Reinventing Christian Mission

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Tom Sine

If you had seen Jalapa in 1989 you wouldn't recognize it today. 'Two million people living on the sides of a precipitous ravine, often muddy, always dangerous. Raw sewage poured down the hillsides into the streams where children played and the poorest built their shacks out of milk cartons. Now the area has been transformed. Electricity, paved streets, piped drinking water, concrete channels for sewers. Hardly a shack to be seen.

Originally Saul and Pilar came to this community to bring good news to the poor and plant an Evangelical church. But they had absolutely no idea of what that good news would be or how God would use their lives to make a difference for God's kingdom. Someone gave them a rubbish tip and Saul prayed over the tip. For three months Saul prayed over the rubbish tip every day for wisdom. God answered those prayers.

One of the leaders of the community volunteered to help Saul and Pilar make a start on their garbage dump and the community pitched in. Slowly a community centre emerged from the rubbish heap that became the centre for the transformation of the entire community. Pilar, working with mothers and children in the community started homework clubs and a range of other children's activities. Saul solicited help from the mayor to secure resources to rebuild this shanty community. Tear Fund England was invited to partner in the project. They not only provided some of the resources for housing construction, they created micro-enterprise projects like producing red-roof tiles to provide income for the unemployed in the community. During this entire time Paul and Pilar held a Bible study in their home. But they resisted sponsoring large evangelistic meetings. They wanted to see their demonstration of God's love touch the people. One day a man who was a chronic drunk had a dramatic conversion experience which God used to break things wide open. The people crowded out their home and they now have a thriving church in the community centre on the former rubbish tip. The centre is called Armonia which is the closest Spanish word to the Hebrew word shalom. Their dream is to see the continuing transformation of the community through the word and deed ministry of Armonia.

Saul said there are three reasons why they work in Jalapa: compassion, obedience and indignation. Compassion for the suffering people, for their needs; obedience to Jesus Christ who has sent us to work among the poor; and indignation, because we get indignant when people created in God's image suffer in this way.'

Defining the focus

Saul and Pilar are among a growing number of our sisters and brothers all over the world who are discovering first hand that God is working through the mustard seed to change our world. God invites all of our communities of faith to become instruments of the shalom purposes of God in a world of growing need.

In this chapter we will argue that we need to radically reinvent how we carry out missions to both more effectively address the challenges of tomorrow's world and to more authentically advance the mustard seed purposes of God. There has been a dramatic growth in short-term missions, more missionaries are being sent by the Church in the Two Thirds World and more churches have been planted among unleashed people groups.

But I find that those active in missions tend to focus on the up side and not deal seriously with either the new challenges ahead or the extent to which we haven't really worked hard enough to define why we do what we do in missions. As a consequence I am afraid that sometimes we get the story wrong and use methods that contradict the faith we claim.

We will begin by going back to the future one last time to highlight some of the new challenges facing Christian missions in a new millennium. Then we will go back to the Bible and work to get our story straight. Finally we will share with you imaginative new ways that Christians all over the world are finding to manifest something of God's mustard seed in response to the mounting challenges of our globalised future.

Back to the future--one last time

This book opened with a ride on the wild side that reminded all of us that we are living in a world changing at blinding speed. Too many of us are also experiencing rides on the wet side because we are not spending enough time paying attention to how both the arenas in which we carry out mission and function as a church are changing.

Ray Bakke, a Christian urban specialist, stresses how important it is to understand the urban context--to 'exegete the city' before we develop missions strategies. What I am advocating is that mission executives, missiologists and leaders in local churches make our best effort to anticipate how the context in which we carry out mission is likely to change in the future--before we strategise.

The physical needs of people in many poorer countries (particularly on the African continent) are likely to increase significantly if the global meltdown spreads. The good news is that the Church in the Two Thirds World will take more leadership in missions and in the worldwide Church in the coming century.

Even if we resume the long boom worldwide, it is clear that many of the world's poorest residents will not benefit if they don't receive help in becoming competitive players in this tough 'new economy'. The forces of globalisation are bringing unprecedented pressures on families and local communities all over the planet.

The pressures of global competition are influencing many of our Western countries to cut back programmers to the poor at home and abroad. As we have seen, we are actually losing ground in the task of world evangelisation to both population growth and McWorld's rapidly expanding borderless youth market which is proving to be much more successful at reaching the hearts and minds of that next generation. So mission organisations need to gear up to do more--much more.

Of critical concern is the growing pressures of Me World for those of us who are part of the Western Church to work longer and consume more. Which means that if we don't find a way to resist this growing pressure we will have less time and money left over to invest in mission. As we have also seen, the Western Church is declining in numbers and giving at a very alarming rate. Particularly concerning is the rapid disappearance of the under-thirty-fives from our churches and the declining discretionary time and money of many of those who stay with the Church.

Therefore my reluctant forecast, if we don't find ways to alter these trends, is that the Church in the West and many mission organisations are likely to have difficulty even sustaining their present levels of mission investment--over the next two decades. The mounting challenges facing us in a global future and the declining capacity of the Western Church to respond deserves much thoughtful discussion and creative action by missiologists, mission executives and practitioners.

Back to the Bible one last time--putting first things first in the Church

Many Western churches are much more highly invested in maintaining a place for worship and nurture for folks inside the building than making a difference in their community or their world.

In fact it is not unusual to find American churches, with big buildings and big budgets, that don't sponsor a single ministry outside their buildings. Pastors in the US often tell me 'that they don't believe doing ministry in the community is the church's responsibility. But it's fine if their members want to volunteer at the local rescue mission or help out at Big Brothers.' In informal sampling I have found that less than 20% of our time or money ever leaves the building in the average American church. I am convinced that our problem of priorities, at its core, is theological. Too many churches have become the protectors of the dominant values of modern culture not their critics.

British theologian, Alister McGrath, brings a very direct word on the dangers of this kind of cultural accommodation. Looking back on Christians who quietly supported the values that were part of Hitler's Germany he states:

We are doing the same thing today, by allowing ourselves and our churches to follow societal norms and values, irrespective of their origins and goals. To allow our ideas and values to become controlled by anything or anyone other than the self-revelations of God in scripture is to adopt an ideology, rather than a theology; it is to become controlled by ideas and values whose origins lie outside the Christian tradition--and potentially to become enslaved to them.

The Church exists not only to meet our spiritual needs and bring us into faith communities, it is also called to help transform our values from those of the culture to those of the kingdom. The Bible reminds us that the Church doesn't exist primarily for itself but for others. We are called on to place mission at the centre of our congregational life as 'resident aliens' who are intended, by God's grace, to be a very rough sample of God's great home-coming celebration. And we are called to share the good news of God's new order in word and deed and by unmasking the values of the dominant culture.

Recovering the theology of first things

Everywhere I work with the Church I find many Christian leaders who act as though all the questions about what it means to be the Church and carry out the mission of the Church have been answered. Now it's just up to us to go out there and do it. I for one am not convinced that all the questions have been answered. I believe that too often we operate from a set of 'immaculate assumptions'. If we ever thoughtfully checked out why we. do what we do we would discover many of us are in serious trouble. And I think we will also discover why mission has been marginalised in many of our churches.

There is a great deal of talk these days among Christian leaders in Britain and North America about revival and the renewal of the Church that sometimes tends to focus us inwardly on ourselves. Wilbert Schenk, a missiologist, wrote a very compelling article in the International Bulletin of Missionary Research arguing that the renewal of the Church and mission are inseparably related.

Authentic renewal of the church cannot be separated from mission; the two are integrally linked. Both arise from the same theological foundation: God's covenant with Abraham was for the blessing of the nations, and this covenant was renewed and reaffirmed in Jesus Christ. The people of God exist because of God's salvific intentions for the nations and the role they are to play in God's mission.

Lesslie Newbigin reminds us that 'The church is not an end in itself. The growth and the prosperity of the church is not the goal of history.' Jesus instead prepared a community to be a 'chosen bearer of the secret of the kingdom ... to embody and announce the reign of God.'  The establishment of God's new order is a fulfilment of the blessing to the nations that  God covenanted with Abraham and Sarah. Newbigin stresses that this is God's initiative and the creator will indeed bring  into being the promised new order through the death and the resurrection of God's chosen one.

Reflecting on the current transition of the Church in North America from a modern to a post-modern culture, George Hunsberger states that we must do much more than 'mere tinkering with long assumed notions about the identity and mission of the church .. . there is a need for reinventing or rediscovering the church.' Building on Newbigin's call for the people of God to 'embody and announce the reign of God', Hunsberger proposes that we reinvent the Church to become missional communities where mission is no longer a programmatic activity but is at the centre of our shared life as a sent community.

The early Celtic Christian community, in the sixth to seventh centuries, understood that to follow Christ they were called into mission and existed as a sent community that stood against the dominant culture of their time. While the Roman Church coming into England from the south was often preoccupied with power and status, the Celtic Church coming down from the north was a community of servants identifying with the poor. They were much more focused on making a difference than making a comfortable existence.

Seeds of hope Planting a seed in Christchurch

In Britain, Australia and New Zealand the churches I have worked with seem to be  more outwardly focused. They typically sponsor several ministries in the community and seem to give a larger share of their total budget to missions. For instance, Spreydon Baptist, in Christchurch, New Zealand is a church that places the biblical call to mission al the centre of congregational life, not at tile margins. 60% of their total budget is invested in mission in their own community and overseas. They sponsor twenty-five thriving ministries lo single-parent mothers, unemployed young people and those on welfare in Christchurch. A very high percentage of their 800 members are involved every week in these ministries.

One of their most creative ministries is called the Kingdom Trust. Essentially the Trust operates very much like a credit union in which those on the margins are given small loans so that they can start small businesses and become self-reliant. However, Spreydon Baptist not only lends the money but also makes available free business consultation. Over the years they have successfully enabled hundreds of people to become self supporting again.

Planting a seed in London

Ichthus Fellowship in London is a mega  church without a building. They rely heavily on home groups and rent a school auditorium once a month so the entire congregation can worship together. This enables them to invest a much greater share of their resources in mission to others. They sponsor a broad spectrum of ministries in London as well as overseas.

Planting a seed in La Puente

Casa de Senor is an unusual church plant that exists as a witness to God's love in La Puente, California. It is a Pentecostal Mennonite church. The church is pastured by two men and two women, all non- salaried. Consuelo Moreno is the minister of prayer. She works at a job from 3pm to 11pm to support her ministry. She arrives at the church early every morning and there is a steady stream of people from the community waiting for her to pray with them. Some are seeking prayer for healing, others for work and still others for discernment. They witness supernatural healings and deliverances which attracts others to this growing congregation. The church runs a sexual abstinence programmer for young people in the community that has been so successful that the local school board is exploring adopting it. The church consists of three houses: one for worship, one for a community education centre and one for transitional housing for those in crisis.

Getting the story straight

Sometimes it is very hard work to get the story straight. Wycliffe translators working with the innuit tribe in Alaska were stumped because they could find no word in the innuit language for 'joy' as they were translating the New Testament. Finally, after weeks of struggle, one of the innuit elders helped them solve their problem. Now the verse in question reads, 'There will be more tail wagging in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine who need no repentance.'

We all need to work a little harder lo make sure we get the story straight. I am concerned because .some of those I have met who are the keenest for mission are, I believe, inadvertently working from the dualistic Christian model I discussed earlier. They are passionately committed to seeing people come lo vital spiritual faith and begin lo change their moral values. But they are oblivious of the need for disciples of Christ lo invite God to change their cultural values.

While Western missionaries have learned lo 'contextualise the gospel' when they go into other cultures they often seem oblivious to the extent to which we bring our own cultural values with us. As a consequence we often wind up unwittingly becoming evangelists for the aspirations and values that power McWorld instead of those that inspire the mustard seed.

Exporting the wrong message The greater problem is that a number of Christians in the West have exported this very narrow spiritual view of the gospel all over the world. Several years ago an American missions organisation was working in a supportive relationship to the indigenous Hainan denomination of 300 churches. The head of this mission organisation, wanting to bless the president of this Baptist denomination, invited him to move into the missionary compound with the missionaries where they would construct a new home for him.

This compound, called the City of Light, was built on a hill above Les Cayes where it was cooled by the trade winds. The some forty missionaries who lived there had homes very much like they would have had back in the States, complete with electricity, stereo head phones and Haitian servants too.

Within three months of the time the president of the Haitian Baptist Church moved into his new American style home in The City of Light, a remarkable change salaried to take place in numbers of Baptist churches all over Haiti. Leadership cut back funding to literacy and community health projects. They then began using these funds to build a house for their pastor like the missionaries and now their president had.

The missionaries had come preaching Jesus with their lips while their lifestyles 'preached' the good news of the American dream. Jonathan Bonk documents how insidiously the affluent lifestyles of missionaries from the West have undermined Christian witness throughout the world in his important book Missions and Money.'  Latin American musicologist, Orlando Costas, indicted the Western Church for exporting a culturally accommodating gospel that calls people to 'a conscience-soothing Jesus, with an unscandalous cross; an other worldly kingdom; a private inwardly, individualistically limited Holy Spirit; a pocket God; a spiritualized Bible' and a Church that escapes the gut issues of society. It has conceived the goal of the gospel as a 'happy' comfortable, successful life. It has made possible 'the "conversion" of men and women without having to make any drastic changes in their lifestyles or world views', guaranteeing [hereby 'the preservation of the status quo and the immobility of the people of God.'

Mission on two tracks

One of the major afflictions of Protestantism, particularly conservative Protestantism, is that we have got the story wrong. At the core of our dualistic faith is the dualistic view of the future we discussed earlier. Too many of us have embraced a view of God's redemptive purposes as the saving of disembodied souls for a non-materialistic future in the clouds. This has inadvertently given rise to a two-track approach to mission all over the world.

One of the most concerning aspects of the Christian dualism model is that it tends to convey the impression that the good news of the gospel only has to do with the narrowly individual, spiritual aspects of personal faith. For instance, in 1996 I was invited, to participate in a panel discussion of the Church's response to the poor at the Call to Renewal Conference, the other panelists included Brian Heir, a Catholic scholar from Harvard, E. f. Dionne, a well-known Catholic author and conservative commentator Cal Thomas.

Cal. Thomas made a forceful statement that illustrates the point I am trying to make. Cal staled, 'I recently interviewed Ralph Reed [then president of the Christian Coalition] and I particularly liked his response to one question I asked him. I asked, "What would happen if every member of the Christian Coalition began to live as their leader commanded them . . . and I am not talking about Pat Robertson?" Reed responded, "Loving their enemies, praying for those that persecuted them, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting those in prison." Cal stressed, "not as an end . . . not as an end . . . but as a means because it gives you an entry to their hearts!' I responded that I was raised in an Evangelical faith that saw salvation in the singularly personal and spiritual terms that Cal had emphasised. But I said that the very call to feed the hungry and visit the prisoner was a part of the vision of the prophet Isaiah that clearly reflected the purposes of God. Scripture teaches that God's redemptive purposes aren't just personal and spiritual. They are corporate and touch every aspect of human life. God's redemptive initiative 'includes the personal transformation we Evangelicals have always emphasised, but the Bible teaches that God also plans to renew a world and create a new community . . . and that is an end and not just a means.' The problem is that this viewpoint is not unique to Cal Thomas.

Beyond two-track mission—recovering the whole gospel for the whole world

This narrowly spiritual approach to the Christian message has inadvertently led to a two-track approach to mission. During the past sixty years there are those who have defined mission as simply proclamation evangelism, personal discipline and church planting. They have planted churches solely concerned with the spiritual needs of the members.

Thirty years ago other Christians who held a broader view of Christian mission went to many of the same communities where church planters had been working and began doing Christian community development projects to help the poor help themselves. World Vision, Tear Fund England, World Concern (who are committed to holistic mission) are a few of dozens of Christian agencies that are all still actively involved in village level development projects. As one travels in Africa, Asia and Latin America one can still find the legacy of this two-track approach lo mission. You will still find churches focusing exclusively on the spiritual needs of their members and an agency like World Vision working in the same community to help primarily meet their economic and physical needs.

When I worked at World Concern, a CEO from a church planting organisation asked me, 'Do you think my organisation should do community development? I responded, 'Absolutely not. Your organisational mission is church planting. But I think you need to plant churches that find ways not only to address the spiritual but also the health care, educational and economic needs of their congregations so that Christian development agencies never have to come to their villages.' I am convinced if we, like Saul and Pilar, could do our mission on a single track the witness for the gospel would be much stronger.

Defining why we do what we do—in search of an integrated approach to mission

To do this we will need to do some really fresh biblical work. A very important conversation has been going on in the Church for the past thirty years regarding the nature of its mission among mainline Protestants, Roman Catholics and Evangelicals. Let me mention a few highlights. For those of us of the Evangelical tradition the Lausanne Covenant 1974 is our touchstone for a new movement into a more integrated single-track approach to mission. [Evangelism and  sociopolitical] involvement are both part of our Christian duty. For both are necessary expressions of our doctrines of God and man, our love for our neighbor and our obedience to Jesus Christ.'

At CRESR 1982 the relationship between evangelism and social responsibility was defined as the relationship between two wings on a bird or two oars in a boat. They were seen as being inseparable. I had the responsibility of organising another conference called Wheaton 1983: The Church in Response to Human Need, where we invited Christian leaders to define our biblical responsibility to the poor.

David Bosch states:

For the first time in an official statement emanating from an international evangelical conference the perennial dichotomy was overcome. Without ascribing priority to either evangelism or social involvement, the Wheaton '83 Statement . . . declared, 'Evil is not only in human hearts but also in social structures . . . The mission of the church includes both the proclamation of the Gospel and its demonstration. We must therefore evangelize, respond to immediate human needs and press for social trans formation.

Evangelical leaders in Britain, like Steve Gaukroger, are much clearer about the unity of our biblical mission than many I have worked with in other parts of the Western Church. Gaukroger writes, 'The Bible consistently describes mission in terms of compassion as well as communication, that is by works as well as words.'

Since the early eighties we seem to have moved into a defector recognition that mission is broader than simply addressing people's spiritual needs. I say defector because this growing consensus doesn't seem to have come out of biblical reflection but simply embracing normative views of mission of the ever-changing Evangelical world view. However, I still run into numbers of people, including those in leadership, who are still pre-Lausanne '74 in their view of mission.

Let me explain. We need to do some fresh thinking about a theology of mission. When World Vision was exploring getting involved in urban mission in the United States, back in the early eighties, Paul Landry asked me to criticise one of their earliest proposals for an urban ministry project in Houston, Texas. The proposal presented strategies for meeting housing needs, economic needs and nutritional needs of an inner-city neighborhood but there was no discussion of the theological assumptions under girding the project. In my response I wrote, 'What if you successfully met all these unmet needs for shelter, financial income and an improved diet in Houston, would the kingdom of God come on earth? Or are we after something more than simply "need meeting"?'

Many Christians, even those who have a more wholistic theology, tend to chronically view mission on two tracks: as individual 'need meeting' and 'soul saving'. Part of the reason we haven't done a very good job of developing an integrated approach to mission is that we haven't spent enough time attempting to define a biblical picture of what God's ultimate purposes are for God's people and God's world.

Consulting with the leadership team of a Christian missions organisation in Britain, I asked the question: 'What are you trying to accomplish in the communities of the poor you work with in terms of a sense of biblical purpose?' The CEO immediately spoke up and said, 'Our organisation works with the poorest of the poor in helping them meet their basic needs and we work in partnership with a number of different agencies in this mission.'

I responded, 'I understand your programmatic goals but what would one village in India look like if you accomplished your sense of what God's purposed are for that community?' He suddenly blurted out, 'My God, we have never" biblically defined what our end game is! We have never biblically defined what we are trying to accomplish in the transformation of a given community!'

Defending why we do what we do—listening to God through Scripture and community

Most churches and mission organisations seldom attempt to do the hard work of biblically defining why they do what they do in mission. Most churches I work with are afflicted by what I call 'chronic randomness', with the men's group going one direction, the women's group another and all holding a potluck supper once a year to celebrate their activities. But no one knows how it all comes together. Churches typically have a mission statement to accompany all their random activity. But it is rare to find a congregation that has developed a mission statement out of Scripture study and then refocused all their activity to reflect that mission statement.

It is even rarer to find Christian organisations that have done the hard biblical work of defining why we do what we do in mission . . . where they have actually drafted an operational theology of mission. I can guarantee that when we work from largely unstated assumptions in our personal lives or organisations, the values of the dominant culture are going to slip in and shape not only what we do but how we do it. And we won't even notice.

Planting a seed by listening to Scripture at Luther Place

Luther Place is a largely white congregation in Washington DC that found itself in an increasingly non-white and needy community. Like many white congregations in that situation it took a vole as to whether to move their church to the all-white suburbs or stay put. To their surprise the vote was to stay put. Before they were perfectly content simply to be a Lutheran Church doing random activities for their members. But if they were going to stay in this community they felt they needed a clear sense of biblical purpose. Members became involved in a very serious study of the Gospels and received what they believed was God's call to their congregation: 'As God is hospitality to us in the bread and the wine of the Eucharist, we feel called to be the hospitality of Christ in this needy community.' They followed up by scrapping a number of their random activities for people inside the building and created a range of new ministries in urban housing and tutoring programmes that were clearly related to their sense of biblical call. You see, not only individual believers and families need biblical mission statements—so do churches.

Planting a seed—listening to Scripture at World Concern

In the mid-eighties I helped World Concern draft their first operational theology of mission. We secured the services of New Testament theologian Eugene Lemcio and Testament scholar Steven Hayner (presently the CEO of Intervarsity Christian Fellowship in the US). The mission statement focused on what they understood to be God's ultimate purpose: To reconcile us in Christ, not only to God, but to one another and to God's good creation through nurturing strong churches. One of the most startling results of making our implicit assumptions explicit was that it changed the mission focus of the organisation.

Before World Concern was content simply to do water projects and health-care projects in Jesus' name. But once we concluded that a major part of God's end game was to develop strong churches that he could use to transform the communities in which they were planted, it changed one facet of World Concern's mission strategy. They funded the development of a curriculum for a Bible school in El Salvador on how to plant churches that seek to address not only the spiritual needs but also the economic, health care and nutritional needs of the community so World Concern would never need to come to those communities to do projects.

Planting a seed—Listening to community in Haiti

Several years before I helped to draft a theology of mission at World Concern, I had the responsibility to initiate a community development project in Haiti. In preparation I invited the team we were sending to Haiti to join me in writing down our biblical assumptions about mission (why we do what we do). One of the assumptions we wrote down was that we affirmed 'that God was alive, well and at work in Haiti before any of the team arrived'. I realised that this principle would be self evident to many people. But the act of writing it down made it explicit and meant we felt compelled to act on it. The first thing our team did on their arrival was to tour the village asking people about their felt needs. They heard people expressing need for tractors, clinics and new buildings—very expensive stuff.

Determined to act on our assumptions that 'God was alive, well and at work' before the team arrived, we created a strategy to find out how God was at work and what kinds of dreams he was stirring up in the hearts of the people. So the team toured the valley a second time asking a very different question: 'What kinds of dreams is God giving you for the future of your family and the future of your community?'

This time the team got a very different response. People told of a strong rivalry and animosity between several families in the community. They believed that God wanted to see their community reconciled. Over 80% of the children were too poor to go to school and God stirred up a dream in many to see all the children able to go school. A number said that the Lord was leading them to pray for the spiritual renewal of their community. The answer to the second question was much more beneficial in helping to focus the direction of the project than the answers to the first- But you see we would never have asked the second question if we hadn't first written down our assumptions about mission.

Bryant Myers, in a comprehensive unpublished manuscript on transformational development, states that transformational development is a 'convergence of stories'. 'The story of the community is joined by the story of the development facilitator and . . . they share a story. God has been and is at work in both stories and God is making an invitation for a better future story. This means the biblical story must become a part of the transformational development process.’

Reinventing mission as though community matters

God's purposes for a new redeemed community is much more than 'soul saving' and 'need meeting' which reflects the individualism of modernity. It is the transformation not only of individual lives but also the quality of relationships of those in this new community.

Mennonite theologian Marlin Miller describes God's end game for the transformation of community as well as individual lives: 'It includes social justice: the protection of widows and orphans, and society's dependents; the struggle against exploitation and oppression; the protection of life and properly.'[14] 'From the disruption of shalom in the Garden of Eden to its tolal renewal in the new Jerusalem, the object of all of God's work is the recovery of shalom in his creation.'

I have found no more compelling imagery of the shalom future of God than that offered us by Richard Foster in his classic Freedom of Simplicity:

This great vision of shalom begins and ends our Bible. In the creation narrative, God brought order out of chaos; in the Apocalypse of John, we have the glorious wholeness of a new heaven and a new earth. The messianic child that is born is the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6). Justice and righteousness and peace are to characterise his unending kingdom (Isaiah 9:7). Central to the dream of shalom is the wonderful vision of all nations streaming to the mountain of the temple of God to be taught his ways and to walk in his paths.

Globalisation and the future of community

While globalisation of the economy is providing growing opportunities for numbers of those on the bottom rungs, it is also homogenising us into one huge McWorld macro culture where everywhere looks like everywhere else. Local cultures, that often reflect more of the values of God's kingdom than the invading global commercial culture are disappearing at an alarming rate. The massive efforts to centralise and globalise the economy are also, as we have seen, increasingly devastating local communities, local economies and the supporting natural environment.

Wendell Berry is very concerned that the globalisation of the economy is increasingly becoming a threat to many local economies and communities all over our planet. He writes: 'The dangers of the ideal of competition are that it neither proposes nor implies any limits. It proposes to simply lower . costs at any cost, and to raise profits at any cost. It does not hesitate at the destruction of the life of a family or of the life of a community.'

What will the long-term costs be to our families and communities of allowing Godzilla-size corporations to swallow farms, shops and the economies of whole communities? Do we really need to trust the future of our families and communities to the magic of the marketplace, the force of globalisation and the centralising appetites of colossus corporations? My Bible tells me that the people of God are not to sit by passively and allow centralised political or economic powers to run rough shod over our families and local communities.

Aren't we called to work actively to see the reign of God established not only in our lives and families but also in our neighbourhoods and local communities?

Mercy Corps is one of a new breed of Christian organisations working to promote the growth of civil society in communities from Lebanon to Honduras. They are committed to developing strong communities in which people have a voice in their own lives and neighborhoods and are reconciled with their neighbors.

Berry insists that the only response we can make to the forces intent on creating a highly centralised global economy is for us to create 'a strong local economy with a strong local culture ... A human community if it is lo last long, must exert a sort of centripetal force, holding local soil and local memory in place.'  I believe that the creator God is already powerfully at work in all our communities seeking lo provide a place to help nurture families and manifest something of the shalom purposes of God's new order.

Titou Paredes is a Christian anthropologist in Peru, who said, 'God is in all cultures both affirming and judging.' I have never seen a mission's project in which there has been any effort to identify the good, the strong and the beautiful of God's new shalom order in that culture and then ask residents in the face of rapid McWorld cultural colonisation and homogenisation which aspects of their culture they want to attempt to augment and preserve. Imagine being involved in mission on a single track working and praying not only for the transformation of lives but of a community as well . . . co-operating with what God has already been doing in our local community.

Planting a seed for community agriculture in Chicago

As we look into the future and see the growing vulnerability that we all face in a McWorld future, it will be essential that we increase our capability for regional and community self-reliance. Wendell Berry states: 'In a healthy community, people will be richer in their neighbors ... in the health and pleasure of neighborhood, than in their bank accounts . . . If you have money to invest, try to invest it locally, both to help the local community and to keep from helping the larger economy that is destroying local communities.'[19] A growing number of agriculture programmes are being started to enable the poor to become more self-reliant in providing their supply of nutritious food. Vegetable gardens are being planted in vacant plots, roof-top tomato patches and backyard beehives are springing up. Some 750 cities have community gardening programmes.

Perhaps one of the most imaginative urban agricultural projects was initiated by Job Ebenezar for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America with the poor in Chicago. The food banks in Chicago received half a ton of tomatoes, aubergines, cucumbers and other vegetables from this project all grown in four shallow pools located on top of a parking garage near the O'Hare International Airport. They are even seriously considering working with the International Heifer Project to raise small livestock including goats and rabbits in the inner city.

Planting a seed in Nicaragua

One of the most interesting models I came across in my research was not a model for community transformation but really for community creation. The AGROS Foundation in Seattle has been raising funds to help the landless poor in Central America to buy land and create new communities on the land. In Nicaragua AGROS has  purchased just under 200 acres of high quality land that will provide the opportunity to create a settlement for fifty landless families. Mario, who is a member of the leadership council for this project, was a contra soldier during the war. As the war ended one of his dying compatriots led him to commit his life to Christ. He in turn led Alejandro, who used to be a Sandinista soldier, to faith. Alejandro is also on this leadership council which is comprised of both Protestants and Catholics. They not only select fifty families but they help them build homes on the land, create the basis for a civil society, schools and literacy programmes and a worship facility that can be used by both Catholic and Evangelical Christians. AGROS has just received an international award from the World Bank, UN and the Inter American Foundation for the creation of one of the most successful anti-poverty programmes in Central America.

Planting a seed in Atlanta

'I think what they have done is absolutely phenomenal,' said Tiger Woods at the Tour Championship at East Lake Golf Course in Atlanta. Woods was talking about a creative project in which people of compassion in Atlanta raised $93 million to restore this aging golf course and the adjacent East Lake Community in which people lived in entrenched poverty. With leadership from Christian urban activist, Bob Lupton, they have built one of the first urban co housing projects complete with a large organic garden to help these urban residents create a community in which residents work together to improve the quality of their life.

Planting a seed for reconciliation in Mississippi

One of the most important elements of working for the transformation of our communities is working for the cause of reconciliation. The miracle in South Africa is a witness to the power of faith to begin the healing process that has so long torn a nation apart. The. Clarion-Ledger, Mississippi's leading newspaper, reports:

The Rev. John Perkins drew applause from both the Legislative Black Caucus and the Conservative Caucus for suggesting how to help Mississippi move beyond its past . . . He suggested law-makers set up something similar to South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission to bring reconciliation between the black and white community in Mississippi. Perkins said a new commission can help the state say, 'We're bringing this to an end, that the war is over and the past is behind us. Now let's see where we go in the future . . . Whites have to overcome their guilt and ask God to forgive them and move forward We blacks have to overcome our blame and slop being victims.’

Planting a seed for reconciliation Down Under

Aboriginal Christians are seeking not only healing at the massacre sites but justice from the Australian government regarding land claims. An Aboriginal Christian writes to other Aboriginal believers:

Oppressors through violence distort reality . . . they put forward the 'narrative of the lie' . . . This lie can only be overcome by a stronger redeeming narrative. If we, together with many other Aboriginal people are going to be 'the Exodus people of God down under' then we have to learn to walk according to another covenant and learn to march to a different drum . . . We are a part of an alternative cosmic story of what God has done and is doing. And it is never dull lo be on the road with Jesus ... I am content lo be on the journey and confident that the creator of this 'precious land under the southern cross' is concerned about all our people and wants all of God's diverse family at the table in God's future.

Planting a seed jar reconciliation in the path of the crusaders

Perhaps one of the most intriguing efforts at reconciliation is the Reconciliation Walk. 27 November, 1995 is the day that marked the nine hundredth anniversary of the call of Christendom to retrieve the holy places from the 'infidels'. This date was selected by Lynn Green and a group comprised largely of European Christians as the date to launch a Reconciliation Walk along the same path the crusaders walked to ask forgiveness of both Jews and Muslims who had been brutalised by the European crusaders.

The reconciliation message they shared with everyone they met in their journey reads:

Nine hundred years ago, our forefathers carried the name of Jesus Christ in battle across the Middle East. Fuelled by fear, greed and hatred they betrayed the name of Christ by conducting themselves in a manner contrary to his wishes and character.

The Crusaders lifted the banner of the cross above your people. By this act they corrupted its true meaning of reconciliation, forgiveness and selfless love. On the anniversary of the first crusade we also carry the name of Christ. We wish to retrace the footsteps of the crusaders in apology for their deeds and in demonstration of the true meaning of the cross. Muslims, Jews and Orthodox Christians have warmly accepted the apologies and embraced those who are coming in the name of the reconciling Christ.

Reinventing Christian stewardship to put first things first

If the Western Church has any hopes of making a serious difference in the lives, families and communities in tomorrow's world we need radically to reinvent how we carry out stewardship in our lives and also our congregations and Christian organisations as well.

Local churches need to teach their members to be whole life stewards. They also need to set new goals to focus more congregational time and money into mission. I urge every congregation to set a goal, like Spreydon Baptist did, of the percentage of time and money they, want to invest in mission and conduct an annual audit to see how you are doing.

As a part of giving much more emphasis to mission 1 urge much more creativity in stewarding staff and church buildings costs. A more relational less bureaucratic approach to congregational life could mean real savings in staff cost. (I am certain that more pastors will need to become bi-vocational in the future.) A number of churches could go for a more decentralised approach, like Ichthus Fellowship, that doesn't require any new construction. Instead of building new facilities some churches are sharing facilities with Seven Day Adventist churches or auction studios.

Church planters need a wake-up call. Most under-thirty-five congregations will not have the resources to build the expensive church buildings my generation erected. Howard Snyder has long urged the American Church to overcome its 'edifice complex'.

Christian organisations will need to create much less cost intensive virtual organisations that rely much less on buildings and paid staff to carry out their mission. We won't be able to afford the top heavy bureaucratic models very far into the twenty-first century with the high executive salaries paid by a number of US-based organisations. We will need to experiment with webbed and networked organisations that are building free and where growing numbers of us work bi-vocationally in ministry.

Essential to the advancement of the purposes of God will be the creation of new partnerships to maximise the use of limited resources. Increasingly the leadership for these partnerships will come from the Church in the Two Thirds World. Christian organisations will also need to learn to create a broad spectrum of partnering relationships with governments, corporations and international organisations like the United Nations.

A wave of the future will be more people-to-people partnerships. Most churches and many Christian organisations could benefit from using the services like those of Interdev to help broker relationships with churches in another part of the world. They also help Christian mission organisations to design collaborative ventures within countries to maximise impact and reduce costs.

Planting a seed at Pecan

When Simon Pellew started Pecan, a Christian ministry to work with the urban poor in London, he took a very different approach to staff compensation. He paid everyone the same modest salary he paid himself. He told me, 'I thought it was a good idea when we started but I think it has turned out to be an even better idea than I anticipated. Because we don't have high administrative salaries we are able to hire more staff and we work together more collegially.'

Planting a seed in old tyres

In the future we will all need to become creative Christian scroungers doing much more with much less. During a creativity workshop in Chicago on urban ministry, I gave participants some creativity assignments. I asked one group to find something that had been thrown away in the city and then to do something with it for the kingdom. They came back with their idea thirty minutes later. I asked, 'What do you have?' They responded, 'Vertical gardening. We plan to collect old tyre casings that you find all over the place in an inner-city community. We will stack the tyres nine tyres high. We will fill the slack of tyres with dirt and plant potato seed in the stack. The potato sprouts will grow out between the tyres. When it is harvest time you simply push over the tyres, pick up the potatoes and sweep up the dirt.' We need this level of creativity as we seek to expand mission to meet the growing needs of the third millennium.

Planting a seed by giving away money

Phil Wall, working with The Salvation Army in Britain, created a new model of fund raising from the parable of the talents. He took all his family's personal savings and asked others in his church to contribute money as they could afford to help raise money to support AIDS orphans in Africa. They put on a banquet in which they presented the plight of the orphans. Instead of asking people to give money to the cause, Phil gave every person there £10 ($15). He said you can take this money and spend it on yourself if you want. Or you can take a list of ideas of ways to invest this money and multiply it to assist these children in Africa. He handed out the list of ideas and gave a deadline for response. He has done this three times and each time he has received more than ten fold the original amount they gave out.

Planting a seed in Brazil

Some conscientious Christian educators have created a new low-cost approach to theological education in Brazil that only costs students $38 a month in tuition. The Serninario Teologico Sul Americano makes every effort to keep costs at an absolute minimum by using church buildings throughout the country for classes and finding teachers who are willing to donate their time to help raise a new generation of leaders who are free to serve God without the burden of debt incurred by college fees. The college even offers doctoral level studies.

This isn't your mum and dad's church any more—a new generation leading the Church into a new millennium

A new generation of leaders are coining on! You will find them planting alternative churches in Glasgow and London, creating new forms of urban ministries in Seattle and Auckland. For example, Simon Chaplin is a twenty-seven-year-old Baptist pastor to the prostitutes and gay community in the red light district of Auckland. He and his family live right in the community where he ministers. You can spot him late at night chatting with his 'parishioners' in his camouflage trousers and red dreadlocks.

God's Spirit is raising up a new generation of deeply committed young men and women who will lead the Church into a new millennium. 'I am particularly impressed by their keen desire to see God use their lives to make a difference in the world. And much of the cutting edge innovation I celebrate in this book is the work of twenty- and thirty-year-olds. Those of us who are older need to pay attention to what God is stirring up through their lives and ministries.

Many churches in Britain are encouraging and mentoring a new generation of leaders. Too often in North America you have to be 40 before you are invited to use your leadership gifts. I urge every church to begin mentoring the young into leadership and take seriously the visions, creative ideas and gifts God has given them.

This post-modern generation is creating a whole new expression of the? Church that is more relational, local, tribal and looks very different from the mega church model of the 90s. They emphasise the creative character of a God of beauty. Growing numbers of these churches are writing their own music and bringing original art and drama into their services. We need to be open not only to encourage a new generation but to learn from their commitment and their creativity.

Planting a seed in Rolling Stone Magazine

One of the most creative ventures in sharing the story to a new generation is the production of a new series by the International Bible Society. Initiated by CEO Paul Chandler who is in his 30s, it is entitled 'Discovering Ancient Wisdom: Practical Words of Insight and Understanding'. The Bible Society has created edited versions of selected Old Testament books like Ecclesiastes and Proverbs plus the teachings of Jesus frank the New Testament in beautifully designed little booklets. They are finding a very responsive market for this 'middle eastern wisdom literature' as IBS has advertised these booklets in Rolling Stone Magazine and various New Age publications.

Planting a seed of hope in Red Square

Intervarsity staff seeking to find new ways to share their faith with a very secular student population at the University of Washington created an imaginative new approach. There is a huge brick quad that students cross on their way to classes called Red Square. These Intervarsity folks wrote the word HOPE in huge thirty-foot chalk letters on the brick. Then they put pieces of chalk down all around the word. Both students and faculty immediately began stopping and used the chalk to write on the brick. Some wrote of their very real struggle with cynicism and despair. One young woman wrote of the hope that a new relationship gave her. A few wrote statements regarding their faith. Others composed verse. Over the course of four hours these young Christians found many opportunities to share both life and faith with their peers.

Planting a seed in Saint Mary's, Ealing

Many of the post-modern young from outside the Church find that our churches aren't just middle classed but middle aged—and they find they don't connect with their generation. Johnny and Jenny Baker were given the opportunity to plant a new post-modern church in an existing church at Saint Mary's Anglican Church in London. They have created an alternative Celtic Christian Sunday evening service in which they are incorporating their own art, music and liturgy. This alternative church has drawn large numbers of young people who never would have shown up for a traditional Anglican service. But they are also finding ways to bring both generations together in common cause.

Planting a seed on the road to Canterbury

Matthew 28:20 reminds us that the great commission is really a call to make disciples, 'teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you'. Teaching them 'to observe everything' didn't just have to do with the spiritual compartment of life but all of life. It is a call to whole life discipleship. But I am persuaded that we not only need to rethink why we do what we do but how we do it. So many of the ways I have seen Western churches practising discipleship seems to reflect more of the modernity lecture model than the rabbinical one.

David Pott invited thirteen students to come to London from different countries for a discipleship training seminar. Previously, these sessions had always taken place in a classroom. But this time David decided to try something different. The thirteen students journeyed together from London to Canterbury—a seventy-mile walk over the course of a week. They journeyed as though they were journeying with Jesus. They read and discussed the teachings of Jesus as they walked together. They gave one another foot rubs and back rubs as they went. In the evenings they would read Pilgrim's Progress about the slough of despondency and all the other barriers that face the pilgrims on their way.

When they began their journey they didn't get on very well together. But as they learned to journey with Jesus they found it improved how they related to each other. When they arrived in Canterbury they imagined they had arrived home to the kingdom of God and concluded the week with a rousing celebration of coming home. I find that a post-modern generation is drawn much more to this kind of a relational, rabbinical model than getting lectured in a box. God is raising up a new generation to lead the Church into a new millennium and we need to be open to their creative leadership.

Welcome to the wedding feast of God!

Let's return to where we began this final chapter—Jalapa, Mexico. You have just entered the community centre that God enabled Saul and Pilar and their church to build on that rubbish tip. Picture the community centre transformed—flooded with white balloons, colourful streamers and ribbons hanging from the ceiling. At the front of the room is an enormous six tier wedding cake. The buffet table is filled with a festive display of dishes provided by the families who are being married. The centre is packed with hundreds of friends, some of whom are standing on tiptoes to see the twenty-eight couples who are being married. There are parents, grandparents and grandchildren all getting married at the same time. Not a few with tears in their eyes.

The Armonia community is conducting this mass wedding for poor couples who have never been able to afford the high costs of legal paperwork and medical certificates plus the costs of a Mexican wedding. As the final prayer is pronounced and the husbands kiss their brides, an enormous cheer goes up from the assembled, a Mexican band starts playing with tremendous energy and the celebrating begins in earnest.

The centrepiece of the great home-coming of God is going to be a huge wedding feast. Listen to Jesus making some last minute changes in the list of invited guests; 'The wedding is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy. Go therefore to the main highways and as many as you find there, invite to the wedding feast' (Matthew 22:2-10). We dare not be among those who miss out. Like those first followers we need not only to commit our lives to God, but like Jesus, also to commit our lives to the purposes of God, giving 'sight to the blind, release to the captives and good news to the poor.'

We are entering a new millennium that is changing at blinding speed. For the Church to faithfully carry out its mission in this world we need leaders who lead with foresight, vision and imagination. We will need leaders who learn to lead with foresight, paying attention to how both the world and the Church are changing. We will need leaders who lead with vision who enable us to find in Scripture an alternative dream to the aspirations that power McWorld. And we will need leaders who enable us to use our imagination to create new ways to advance God's purposes in response to the challenges of tomorrow's world.

As we have seen, globalisation will present us with an array of new opportunities and challenges. I am convinced that if we don't seriously and prayerfully reorder our use of resources in our lives and churches we won't begin to be able to respond lo the new opportunities that God is giving us. We will need [o radically reinvent our lives, churches and mission programmes if we have any intention of engaging the new challenges of a new millennium.

We also need to pay much more attention to the pressures from modern culture to cave into the seductions, idolatries and addictions of McWorld. I am convinced that those pressures are largely responsible for the steady erosion of our investment of time and money in the work of God's kingdom.

At the very centre of our lives God calls us lo a very different dream than the Western dream. It is the dream of a God who invites us home to a world made new. It is an opportunity to flesh out in community with others, by God's grace, something of the hope and celebration of God's great home-coming. And it is an invitation to join sisters and brothers all over the world in allowing God to use our mustard seeds to see his kingdom come in some partial ways now in anticipation of Christ's return when the wedding feast will break out in its fullness. I don't think we have any idea of how God can use our mustard seed to make a difference in a new millennium if we are willing to take the risk of reinventing our lives and congregations to put God's purposes first. Welcome home to the wedding-feast future of God!

Opportunities for those in leadership

The opportunities for Christian leaders are:

1. To make a major effort to reach, church and mentor a new generation in our Western countries, and to challenge them to a radical biblical discipleship in which they place the purposes of the mustard seed before the aspirations of McWorld

2. To challenge all churches to move mission to the centre of congregational life, setting goals for how much total time, prayer and money they plan to invest in mission each year fat home and abroad) and do an annual audit

3. To enable all churches and Christian organisations to do the hard work of writing down their implicit assumptions about why they do what they do. Then to study Scripture and write down a set of biblically based assumptions to provide a springboard to focus mission and create new possibilities

4. To create new ministries that work for the shalom transformation of individuals and also whole communities in order to reflect something of God's purposes

5. To reinvent how we steward resources in our Christian organisations to do more with less

6. To pay attention to the leadership that is being provided by a new generation and find ways to collaborate

7. To create new forms of partnership to maximise impact while reducing costs

8. To create new celebrations of the in-breaking of God's kingdom as we work with those at the margins for the Shalom purposes of God