Last week I sat in a cathedral thinking about mission…

It was Holy Trinity Cathedral, in Auckland.  We were there for the ordination into the priesthood of a close friend.  It is a newer building, but still a cavernous space, providing a place where people gather.

Down the sides are all these glass doors, enabling people to see and be seen by the world passing by, while also offering a means for direct entry into the cathedral from outside.  There is a foyer-like space just inside the doors, in which people can mingle, before making their way across to the seats. 

Once seated with everyone, there is an awareness of facing a pulpit in the near-distance and then, in what seemed a long way away, up the front, there is a cross and a table.

 I sat there, taking it all in, thinking about mission…

One thing I’ve noticed with the emerging generations—considering Christians especially here—is that they seem to have a bigger heart for the world than was the case with my generation.  There is an activism, a conscience that animates them.  They are shaped by causes.  They take to the streets.  They engage social media.  Fair Trade.  Climate Change.  Black Lives Matter.  Colonialism.  Gender Inequality.  Poverty.  Biodiversity.  Refugees.  Trafficked Children.  Income Gaps.  It goes on and on.  It can be easy to be critical of this limited focus, almost bubble-like in its intensity, identifying what is lacking in such devotion to a cause, or three.   

Maybe a better approach is to open the doors and welcome them into the mission of God.  Yes, to consider their cause to be one of those doors down the side of the cathedral and focus more on what is right with it, rather than on what is wrong with it.  With doors open and welcome extended, the foyer-like space enables these people to mix and mingle with each other, deepening the understanding of each other’s activism and concerns.

Then it is time to take a seat, gathering now with the wider people of God, most of whom do not share that same devotion to their cause, but all of whom experience their own call enabling them to participate in the mission of God.  It is all a bit awkward to be honest.  Everyone is so different from each other.  There are lots of bubbles in that cavernous space.  But they listen and learn from each other as best they can.  They sit under the word of God together, as ‘the whole counsel of God’ is explored. 

During this time, their cause is thickened and deepened and widened—and reframed, as the word of God challenges them, under the guidance of the Spirit of God in the company of the people of God.  In time the recognition dawns on them that activism alone will not bring the enduring transformation that is desired.  It is not radical enough.  It doesn’t deal with the root causes.  As the exposure to truth grows, so do the seeds of doubt.  “Have I placed too much hope in effecting change through political processes?”  Probably.  “Has my education engineered my worldview in such a way that blindposts have been created?”  Almost certainly.  “Has my sociological analysis of the problem duped me into thinking that the solution is found in a solely sociological answer?”  That is very easy to do. 

As the questions surface, the allure of the distant cross takes hold.  The word of God to which they’ve been listening keeps pointing to it, and now an intrigue draws them, with their cause, on a journey to the front.  There they are confronted by the Christ-event, with a cross to describe it and a table to remember it.  Here is the truly radical solution.  The efficacy of a cause, any cause, is hindered until the epicentre of what is wrong is engaged.  Hearts need to turn, sinful hearts and the evil systems which those hearts build.  This is where the gospel goes to work.  This is what the cross achieves and the table remembers.

Those with a cause return to their seats, with a spring in their step and hope in their hearts.  The diversity doesn’t feel so awkward any more.  Now it feels more like a unity, a oneness of purpose, offering strength, solutions and solidarity to get up and scatter through the same doors from whence they came.

nice chatting

Paul

My mind keeps traveling on, beyond the cathedral…

(i) … to the church which we attended, on the edge of a slum in one of India’s megacities.  The church would need a lot of doors to depict all the possible causes!  They did what they could, but what impacted me so much was the way the pastor was relentless in his focus on the Christ-event, even in that context, as the hope of the world, the truly radical solution.

(ii) … to the paragraph that helped me so much some years ago—in Chris Wright’s Mission of God.  In a similar post (link here), I write more fully about its impact on me.  The ‘ultimacy’ of evangelism, rather than its ‘primacy’.  Afterall, “we can enter the circle of missional response at any point on the circle of human need”.   Here is that paragraph once again:

The language of the ‘priority of evangelism’ implies that the only proper starting point must always be evangelistic proclamation.  Priority means it is the most important, most urgent, thing to be done first, and everything else must take second, third, or fourth place.  But the difficulty with this is that (1) it is not always possible or desirable in the immediate situation, and (2) it does not even reflect the actual practice of Jesus.  Rather, almost any starting point can be appropriate, depending possibly on what is the most pressing or obvious need.  We can enter the circle of missional response at any point on the circle of human need.  But ultimately we must not rest content until we have included within our missional response the wholeness of God’s missional response to the human predicament – and that of course includes the good news of Christ, the cross and resurrection, the forgiveness of sin, the gift of eternal life that is offered to men and women through our witness to the gospel and the hope of God’s new creation.  That is why I speak of ultimacy rather than primacy. Mission may not always begin with evangelism.  But mission that does not ultimately include declaring the Word and the name of Christ, the call to repentance, and faith and obedience has not completed its task. It is defective mission, not holistic mission (318-319).