A number of years ago some good friends of ours sensed a call to go overseas as missionaries serving in Africa. As they prepared and then said their tearful farewells at the airport, I sort of imagined that they would be on some sort of permanent high intensity Billy Graham Crusade. Rallies in large halls, lights and powerful sound systems, dapper suits and ties, choirs and bands, powerful appeals, tearful responses followed by mass conversions followed in quick succession by a virtual army of builders constructing steepled chapels with rows of fixed pews, pulpits and carpeted stages across the land!
I was quite startled when I realized that much of their next five years would be spent living in an adobe hut in a far dry desert, learning a difficult dialect and making friends with and caring for a people who would never find their way into my imagined Crusade!
The Message paraphrase describes the coming of Jesus into the world like this: “... The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.” (John 1:14).
We Western Christians are now missionaries in a world every bit as foreign to the vanished era of Christendom. We are no longer running churches amongst people who ‘sort of’ get it but have strayed a little and need to be cajoled back to the faith of their parents.
No, we are missionaries with a message no-one remembers anymore, who need to ‘move into the neighbourhood’ just like our cross cultural missionary cousins do all the time. For them, building a ‘church-building’ or starting a public ‘worship-service’ may well be the very last thing they do – not the first! The missionaries in my story spent most of their time sharing hospitality around meals, listening, chatting, and practically helping out at the point of actual need and opportunity. They couldn’t start with their pre-packaged witnessing program – and never did! Literacy, for them became the core activity. Teaching reading and writing – and sharing of their lives and faith in the midst of that!
As a trickle of people became interested in the way of Jesus – they would meet to talk about the stories of Jesus and show these new followers how to pray – and that little community of faith began to form its own practises, songs, spiritual habits – very, very different to how ‘real’ Christians would do it back ‘home’.
What does that mean for us as 21st Century suburban planters and church-goers?
It means we need to put on a totally different set of glasses as we look at our neighbourhood and plan our church activities!
- Recognise that there are many, many people groups around us, not just one type!
- A one-size congregation and ministry-approach, will not serve all, we need to diversify.
- Our parent churches do not provide helpful templates for many of these social groups.
- We need to move into their neighbourhoods and patiently form real friendship and take real interest in their social life. This will not be where our church friends hang out!
- We can’t really enter several neighbourhoods all at the same time any more than a cross-cultural missionary can live in 2 or 3 villages at the same time. Choose wisely.
- Our ‘neighbourhoods’ are mostly non-geographic. Interest and age groups are more often the neighbourhoods in which people live – each with their own ‘lingo,’ interests, rhythms and stories. Sporting clubs, schools, hobby groups, cultural centres, art groups, retirement villages, shopping strips, music groups, motor vehicle groups and so on are the new neighbourhoods around town. Can you identify those of your ‘tribe’?
- These activities are not an end in themselves, but a catalyst around which a wide web of relationships form. For example, in a girls’ Basketball team, the parents, siblings, boyfriends, former players, coaches and interested schoolmates form the web. It’s not just the 9-10 players, but maybe 40-60 people who connect around the activity. They do so, not just at the courts, but at practise, after-game dessert in cafes, BBQs at family homes and so on. Entry to such a neighbourhood is contingent on being in some way a part of the team or having a significant other who is.
- Usually we will be called to and need to be released to serve in the group that God has given us an affinity for. It takes real time and may require being released from some other church-based activities to make time. You may need to give up running the church Mens’ Breakfasts to really find the time to engage that Model Aeroplane ‘neighbourhood.’ Not just the formal meetings they run, but the broader, more relaxed and personal times they and their families connect.
- Evangelism here is rarely done on a soapbox or pulpit. As mates share about the challenges and joys of life and what’s got them through – they compare notes about what’s important. Not as salespeople, but mildly with a curiosity to learn in turn how the other gets by. These are the conversations that can change both our and others lives!
- ‘Church’ in these settings may never become a Sunday gathering with pews, pulpits and preaching! A chat around a kitchen table where bread is broken, prayers murmured shyly and the Story is read and talked before the group heads off on their bike ride – this may be the sign of the Kingdom in that neighbourhood.
This is something we can all do! Grab a pith-helmet and a cuppa and sit down with your family and small group and plan out how you will start!
