Some reflections on being in England (which I wrote in August but managed to not post)

A few weeks back I spoke at the men’s group at church in Beeston. I was given carte blanche and decided in the end to do two things: a brief update on life and work in Athens (see previous post) and then some brief reflections on UK church life and ministry from our perspective as annual returners. (I did say by way of intro that the latter section really ought to come from someone older and wiser – a grandfatherly kind of fireside chat - so apologies if it comes across as a bit pretentious or arrogant. Treat it as a work in progress, it might be total bunkum, and feedback whatever you think.)

First, the church in the UK has far more resources at her disposal (in terms of quality, variety and extent) than most people realise.

Though we’ve not actually experienced this much ourselves, it is fairly common for people who are planning to leave the UK to do gospel work in other countries to have to face the question ‘why are you going there when there is so much work to do here?’

True – there is lots to do in the UK. Lots and lots – it’s a bottomless pit of gospel need and opportunity, and many people need to be at that work. But relatively speaking the pit is just a bit less bottomless in the UK than in almost all of the rest of Europe, not to mention North Africa and the Middle East, vast swathes of East Asia, and plenty of other places. I’d love to know exact stats (they don’t accurately exist) but I’d guess that if you got all the real born again believers in Portugal, Spain, Italy, France, Belgium, Austria and Greece in one room, there’d be far fewer than if all the English ones were gathered. I don’t really know the situation in Germany, Scandinavia, the Netherlands, where the evangelical church is perhaps stronger than all those other countries, but there I am sure there are still far fewer Bible-teaching churches and gospel-believing individuals than in the UK.

And that’s just numbers of people – there is also I am sure more in the way of cash, colleges, books (in English at least!), training initiatives and legacy (with some notable exceptions I am sure) in the UK than in the rest of Europe.

When we look around our own country it is easy to feel overwhelmed by the largely unmet challenges for the gospel. But look across the channel and then further afield and there are many more.

So, why are you going there instead of staying here? Because there’s lots to do, and there is more in the UK to do the work in that country than there is in other places to do the work there.

That’s a really simplistic answer to a question that raises more than just statistics, but I think it’s a valid place to start. 

Middle-class aspirations hinder the progress of the gospel

You would not believe the number of conversations we’ve had this summer that end up being about this issue.

Middle class is of course a slippery and in many ways unhelpful term but I stick with it because I think it captures the point – that many of us grow up – consciously or subconsciously – with a set of assumptions about the kind of life we want to live that are shaped more by ‘middle class’ aspirations than by the gospel, which are to do with a certain level of security (financial and otherwise), comfort and status, and assume access to a certain set of services and activities.

In and of themselves perhaps none of it is wrong (not wrong for Christians to live in nice houses, play fun games, see nice places etc etc) but surely it is wrong in the sense of betraying where our hearts are and what our trust is in if our ambitions and drive are shaped by anything other than Christ? If therefore it is true that much of what shapes the living and thinking and planning of many of us is from our assumptions about the kind of life we could live, rather than the kind of life the gospel commands us to live, something is seriously amiss.

None of this is new to many of us I suppose. What has struck us this summer, however, is the myriad of ways in which that works out. Here’s a quick list:

• The kind of school my children must attend (ruling out certain catchment areas)

• The kind of house I want to live in (the one I’m in now is OK but it’s not the sort of place I want to raise my children in long term)

• The part of the country I want to live in (I would prefer to be in London/near the mountains/close enough to parents/not too close to parents!)

• The career progress I feel I ought to make (guaranteeing being at the whim of the labour market/the future of the firm/the location of the next step up)

• The extra-curricular activities I need to make sure my kids can take part in (making my life fiendishly busy in the process)

• The kind of home I feel I need to run (things being ‘just so’ becoming more important than the people to whom I can minister in my home)

That’s a quicklist – perhaps there are more significant and more subtle issues. And you see that none of the above is potentially wrong – good to go to good schools, a blessing to have a nice house, fine to live wherever, good to work hard and productively, good and fun to get involved in a range of activities, lovely to have a lovely home and so on. But when it all stacks up we see that we are driven by many things and quite easily not by the gospel at all.

We are called to reach the people in the place where we are and it seems clear that all the aspirations we have easily prevent us from doing so because we are caught up in all the other things that are important – and this doesn’t even begin to take into account all the church stuff!

The call to follow Jesus supercedes any and every call from those around us – society, parents, colleagues, closest friends, spouse, church community – and requires the giving up of everything for the sake of gaining everything. Perhaps this could just be an observation on the very simple subject of eschatology – for which world are we living and working? If it is the dream of the middle classes that drives us, we are living for now. (I know it’s not just about middle classness – people of all socioeconomic backgrounds are materialists, but this summer has been a tour of middle class England.) Jesus calls us to give up everything and follow him, and the sorts of things that come with being comfortable and secure in this world are not worth fixing our eyes on in comparison with the glory and joy to come.

Understanding this trade off would release an unbelievable amount to support the progress of the gospel – cash, yes, but perhaps more significantly time: time to love and serve people (people at church and the many around us for whom we just don’t have enough time because we’re too caught up in the machine), time to get to invest in relationships, time to give over a period of years and years because that’s how long it takes to get to know people and win their trust (which is impossible in the easy-come easy-go society we live in), time to open our homes to those who need it, time to do the every-member ministry that our churches need, time just to ‘be’ rather than to ‘do’ all the time.

The bread and butter of mission in the UK is truth spoken and good deeds done in the context of everyday life and relationships, and not rocket science.

I’ve written longer than intended already so let me be super-brief: the task of making disciples is pretty simple really, and doesn’t require experts to tell us how to do it. But if we are cut off from people around us and not confident in the truth we trust, not much is going to come of our missionary efforts.

The methodology we have inherited from the past decades of church life is simply not suited to reaching most of the people around us. What will reach them is people living good lives among them, and speaking clear truth to them. How much of this is actually happening? And can you see the clear link to the previous section?

Unless we have first the inclination (which is counter-cultural because it’s not about creating my comfortable and secure little kingdom) and second the time (which is also a precious commodity when work and housework and children’s activities and home improvements and ‘me’ time and too many church meetings are all added together) to live lives that actually touch upon the lives of those around us, what significant impact for the gospel are we going to make in our towns and villages?

The gospel will make progress as ordinary Christians live ordinary lives that are full of relating to others in which we can demonstrate the loving godly living that the gospel generates and in which we can speak the gracious words that the gospel is.