Minister’s Study Leave

Study Leave Report
for study undertaken between 23 June and 17 August, 2014
by Rev. Owen Rogers
Belmont Presbyterian Church St. Margaret’s, Northern Presbytery, PCANZ

We used to call it God’s Own Country but today New Zealand has only its natural beauty by which to earn the title while its people for the most part ignore their Creator and shun the One to whom they owe their existence. From a peak in the 1960s this country has seen a substantial decline in Christian allegiance and church attendance. Today Christianity is being sustained by immigrants while the ‘indigenous’ population is less and less interested in organised religion and faith. The spirituality that is currently popular is seen as distinct from faith in Jesus the Christ. Many New Zealanders these days show no interest in God and a number are scathing or antagonistic towards Christianity.

I am not happy with this situation. It might fit a last-days scenario but I believe that God loves my compatriots and wants them to know and love Him. I believe, too, that we who know Jesus have a part to play in helping people find and be found by God. So what is to be done?

This study leave grew out of this concern and I began with the question, “What, if anything, would provoke a secular Kiwi person to pay attention to God?” I figured I could find out by asking people who have become Christians recently what did it for them. I chose to speak to people who have become Christians in the last 5 years or so. That way I would ensure that my learning would be current. Also, because I am committed to people continuing in the faith, not falling away, I added the question, “What is keeping you growing?”

My research
In a recent Candour article, Martin Baker asked, “When do you and I get the opportunity to stand back from being immersed in the day-to-day dealings of our private and public lives and, for want of a better word, evaluate where things are going for ourselves?”1 This is a purpose of Study Leave in general and this one in particular.

My Study Leave was 6 weeks, four of them in England, between 28 June and 17 August, 2014. I would like to record my thanks to the Bill and Margaret Best Travel Fund of the PCANZ and to PSDS for their support of this work. I talked with new Christians in New Zealand, England and Australia. I talked with church leaders, including Neil Hudson, Director of the Imagine Project of the London Institute of Contemporary Christianity2, and Tony Dark, Pastor responsible for evangelism and follow-up at New Community Church, Sidcup, London, a New Frontiers Church. And also Joe and Anne Kapolyo whom we met in Singapore on the way home. Joe is Minister at Edmonton Baptist Church, North London and was in NZ on a speaking tour with Scripture Union during August.

I went to LICC because they are on about the same things I’m on about and New Community because they are a growing community and were able to put me in contact with young Christians (and because our son and his family are part of this church and were our point of contact). This report is a distillation of the many discussions I had and personal stories I was told, books and pamphlets I read and my meditation on all of these. I always had a practical purpose for the study which ultimately is, ‘Where do we at St. Margaret’s, Belmont, go from here?’

I figured that I could talk with people in NZ and in England as the two countries are comparable and my reading and discussions show this assumption to be valid. Both countries fit the description I gave in my opening paragraph.3 From my research I gained a picture of today’s non-Christians, their attitudes and thinking, in our two countries. The portrayal given in Beyond Belief? and Beyond the Fringe is derived from research carried out in England but correlates strongly with what I see here in NZ. Beyond Belief? is useful in its description of barriers and bridges to faith – barriers that hinder our communication of the gospel and warnings of things to avoid and bridges we can use to assist our communication.

I talked with a number of people – in New Zealand, in England and in Australia – and got a variety of answers. People were motivated by problems at home, a rocky marriage, dysfunctional family life, loneliness, seeing Bible prophecy coming true, believing that God did make the world and is in charge, a desire to do the right things and be accepted by God. But for all who told me their stories one factor was consistent: the influence of one or more Christians in their life. Christians lived the Life before them showing that there are answers to their problems, were there for them in their trauma 24/7, were always friendly and hospitable, asked and answered questions and prayed for them whether they knew it or not.

Talking with people showed me that a knowledge of the profiles of non-Christians and of the barriers and bridges are very useful to guide our interactions, especially in the early stages of developing relationships. At the same time one needs the guidance of the Holy Spirit so as to be dealing with the things that matter as there are several things going on at the same time, and what is presenting may not be the real issue. People don’t come to Christ through intellectual argument alone for following Jesus is a relationship, not a philosophy, it is more than accepting a set of propositions, it is joining one’s life to the Life of our Creator.

It was clear from the stories that, while many objections to Christianity appear to be intellectual, there is in many – maybe most – cases an underlying factor in people’s lifestyles. People want to live their choice of lifestyle so they want to justify their behaviour not change it and they build for themselves a religion/philosophy that enables them to go on living the way they want. They object to Christianity because they sense that Jesus expects them to change (the church certainly conveys such an expectation) and they conjure up distasteful images of what that change looks like. What they don’t realise is that when they do seek change, and Jesus to do the changing, it comes much more easily, gently and lovingly than they ever expected. Tony Dark highlighted this factor and several of the stories reinforced it.

The answer to my questions
While most of my respondents pointed to a single person at the start of their journey to Jesus, in all cases the thing that got them to conversion and continued growth was, simply put, the Christian community. Somewhere in my reading I came across the comment that there are many in our society who aren’t following Jesus but most of them know someone who is. We all know and interact with a number of non-Christians every day; we just need to pick up on these contacts and ‘scratch where it itches’. The involvement of the community is important in showing people real Christian living (as opposed to the false, stereotypical image they likely have in their minds). It also takes the pressure off any one person by sharing the work. I don’t have to do everything because God has gifted others with me to do what he hasn’t gifted me to do.

For growth in the faith we tend to think there are certain things that all disciples must learn. These have often been put together in one curriculum or another and new Christians encouraged to go through the programmes. For my sample of new Christians, curriculum delivery, especially in terms of Bible Studies, Home Groups and so on, is patchy to say the least but this does not seem to be hindering them in their growth in knowledge and practice of the faith. Just as it takes a village to raise a child it takes a godly Community to raise a Christian. One of my interviewees said that he felt his growth was his responsibility and others showed that they were taking responsibility for their growth. My interviewees’ churches provide various opportunities for study and interaction and these are taken up as people are able to do so. I detected no ill effect when they don’t as long as they stay connected to the community, as my interviewees are doing.

This is not entirely a new thought for me – that Christians can grow when they are not doing courses and they don’t need to be in small groups all the time. Research done by Willow Creek Church in Chicago a few years ago revealed that putting people through courses doesn’t equal growth and that the church must not take away from the people their responsibility for their own growth.4 From all this I am staying with the convictions that every baby needs parents and every (new) Christian needs a mentor to guide and encourage nurture and that Bible study, discipleship courses and small groups are important for growth and ministry.

Community is key
My research has brought me back to the importance of community and reminded me that the church is impotent without it. We cannot truly show God to the world without community because God is communal. Without community we struggle to draw people to Christ. This fights against the individualism with which I have been brought up, particularly individual salvation. There is much in the Bible that speaks of God’s communal orientation. For example, Jesus often spoke of and to his flock. He addressed whole towns at once (esp. Jerusalem). Throughout the Bible, God deals with nations, cities, tribes and other groups. Individual people exist in relation to a group, not in isolation.

Even so, I have a lot of work to do to develop a truly Christian community. I wonder firstly what it really looks like and secondly how we get it. While I have tried to work in this direction in each of the churches in which I’ve been involved, I feel that I have yet to experience the real thing.

How do we get a community of love and reconciliation when it includes none who has it all together, Christians who have serious issues, and non-Christians who have more need to receive love than ability to give it? Is there something about loving Christian community that shines through despite our human dysfunction? If so, what is that and how will it be distinctive and attractive and clearly of God?

Community is necessary for people to know Jesus but it is also essential to glorify God. The primary reason for working towards community is to be authentic Jesus-followers. Others joining is a consequence of who we are and what we do in connection with God’s Spirit just as it was in the beginning.5 Leslie Newbigin wrote: “…what our Lord left behind Him was not a book, nor a creed, nor a system of thought, nor a rule of life, but a visible community…”6

If we only knew..
For this I will have to research what the church knows and follow the Spirit in putting this into practice. Let me quote from Nick Spencer in Beyond Belief?

“The Chief Executive of Hewlett Packard once said, “If Hewlett Packard only knew what Hewlett Packard knows we would be market leaders.” The same goes for the church.

“Right now … hundreds of churches are engaged in interesting social and community projects. Hundreds more are experimenting with new and fruitful ways of evangelism and ‘doing’ church. Congregations are shaping Sunday services, modifying buildings, offering new facilities, meeting at different times, using different liturgies and trying out new formats.

“Cell and house groups are trying out new forms of fellowship. Christians are developing creative, original ways of bringing Christ to work. They are developing pithy, memorable responses to the old questions. They are using pertinent examples in order to explode the old myths.

“And so much of this is going on in parallel, without any serious communication or sharing of ideas. If Christians only knew what other Christians were thinking, saying and doing – not just so that they could imitate it but so that they could use it to develop their own thinking and living – the church would be so much more fruitful.”7

It is assuring to note the cultural change that has taken place in St. Margaret’s in the last 7 years. Our church culture now includes an expectation and an ability to speak for Jesus and to invite people to church. Our people are no longer freaked by the idea of speaking of their faith now that they have some questions to ask and answers in mind. The culture will continue to change in small steps month by month, steps which LICC refers to as one degree shifts.8

In the next few months we will take a two-pronged approach. In the first, we will make the most we can of the Hope Project because the TV ads will be broadcast and the booklets will be delivered between now and Christmas and they will provide great opportunities for conversations with our neighbours. The second prong will be to use the ‘Frontline’ material, a liberating view of how God can and does work in and through us in our daily lives, to help us to be Christ’s disciples 24/7.

I appreciate meeting Joe and Anne Kapolyo and attending their seminar in Auckland in which they encouraged us to make our Christian communities multicultural communities. St. Margaret’s already has multiple cultures and the challenge is to develop this as we go along. Thanks, Joe and Anne for ideas on how to do this.

Along with the Hope Project and Frontline I can see a place for Alpha, in the coming months and possibly ongoing, as an introduction for those who are new to Christianity.

I am sure that this Study Leave has fulfilled its objectives. I have a firmer vision for the future of the church and how that might be achieved. I go forward confident in the Lord to continue to develop community one small step at a time.
Bibliography
Allen, Roland, The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church, Wipf & Stock, 1962
Greene, Mark, Fruitfulness on the Frontline, IVP, Nottingham, 2014
Hawkins, Greg L. and Parkinson, Cally, Reveal, Willow Creek, 2007
Spencer, Nick, Beyond Belief? Barriers and Bridges to Faith Today, LICC, London, 2003
Spencer, Nick, Beyond the Fringe, Researching a Spiritual Age, Cliff College, 2005
Fruitfulness on the Frontline DVD, an 8-session course for disciples who want to make a difference where they are, 2014. (Companion to Mark Greene’s book.)
licc.org.uk is the website address for the London Institute of Contemporary Christianity.
followers.org.nz is a website for going on from here re missional communities and the like.