In Genesis chapter 1 we read of how God created Adam and Eve - to live in a close and intimate relationship with himself and with each other. They had unlimited access to God and enjoyed transparent relationships with each other. After they chose to rebel against God they found that they started to hide from each other, as well as from God, and began to hurl blame each other. I think if I was God I would have considered starting again with a new couple. I would have responded like a potter does with a pot that takes the wrong shape. But he did not do this!!!
The Christian gospel tells the story of a missionary God. God has a mission - he seeks relationships with human being due to a breakdown in relationship: (1) humans are created by God; (2) humans rebelled against God and (3) God seeks to restore humanity to Himself. He immediately began to take steps to reunite His wayward creation to Himself. Through the patriarchs He kept contact with humanity - seeking all the time to turn people’s heart back to Himself. Through Moses He instituted a way in which people could enter into communion with Him through the sacrificial system at the tabernacle. Through the prophets and kings He continually called people back to Himself when they wandered from him. He sent Jesus Christ, His only Son, to earth to make it possible for people to be reunited with Him. He put the church in place, as he did the nation of Israel, as an channel through which people could enter into a relationships with Him.
God calls and inspires us to join His mission - to reach out to people. We are co-workers with God in the ministry of reconciliation. 2 Corinthians 5:17: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God.”
How will we fulfil this ministry of reconciliation? We could pay someone to do the reconciliating for us. A professional, someone who is trained for the job. But Paul says in Ephesians 4 that God has given people to the church, like pastors and evangelists to prepare his people for works of service. Their role is not to do the ministry but to prepare people to do the work!
The key will be developing relationships with unchurched people. Unless we begin to establish significant contact with people outside the church we have no hope of leading them to God.
I believe that God is calling his people to be involved in ministry to unchurched people. But I also believe that he is calling some to engage in ministry that is “outside in”. He wants people who are willing to leave the comfortable safety of the church sanctuary and venture into the hostile world in order to lead lost people back to Himself. There are five stages in this strategy: making contact with unchurched people; looking for ways to have extended contact with them; proclaiming the gospel to them; nurturing them in the faith; and integrating them into the local church.
Our task here is a missionary task. We need a similar strategy as that used by missionaries:
1. Get to Know the Bible and it’s Original Languages
* To translate it into the language of the new group of people.
2. Get to Know the Culture of the People that the Message will be Shared With
* Go and live with the people over a period of time. Observe and converse.
* Learn their language - vocabulary; structure and grammar.
3. Contextualise the Message of the Bible into their Culture
* Look through the glasses of their culture at the Bible.
This is incarnational missions. Being with people in order to lead them back into a relationship with God. This is not reserved just for full-time missionaries. In fact, I don’t know of many missionaries working in our suburbs to lead unchurched young people to God.
How can you be involved in this mission right on your door steps?
1. Pray for People who are Lost
Especially unchurched youth.
2. Pray that God will Raise us People to Work Among Unchurched Youth
In Matthew 9:37,38 Jesus said: “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”
3. Support the Churches Effort to Reach Non-Christians with the Gospel
Accept that it may be a bump road that God is calling us to walk. The following two examples of churches in England that have attempted to work outside in show that it is going to be a great challenge to integrate outside in ministry into the local church. Read more about the challenge of integrating non-Christians into a youth group.
Example #1
A young youthworker was taken on by an evangelical church to reach to young people in the local area. Everything started out extremely well. the church had a good history of youthwork with a fair-sized youth fellowship and an open youth club one night a week. The appointment of a youthworker was considered and discussed in some depth by the church and it was agreed that work should focus on outreach in the local school. Using the training gained at Oxford Youth Works (an organisation involved in training Christian youthworkers to work among young people who are unconnected with the church) the youthworker quickly began to build relationships with a group of relatively ‘tough’ working class young people who lived on an estate close to the church. Within a year or so relationships had developed to such an extent that a good few of the young people would regularly drop by the youthworker’s office at the church. In addition numbers in the open youth club had grown from ten regulars to around sixty young people, most of whom were contacts made by the new youthworker. There was evidence that the outreach was working with a small group of around five or so of these young people meeting on a weekly basis in the church building to worship and pray.
The work was obviously going extremely well. The problem was that the church found it difficult to come to terms with the young people who were now starting to affiliate themselves to the youthworker and to the church building. They were regarded as ‘trouble’ and somewhat of a threat. The story did not end terribly well. After two years the youthworker decided to move on. During lengthy discussions concerning the future of the work, the initial desire to continue the ministry among the working-class young people on the part of the church leadership was slowly eroded by pressure from church members, some of whom had children in the youth fellowship. Eventually the church appointed a new youthworker but substantial changes to the job description placed much greater emphasis on work within the church and the existing youth fellowship. Meanwhile the original group of working class young people, including those who used to worship in the church building, were left with little or no contact with the church and were somewhat puzzled as to what had happened.
Extensive discussions with the church leaders and the youthworker left me with a number of questions. Why did this experiment in mission not succeed? How can a church have the imagination to plan such an appointment but then fail to deal with the consequences of success? Why should a church which has paid so much money for a youthworker not seemingly want local young people even when they come to faith? As I pondered these questions I was convinced that the answers lay in an understanding of the mind set or subculture of the evangelical church.
The young people with whom the youthworker had made contact clearly did not fit in with this shared church subculture. Even those young people who had expressed interest in the faith and attended worship were still seen as difficult or a problem. Despite the fact that they had come to faith, the church appeared to find it difficult to accept them. Much as a human body might reject a donated organ of the wrong type, these young people had been effectively excluded from church life. The striking thing to my mind was that church members’ resistance to these young people appeared to transcend their obviously deep desire to reach out with the gospel. There was a contradiction between the stated official line of this evangelical church, namely to share the faith with everyone in the local community, and the actuality as experienced by this group of young people. This contradiction seemed to indicate a strong undercurrent of values and motivations which were powerful enough to cut across the official theological position of the church.
From: Growing Up Evangelical: Youthwork and the Making of a Subculture, by Pete Ward, SPCK, London, 1996.
Example #2
Bob Mayo and Eddie Webber identified a group of street kids hanging around the street corner, where their church stood (the St. James Anglican Church in Bermondsey, London), and wondered how they could share the gospel with them, how they could integrate them into the church, and how they could talk about the Christian faith to them.
They identified three categories of people: (1) Non-Christian - these people have made a choice not to be Christian. They have had contact with church or Christians and have some understanding of the framework of Christianity. The reason that they are not Christian is either hostility, apathy or disagreement. (2) Pre-Non Christian - these are people with no knowledge of the option to be Christian. Jesus is just a word to be used negatively, it is nothing more than a swear word. The reason that they are not Christians is not hostility, apathy or disagreement, but ignorance of the basic Christian story. (3) Christian - these people have made a choice to be Christian.
The book tells their story as they made contact with a group of people and sought to integrate them into the established church. It shows their successes and failures, and in the process presents guidelines for ministry among youth that is outside in. They acknowledge openly all the mistakes they made. But they leave us with two emotions: real sadness that the experiment came to an end; and a strong hope that they will keep the conviction that is in them, that emerges in the last pages and that they will go back and try again.
Here are some excerpts from the book regarding how the mission worked out:
The work we did was littered with mistakes, but we needed to make these mistakes in order to build up a picture of what we should be doing. If we had not been prepared to make mistakes and learn from them, we would not have started anything. We wanted these kids to get to know Jesus and if we tripped up we would try again. Once the pre-non Christian young people came into church the people who previously came for worship started leaving, because they were stressed out by the young people.
When we tried to bring the two services togther, the one for the pre-non Christian young people and the Christian young people, things fell apart. People were annoyed at the impact the pre-non Christian youth had on the believers. Their behaviour in the church was considered unacceptable. They felt that the young people were not observing any boundaries. We were asked by the vicar to close down the service for a ‘cooling-off’ period to give the people in the church an opportunity to assess what might have happened and to decide on what might be done next and how the service might continue. The young people had gotten used to going to church and they were angry at the sudden decision to close the service.
It was one of the worst nights of our lives. We felt cheated, compromised and crushed. We felt that we had let the young people down; I felt that we had let the rest of the church down; but worse than that, we had let ourselves and God down. We thought about barricading ourselves in the church and make them physically remove us, but decided not to do that. We submitted to the decision to cancel the service and arranged a series of meetings with the church members to discuss how the work with the young people could continue alongside the rest of the life of the church. We discussed boundaries on smoking and drinking and swearing. We discussed opening and closing times. We took the spontaneity of the services and tried to make them fit the existing structure of the church. We had long and tiring meetings in order to try and forge an agreement over how the service might continue. Three A4 pages full of rules were drawn up. Our services had been rough and ready. They had started when they started and finished when they finished. They had been loud, unruly, exciting and creative. They had not fitted into any system but they had been saving souls. We submitted to authority, worked at getting into unity with other believers, prayed, fasted, hoped, believed. Yet, as we did this, we were killing the animal that God had created. When we opened the church again to the young people after Christmas, no one came.
It does not seem as if the service will ever be able to start again. Eddie and I have been told that it is no longer possible for us to restart the service since we are now living outside the area. However, the work with the young people in Bermondsey is still heavy on our hearts. We will stand or fall on the conviction that God wants us to start the service again and make him known to the young people of Bermondsey. We are convinced that there is nothing so significant for the church in England to face up to as the challenge and opportunities of relating to pre-non Christianity.
From: Gospel Exploded: Reaching the Unreached, by Bob Mayo, Triangle, 1996.
4. Get to Know what Unchurched People are Like
An unchurched youth: (1) has rejected youth group, but not necessarily God; (2) is morally adrift, but secretly wants an anchor; (3) resists rules but responds to reasons; (4) doesn’t understand Christianity, but is ignorant of what they believe; (5) doesn’t just ask, “Is Christianity true?” but “Does it work?”; (6) wants to experience something, not just know it; (7) wants to be somebody’s friend, not their project; (8) isn’t much of a joiner, but is hungry for a cause to connect with; (9) is tolerant of different faiths, but thinks Christians are narrow-minded; and (10) may try youth group if invited by a friend, but this may do more harm than good (adapted from Inside the Mind of Unchurched Harry and Mary, by Lee Strobel, Page 44-81).
5. Make Contact with Unchurched People
In order to get to know unchurched youth, leaders must: (1) spend time asking God for strength and guidance; (2) research the local area to find out where youth congregate; (3) visit the places where youth congregate and hang around to discover all they can about the youth; (4) visit these places over a period of time and look for God’s leading regarding whom to relate to; and (5) decide on which group of young people God is leading them to (Pete Ward, Youth Culture and the Gospel, Page 54-56).
6. Develop a Relationship with an Unchurched Person
Lee Strobel from Willow Creek Community Church suggests the following relational strategy for bringing an unchurched person to Christ: (1) Believing Bob builds an authentic relationship with Unchurched Harry; (2) Believing Bob tells Harry how God has changed his life and communicates the gospel to him; (3) Believing Bob invites Harry to a meeting designed for seekers and answers questions and concerns; and (4) once Harry commits himself to Christ, he begins attending a meeting geared for new-believers (Inside the Mind of Unchurched Harry and Mary, Page 165).
Start fishing - become a fisher of men. Let down the net on the right side of the boat: outside the church, where the fish are waiting to be caught.
The Door
I stand by the door. I neither go too far in, nor stay too far out.
The door is the most important door in the world
It is the door through which men walk when they find God.
There's no use my going way inside and staying there,
When so many are still outside and they, as much as I,
Crave to know where the door is.
And all that so many ever find is only the wall where a door ought to be.
They creep along the wall like blind men, with outstretched, groping hands.
Feeling for a door, knowing there must be a door, Yet they never find it...So I stand by the door.
The most tremendous thing in the world is for men to find that door - the door to God.
The most important thing any man can do is to take hold of one of those blind groping hands,
And put it on the latch - the latch and only opens to the man's own touch.
Men die outside that door, as starving beggars die on cold nights in cruel cities in the dead of winter;
Die for want of what is within their grasp.
They live on the other side of it - live because they have not found it,
Nothing else matters compared to helping them find it,
And open it, and walk in and find him...So I stand by the door.
Go in great saints, go all the way in - Go way down into the cavernous cellars,
And way up into the spacious attics - It is a vast, roomy house, this house where God is.
Go into the deepest hidden casements, of withdrawal, of silence, of sainthood.
Some must inhabit these inner rooms, and know the depth and heights of God,
And call outside to the rest of us how wonderful it is.
Sometimes I take a deeper look in, sometimes venture in a little farther;
But my place seems closer to the opening...So I stand by the door.
There is another reason why I stand there.
Some people get part way in and become afraid lest God and the zeal of his house devour them;
For God is so very great, and asks all of us.
And these people feel a cosmic claustrophobia, and want to get out. 'Let me out!" they cry.
And the people way inside only terrify them more.
Somebody must stand by the door to tell them that they are spoiled
For the old life, the have seen too much: once taste God and nothing but God will do anymore.
Somebody must be watching for the frightened who seek to sneak out just where they came in,
To tell them how much better it is inside.
The people too far in do not see how near these are to leaving - preoccupied with the wonder of it all.
Somebody must watch for those who have entered the door, but would like to run away.
So for them too, I stand by the door.
I admire the people who go way in.
But I wish they would not forget how it was before they got in.
Then they would be able to help the people who have not yet even found the door,
Or the people who want to run away again from God.
You can go in too deeply, and stay in too long, and forget the people outside the door.
As for me I shall take my old accustomed place,
Near enough to God to hear him, and know he is there,
But not so far from men as not to hear them,
And remember they are there too.
Where? Outside the door - thousands of them, millions of them.
But - more important for me - one of them, two of them, ten of them,
Whose hands I am intended to put on the latch.
So I shall stand by the door and wait for those who seek it.
"I had rather be a doorkeeper..."
So I stand by the door.
From: Intimacy With God, by John Caldwell.
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