A Fair Go
A Fair Go
A few days ago I was away across the sea at the Orama Christian community on Great Barrier Island. I was there to teach a few shards of Church History at a convocation called "Sojourn 07". While there I dreamed one night that I was looking up a road. To my right was a fire station. On my left a row of very old Pohutukawa trees (the New Zealand Christmas tree!), with heaps of new shoots and their brilliantly red flowers. As I watched, a rather old fire engine came roaring out on its way to a fire. But as it did so it crashed through the trees, uprooting and scattering them.
Here is a warning for 07. We need to be very, very careful we don't allow traditional and imported Christian theologies and methods of mission and evangelism to crash over the top of exciting, new, indigenous evangelistic "sproutings" here. One definition of madness is to keep on doing the same-old, same-old, believing something different is going to happen. To date, none of the good-old, tried-and-true methods of evangelism and church growth have worked with anything other than the mildest success. But we keep on ploughing with the same old gear. To what end or purpose?
I suspect the major consequence is that experimental initiatives get mashed up before they ever have a chance to get started, let alone bear fruit.
"No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; for the patch pulls away from the garment, and the tear is made worse. Nor do they put new wine into old wineskins, or else the wineskins break, the wine is spilled, and the wineskins are ruined. But they put new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved." (Matthew 9.16-17)
In the language of the Kiwi, I believe the Holy Spirit is simply asking the Church in Aotearoa to give Him a fair go!
PS While we are on the subject of local versus imported...once again Aotearoa is being tramped by the usual summer-holiday flock of overseas ministries. On my really bad days I find myself wondering if they are here just to tell us how to serve God in our own backyard, or hoping to give their suntans a boost as well?
