Friday, October 26, 2007
change in northern ireland
2007 has undoubtedly been an historic year. The "chuckle brothers" are on their thrones in Stormont and change is sweeping Northern Ireland: immigration, the housing boom, the re-imaging of Belfast as a post-conflict city, a gradual closing down of illegal activities by paramilitaries, and a SLOW increase in the universal conscience of our population towards caring for the environment and the global poor at the same time as their worship of the consumer god.
One unchanging fact is the continual decline in church attendance and the steady mis-trust of religion to offer any hope for humanity.
Roy Searle of the Northumbria community, described the situation both in the UK and in Western Europe as "the church being in exile...and we’re having to figure out how to sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land." This "foreign land" is Ireland, but not as we know it. We worship this God of consumerism, we feast at our computer screens, and we dine on the back of cheap Chinese labour. God is at best a delicacy nibbled on by those in the Christian sub-culture.
If we are in 'exile', how do we get out, or how do we live with integrity and relevance. The worst thing we can do while in exile is sing about how happy we are, and how great things are going, and how revival is here. If we are in exile we need to realistically assess the situation, and offer consolation to those who have lost in this exiling process, and find God in the midst of the ashes of Christendoms past achievments.
What does this mean for organisations like YWAM and for training programmes like the Discipleship Training School that have been born out of happier times in church history. We need YWAM to be an agency that seeks to offer vibrant realism and hope to a church and society that has lost God. We need to live a prophetic alternative to the consumer God, and we need to be a catalyst to seeing more Christians do likewise whether they are YWAM ers or not. Our DTS needs to journey as society changes and be more and more relevant and not less and less.
Our hope in Northern Ireland is that our DTS' are being relevant, that they are places where seekers can sojourn with us, hear truths, apply them to their lives, see the world as God sees it, not through the lenses of blind idealistic optimists or pessimistic fatalists. But we need to see the world that is really there, and find the God who is there, and bring the two together.
In the words of Rabbi Abraham Heschel, "God is a stranger in the world. The Shechinah, the presence of God, is in exile. Our task is to bring God back into the world, into our lives."
One unchanging fact is the continual decline in church attendance and the steady mis-trust of religion to offer any hope for humanity.
Roy Searle of the Northumbria community, described the situation both in the UK and in Western Europe as "the church being in exile...and we’re having to figure out how to sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land." This "foreign land" is Ireland, but not as we know it. We worship this God of consumerism, we feast at our computer screens, and we dine on the back of cheap Chinese labour. God is at best a delicacy nibbled on by those in the Christian sub-culture.
If we are in 'exile', how do we get out, or how do we live with integrity and relevance. The worst thing we can do while in exile is sing about how happy we are, and how great things are going, and how revival is here. If we are in exile we need to realistically assess the situation, and offer consolation to those who have lost in this exiling process, and find God in the midst of the ashes of Christendoms past achievments.
What does this mean for organisations like YWAM and for training programmes like the Discipleship Training School that have been born out of happier times in church history. We need YWAM to be an agency that seeks to offer vibrant realism and hope to a church and society that has lost God. We need to live a prophetic alternative to the consumer God, and we need to be a catalyst to seeing more Christians do likewise whether they are YWAM ers or not. Our DTS needs to journey as society changes and be more and more relevant and not less and less.
Our hope in Northern Ireland is that our DTS' are being relevant, that they are places where seekers can sojourn with us, hear truths, apply them to their lives, see the world as God sees it, not through the lenses of blind idealistic optimists or pessimistic fatalists. But we need to see the world that is really there, and find the God who is there, and bring the two together.
In the words of Rabbi Abraham Heschel, "God is a stranger in the world. The Shechinah, the presence of God, is in exile. Our task is to bring God back into the world, into our lives."
