stopover.ca

Renewal. Whenever the Mission of the church is reduced into caring for the ‘spiritual needs’ of weekend participants, or co-opted into anything less than the beautiful entire renewal that God has in mind, He invites us back to participate in the story He is still authoring.

Spending time in another culture forces us out of our comfortable shorthand, bias and uninformed opinion. As we travel we often find ourselves both learning from the most resourceful people on the planet, as well as finding levels of frustration we had no idea could exist.  Our too simple solutions are proved false.

Cross-cultural partnership often means that failure suddenly exists not simply as a concept but as an actual reality.  Frequently, the beautiful idealization of partnership has been intractably dismantled.  Both parties are angry at the other for diminished expectations and it is normal for people in this circumstance to grieve a little.  Now comes the tough part … are both willing to continue the difficult path of reconciliation?

What began in the initial excitement phase of cross-cultural engagement, has now been stomped by the cruel forces of the rejection phase. It is important to realize that this is the right moment when an true and honest engagement might actually become possible.

If participants are willing to push through into growth, to commit to the hard work reality of cross-cultural relationship and effective partnership – in more than word alone – a truly engaging partnership may emerge.

New people are invited to trust the story of the kingdom.  Others, who have already walked this way, hold their hands out to new-comers as they choose to take their first faltering steps.  The practice of the kingdom becomes natural when the hand-holding and support goes both ways, developing mature partners.  Cultures around the world share the beautiful stories of how the Kingdom of God is relevant anew, as it wrestles in the Kingdom of Caesar, or in the Kingdom of Sudan, or in the Kingdom of Capitalism, or even in the Kingdom of Canada.

Here is the second part of three:

Settling in. The church was born. In time the movement developed systems to transfer their vision, songs and creeds gave language to basic theology, buildings and teachers reinforced the message, slowly the movement became a community and then an institution. The first believers faced anger and mistrust, many were killed, others recanted, some ran. Everyplace they ended up, the followers of Christ would dream dangerous dreams. They dared to ask what the world could look like if everyone made everyday decisions between the kingdom of God or the kingdom of Caesar.

The historical story of this body reveals moments of wild success as well as dramatic failure in their mission, often it happened at the same time. Great social oppression as well as great political acceptance each carried painful compromises. Sometimes the problem was from within, their mission was at times ignored and forgotten, its leaders grasped for power in the name of the kingdom, the church made horrific mistakes, and blamed it on others.

Still it stumbled along, voices from the centre called out to the margins. Power was laid down. Everyday people made the little choices that would reject Caesar and attempt to live the new kind of kingdom. The mission carried on: people believed in the dream of the kingdom enough to act as though it exists, and continue to find others peculiar enough to join the movement. The cycle of passion, settling in, discontent and then renewal continued and still carries the Mission forward.

Discontent. Every generation is newly made aware of how simply the Mission of the Kingdom (and the Church) can be forgotten, or consumed by caring for the needs of the institution. At times the mission gets sidelined and rather than existing as the purpose of the church, it becomes a program of the church. It sits alongside the youth or kids club as a line item on the budget.

When Personal Spiritual Development became the Mission of the church, missions became activity. Noble and Excit!ng opportunities for Western Christians to practice and perfect their personal spiritual growth. In subtle as well as significant ways, Mission can be reduced from inviting others into the kingdom way of Christ, into a tool for pastors to use in promoting lordship development in parish members – the problem may be, that as a tool, it works too well!

It is natural, reasonable and even commendable thing to value and promote the spiritual development and care of people. Yet, while this goal is understandable, Mission as Program does pose a problem.

This “missions for the benefit of me”, has lead to the critique by some that perhaps the majority of recent missions dollars we spend is actually money spent on ourselves. There are legitimate concerns regarding the effectiveness or ethical responsibility of naming this ‘tourism with a purpose’ as the mission of the church.

Is mission really intended to be more for the one going than the one receiving? Some suggest that a trip is 80% for the participant and 20% for the host culture, others suggest an obverse in that relationship with the 80/20 reversed. Some suggest a 50/50 split is more equitable. 60/40?

.

I will get the third and final section up soon.  Any thoughts so far? I love a comment or two …

Mark Crocker

Wow! how the weeks fly by!? I have been very busy writing for the ‘mid-termers’ project, material for individuals planning on heading overseas for less than two years. i am getting close to completing the book, but it has really taken all of my time over the last several weeks. I just noticed how I have neglected this blog. tsk tsk

In any case, I thought I would post my thoughts on the changing purposes of mission, both the historical as well as present realities. This is the first of 3 parts:

———————————————————-

At its core, the mission of Christ was intended to invade the natural order of the universe, a peaceful yet powerful revolution. The dream of Christ was to substitute grace for karma, to stop the cycle of ‘an eye for an eye’, to put an end to giving everyone exactly what he or she deserved.

The essence of the message Jesus that revealed, “the kingdom of God”, surrounded all of life. Jesus taught that every second of the day, humanity is faced with a choice: live according to Caesar, the established order of power, wealth and system; or live the kingdom of God, a seemingly idealistic and naïve version of the world. The choices could not be unified, they oppose one another, and every second of the day, both options stand available to be chosen by anyone.

A new story was being told, at once counter-intuitive, and yet so much more interesting. It confused those who first heard the message, it did not call for the old expected religious piety. Instead Jesus asked his followers to relearn what faith might mean, he called others to join with the poor and oppressed the foreigner and slave. He did not permit people to simply write off others as victims of social stratum, chance, destiny or the gods. Instead Christ asked everyone to take responsibility for that which they were not responsible – one another. Suddenly everyone is my neighbor, not just the person who lives in my home-town, everyone included even the ones with the cult-like beliefs from the next province over.

The message was meant to upset the very structure of society as at the same time it challenged the individual as well as the community. Unscrupulous business practices are tougher with my friend than my enemy. Relationships takes on significance when our partners are to be treated like family rather than mere objects to meet our sexual needs. Power that was usually used to gain friends and influence people was now to be wasted on the hopeless causes of poverty and inequality. It sounded like the loopiest idealism ever considered.

The Mission of the Kingdom was at various times dangerous to politicians, ridiculous to the powerful, unworkable to philosophers and yet still, so very, very compelling. Everyone was invited in; a person only had to be bold enough to believe that acting on the compelling vision of Jesus could actually mean a change in the way of the world. The bar was not set very high for entry, believers were simply asked to attempt to live it out loud. Yet Jesus also knew the stakes, if you followed the rules of the kingdom of Caesar, then all would be well, if instead you began living as though the ‘kingdom of God’ was actual reality you were bound to get into trouble. It would mean crosses in Palestine, torture in Turkey and rubber bullets in Alabama.

After Christ finally co-opted power through the most unlikely of methods – his execution and surprising resurrection, the church accepted that mission. They chose to relearn what faith might mean. To act as though the kingdom was present, they needed to forgive enemies, turn the other cheek, share what was rightfully their own, and trust that God was for everyone, all the world – not just their little ‘blessed’ corner.

Many did empty themselves of years of religious dogma. They relearned what it would mean to believe, they attempted to live it out loud, and somewhere in the very human mess of it all, they found themselves partnered with God to change the natural order of the universe.

part 1/3

I will try to get the second and third sections up this week …

Mark Crocker