Archive for the ‘Mission’ Category
Joint declaration on the freedom of religion and the right to conversion
It seems to me rather than side stepping this matter it’s better to be up front about it. In Norway, they have taken the initiative to combat islamophobia. How about in Malaysia? Combat christophobia anyone?
The Islamic Council of Norway and the Church of Norway Council on Ecumenical and International Relations jointly declare that everyone is free to adopt the religious faith of their choice. We denounce, and are committed to counteracting all violence, discrimination and harassment inflicted in reaction to a person’s conversion, or desire to convert, from one religion to another, be it in Norway or abroad.
We interpret our religious traditions such that everyone has the right to freely choose their religious belief and faith community, and to practice their religion publicly as well as privately.
Missionary activity and information to others about our faith must be done according to ethically accepted standards, that is, without the use of any form of force or manipulation. If freedom of religion is to be upheld, all conversion must happen freely.
As religious communities we experience joy within our respective contexts whenever a person wishes to share our faith and join our religious community. Therefore we also respect a person’s right to convert to a different religion than our own.Oslo, 22nd of August 2007
Missionary Activities and Human Rights: Recommended Ground Rules for Missionary Activities
Rather than telling people that we should stop missionary activities, perhaps the better way forward is the raise the standard and our code of ethics in the way we share about our faith to others and how we invite others to adopt our “religion” or “world view”. Let’s start with an excerpt on educational services.
Missionary activities and educational services
- When providing education for others, religious organisations should be transparent about their religious affiliation and/or objectives.- Missionary organisations maintain the right of those who run schools to promote their own belief traditions. However, religious organisations should never use the offer of education merely as a tool to gain a foothold within another religious community.
- When running preschools and schools, religious organisations should respect the religious affiliation of the pupils and not involve them in religious activities or expose them to religious propagation without explicit and voluntary consent of their parents or legal guardians. The schools should not prevent or discourage such children from practising the religion of their family while attending the institution.
- Where such instruction is customary, organizations that run schools which provide religious instruction should allow access to alternative religious instruction for pupils with different religious affiliations.
Guiding Principles for the Responsible Dissemination of Religion or Belief
14 Principles. Here are some:
To teach, manifest, and disseminate one’s religion or belief is an established human right. Everyone has the right to attempt to convince others of the truth of one’s belief. Everyone has the right to adopt or change religion or belief without coercion and according to the dictates of conscience.
In disseminating faith or beliefs, one should be truthful and fair towards other religions and beliefs. This requires comparing the ideals of one’s own community with the ideals of other communities, and not with the alleged failures of others.
No one should knowingly make false statements regarding any aspect of other religions, nor denigrate or ridicule their beliefs, practices, or origins. Objective information about these religions is always to be desired in order to avoid the spreading of ill-founded judgments and sweeping prejudices.
Using political or economic power or facilitating its spread under the guise of disseminating religious faith or belief is improper and should be rejected.
Malaysia tribes ‘forced to convert’
Malaysia in the news for the wrong reasons again 
Indigenous groups in Malaysia are accusing the government of using religion as a condition for development aid.
The ethnic tribes say infrastructure is offered to them if they abandon their animistic ways and embrace Islam – a claim the government rejects.
Foreign medical workers among 10 killed in Afghanistan
Blog reveals Afghanistan medic Karen Woo’s dedication
This is so tragic in the light of so much good these medical workers have done for Afghanistan.
The BBC understands that Dr Woo gave up a well-paid job with private healthcare provider Bupa to work in Afghanistan for minimal financial reward.
She died alongside six Americans, a German and two Afghan interpreters who had been working with Christian charity the International Assistance Mission to provide eye care in remote villages.
Her blog posts reveal that she was driven by a desire to improve the lives of ordinary Afghans – and spread the word about their plight.
It’s nice to see the variety of people
learning together,
and moving forward together into the future as a communion back home and in the world.
“Transcontextual” – I like that!
I had two delightful surprises today. One in the morning, and one in the evening right now. Thanks Dion Forster for your encouraging words. We have so much in common, and yet we live and serve in such differing contexts. Of course, besides being able to film while driving, our common interests cover a wide range of concerns from theology to social justice, then from blogging to using social media in general, there’s also the more academic side of things and all things missional, the list goes on.
Of course, one strong bond is none other than, in Dion’s words, the “desire to follow the person and ways of Jesus.” Dion on further gives a superb elaboration of what that means for us. He simply articulates so wonderfully what’s burning in my own heart, and what bubbles in my mind constantly. Thanks Dion. I’m looking forward to our next cup of coffee or fruit juice somewhere in the world.
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Connected by the strong bonds of God’s grace – Sivin Kit a good friend.
I am blessed with many wonderful friends! I relate to many of them because we share at least one common interest. There are a few others with whom I feel a closer affinity because we share some deeper and more significant common values. Then there are those among whom I am privileged to be counted, because we share a common approach to our faith in Christ.
My friend Sivin is one such friend.
Since we first met in Malaysia in 2007 we have stayed in good contact. Here’s what I wrote in reflection of our first meeting:
Yesterday I made a new friend, Rev. Sivin Kit, he is a theologian, and pastor, and to our amazement we found that we have so many things in common! Rev. Kit kindly collected me from Kuala Lumpur at the end of the MPC to bring me to the ‘Seminari theoloji Malaysia‘. He is a past graduate of the seminary, and now serves as a Lutheran pastor in KL.
As Sivin and I talked I was amazed to discover just how many things we have in common as persons (for one thing we’re the same age, but for another we are both avid bloggers! Please take a look at Sivin’s blog here: Sivin Kit’s Garden. Sivin is also the co-ordinator for ‘emergent Malaysia’, a network of pastors and laity that are engaged in the conversations of the emergent Church movement. He knows so much more about both the theology, and the ideals, of this movement than I do! What is more, Sivin hosted Brian Mclaren on his visit to Malaysia (I even got to eat in the same restaurant as they ate!) Thanks Sivin for your hospitality, friendship, and patient engagement with me!
Sivin and I remain close. We have a common desire to follow the person and ways of Jesus.
Of course there are as many ways to following Jesus as there are people, since true discipleship of Christ is expressed and discovered in a loving relationship with Jesus as savior and Lord. For each of us this journey has meant that we’ve had to go beyond some of the boundaries of conventional expressions of the Christian faith. Of course the aims of these careful explorations in faith are pretty similar to those of conventional Christian communities, i.e., to forge loving obedience, to seek true transformation, and to encourage authentic and courageous living with Jesus and those who Jesus loves (in that last part of the sentence you can read ‘Jesus loves everyone, not just Christians ‘like you’ or Christians ‘like me’. Heck, Jesus has a special love for people who do not yet recognized His love!’).
Many find such a radically inclusive Christian position offensive. Others feel unsettled at attempts to discover new depths in authentic Christian living. For some the thought of uncertainty that is brought about by change is simply too much to bear.
And so, there are times where we are misunderstood. There are other times where we face rejection for our approach to the Christian faith. I have come to expect this. As I’ve said elsewhere, I don’t expect people to be able to understand my theology in its entirety – even I don’t understand myself fully!
Thankfully, we are not alone on this journey. There are millions of believers, all across the globe, who are not satisfied with ‘mere Christianity’. There are many faithful servants of Christ who are serious about servanthood. Many believe that it truly is God’s intention to transform the world, and not only to fill the Church. And so we stand together in a loose affiliation of discovery. We are bound less by a common set of truths than by a recognition that God’s gracious love for the world is mystery of grace that requires a tangible response. We are frail and imperfect servants of a gracious and powerful God! Our contexts differ, and so do our responses – but our desire is largely the same; faithfulness to Christ and His Kingdom.
Here’s a wonderful video of my friend Sivin Kit at the Transform conference (with Brian Mclaren). It gives a great overview of Sivin’s ministry and context.
From this video you’ll see that Sivin and I have one other thing in common… the ability to film while driving!
Please visit Sivin’s blog here – you will find hours of wonderful reading. Many incredible resources, and enough challenging thoughts to sustain both your mind and your soul!
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It’s great to see be in touch with my friend in the USA Steve Knight and others get this event off the ground. Great gathering of speakers and I believe a wonderful bunch of participants too. I’ve found it a great privilege and honor to have been part of this conversation and still part of it in some way, thanks to those who are willing to listen.
This is a good overview of what and who is the World Council of Churches through the lens of the assemblies.
Interesting fact about Bonhoeffer and Newbigin both of whom have inspired me tremendously!
Though only three years apart in age, Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Feb 4, 1906 – Apr 9, 1945) and Lesslie Newbigin (Dec 8, 1909 – Jan 30, 1998) never did to my knowledge meet one another though the 27 year old Bonhoeffer was in London pastoring a German congregation from 1933-1935 while the 24 year old Newbigin was training for the ministry in Cambridge. Both were very involved in ecumenical affairs and international relationships but Bonhoeffer was active in the 1930’s with the World Alliance, Life and Work, and Faith and Order; and Newbigin was primarily involved in the 1950’s and 60’s in the International Missionary Council, World Council of Churches, and Faith and Order. Though both were highly effective in the international sphere, both ended their lives more optimistic about the local church and somewhat disappointed in the theological compromises of the large ecumenical organizations.
I agree with Vinoth Ramachandra .
Jesus rebuked the church leaders of his day for honouring prophets by building monuments to them but not paying attention to what they actually said. The best way to honour Newbigin is, surely, to pick up and read some of his essays and books.
Interesting insight from one who “had the privilege of working with Lesslie during the last few years of his life.”
The thing that struck me most forcefully about Lesslie when I first began to work with him was his tremendous energy. In the years following his ‘retirement’, he was successively a lecturer in missiology, pastor of an inner-city church, moderator of his denomination and the inspiration for an international movement whose aim is nothing less than a radical revitalization of mission to Western culture. On top of all that, he maintained a busy schedule of national and international speaking engagements and wrote prolifically on missiology.
Many people (including many Christians) who achieve positions of prominence or influence are only too conscious of their own importance – not so, Lesslie. For me he epitomized intellectual humility. He was always very open about the dependence of his ideas on others, always willing to listen seriously to criticism, always ready to encourage younger men and women who were struggling with aspects of the relationship between the gospel and our culture.
A less obvious personal characteristic – but one that became clear as one got to know him – was his gentle sense of humour. At times this could be slightly self-deprecating, e.g. when he commented that old ecumenists are only really at home in airport departure lounges. Or he could be gently ironical. However, his favourite form of humour was the limerick; he admitted that he used to relieve the boredom of ecclesiastical committee meetings by writing limericks about his colleagues.
The energy, humility and sense of humour together serve to obscure another important characteristic, namely, his courage. His autobiography gives scant mention to an accident during his first term in India. That accident led to ten operations on his leg, the very real prospect of amputation and more than a year spent on crutches. When I knew him, half a century later, he was still suffering the after-effects. However, he could say ‘God did indeed turn that accident into a source of manifold blessing for which I cannot cease to give thanks’ (Unfinished Agenda, p. 44). Towards the end of his life he also had to cope with failing eyesight. I think many of those who read his final works would be surprised to discover that by the time he wrote them he was no longer able to read. His humour and his courage come together in a typical remark: ‘You don’t have to be able to see to use a typewriter!’
The Missionary Who Wouldn’t Retire
one more. . with a great line.
As we tell the Jesus story, we draw people to him as a person worthy of allegiance rather than as a proposition to be evaluated.
God’s Mission and Ours in the 21st century
An address by the Archbishop of Canterbury to a meeting of the Intercontinental Church Society at Lambeth Palace
Making disciples is a matter of shaping people who are willing to go on learning from God. Interestingly, Jesus doesn’t seem to talk about making members, recruiting people to sign up: he wants disciples. He wants members of his body, not members of an organization. And the members of the body are those who share in the action of the body – a disciple is a learner, somebody who puts themselves to school under God and God’s Messiah. So go and make learners; encourage people to embark on the journey of discovering what the gift of God is.
In mission when people see the new creation, the transformed reality that is set before them, they will need time to learn what it’s about. Don’t look for short cuts. Draw people in to the newness and mystery and excitement, and then let them know that it’s a lifetime’s work to find your way into it. Take the time that is needed for people to learn and to grow to be disciples. Of course Christ asks from his disciples service, obedience, sacrifice, but all the time Christ asks us to continue learning, day by day taking up the cross, walking this path and discovering as we go.
An address by the Archbishop of Canterbury given to a meeting of the Alcuin Club at Lambeth Palace
Founded in 1897, the Club (named after Alcuin of York, deacon, abbot of Tours, d 840) has a long and respected tradition of promoting sound liturgical scholarship within and beyond the Church of England by publishing a series of collections and other works.
Liturgy is an event of transition; something changes; where you are at the end is not where you were at the beginning; and I would maintain that understanding liturgy properly is understanding the specific changes and movements that this or that liturgical act involves. So liturgy is itself a temporal activity, it takes time and it takes ‘differentiated’ time. Differentiated time is the opposite of the unmarked time of the seven-day working week; the opposite of time without rhythm; the opposite of time considered simply as a medium you can use in order to make money or make yourself secure or to guarantee profit or whatever. The more time is seen as opportunity for activity like that the less differentiation there is. It’s much better (we seem to assume) to have seven working days on the trot than to have these tiresome interruptions all the time where you can’t actually make money for twenty-four hours. I’m not in principle a dedicated, old-style sabbatarian, but there are moments when I fully understand what that is about in its most positive sense — and many of those moments happen when I’m enjoying a Sabbath eve meal with Jewish friends, when I realize just what it is to have twenty-four hours experienced as sheer gift and grace, to be welcomed like a bride.
But that is deeply counter-cultural at the moment. Global communication and the global economy, and the work patterns that I’ve already referred to, all of that pushes us in the direction of time that is flattened out. It’s just duration, it’s not rhythmical. It’s what I called earlier unmarked time. That is, more and more, the time in which we are encouraged and sometimes obliged to live. Liturgical time is the opposite of simply time that has to be filled up. It is the time of a drama, the time of an event. It is to do with the building and release of tension, and the time needed for transition or change to happen. It is differentiated in the sense that it casts a different light on how we spend the rest of our time (or at least it should). That element of building and releasing tension is, again, something which we are very easily seduced into losing sight of in liturgy. The worship event which has no story to tell and no rhythm to follow may be highly ritualized, but what it isn’t is liturgical, transformative. It may have its own virtues and its own strengths, but they’re not specifically liturgical.
How does God reveal himself? A Christian Perspective
Lecture given by the Archbishop of Canterbury at the World Islamic Call Society Campus, Tripoli, Libya
Thus God always seeks to make himself known. God knows that when we fail to see him and know him, we condemn ourselves to a darkness of spirit that means we never become what God wants us to be. So he desires to bring light into that darkness – not only for the sake of human beings but for the good of all creation. In the eighth chapter of the same Letter to the Romans, Paul says that the whole of the creation is held back from becoming what God wants it to be by the failure and sin of human beings – so that when this is overcome, there is a foretaste of the glory of God appearing in everything that has been made. Revelation is the beginning of the restoration of all things in the universe to their proper condition. And so Christians will speak of Jesus as the beginning of a ‘new creation’. St Paul in another letter writes about how all things hold together in Jesus. And because it is through Jesus that the creation is brought to its new condition, the condition in which it is set free to become what God made it to be, the early Christians concluded that creation had always held together because of the eternal Word of God which was embodied in Jesus. Jesus’ life came to be understood as the translation into human terms of an everlasting dimension in the life of the one God – the eternal outpouring of divine love and its reflection back to the heart of God, the movement outwards and then back into the depth of divinity that allows us to speak of God ‘the Son’, though not in any material or literalistic sense.
So we do not say that Jesus ‘becomes’ divine, or that he adds something to God. He is simply the human form of the eternal Word which, says St John in his gospel, is always ‘in relation to’ the God who is the source of all things. When we as Christian believers identify ourselves with him in the ritual of baptism, we are made able by the gift of the divine Spirit to call God ‘Father’ just as Jesus does. In other words, God makes himself known to the believer not by telling us new information about himself, and not even or not only by revealing a law, but by making us able to enter into a relationship with him in which we have confidence and intimacy – like the intimate relationship that a child has to a parent.
When Christians speak of God making himself known, they mean that God, in addition to the signs he spreads abroad in creation and in addition to the revelation to Moses of the Law for his people, makes himself known as a loving father to us. Because Jesus in the gospels prays to God as father, and because we believe that he is more intimate that any other with God, we understand that when we are made able to pray in his words, we are brought as close to God in love as we can be. And because we also believe that Jesus perfectly expresses the one unchanging will of God, we know that in Jesus’ life and death and rising from the dead we encounter a God whose purpose is always love and forgiveness. It is the whole life of Jesus that is the revelation, not only his teaching.
An introduction to St John’s Gospel
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, spoke last month – without notes – to students of St Paul’s Theological Centre, London, about St John’s gospel. This is an edited version of the transcript of the first of his two talks:
Is it eye witness in the sense that it’s reporting exactly what Jesus said?
I suspect that there again we may just possibly be asking the wrong kind of question. And let me paint a picture here which carries some sort of conviction for me.
John, obviously, by the end of the first century is quite an old man. Like every member of his society and culture, he has a very good memory.
People in cultures like that have very powerful memories. They can remember long discourses and they’re used to recalling quite extensive communications of various kinds.
At the same time, they are not, as it were, walking tape recorders, and their memory can also be filled out and expanded with what you might call mental footnotes.
But I’d like to think of John sitting in the middle of a group of his disciples and they say, ‘Tell us about the time when Jesus was talking to Nicodemus.’
And John says, ‘Nicodemus came to Jesus by night and Nicodemus said this and Jesus said that…’
General Synod, York – The Church of the Triune God
Following an allocution from Metropolitan John Zizioulas of Persamon, the Archbishop of Canterbury gave the following speech introducing a synod debate on the report at the July Group of Sessions 2008. References are to paragraphs in the report.
And I want to begin by noting that there’s an easy possible misunderstanding of the way in which this document sets about its business. As is said on the first page of the report, it’s not simply that we are being commended to a social analogy for the Trinity; there are three divine persons and lots of human persons and so God and Humanity are a bit like each other really. The document goes a great deal deeper than that. It’s much better to say that in the light of what is revealed about reality itself, in the doctrine of the Trinity all talk of the Church must be consistent with that, and if fundamental reality is revealed in the doctrine of the Trinity (as existing in relation) then that dictates and shapes everything we say about the Church and indeed about everything else.
So, for example, (paragraph) 1.22 is crucial, ‘The Church is the body of Christ, the fullness of the Holy Spirit, and the abode of the Holy Trinity. It is not primarily a sociological phenomenon, but a gift of God the Holy Trinity’, the Church is as it is because of God’s being as God is, in Trinity. And thus the Church is as it is to be a manifestation of God’s life, a life in communion. What is basic in everything is Agency acting in interdependence, in relationship, in mutuality, but the created order is always at risk of losing that interdependence, and human beings are very particularly at risk of forgetting their interdependence. Hence the fall, hence sin, as essentially the assertion of self-sufficiency against God and against others.
And that means of course, that our salvation is the restoration of relationship. You’ll see if you turn to (paragraph) 2.2, the phrase, ‘These eternal relations are the cause of our salvation’. We are the way we are because God is the way God is, and we are saved in the way we are saved because God is the way God is. Salvation is the restoration of communion, and that happens effectively, decisively, when the eternal life of God the Son in communion with the Father of the Holy Spirit is, through the Spirit, translated into the human life, and death and resurrection of Jesus.
Once again, the form of our salvation depends on God being the way God is. And lest anyone should think that there is some kind of weakening or softening of an emphasis on the centrality of the cross here, I draw your attention particularly to (paragraph) 2.12, ‘The Son of Man is glorified in his betrayal and death: the work of God’s Spirit is power made perfect in weakness’. The signs and wonders of Jesus’ spirit-filled ministry must be understood in the light of the paschal mystery. The paschal perspective, the perspective of Good Friday and Easter, is the way in which we grasp, in human terms, in the human world, how God is the way God is in Jesus Christ.
So the Church appears as the Spirit’s creation out of that incarnate reality in which we are liberated from our isolation (might look at paragraph 2.40 for that). So, that immediately suggests the sort of point made in, for example (paragraph) 3:32. It’s inevitable that diverse receptions of the Gospel, diverse ways of receiving and hearing the good news, are implied in this pattern. Salvation is not a monolithic message, delivered all in one go, to one set of homogenised people. For our restoration to communion, a diversity of hearing and understanding is part of the reality to which we’re called. And (paragraph) 4.14 will tell you a little bit about the proper dimensions of a diversity brought together in reconciliation, that’s not just passive co-existence.
Hope to spend more time on “The Trinity” as the year ends. Good stuff from Alan Roxburgh