Since I have been back in Australia, I find myself looking at this country, looking at the church through the eyes of a missionary. I can’t help it and I can’t help wondering what is applicable from those experiences back here in Australia. I have a restlessness in my spirit because I think we have reached an edge place. How we respond to this margin in the next few years will determine whether the Kingdom of God gains or continues loosing significant ground in this country. I have witnessed God working in amazing ways in the two-thirds world. It is time for those missional practices to come home. It is time for them to find local expression in the first world… in countries like Australia.
What impressed me in both Africa & South East Asia is that when you are in a place where the church isn’t, it makes you ask key missional questions. Questions like, ‘How am I prepared to change so I can connect the gospel with these people ?’ and ‘What am I prepared to do so that the Kingdom of God finds a meaningful & powerful expression in this place ?’, even, ‘How can I help people follow Jesus in ways that are natural, vital & life transforming – in both a personal and a communal sense ?’
It has been my observation and my personal experience that answering these questions has always involved a journey. This has been a movement away from what is familiar – a shift towards relearning the world from the perspective of the people I am serving. In both places our success has never been based upon our commitment to and the frequency of our team meetings, it has always involved deeply listening, being present and practically involved in the community.
If people were hungry – we found creative ways to feed them and develop more effective farming methods, if people were suffering from aids, that meant developing programs of support for those afflicted families, if people were troubled by demons, it meant prayer ministry, if people were troubled by their dreams it meant dream interpretation. We were always experimenting. Failing forwards meant persevering with each other – finding ways to celebrate our differences. It meant praying – praying about everything – particularly all the obstacles and the resistance & sickness that seemed to come our way.
Always there is an emphasis on sensitivity, persistence, on generosity openness & intuition. Our weakness was our strength and our vulnerability guaranteed our dependence upon the Spirit of God.
A few weeks ago I was reading a publication from Global Interaction, the missional org. of the Baptist Churches in Australia. They have as their mission statement, ‘Empowering communities to develop their own distinctive ways of following Jesus’. There is something very local and global about that statement that allows for difference and diversity.
Do you also notice there isn’t any mention of building great churches or even finding news ways of attracting people to come to church ?
When the people won’t come into the church, the church must go to the people.
I keep finding myself wondering mischievous thoughts like what would happen if my local church choose a statement like this ? What sort of church or even network of churches might it become if the community became our sanctuary instead of our building ?
