‘Urban Mission’ have been using rap in gospel ministry for 16 years in schools and prisons. We did this while working other jobs. Then we were invited to come on to the staff of a failing school in Lewisham to use music as a mentoring tool. The children would go from ‘Maths’ to ‘Urban Mission’. We were able to lay down some ground rules. We banned references to drugs or violence. ‘So what we going to do then?’ they asked. This gave us a great opportunity to talk about life skills. We focused on the content (What are you saying?), the creativity (How are you saying this?) and character (Who are you?). This may not sound like gospel ministry, but this opened the door for evangelism in a way we had never experienced. By relating to the children we had opportunities to testify. Ten minutes into lunchtime the children were still wanting to talk about the gospel. As a result many children have come to Christ.

Principles

Relating
We do not need to make the gospel ‘relevant’. When was life and death irrelevant to people? It is more about being relational than being relevant because gospel is always relevant. The bigger challenge is how they relate to us and us to them. How do we build a relationship so they find the gospel accessible through our lives? Build relationships to create revelational opportunities.

In John 6 Jesus fed people who were only interested in food. But it created an opportunity to share the message – even though only a few accepted it. So the feeding was a relational act that created a revelational opportunity.

Paul also related to people. See 1 Corinthians 9:19-22. Paul made attempts to relate to unbelievers, but without using his identity. Although Paul opposed circumcision of the Gentiles (the letter to the Galatians), he circumcised Timothy to relate to Jews (Acts 16:3; see also Acts 21:24). Paul found opportunities to relate to people and engage in their culture (Acts 17:22, 28).

Articulate
We need to speak clearly. Rap is an ideal medium for gospel communication because its fundamental element is words. Rap is content-full. Rap is also well known for using metaphors and similes. This allows us to present truth in a sideways manner. We use language to which they can relate before it becomes clear we are presenting the gospel (like the prophet Nathan to David). Jahaziel (a Christian rapper from London): ‘They call me Santa on wax because I bless them with God’s presence when they unravel my raps.’

Short stories are engaging and stories plus music are memorable. ‘From the earliest records of civilisation human beings have used storytelling as a powerful tool to communicate all that is significant concerning human experience.’ (Shai Linne)

Precipitate
Do not rush into something. Rap has some dangers. There is a potential for pride. Rap needs to be seen as a ministry and evaluated as a gospel ministry. For example, we require those who do this ministry to have a suitable gospel character no matter how musically gifted they may be.

Conclusion
It is the message not the method that makes the impact. We did not rely on rap. That is why we have packed it with gospel content. Rap is a relational tool and relational tools will vary in different contexts. The key thing is that we need to relate without compromising gospel content.

Available here from amazon.com and amazon.co.uk.

Rick tells you his wife is divorcing him after 22 years of marriage. How do you bring the words of Scripture to Rick? How do you counsel him with the word? CrossTalk is an attempt to answer this question. It’s a book on the use of Scripture in pastoral counselling.

It opens with a chapter outlining a number of scenarios to highlight both the challenges in applying Scripture to life and some of our preconceptions about how this should be done. The Bible is not, says Emlet, primarily a book of do’s and don’ts, nor a book of timeless principles for the problems of life, nor a casebook of characters to imitate or avoid, nor a system of doctrines. Instead the Bible is a story: the story of redemption with Christ as the centre. This means we need to look back to where we have come from and forward to where we are going, all the time remembering that this is God’s story, not ours.

To apply the Bible life, however, requires not only reading the Bible as a story, but being able to read people. Strikingly here Emlet’s approach parallels that of his approach to the Bible. He’s moving us away from proof-texting to seeing the Bible as an integrated narrative. In the same way he moves us away from trying to understand people through disconnected words or actions. Instead he proposes that we look for the “narrative skeleton” running through the person’s life. ‘In this sense, everyone has a story. Not simply a story to tell but a story (or stories) to live, a plotline that is going somewhere.’ (66) Emlet suggests using basic worldview questions (Where are we? Who are we? What’s wrong? What’s the remedy?, 69) to plot a person’s story in a way that parallels the Bible plotline of creation, fall and redemption. This allows us to ‘answer the fundamental questions of life with the biblical story’ (71).

Emlet suggests that we should view people in the categories of saints, sufferers and sinners (all of which will simultaneously be a reality for most people). He suggests that it is important to highlight these particular aspects of our identity as believers because “they describe our experience before Jesus returns to consummate his kingdom. How we live in our ‘roles’ as saints, sufferers, and sinners reveals how aligned we really are with God’s Word.” (74) (I’ve included below the main questions Emlet suggests for analysing people in this way.) “In ministry we are reading two ‘texts’ simultaneously, the story of Scripture and the story of the person we serve. In ministry we must always have one eye on the biblical text and one eye on the individual. Or better, our gaze constantly shifts between the two.” (90) Chapters 8-10 explore these principles through an extended case study.

In the final chapter Emlet emphasizes that the use of Scripture is a process, not a one-time event. Personal ministry is a dialogue, and that conversation occurs over time. He concludes by reminding us of the need to immerse ourselves in the word and rely on the Spirit rather than trusting a methodology. ‘The more we immerse ourselves in Scripture and the more self-conscious we are in our approach to people, the more natural and spontaneous these connections will be’. (173) ‘Real-life ministry requires wise creativity and Spirit-dependent flexibility, not slavish adherence to a set of rules’. (174)

If these ideas do not strike you as new then you may not gain much from reading CrossTalk. But if they are then CrossTalk would be a great place to start, to start learning how to use Scripture rightly in pastoring one another.

One final comment: There are a couple of pages on the role of the community in pastoral care (60-61, 175), but they are very brief and it would have been good to see this developed more.

Questions to help you understand a person

Questions for the Saint (95)

1. What evidence of God’s grace do you see in the person’s life?

2. In what ways do you see the individual already living true to her identity in Christ?

Questions for the sufferer (97)

1. What significant situational stressors is he currently facing? Consider things like body/health issues, relationship pressures and circumstantial and social/cultural influences

2. What were the significant shaping events of his life?

3. How has he been sinned against?

4. How is the person experiencing his problems?

Questions for the sinner (98)

1. What desires, thoughts, emotions, and actions are out of line with gospel/kingdom values?

2. What motives, themes and interpretations of life “compete” with the biblical story?

If we aren’t careful, we can get indigestion by consuming this stuff. Our diet devolves. We get bogged down in best practices instead of diving deeply into the Bible and our culture. What we need is good theology and missiology. For sure, there’s a place for winsome dialog about church planting best practices, church methods, and philosophy of ministry. My Tools for Missional Church is an attempt to contribute to these practical resources.

Reading Integratively

The danger, however, is reading practically apart from grounding our practice in theology. Snapping up the latest best practices, whether they are missional communities or multi-site video venues, should never be done haphazardly. As elders we are to watch our life and doctrine closely to make sure that theology and practice are closely intertwined, both for ourselves and for our flock (1 Tim 4:16). We should read and lead integratively.

I find that my church passion, insight and practice are helped by reading deeply—taking in good information and reflecting on its application. Cultivating good reading is a disciplined process that is learned over time. Fortunately, I’ve had a great missiological mentor to help me along the way, Dr. Timothy Tennent. Tennent now serves as the President of Asbury Seminary and studied under Dr. Andrew Walls, “the most important person you don’t know”.

Dr. Tennent is both a theologian and a practicioner—tithing a third of his life to church planting and theological education in India. He advocates a missiology done in “space and time,” meaning theology should be done in dialog with church history through deliberate contextualization. This has a way of keeping our best practices honest, squaring them with theological history and our cultural context.

As theologian-missionaries, we should all strive to cultivate and practice a theology that is missiologically oriented and a missiology that is theologically grounded. Not all missiologists follow this difficult, interdisciplinary path. Sometimes the integration of theology and missiology is up to us, the practitioners. We possess the high calling of shepherding the church in truth, wisdom, and love. And a little help can go a long way.

Reading Intentionally

To offer a little help, I’d like to recommend some good missiology. Missiology is the great integrating theological discipline, bringing biblical exegesis, systematic, biblical, and practical theology together for the sake of gospel advancement.

In no particular order, here are some missiologists I have found particularly helpful. Some are more theologically reflective than others. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it is an honest one (I’ve read multiple books by most of these authors). You certainly won’t agree with everything they teach, but that’s why you should read them. Sometimes they will change your mind for the good. Other times they will strengthen your understanding. Here’s a key work by each author:

• Andrew Walls – The Missionary Movement in Christian History
• Paul Hiebert – Anthropological Insight on Missiological Issues
• Chris Wright – The Mission of God           
• Ralph Winter – The Perspectives on the World Christian Movement
• Chuck Kraft – Culture, Communication, & Christianity
• Lamin Sanneh – Whose Religion is Christianity?
• David Bosch – Transforming Mission
• Tim Tennent - Theology in the Context of World Christianity
• Leslie Newbigin – Foolishness to the Greeks

No doubt I’ve left some good ones out, especially the newer missiologists like Ed Stetzer, Darrel Guder, Alan Hirsch, and so on. However, the newer missiologists have read these older missiologists. Just check their footnotes and follow them to deeper reading. An advantage of the above list is that these men are seminal missional thinkers, who in addition to breaking new ground, do so integratively.

Strive to do theology in “space and time” by reading integratively. Avoid reading indigestion by reading to make your practice theological and your theology practical.

Let me (with tongue in cheek) suggest another: slow church.

There is a slow food movement that extols the merits of hand-cooked food made from local ingredients cooked for as long as takes - an antidote to fast food. The slow food movement has extended so that people are advocating slow cities. I've reading through Proverbs over the past few weeks and have been struck by how many call for us to slow down. The books of Proverbs extols the virtues of:

Slow speech

See 10:19; 12:18, 23; 13:3; 17:27; 18:6-7; 21:23; 25:15; 29:20. It's an idea picked up and encapsulated in James 1:19-20: ‘My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for man’s anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires.'

Slow wealth

See 11:18; 20:11; 22:8, 16; 28:20, 22. ‘Dishonest money dwindles away, but he who gathers money little by little makes it grow.’ (Proverbs 13:11) This is an important reminder after the credit crisis. Get-rich-quick schemes either destroy you or someone else (and Proverbs has plenty to say about exploitation). Wealth earned slowly through diligence and hard work - and given away quickly - this is creditable in God's sight. Of course Proverbs also warns against those who are too slow - the sluggard who is lazy. See 10:26; 12:24, 27; 20:4, 13; 21:25: 22:13; 24:30-34. (for more on the imbalance between work and rest see my book, The Busy Christians Guide to Busyness .)

Slow actions

See 14:16-17; 15:18; 16:32; 19:11. ‘A patient man has great understanding, but a quick-tempered man displays folly.’ (Proverbs 14:29) Also character takes time to form so grey hair is honoured (16:31). Our culture is always in a hurry. We want to achieve everything today. It is striking that Jesus waited for 30 years before beginning his public ministry. I wonder if most of us had had our way we would have urged him into ministry earlier. A former boss once used to say, 'We over-estimate what we can do in a year and under-estimate what we can do in five years.'

Neil Cole is the author of Organic Church and, as the title suggests, in Organic Leadership he takes the approach of Organic Church and applies to leadership and training.

Cole begins by suggesting that many leaders who sincerely desires gospel fruit in fact impede growth because what they do – and what they have been trained to do – is lead an institution. “What is consistent in both Organic Church and Organic Leadership is my belief that the kingdom of God is relational, spiritual, and natural – without all the artificial stuff we tend to use to prop up our ministries today.” (15) What Cole criticizes in his opening deconstructing section is “institutionalization, corruption of leader character, legalistic leadership, the monopolization of truth, the hierarchical chain of command, false views of reality, and parasitic ‘ministries’.” (30) “What we think of as being needed can in reality be our neediness ... A drive to feel significant compels them and being needed affirms their sense of importance.” (39)

Cole then asks why, when many churches complain of a lack of leaders, other churches seem to have lots of leaders. The difference, he suggests, lies in whether your approach to finding leaders is recruitment or reproduction. “Recruitment is a practice in subtraction – taking people from one ministry to work in another. Reproducing leaders from the harvest and for the harvest is a practice of multiplication.” (134) The only biblical example of recruitment is Barnabas recruiting Paul in Acts 11:22-26. When in Luke 10 Jesus tells his disciples to ask the Lord of the Harvest for works the only place from those workers are going to come is the harvest itself. “If your ministry is struggling without leaders, do not re-evaluate your leadership development program. It is time to re-evaluate your disciple-making system. If you are doing next to nothing to reach lost and broken people, your leadership development system will yield very few results.” (139)

Cole challenges our image of leaders and our models of success. “As I read the New Testament, I have found three things that Jesus views as crucial to the success of his followers. They are faithfulness, fruitfulness, and finishing well.” (154) “In choosing leaders we must look for character – not doctrinal integrity, preaching style, or managerial skills.” (143) He emphasizes the importance of humility in leaders and leaders who give away power. “We don’t first find leaders and hope they take on the qualities of a servant. We need to find servants and let them be just that.” (204)

To develop leaders with character Cole urges us not only to teach and envision many people, but intensively to mentor a few – just as Jesus and Paul did. “If you can’t reproduce disciples, you’ll never reproduce leaders. If you can’t reproduce leaders, you’ll never reproduce churches. If you can’t reproduce churches, you’ll never see a movement.” (250)

Mentoring leaders involves more than simply increasing their knowledge. “From the way most leaders are groomed, evaluated, and selected in the church today, correct doctrine and the ability to communicate it appear to be the dominant measures of a leader.” (209) In contrast Cole says: “Most Christians in the West are educated beyond their obedience. More education is not what we need. We need more obedience to what we already know.” (208) It’s a provocative statement, but no more than the Spirit says in James 1:22-25. When Paul tells Titus to “teach what is in accord with sound doctrine” (2:1), what follows is not sound doctrine, but “relational character lived out in real life.” (209) It’s not sound doctrine is unimportant, but even here the goal of mentoring is “instilling in people a hunger for learning and then teaching them how to discover good information.” (216) Again, Cole comes back to the need for obedience:

“There are some other principles needed in this arena, though. We must get better at not educating people beyond their obedience. The way we pour on the teaching without any regard for practice is atrocious. We simply do not understand the damage this causes in our disciples and emerging leaders. We actually teach people a subtle yet very tangible way that obedience is not necessary; simply knowing the truth is enough. We are, in effect, training people not to take God’s truth seriously and personally.” (216)

One at a time

Cole advises us to mentor people one at time in one thing at time.

“The best way to multiply leaders – in fact I believe the only way to multiply leaders – is to do so one at a time. So while you may cover a lot more ground with large groups of people, your training will not be reproductive. If, however, you train a few, one-on-one, you can make sure they are growing holistically until they too as training others one-on-one. This is how we reproduce as leaders, and the result can be exponential, rather than merely incremental, growth.” (234)

“One thing at a time. So often we teach more than people can learn. The results are ineffective learning. In my experience, if I try to teach just one thing to an apprentice and do well with it, the emerging leader is always learning something. If I try to teach three or four things, there is a good chance I will teach the person nothing. Our memories are just not that good.” (234)

“Never teach a skill until there is a need for it … Never teach a second skill until the first one is learned … A skill is never truly learned until it is taught to another.” (240-242)

It becomes clear that mentoring one person does not mean you can only be mentoring person, but that you mentor people on their own – you don’t rely of group activities. Cole suggest 12-15 is the maximum number of people you can be mentoring at any one time.

“There is one principle that is extremely valuable in training people on the job. It is a principle that can save literally years of your life and keep you from untold frustrations. When it comes to investing your life into another, invest is what is proven, not in what is potential.” (244) “So to invest in what is proven, begin by presenting an individual with a small challenge.” (245)

Cole ends with a chapter on money in which he argues that in the New Testament the only people who have a right to receive regular money are apostles and widows. The “double honour” of 1 Timothy 5, he suggests, is an occasional honorarium. I’m not persuaded by his arguments here – and I speak as someone who doesn’t receive a salary from my church. But Cole's central concerns are important. “If you’re not willing to shepherd the flock without pay, then you’re not qualified to do so for pay.” (286) He quotes Roger L’Estrange: “He that serves God for money will serve the Devil for better wages.” (280) “In the context of organic churching, where churches are intentionally smaller, more intimate, and rapidly reproducing, there is no need to pay someone to pastor. The bar for ministry is down low enough that it is easy to shepherd ten to twenty people without needing to be paid to do so.” (286)

In conclusion Cole suggests: “The reason the church sees such poor results when she calls for volunteers is because we are asking so little of people.” (294)

As with Organic Church, I found Organic Leadership challenging and helpful. It was timely for me as I have been reviewing my own leadership. Again, as with Organic Church the lack of biblical theology (not in the sense of being unbiblical, but in the sense of not tracing the christo-centric redemptive story-line through the Bible) makes the theology somewhat 'thin' and occasionally makes the exegesis doubtful. But overall this book is full of stimulation and challenge. It's an important book for leaders who want to reproduce leaders.

In January I claimed that Tim Keller’s The Prodigal God DVD and workbook was my resource of 2009. I’m pretty confident that his new Gospel In Life DVD and workbook will my resource of 2010.

As the title suggests, Gospel in Life looks at how the gospel is to be lived out in our lives, in our church communities and in the world. So it’s a kind of discipleship programme. It would be great to use for training leaders within your church or with your small groups or as part of a vision-setting programme.

The DVD consists of eight ten-minute talks by Keller. It’s just Keller speaking to camera, but the windows behind open out onto different views of the city and key points are animated on cityscape backgrounds so although its very simple the overall effect is engaging and pleasing. The workbook includes and Bible study and discussion questions for each session plus fairly intensive ‘homework’ involving further reading and a small group project.

Here’s the outline of sessions:

1. City - The World That Is
2. Heart - Three Ways to Live
3. Idolatry - The Sin Beneath
4. Community - The Context for Change
5. Witness - An Alternate City
6. Work - Cultivating the Garden
7. Justice - A People for Others
8. Eternity - The World That Is To Come

It’s all here – all the important missional insights we have come to expect of Keller: the focus on the city, the centrality of the heart, the need to live by grace, the significance of idolatry, the importance of cultural engagement, the role of work in mission, the integration of social involvement. If I have a criticism is that, given the constraints of eight sessions of 10 minutes, I was often left thinking, ‘I’m glad he made that point, but I fear people might miss it.’

Also the homework is too intensive for some of the people with whom we work. But you can readily adapt the material. It’s clearly designed with a Western context in mind, but we went through it on a recent visit to a couple sent by a our church to the Middle-East and it was full of resonances for them in their context. Because time was short we combined sessions 2 and 3, 4 and 5, 6 and 7, and sessions 1 and 8 could also be combined.

One final reflection. I was struck working through the sessions how close Keller’s vision of church and mission is that to ours in The Crowded House. What’s striking is that the structure of his church is so different. Steve Timmis and I have begun refuting the idea that there is a ‘TCH model’ of church – not least because there are different church structures within The Crowded House network, but also because we have never wanted to put The Crowded House forward are the right way of doing church! But we are persuaded by the theology of church and mission that shapes what we do. Listening Keller reinforced this conviction: the principles we share in common matter, the structural outworking of those principles can and should vary in each context. So don’t get hung up on how to do this or that – get the theology right.

The workbook is available from Amazon.co.uk, but not the DVD so UK readers will have get this from Amazon.com.

A gospel community is a group of believers that lives out the mission of God together as family, in a specific area and to a particular people group by declaring and demonstrating the gospel in tangible forms. God is moving to create thousands of new gospel communities on mission around the world. Be a part of this movement.

Regular people, living ordinary lives, with great gospel intentionality.

Join our community site today and join the conversation.  

Remember God’s grace to them

I remember my father reminding me, when I was expressing some exasperation at someone, that this was someone for whom Christ had died. The people in your missional community are the people for whom Christ died. Christ loved these people so much he gave his life for them. How can you despise them? Or avoid them? Or wish them in another church? Christ sweated blood for them, he took the lashes for them, he bore the taunts for them, he took the nails for them, he was cut off from his Father for them.

Remember God’s grace to you

Jesus tells the parable of a man who man was forgiven a vast debt and who would then not forgive a small debt owed to him (Matthew 18:21-35). He ends up with nothing. Remember the great debt of yours that was nailed to the cross. Remember the great gift that God gave to you. Let that be the measure of your love.

This is what makes community work. Not purpose-driven strategies or communication skills or anger management techniques or gender- and race-awareness training. What makes community work are people who never lose the wonder of ‘the incomparable riches of [God’s] grace expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus’ (Ephesians 2:7).

Here is set of questions that may help you think through the stories, values, worldview and culture of the people in your neighbourhood.

Where?

• Where are the missional spaces (places and activities where you meet people)?
• Where do they experience community?
• Are their existing social networks with which we can engage or do we need to find ways of creating community within a neighbourhood?
• Where should you be to have missional opportunities?

When?

• When are the missional moments?
• What are the rhythms of your neighbourhood?
• How do people organise their time?
• What cultural experiences and celebration do people value? How might these be used as bridges to the gospel?
• When should you be available to have missional opportunities?

What?

• What are peoples’ fears, hopes and hurts?
• What ‘gospel’ stories are told in the neighbourhood? What gives people identity (creation)? How do they account for what what’s wrong with the world (fall)? What’s the solution (redemption)? What are their hopes (consummation)?
• What are the barriers beliefs or assumptions cause people to dismiss the gospel?
• What sins will the gospel first confront and heal for these people?
• In what ways are people self-righteous?
• What is the good news for people in this neighbourhood?
• What will church look like for people in this neighbourhood?

These are questions you might ask on first encountering a new community or neighbourhood. But they should also be questions we ask all the time so that missional reflection is a normal part of our life.

A ‘missional’ small group is not necessarily one which is doing some kind of specific ‘evangelism’ programme (though that is to be recommended). Rather:

1. If its members love and talk positively about the city and neighbourhood.

2. If they speak in language that is not filled with pious tribal or technical terms and phrases, nor disdainful and embattled language.

3. If in their Bible study they apply the gospel to the core concerns and stories of the people of the culture.

4. If they are obviously interested in and engaged with the literature and art and thought of the surrounding culture and can discuss it both appreciatively and yet critically.

5. If they exhibit deep concern for the poor and generosity with their money and purity and respect with regard to opposite sex, and show humility toward people of other races and cultures.

6. If they do not bash other Christians and churches.

Then seekers and non-believing people from the city (a) will be invited and (b) will come and will stay as they explore spiritual issues. If these marks are not there it will only be able to include believers or traditional, ‘Christianized’ people.

Reflection

1. How does your community measure up against these criteria?

2. If we find ourselves changing the language we use when unbelievers are present then we should probably change it all the time. Think about how you might talk about evangelism when unbelievers are present.

3. Tim Keller says the members of a missional community ‘love and talk positively about the city and neighbourhood’. List ten things you love about your neighbourhood.

Mission must involve not only contact between unbelievers and individual Christians, but between unbelievers and the Christian community. We want to build relationships with unbelievers. But we also need to introduce people to the network of relationships that make up that believing community so that they see Christian community in action.

People are often attracted to the Christian community before they are attracted to the Christian message. The best place for belief to emerge is in a context where people already feel that they belong. If a believing community is a persuasive apologetic for the gospel then people need to be included to see that apologetic at work.

Our approach to mission should involve three elements:

• building relationships
• sharing the gospel message
• including people in community

1. Building Relationships

It’s all too easy for us to put on events that suit us at locations that suit us and at times that suit us. But to reach a neighbourhood or community of people, we need to eat their food, play their games, hear their stories, walk their streets, enter their homes, follow their timetable and inhabit their spaces.

2. Introducing to Community

This does not necessarily mean inviting people to a Sunday church meeting or to your church building. It means introducing them to our network of relationships in the context of ordinary life: inviting both Christian and non-Christian friends round for a meal or for an evening out.

We should not try to be behave differently around unbelievers – be, as it were, on your ‘best behaviour’. We want to be authentic, vulnerable, real with them. We will share our struggles as well as our joys. We are witnesses to grace, not to good works. If we project a façade of shiny, happy or good people then either they will see us as hypocritical fakes or they will assume we are reconciled to God through living a good life. So people will see us falling out, but being committed to one another and forgiving one another. For this reason, it is much easier to communicate grace (as opposed to works) in community than on our own.

Unbelievers often experience a significant culture gap when they first attend a church meeting. One way of overcoming this is to ensure that our ordinary life together is gospel-saturated so that ‘God-talk’ to be normal. At the same time we want our meetings to feel less religious so unbelievers feel comfortable in them – more like a family gathering than a religious service. The result is that when people come to a meeting it is not a big culture shock for them. At the same time, because we have introduced to the network of believing relationships, they should already know half the people here. It becomes a much less threatening occasion.

3. Sharing the Gospel

A key aim is to invite people to read the Bible with us or explore the Bible story with us. But sharing the gospel usually begins with talking about Jesus in conversation. (This is easier if talking about Jesus is also a normal part of conversation with believers.)

But where we can be proactive we will pursue the missional focus of your gospel community. Where we can make decisions about how we use our time, where we shop, with whom we eat and so on, we will make those choices in the light of our missional focus. This is proactive intentionality. Sometimes we can be proactive about the choice of your work – we may take a job that allows us to pursue our missional focus. But other people will not be able to do this. They will spend their work days being reactive to opportunities, but then make choices about what they do in the evenings and at weekends to pursue the missional focus of their gospel community.

Identifying a missional focus is often an on-going discussion because missional opportunities change (reactive intentionality can create new opportunities).

One form proactive intentionality can take is designating a time when the gospel community will do mission together or serve their neighbourhood. One gospel community sets aside one evening a week when everyone commits to do mission together with the ethnic group they are trying to reach. They may invite people over for a film or visit people in local barber shops or cafes. Another gospel community meets each Sunday at 9am for a short time of prayer. They then go out in groups to hang out with, or serve, unbelievers. Some may go to the park to play football. Others will host a cookery session with young women. Others may work in the garden of a neighbour. People are then invited back to a home for lunch together.

Shared lives require proximity. Perhaps the most frequent question I had when I was in the States in October was about how church could create community when their members were spread over a wide area. Let’s take a church I spent some time with in New Jersey as an example. They have people living half an hour drive from the church building in one direction and half an hour drive in the other direction. So some people live an hour away from each other. How are they going to share their lives?

Let me suggest three possible responses:

1. Encourage people to join local churches

I wonder how many churches people pass as they drive half an hour to church each Sunday. Some will be dead and ready for burial. But many will be good churches. They may not be as good as the church people attend. But they may be faithful and engaged in their locality.

Why do people drive pass them? It reflects a consumer mentality. We shop for churches like we shop for groceries. If we don’t like the product then we take our business elsewhere. We end up at the big convenience store with the large parking lot and the local shops in Main Street that the old and the poor have to use wither and decline.

A second problem is our definition of ‘good’. We too often define ‘good’ in terms of the Sunday morning performance rather looking for a church that is reaching the broken people in its neighbourhood.

2. Move closer to one another

Consider our church in New Jersey. One of the members lives in a well-defined neighbourhood centred around a lake. There is a strong sense of neighbourhood, an active residents’ association, regular community events. This Christian family are getting to know their neighbours and last year they ran a backyard Bible school. Imagine if two other families moved into that neighbourhood with perhaps a single person living with one of the families. Now you have a team of seven, attending the church each Sunday, but then working together to reach that neighbourhood. Building relationships with neighbours. Getting involved in the residents’ association. Praying together. Sharing their lives. Involving unbelievers in their shared life. In time holding Bible studies. Dynamite!

There are six or seven households represented in the gospel community to which I belong back in Sheffield. All but one of those intentionally moved to be in that area, to reach that area together, to be community. With one exception, we all live within ten minutes walk of each other.

3. Jump in the car

Again, come back to our church in New Jersey. Some members lives one hour from each other. But of course they are all spread out across the area. So in fact most of them live within ten minutes of several other members. So why not cluster together with those who are near? Ten minutes is not far.

I live in an urban area. Twenty minutes feels like a long way away (and people would assume you meant 20 minutes walk). But in rural America people travel 20 minutes to get their groceries. So 20 minutes is near. You make that kind of journey several times a week. So why not jump in the car and pop over to see someone? Why not call and say, ‘We’re about to watch American Idol. Why don’t you come over and watch it with us?’ If you can drive 20 minutes to Walmart, why can’t you drive 20 minutes to share life with members of your Christian community?