column 1: mission holds clues for shaping the church of the future

i am currently writing a series of six columns for the christian herald sharing some stories on emerging church. i think they just keep the current column online. the current one is actually no 2 - tea for the soul. i'll paste the first one below...

I have been involved in youth ministry for about twenty years. On a pretty regular basis some new fad or trend comes around that is packaged and sold as the latest solution to reaching young people. This month youth cells, next month 24-7, then purpose driven youth ministry and so on. There is nothing inherently wrong with this - many of these things are good - but after a while you can get tired of hearing about the next quick fix…

The thing that opened up a whole new world for me was discovering insights and stories of people who traveled to other cultures to share Christ and had to go  through a process of re-imagining what the gospel might look, feel, sound, smell and taste like in those cultures. This process invariably involved a crisis of realising that what they thought was the 'gospel' was actually a mix of their own cultural stuff along with the story of Christ. They had a whole lot of rethinking to do! One book in particular that grabbed me was the story of a missionary to the Massai, a nomadic tribe in Africa. Rather than following the usual pattern of expecting the tribe to come to the mission compound Vincent Donavon decided to go and meet with the tribe on their turf and share the gospel with them. In the book Donavon reflects on his journey with a wonderful quote about how his insights might relate to working with young people…

Do not call them back to where they were and do not try to call them to where you are, beautiful as that place may seem to you. You must have the courage to go with them to a place that neither you nor they been before.

My hunch is that mission holds the clues to shaping the church of the future. Insights from cross-cultural mission will help us do ministry in our own cities, communities and networks. This is particularly so at the present moment because of the cultural changes taking place all around us, and because the church has unwittingly found herself caught in some sort of time warp. Joining the Church Mission Society for me has felt like a sort of homecoming - I am excited at the prospect of mining a wealth of expertise that can fuel mission amongst youth and in the emerging church. In these columns I will particularly focus on emerging church and share stories from mission around the world to try and tease out some of what God might be up to and beckoning us to join in with.

Comments

[Bob C]

in this, emergent brand would be lipton, with alt.worship being chai

then again, maybe we are all lentils ?

[tony sheng]

Your ideas so resonate with me. I've been a volunteer youthworker for about 15 years and had a major paradigm shift after I took the Perspectives course. The course focused on World Missions, versus anything to do with youth ministry. Same kind of thing - thinking about mission and culture brought into focus stuff about youth ministry. The studies in the course changed everything I thought about youth ministry beforehand.
Great post! Looking forward to those articles.

[lillylewinl]

thanks jonny!
i heartily agree that due to cultural shifting, we must get out and relearn just where folks really are...not just create stuff we "think"folks will like...and getting out of the building and going where people are, not expecting folks to come to us...even if we are creating stuff that is way outside the regular church box!
trying to work out coming to colorado...
tell jenny and steve hi from the lewin clan. lilly

[jonny]

thanks guys... lilly be great if you could be in colorado :-)

[Phil]

That Vincent Donavan quote has really stuck with me over the past couple of years, pretty much since you quoted it to us at CYM.

The thing that just struck me about it, literally just as I was reading it on here again, was the bit about having courage.

I'm currently feeling a bit directionless in my youth work - possibly in life as well but thats a whole other thing - maybe I need to reflect on the idea of having courage to step out and take those risks. Maybe I just need to get off my ass and do it.

[durb]

As a long time youth worker I would agree with your observations (although I do like "Purpose Driven Youth"...as I feel it provides a good framework with a lot of flexibility). I meet monthly with a group of mission represntatives, mission pastors, and missionaries, and I find I learn a great deal from interacting with them that applies to youth ministry. It's also encouraging to learn about the creative ways people find to share the gospel.

[Richard Passmore]

Great to see, Donovan coming back around. I posted the extract from Off the beaten track exploring the quote and tacking a bit more the other day, if your interested.

[D. Goodmanson]

Thanks for this quote, "Insights from cross-cultural mission will help us do ministry in our own cities, communities and networks." It reminds me of the impact Newbigin had when he returned from cross-cultural mission. I pray that many of us can strip the cultural traditional backage of church and be the church.