But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare (ESV, Jeremiah 29.7).

Seeking the welfare, the shalom, of Aotearoa New Zealand — in this spirit of prayerfulness — seemed to capture my little quest.  At about this time, two things happened.  One was the birth of a grandson, who was named Jeremiah!  The other was an invitation to assist with teaching a new course on the topic loosely referred to as ‘mission to the West’. 

In time, this invitation felt like the hand of God at work.  Almost thirty years ago, I developed a course on The Gospel in a Post-Christian Society.  It was one of life’s long labours!  While an interest in the topic has never left me, the relevance of it has slipped into the background during these years with Langham Preaching, with its focus on the church beyond the West.

Eventually, I said “yes” to the invitation.  God appeared to be in it, offering me a way to “seek the welfare of the city/country where I have sent you into exile”.

And so, through January, I went on a reading blitz to update myself on the topic…

Something fresh and seminal was a high priority.  I wanted to be pushed around — updating old ideas, thinking new thoughts.  In Stefan Paas’ Pilgrims and Priests I found what I was looking for.  Writing out of the Dutch context helped, as it redressed the overreliance in NZ on resources from the US and the UK where Christianity has had such a different profile in society.

Chapter 3 (pp 44-123) was a long (worthwhile) slog through six ways in which ‘churches in the West have responded to the secularization of their societies’ (45) — some of them very close to home and none of them fully adequate.  This lays the foundaton for his thesis, built around ‘pilgrimhood and priesthood’ (174). 

Refreshingly, his tone is not antagonistic towards society.  Nor is he adding burdens to the local church.  If anything, the pressure is lifted, especially for those in smaller, struggling church settings into which this book breathes such hope.

Thirty years ago, Newbigin was all the rage.  It was the elderly “Kiwi Newbigin”, Harold W. Turner, who convened a small ‘think-tank’ which I attended, that got me started in this area…

My own ‘whiff of exile’ is helping me appreciate afresh the way exile fits into the biblical story.  Lee Beach’s The Church in Exile teases open this theme.  After discussing the Bible’s ‘diasporic advice tales’ (65)— Esther, Daniel, Jonah — he travels on to Jesus and ‘the exilic wisdom of 1 Peter’ to provide handles on what it means for the church to be in exile today.  It is such a suggestive metaphor, like Jesus’ elemental metaphors of salt and light, as it takes us right to the heart of our calling: to be immersed in culture, but also ‘to stand apart from it and offer an alternative way of life’ (47).

One of the little irritations from my younger years is with apologetics — or, more specifically, with apologists.  Again and again, my experience was that they tended to be full of truth but empty of grace, in stark contrast with their Lord and Saviour.  Who among us has not done a bit of apologizing for apologists?  Ugh.  It is one thing to love the truth, to articulate it and defend it — it is quite another to do so in a way that loves the unbeliever and commends Jesus to them.

This is what attracted me to the writings of Tim Keller.  Take the first two books of Keller’s which I read.  A love for the unbeliever permeates his book on apologetics, The Reason for God, and his commitment to find pathways to Christ and commend him to his listeners is at the heart of his approach in Preaching.  These have been failings for me and I am so grateful for Keller’s example.

I encountered these next two books on the How to Reach the West Again podcast, emerging from the Redeemer City to City ministry, founded by Keller, and featuring interviews with pastors struggling in the European context.  Keller writes the Foreword each time and this same desire to love and listen to the unbeliever and to commend Jesus to them can be found within their pages.

As is often the case, the subtitle says it all.  Daniel Strange’s Making Faith Magnetic is about ‘five hidden themes our culture can’t stop talking about … and how to connect them to Christ’.  

Once again, this next book feels more sofa, than soap box, as the author tries to engage the ‘doubts and difficulties’ that people in society have today.  In A Place for God, Pete Nicholas accumulates questions people are asking, listening to them ‘from a place of curiosity and a genuine desire for engagement’ (10):