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This past week, Servants members from all over the world gathered in Manila, Philippines, for our triennial forum: our family reunion.  This message was given by Kristin Jack on the final morning.

I think it is pretty clear to all of us that we have an enormous task on our hands, and that we live in a world of tremendous need, and pain. We know that last night, 800 million people went to sleep, or at least tried to go to sleep, hungry. No doubt many of them did not sleep, because of the dull ache in their bellies, or because of the hardness of the street or the dampness of the dirt that they lay on. And at the same time, we are living in a world where, for example 30% of people in the United States are obese. This is the madness of the world we live in where, in some of the countries we come from, a third of the people are dying of overeating, and in the countries where many of us have gone to, a third of the children are dying of malnutrition.

Statistics tell us that globally over a billion people around the world are living in slums, and even in the developed nations of the rich 1^st world, 54 million people live in slums or on the streets. We live in a world in which nearly every nation and Government are pouring so many of their resources into building weapons of war, instead of building peace, or in extending aid and development to their poorer neighbours. Indeed, it seems that we live in a world more committed to the idea of injustice than to justice, more to wealth for the few than to equality for all, and more to triumphing through violence than triumphing through peace. This too is the madness of the world we live in.

So in response to all this, what are we to do?

Well, those of us in this room have put our hand up and said what we believe must happen,  that some of us need to do what Jesus asks of us, that is: to go, in person, and do life, living incarnationally, right there, among the poor. We have decided that though money and other resources are useful, and though sending Bibles and tracts might be useful too, actually, some-body has got to go, and put arms and legs and hands and feet and lips on the gospel of Jesus. Some-body has got to try and put flesh and blood on all this talk, and all these songs, about the love of God. Somebody has got to try and make it real, and tangible, and touchable for people who are dying.

And so into this context of overwhelming need, we come as this tiny, under-resourced, little band of women and men, and children – that’s all we are. We don’t come with a lot of money, and we don’t come with blueprints or master plans, but we come armed with mustard seeds. Tiny, fragile, vulnerable, easily swallowed up, mustard seeds. And, as the ancient Middle-Eastern books on horticulture tell us, one of the things about mustard seeds is this – once they have taken root, they are the most persistent of all weeds – and they are almost impossible to get rid of. And they just keep spreading. And in a very real sense, we don’t just come bearing seed, but we are the seed. Fragile, vulnerable, trembling, all too human seed. Seeds that Jesus calls to fall into the soil, and to die, in order that we would release life for others. And many of us have arrived here at this forum, feeling very much how fragile we really are.

So, we are a fragile people, wounded healers, a tiny band of mustard seeds. But like persistent weeds, we’re spreading. We are certainly not bigger or stronger than the powers and principalities that oppose us, and oppose God’s Kingdom - but Jesus does not ask us to be bigger, he just asks us to be more persistently loving and more persistently determined than those forces. And what’s more, God has given us a ‘bigger’ vision, which is : “to see the urban poor and their communities transformed by the power of Christ”. And sometimes we are overwhelmed by the size of the need, and we ask with Paul – “who is worthy for such a task?”

But one of the assurances we cling to, is that as we pursue this vision, we too will be transformed, and will become a people whom we have never been before. Remember, when Jesus first called his disciples, he promised - “Follow me, and I will make you into fishers of all mankind”. He will make us into a kind of people we have never been before. He will make us more than we were before. “Lord, make us more than we are!”

But often this process is painful, isn’t it? We are following Jesus, and we are following his way. And the way of Jesus is obedience, obedience unto death on a cross, then waiting in the darkness of a tomb, waiting for the resurrection and the Spirit outpouring to come. And as Craig said on day one, some of us are still at that point of struggling with this whole question of “can I do this, can I do what God is asking me to do?”

And some of us feel like we have been dying, or at least dying to self, and some of us feel like we are waiting, waiting, waiting - in a dark, enclosed space, not sure what will happen next. And some of us have arrived here feeling pretty beat up, although I also know, God has been doing a work of healing and restoration in many lives over the past few days. God does take us to the cross, and to the tomb, and that is always his trajectory and our trajectory – but it is never his intention to leave us there. It is never God’s intention to destroy us, but instead to transform us, and lead us towards the power of the resurrection. Unfortunately, there is no other way for that to happen except by way of the cross.

I shared this with some of you at ILC earlier last week, that this place has strong memories for me. At the first Forum Susan and I attended here in 1998, we arrived broken, empty, and distraught. If not burnt out – then as close to it as you should let yourself get.  We had seen a lot of dreams and hopes crumble. We had watched friends die. We had nursed our best friend in our community as she died from AIDS. Our team was fractured and in conflict. On the last morning of that Forum, at the end of the last song, I broke down and wept, and wept and could not stop for 40 minutes. Waves of despair and failure swept over me. If anyone had asked Susan and I at that point “what was happening in Cambodia”, we could only have answered: “death, brokenness and tears”.

But we returned to N.Z. for several months home leave, and we took Spiritual Directors, and we talked to team building coaches about how we could rebuild our team in Cambodia, and we prayed and rested. And we returned to Cambodia and God turned it all around. He restored our lives. He restored our team. So I can testify to you: Our God is the God of the resurrection, of second and third and 4^th chances. There is hope.

And so, my question is this: in the face of this world’s madness, and its poverty and brokenness, and all this greed and violence and indifference on one hand, on the other, our own smallness and fragility on the other - how on earth can we even start? How on earth can we be involved in this process of “seeing the poor and their communities transformed by the power of Christ?” And how can we do this without being destroyed in the process?

Well, the 1^st thing I want to say to you here and now, and especially to those of you who are just joining teams and going out for the first time, is to repeat loud and clear what Craig said on day one: “We cannot do this on our own.” (Seven crucial words!). It’s impossible. So this morning I want to mention Five things, other than ourselves, that we need if we are going to be able to do this stuff, and see this transformation come about.

Firstly, we need each other. We need to belong to communities and teams of people who are committed to one another’s wellbeing and health and longevity. Teams of people who are learning how to love one another. Teams of people who are committed to living out our 5 values – Grace, Rest, Creativity, Celebration, and Beauty. Because these things are an antidote to the pain and the toxicity of this world’s madness. As Jono and Julie reminded us the other night – in a Godly sense, “it is beauty that will save the world”. And let’s just take a moment to pause, and look around the room, and remember all the reflections and creative installations that we’ve been involved in designing this past week. Just take a minute to reflect on those ones which have been the most life-giving for you, and why. And think about how you can incorporate more of that value into your life and your team’s life in the future.

And this, as we know, is why we send people out in groups of five, rather than as individuals, or ones and two’s. Because we can’t do this alone, and we need each other. There is that African proverb that says “if you want to run fast, run alone; if you want to run long, run together”. And it’s true. But of course, for those of us raised in the oh so individualistic, personal rights, personal space, personal savior, personal everything obsessed west, this is not easy, and we have to help each other learn as we go. We need to raise really high the sense of commitment that we have to one another, and in our teams we need to start thinking of ourselves as covenanted together, thru thick and thin, thru sickness and health, thru harmony and thru conflict, as covenanted communities. And as Charles Ringma reminded us, we have to have the grace to offer each other our gifts, and the grace to receive from others their gifts.

Now the second thing I want to remind us of, is the need to continually search for a deeper and deeper walk with Jesus, the risen Christ. Of course, we take it as a given that when someone joins us, they are a follower of Jesus. But we have been talking this past fortnight about how we can help one another go even deeper. And to this end Daniel from our Southhall community will be coordinating the development and the pulling together of more spiritual formation materials that we can all use to deepen our relationship with God, not just as individuals, but as teams, as we get into rhythms of communal prayer and scripture reading and liturgy and so on. We have also talked this fortnight about raising the expectation for the pre-field preparation people do, in terms of their spiritual formation, and no doubt some of Daniels collation will feed into that too.  And its great that Daniel and some others are taking the lead on this, but we all need to each take responsibility for deepening this in our own lives, and in the lives of our teams.

So, whatever else we do in or outside this mission, we have to keep clinging to Jesus, the source of the love that will not let us go. The Jesus who has overcome death, and sin, and darkness, and oppression, and is risen, and is alive for evermore. This Jesus who promises “I am with you even to the very end of the age”, This Jesus who promises “I will never leave you nor forsake you”, This Jesus about whom it is promised “nothing in all creation, neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither height nor depth, neither present nor future, no nothing, no nothing can ever separate us from his love.”

The third thing I want to mention, is our need to be learning from those who have gone before us in mission. We had a really rich time last week of sitting around and sharing lots of wonderful, encouraging stories of things that had happened and were still happening in the different cities where each of us lived and worked. I hope too, now that finally the book “The Sound of Worlds Colliding” has been printed, this will be another tool for helping us keep alive and learn from our stories. Of course, there are many more stories that will be told and written of in the days to come, from all of you – it’s just that I’m not volunteering to be the one that does it next time!

We also talked at ILC about the importance of having a diversity of ages and stages in our communities, so that we can learn from one another. We need the risk taking, activistic energy of our 20 and 30 year olds. We need our people in their 40’s and 50’s who are exploring more reflective and contemplative ways with Christ, and we need our 40’s, 50’s, 60’s and above who can provide rich, experienced mentoring to others. We need this kind of diversity in our community. And so I am really excited that we have established now this small group of mentors who will work with me, and you, to visit teams and provide pastoral care, strategic thought, and wisdom. And so over the next few weeks and months, you will have the privilege of getting to know Lois, Mark and Cathy, or Hans and Reitje in a much deeper way.

But when we talk about learning from those who have gone before us, we need to reach out even wider and further than our own ranks. We need to have the humility to be learning from fellow missions working amongst the poor. And, we need to be tapping into the long rich spiritual traditions that have preceded us in history. Some here in the Philippines have already been exploring much more deeply the more ‘contemplative’ approach to prayer and liturgy that our Catholic brothers and sisters are especially well known for. Also here in the Philippines, some beautiful exploration is taking place of an eco-spirituality that sees and honours God’s presence in his creation. And some of you have already visited with Rachel and Joshua out at the Tanay farm. In many ways this is a recovery of the deep love of God, and his people, and all creation that Francis of Assisi modeled for us all those centuries ago. Francis lived a life of passionate love for every creature, and every person he encountered. But the reason for that of course, was that Francis was head over heels, deeply, madly, passionately in love with Jesus. And that was because he had come to discover that Jesus was deeply, madly, passionately in love with him! Francis has blazed a trail for us to follow in wholistic mission, he is a part of our heritage, and we need to learn from him. I really do believe that Francis is one of the great cloud of witnesses that surrounds us, cheering us on.

And of course, for so many it has been the example and the inspiration of another Catholic ‘saint’ that has challenged us into mission among the poor. Mother Teresa’s love, service and prayerfulness are surely a template for us. Her saying “we cannot do great things, only small things with great love” has already become a mantra for many of us here.

And there are many of us in our Servants community who are also recovering the deep , historical commitment to peace-making, reconciliation and non-violence that our Ana-Baptist friends, like the Mennonites and the Amish, have recovered for us after the calamitous Romanization of our faith in the 3^rd century AD, ushered in by Constantine. We have rediscovered that active non-violence and peace-making are integral to the gospel.

And because of our commitment to wholism, we are of course also recovering the social-justice stream, that of course was first articulated by the Old Testament prophets, who spoke out against exploitation of the poor, the widow, the orphan and the refugee. We are committed to taking seriously the teachings and the example of Jesus, and his commitment to justice for the poor and oppressed. This Jesus of whom it is written “Here is my servant whom I have chosen the one in whom I delight, I will put my Spirit on him, and he will proclaim justice to the nations. A bruised reed he will not break, a smoldering wick he will not snuff out, till he leads justice to victory, and in his name the nations will put their hope” (Matt 12:18-21).  And in our history, our heritage, we have many wonderful role models to look to, from the likes of the Quakers and the evangelicals like Wilberforce who fought against the evil of slavery and finally defeated it, and brothers like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the pastor who helped smuggle Jews out of Germany, and who refused to allow his church to come under the authority of Hitler – and he paid for that with his life; and in this fight for justice, we have brothers like Martin Luther King Jr, a prophet that God sent to fight against the racism, and hate and indifference and militarism of America – and who paid for it with his life. These too, stand as a great cloud of witnesses, cheering us on.

And then there is, for some of us, even more obviously, the evangelical stream. Those crazy people who believe that the Gospel, the words and the works of Jesus must be proclaimed throughout the world, and those crazy people who continue to long for and labour to see more and more people come to know the love of Jesus in a personal way. We take seriously the command of Jesus to us to go into all the world, making disciples of all nations, baptising them into a relationship with Jesus, and teaching them to obey everything Jesus taught. This too is our heritage, and a stream of life giving water that we dare not forsake. And I know that some of us have at times grown weary with the excesses and the insensitive blunders that have been made in the name of evangelism. But I know we are all agreed here, that this broken, violent, pain-filled world desperately needs Jesus and his teachings, and if we don’t proclaim him, who will? And if we don’t go, who will? And how else will the poor and the rich, the oppressed and the oppressors, those with addictions, those with hearts of stone – how will they be transformed, and be freed, apart from coming to know Jesus? And how will anyone hear, if no one goes, and if no one tells? Well, I know for a fact, that I would not be standing here before you today, and I would not ever have gone to Cambodia, if not for the fact that during my second year at University, somebody had not had the love and the gumption to get beside me, and care for me, and share the gospel of Jesus with me. Up until that time I had been an atheist, and was totally lost and trapped in my own arrogance and confusion. We must not lose our confidence in the power of the gospel, and in the very words of Jesus. As Paul says in the book of Romans “I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for salvation for all who will believe.” In the gospel, in the very words of Jesus, is the power of transformation, for all those who are broken, who are poor, who are oppressed. If we want to see wholistic transformation taking place among our neighbours, among our communities, and in our own lives, we need to be praying for and working for people to come to come to know Jesus.

And of course, I am not talking about the insensitive, heavy handed ramming of information or doctrine down peoples throats. We need to proclaim the gospel in ways that are sensitive, that are gentle, that are respectful, that are contextual, and that make sense to those to whom we go. But woe unto us if we do not proclaim it. My favourite definition of evangelism is simply this: one beggar showing his fellow beggars where it was that he found food. We are all beggars, and we’re all broken people, and so there is never any room for pride or anything less than deep respect and humility towards those we have gone to – and towards their faith or non-faith.  And if we personally don’t feel able or equipped in these areas, we need to be praying people onto our teams who are. Because this is such a big part of what it means to be working for the wholistic transformation. So this is the fourth thing we need to hang onto – confidence in the power of the gospel – confidence in the very words of Jesus - to bring about transformation.

And the 5^th thing I want to remind us that we need, is the power of the Holy Spirit. We cannot do this alone. We so desperately need the Spirit of Jesus that was out poured on Pentecost to empower us to do this stuff. We need every gift and every fruit that we as individuals, and that we as teams, can bring to this task. Otherwise, it’s all just too hard. We need the sense of joy, the sense of enthusiasm, the thirst to worship, the openness to words and pictures and miracles, that the Holy Spirit brings amongst us. And this too is a rich stream of our own heritage that we need to reach back into for constant refreshment. It was Jesus himself who told his first followers not to launch out into mission, and not to leave the city, until the Holy Spirit had fallen on them, and given them the gifts and the power they would need to do that mission. And I know there are many of us here in this room who have been inspired and challenged into mission by stories from people like Jackie Pullinger, breaking bondages over drug addicts in Hong Kong; and a generation before that, David Wilkenson, relying on the power of the Holy Spirit to free people from bondage to gangs and violence in New York. We can’t do this alone, it’s too hard. We need the power, and the gifts, and the fruit of the outpoured Spirit of Jesus in order to do this stuff.

As we have seen, quite beautifully in this past week, these things can flow together, and we can actually have the whole, integrated, package. To recap:

-     We need practices of contemplative, reflective prayer and rhythms to help us become more self aware, and to come to those places of deep yielding, and surrender, and to come courageously face to face with our own brokenness and loneliness.

-     And we need the deep commitment to social justice, and holy anger over all that is wrong in this world, to propel us out to engage with it.

-     And we need our evangelical tradition, and the transforming power of the gospel, Jesus’ very words, in order to see something actually change once we’ve got out there.

-     And we need the empowering that can only come from the Holy Spirit, to release in us new levels of joy, and energy, and giftedness, so that we have something lasting to give this thirsty, broken world, and that will enable us (and those we go to) to last and not burn out while we are doing so.

Finally then: We cannot do this on our own – it’s too hard. And so,

1. We need each other.

2. We need a deeper and deeper walk with Jesus.

3. We need to be learning from those who are older, and those who have gone before us.

4. We need to keep hold of our confidence in the power of the gospel (Jesus’ very words) to bring about transformation; and

5. we need the power of the Holy Spirit.

It’s been a rich, deep fortnight, and I think God has been doing a deep work in many of us I know. And now its time for us to be sent out once more, to be re-commissioned for this task that is so close too being too hard for us to do.