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

More quotes from Roy Joslin’s Urban Harvest to mark the thirtieth anniversary of its publication …

The fact that the form of worship in urban, suburban, coastal and rural churches shows little if any variation strongly suggests that the matter of worship and culture is a neglected area of Christian thought. If, as seems probable, the practice of worship in our urban churches appears to reflect a culture that is other than urban, then this is an area of Christian living where reformation is required. (305)

This query of the value of studying mental processes and language forms would not arise if our work was on the overseas mission field. The overseas missionary expects to engage in language study. He would not expect to make progress without it. Be we are in a mission field situation in our urban areas. Missionary principles ought to be applied to the situation. (76)

The leaders must also encourage the church progressively to reflect working-class culture in its life and witness. That obligation may run counter to some of their personal cultural preferences, but it must not be avoided. If a local church adopts a culture which is not indigenous, then it may appear to their non-Christian neighbours that repentance from sin and a turning from local culture are all part of a proper response to the Christian gospel. In addition a local church which is spiritually and culturally isolated within the community it professes to serve will find that it has added to its problems in evangelism, and has widened the gap between the local Christians and their non-Christian neighbours. (253)

By far the largest part of Jesus’ teaching was presented in concrete thought, making wide use of the objects and events of daily life. The teaching of Jesus was clear and memorable, not only because of the authority which He spoke (Matthew7:28-29), but also because He presented it in the concrete thought forms. His hearers could both hear and see what He was talking about. (55)

Urban Harvest is available here from amazon.com and amazon.co.uk. In October IVP are publishing my latest book, Unreached: Growing Churches in Working-Class and Deprived Areas, was written with the Reaching the Unreached network.

This article was originally published on Tim Chester’s blog.

More quotes from Roy Joslin’s Urban Harvest to mark the thirtieth anniversary of its publication …

A striking feature of Urban Harvest is Joslin’s emphasis on the doctrine of creation and the importance of general revelation as a prelude to gospel proclamation.

Tower block estates are not really concrete jungles; they are grey deserts. The homes of the people have no character or individuality about them. They are like a mound of boxes piled high in the sky. Slabs of dull grey concrete reach high and heavenwards. Down at ground level people scuttle to and fro as though surrounded by some ‘technological Stonehenge’. But the visible symbols of the ‘concrete age’ kindle no spark within the soul. They crowd the skyline and hem us in. They restrict our ration of God’s blue sky. (39)

Regrettably, the resident in the big city is still more aware of what man has manufactured than of what God has created. Urban dwellers on post-war high-rise estates are, so it seems, surrounded by monotonous mountains of greyness. This matter exposes a major factor of spiritual deprivation as well. The scriptures teach that before a person acquainted with the truth revealed in God’s Word he has to rely on God’s general revelation in creation for his inner awareness of the Maker to whom he is accountable. (144-145)

We tend to associate the presence and power of God with the glory of the heavens and the beauty of the countryside. But God’s highest creation is more in evidence in the bustling din of a city rush-hour than in the relaxing peace of a rural landscape. ‘So God created man in his own image, in the image of God He created him’ (Gen. 1:27). This is the summit of God’s creative achievements. This is God’s marvel of miniaturization. (225)

Urban Harvest is available here from amazon.com and amazon.co.uk. In October IVP are publishing my latest book, Unreached: Growing Churches in Working-Class and Deprived Areas, was written with the Reaching the Unreached network.

This article was originally published on Tim Chester’s blog.

Here are the first quotes from Roy Joslin’s Urban Harvest to mark the thirtieth anniversary of its publication. The focus of these quotes is the importance of social class in thinking about mission.

The saving word of the gospel does not come to man in some kind of spiritual vacuum. It confronts him in his own particular circumstances and at a particular point in his earthly pilgrimage. The setting in which the gospel is addressed to a person’s need is something we must examine. The Apostle Paul’s adherence to this scriptural principle is something he spells out clearly (1 Corinthians 9: 19-23). To disregard this requirement because it is ‘not part of the gospel itself’ is to fly in the face of Scripture. (11)

D.M. Lloyd-Jones said ‘The impression has gained currency that to be a Christian, and more especially an evangelical, means that we are traditionalists, and advocates of the Status Quo. I believe that this largely accounts for our failure in this country to make contact with the so-called working classes. Christianity in this country has become a middle class movement; and I suggest that this is so because of this very thing’. (2)

Neither the Christian church nor the working classes start from a position of neutrality. The church is already identified with that social group that possesses ‘power, privilege and prestige’: the working classes are the major social group to whom generally, these things are denied. It is important for us to grasp just how firmly the contrast is there. (286)

Urban Harvest is available here from amazon.com and amazon.co.uk. In October IVP are publishing my latest book, Unreached: Growing Churches in Working-Class and Deprived Areas, was written with the Reaching the Unreached network.

This article was originally published on Tim Chester’s blog.

2012 year marks the 30th anniversary of the publication of Urban Harvest, Roy Joslin’s call for evangelical involvement in our largely unreached working-class communities. I was a teenager when it first came out, but I well remember the stir it caused in Reformed circles in the UK. It was perhaps the most significant book on the subject since William Booth’s In Darkest England in 1890.

Roy Joslin was a pastor in Walworth in London so wrote from his own experience. (He also went to Bible college with my father.)

Sadly, even as he was writing Urban Harvest, he was beginning what would be 33-year struggle with Parkinson’s Disease.

Britain has changed radically in the intervening years and Joslin’s analysis of social class feels dated. But there is still much of great value in the book so over the coming weeks I’m going to post some quotes from the book.

In October IVP are publishing my latest book, Unreached: Growing Churches in Working-Class and Deprived Areas. It comes out of a working group conveyed by the Reaching the Unreached network. We hope it will encourage people to get involved in reaching our estates and cities as well as giving people a sense of how they can go about this work. It might not prove to be the last word on the subject, but it will fill the 30-year silence since Urban Harvest.

Urban Harvest is available here from amazon.com and amazon.co.uk.

The story of Roy Joslin’s struggle with Parkinson’s Disease is told by his wife, Valerie, in Rediscovering Roy which is available here from amazon.com and amazon.co.uk.

This article was originally published on Tim Chester’s blog.

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.