Canterbury Church Plant

Put the Easter flyer in the letter box and run. Spot the newcomer in the back pew, and close in. Uh oh, that man next to you on the platform does live in your street; just pretend to check your phone and edge away.  What? Your colleague asked you about your faith? Quick, bring her to next month’s evangelistic event!

I wonder if we’ve hoped to reach the lost without ever being in the right position to reach them.

By ‘position’ I mean that proximity and posture, where we can come near to non-Christians in a way that doesn’t crush them. My own history of relating to non-Christians sadly includes years of keeping them at a distance, interspersed with single-minded evangelistic sorties into their territory!

Perhaps we have something to learn from God here. The Bible tells a story of God re-positioning himself, patiently and painfully, to save his creatures. He didn’t save us by speaking a decree from a distance; nor did he simply stride on in and crush the rebellion. And it’s a repositioning story that wasn’t very quick or efficient; it seems to have taken quite a while!

What do you think? How has God positioned himself to save us? And does it give us any clues for how we might position ourselves in the lives of those who are lost? 

Sorry about the late post, but you may be interested to come to our supporters’ brunch Saturday morning.

3) Cross-cultural mission Commends the Message  

When you do cross-cultural mission, your mode of activity warmly commends the message you’re bringing.

Ever had someone try to persuade you to buy something from them? Or to recruit you to a cause? Or even to a religion?! Sometimes our first thought is ‘Am I going to gain from this, or is this just about your own agenda?’. Many people must react the same way when a Christian tries to persuade them to trust their lives to Jesus. 

We’ve found in Canterbury that when you, as a gospel-bearer, genuinely cross over into another person’s culture, your actions are saying to that person something vital: ‘I’m not gaining from you getting this message, but you’re going to gain from it’. 

They look at you, and see you’re voluntarily doing things that are a burden to you but a pleasure to them! At first, they might wonder ‘Why is she spending time with me, when someone from her culture would normally pass me by?’. Then they might notice you’re asking about subjects that wouldn’t otherwise interest you, eating food that you never would, pronouncing words you’d never attempt. You’re a friend who doesn’t pull them off their own turf. In fact, so much do you value the good things in their lives, that you’ll make yourself uncomfortable in order to affirm those things. 

If that’s what you’re like towards them, well when you tell them the confronting message that Jesus is their Lord, they’re more likely to recognise it as good news rather than threatening news. News that sets them free, rather than crushes them. 

For a long time I read Paul’s famous words ‘to the Jew I became like a Jew, to win the Jews’ (1 Cor 9:20-22), and thought, ‘We must become “relevant” to be effective’. But read the chapter and you’ll see what makes Paul’s cross-cultural mission effective is not its relevance but its sacrifice. When he became like a people group, he became a slave to them (9:19). What commended his gospel was not simply that he’d come along side them, but that he’d given up his rights to be there. 

For us living in multicultural Sydney, that’s a relief, don’t you think? What will commend our message is not our slick assimilation to those from a different culture, but our stooping (often clumsily and painfully) towards their feet. We don’t have to come among them as equals; we must come among them as their servants. But if we only do same-culture mission in this city, we’re missing out on this way of commending the gospel! 

In Canterbury, we know we can only ever be amateur students of most of the 20 different cultures in our neighbourhood. But that’s ok. As we move stoopingly towards these diverse neighbours, we’re commending to them the Son of Man we speak of – who came for our good and not for our harm, to serve rather than to be served, to free us rather than crush us. 

2) Cross-cultural mission Embodies the Message  

When you engage in cross-cultural mission, your activity resembles the heart of your message.

When you think about it, enclosed in the message ‘Jesus Messiah is Lord’ are two cross-cultural movements that have broken into our world.

Firstly, God has come to humans. His Son has pitched his tent in our camp (Jn 1:14), giving up his rights to come as a weak human (Phil 2:6-8). Surprisingly, in Jesus the holy God began to eat with fraudulent government crooks and sex workers. And, in the most extraordinary cross-cultural movement for the Author of Life, he even ate with us at our table of death! (Heb 2:9). When we go to those who are far from us culturally, we imitate the God who didn’t insist we first come to him, but who gladly stepped into our sin-enslaved world.

Secondly, our gospel declares: Jews have come to Gentiles. Finally the time has arrived for Abraham’s nation to shower other nations with blessing. The first thing the risen Messiah did was to send out 12 Jewish men, a symbol of Israel’s 12 tribes, to go to the ends of the earth (Matt 28:19). Paul too said this Jew-to-Gentile movement was absolutely central to the gospel (Eph 2:14-15, 3:1-10), and saw it as key to something bigger: God stitching together around Jesus all the pieces of a torn apart world. And that included cultural splits within Gentile society (Col 3:11-13).

So in Canterbury, when a couple of white Anglo Christians knock nervously on the door of a Cantonese-speaking neighbour; when a church social involves Europeans struggling to eat a Sri Lankan neighbour’s spicy curry with our fingers, we’re embodying something of Jesus’ gospel even before we’ve spoken a word of it. Namely, we are moving towards those who are far from us.

If we in Sydney are gospel people not just gospel proclaimers, then, instinctively, we should be drawn to this kind of outreach. We should have a bias towards cross-cultural mission. What do you think? 

1) Cross-cultural mission Transforms the Messenger 

When you do cross-cultural mission, God changes you into the image of Jesus. 

That first time I touched down in Dhaka airport, I had high hopes of reaching Bangladeshis with the gospel. But crossing the cultural barriers was like stumbling through a thick cloud of smoke. I tripped over language obstacles. I waded through the alien food, foreign bowel-attacking bacteria, rock-hard beds, cold water-bucket showers. I picked myself up after humiliating cultural slip-ups. I was a pathetic ‘missionary’!

But this was the month, more than any in my life, that God changed me.

As I moved clumsily towards Bangladeshis, He shaped my heart to love sacrificially. To give up what I secretly thought I was entitled to. To rest on Him when culture stress had exhausted me. To have affection for people in their peculiarities, not just for their instantly endearing qualities.

That was how God changed me in the space of a month. What might He do if you invested yourself in cross-cultural mission for a life-time? 

Yes, same-culture mission can be hard too. But I’m not sure its hardships are as spiritually transformative per bead of sweat.

We’ve found in Canterbury that just speaking a word of encouragement to a Korean Christian who hardly speaks English, takes patience. Including a Hindu family in a dinner and prayer night when they just show up (true story!), requires a responsive, thoughtful love. And deep trust in God.

You might have found something similar, spending time with long-term unemployed, the intellectually disabled, the elderly – or pompous white Aussies like me! As you painfully move from your position of advantage to the feet of others, God is changing you. You’re learning the pattern of Jesus himself, ‘not seeking my own profit, but the profit of many, that they may be saved’ (1 Cor 10:33).

Cross-cultural mission will make you more like Jesus. That’s one very good reason to do it.

Why cross-cultural mission has big advantages over same-culture mission

Taking the news of Jesus to your own kind has obvious advantages.

I’m male, middle class and white. And when I reach out to the same kind of people….well, I already know lots of them; I speak their lingo; I’m comfortable with their Anglo culture; it’s easy to connect. If they turn to Christ, I can help them wrestle with those complexities of honouring Him as a middle-class Anglo. Same-culture mission makes sense, and in Sydney it’s become the norm.

But should it be?

Now that I’ve spent time in Bangladesh and in Canterbury, I’m convinced that cross-cultural mission has much bigger advantages than same-culture mission. When Christians take the gospel to those who are culturally different from us, there are weighty blessings, deep benefits.  And, with our dominant ‘same-culture’ model of mission, we’ve  been missing out on these blessings.

I’ll be sharing three big advantages of cross-cultural mission. Before I do, though, what do you think? Have you experienced any advantages in reaching out to non-Christians who are culturally different from you?