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.

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

In the early industrial period evangelical Nonconformity was characterized by three particular features: the priority of aggressive evangelism, the importance of itinerant and open-air preaching and the heavy reliance on laymen in the overall evangelistic strategy. In time, however, the early enthusiasm noticeably cooled as the process of social mitigation continued. (26)

A term which has come into the vocabulary of the ‘science of missions’ is the word ‘lift’. It is associated with the phenomenon of upward social mobility, but the term itself describes the social and cultural estrangement of the members of a religious group from the social environment in which they were recruited. ‘Lift’ appeared to trigger a number of unwelcome trends in the realm of evangelism. Aggressive outreach steadily waned. This was replaced by ‘a concentration of evangelistic activity among people already on the peripheries of organized religion’. Lay involvement in gospel witness declined. What had been the general responsibility of all believers gradually became the particular speciality of the minister. The chief area of evangelistic effort changed progressively from adults to children. (25-26)

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.

We have several women in church for whom home is really bad news. Over decades, husbands, and sometimes the grown up children, have been very demanding and constantly rude, domineering, aggressive, hurtful. They can’t realistically escape because of poverty, fear, guilt, knowing that Christ would not want them to leave even if they could. Life for these women is miserable and, in practice, they are hostages in their own homes. This includes tight restrictions put on the amount of time they’re ‘allowed out’ at church.

For these hostages, church is like a refuge, and a thin slice of life which is their own. It is one place they can escape to where they are loved and valued, and find some friendship and joy. These are converted women who love Jesus, and love to sing his praises. But they can’t bear the thought of their ‘captors’ joining them, invading their safe and precious space. So they can’t bring themselves to pray for them. And they wont bring them to church because it would be like inviting their persecutors into the refuge. And they’re very reluctant for us to go round to try and build bridges or share the gospel, both for the trouble it will cause them, and because they can’t bear the thought of their captors being saved. The extent of grace is a really hard doctrine for them.

Have you come across this in your setting? How have you handled it?

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…)

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.

Massive challenge for church leaders:

The world and the culture in which we live is this: Marriage is the issue. From gay marriage to divorce to adultery – people need to know how to love one another, and live together and raise kids and finish well.

And here’s the hard, cold, sad truth: you’re gonna take your marriage, and you’re gonna put it as the most important human relationship in the church, you’ll make it the epicentre of the culture that you create, and from there, everyone else is going to photocopy your marriage.

So if your marriage is jack you will have a church filled with jack marriages. If your kids are not loved and led, you will have a church filled with kids who are not loved and led. You will get a church, but you’ll get just another poor, dysfunctional, unhealthy church.

We don’t need more of those.

Watch the whole talk at marshillchurch.org

Yesterday I took my two eldest kids to play in the new playground that’s literally 2 metres away from our front gate! We hadn’t been out there for more than 5 minutes when a loud, violent row erupted between 2 men in a neighbouring house (apparently over drugs). The entire park full of kids (including my own) seemed to stop whatever they were doing as they listened to a tirade of threats and verbal abuse along the lines of “I’m going to rip your f___ing head of you f____ing C___!!” I tried to get my kids back home so as not to expose them to such aggression, but by the time we got to the gate the row was over.

The damage was done.

We stayed in the park for about half an hour afterwards and as I was getting ready to take the kids home I was shocked to find my 4 year old little girl sat under the climbing frame scrawling her name on the equipment. She was with an older girl who she insists had put her up to it. I cleaned the graffiti off (the first to be done in the new park) and went home shell-shocked! Only a week earlier some friends from church had taken my daughter out to play in the park on a sunny Sunday afternoon, only to leg it back to the house with her a few moments later saying: “It’s all kicked off out there, there’s men fighting with metal bars and all the kids are screaming and crying…it’s nuts up here!!”

The reality of what it means to raise my precious kids on a deprived council estate is really starting to sink in. So I guess this post serves 2 purposes.

(continue reading…)

“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.’