiversity and a class-room will be built as a field-study centre.
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6 yes lent 2009
Mark Berry
IT support: new skills for prisoners
CMS special general meeting
Maurice & laura Connor
7 yes lent 2009
This line, spoken by Catholic priest Father
Flynn in John patrick Shanley’s play, Doubt, runs
through my head as i sit down to have a conversation
with Jenny mcintosh, one of the founders of spirited
exchanges — an umbrella name for a variety of
initiatives designed to support people grappling with
faith and/or church.
spirited exchanges first began in Jenny’s homeland of
new Zealand. she recently moved to the uK to help
foster the network here. When asked how it’s going so
far she says with a smile, “Well, pioneering is always
slower than you’d like.”
Despite the Damaclesian statistics indicating that
traditional church isn’t working for many, Jenny says
that often, churches don’t see a need to get on board
with what she’s doing.
“There’s this perception that i’m taking people away
from church,” she says. “Which i’m not.” But nor is she
trying to convince people to return, and it’s that kind
of open-endedness that Jenny says sometimes makes
churches uneasy. “many want to know what results
they can expect; they want to know people will come
back and i have to be honest: spirited exchanges
doesn’t say that people will return to the same church,
or that they will come back to church at all. What does
happen for people is that they grow into something
new and will look for places which allow for a more
diverse faith expression.
“We hope that people will find life in faith again but
we realise that some won’t. We don’t have an agenda;
we allow people space to make those decisions
themselves.”
according to Jenny, spirited exchanges is organic in
that it’s identifying and working with an existing reality:
“The more we try to control people they more we will
lose them.”
unfortunately, some people’s experience with
church has been akin to a child-parent relationship.
“Doubt can be a bond as powerful and sustaining as certainty. When you are lost, you are not alone.”Jenny McIntosh interviewed by naomi rose
8 yes lent 2009
spirited exchanges is about accompanying people
on a journey to spiritual adulthood “that can be quite
painful.”
Jenny speaks from experience. she started following
Jesus in her mid-teens and became active in her local
church, noticing early on that sometimes systems
and keeping the rules seemed more important than
people’s actual needs. still, she tried to work within
the system, volunteering where she could and helping
her husband, who was in full-time christian work. “it
was very much a doing phase of my life. That’s what
i understood being a christian was. it always seemed
about activity and striving.”
she and her husband’s eagerness to serve took them
and their four children to india, where they continued
working with young people. and it was during her
eight years as an overseas missionary that certain
issues became impossible to ignore.
“i started facing questions about pluralism, about my
culture and attitude. i found i didn’t want to go to
church. i wanted to spend time with God, yes, but
i didn’t find it the least bit helpful to be in church. it
seemed boring and irrelevant.” Jenny remembers
what it was like being home on leave during that
time and struggling with deputation. “people put
missionaries on a pedestal so you needed to be wise
about what you said publicly.”
Jenny and her family returned to new Zealand in
1994, and her husband became minister of a church
they’d been involved with before moving to india. But
Jenny felt like she didn’t fit there anymore.
eighteen months after returning to new Zealand,
Jenny’s husband died suddenly, catapulting her into
grief and disorientation. “When life gets difficult or
traumatic, people start asking questions. and a lot
of churches don’t have a developed theology of
suffering. They want you to keep a stiff upper lip.
They may be good at offering practical support, but
they often aren’t equipped to help you emotionally or
spiritually with real grief or despair.”
Her husband’s death wasn’t the only thing that
challenged Jenny’s faith paradigms. around the same
time a couple in the church made the agonising
decision to have an abortion because the child would
be born with cystic fibrosis. Their first child, only
seven months old, also had the disease. The way
they were treated by some in the church was terrible;
they were ostracised. “it wasn’t the issues themselves
that challenged me. Difficult stuff happens. it was
the deeper assumptions and culture that i started
to question and that left me feeling like i was dying
inside. The understandings i had needed to be
expanded. God was surely bigger than all this.”
around this time, Jenny made the difficult decision
to leave her church and also read an early article
on church leavers and faith stage transition by alan
Jamieson who later authored a churchless faith.
“Talking to alan and reading a new stream of books i
was gradually able to process some of my faith issues.
“up until then i’d never heard about the idea of faith
development. But it became an extremely helpful
language for me to deal with what i was going
through.”
alan Jamieson had done considerable research into
faith development theories, such as those proposed
by James fowler, as a way of perhaps explaining why
people left church.
according to fowler, there are six stages of faith
development, a la Jean piaget’s theory of cognitive
development or erik erikson’s theory of social
development. These stages relate to how an individual
experiences his or her faith holistically.
The first stage fowler calls intuitive-projective faith.
This is when the imagination runs wild and the “child”
or “new believer” begins to absorb strong taboos.
stage two is called mythic-literal faith, where symbol
and ritual begin to be integrated. The world becomes
linear. people in stage two can have a strong sense
of fairness and cause-and-effect, which can drive the
person into a strict, controlling perfectionism
or legalism.
The third stage is synthetic-conventional faith.
The majority of people stay in this stage, which is
characterised by conformity. a person finds his or her
identity in a certain viewpoint and is reluctant to think
critically about it. There is an adherence to hierarchy
and majority opinion, which somehow becomes
inseparable from “goodness.” if a person’s life situation
becomes difficult, it can drive them to despair, or to
the next stage, which is individuative-reflective.
This fourth stage consists primarily of angst and
struggle, in which one must face difficult questions
regarding identity and belief, as an individual. people in
this stage are prone to disillusionment and bitterness.
But most will allow for increasing complexity and
enter stage five – conjunctive faith. people in this
stage acknowledge paradox and transcendence. They
allow for mystery, though it may scare them. They
move from deconstruction to reconstruction and
begin to see a bigger picture of justice beyond their
own culture. it is a stage involving new possibilities
“There’s this perception that I’m taking people away from church. Which I’m not”
9 yes lent 2009
spiritual adulthood rather than depend on the church
like a parent. Where diversity and questioning and
realising our full potential are encouraged, and where
doubt is an acknowledged part of a growing and life-
giving faith.”
until that time, spirited exchanges is here to help
those who are struggling. “it’s exciting to see hope
come into people’s eyes as they reframe their faith.
God becomes bigger and faith becomes deeper
and more integrated into all of life.” i’ve been told by
people that they wouldn’t be in faith without spirited
exchanges.
“i’m not saying i have all the answers. But i am
saying it’s ok to have questions. and if you do have
questions, you’re not alone. one of the guidelines
of spirited exchanges is that ‘We let God defend
God’. if God is all encompassing, then God can cope
with anything we might think or say no matter how
heretical it might sound.”
CMS is glad to partner with Spirited Exchanges
which has a newsletter, website and other resources
for individuals or groups. For more information, see
www.spiritedexchanges.org.uk
and a sense of wonder. stage six is what fowler calls
universalizing faith. This is where people not only see
a bigger picture, but live their lives – or often risk their
lives – for the sake of others.
spirited exchanges is fuelled in part by faith-stage
theory. Jenny says, “We help people process what’s
happened in church, re-examine their faith paradigms
and help them see what they’ve adopted as part of
the christian package that they may not actually agree
with or has even been oppressive. at the beginning,
when people first become christians they tend to take
on everything, not just beliefs but certain behaviours
and values. at some point many begin to say, ‘This
doesn’t make sense…’” she cites an example: “like
the idea that someone became sick or died because
we didn’t pray enough. We look at parts of our faith
that have become distorted and create space for
people to find life and faith again.”
During a spirited exchanges meeting, there is no
leader, though there may be a facilitator to make
sure the atmosphere is safe and respectful. There
is no set prayer or Bible study; people are free to
talk about whatever issues they like. all sorts of
viewpoints are heard. says Jenny, “There’s no tie-
up at the end. people come away with their own
views and sometimes those are different from
where they started. When you hear different views
in conversation, it helps you decide what you think.
people draw on their knowledge of the Bible, their
understanding from teaching they have had, books
they have read and their life experience and they start
to integrate those together. The challenge is to keep
it all genuinely open-minded and to rely on the Holy
spirit to help people process. We have to bear in mind
that not everyone is at the same faith stage.”
criticisms levelled at fowler include the fact that the
faith stages are sometimes perceived as hierarchical,
so one is “better” than the other. also, people
sometimes perceive that they are a step beyond
where they actually are. citing Jamieson’s image of the
stages set in a circle in conversation, Jenny says, can
be a more helpful way of understanding it, with one or
other stage being dominant at different points in life.
Jenny points out that in these postmodern times,
people are likely to hit the stages earlier in their life as
believers. “That’s because the questions people used
to start having around mid-life are surfacing much
earlier.”
What could help mitigate the necessity of
deconstruction and reconstruction? “imagine a church
setting where people are actively encouraged to reach
“Up until then I’d never heard
about the idea of faith
development. But it became an extremely
helpful language for me to deal
with what I was going through”
The mission of God: unlocking the Bible’s grand narrativeBy Christopher JH Wright
demands no radical concern for the social, political
ethnic and cultural implications of the whole
biblical faith here and now, has led to massive and
embarrassing dissonance between statistics and
reality. some of the states in north-east india, such
as nagaland, are held up as outstanding examples
of the success of late-19th and early 20th-century
evangelism. The state is recorded to be around 90
per cent christian. yet it has now become one of
the most corrupt states in the indian union and is
riddled with problems of gambling and drugs among
the younger generation. naga students at the union
Biblical seminary, where i taught in the 1980s, would
tell me this is a proof of the fact that successful
evangelism does not always result in lasting social
transformation. others will point to the tragic irony
of rwanda – one of the most christianised nations
on earth and birthplace of the east african revival.
and yet whatever form of christian piety was taken
to be the fruit of evangelism there could not stand
against the tide of intertribal hatred and violence that
engulfed the region in 1994.
i write as a son of northern ireland. as i grew up,
almost anybody i met could have told me the
gospel and “how to get saved.” yet in my protestant
evangelical culture, the zeal for evangelism was equal
only to the suspicion of any form of christian social
concern or conscience about issues of justice. That
was the domain of liberals and ecumenicals, and
a betrayal of the “pure” gospel. The result was that
the de facto politics of protestantism was actually
subsumed under the gospel in such a way that
all the political prejudice, partisan patriotism and
tribal hatred was sanctified rather than prophetically
challenged (except by a very brave few who often
paid a heavy price).
as James would say, “this should not be” (Jas 3:10).
But it is. and it is one reason why i beg to dissent
from the notion that evangelism by itself will result
in social change, unless christians are also taught
the radical demands of discipleship to the prince of
peace, are seeking first the kingdom of God and his
justice, and understand the wholeness of what the
Bible so emphatically shows to be God’s mission for
his people.
evangelism and social involvement; chicken or
egg? another way the issue is sometimes framed is
this: surely the best way to achieve social change and
all the good objectives we have for society on the
basis of what we know God wants (justice, integrity,
compassion, care for his creation, etc.) is by vigorous
evangelism. The more christians there are, the better
it will be for society. so if you want to change society,
do evangelism. Then those who become christians
will do the social action part. i have often heard this
as an argument for prioritising evangelism over social
action, and it has serious flaws.
first (and i think i owe this point to John stott),
there is flawed logic that says, if you are a christian,
you should not spend time doing social action;
instead give all your time to evangelism because
the best way to change society is to multiply the
number of christians. The logic is flawed because
(1) all those new christians will, following the same
advice, give time only to evangelism, so who will
engage in social action? and (2) you ought to be
engaging in social action since you are the product
of someone’s evangelism. The argument becomes
an infinite regress in which real social engagement
as part of christian mission in the world is inevitably
postponed.
This view also overlooks the importance of
example. if someone comes to faith through the
effort of a christian or church that endorses only
the evangelistic mandate and has a negative and
non-engaged attitude to all things social, cultural,
economic or political, then the likelihood is that the
new convert will imbibe the same dichotomised
attitude. We reflect the kind of mission that moved
us into faith.
and tragically, this view is simply not borne out
in history. now of course there is such a thing as
conversion uplift. When people become christians,
they tend to shed some harmful habits and acquire
some positive ones. This can certainly benefit a
community if enough people are affected in this way.
However, there are other instances where rapid
conversion of whole communities to a pietistic
gospel that sings the songs of Zion to come, but
“yet in my protestant evangelical culture, the zeal for evangelism was equal only to the suspicion of any form of Christian social concern or conscience about issues of justice”
10 yeslent 2009
11 yes lent 2009
Holistic mission needs the whole church. a final
question that is often raised in the context of
teaching holistic mission arises from unavoidable
personal limitations. “you are saying that christian
mission involves all these dimensions of God’s
concern for total human need. But i am finite, with
finite time, finite abilities and finite opportunities.
should i not stick to what seems most important –
evangelism – and try not to dissipate myself over
such a broad range of objectives?”
The same thought doubtless occurred to God,
which is why he called the church into existence.
Here is another reason why our ecclesiology must
be rooted in missiology. The mission of God in the
world is vast. so he has called and commissioned a
people – originally the descendants of abraham, now
a multinational global community in christ. and it is
through the whole of that people that God is working
his mission purposes out, in all their diversity.
There are different callings, different giftings, different
forms of ministry (remembering that magistrates
and other government officials are called “ministers
of God” in romans 13, just as much as apostles and
those who organised food aid). individuals must
seek guidance from God regarding their calling.
some are indeed called to be evangelists. all are
certainly called to be witnesses, whatever their work
context. The apostles in acts recognised their own
personal priority had to be the ministry of the Word
and prayer. But they did not limit their ministry to
such work, as philip’s evangelistic encounter with the
ethiopian shows.
is the church as a whole reflecting the wholeness of
God’s redemption? is the church aware of all that in
which God’s mission summons them to participate?
The ringing slogan of the lausanne movement
is: “The whole church taking the whole gospel to
the whole world.” Holistic mission cannot be the
responsibility of one individual. But it is certainly the
responsibility of the whole church.
i can do no better than endorse the words of Jean-
paul Heldt:
There is no longer a need to qualify mission
as “holistic,” nor to distinguish between
“mission” and “holistic mission.” mission is,
by definition “holistic,” and therefore “holistic
mission” is, de facto, mission. proclamation
alone, apart from any social concern, may
be perceived as a distortion, a truncated
version of the true gospel, a parody and
travesty of the good news, lacking relevance
for the real problems of people living in
the real world. on the other end of the
spectrum, exclusive focus on transformation
and advocacy may just result in social and
humanitarian activism, void of any spiritual
dimension. Both approaches are unbiblical;
they deny the wholeness of human nature
of human beings created in the image of
God. since we are created “whole,” and
since the fall affects our total humanity in all
its dimensions, then redemption, restoration,
and mission can, by definition, only be
“holistic.”
Adapted from The Mission of God by Christopher JH
Wright. Copyright©2006 by Christopher JH Wright.
Used by permission.
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Imagine standing on a hilltop overlooking
a great plain. Below, covering a vast area of the
ground is a camp. you know, instinctively, that it’s
been there a long time. There’s the fluttering flag on
the pole. Buildings have been constructed: offices,
storerooms, you can even see the smoke rising from
the kitchens. some people are off-duty, playing in
the river, while others are engaged on some intense
formal activity.
suddenly, the scene is interrupted. a vehicle roars
in to the camp, the driver gets out and hurries off.
Time elapses, then there’s a buzz of excitement.
Groups start emerging from everywhere, things
start happening. The camp is being broken up.
Decisions have to be made about what can travel
and what belongs to the time of ‘settlement’. There
are fresh demands and requirements. everyone and
everything is suddenly on the move.
sometime towards the end of the last millennium,
the tide turned for the churches’ mission in england.
There was a fresh wind blowing; parts of the church
seemed to be waking up, getting ready. people
were talking about mission again, but in a different
way, and right across the different traditions and
denominations of the church. it wasn’t wholesale,
but patchy, a bit like rock pools filling up while the
main tide is still some way out. and this tide of
mission has continued to make its way in. it’s been
accompanied and encouraged by various initiatives
on mission and evangelism, including 2004’s
mission-shaped church by the church of england’s
mission and public affairs council; fresh expressions,
the shared anglican-methodist initiative was also
notable.
These things are helping find new shapes and
patterns which can assist mission and evangelism in
10 marks of mission spiritualityWhere does the passion to re-engage with evangelism come from? Sue Hope offers some pointers
12 yes lent 2009
13 yes lent 2009
a post-modern world. But the passion to re-engage
with evangelism in our culture, where is that to
be found? is there such a thing as a ‘spirituality for
mission’ that will engender and support mission
– an apostolic spirituality? and if so, what are its
characteristics? Here are 10 indicators of people
living in a mission spirituality:
1. knowing what they are for and about They
are called and sent. They know why they are on the
planet and what they are to do while here. They are
supremely focussed on their task.
2. living with trust Being called to mission
means leaving the safe and knowable and locating
your identity and security in another place. like
Jesus, whose public ministry was kick-started by an
experience of being deeply and dearly loved (luke
3:22), mission-motivated people have to learn to
graft themselves deeply into the love of the father
and to minister out of that love.
3. Contemplative activists “When he saw the
crowds, he had compassion on them” (matt 9:36).
Those who are fired with the love of God are
those whose eyes have been opened and who
see brokenness and pain. They also see God’s
possibilities, and God’s promise. contemplation, true
seeing, leads to action.
4. Travelling light ‘Take nothing for the journey’
(matt 10). Too many possessions can inhibit speed
of response to shifts in culture. Too much money
can belie our faith in God’s provision. packaging the
gospel into doctrinal formulae limits the way that
people are able to receive it. We’re invited to go
empty-handed, becoming less anxious and more
free.
5. Two by Two Jesus sends his friends into mission
‘two by two’. community, koinonia, participation in
the spirit, is the gospel lived. others are invited in to
it. Those first missionaries were instructed not to live
in a ghetto, but to lock their community onto that
of the person of peace, so that there could be what
post-moderns call ‘flow’. missional community is a
key factor in apostolic spirituality.
6. Dependence: prayer and the Holy Spirit Those
who go in mission need to go in deep dependence
upon the Holy spirit. “stay in the city,” said Jesus, “until
you are filled with power from on high” (luke 24:49).
learning dependence often happens through the
wilderness experience, because in the brokenness
and the emptiness of our own lives we learn to lean
on the Beloved (song of songs 8:5).
7. Branded with a message There is ultimately
one message from which all others spring. it informs
and shapes those who go in mission, it burns onto
them, they are branded with it and changed by it.
The message is that Jesus is alive.
8. Robust faith The message is transmitted in word
and in deed. “Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse
the lepers, cast out demons.” (matt 10:8) The deeds
are indicative of a new order. They bring life and
transform communities as well as individuals. They
require confident engagement with the powers of
darkness and are activated by a robust faith.
9. Joyfully serious and seriously joyful The
mission is supremely important. and yet there is a
light-heartedness about those who go in mission.
apostolic spirituality means both serious intent and
joyful detachment. outcomes are left to God.
10. embracing adventure and risk Whereas a
ghetto mentality shrinks people, the adventure of
mission stretches us. The risks of adventure are great,
but the rewards are high. and those who were first
sent out by Jesus discovered that their lives were
never the same again.
Susan Hope’s book, Mission-Shaped Spirituality:
the transforming power of mission, looks at the
attitude of mind required to engage in mission,
through a combination of real-life case studies
and observations from her own experience. It is
published by Church House Publishing.
The Rev Susan Hope
14 yes lent 2009
While in India researching the life of pandita
Ramabai (1858–1922) one of the great Christian
activists of all time, I was surprised to learn
about her daughter, Mano. Mano is invisible
in all accounts of pandita’s story to date, but
it turns out she tirelessly shared her faith with
other girls her age, so much so that they gave
her the nickname, “Missionary Mano”.
i wonder if one day it will dawn on us that babies,
toddlers and children have been some of the most
effective mission partners. i think of the enigmatic
words of psalm 8:2:
from the lips of unweaned infants
and suckling babes you have ordained
praise (strength) to silence the foe and
the avenger.
The world has been undergoing a quiet yet seismic
revolution when it comes to the way we view
children and young people. a useful date to bear
in mind is 1989, when the united nations adopted
the convention on the rights of the child. While
our consciousness regarding women, the poor and
ethnic minorities had shifted, it took time for children
to be seen as fully human, rather than as “human
becomings” or “adults-in-waiting”.
yet, throughout history, children have been agents
of hope and change in movements such as the
abolition of slavery; the fight for civil rights and
spiritual revivals. The recognition of this has led to
further study into the area that’s become known
as “child theology”. The child Theology movement
is an international group that links creatively with
other groups engaged in fields such as godly play,
children’s spirituality and children’s ministry. our eyes
are continually being opened to formerly hidden
insights in the Bible regarding children and mission.
These new insights are impacting mission practice
for children and by children in all five continents.
in Brazil, churches are being planted through
children’s work. in the philippines, cms mission
partners Kate and Tim lee, who started Jigsaw
Kids ministries, are involved in rethinking children’s
ministry and evangelism. The viva network are
actively encouraging children to engage in prayer for
mission, no matter how young. in Kuala lumpur, a
church has started a new school for stateless and
muslim children; now the school’s emphasis on
child theology, godly play and cultural sensitivity is
syourhtnq
as you were: what we can learn about mission spirituality from children?
By Dr keith J White
15 yes lent 2009
helping reform the church’s theology and mission.
This year is also the 30th anniversary of the
international year of the child and it seems a fitting
time to re-discover the place and participation of
children in mission. after all, when his disciples were
having a heated discussion about mission spirituality,
Jesus placed a child in their midst with the injunction:
“unless you change and become like little children,
you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (matt
18:3). How we will view the children among us?
Dr Keith J White is Director of Mill Grove where,
with his wife Ruth, he is responsible for the
residential community caring for children who have
experienced separation and loss. He is former
president of the UK Social Care Association and
Chair of the National Council of Voluntary Child Care
Organisations, and of the Child Theology Movement
and founder of the Christian Child Care Forum.
Further resources
from the author: ‘rediscovering children at the Heart
of mission’ in G miles and J Wright, eds, celebrating
children (paternoster, carlisle 2003); The Bible,
narrative and illustrated (WTl, 2008); caring for
Deprived children, ed, (palgrave macmillan, 1979);
a place for us, editions 1 and 2 (mill Grove, 1981);
“I was shocked to discover the
vital strategic role that
children played in the unfolding
story of God’s saving acts. and everything since
has confirmed the truth of
this insight”
qurhtnl mp
in His image (Tell, 1977); The art of faith (John
Hunt, 1997); children and social exclusion, ed,
(ncvcco, 1999); The Growth of love (Brf
Barnabas, 2008).
marcia Bunge, The child in christian Thought
(eerdmans, 2001); The child in the Bible
(eerdmans, 2008)
margaret saunderson, lights in the Darkness:
planting churches through children’s work in lima’s
shantytowns (Zoe, 2003)
The child Theology movement: www.childtheology.org
fresh understandings of church planting and
formation beginning with babies, children and
toddlers (for example, pepe projects in Brazil):
www.bmsworldmission.org
love to pieces: cms lent resource produced in
conjunction with cms mission partners Kate and Tim
lee with the Jigsaw project in metro manila:
www.cms-uk.org/lent
cms World to rights schools theatre project,
encouraging children to lend their voices for justice:
www.worldtorights.info
children’s engagement in prayer for local, national
and world mission: [email protected]
Dr keith J White
16 yes lent 2009
author David Bosch once said that we are
called to live a spirituality of the road, not
of the balcony.
a spirituality of the road evokes images of
movement, change, journeys, new places,
discovery, and crossing borders. it can also
suggest feelings of weariness and disorientation.
But the idea is that we grow more as participants
than as observers. i personally found this to
be true; it was during my time in uganda that i
began to more fully understand the goodness
of God.
When it comes to a spirituality of the road, we
must ask a couple of questions. one, at what
pace should we travel? should we rush from
point a to point B, ignoring the scenery along the
way? or should we travel at the speed of love, as
Kosuke Koyama suggests in Three mile an Hour
God? Koyama writes:
love has its speed. it is an inner speed. it is a
spiritual speed. it is a different kind of speed
from the technological speed to which we are
accustomed. it is ‘slow’ yet it is lord over all
other speeds since it is the speed of love. it
goes on in the depth of our life, whether we
notice or not, whether we are currently hit by
storm or not, at three miles an hour. it is the
speed we walk and therefore it is the speed
the love of God walks.
Koyama says that Jesus’ pace was not rapid; it
was more like this speed of love. Think of the
journey along the emmaus road and what riches
those followers of Jesus (and all of us since)
would have missed out on had they rushed past
Jesus and ignored him. What is our pace? are
we so busy engaging in mission that the scenery
and relationships pass us by? are we so caught
up in achieving and doing that we do not pause
to engage with the stranger and listen to the
promptings of the Holy spirit? if so, we may as
well be in the balcony.
a second, related, question to ask is, in our rush
to do more ‘important things’, are we missing
out on what Bosch calls the spirituality of the
commonplace?
it’s easy to be captivated by the spectacular, by
wonderful meeting and powerful ministry – we
sing about “more love, more power”– but is
that really what God calls us to? is that really the
experience of most people?
The view from the roadIt’s as you engage in mission that your spiritual life develops, says Dr Cathy Ross
17 yes lent 2009
people underestimate how challenging, yet
rewarding, it is to discover spirituality in daily life.
yet, kingdom life is ordinary life lived in the real
world: in things like earning a living, bringing up a
family, having fun, enjoying parties, building cities,
mourning loved ones, healing sickness, making
music, playing sport, studying and travelling. it’s all
about doing these things to the glory of our creator
and redeemer, and resting in who we are meant to
be in christ.
as we engage in mission wherever we are, i suggest
some characteristics or disciplines that we might
observe in order to develop our spirituality of
the road. They’re disciplines because they take
some effort.
1. Inquirer
ask questions about every facet of life – the political,
the economic, the industrial, the social, the spiritual.
2. learner
We need to learn the culture and subcultures of
where we are. in learning from others, we begin to
learn more about ourselves, what makes us function,
how we can grow and develop. as we learn let us
maintain a self-awareness and practise humility
under God.
3. listener
We must listen to the assumptions behind the words
and worldviews of others and learn to hear Jesus
speaking through them. This will challenge our own
understanding of how God works in the world, which
will in turn deepen our spiritual life.
4. lover
as we learn to love others with patience and
gentleness, we will find our hearts being opened
out and softened. as we grow in christ-like love, our
spiritual life will be enhanced. ask yourself, “How can
i live at the speed of love? What will that look like in
my life?”
5. Disturber
What does it mean to be a disturber? i think it
means questioning the status quo, and engaging
with people who may have very different ideas to
ours. We are inviting others to see Jesus and live
in relationship with him, so this will likely disturb
their lifestyles, relationships and futures. as Ts eliot
expressed in Journey of the magi, the three kings,
those enigmatic wise men, returned to where they
had come from “no longer at ease here, in the old
dispensation, with an alien people clutching their
gods.” once they had seen Jesus, they knew. They
knew this baby, this King of the Jews, was one to
adore. They knew that somehow Jesus changed their
lives. as followers of Jesus, we must allow people to
see another way of living and being.
This will have profound implications for our spiritual
lives. We may indeed be out of synch with the world
in which we live, we may be uncomfortable, and this
will force us to rely on God more.
6. Sign of the end
We are to live as visible signs of hope that God’s
kingdom is reality, that we are living on the frontier
of a new heaven and a new earth, and that will have
profound implications for our spiritual life.
Conclusion: not “how to” but “where to”
you may be surprised that i haven’t yet spoken of
reading the Bible and prayer. yes, we do need God’s
word to nourish us and we need to develop a deep
and ongoing life of prayer, as John Taylor explained in
The Go-Between God: “To live in prayer, therefore,
is to live in the spirit; and to live in the spirit is to live
in christ…. prayer is not something you do; it is a
style of living.” prayer is both our privilege and our
responsibility as we engage in the missio Dei.
a spirituality of the road embraces prayer as an
integral part of the journey. it is not all about living a
life of relentless activism (though this may be part of
it); the end to which we strive ultimately is, as roland
allen has expressed it so beautifully, “the unfolding
of a person” – the revelation of christ. The heart of
mission is communion with christ – daily, constant,
ongoing – through the enabling of the Holy spirit.
further, a spirituality of the road realises that models
and “how to’s” only get us so far. There is no
blueprint, or map or sat nav that contains every turn,
bump or unexpected circumstance. We will have our
challenges and disappointments, our dark nights of
the soul. We will have our feelings of betrayal, and
thoughts that God has left us to struggle on this road
alone. are we willing to face that? is our spiritual life
robust enough to face the heartache and brutalities
of a broken world? as we give up our seats in the
balcony and step out along this road, committed to a
long obedience in the same direction, maybe some
of the above qualities can help us live life in all the
fullness to which Jesus has called us.
Dr Cathy Ross is the
manager of the Crowther
Centre for Mission Education
and JV Taylor Fellow in
Missiology at the University
of Oxford
pain
ting
by D
r. H
e Q
i
18 yes lent 2009
In one arabian peninsula city, an ethiopian
pastor trains every one of his church members
as a missionary. There are 35,000 ethiopians working
in that country; 96 per cent of them are young, female,
domestic workers living on a few dollars a week.
The christians among them, like every other young
ethiopian woman, are hoping to send home a little
money to support their families. They also discover that
God has placed them in a key mission context.
in just 11 months these young women have taken
the Jesus film and arabic new Testaments into 800
homes where they are able to share the film with
children and read the Bible with their mothers. sadly,
these women, who are actively engaged in evangelism
in one of the most closed mission contexts in the
world, will never appear in any statistics of ‘foreign
missionaries’. They will attract little prayer or financial
support from minority world (Western) churches so
concerned to “reach the unreached.”
This is why we need to radically revise our
understanding of who a missionary is in the
contemporary, globalised world. in fact, we also need
to revise much of our mission history in order to take
a much more realistic account of who really have
been the ‘midwives of the gospel’ over the past 2,000
years. samuel escobar writes,
another missionary force is also at work today,
although it does not appear in the records of
missionary activity or the databanks of specialists.
it is the transcultural witnessing for christ that
takes place as people move around as migrants
or refugees, just as in new Testament days….
They are missionaries ‘from below’ who do not
have the power, the prestige, or the money from a
developed nation, and are not part of a missionary
organisation. They are vulnerable in many ways, but
have learnt the art of survival, supported by their
faith in Jesus christ. (The new Global mission,
ivp, 2003)
mission from ‘below’ has always been a highly
significant aspect of christian mission; it becomes more
significant in the 21st century for three reasons.
most christians today are financially poor, politically
marginalised and socially restricted by their gender,
age, or ethnicity.
The increasing prevalence of migration has radically
increased the opportunities for migrant christians to
be effective in cross-cultural mission.
in a world where international travel and
communication are becoming easier, even christians
with very modest financial resources are able to share
the gospel with those without faith in different parts of
the world.
Returning mission to the majorityMark oxbrow explains why we need to radically revise our understanding of who is a missionary
“We need to revise our mission history to take a much more realistic account of who really have been the ‘midwives of the gospel’ over the past two thousand years”
Photo: Jonathan Self/CMS
19 yes lent 2009
The professional vs the voluntary missionary?
although one band of actors might have predominated
or been ‘historically visible’ during particular periods, five
categories of missioners have all engaged in effective
mission side by side. The five groups i identify (although
there are obviously more) are:
refugee evangelists witnessing traders and entrepreneurs monastic communities in mission imperial philanthropists professional missionaries
These five groups can represent some key stages
in christian history. However, they also represent
significant movements in mission that can and do co-
exist within the contemporary church. my contention
here is that the experience of majority world christians
in mission today could help us recover a much
broader understanding of what our missionary God is
doing among and through his people.
reading the accounts of the early church (eg, acts
8:4), it is clear that some of the very first cross-cultural
missionaries were fleeing for their lives. in each century,
faith in Jesus christ has been taught by those fleeing
from persecution, war, ethnic cleansing, famine,
and drought. it seems that those who have known
suffering and found God to be faithful are often the
best evangelists. The challenge for the global christian
community is to discover how we might best support,
equip, and encourage ‘refugee evangelists’ today.
Business as mission has become a popular concept
in recent decades and a way in which those with
entrepreneurial skill and business acumen can
discover their vocation in mission by serving the
holistic needs of communities who lack employment
or faith. The idea of christian business people in
mission, however, is hardly new. in the early centuries
the news of salvation in Jesus was carried along the
silk roads of central asia and into china. nestorian
christians were especially effective at planting
churches while bringing communities the advantages
of international trade.
for many centuries, religious communities carried
the christian faith from village to village, tribe to
tribe, to india, china and beyond. Today, we see the
rise of a new monasticism and renewed interest
in missional communities. in the 18th and 19th
centuries, european empires, rising from the heart
of christendom, brought religiously-motivated
philanthropy (as well as other things considered
destructive and evil). civil servants, ship owners,
and school teachers saw the gospel as part of their
‘civilising’ programme for subject peoples. only in the
last two centuries have we seen the rise of what i call
‘professional missionaries’ who are recruited, trained,
deployed, and financially-supported for a life of full-
time mission.
a new kind of dance
i have rehearsed this mission history because
it is not only Western christians who forget that
refugees, merchants, monks, and civil servants can
be missionaries. addressing the mission community
of the World evangelical alliance in 2006, Duncan
olumbe, director of Kenyan-based mission Together
africa, warned his majority world colleagues of
the dangers of seeking to join the european-
choreographed “power dance”, “imitation dance”,
and “position dance”. in other words, the professional
missionary paradigm has become so pervasive that
even those who have a much stronger missional
rhythm in their spiritual bones feel constrained to do
mission in the european style.
many majority world churches would struggle to
support one traditional, ‘professional’ missionary family,
but how many of their members could be resourced
as refugees, migrants, business women, overseas
students, or traders in cross-cultural mission? olumbe
continues, “i long for a different dance! However, how
can we allow space for the different dancers – african,
asian, european, american, etc – with all their different
rhythms, beats, and paraphernalia?”
olumbe’s question is addressed to mission leaders
in north america and europe, as well as those in
asia, africa, and latin america. While rejoicing in all
that ‘professional’ missionaries continue to achieve
for christ’s kingdom, we need to create space for the
other dancers. This will involve reallocating resources,
for example, to fund the training of the 400,000
filipino christians currently working as migrants around
the world.
This requires partnership on a global scale, where
power relationships are renegotiated and resources are
pooled. my greatest hope is that as the majority world
begins to control the dance tune and discover new
steps and rhythms, that we in the minority world will at
last escape our blinkered professionalisation of mission.
The Rev Canon Mark Oxbrow is the international
coordinator of the Faith2Share network, which brings
together 16 international mission agencies from five
continents to share resources in mission. A slightly
longer version of this article first appeared in the
January 2009 issue of Lausanne World Pulse
(www.lausanneworldpulse.com). Published with permission.
“The challenge for the global Christian
community is to discover how
we might best support, equip, and encourage ‘refugee evangelists’ today”
Crow
ther
Cen
tre
new
s
20 yes lent 2009
7 May, 8pmpublic lecture by Dr atola longkumer
(pending visa)
“religious conversion: re-thinking religious
encounter in modern india.” a survey of
discourse and events in the country
pertaining to conversion, mission and other
dominant religions.
16 May, 10am–3.30pm “Does Faith Work?” Workshop day on the
role of faith in the public space with paul
Woolley from the THeos think-tank.
a series of four workshops on faith in the
school, faith in the Hospital, faith in the prison
and faith in the market. £10 (£8 concessions)
rsvp before 2 may: [email protected] or
28 May, 8pm St Thomas lecture by Dr Joshva Raja
“mission challenges from contemporary india:
‘that they may be one, that the world may know
…’” consideration will be given to such issues
as being a minority, conversion, internal unity
and contribution to development.
11 June, 10am–1pmMission and Mediation in a Consumer
Culture conference with peter Ward
hosted by Jonny Baker and cathy ross.
£5 payable at the door
16 June, 10.30am–3.30pm
“Britain – a Christian Country?”
Faiths, Identity and Insecurity
With richard sudworth and others.
faith to faith, Global connections and
crowther centre.
There will be a small charge.
look out for our forthcoming lectures in
the autumn on Mission in Context, with
Stephen Bevans. This will be a series of four
lectures, using case studies from oxford (both
town and gown).
for more information email
Missiologists in Residence
The crowther centre is looking forward to
hosting two missiologists in residence.
from 17 february to 16 may Dr parush
parushev is with us. He was born in Bulgaria
to an atheist family and became a christian
in 1990. He obtained his first phD in 1977 in
applied mathematics at the Technical university
in st petersburg. He completed his second phD
from fuller Theological seminary in california
in 1996. at fuller, he studied theology, with
specialist interest in christian ethics and moral
philosophy. currently he is the Director of the
institute of systematic study of contextual
Theologies at the international Baptist
Theological seminary in prague.
Dr atola longkumer will be at the crowther
centre for two months, from 25 april (pending
visa). she was born in north-east india, in naga-
land. at the moment she teaches in a school for
theology in Jabalpur. she specialises in mission
studies and the interface of christian mission
with the local naga culture and the multi-
religious culture in india.
Visiting Student
Together with Wycliffe Hall, the crowther centre
has started a programme that aims to invite
students in mission studies, mainly from the
majority world, to oxford for one academic
term. The goals of this programme are to give
the invited student the experience of theology
in a Western university context, and to receive
their input for a better understanding of the
global church.
Vija Herefoss is a young missiologist from
latvia currently living and working in oslo,
norway. from 2007 she has been employed
as a research fellow at the norwegian school
of Theology and is working on her doctoral
thesis, which aims to analyse the challenges
for mission in a post-communist context. Her
interest in missiology is influenced both by her
own experience of coming from a non-christian
background as well as by the need for reflection
on the specific situation of churches in a post-
communist framework.
Raiding the archives
21 yes lent 2009
neXT ISSUe oF yes DUe June ‘09
Forthcoming monographs:
Johan p Velema
a Biblical Basis for
project evaluation
Tim Dakin
christian mission in a
pluralist context: on the
margins and in competition
“Christianity is a religion for all mankind.”it may appear extraordinary to christians today that
this statement had to be made as late as the 19th
century. in fact, this quote, from Henry Brunton’s
Grammar and vocabulary of the susoo language
(1802), caused much controversy.
This book proved groundbreaking in two ways:
firstly, in its linguistic value as one of the earliest
attempts to translate an african tribal language; and
secondly, as a significant contributor to the
re-shaping of mission strategy.
Brunton’s Grammar is the earliest grammar of
a West african language and one of the earliest
grammars for any african language. The susoo
language is spoken by the susu people who live
on the rio pongas in modern day Guinea. Henry
Brunton was a scottish missionary who worked
among the susu people between 1798 and 1799,
when he returned to scotland due to ill-health.
perhaps as important as the susoo grammar
itself is Brunton’s discussion of mission strategy
found in the preface. at the close of the 18th
century, a debate still raged within the context of
colonialism over the necessity of translating tribal
languages. Brunton notes that “some seem to be
of the opinion that barbarous languages ought to
be rooted out, and better ones introduced in their
stead.” in response, Brunton argued strongly that “if
missionaries wish to do any good, they must either
speak the languages of the heathen miraculously…
or they must learn them with great labour.”
Henry Brunton’s Grammar shows the fruit of this
labour and helped shape a mission strategy that
worked with local cultures, languages and traditions
as opposed to against them. The crowther centre
is lucky enough to hold a first edition of Brunton’s
Grammar in its archives and has done so since
it was published by the society for missions to
africa and the east – later called the church mission
society.
James Donaldson is an intern in the CMS
communications team. His recent contributions
include articles for the Unsung Heroes section of
the CMS website.
a few years back, Simon Barrington-Ward,
CMS general secretary 1975–85, chaired a
CMS review on mission spirituality.
it involved wide-ranging discussions
where we sought to discern what was at
the heart of the spirituality that’s fuelled the
cms movement for over two centuries. The
main outcome was a proposal to push ahead with
the possibility of cms being recognised as a mission
community acknowledged by the wider church
(of england).
During an interview given when he opened the
new cms building in oxford, the archbishop of
canterbury was asked about what he saw as the
most important recent developments in the life of
the society. He pointed to a rediscovery “that where
it all comes from is sharing a discipline of prayer, a
real community.” cms, he said, “is first and foremost
a community of christians and ought to be learning
to live together in a disciplined way.”
We’ve been developing the means to enable a
community-wide discipline of prayer, one that
reflects cms mission spirituality. This year we’re
launching cms Daily. This resource for daily prayer
includes a simple liturgy, daily reflections and items
for prayer from cms around the world. as this issue
of yes went to press, about 300 people had agreed
to try out a pilot version on a daily basis for
two months and offer us feedback on
the resource. We will be taking
their comments into
account and hope to
launch a fuller version
of cms Daily later in
the year, as members of
cms re-enrol in the new
combined community of
cms and the south american
mission society (sams).
sams supporters will have an
opportunity to enrol as members.
in the last edition of yes, cms
mission leadership and communities
team leader Jonny Baker reflected on
the importance of networks. This is a
helpful way to understand the spread-out
nature of the cms community — we work
in networks. The key to networks
is participation; for the most part,
people participate on a minimal, but
sustained level. at a recent meeting of
cms managers and directors, Jonny gave the
example of someone who contributes a Wikipedia
entry; Wikipedia relies on often-minimal, but
sustained participation.
The daily discipline of prayer using cms Daily may
only take a few minutes, but it captures the heart of
what it means to be a community that’s participating
in God’s mission. and it’s a very good basis for doing
a lot more.
as we go forward in this journey of discovery and
participation in what it means to be a community
of people in mission, the trustees and senior
management team of cms will need to put a
number of new things in place. some of our
communications will need to be modified. We’ll
learn things from fellow travellers headed in the
same direction, though they may be doing some
things differently.
all in all it’s an exciting time to be putting our
mission spirituality into practice in a new way. it is by
participation in mission that we most keenly explore
the height, depth, breadth and length of the love of
God which is in christ.
See the CMS website for the full interview with the
Archbishop of Canterbury. For more information
about CMS Daily, contact 01865 787400
Recommended Daily dosageBy Tim Dakin, cms general secretary
22 yes lent 2009
23 yes lent 2009
The winter issue of Share, magazine of the
south american mission society (sams), carries
a fascinating story about charles Darwin, which
coincides well with the 150th anniversary of the
publication of The origin of species. Bob lunt, editor
of share, writes:
“not widely known…is that from 1867 Darwin made
an annual subscription to sams funds in recognition
of the society’s work in transforming the lives of the
fuegian indians, the collective name of the tribes
of Tierra del fuego. sams annual reports used to
include names of donors and subscribers and tucked
away in the long list for 1867 is that of ‘charles
Darwin esq., per admiral sulivan’.”
apparently sir James sulivan, a longtime friend of
Darwin, sailed as second lieutenant on the Beagle.
Darwin had initially expressed serious doubts as to
whether the Tierra del fuego mission would do any
good. But by 1870 he changed his mind and sought
election as an honorary member of sams.
Still on the subject of anniversaries, andrew
Walls, one of the foremost mission historians,
has written: “The World missionary conference,
edinburgh 1910, has passed into christian legend.
it was a landmark in the history of mission; the
starting point of the modern theology of mission;
the high point of the modern Western missionary
movement and the point from which it declined; the
launch-pad of the modern ecumenical movement;
the point at which christians first began to glimpse
something of what a world church would be like.”
plans are underway for edinburgh 2010 (2–6 June)
which will celebrate the earlier event and address
the future of mission. cms is involved through Dr
cathy ross of the crowther centre for mission
education, who is helping shape the theme track on
“mission spirituality and authentic Discipleship”. full
information from the edinburgh 2010 website
www.edinburgh2010.org
For a sterling example of mission spirituality
and authentic discipleship in practice look no further
than the testimony of Jean Waddell. as this issue of
yes went to press, we passed the 30-year anniversary
of the release of three cms people in mission, Jean
Waddell with Dr John and audrey coleman, who were
imprisoned in the tumult of the iranian revolution. at
one stage Jean, secretary to the bishop, was shot and
had a close encounter with death. years later Jean
said, “Throughout the troubles of the middle east,
especially the revolution in iran and my wounding
and imprisonment, i was sustained by the continuing
awareness of God’s presence with me. i hope that my
response to these events helped others to seek his
presence in their lives.”
I never cease to be amazed by the variety
of ways cms people live out their day-to-day
discipleship. alison Blenkinsop (nee fookes) once
served in pakistan as a nurse at Bannu christian
Hospital. now in retirement, she devotes lots of
energy toward campaigning to limit damage caused
by inappropriate infant feeding. alison, who bills
herself as an “international Board certified lactation
consultant”, has published fit to Bust (pen press,
£9.99, isBn 978-1-906206-89-5). as anyone who’s
engaged with campaigns against firms promoting
baby formula as better than natural feeding will
appreciate, it’s a serious theme. But the book takes
a light-hearted route with a collection of memorable
poems, songs, cartoons and stories.
by John Martin
“Darwin...changed his
mind and sought election as an honorary
member of SaMS”
on 20 January, cms members recorded their overwhelming support for the plan to merge with sams. for the next few months cms and sams will work in close cooperation, with Henry scriven serving as mission director for south america and Tim Dakin providing overall leadership as general secretary of cms and sams. The new legal entity should be in place towards the end of 2009.
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so do I plant for those who come after me.
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