Bespoke Faith Conversations

Well over 100 years of industrialisation has conditioned us to think in terms of systems and easily repeatable processes. In short we think everything can be 'shrink-wrapped'. This has affected the way we think about helping people towards faith in Jesus through our conversations: we assume there must be some system, a shrink-wrapped off-the-shelf package that will get any person over the line of faith. Christians believe that if we can just learn approach X or technique Y, then all will fall into place in our evangelism.

The reality of course is not so straight-forward. Each person is an individual with their own story-so-far, their own unique background & formation that affects their thinking, and thus their own path. A package that worked so well for one person simply may not be the right thing for someone else.

The available courses for helping people discover Christian faith have their place, and have been useful for some decades now ... but we should also realise the need for bespoke faith conversations - dialogue that listens to the person and tailors the approach to make a truly spiritual conversation for them.

Fortunately the gospel accounts give us a great examples of Jesus taking the bespoke route. Take John chapter 3 and 4 for example. In chapter 3 he is met by Nicodemus, a Jewish Pharisee coming with a readiness to explore. Jesus challenges him with the difference between 'head knowledge' and 'heart knowledge', the need to not simply be religious but to be spiritually re-born. Then in chapter 4 he has another 1 to 1 conversation - this time with a Samaritan woman. Again Jesus challenges, but on a completely different approach - the provision of abundant spiritual resources that He can give, that can include her.

What would have happened if Jesus had just one fixed programme of episodes that he used in strict lock-step with each person?

In both cases Jesus raised the conversation from the physical up to the spiritual, and asserted how He is connected to the spiritual in a way never known before. But the starting points and the way the conversations panned out were totally different - Jesus took a bespoke approach for each.

Each needed acute attention to who the person in front of him was - their back-story, their already acquired knowledge and expectations. Those starting points weren't to be ignored, or simply run over by some 'believe-this-truth' steam roller. No - Jesus took them as genuine in their own right, but nevertheless bases from which He could challenge. The challenge was suited to the person, cast uniquely for them to (potentially) respond to.

We need to learn to do the same ... which is why putting listening ahead of our temptation to download is so important. A double-listening: to the person and to the Spirit will prove a potent combination, since it will enable us to journey with the person right from their own starting point. The Discovery Bible Study approach for those who are willing to sit down and explore then proves useful compared to a set course, because you have the freedom to choose which passages you think best fits the person's starting point and progress.

Of course bespoke approaches are more costly and resource intensive (just like in physical manufacturing) ... but the eventual quality and elegance is so much higher. Can the church afford this cost? Yes, if every believer is willing to make themselves available for the unique conversations that God can put in their path.

False False Gods

A few weeks ago I came across this article in The Telegraph slamming the so-called 'managerial class' supposedly running the church of England. Among other things the author was bemoaning the loss of traditional church choirs, but citing that as the result of (in the author's assessment) more troubling and deeper issues in the organisation.

Personally I am not so worried about arguments about choirs, or music styles in churches, or even debates about how churches are run. What caught my attention was an astounding statement in the very last sentence of the article: "Thanks to the false god of 'outreach', the Church of England is severing them".

I have never heard 'outreach' asserted as a false god before! As someone who has spent the last 20 years advocating "Misseo Dei" - God who is intrinsically reaching out on mission - I guess I find this assertion as the ultimate false statement. My critique of many a church (and many a individual believer) is not having a proper and holistic appreciation of Misseo Dei and the implications for the church and for us. The Mission aspect (and hence outreach) is all too frequently an 'add on', rather understood centrally in the reason & purpose of our faith ... allowing other things to take precedent, affecting our budgets, allocation of time and energies.

The fact that some look to institutions such as the church of England, and put its institutional life as the precedent, and label as "false god" the mission/outreach agenda, shows to me just how polar opposite from God's desire that people's thinking can become. Of course this is really no surprise: in God's ultimate mission move we read "... the world did not recognise him ... He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him" (John 1 verses 10 and 11).

Now at this point we should be clear: all of us, as fallen humanity, are capable of making anything we have around us on this world as a 'false god', i.e. elevating it above its proper place and holding it high instead of God. Our worship style, or thoughts on how things should be organised, and yes even our own agendas for outreach can be put above God in the way we think and then live out our lives. This is a problem that none of us are immune to, and we all have to repeatedly face up to.

But in facing it, we return to God, and hold Him again as first & only. This we are able to do because He first loved us, i.e. because He reaches out (over & over) to us, a mission endeavour on God's part! The fact that God reaches out ... to us and to others ... surely then leaves us with just one response: to be embraced by Him and to join His action in reaching others. In doing so we relegate our own plans. But that relegating means putting God's outreach desires ahead of our own personal preferences and tastes - preferring instead to do what is necessary to reach out to those of other backgrounds, choosing ways (like choice of music style) that might make sense for them rather than sticking to our own taste.

That doesn't make mission a false god, but a priority we pursue because the true God Himself is a God of mission!

Formidable Task

This week commemorates the D-Day landings from 80 years ago. There have been ceremonies, special events, documentaries and extensive news coverage - reminding us of the formidable and colossal task of invading occupied territory such that the overall war could eventually be won.

There are many a story of huge sacrifice, with a scale of loss of life that we simply cannot begin to properly comprehend - for example as landing craft lowered their ramps friends and colleagues would have been cut down immediately as soldiers attempted to run forward. Yet listening to first hand accounts of surviving soldiers, they went into this mayhem with an incredible sense of purpose and mission. The controlling thought was not "What can I do?", but more of "What needs to be done?". With all the many months of planning, logistics, coordinated actions of land, sea & air, and individual unit objectives ... the many & diverse allied participants seemed to go in each personally owning the task at hand.

Jesus left his disciples with a commission stemming from the 'all authority' that was given to him. That commission was to 'make disciples' of all peoples - a formidable task in its own way. Elsewhere Jesus had made it very clear that it would be costly too, involving forms of sacrifice (including death for some).

This commission still stands today, and remains a formidable task. Jesus is Risen Lord, and yet we do not see all things subject to Him. Various church organisations as well as mission agencies continue to pray, plan and commission at scale to continue implementing the commission to make disciples of all peoples - praise God! But I wonder if at ground level whether many western Christians have an equivalent sense of personal ownership of the task, or do they leave it to the 'institution' (e.g. the church or denomination) that they belong to?

In contemplating the task, a reasonable question asked by an individual believer would be "What can I do?", especially if they are not naturally gifted as an evangelist. They may also consider that their indirect auxiliary contribution is useful and sufficient (the D-Day landings of course included a mass multitude of auxiliary contribution apart from the frontline soldiers). This is valid.

Yet a better question is 'What needs to be done?'. To complete this Commission, to see it played out to all peoples as Jesus commanded, let each of us look to Him for that Big Picture Command, that over-arching sense of what we - as His operatives - should be about. With that as our starting point, we can pray & consider strategically the approach we and our fellow believers are taking - linked with our church, churches, and other Christian organisations in our own sector. With all that in mind we can then pray and individually discern our particular action, or near term unit objectives.

The Great Commission is about an invasion - re-entering occupied territory with the Good News of the Kingdom of God. It requires thousands of individual believers owning the task regardless of whatever rank or station they perceive themselves to be. It will involve loss and sacrifice, perhaps in ways we cannot comprehend, but it stems from 'all authority', which means we can confident of eventual victory.