DVD Amnesty

Great encouragement 14 years later

As a Relay worker with UCCF at Birmingham University I invested a fair amount of time in helping to run the CU's Just Looking programme. As far as I can recall this involved (each week) doing a couple of hours work alone on a passage in John's gospel, then meeting with Dave, the evangelism secretary, for a couple of hours, then meeting for a couple of hours with a small group of students who helped Dave and I to run the show, then holding (each Monday after lectures as I recall) the Just Looking training for an hour and a half. My memory is a bit foggy but I think there were between 10 and 30 leaders from the CU in each cycle.

I remember really enjoying it. I loved getting into John's gospel (much of which I have gone back to again and again, most recently last night). I enjoyed working with Dave, a student leader of energy and vision (if you're reading this Dave Wright, get in touch!). I loved having regular contact with the young and enthusiastic servants of God who wanted to reach their friends with the Just Looking tool. And I enjoyed leading two groups of strangers as mission follow up.

I only ever got to meet one person who was converted through it, although I heard stories and rumours of others.

Anyway, yesterday one of them was in our house for lunch!

She and her husband (who I'd known a little at Birmingham) were visiting another work in Athens and we arranged to meet up because of the Birmingham connection and some cross-over in our work now. At the end of lunch I asked how she'd become a Christian, and to my amazement it was through the Just Looking course another student who I remember working with had run for her alone in her hall of residence (my old one, Lake-Wydd if any Brummies are reading this).

How great is that. The farmer sows the word. Indeed - and years later I had the privilege of seeing part of the harvest.

The encouragements from this are on so many levels. The work we put in, the faithfulness of the first year student who reached out to someone who wasn't even her friend at the time, the growth into maturity in the years since, the other testimonies she was able to pass on of others who were also converted (four or five in that hall alone, at least some of who she is still in touch with), and of course the faithfulness of the one who makes the seed grow.

It brought a lump to my throat as I heard the story and reminded me (again) to keep indiscriminately sowing the word.

In July and August we hit the road a few times from Beeston, and by the end of our time in England we were able to look back on a truly encouraging theme to our extended stay: church planting. 

In some ways this might seem a bit faddish in the sense that you hear lots and lots about it (and I don't think we did say ten years ago) but that doesn't detract from the fact that we were privileged to witness first hand, and hear lots more about, some great, faithful, God-glorifying church planting endeavours.

From Beeston we made a weekend trip to Bristol to visit my sister and her family and take part in a church gathering of a church that has asked to support us (Emmanuel Bristol). A week later we went to Liverpool to see my little brother and his wife, and be part of a couple of gatherings of Aigburth Community Church who also support us. We also went for an afternoon to Birmingham for a more random gathering of friends, many of whom are involved either at City Church Birmingham or Grace Church Cotteridge/Stirchley. 

Then on our holiday to Northumberland we drove from Beeston to Boroughbridge for lunch and toilets at the De La Hoyde's, who have moved there in the past year to help out with a new gospel planting initiative in that barren market town. During our stay in the wilds of the north east we popped into Newcastle to see the Andersons, old friends from Beeston, who have thrown their lot in with a church plant in the city centre there. On our way down south we popped into the Duncan's (friends from Sussex), who'd been in their new house for all of 48 hours. They've moved for work reasons ish but are specifically hoping to be strategically useful for church growth in that incredibly needy area. From Hexham we then had our final toilet break in Leeds with the Marlows, and caught up with the Astons who had just moved to that similarly needy city to see how they can contribute to church planting possibilities there. 

Whilst in Beeston I also hopped over to Derby to have lunch with Jonty who has just begun leading Christ Church Derby. And the Knights came up from High Wycombe to hang out in our sunny back garden and caught us up with their church planting ish endeavours.

Anyway, what's the point? Well, isn't it great that there are people who love God enough to make difficult choices to move to a new place, or leave (for good reasons) their existing church family to plant the beginnings of a new family in a new part of town? Isn't it great that, in the face of all sorts of negative news and trends regarding church in the UK, God is still building his church. We pray for more and more such initiatives across the country.
 
We found this really encouraging and found ourselves thinking how much we would love to be involved in something like this at some point - and perhaps even be part of stimulating similar initiatives here in Greece.

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.

Pupil power

What should happen in a school when a teacher hits a pupil? 

In Greece, students have the right to 'occupy' a high school or university (this is the closest translation of κατάληψη or katalipsi) if they want to protest about something (or perhaps nothing). It turns out that this is what happened this week at our local high school. We saw that the school was closed yesterday morning, with the student body milling around on the street outside, not particularly bothered about the cars trying to get through.

The occupied gateway of the local high school

Today I asked one of the adults waiting around (think she was a parent) what the reason was (past reasons have included protest at educational reforms, the killing of 15-year old Alexis at Christmas 2008 and pension reform [clearly school kids are into forward planning]) and she explained that it was because of this hitting of a pupil. I should have asked for more explanation of that and I don't know what the legal issues are here, but it is interesting that the student body - or at least an active minority - has the option of shutting the school.

One of the things that most intrigues me about this is that it really does seem as though they're looking for any excuse to stop lessons. Most of the kids arrive each morning fully intending to be in classes, but some think it's a better use of the day to shut the school, cause havoc on the roads and some bother for some parents who then need to be looking after their kids, and stop the entire school from learning. 

This is all perfectly legal. And there seems to be no indication of staff trying to talk the protesters down, or parents wading in saying 'get back to school', or an active minority of pupils disagreeing with the action.  These were all possible responses that went through my mind.

I don't want to belittle physical abuse, but I think I prefer the option of the teacher in question, the family involved and the relevant legal bodies sorting out out of school. Or does that just reflect my individualistic, passivist leaning? Is it a healthy thing that the whole school takes responsibility? 

If this sort of thing happens in four years when Joel is at that school, I can imagine it being extremely frustrating. It does make me wonder whether the challenges we'll face in the future will be more complicated than they are now. Our kids are in primary school which is basically straight-forward and seemingly fairly innocent. But as other things we've been reading lately suggest, there is a distinctive and troubled societal undercurrent that is not neutral or light, but does perhaps pose significant challenges to the raising and training and educating of a family.

Having said all that, and re-read it, a large part of me thinks that sounds like over-analytical hogwash, there's nothing new under the sun, and this is a pointless musing. But I think I'll leave it up, if only to look back at in four years' time.

Some remarkable reportage on Greece PS

When I got to the end of the Vanity Fair article posted earlier this week, I remembered something that happened in our first week in Athens, January 2007. Here's the line from the magazine:

But [Greece] does not behave as a collective; it lacks the monks’ instincts. It behaves as a collection of atomized particles, each of which has grown accustomed to pursuing its own interest at the expense of the common good. There’s no question that the government is resolved to at least try to re-create Greek civic life. The only question is: Can such a thing, once lost, ever be re-created? (Michael Lewis, Vanity Fair, 1 October 2010, final para).

Now I am not Greek and I have not even lived here for four years, but I feel somewhat defensive as I read that. How would you feel if you were Greek, reading such a black-and-white national character assassination?

A few reactions: first, that is not far off a useful summary of human nature. I think we're all at heart accustomed to pursuing our own interest at the expense of the common good. Societies do it in different ways, and some of the ways Greeks do it are just less culturally acceptable in, for example, England. (I'm not sure our civic life is inherently better in England though. You don't find Greek high streets that are no-go areas on Friday nights as you do the length and breadth of England.) But fair enough to an extent - Greece has societal sin. No surprise there.

Second, I really don't know how fair a characterisation of the Greek nation this article is. I'm going to sound it out among some of our friends here. Most people we've got to know here don't hold back about criticising their compatriots (as Lewis points out) so it may be that people don't get as defensive as I think they might - maybe it's spot on.

Third, as I said I was reminded of something trivial that happened nearly four years ago.

Moving these days seems to assume a fair amount of IKEA purchasing and we were no exception - with many, many flat-pack boxes opened and the contents assembled. What to do with the mountains of cardboard? Rubbish collection here takes place each night and you have to carry your stuff to the nearest wheelie bins, in our case just at the end of our short street on the main road. I set out with load upon load and was a little concerned to find the bins already full. There was no way I could leave all those boxes without encroaching on the road itself, or piling up precariously high.

I asked Costas what to do - our friendly neighbour, now in his mid-20s. 

'Costa - should I leave a few here now and some more tomorrow and so on?

'No, just leave them all.'

'But there's too many - it will be a problem on the road.'

'Eh, this is Greece. We don't care.'

This was said with shrug of shoulders and most certainly in the sense of 'someone else's problem - sleep easy my friend'.

Part one - the moving boxes (can't locate picture of IKEA boxes which followed)

Perhaps the lack of civic duty is much more pronounced here. Can it be recreated, once lost?

As we think about teaching the truth about Jesus, the one who is Lord over all of life - including tax demands, litter and illegal software copying - we are beginning to see more clearly the way the gospel will challenge the students who epitomise the 'we don't care' of modern Greece.

This is not important...

...but worth mentioning. I noticed sadly that our favourite Greek beer (Mythos, which very handily allows one to say my Thos and your Thos) has gone up from 86c to 1.06E over the summer. This is still not much for half a litre of ideal companion to our favourite Greek fast food on a hot evening, the chicken giros with everything, but I was therefore chuffed when at the same time as noticing the raging inflation I backed into a stack of 'new product' Hellas Pils, for a mere 59c.

It turns out that this was a bad deal at half the price. The second bottle that we opened, which had a bit of fizz, might have been the collected dregs of other peoples' Mythos. The first bottle (see picture) broke as I opened it. Note the neck and cap. I poured it into glasses through a tea strainer to collect the stray shards of glass, but I shouldn't have bothered as it went straight down the drain once it was tasted.

Something is worth paying for if it is to be richly enjoyed a la 1 Timothy 6.