With the focus of my work remaining overseas, I have needed to find ways to re-engage with life here in New Zealand.  Thirty years ago, I developed a course at Laidlaw College, The Gospel in a Post-Christian Society—and so, when Greg Liston asked me to assist with a new course at Laidlaw covering similar terrain (Ngākau Maia: Christian Confidence), I sensed this to be the Lord’s provision.

I asked Greg if I could add a couple of sessions: (a) Voices from Another Time; and (b) Voices from Another Place—guided by the conviction that listening to voices nearby, chronologically and geographically, will never be sufficient.  In the mission task, our now and here needs some then and there.

With Voices from Another Time, the idea is to subvert what CS Lewis called ‘chronological snobbery’, where the latest word is considered to be nearer to the final word than any word that went before.  People tend to ignore times that are distant from their own. Our particular focus is on the time before Constantine turned the Roman Empire into the Holy Roman Empire, launching what has come to be called ‘Christendom’.

With Voices from Another Place, the idea is to subvert what could be called ‘geographical snobbery’, where the proximate word is nearer to the final word than any word from further away.  People tend to ignore places distant from their own.  Our particular focus is on the places beyond what is loosely, and unhelpfully, referred to as ‘the West’—namely, the ‘Majority World’, referring to much of Latin America, Africa and Asia. 

Along the way there has been some imagery loitering in my imagination…

bubbles

Blowing bubbles is fun that never loses its appeal.  Get a thick, soapy film on that mini-hoop and then, with a steady breath blowing through it, watch the stream of bubbles emerge and float away.  There always seems to be enough surface tension to enable the bubbles to keep their shape for longer than we expect.  

The easiest illustration of the bubble-life is found in the media and politics.  As CNN and Fox News reflect on the same current events, they create such different bubbles.  I keep both Apps on my phone and often marvel at each one’s ingenuity with the facts!  When true to their best principles, the political ‘left’ and the ‘right’ can each make a compelling case for their vision of the world.  However, the polarising tends to take over—and a return to their bubbles.  After all, in fearful and uncertain times there is comfort to be found in being surrounded by voices speaking the reassuring echoes of what we already believe—and so favourite authors and publishers, podcasts and websites, are churned out to keep the bubble intact.

As a (very) young pastor, I remember being confounded by the YWAM-bubble.  There was a language, almost a culture, with which I struggled to connect.  Our respective bubbles just bounced off each other, such was the strength of the surface tension in both of them.  On returning to NZ in 2020, I’ve noticed another phenomenon with bubbles.  Bursting, or pricking.  The art of painting an opposing view in its best light and debating with it in a civil manner seems to be gone.  In its place there is this arrogance which pricks.  Paint it in its worst light and ‘cancel’ it.

In training for mission this bouncing and pricking is not the way forward.  But the metaphor is still helpful.  What we need is to be more self-aware about the bubbles which shape us and, in humility, prick them every now and then, by opening our minds to listen to these other voices that we draw into the conversation.  To those ‘reassuring echoes’, let’s add some probing goads—while taking care to follow the wisdom of GK Chesterton all the way home.

Bubbles need to be pricked.  We need other voices, from times and places not our own.

bad air

I am not a sailor.  My interest in the sport only surfaces every four years at the Olympics and on those rare occasions when the rulers of the America’s Cup get their act together and decide on ‘when and where’ the next racing will happen.  One of the phrases that sailing commentators use is ‘dirty air’, or ‘bad air’.  By this they mean that the leading boats in a race can create these wind ‘shadows’ in which the flow of air is blocked to the boats behind them, creating the need for these following boats to ‘tack away’ from this ‘bad air’ in search of a fresher breeze.

In the conversation around mission, one example of ‘bad air’ is Christendom.  A bit like embedding a photo in this blog, Christendom marked the time when Christianity became embedded in Empire.  They each empowered the other.  The Church moved from the sidelines to the center, with a kind of home-field advantage.  While they write entire books on this stuff, here is a simple description of what happened, from Michael Goheen:

The Scottish poet, Robbie Burns, was once provoked to pen a few lines when he saw a louse wandering across the bonnet of a woman in church. Towards the end of the poem, we find these words:

Oh, would some Power give us the gift to see ourselves as others see us. It would from many a blunder free us, and foolish notion. What airs in dress and gait would leave us…

“To see ourselves as others see us.” It is a phrase, and a poem, that I associate with John Hitchen, the principal at Laidlaw College through the 1990s when I was on the faculty.  He loved to quote it—and so it was hammered into me.  I enjoy sports and like to follow the progress of New Zealanders on the global stage.  However, generally speaking, I don’t relish the way the NZ media reports on their progress.  There can be this brashness, or shrillness, probably born in insecurity, that is annoying.  I much prefer to seek out reports that help me see our (sports)people as others see them…

In training people for mission, it is critical that we notice how many crashes are caused by blindspots—many of them related to the syncretisms that bedevil us.  We mingle the worship of the true God with the worship of counterfeit gods.  It is a human habit.  No one is excluded.  My hunch is that ideologies —nay, idolatries—like narcissism and nationalism are now so prevalent, that it is no longer a case of wondering whether we have succumbed, or not—but where it is on the sinful spectrum that we find ourselves. 

The way forward?  Well, one way forward…  You guessed it.  Being attentive to voices from other times and places, trying to ‘see ourselves as others see us’—enabling the blindspot to morph into a mirror.  

Blindspots need to be exposed. We need other voices, from times and places not our own.