And I definitely am missing out on something. In the same way that the telephone was once a luxury, but now is as necessary as a letter-box, Facebook has become almost essential if you work amongst anyone aged 10-30.

Justin & Jenny Duckworth are to blame – they have written a book called “Against the Tide, Toward the Kingdom” and one of their helpful ideas is that we all have things to chuck out of the boat. In this metaphor, the boat is what we travel in on our kingdom journey.

Facebook needs to be chucked out of my boat.

Nothing is more fallacious than wealth. It is a hostile comrade, a domestic enemy.
John Chrysostom, early church father

A few years ago I was talking with a young man who was really interested in God – we’ll the young guy “Brad”. Brad had been talking to a youth worker who was also a Christian. This youth worker told Brad that he had prayed for a vehicle and someone had donated a motorbike to him. Brad thought this was fantastic!

It was obvious that the youth worker believed strongly that God had directly intervened to make this happen. I don’t want to denigrate his obvious gratitude. I think that God can bless us financially or materially. But there are a few things to say about it.

First, any gift we receive from God has no connection to the depth or quality of our faith. We didn’t get it because we prayed better, lived better or sacrificed more. A deeper faith may lead us to realise that our gifts are truly from God, but a deeper faith is not why we received them.

Secondly, any gift we receive is held on behalf of others. That is the meaning of the body of Christ. Gifts are held by us, but God entrusts them to us for the benefit of others. They are not ours.

Thirdly, nowhere in the New Testament do we find God blessing people financially or with material possessions. We find that Jesus blesses people with sight, healing, inclusion, love, justice, forgiveness, but not with material possessions. In the early church, we find the same thing – people give away money, property and possessions rather than receiving them. When property, money or material possessions ARE mentioned, it is to narrate giving them away, guard against their dangers, advise  the best use of them or condemn their abuse.

It’s therefore very difficult to argue that God gives us material and financial riches to enjoy. Instead, I would argue that when we do find ourselves with material possessions and money, a biblical response is to use them for the wellbeing of others, primarily those without the gifts we have received.

So, I need to ask this youth worker “For what purpose did God give you this house? How can it be a source of blessing for others?”

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His main point, I think, sheds light on a key tension within my own movement, which in the fashion of Wendell Berry, I will call the Movement for biblically-based Christ-centred Spirit-empowered evangelism + justice-making + church-planting + community-growing + disciple-forming + godly child-rearing  + creation-caring + music-making + other good stuff which we haven’t thought of yet, which tends to exist on the fringes of inherited church structures.

Why doth it shed such light? Aly He points out that conservatism has an ‘organic’ approach to change. He doesn’t mean home-grown food. He means that change is tied to what has gone before, it ‘grows’ out of the past, as a plant grows from its roots:

…human society is organic. It is something that has evolved slowly and naturally, incorporating the wisdom of generations and gradually leaving behind those things that have proven themselves to be folly

Conservatism has no place for complete breaks with the past in order to forge a new and bright future, and when you put it like that, you can see why it has it’s roots in the French Revolution, which certainly tried to erase the past in order to blaze a new and more excellent future, mostly by killing its opponents.

What has this got to do with the above-mentioned movement? There is a tension in this movement, and therefore within myself, between wanting change to happen slowly, in continuity with the past and at the same time calling for massive reconstruction of the whole of our culture according to the radical vision of Jesus Christ. I want to move with the slowest person in the community, but I want the war to stop now. I want to value the past, the traditions, the hand that has fed me, but woe betide the church structure that stands in the the way of the prophetic voice of Jesus through the ages.  Waleed Aly would call these two approaches to change ‘conservatism’ and ‘revolutionary’.

Both of these approaches to change are needed in our movement. There are times when decisive, sudden and un-usual (that dash is intentional) change is needed, and times when slow, organic change is needed. I would also say that these approaches to change depend on each other. Revolutionary change will struggle to last, if happen at all, if the slow and incremental and organic changes have not been taking place. And organic approaches to faith will simply wither and choke on their own reverence for the present and past without the tectonic slide of revolutionary change.

(The image to the right is called “The Foreign Tree”. According to the site I got it from: These painted engravings ridicule the unrest wrought by French revolutionaries by contrasting French subversion with British stability. The “British Liberty Tree” (depicted in the preceding image) is assigned to the mock Latin genus of “Stabilissimus,” while the more sickly looking “Foreign Tree” in this image is put in the genus “Subitarius.” Notice in the background of the latter, a guillotine, symbol of all that is wrong with France.)

One of the factors in the recent resurgence of interest in ANZAC Day has been the corresponding decline in mainstream religious participation. In 2005, the New Scientist magazine carried a story about a “religion gene”:

Until about 25 years ago, scientists assumed that religious behaviour was simply the product of a person’s socialisation – or “nurture”. But more recent studies, including those on adult twins who were raised apart, suggest genes contribute about 40% of the variability in a person’s religiousness.

Whatever this actually means in practice, it’s clear that we long to believe in a higher, larger truth than ourselves, and more significantly, to participate in rituals that point to that truth. I think that the resurgence of ANZAC memorials and pilgrimages to Gallipoli has its source in this reality. In short, when the religious life of transcendent traditions¹ declines, civil religions take their place. And that is what the resurgence of ANZAC Day is about – civil religion.

Rituals, processions, remembering the dead, even readings from Christian scripture (addressed in Jarrod’s article) – its all there. Now, my point is not that ceremonies which are not explicitly Christian are bad – of course not, ritual is a part of human life, whether externally religious or not. My problem is that such ceremonies induct us into a positive remembrance of war, verging at times on outright celebration, as we revere Gallipoli as a “national creation story”.

None of what I’m saying here negates these facts: that Australian soldiers possess courage; that we should recognise their suffering and bravery; that it is possible that war, like all hardship, can reveal positives in the human character; and that there should be some sort of ritual to remember these things. I affirm these things, and I admire the courage of those who go to war, even as I do not admire the task they fulfil.

But here we come to the nub of the problem. Australia has begun to see our warring history, and Gallipoli in particular, as emblematic of our character as a nation: a place and time where mateship was birthed, as a model for young people to venerate and aspire to, a place wherein the purifying violence of Suvla Bay a nation was truly formed. I do not affirm these things. I do not believe these things are healthy, because they essentially argue that the violence of war is a stable foundation for human relationships, individual character & vocation, and nationhood.

For Christians who follow a Jesus who died willingly to save the world (rather than kill to save it), any memorialising of war is a challenge to our faith. So what kind of memorial could I participate it? From a Christian point of view, any war is a violation of God’s creation, and God weeps over all those who die, and over all those whose participation in war has damaged them. Therefore I would like to see a memorial that remembers, and recognises, the dead from all the wars that Australia has fought in: from the Boer War through to Afghanistan and Iraq. I would like to see a ritual in which the dead of our enemies are brought to our attention, as well as our own dead. That way, ANZAC Day would truly be a remembrance of the horror of war

I finish with this quote from Jarrod McKenna’s own article:

If we say fighting is wrong, we spit in the face of all those soldiers who have bravely served their countries. But if we say the way to fight is with violence,then like those in Matthew’s passion account, we spit in the face of Christ. Do not judge those who did not know there was a better way. But it is a judgment of our Christianity if we remain silent as our governments sacrifice trillions of dollars and the precious lives of young people on the altar of unwinnable wars.

1. Those religious traditions with a belief in some kind of deity who includes, but also exists outside, human experience

Even though I know he is in improved circumstances, I feel a wave of frustration rise and fall. What is the use of building relationships when they are constantly eroded by transience? I have, many years ago, resolved that long-term relationships were necessary to unveil the reign of God, whether among the poor or whoever. I had decided that speaking out the good news needed to happen on the platform of trust and respect.

But it’s a lonely stance. Often, those we relate to want to move on to something else quickly. This is the case whether we are among the poor who want to rapidly escape, or among the general population for whom the next best thing can’t arrive too soon.

How do we deal with transience, when our theology inspires us to grounded lives and longevity?

Here’s a couple of ideas:
(1) We rid ourselves of any heroism: our desire to be the ‘key’ people in others’ transformation can cripple us when we no longer have the opportunity to be that ‘significant’ person.

(2) We re-member ourselves: “re-membering” is recalling the fact that we are members of a body, a movement, a people that is far-spread. We, as individuals, are not it. That should give us some hope in the face of transience. As the biblical saying goes: some sow, others reap, and we enter into each others’ labour. When we can no longer be a part of a person’s life, someone else will take up the labour.

(3) We recall the Trinity: relational mission struggles with the tension of ends and means. Is the relationship for the purpose of more effective evangelism, or so that the person will have a better life? Or is it simply for the sake of the relationship? I don’t think there is an answer to this one, but in the face of transience we need to remember the Trinity; the Godhead in which relationship is essential to the character of God.

I visited Greg recently to invite him to lunch at 12pm. He asked me what the time was, as he had no clock and the one on his DVD player was wrong – he had no clock. Middle-class time is so important that I was momentarily gobsmacked by this small but significant clash of cultures – it meant that Greg would always struggle to turn up to anything on time. Think about the implications for relationships, health and employment.

In the Seeds community here, we are all middle-class. Our experience has been smudged in places by the same factors that affect our neighbours, but not in combination and not for long. Though we are trying to be in solidarity with the poor, our class loyalty is still to the middle-class, which distracts us in many and specific ways from our stated desire to be amongst the poor. I say this bluntly because unless I swallow this bitter pill, this dynamic will corrupt and deflate many of my efforts to love my neighbour.

‘Class’ and ‘Culture’ are abstract terms, but they jump out when we uncover some fairly ordinary items. How does our middle-class loyalty manifest itself?:

1. Spending time with the middle-class: we know the codes of middle-class relationships (when to speak, what to say, what not to say, how often to swear etc) but we don’t know how to spend time with those who live in generational poverty. Do watch the TV that’s always on? Is laughing at crude jokes OK? Should we ask personal questions? Because we have meetings to be at and people to see, we middle-class people have a sense of time which is cut up into segments for apportioning. Sitting for an hour on someone’s dirty lounge while watching wrestling seems like a waste of time.

2. Refusing the food of the poor: food is crucial to mission, as Jesus the glutton and drunkard attests. It connotes hospitality, connection and welcome. Even in our culture, refusing to eat someone’s food is extremely rude. People often offer me a beer or a Beam and coke can at their house, but this year I’m not drinking alcohol. The issue of accepting alcohol has nothing to do with ‘getting down to their level’ (what a hypocritical phrase of misplaced superiority) but of accepting the hospitality of those who we serve. We want to extend hospitality to them, but not the other way around…well, maybe it would be OK if they would only offer nice food. In my area, people generally eat unhealthily, and their children do too. This is a sensitive issue for middle-class  parents, who understandably don’t want their children eating sugary and fatty foods. Is the price of mission paying for dental work?! I don’t have children, so I’ll leave someone else to give a definitive answer.

These are just 2 examples – others are entertainment, physicality, sex, clothing etc

I don’t raise the issue of class because I want us to forget our family and friends, but to remind myself that cross-class solidarity is so difficult as to require regular self-scrutiny. Our middle-class upbringing is not evil, but has instilled norms of purity which seem as natural as the sun rising. Our desire to serve Jesus in the poor can’t be sacrificed for our middle-class sensibilities.

A couple of friends and I were comparing missional efforts we’d been involved in, and seeing what lessons we could learn for our current situation in Bendigo.We quickly concluded that our previous efforts, while recognised by others as ‘innovative’ and ‘radical’, were still mainly reliant on people coming to us…to our houses and ministry spaces. In the part of Bendigo where we live, people hardly move from their couches, let alone out of their houses. People tend to be wary of coming to things, even the front door when you knock. We re-realised* that we needed to get out to people’s houses. If we meet someone, find out where they live and visit. Call people up to come to events. Get to know as many people as possible, shallowly. Get to to know a few people deeply. Just keep doing it.

When Kylie and I moved to Long Gully, we spent the first 6 months visiting the neighbourhood centre once a week. Every time we would try to talk to them about our desire to volunteer, and gave them our contact details. It took 6 months to get a response. It took doggedness. For the last 18 months, I’ve seen a bloke in the street – and I just smile and say g’day. A few weeks ago, I saw him again, and the Spirit prompted me to introduce myself – turned out I was the first person in 2 years to do so.

In a climate of flexibility, got-a-better-offer and continual reform, doggedness seems twee, a bit naff, old-school in a bad way. But, to remix a cliche, if something’s worth doing, then it’s worth doing over and over again. In fact, in contexts of poverty and associated distrust, doing something repeatedly is the very definition of sanity and strategic brilliance. The shell of indifference with which so many people clothe themselves won’t be pierced by energetic church services or enthusiastic, but shortlived, attentions. It will take a long tapping away at the stone until one day it cracks.

I could write masses about this, and maybe I will. Stay tuned for the other unsung missionary virtues.

——————-

* I do a lot of ‘re-realising’ – simple things get lost in my brain.

The “undeserving poor” is not a phrase that Jesus bandied around much, but it lurks whenever we talk of ‘helping the poor or ‘mutual obligation’.  The ‘undeserving poor’ are those who are in poverty through, mainly, their own doing. They have wasted their stimulus package (and their baby bonus) on wild living, alcohol, drugs, junk food and pokies. On the other hand, the ‘deserving poor’ have made good with the little they’ve got from life, diligently saving what they can as they eat stale toast spread with a slither of Vegemite, or perhaps breathing raggedly though lungs destroyed by asbestos. The deserving poor are those who will, with our assistance, be good citizens. The black sheep, the undeserving poor, seem to us to just want to muck about in their squalor.

When Australians look to the global poor, they see (with the eyes of pity and compassion) the ‘deserving poor’, their lives ruined by tsunami, evil & corrupt politicians and civil war beyond their control. We like the deserving poor to stay where they are, and we like to help them. Once they start walking our neighbourhoods, they are usually headed to the ‘undeserving poor’ bin. When we look to our own neighbourhoods, we tend to see the undeserving poor – people who lack things but also seem to have opportunities they let slip, jobs they didn’t get…they are just not afflicted enough to gain our undying sympathy!

Why the difference in sympathy?

Hyperopia & Myopia refer to common problems with eyesight. Hyporopia, or long-sightedness, means you can see the child kidnapped to be a child soldier in Darfur but you can’t see the teenage mum captive to cycles of domestic violence – “Why doesn’t she just leave him?”. Myopia, or short-sightedness, means we see the ambiguity of a 21 y.o. single mum with 3 kids (one with a disability) spending half the stimulus package on drugs but the siphoning of our overseas aid money because of corruption seems just too hazy to really see.

I am convinced that people overseas deserve our assistance, but I am just as convinced the ‘undeserving poor’ deserve it too.  The Incarnation of Christ into humanity means that Jesus came here to serve in the midst of ambiguity, not to ignore it. We can’t refuse to love and serve if people have mixed reasons for accepting help, or are not grateful. God loves especially the ‘undeserving’. How we live this out in practice is the long, and satisfying plough that we have put our hands to.

‘Where do I join this kingdom revolution?’

If you’ve read this far, you have probably already decided that you want to join this kingdom revolution. Next step is to find some people who want to do it with you. If you don’t have anyone like that, look up some of the communities mentioned previously. They’ll help you on your way.

Most importantly, do something. This movement is not about standing on the banks of the river while others swim by. It is about getting personally involved in people’s lives, people who are isolated, persecuted and poor. Knock on the door of the elderly neighbour. Stand up to bullies, be they small or large. Make peace. Spend a week’s coffee money on someone who actually needs it. Foster a child. Pray with a suffering parent. Invite the new person over for tea. Sit down with the loner at school. Sell your possessions and have a party for the outcasts. Tell the truth despite the consequences. Move to the wrong side of the tracks.

The disciples simply left their nets and followed, and Jesus wants nothing more and nothing less. Jesus doesn’t care how much we know, or what we are doing now, or what we’ve done in the past. He cares about where we’re headed. In the river of Jordan, John baptized Jesus in a symbolic drowning and rising to life. In following Jesus among the poor, we not only drown with all our inadequacies, flaws and sins, but rise to a new life of compassion, truth & justice.

The Road to Emmaus

‘Who can walk with me on this journey?’
Jesus walked with 12 disciples as he went about preaching, healing and casting out evil. Why? This journey of compassion & justice is joyful, but it’s also a battle against the forces of evil within ourselves and in our world. The pain in the world is real, and our own sin can often paralyse us. If we try to swim by ourselves, we will drown. We need others alongside us. It’s no surprise that Jesus sent out his disciples two-by-two and that the lion’s share of the New Testament is addressed to communities, not individuals.

Often you may feel alone as you feel your way into this way of compassion and justice. But there is a growing movement of Christians who are rediscovering the radical roots of our faith, who are seeing that life following Jesus means nothing less than allowing the Spirit to lead us into dark places, into hard places, to be light and life. We are discovering, to our surprise & joy, that Jesus was always walking before us, and beside us.

Visiting some of the communities in Part IV will put you in contact with many people who are on the same path. But if you can’t come, then check out some of these resources:

1. Websites/blogs:

• Mark Sayers Thinks
• Urban Neighbours of Hope (Sydney)
• Hold: this space
  
• Jarrod McKenna
• Mustard Seed Associates
• Marcus Curnow

2. Books:

• Not Religion, But Love (Dave Andrews)
• The Irresistible Revolution (Shane Claiborne)
• Make Poverty Personal (Ash Barker)
• Check out some of my articles

3. Conferences/Gatherings/Training (Australia)

• TEAR Australia 2009
• Surrender 2010
• Just Salvos
  
• Forge
• UNOH

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV