Formulas
This an extract from my regular newsletter for supporters of Seeds Bendigo:
Friends, I’m finding it difficult to write you this letter at the moment. I’m finding it difficult to put into words what is going on in Long Gully, both for me and the community around me. This is not because anything particularly negative is happening, but because it’s increasingly clear that the work of ‘being neighbours’ is a mysterious one.
I’ve been catching myself saying “It depends….” a lot. Why?
I love models, and patterns; finding common things across different places is very satisfying to me. However, much as I would love to have a formula that can be ‘multiplied’ in other places, I often find that so much of what we do is very specific to our place, and the people in that place. Is it good or bad to have lots of programs? Depends on the people and the place. Should we have a paid role in the community we are serving? Depends. Should church services be held in ‘church buildings’ or somewhere else? It depends. Is it better to stay in one place for decades, or move on quickly? It depends.
To give a specific example, we don’t tend to have a lot of our neighbours over to our place. It’s not for want of inviting; it just doesn’t seem to be something they feel comfortable with. A while ago, this would have created quite a bit of anxiety for me, because home-based hospitality was the crucial in my early years of mission. But I now realize, this depends on the character of the people and place.
Why all this ambiguity? I think it is due to 3 factors: place, people & time. All of these work together to alter the way we live out our faith. When we look at Jesus in the Gospels, and at Paul and the early church, the way they did things altered according to circumstance. Jesus called some to follow, others to stay; Paul travelled constantly while others stayed put.
So what stays the same across time, space and personality, and therefore what we need to get right, is not models or patterns or formulas, but character. Both working on our character, and also being shaped by the character of God, the colour of which is most clearly shown in Jesus and the fruits of the Spirit.
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Good reading Dave.
Yes I see what you mean. I haven’t thought about this much as we all look for formulas so easily. None of us wants to reinvent the wheel.
But as you imply, relationships resist this in may ways… or is it that there are some “built into the creation” laws which hold for relationships generally, but beware the variations which allude to other undiscovered “laws” which either we fight against and wish to return to the safety of “established laws” or we discover God’s pleasure in opening up the new to us yet again and we thus have to become further transformed in our understanding and awe of God’s ways… adjusting our reality with joy rather than with pain…. or maybe both!
Keep up these great discoveries and reflections on them.
Yes Dave, you are right. We tend be so serious, strenuous and asd a rtesult, unfortunately stuck. Formulas would certainly add to our demise (I think that is what has happened to YFC in KZN). Our need for comfort and certainty creates a “certain way to do ministry” but I agree with you, this cannot be the way and does depend on “place, people and time”…just the realisation we need when understanding the Bible. Hang in there with the rest of us on the journey. The Way will become clear.
Sorry, I meant….”as a result, unfortunately stuck. Denis
Dear Dave,
Good comments. I like the way you are reviewing your situation and approach rather than just following a predetermined formula. Most people have their principles and way of reading Scripture, but how they are outworked in a particular context requires reflection. I like the fact that in the past you would have used hospitality as a important means of reaching people/incarnational approach but now on reflection, find it doesn’t really fit where you are at this stage of life. I’m the same. We have had people staying with us (who are well adjusted, clean living mature Christians, so nothing to complain about) for a variety of reasons recently, but I’ve felt a bit put out. It’s not that we are living in a cramped house and then have visitors on top of this. We have a large house and the visitor has their own ensuite bathroom and bedroom. I’m committed to the hospitality model which Jesus offered all sorts of peole, and its an important principle within Benedictine spritiuality, but its requires a bit of a sacrifice by me of my personal space and actually welcoming them into my very life. I do tend to learn new things about myself, my own self centered and perhaps blinkered view of how I think Christianity is put together and perhaps that is the gift they leave with me.
Thinking about the role context plays in getting us to say: ‘it depends alot on . . .’ is one of the sub points in a sermon I am writing today for delivery tomorrow on Naaman, the Syrian commander of their army who was healed of his leprosy by Elisha (1 Kings 5). Naaman converts to believe in God, but it is not to become a Jew. He will still be required to attend the public worship of the Syrian god Rimmon with the king; failure to do so would be treason (1 Kings 5:18). He seeks not permission but pardon for this act from Elisha. Elisha bids him to depart in peace: he shows something of God’s gentleness in dealing with believers in tricky moral and political circumstances. As Paul says in 1 Cor 7:20: ‘Let each one remain with God in the condition in which he was called”, but if one can leave that position, they should do so (vs 21). There are times when a new convert must find a new place of employment and new friends, such as when a prostitute converts. It would be improper to offer one’s services ‘to the glory of God’. It depends on . . . Sometimes we (Christians) demand higher standards of holiness from people than what God would expect of them (like Naaman); on other occasions I feel that the Church has compromised in this area under the guise of accommodation to a variety of prevailing sociological and psychological views. Its a tricky issue: hospitality of the outsider; hospitality of the newest theological and psychological view and trying to work out what my response might be. It all depends on . . .