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 challenge of the city

The exodus of Christians from the inner-city areas to the more desirable residential areas of suburbia has seriously undermined the life and witness of churches in working-class areas. (43)

There are too many urban people and too few urban Christians. So we cannot afford a ‘believer-drain’ to the suburbs. (223)

It would be wrong to suggest that God wants all Christians in the inner city to stay where they are and never to consider a move. But I do not believe that no Christian should leave the inner city without considering fully the spiritual issues involved. (224)

If God could transform pagan Ninevah, can He not do the same for pagan London, Liverpool or Birmingham? If God chose to achieve the transformation of Ninevah through an imperfect human instrument like Jonah, then God can use us too. We must direct our unceasing prayers to this end. (311)

The challenge to evangelize

It is possible to detect a marked contrast between the New Testament Christians and those of today in relation to the spreading of the gospel. Put simply, it is this: they did it; we talk about it! Evangelism for the early Christians was not something they isolated from other aspects of Christian living in order to specialize, analyse, theorize and organize. (79)

For many believers, their ‘evangelistic lungs’ are in a poor state of health. Witnessing to our faith in Jesus Christ is such an effort – just like laboured breathing! We cannot go on like this. (81)

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.

In this week’s quote from Urban Harvest Roy Joslin offers ten ‘tests’ of gospel ministry.

In order to help us apply the appropriate ‘tests’ to the gospel work in which we are engaged a number of probing questions need to be asked.
1. Are we placing the responsibility on the believers to evangelise or on the unbelievers to come and be evangelised?
2. Do our church members in their daily witness see themselves as the principal agents in evangelism, seven days a week and all hours of the day, or do they think that the chief responsibility lies with the preacher in his ‘one-hour-a-week’ gospel service and sermon?
3. Are all our church members capable of giving a ‘reason for the hope’ that is in them? Can they with simplicity and accuracy articulate their faith? If not, why not? Where does the fault lie? We have seen that John Bunyan, shortly before he became a Christian, was greatly impressed by the ‘three or four poor women sitting at a door in the sun…talking about the things of God’. Are we to regard these women as peculiar and exceptional, in view of what the scripture requires of us? How can we ‘loose our stammering tongues to tell his love immense, unsearchable?’
4. Are our church membership and congregation socially representative of the community in which it is located? If not, why not?
5. How far has our gospel outreach become ‘introverted’ evangelism?
6. Are our methods of evangelism unfairly selective? Have we been guilt of a form of favouritism without realizing it? Apply this question to your own work among adults and also among young people.
7. In our evangelism generally do we make it our policy, as far as possible, to introduce people to the gospel first before we seek to introduce them to the church? Is it spiritually realistic to expect an unbeliever who is without spiritual life and understanding to share meaningfully in the worship aspects of an evangelistic service in order to hear the gospel?
8. If our church is located in a community which is partly or predominately working class, do any aspects of our evangelism take into account the phenomenon of ‘solidarity’ which is an important feature of working-class culture?
9. Do the methods of evangelism we currently employ reflect an awareness of the need to have a careful balance between ‘instruction’ and ‘persuasion’? Ideally we need to explore or create opportunities for ‘feed-back’ following our preaching or witness. We need to be able to gauge whether or not we have carried our hearers with us in an understanding of the gospel …
10. … Do we in our local churches have any policy for regularly reviewing the opportunities that we have and thought we ought to use? Are we able to make a calculated and spiritual assessment of the opportunities presented by a number of forms of evangelism? (149-151)

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 …

Joslin speaks of ‘sanctified imagination’. He illustrates this with a couple of examples:

A young mother chose to do her washing in the local laundrette because it was a useful meeting point for developing links with other local mothers. In her scale of values, deepening of relationships with neighbours was more important than the convenience of doing her washing at home, even though she possessed her own washing machine. Shopping times provided natural and useful opportunities for developing contacts with people. In her scale of values effective evangelism was more important than efficient shopping. For her it was preferable to make her purchases from two shops even though she could have obtained all the items from one. Her approach to personal evangelism was determined by a matter of simple arithmetic. It is better to witness to two shopkeepers than it is to one! (152)

Christians must take the time and trouble to be good neighbours. If we are too busy running church activities to find time to be neighbourly, then we are too busy. (283)

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 …

Generally speaking, the working man is not willing to go to church – it is outside his circle; he does not belong to that ‘class’. But if we make the main focus of our evangelism the preaching of the gospel from the pulpit we are discriminating unfairly against the working man. (91)

Joslin cites Iain Murray:

The exercise of spiritual gifts by preaching elders in the meetings of the church is not the primary means by which the gospel spreads. That exercise is limited both by time and by place, but the witness of Christians in the midst of the world is not thus limited. It seems to be that this point demands our special attention because I am afraid that the tendency of our tradition has been away from the New Testament. (97-98)

Joslin himself says:

Paul’s evangelism among the Jews showed a certain uniformity. But his gospel work among the Gentiles exhibited great variety. There was no ‘standard religious situation’ comparable to the synagogue. So Paul preached and witnessed in the open air (Acts 17:22-32); in the market place (Acts 17:17); in a hired hall (Acts 19:19); in private homes (Acts 18:7); in prison (Phil. 1:12,13); by the riverside (Acts 16:13); before the Roman authorities (Acts 26: 1-29) and on board ship (Acts 27: 23-25). (99-100)

Preaching the gospel in a place of Christian worship takes place usually at a time and a place which suit the believers. Gentile evangelism will inevitably involve us in reaching the unbelievers at a time and place that suits them. Is Sunday necessarily the best day for evangelising the working classes? John Wesley regularly preached at five o’clock in the morning! He did this in order to reach the ‘labouring-class’ people before they went off at daybreak to commence work in a factory or a mine. (101)

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.

When we had our first baby, Megan, I was blown away by the generosity of people in our street. Next door gave us a mountain of baby clothes, even though they’ve got a full house, with 13 grandchildren in and out. Our new neighbours on the other side, who we’d spoken to a handful of times, seemed to have bought something new for the baby every time we saw them. And it’s not just a baby thing. I’ve been put to shame as I’ve received far more practical help and love from those in my street than I’ve given.

We’ve been reading through Exodus as a family recently, and have reached the practical laws in chapter 21 onwards. It seems there were to be no boundaries for the Israelites in their concern and compassion for others. Foreigners were not excluded (22:21). Personal grievances were not to prevent aid (23:4-5). As much as I would love to just obscure the moral teaching of the Old Testament law under a blanket of redemptive-historical-fulfilment mumbo-jumbo, the truth is those laws reflect the heart of our generous God. Jesus was clothing himself with that law as he went about ministering grace to those in need, and summarising it’s teaching in the always-challenging parable of the Good Samaritan.

So why am I such a stinge-meister? Why am I so slow to seek out need around me? Why is generosity an effort rather than a knee-jerk reaction? (continue reading…)

So here’s where I’m coming from. At New Inn Church (www.newinnchapel.co.uk) we’d been running a youth group for a couple of years, with secondary-school-aged kids coming, mainly from nearby council houses, and almost entirely not Christians.

We’d started with simple talks based on their hardest questions (‘Why does God take good people and leave bad people?’ ‘Did God make dinosaurs?’ and ‘When Jesus comes back, will he be wearing old clothes, modern clothes, or will he be… naked?’ – ok, we didn’t do a whole week on the last question!). Then we began doing some narrative sections in the gospels, but still without directly engaging with the Bible text. Then this last year, we began by looking at the promises made to Adam, Noah and Abraham, all pointing forward to Jesus, and we used the Bible passages for that.

By this point, we had a consistent group of about ten teens, and were gradually piecing together the gospel with them. Ok, so most weeks we still had to send home a couple for bad behaviour, but the routine had been set – half an hour of Bible study, followed by half an hour of dodgeball (always, every week, without fail – their request! My knees have never been the same since…)

So I felt they were about ready for something like the Soul DVD – a nicely repackaged form of the youth Christianity Explored course (buy it from the Good Book Company here). How did it go down? (continue reading…)

Watch the last of the sessions from this year’s conference, by Pete Jackson.

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

Watch the second of the sessions from this year’s conference, by Tim Chester.

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

Watch the first of the sessions from this year’s conference, by Andy Mason.

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