Reaching the UnreachedAn annual conference for churches trying to reach out in the hard places of our land

Guest post by Martin McNeely

Not long ago I was asked to take part in a seminar organized by the Urban Mission group of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland entitled “Keller Unplugged”. It was not, as it might sound, a performance of acoustic tunes extolling the virtues of New York’s Presbyterian pastor, author and teacher! Rather, it was a gathering of like-minded church activists who wanted to see if Keller’s ministry could teach us anything in urban and missional contexts closer to home.

At first glance, some would bypass Tim Keller. He’s working in a context far removed from the UK, particularly our estates and unreached areas. Redeemer Presbyterian concentrates on Manhattan urbanites, post-modern younger professionals in a cosmopolitan and socially liberal city. Without doubt, Keller’s ministry and philosophical style reflects this.

But deeper appreciation of Keller gives us good ground for a study of his teaching, not least because his formative ministry development was forged in Hopewell, a blue collar Virginian town. It was there, for the first ten years of his ministry life, where Keller learned to preach. It was in that setting where his theology of evangelical social conscience was worked through, via his DMin studies at Westminster Seminary.

So what did he learn? In a recent exploration of his life at desiringgod.org Keller shared three main influences. The first was the Covenant theology taught at Westminster by Meredith Kline. Keller has also been influenced by and closely associated with the approach of Ed Clowney and his desire to share Christ in Old Testament preaching. I find this emphasis on covenant, or as others may term it, ‘Biblical theology’ most helpful. In our broken, dysfunctional society it is so helpful for the preacher to know that God does have a plan and that He does not break His promises to His people. What a challenging message in a society where promises are broken all the time.

Secondly, Keller emphasizes the doctrineof Justification by faith. He argues from his reading of Richard Lovelace in Dynamics of Spiritual Renewal, that justification has played a role in every major revival of God’s Spirit in Church history. And again, in our society what a Gospel of hope! Broken people in sinful situations can be forgiven and declared blameless by grace alone through faith alone in Jesus Christ.

Finally, Keller speaks much of the importance of works as a result of our having experienced mercy. The key influence here is Charity and it’s Fruits by Jonathan Edwards. Tim Keller particularly expounds the Good Samaritan parable as evidence of not only God’s great mercy which saves, but of our response as mercy showing people. In his book Ministries of Mercy (P&R), Keller argues that good works provide a “plausibility structure” out of which Gospel relationships and conversations develop. His recent work “Generous Justice” is an extended exposition of the wider Biblical arguments.

Now, I’ve neither studied all of the above names or profess to be an expert on Tim Keller. But neither do we need to be in downtown Manhattan to appreciate him. I find his balanced teaching very helpful in my context. I hope you do too.

Martin McNeely is minister of Ballykeel Presbyterian, a community church based in Ballymena, NI.

Here’s a good quote from Tim Keller on the middle-class culture of evangelical churches:

Most evangelical churches are middle-class in their corporate culture. People value privacy, safety, homogeneity, sentimentality, space, order, and control. In contrast, the city is filled with ironic, edgy, diversity-loving people who have a much higher tolerance for ambiguity and disorder. If a church’s ministers cannot function in an urban culture, but instead create a kind of non-urban “missionary compound” within it, they will discover they cannot reach out, convert, or incorporate many people in their neighbourhoods.

Tim Keller, ‘What Is God’s Global Urban Mission?’ The Lausanne Global Conversation, 2010.

A couple of weeks ago I went to Birmingham and sat in a sweaty little room full of church planters and gospel practitioners (many of whom are listed as authors down the right hand side of this page!) We were there to drink coffee, eat mini muffins and chat about the challenges that are faced by those who are involved in planting churches on council estates and communities around the UK that are socially deprived and culturally alien to the established church. With literally 5 minutes left on the clock a HUGE issue was raised that we didn’t have a chance to discuss at any length, but that has been on my mind ever since.

The issue is that of leadership.

While it’s probably fair to say that there is a genuine lack of good quality, godly leadership across the board in the UK church at present, it would seem that the problem is far more extreme in these more challenging areas. This was highlighted when I asked this question:

“How many of your leaders have come from the community you’re trying to reach, and how many have you had to bring in from outside?”

Incredibly, every single person (including me) had to admit that their leadership was made up of godly men and women who had sacrificially come to serve from outside the area. I’m sure that there are exceptions to the rule out there, but the stark nature of the leadership challenge that confronts us as churches in these already demanding contexts is as blatant as it is urgent.

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“Just keep your head down and you’ll be alright!”

That was the blunt advice given to me by the local shop-keeper when I introduced myself as a Christian who had just moved onto the estate to start a church. Apparently the way to get by on a council estate that has long been synonymous with poverty and social disorder is to opt for anonymity and obscurity. The trouble is that that’s not the life that Jesus has called us to, and it’s certainly not a biblical strategy for planting a church. Besides, we hadn’t just left the comfortable familiarity of life in Cardiff and moved into a house right at the heart of this challenging new community because we wanted a quiet, uneventful, bland and insignificant existence.

Quite the opposite in fact!

We were there on mission. We were there for an adventure. We were there to see the power of the gospel change lives. We were there to make an impact in the Name of Jesus and for His glory. Ironically, we had already settled on a name for our not-yet-in-existence church – Hill City Church – inspired by the words of Jesus in Matthew 5:

“You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” (v14-16)

I don’t think Jesus was saying “Just keep your head down and you’ll be alright!”

Quite the opposite in fact!!!

Jesus didn’t save us to shy away but to shine out. If this dark estate was going to encounter Jesus, it needed a church that was set intentionally and unmistakably high on the hill committed to letting the irresistible light of Christ shine out for all to see! Like Jesus said, no one lights a lamp and hides it under a basket. We certainly didn’t want to contradict Him!

The truth is, however, that when it comes to reaching the unreached and establishing churches in these broken communities, it’s very easy to grab a basket and smother the gospel light that we’ve been entrusted to shine. In reaching a culture like that of a council estate, there is one basket in particular that Christians find it all too easy to hide beneath - the basket of fear!

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The following is taken from an article written for an Anglican Handbook for ministers in training to encourage them to consider gospel work in an urban priority area.

Most Anglican ministers are middle class, and our experience of gospel ministry is middle class. So, our formative models of church (how we think church should be), drilled into our minds are largely inappropriate in a working class area. For instance, the middle classes give a much higher priority to manners, time-keeping, planning, paperwork etc. The challenge for us is to do cross cultural ministry – to develop a gospel community not a new middle class in a working class area.

Traits which characterise the local community will inevitably characterise the church gathered to the Lord in that area. Positively, in Dagenham, this has meant for instance refreshingly direct communication – how people feel, they say; what people think, they say – straightaway and to your face. Negatively, in Dagenham, it has made maturing a church very slow and painful – un-social, volatile tempers, filthy language, dependency, endemic underachievement, fear of responsibility and leadership, anti –authority / institution / ‘professionals’, chronic ill health, poor resources (money and abilities) etc etc.

So the difficulties in building and sustaining a local church are not those traditionally presented to the would-be pastor/evangelist. At this point 4 myths need to be blown out of the water.

Myth 1. Urban Priority Areas are too hard and too dangerous!

There are some urban places where this may be true. Dagenham has a reputation. But the truth is most of the population is not dangerous. It is afraid. When we go door-knocking, the fear is on the inside – locks, warning signs, dogs – people are scared to open their doors. But as one policeman put it, ‘there’s more fear of violent crime than actual violent crime.’

So there may be a lot of posturing – tattoos, shaven heads, metal piercing, aggressive language – but it’s largely surface toughness, in response to feeling threatened and traumatised, scared and insecure.

Some features of an urban estate make living there harder. But heaven is not far away, and anyone with a bit of missionary zeal can put up with a bit of hardship until then. And it’s nothing like as hard as Morocco or North India! And it’s no harder than the personal suffering inflicted on many ministers in leafy villages and suburbs, where well trained middle class neighbours and members of the congregation know how to launch a malicious campaign of opposition and really hurt you.

Gospel work is hard wherever you are.

Myth 2. No place for ‘word’ ministry

Our population has a higher than average level of illiteracy. We are always at the bottom of the tables for the three ‘R’s’. This seems like a ‘turn off’ to evangelicals whose core business is word ministry. But our experience has been the opposite. Our members love Bible teaching. More than for anything else, they will come to hear God’s word – to have a text explained which they find hard to read and understand for themselves. The issue is the words the preacher uses and the way in which he communicates them.

So it’s harder work for the gospel/word minister in an urban priority area to prepare teaching in an appropriate form (plain, clear, easy to follow, well illustrated, emotional etc), but nonetheless there’s a huge appetite for the word of God. I love it knowing our congregation feel short-changed if the teaching on Sunday is not a good half hour, yet when I visit some well educated churches I’m told to keep strictly to 20 minutes. The paradox is that we want ministers with the very best brains and teaching skills in urban priority areas because they can express God’s truth with crystal clarity, rather than the ones with mediocre brains and skills (like me!) who get in a muddle.

Myth 3. Social needs take precedence over gospel ministry

Like any urban area, we are confronted with overwhelming and relentless social needs. We were taught at college that it’s necessary to address people’s social needs first before they will listen to the gospel. Our experience has often been the opposite.

For a start, the Council and Social Services have the resources to do a much better job than a struggling church could ever do. But what the church can uniquely provide is the gospel and a gospel community. In our experience, it’s often the gospel that has proved most helpful to people whose lives are in a mess. Either, their situation is beyond much change realistically; but the gospel introduces a love, hope and joy that makes their circumstances bearable. Or it is the gospel that has the power to set things straight. Being sorted out is a product of the gospel not a prerequisite to gospel ministry. Far from social needs taking precedence over gospel ministry, acute social needs heighten the need for what the gospel can uniquely provide.

Myth 4. Urban areas are God-forsaken – the gospel doesn’t work there

John Fuller says, ‘There are no God forsaken places, only church forsaken places.’ When we arrived in Dagenham, within a third of a mile radius were 3,500 crowded houses. The one church serving that population had about 20 discouraged members. It’s not that the rest of the population had heard the gospel and rejected the good news of Christ’s kingdom. The majority had never heard of the local church, let alone the gospel. That seems to be fairly typical of urban priority areas – vast populations surrounding few, tiny, struggling churches. So the issue is one of deployment (teams dedicated to the very long term) and resourcing (no less than the sort of resources invested in pioneer mission abroad).

The gospel remains the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes (Romans 1v16), and especially the lowly things of this world and the despised things (1 Corinthians 1 v 28), but how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? (Romans 10 v 14). There are no God forsaken places, only church forsaken places. Given what appears to be God’s compassion for ‘the poor’, it seems strange that the majority of ministers coming out of training sense a call to anywhere other than the abandoned estates of our towns and cities.’

Now I guess that this might seem like a rather obvious kind of question to ask! Surely the point is to build a new local congregation in an area where there wasn’t one?!!But as I think of it, that can’t really be the goal because it would seem to imply that any old congregation would do. As long as people are gathered together in ‘church’ that would be enough…. even if there was much sin, heresy and unbelief!

I find it personally helpful to keep asking myself this question because it clarifies what we are really about in church planting: we are about the glory of God. We want to see the worth and wonder of God displayed to the local area through the congregation. And, of course, this affects everything! It means that simply gathering people (i.e. the growth of the congregation) is not really a true indication of whether the goal is being reached. Yet, how often am I tempted to assess our ministry in regards to that issue!!

The real question we need to keep asking is whether or not the gathering is glorifying to God. Do we have a congregation that is becoming more mature and holy and pure? Do we have people who are serving and loving each other? Do we suffer with joy? Now, of course, people are always growing and many have to hear the gospel many times before they trust in Christ. But, we need to remind ourselves, for the sake of our own spiritual sanity, that the success of a church plant can only be assessed by the spiritual fruit it produces in the lives of new people – and not simply by the presence of new people. It’s even conceivable that numerical growth might, at times, even be a bad thing (!) if a church is only gathering in the long term and not converting. It may, conversely, be good for a congregation to diminish in numbers so that Christ will be honoured.

For leaders in big congregations this is perhaps easier to practice. But when your congregation is small and you’re desperate for it to grow there is a very subtle pressure to compromise on this. You just want to show that something’s happening where you’re working!!! Those of us trying to pioneer new work need to learn to bite the bullet on this and trust God for His church. We want real spiritual growth and not artificial growth through numbers.

I like a clear strategy, thorough-going administration and functional organisation. It makes me feel in control and as if I’m on top of things. It makes me feel as if the task of reaching people is not beyond me. I feel safe with a strategy, so I want people around me in my church that are gifted administrators and organisers.

And surely that’s what the Lord wants too, isn’t it? His churches will be built up, and His people will grow, by the power of efficient strategy and people who are able to make things happen. “Send me more of them, Lord,” I would pray.

But what happens when you are trying to build a Gospel-centred church family when few are administrationally gifted, most genuinely struggle to organise things and planning doesn’t come naturally? Well, if you are an idiot like me, try to beat them into organisational shape whilst begging God to transform them into the congregation that all the church growth manuals say they ought to be. Or else go back to your bible and realise that the Lord expands His kingdom rule through weak and feeble pray-ers who depend on Him over their own strategic ability and well meant plans.

I want things tidy, manageable and measurable so that I can feel in control of something that truly is beyond me. The Sovereign Lord doesn’t do tidy, but leads us to a heart of dependency.

I want a clear plan that testifies to my greatness as a leader. He wants to silence our pride and show that He alone is saviour.

I want to put confidence in worldly methods and boil Gospel ministry down to a manageable formula. He works to defy worldly wisdom and delights to anwer the prayers of dependent people.

Realising this is truly liberating. I no longer need to try to disciple people to be square pegs in round holes. I don’t need to train non-strategy types to be what they are not (needlessly frustrating and discouraging them along the way) .

Not all in our church families can plan, strategize, and push through a vision for Gospel growth, but everyone of God’s children can beg their heavenly Father for mercy, direction and saving grace. I can teach them all that! Until recently, I counted it a frustration that our church family has only a few who can drive through a vision – however, I’m beginning to think that in the long term it might be one of God’s greatest gifts to us. It means we have nowhere to turn but prayer, and we can all beg!