Rediscovering Mission (Part 2)

I concluded last month's article by asking how we engage in mission: how do we reach out to the many in society who have little or no experience of Church? It is so important to recognise that mission is not undertaken simply through our own willpower and strength but by God's.

Mission Must Be Spirit Led
Being Spirit led is an essential quality of our sharing in God's Mission. Historically we know this to be true: it is evidenced by the extraordinary happenings of Pentecost, when the forlorn, downcast disciples exploded into life through the force of the Holy Spirit and began the unstoppable spread of the Christian Faith on a scale that dwarfed any military campaign of conquest in history.

We can see it in the fervour of revival instituted by the Wesley brothers in the Eighteenth Century. Their sustained, superhuman efforts were only possible through the Holy Spirit working in them. There are many other examples.

It is up to each new generation of Christians to relate to its own society, where they are. Jesus did it. The Wesley brothers did it. So must we. God is out there, in his world - the society around us. He inhabits that world and cares for it just as he inhabits the Church and the people of His Kingdom. Christians cannot opt out of society. It forms us and influences our thinking and that of our children. We are in it as God is in it. We have to work together. We have to share in God's Mission.

Know the Mission Field
But if we are to make effective contact with our modern society we do need knowledge of the mission field. In order to do this Christians have to attempt a very tricky task: they have to step outside their parish situation for a moment and look objectively at what the Church is facing. In fact we cannot really see the Church as an outsider would for in our own Church we are in our comfort zone, a kind of unchanging "Holy Cocoon" as it sometimes feels. But we have to attempt this exercise and face facts. We have to hear some difficult truths and also take on board hopeful and positive signs about the nature of the society in which we live. Let's turn over the soil for a moment, then, and look at the field laid bare.

Postmodern Society
We are living in a period of time that has been called the Postmodern Society – some call it the 24 hour society or the designer label society. No one label fits the bill but we can sense that it is radically different to the world of even 30 years ago. Moreover it's not just a transitory phase.

There are three important features of this postmodern era: Consumerism, Electronic Networking and Globalization (ring any bells?). These interlock and fundamentally change the way people now see things. They transform our experience.

Choice Predominates
Firstly, in this supermarket of life choice predominates as never before, but choice is determined by affluence. Furthermore in this heady climate, choice is applied to consumer goods as much as it is applied to truth: "Go where you wanna go, Do what you wanna do, Be what you wanna be." We can construct our own identity and values and (this is where it gets very silly) we can even be drawn into thinking that we can choose our own morals – off the shelf – but that's a separate debate in itself.

Globalization influences our everyday life as much as it does events happening in the world. As for electronic networking, we communicate across the world in no time, expect all things to be instant, distance no object, and mobility the norm. The reliance on neighbourhood to provide identity is being eroded by information power flow and community established "through the Net".

Next Month: Staggering Statistics: The Generation Time Bomb and Fresh Approaches to Being Church.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4