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

Watch the third of the sessions from this year’s conference, by Duncan Forbes.

To watch the rest of the videos from the weekend, go to the 2011 conference page.

A question was sent in via the contact page, and I thought it was worth posting for discussion. Here it is:

Does anyone have any theories about why these areas [council estates, urban priority/deprived areas] are so hard and the people so resistant to the Gospel? The usual response  is a) poverty and b) poor church witness and practice. But I don’t buy this. In many parts of the world people are much poorer, and churches much more corrupt, sectarian and heretical, yet people flock to them because they are desperate for God! They even plant their own churches without having being discipled or without having even heard of Mark Driscoll or Tim Keller! Why not here?

Got any answers? What are your thoughts? Post a comment below.

In Urban Harvest Roy Joslin highlights that those living in deprived areas often form their opinions on life based mainly on impression – what they see and experience. The middle-class on the other hand, often those who have been through higher education, shape their worldview primarily through reasoning. This has massive implications for us as Christians in these areas – what we do is as important as what we say.

I just wanted to provide a real life example of this, which forced me to start thinking more about how I speak about the gospel.

A mum who lived near us made a throwaway comment about smoking. She said she thought smoking when pregnant was fine. I asked her what she thought about the big label on her cigarette packet, “SMOKING WHEN PREGNANT HARMS YOUR BABY”. She replied that it was a load of rubbish. She then went on to explain that she had followed the doctor’s advice with her first child, and had stopped smoking. The pregnancy had been tough, and there were serious complications at the birth. So for her next pregnancy she took no notice of the warnings and happily puffed away through her nine months. This time the pregnancy, birth and baby were all fine. Her conclusion: the doctors are wrong, and smoking is fine.

I thought about how this lady had formed her opinion on the poison of smoking. And I realised most of what I was saying about the poison of sin and the remedy of the gospel was probably going over her head too! Not because I was using complicated reasoning, but because I wasn’t connecting with or countering her existing impressions of Christianity.

So how do we adjust for this difference in thinking? Joslin says mistaken opinions “can only be changed by… the influence of a contrary set of sense impressions”. Real life testimonies can have a massive effect here, particularly if they are from others who have grown up in the same area. But there is no quick substitute for simply doing as Jesus did, and being ‘a friend of sinners’. Only then will the radical difference of our Christ-centred, Spirit-empowered lives both connect with and counter those false impressions.

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.

The Times had an interesting piece, “The Joy of Reading out loud” (sat Oct 2 2010). In it they talk about the Initiatives of The reader Organisation started by Jane Davies in Liverpool. Here’s an extract,

Davies found that reading aloud is the best way to get people into books and then she discovered that it makes people calmer, happier, self-reflective, more sane and open-minded. She found that her method works in retirement homes, with abused children, with kids who have never read a thing, with prisoners, with people on council estates and with NHS patients.

“We were reading Othello out loud with a group who had never read or seen a Shakespeare play. After a few weeks a woman said, “I’ll read Iago this week. I know that bastard. I was married to him.”

I realise that many of us are doing Gospel work in areas of low literacy, but please don’t take that as resistance to literacy. I have never met anyone in Speke who struggled with reading who didn’t actually wish they could read better.  The issue is how we make efforts to make text more accessible to those who have often been scared off by it. As I read the quote above I was encouraged to come up with simple and creative ways to get people into the text of the bible.

• Enourage reading out loud
• Enourage people to have a go at reading different parts
• Ask good questions about what is said, how it is said and why it is there

The Lord knew what He was doing when He gave us a written word. Can I encourage you to have confidence that the written Word of God is made to engage with the hearts of men.

An example: Last year I preached through Hosea (yes, that OT minor prophet). A lady who had just started coming to church asked me for a bible so she could read the story for herself. She didn’t have an O-level, she didn’t have a bookshelf, she’d never worked and had 7 kids by 2 fellas. The day after i gave her the bible I tentatively  asked whether she’d read the 1st chapter of Hosea, and to my astonishment she had read through the whole book.

“What is it about?” i asked.

“Its showing us that God is faithful even when His people aren’t. I know all about unfaithfulness and how God must feel.”

God’s written Word is powerful and people aren’t as stupid as you think, don’t shy from getting it into peoples’ hands.

Here’s the talk I’m giving at church on Sunday.
What do you think of the city? When most groups do a word association on ‘the city’, they throw up a mix of positive and negative images. But what is God’s vision for the city?

1. A place of refuge

Read Joshua 20. Here are a farming people, about to disperse into the land. And God says: You’ve got to have cities because you’ve got to have places of refuge. The first cities you build will be built as places of refuge.’

How do cities today offer a place of refuge? cities are a place where refugees and minorities can find a home and a community. People from the majority culture (‘middle-England’) usually don’t like the city, but minorities love it. The reason for both is the same – it’s because the city is a place of difference. (continue reading…)

It’s really important to love your neighbourhood. Sometimes that will need to be a decision you make. But ask God to give you genuine affection for your neighbourhood and its people. One helpful exercise is to list the things you love about your area.

This is what we came up with at a recent church gathering …

• I can buy harissa (i.e. there are lots of shops selling ethnic foods and other interesting things)
• there are loads of buses
• The Broadfield pub (where we go for the pub quiz each week and to watch sport)
• our friends and the church family all live nearby
• there are lots of communities and ethnicities (but no ghettos)
• the Abbeydale Picturehouse (see picture by Matt Lollar from our church)
• there’s a mix of residential houses and businesses in the area
• it’s not pretentious
• the greenery, parks and trees
• all the many restaurants and kebab houses with food from many different nations
• there are big supermarkets and little shops
• the bric-a-brac shops and charity shops
• the 24-hour shops
• the b rothel has gone
• it’s a main road into the city and out into the countryside
• in a hilly city, it’s flat

“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!

(continue reading…)

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.’