Contextualisation is vital. Missionaries spend time learning a language and a culture so that they can share the gospel effectively and plant God honouring churches that disciple people well given their particular context. I wonder sometimes whether we tend to forget that lesson in the UK. Simply assuming because something worked somewhere else it will work here in just the same way. But such an approach is dangerous and flawed because our regions have distinct flavours, histories and influences.
In fact it is one of my concerns as I look at the church in Yorkshire, the county with the lowest church attendance in the country, a church attendance on a par with Japan. We simply haven't spent enough time thinking about how we reach Yorkshire people with the gospel. We have tended to just do what everyone else is doing. Partly that is skewed by church planting in university towns where the majority of students and a significant chunk of the general populace are not from Yorkshire. Sheffield, Leeds, and York are not the norm in Yorkshire, though I wonder if even there churches are reaching the indigenous Yorkshire men and women or just the interlopers?
So what would it look like to contextualise? Yorkshire is not the South of England. Yorkshire people don't think like people from the home counties. So how do we reach them with the gospel? What would it look like to contextualise? To do Church in Yorkshire Places? Here are a few thoughts:
A Passion for Jesus
Middle Class (Southern) Evangelicalism tends to prize rational argument over passion. Yet spend time with Yorkshire people and you realise they are passionate and driven. A raised voice in conversation is not a sign of anger or loss of control or rationality but of concern and love and commitment. Our passion for Jesus must match that of the fan for his club, or the Yorkshire man for his county. Preach and proclaim the gospel with passion.
Working class mentality
If you ask a Yorkshire man what class he is he will look at you like you've gone mad. What class would you want to be, 'Of course I'm working class I'm from Yorkshire.' Being a Yorkshire man or woman defines your class not your occupation and it is historical not changeable. Many have been to uni and have traditionally middle class jobs but still define themselves as being working class, in fact many will resent the implication that they are middle class. They have working class values and virtues and we need to address those and think through how they have been shaped by gospel values, and how sin has warped them not simply value, assume, address and preach to middle class issues.
Local not national
Yorkshire people are passionate about being from Yorkshire, what other county devised it's own medal table for the Olympics. They care passionately about local issues. It is not that national or international issues don't matter but that local comes first. How do we in our engagement, evangelism, preparation, and preaching reflect that?
A suspicion of interlopers
There is an ingrained suspicion of outsiders, especially if you speak with a posh accent (unless you are from Harrogate). We have to work hard to overcome this, how? By accepting, loving and engaging with Yorkshire and it's quirks and eccentricities. And we must commit to long term listening engagement and friendship with our communities if we are an interloper. Listening matters, otherwise we reinforce the idea that we arrogantly presume to come in with all the answers. We don't. We have loads to learn and value and we will be richer for it.
Defined by hardship
Many communities in Yorkshire have had it hard. Do your research? Read local history about the miners strike and the loss of other traditional industries and understand how this has shaped, and is still shaping, communities. Read local history and talk to and listen to local people about the church in that area. People tend to define themselves by struggle and hardship. Which in turn can produce a can't do attitude and or a resentment of others who have 'had it easy'. In some cases we will find church has added to this hardship. We need to wrestle with how the gospel addresses and reshapes this? How do we plant and pastor churches that reshape this with gospel realism and thankfulness?
Mistrust of big project/society/organisations
Many have been let down by big promises made by big organisations or left disenchanted by unfulfilled promises and visions. This leads to a sense of mistrust of the big and of grandiose visions and plans. We need to plant and pastor churches that overcome this by being realistic, only promising what we can do and by being quick to admit mistakes if and when we have let people down. Working hard to win back trust through sheer love and commitment.
This is only scratching the surface of what is a very complex issue but one we need to face and think more deeply about as we pray and plan to evangelise Yorkshire for the glory of God by planting churches across this great county.
Showing posts with label Yorkshire. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Yorkshire. Show all posts
Tuesday, 17 January 2017
Wednesday, 2 September 2015
Are smaller churches paying the price for giving away?
This summer I had a bumper crop of emails from student/youth/assistant pastors asking me that if we were sending any students to university in their town/city we would direct them towards their church. I always have mixed feelings when I receive such emails. Whilst in one sense its great to know that there are churches to direct students towards I almost want to vet those churches. To email back and ask if they will be sending those students back to us (or any other church) three years hence better equipped and trained, more in love with Jesus and more aware of the need and more determined to see God's kingdom grow in the United Kingdom. Or whether their students usually stay on with them after graduation, thus growing their church at the cost of churches in non-university towns.
I've mused on some of the questions I would ask:
1. What percentage of students do you encourage to engage in the work of mission on campus through the CU because you recognise the unique strategic opportunity it presents? How do you encourage that?
2. How do you help students gain a vision of God's kingdom that encompasses more than just your church or city or town, but a passion for the gospel to be known across the UK?
3. How do you equip and train and release those students who come to you to serve the kingdom across the world?
4. What percentage of your students stay with you on graduation and why do they stay?
5. What percentage of your graduates leave to go to gospel deprived areas of the town or city or to serve in gospel work in other UK towns or cities?
There are others but they are the principle five. Because here's my concern the cost to small evangelical churches of sending their young people to university is staggeringly high because most do not return. It means that nationally churches outside of university towns are ageing, lose the next generation of leaders, and will eventually die out. Though those small churches are often the ones who readily give away at cost to themselves.
If you map where most church planting is taking place it is in university towns and cities. Why? Is it because those are the churches with young mobile people, the freshly minted young graduate professionals? I'm not against church planting, I'm all for it. But there seems to be little thought about planting outside of our cities. That's partly why I think Gospel Yorkshire is an exciting initiative as it highlights places across the 4 counties of Yorkshire that have a need for new gospel witness and many of them are in non-university areas.
I fear the trajectory we are on in the UK. Church in the university cities growing whilst the smaller churches pay the price for giving away. With many in those university cities either ignorant of the gospel need elsewhere or unaware of the gospel work being done there (I've heard of people who were told by those in big university churches upon getting jobs in Doncaster that there were no bible teaching churches there).
I'm almost tempted to add one last question to those above. 'Imagine, that over the next 5 years every one of your young people left to move to another city and did not return and were not replaced by other young people, how would that impact your church? How would it effect it's budget, it's children's work, it's bible study, it's pastoral care, it's ability to reach out with the gospel, it's leadership?'
I've mused on some of the questions I would ask:
1. What percentage of students do you encourage to engage in the work of mission on campus through the CU because you recognise the unique strategic opportunity it presents? How do you encourage that?
2. How do you help students gain a vision of God's kingdom that encompasses more than just your church or city or town, but a passion for the gospel to be known across the UK?
3. How do you equip and train and release those students who come to you to serve the kingdom across the world?
4. What percentage of your students stay with you on graduation and why do they stay?
5. What percentage of your graduates leave to go to gospel deprived areas of the town or city or to serve in gospel work in other UK towns or cities?
There are others but they are the principle five. Because here's my concern the cost to small evangelical churches of sending their young people to university is staggeringly high because most do not return. It means that nationally churches outside of university towns are ageing, lose the next generation of leaders, and will eventually die out. Though those small churches are often the ones who readily give away at cost to themselves.
If you map where most church planting is taking place it is in university towns and cities. Why? Is it because those are the churches with young mobile people, the freshly minted young graduate professionals? I'm not against church planting, I'm all for it. But there seems to be little thought about planting outside of our cities. That's partly why I think Gospel Yorkshire is an exciting initiative as it highlights places across the 4 counties of Yorkshire that have a need for new gospel witness and many of them are in non-university areas.
I fear the trajectory we are on in the UK. Church in the university cities growing whilst the smaller churches pay the price for giving away. With many in those university cities either ignorant of the gospel need elsewhere or unaware of the gospel work being done there (I've heard of people who were told by those in big university churches upon getting jobs in Doncaster that there were no bible teaching churches there).
I'm almost tempted to add one last question to those above. 'Imagine, that over the next 5 years every one of your young people left to move to another city and did not return and were not replaced by other young people, how would that impact your church? How would it effect it's budget, it's children's work, it's bible study, it's pastoral care, it's ability to reach out with the gospel, it's leadership?'
Wednesday, 17 July 2013
Yorkshire: conflicting emotions
Tomorrow I'll drive up to the last Yorkshire Training of the year, pity the poor students as I inflict my preaching on them at their end of year service. I have loved going up to Xscape every Thursday and trying to teach these committed young (compared to me) and old people how to teach God's word better as they lead bible studies. It has been a real encouragement to see their passion, and their commitment. Many of them take a day off work in order to come, relatively few are ministry trainees, but all of them are committed to teaching God's word better. And that is a real encouragement because Yorkshire is so bleak spiritually, it is the least reached county in England, so to see 30 people committing themselves to teach the bible in different contexts is brilliant.
But in a way the drive up and back from YT is always discouraging. For example I pass one church which is bordered up and shut, another which is up for auction, and another which is used for retail purposes. And they are just the ones I can see from the main road. There is another I know of which has, in the last few months, shut its doors for the last time and others which are limping along with a handful of members, but where closure looks to be just a matter of time. It is a desperate situation, one which mixes despair with hope.
What I mustn't do in that situation is do an Elijah, he despairs of the state of the nation. What I must do is pray to the God who is able and maybe share the need with others, whilst thanking God for those he is already stirring up to serve him.
Wednesday, 5 December 2012
Recognising what is culturally appropriate
As I've been thinking about reaching Yorkshire with the gospel it has got me thinking about our prepackaged view of church. When I say the word church all sorts of ideas pop into our heads. 2 services one in the morning or one in the evening or one afternoon service with tea, a building or a school hall, a Sunday gathering, home/gospel/small groups or whatever you want to call them. There are a set of assumptions which we make when we think about church. But are those assumptions helping us reach people with the gospel or stopping us reaching people with the gospel? Does what helps one group of people hinder another?
Take the idea of home groups (or whatever you call them). A group of people who regularly get together and are committed to studying the Bible together. That is great, and much great work and discipling is done in these groups. But are they culturally relevant for everyone? What about for those not from academic backgrounds, or who have always found reading and comprehension exercises difficult? In what other environment or secular setting do people sit down and discuss a document(I know the bible is much more than that)? My guess is its only in middle class, university educated environments and work places. Do we need to be more creative in our thinking about Bible teaching for the vast majority of people? What will this look like?
With most of my friends who are Yorkshire born and bred we don't read a book and get together to discuss it over coffee. We gather together to watch something or to do something (like go to the footie, or a pub quiz). We talk alongside each other as we do something together, or help each other out with something. We meet at the school gate and chat about real life problems and practicalities as we wait to pick our children up from school. So sitting in a room and discussing the Bible is so hard for these men. And it is not that they are wrong and we are right, it is not that they need to learn to do it. It is that we need to learn to be culturally flexible with the inflexible truth of the gospel. If courses on an evening in a building or a home are our way of evangelism will we ever reach these people?
Or take the presuppositions about a church service - I'm not talking about when it is or isn't as in day or time I'll throw myself on that grenade another day - but about its content. What level of literacy do our services require? What level are we aiming at in our reading and our preaching? Is the language we use technical or understandable?
Picture your normal service: how many songs do you sing, how quick are they, how many different songs do you sing in a month? How accessible are bibles to people? Do you have big print bibles? How well read is the bible (this is vital if people struggle to read for themselves)? What technical language is used in your service? Worship, praise, grace, trinitarian, gospel, justified, cross, prayer all words we use but which need to be explained and may be better replaced by a simple phrase.
I want to say right out front that I love singing and praising God is a biblical and right response to the love of God in Christ. But how welcoming is our singing if you are from a non-singing culture? Or reading if you find reading hard? Would we be better to have a smaller selection of songs we sing and almost learn so that how well you read the words of a screen is irrelevant? In a largely non-reading culture even among church goers how can we ensure the bible is taken in during the service? It needs to be read well, with feeling, emotion, depth, passion, sorrow depending on what the reading calls for.
I wonder if we need to stop and think about our evangelical Christian sub-culture. Who does it exclude? How hard does it make it for people to feel at home, to grow, to be discipled? The problem with assumptions is that we make them sub-consciously, by their very nature they are not thought through decisions. I can't help wondering if our church culture is part of the problem not the solution for many in Yorkshire?
Take the idea of home groups (or whatever you call them). A group of people who regularly get together and are committed to studying the Bible together. That is great, and much great work and discipling is done in these groups. But are they culturally relevant for everyone? What about for those not from academic backgrounds, or who have always found reading and comprehension exercises difficult? In what other environment or secular setting do people sit down and discuss a document(I know the bible is much more than that)? My guess is its only in middle class, university educated environments and work places. Do we need to be more creative in our thinking about Bible teaching for the vast majority of people? What will this look like?
With most of my friends who are Yorkshire born and bred we don't read a book and get together to discuss it over coffee. We gather together to watch something or to do something (like go to the footie, or a pub quiz). We talk alongside each other as we do something together, or help each other out with something. We meet at the school gate and chat about real life problems and practicalities as we wait to pick our children up from school. So sitting in a room and discussing the Bible is so hard for these men. And it is not that they are wrong and we are right, it is not that they need to learn to do it. It is that we need to learn to be culturally flexible with the inflexible truth of the gospel. If courses on an evening in a building or a home are our way of evangelism will we ever reach these people?
Or take the presuppositions about a church service - I'm not talking about when it is or isn't as in day or time I'll throw myself on that grenade another day - but about its content. What level of literacy do our services require? What level are we aiming at in our reading and our preaching? Is the language we use technical or understandable?
Picture your normal service: how many songs do you sing, how quick are they, how many different songs do you sing in a month? How accessible are bibles to people? Do you have big print bibles? How well read is the bible (this is vital if people struggle to read for themselves)? What technical language is used in your service? Worship, praise, grace, trinitarian, gospel, justified, cross, prayer all words we use but which need to be explained and may be better replaced by a simple phrase.
I want to say right out front that I love singing and praising God is a biblical and right response to the love of God in Christ. But how welcoming is our singing if you are from a non-singing culture? Or reading if you find reading hard? Would we be better to have a smaller selection of songs we sing and almost learn so that how well you read the words of a screen is irrelevant? In a largely non-reading culture even among church goers how can we ensure the bible is taken in during the service? It needs to be read well, with feeling, emotion, depth, passion, sorrow depending on what the reading calls for.
I wonder if we need to stop and think about our evangelical Christian sub-culture. Who does it exclude? How hard does it make it for people to feel at home, to grow, to be discipled? The problem with assumptions is that we make them sub-consciously, by their very nature they are not thought through decisions. I can't help wondering if our church culture is part of the problem not the solution for many in Yorkshire?
Tuesday, 4 December 2012
Reaching Yorkshire
Anyone who has read this blog knows how hard Yorkshire is to reach with the gospel. The work is slow and laborious, often 3 steps forward 2 back, (sometimes 3 back). Yorkshire is the only county never to have had a revival, it languishes way behind other counties in terms of living, growing, gospel centred churches and number of Christians as a percentage of the population.
I've been wondering why this is for along time. It was whilst reading Tim Chester's 'Unreached' Growing churches in working-class and deprived areas that I began to formulate something of a hypothesis about this. The book is excellent, every pastor, elder and church leader in the country should buy one. In fact why not order enough for your leadership team and discuss a chapter every time you meet? What is so good is that it exposes how middle class British Christianity is but also addresses some of the significant needs and opportunities there are among the working class and deprived class in the UK. As well as helping us understand something about the culture.
But what I have found particularly stimulating is seeing parallels between the culture, ideals and attitudes described in the book and those of people from Yorkshire whether working class or not:
There is a suspicion of authority figures government and big organisations, in part historical, in part deserved and in part just a fruit of being northern when everything is perceived as taking place in the South (beginning to pick this resentment up myself!). I wonder if that means church leaders have to overcome a sense of suspicion of authority before people will even come to church, therefore long term pastorates are vital, as are pastors who are out of the office and with people. Churches themselves are seen as part of the machinery of government and must show their love of people not programs or politics.
People have a sense of being from Yorkshire not of being British. Take the Olympics for example - one of the points of pride on local radio and TV was having a medal table for Yorkshire along with Team GB. There is a sense of being part of the UK but being distinctive regionally and not wanting that to change. Again I wonder if that is something churches have to overcome, especially if its leaders are not native Yorkshire folk, how? By showing a commitment to the locality, love the people by serving them where there needs are. If there is no community space provide one, if litter is an issue organise work days, if the issue is debt provide debt counselling and so on. We need to show people that we are for them and love them and value them before they will listen and this can take a long time (stubbornness is a Yorkshire trait too!)
Yorkshire people are open and forthright, they don't just tell you that a spade is a spade but whether its a good spade or a useless one (I've toned down the language they would use) whether you ask for their opinion or not. It is little wonder that academic preaching doesn't reach these people, that they see little point in it. They value honesty and forthrightness and that is the sort of preaching they need to hear. They need the Bible to be taught in honesty and applied readily and practically. They are an intensely practical people and they need to see what difference it makes day-to-day to worship God, Father, Son and Spirit.
They are just a couple of the areas where I wonder if Yorkshire folk are distinctive. I wonder how much of that explains why we aren't reaching people in Yorkshire with the gospel. I wonder how much of the Yorkshire mentality is similar to that of the working class that churches in the UK simply don't reach? Valuing people and relationships above anything else, not being partuclarly aspirational, and so on all add to the mix.
I hate to think what the percentage of the indigenous Yorkshire population in bible teaching churches is on any given Sunday. I wonder if many of our Yorkshire churches are populated by interlopers from other counties, aspirational students and young professionals, and so on, and when we preach to those in front of us (which we naturally do) we move further away from the people our churches historically were put in place to reach.
What would it look like to preach and teach the gospel in Yorkshire to Yorkshire? Would it be less academic (notice I didn't say less biblical), would it be more practical and down to earth, would it be more confrontational? Would our churches need to be more long term in our commitment?
I love where God has put me to minister, I love Doncaster, the people, the honesty, the willingness to love and help. But it is a county and a town desperately in need of the gospel.
I've been wondering why this is for along time. It was whilst reading Tim Chester's 'Unreached' Growing churches in working-class and deprived areas that I began to formulate something of a hypothesis about this. The book is excellent, every pastor, elder and church leader in the country should buy one. In fact why not order enough for your leadership team and discuss a chapter every time you meet? What is so good is that it exposes how middle class British Christianity is but also addresses some of the significant needs and opportunities there are among the working class and deprived class in the UK. As well as helping us understand something about the culture.
But what I have found particularly stimulating is seeing parallels between the culture, ideals and attitudes described in the book and those of people from Yorkshire whether working class or not:
There is a suspicion of authority figures government and big organisations, in part historical, in part deserved and in part just a fruit of being northern when everything is perceived as taking place in the South (beginning to pick this resentment up myself!). I wonder if that means church leaders have to overcome a sense of suspicion of authority before people will even come to church, therefore long term pastorates are vital, as are pastors who are out of the office and with people. Churches themselves are seen as part of the machinery of government and must show their love of people not programs or politics.
People have a sense of being from Yorkshire not of being British. Take the Olympics for example - one of the points of pride on local radio and TV was having a medal table for Yorkshire along with Team GB. There is a sense of being part of the UK but being distinctive regionally and not wanting that to change. Again I wonder if that is something churches have to overcome, especially if its leaders are not native Yorkshire folk, how? By showing a commitment to the locality, love the people by serving them where there needs are. If there is no community space provide one, if litter is an issue organise work days, if the issue is debt provide debt counselling and so on. We need to show people that we are for them and love them and value them before they will listen and this can take a long time (stubbornness is a Yorkshire trait too!)
Yorkshire people are open and forthright, they don't just tell you that a spade is a spade but whether its a good spade or a useless one (I've toned down the language they would use) whether you ask for their opinion or not. It is little wonder that academic preaching doesn't reach these people, that they see little point in it. They value honesty and forthrightness and that is the sort of preaching they need to hear. They need the Bible to be taught in honesty and applied readily and practically. They are an intensely practical people and they need to see what difference it makes day-to-day to worship God, Father, Son and Spirit.
They are just a couple of the areas where I wonder if Yorkshire folk are distinctive. I wonder how much of that explains why we aren't reaching people in Yorkshire with the gospel. I wonder how much of the Yorkshire mentality is similar to that of the working class that churches in the UK simply don't reach? Valuing people and relationships above anything else, not being partuclarly aspirational, and so on all add to the mix.
I hate to think what the percentage of the indigenous Yorkshire population in bible teaching churches is on any given Sunday. I wonder if many of our Yorkshire churches are populated by interlopers from other counties, aspirational students and young professionals, and so on, and when we preach to those in front of us (which we naturally do) we move further away from the people our churches historically were put in place to reach.
What would it look like to preach and teach the gospel in Yorkshire to Yorkshire? Would it be less academic (notice I didn't say less biblical), would it be more practical and down to earth, would it be more confrontational? Would our churches need to be more long term in our commitment?
I love where God has put me to minister, I love Doncaster, the people, the honesty, the willingness to love and help. But it is a county and a town desperately in need of the gospel.
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