With my responsibilites for developing and coordinating our church's work in the community here in Hull, I'm always interested in finding out what other churches are doing. This video was encouraging, with some brief snapshots of a few churches across the north of England working on different projects to reach out to their communities. We run a debt counselling service here, although we work with Community Money Advice. We're also working on starting up English classes. I have also tossed around the idea of something like a drop-in centre to help those who are looking for employment, given the economic situation in Hull.
These initatives are exciting. What sorts of things are your churches doing in your communities?
There are quite a lot of incredible images being posted online from the riots in London over the past few nights, like this one of a burning bus. It is hard to believe that these riots are really happening just a couple of hundred miles south of here. In some ways, it is hard to get your head around this, to see people setting random cars on fire, throwing things at store windows, huge numbers of police in riot gear rushing to restrain people hurling bricks at them.
But here we are. As I have been following the events unfold on Twitter, a lot of the blame seems to be focused on policies the Conservatives have implemented. I am certainly not an authority on the political scene in the UK, but these kinds of blanket accusations are never helpful, nor are they accurate, because of the complexity of the situations. Certainly, the economic conditions in Britain right now are not good, but if terrorizing your community is is how you voice your protest to the situation, the issue goes far deeper than your frustration over not having work. This is symptomatic of significant cultural and social problems, and they are just coming to the fore in an ugly way.
This blog is not usually a forum for commenting on current events, but since this is so close to home, there are a few things I think are worth discussing. In the first place, I don't think you can properly understand the situation without recognising that at the core, human beings are religious beings. Everything we do is either in service to God, or to an idol. The events transpiring in London are fundamentally spiritual in nature. Some people have observed that the youths who are organising and leading a lot of the rioting are laughing and seem to think of this as something of a cheap thrill. In reality, though, it is reflective of the idolatry of their hearts. This is, ultimately, an act of worship in service to the false gods they devote themselves to.
James K.A. Smith, in his excellent book, Desiring the Kingdom, puts forth the idea that human beings are primarily directed to act according to what they love or desire. We do what we do because of what we love, and because we are oriented toward a vision of human flourishing. The problem comes when our ultimate love is reserved for anything but God. We then serve idols and pledge ourselves to distorted ideas of what it means to be human. And so, while the situation in London right now might be allieviated presently by means of significant police presence, and in the future by means of different economic policies, these will never get to the root of the problem. We are not really addressing the issue if we are not addressing the underlying problem of sin and idolatry.
Secondly, and pertinently, the church needs to speak into this situation because these sorts of events testify to the ongoing battle that rages for the heart of the city. We have a tendency in the modern West to avoid talk of the spiritual and the supernatural, but we cannot deny and must not ignore that cities are prime targets for the forces of evil. In the face of this, we need to loudly proclaim the good news of the Kingdom of God, sharing the love of Jesus, and embodying the true justice, peace and freedom that come from acknowledging his Lordship over all of life. It is in worshiping and serving the risen Christ that human beings find their true worth and dignity. The rioting in London testifies to the despair of a generation that is searching and longing for these things. Local churches in the city right now need to seize on to the opportunity to bring hope into a desperate situation.
As the evening draws near again, and the people in London continue to deal with the unrest caused by the riots and the fear of what another night might bring, the collect for Aid against all Perils from the Evening Prayer service in the Book of Common Prayer is fitting:
Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord; and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night; for the love of thy only Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.
To modern society's credit, it has become increasingly popular to talk about injustice and to try and find ways to fight against and eradicate oppression. Strategies and methods for tackling these various problems vary, as does their effectiveness. One important thing to understand is that most injustices are not isolated things, but are symptoms of deeper problems.
Poverty is a particular concern of many people today. As I mentioned in my last post, a lot of proposed solutions to the problem of poverty are limited to the distribution of material goods, such as money and food. But, we need to understand, as Harvie Conn and Manuel Ortiz argue in Urban Ministry: The Kingdom, the City, and the People of God, that 'injustice and oppression are at the root of most poverty in this world' (p. 328). That is, there are systems and structures in our societies and cultures that are unjust, and that are a direct cause of problems like poverty.
When we understand the poor to be people who do not have enough food or enough clothes or enough money, our solutions will aim at alieviating those immediate problems. However, we need to have a broader understanding of the poor, and the Old Testament can help develop this. In their book, Cities: Missions' New Frontier, Roger Greenway and Timothy Monsma write, 'A careful examination of the Hebrew words translated "poor" reveals a much wider meaning than we might have expected. The poor are those who are forced into submission, reduced to subservience – the oppressed and the violated' (p. 173).
You cannot read the Bible, even cursorily, without noticing the frequent repetition of the command to care for the poor. God has always entrusted his people with this responsibility. Society in the time of Old Testament Israel, when they lived according to God's law, was the epitome of justice, a society free from the structures that oppressed people. The same could not be said of the pagan nations surrounding Israel, whose autocratic rulers demanded total obedience from their subjects and subjected them to endless tyranny. Yahweh demanded total fidelity as well, but in submitting to his rule of love, humanity flourished. And Israel was charged with embodying this rule of love toward everyone who lived within her borders.
As the church, this will help us begin to think about how to deal with poverty in our communities and cities. As we work in our neighbourhoodsand seek to bring shalom to the city, we must remember that bearing witness to the rule of Christ over all of life involves a committment to 'act justly and love mercy' (Micah 6:8). We want people to acknowledge Jesus as their Lord, but that mission involves more than just addressing their hearts. That is certainly a major part of it, but it goes hand in hand with embodying an alternative reality that reflects the love of Jesus and that manifests itself when we fully submit to our King.
Doing this will bring us into direct confrontation with the economic, political, and religious systems that govern our communities and cities. However, as Robert Linthicum has said, 'If the church does not deal with the systems and structures of evil in the city, then it will not effectively transform the lives of that city's individuals' (Empowering the Poor, p. 11). Viv Grigg, who has spent many years living in the slums and among the poor of cities like Manila, Calcutta, São Paulo, and Los Angeles, says,
The cause of the poverty of the slums has to do not only with the spiritual condition of the slum dweller and the lack of resources among the poor. It has to do also with oppression and the political and economic structures of society that operate in favour of the rich. Holistic ministry cannot avoid confronting the principalities and powers that perverty and corrupt the structures of society in ways that bring abundance to the few and grinding poverty to the many... If the poverty of your squatter area is caused by oppression, the pastoral response will involve actions that may conflict with the interests of those who oppress (Cry of the Urban Poor, pp. 176-178).
When we arrive in Hull in July, one of the projects I will be working on is a programme that St John's has begun to set up to help people in Hull deal with the problem of debt. The unemployment rate in Hull is very high, as is the number of people who fall below the poverty line. There is a lot of work to be done on this front.
Melvin Tinker, the vicar at St John's, pointed me to this video yesterday. It gives a good picture of the situation in Hull and talks about some of the encouraging initiatives that have been started to address the problems there. The video is a promotion for Poverty Sunday, to make people aware both of the need and of how they can support efforts to alleviate poverty in Hull. You can find out more about the Church Urban Fund by visiting their website.
Acts 2:42-47 is a favourite passage of those who like to talk about an ideal of what the church should be like, and for good reason – we have in these few verses one of the clearest biblical pictures of a vibrant, living, and active church. Mike Goheen and Craig Bartholomew, in their book, The Drama of Scripture, discuss the marks of the early church in this passage:
As Luke describes the young church, it has three defining qualities. The first is devotion: this new community devotes itself to the apostles' teaching, fellowship, the breaking of bread, and prayer so that they might more and more experience the life of the kingdom (2:42). The church's second defining quality is that the life of Christ in manifested both in the lives of individual members and in the life of the community considered as a whole. The church is thus known by convincing signs of God's saving power within it (2:43), by justice and mercy in its communal relations (2:44-45), by joyful conviviality (2:46), and by worship (2:47). Third, as the liberating life of the kingdom becomes more and more evident in the church, we hear that the exalted Lord "[adds] to their number daily those who are being saved" (2:47). This too fulfills the Old Testament prophecies about God's kingdom. The prophets pictures the drawing power of a renewed Israel (Isaiah 60:2-3; Zechariah 8:20-23): "A decisive element of the prophetic conception of the pilgrimage of the nations to Zion is that the Gentiles, fascinated by the salvation visible in Israel, are driven of their own accord to the people of God. They do not become believers as a result of missionary activity; rather, the fascination emitted by the people of God draws them close." This newly formed community of the early church is attractive to outsiders. The life of the believing community radiates the light of the kingdom and thus draws people from darkness (cf. Ephesians 5:8; 1 Peter 2:9).
We have here a church which understands that the gospel is about more than just saving souls, and is more than just a belief one needs to hold in order to guarantee eternal life. The gospel is an announcement that in the person of Jesus Christ, the Kingdom of God has come. The gospel calls people to be members of this Kingdom, to serve King Jesus, and to have their whole beings transformed by the power of the risen Christ. The church, believing this message, begins to embody a new reality that testifies in word and bears witness in deed to the rule and lordship of Christ over all of creation. By its words and deeds the church then invites people to an encounter with the Kingdom of God and the true freedom, justice, and peace that comes through the rule of the sovereign Lord, in order that they too might confess that Jesus is Lord and be baptised into this new life.
Chris Wright, a leading missiologist and International Director for the Langham Partnership International, gave this excellent talk at the Third Lausanne Congress in Cape Town this week. The blurb on the website says, "[Wright] challenges the people of God to confront the idols of power and pride, popularity and success, and wealth and greed. He calls the Church to repentance and simplicity." You must find 23 minutes to watch this.
We have just begun to read John Stott's little book, The Living Church, together as a staff team at our church. In the first chapter, he writes about some of the defining marks of the early church as recorded in Acts 2:42-47, one of which was a strong committment to evangelism.
The fervor the early church manifested in fulfilling its mission to be witnesses to the gospel of Jesus Christ is no secret, and Stott highlights the fact that the Lord blessed their efforts by "adding to their number daily those who were being saved" (Acts 2:47). He notes that "those early Christians did not regard evangelism as an occasional activity...[but] their witness was as continuous as their worship" (32).
Part of the reason they devoted themselves wholeheartedly to this task was because they had this eager expectation that the Spirit was actively at work drawing people to himself and believed that they were his instruments to gather the people of God from every nation, tribe, and language. They were animated by the conviction that if they faithfully proclaimed the gospel of Jesus Christ, they would see their efforts bearing fruit by the power of the Spirit.
In the West as we continue to witness the rapid decline of Christianity, it is easy to lose hope in ever seeing this kind of result in our day. And our disillusionment plays a part in leading us to neglect our call to bear witness to the risen Lord. We also lose confidence in work of the Spirit, and in some instances, may even be tempted to think that the Spirit has left the church. As a result, we turn to devising all kinds of plans and methods and programs to get people to come into our churches, and hope that in the process, the Spirit comes back.
But the Spirit already came at Pentecost, and the reality is that he has not left the church! We can rejoice in this truth, and root ourselves in the knowledge that he is always with us. Jesus promised in Matthew 16:18 that he will build his church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. We are living in a time where most of his work to build his church seems to be going on in other parts of the world, but the staggering growth of the church around the world alone should remind us how amazing the work of the Spirit can be.
Let us recover the eager expectation that characterized the early church and pray that God would work powerfully through us to gather his people to himself.
The denomination I am currently affiliated with, the Presbyterian Church in America, has been holding its annual General Assembly this week in Nashville. This is always an important time for the denomination, as the leaders of our churches gather together to discuss the future of the denomination and how the churches can continue to remain committed to the shared mission of being "faithful to the Scriptures, true to the Reformed faith, and obedient to the Great Commission."
Due to my schedule, I haven't been able to follow the assembly as closely this year as I was last year, but I tuned in for a little while last night. As they were deliberating on different matters, I was reminded of a something I read in The House Where God Lives, a book on ecclesiology by Canadian theologian, Gary Badcock, published toward the end of last year. What he says here is worth thinking about as meetings like the PCA's General Assembly happen. Consider this:
'I believe in the church.' In this confession of Christian faith there are, ultimately, grounds for hope. The church is what it is not because of some program, system of thought, or pattern of practice. It is what it is, in the final analysis, because God graciously chooses to deal with us as sinful creatures. As a result, the church is more than a hollow shell in which humans think theological thoughts, dream religious and moral dreams, and do good deeds. Hence neither the existence nor the renewal of the church is strictly our task; this is just as well, because on account of our half-formed thinking, our sloth, and our disobedience, the church in itself is bound to be a disappointment. God is able to renew the church, but this is entirely despite the fact of its limitations and sinfulness, despite its wrong-headedness and outright lies at times, rather than because of any inherent holiness or wisdom it possesses. Therefore, the renewal of the church does not even depend on an ecclesiology; in the end, even the theologian who labors to say as much must fall silent, give thanks, and pray.
What is absolutely required here is neither a theology nor a strategy but what [we may call] 'God's lightning,' the free action of God that strikes unexpectedly, in ways that surpass what we can ask and in the end is totally independent of our answers or our imaginings. For the renewal of the church takes place as God reaches out in power, truth, and love by his Word and Spirit, so that God himself comes to us – God, the unutterable one who transcends all our theological systems and stratagems alike, the one who judges all things and who makes all things new. The renewal of the church, though a goal toward which we can surely work and concerning which we can think, is ultimately something for which we must pray and wait. This is what I intend when I speak of the church as 'the house where God lives,' that is, affirming what is sufficient for our needs in this age and in all ages, and affirming what is finally the one great theme of ecclesiology as a question of Christian doctrine (337).
By no means, of course, is this a call for us to sit idly by and wait for God to work. Indeed, the work of meetings such as General Assembly is very important for the life of the church. But what Badcock wants us to realize here is that while our work is important, in the end it is nothing if God is not in it. When we stop and think about it this is perhaps an obvious truth, but in our day to day work it is easy to let something so simple – despite it being so crucial – slip from our minds.
To that end, let us continually be in prayer for the Spirit to be at work in our churches bringing life and renewal as we strive to be faithful to the one who called us, and as we labor in our mission to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ. To him be the glory forever.
