Across the UK, CMS church advocates work very hard to keep local and global mission high on the agenda within their churches. Our church relations team spoke to some advocates to find out how they do that.

CMS advocates work in different ways in different contexts – but always to enable congregations to understand better what God is doing in mission around the world.

Beryl Howard St Stephenʼs Hightown, Liverpool

When Ruth Hulser, a former CMS mission partner, retired three years ago, Beryl’s church was keen to link with another CMS mission partner.

After a time of discernment, they carefully prepared and shared with the congregation about Olinda, Brazil, where Becky and Evaldo Reid Rodrigues seek to give vulnerable girls a hope and a future. Having established greater understanding about their location, St Stephen’s linked with Becky and Evaldo. Each week an update on their work is included in the parish online notice sheet and they are included most weeks in the intercessions at church. In this way, the focus on the work is continuous, and people feel included. Keeping mission on the agenda is seen as a part of the church’s culture, so people can see and understand more about God’s world.

Robin Dawson St Thomas’ Brampton, Chesterfield

Robin Dawson, a long-term supporter of CMS, is part of St Thomas’ mission committee, who seek to bring mission into the congregation’s focus every second month. This may involve a visiting speaker, but currently the mission spotlight is on different aspects of CMS’s work, including mission partners Paul and Sarah Tester in Peru, with whom the church is linked.

In addition to visits from Paul and Sarah, the mission committee has organised mini events to encourage people to engage with mission. On one occasion they held a Prayer and a Pint for Mission event at the church centre’s coffee shop. They have also organised a Christmas tree festival, with a tree featuring the work of CMS. And one year the children from a local school made Christmas decorations, which they exchanged with decorations made by children from a school in Lima.

Jenny Blamire, St Peter & St Mary Fishbourne, Chichester

Jenny Blamire first got involved in supporting global mission while worshipping at a large church linked with partners around the world. Jenny and her husband then moved to St Peter & St Mary Fishbourne, a much smaller church with no global mission links. After asking around she found that there would be interest in supporting mission in Uganda.

Jenny felt CMS would be a good match and was delighted when the PCC were enthusiastic about linking with CMS mission partner Jenny Green, who was then working at Potter’s Village, Uganda.

The congregation took the link to heart, and when Jenny Green moved back to the UK in 2014 to continue working with CMS in Bradford, they were glad to continue their support. The urban context of Bradford was as much of a crosscultural window for Fishbourne, a leafy rural village, as Uganda had been.

When Jenny Green retired in 2020, Jenny (Blamire) approached the PCC about supporting new CMS mission partners. They agreed to begin a link with Daniel and Sarah Brito Medeiros, working at the ReVive project in Brazil, which Jenny had read about in CMS publications – beginning a new chapter of mission. And how has the link impacted the church? Jenny reflects, “When we were raising funds to build a new church hall, it seemed an impossibly large amount. But Jenny Green came to visit and told us about how they had raised all the funds needed to build Potter’s Village medical centre. I thought, ‘if God can do it in Uganda, he can do it here,’ and he did! Within two or three years we had the money we needed.”

Diana Stammers Bradwell Church, Milton Keynes

Until recently, Bradwell Church has been linked with CMS mission partners K and T, who have just returned to the UK from many years of service in South East Asia. Bradwell are committed to both local and global mission, with a particular heart for Christians facing persecution. They always want to make sure their priorities are well balanced between providing practical support for people in need and seeing that God’s Word is spread through mission.

Diana says that in these mission partners, her church felt that they were supporting people who, through action and teaching, were bringing the gospel into the community where they were.

And for the Bradwell congregation, “sending” their mission partners was a way of expressing their faith and help, as part of a much bigger chain of support. It was a way for the congregation to be a part of very important ministry. In turn, through link letters, emails and visits, they were inspired and encouraged to know how God is working in another part of his world.

Conclusion

So, what does it take to keep local and global mission on the agenda in your church? A heart for mission and a proactive approach. Our advocates share a clear conviction that God is at work here and everywhere, and they encourage their congregations to participate in that work – in prayer, practical action or financial support – right where they are.

Find out more

If you would like to know more about being a CMS advocate in your church, contact the church relations team at churchrelations@churchmissionsociety.org

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I lead a small charity called Poole Missional Communities which, since 2008, has been exploring and experimenting in mission among people with little or no background in Christian experience. We talk a lot about missional community as the kind of basic unit of mission in all we do.

By Paul Bradbury, pioneer minister in Poole, Dorset

What is a missional community?

Here’s our working definition: Missional Community is a flexible term to describe a group of Christian disciples who form community with a particular missionary purpose. A common commitment to prayer and living out the Christian faith together are the basis for their mission as a community. Mission can be to a particular place, a particular age group or subculture, or around a particular mark of mission e.g. care for environment, social justice.

More recently we have sought to describe some of the principles of missional community. Missional community is not really a form but what happens when a group of people intentionally set out to share life and ministry together with a common set of values inspired by the gospel.

The small, weak and unlikely

Recently I was reading 1 Samuel 17, the story of David and Goliath, and started to reflect on the connections it was making for me with missional community, particularly in the times we are in. The context of 1 and 2 Samuel is of a significant shift in the life of the people of God as the time of the judges morphs into the era of the Kingdom of Israel. Israel asks for a king, just like all the other nations, and God reluctantly gives them a king. But there is a constant theme of the small, weak and unlikely person being chosen over the strong one who looks like the sort of person a king should be.

It is similar with David and Goliath – David, the youngest of all the sons of Jesse, who has already been chosen to succeed Saul, comes against the classic powerful warrior. He rejects the armour of Saul, another rejection of the normative cultural expectations of kingship, and advances on Goliath with nothing but a sling and “five smooth stones from the stream”.

David or Goliath?

Sam Wells has written on this story, reflecting how the Church in our age continues to think we should be Goliath when really, are we not called to be David? Small, vulnerable, armed with nothing but five small pebbles and a slingshot – and our faith?

I believe the Church is being called into a time when it must learn again to trust in the small, the local, the relational and in the rather ordinary business of building connections and being neighbours and loving people in the midst of their lives. We have trusted too much in the big and the flashy, the technique and the enterprise. But the world hungers for authentic human relationship and for an encounter with God that is embodied and trustworthy.

Five smooth stones

So what might be the five smooth stones of missional community? Here’s my take:

Small

Christian community that is small enough to enable us to be “one another”, to adapt quickly to the changing world around us, to be participative and foster belonging.

Slow

Christian community that rejects the accelerating pace of modern life with events and programmes that must always be better and more popular than the last. Community that doesn’t exhaust people, that is humanising and spacious enough for the voice of God to be heard.

Local

Christian community that is local and deeply attentive to its context, not just so that it can respond to a perceived need on its own terms, but so that it can join in with the story of a place and make authentic connections between the life of a community and the good news of the gospel.

Simple

Christian community that is earthed in people’s lives, the kitchen table, the back garden, the cafe and the street, that is stripped of all the accumulated hindrances of buildings and staff teams and therefore simple enough to give space for relationships to be the priority.

Hospitable

Christian community that is open: open to the leading of the Spirit, to building the Kingdom in partnership with others, to conversation and dialogue as means of doing mission with others, to discipleship as a journey together into which we invite others as co-learners.

That’s my take for the moment. It’s a work in progress.

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One of the paradoxes of being a Christian in the Western world is that there is freedom of religion, yet it seems many Christians resist the idea of practising their faith in ways that can be observed publicly.

By Nigel Rooms, Partnership for Missional Church leader at Church Mission Society

Faith, a private matter

There is a long story behind how this situation has come about. During the Enlightenment period (approx. 1650–1950) in Europe (and later North America and in other “Western” places) the individual, rational, thinking mind became of the highest public value. The scientific method, which claimed to be objective, reigned supreme. So, facts (which can be proven by the scientific method) and values (which can’t) came to be separated. Facts were allowable in public, values in private.

Religious faith (despite many valiant attempts over the centuries) cannot be proven via the scientific method. And so religion must be relegated to the private sphere, which is why you often hear politicians say that religious people should not interfere in public matters. Incidentally, some people think this is also why women tend to be more religious than men – since men have, until very recently, controlled the public world of “hard” facts, while women concentrated on the private, family home and “soft” values.

So, with some notable exceptions, the Christian Church in the West has given in to this “social imaginary” of how things are organised – faith is considered a private matter. In the Partnership for Missional Church (PMC) process, we help congregations take a close look at themselves, their beliefs and actions, kind of like a mirror. The data from across the UK shows that the kind of congregations we work with exhibit quite high levels of individual and privatised spirituality within the boundary of the church.

And some (though fewer) people are involved as individuals in their wider community outside the church.

However, churches rarely act in public in the name of their church. We tend to exhibit our faith when we go to church, but for the rest of the time it largely remains hidden. We are rarely caught being Christian out in public.

Simple steps

I’m not arguing for forcing our faith to the surface, turning every conversation we have to being about Jesus. This might work for some, but to many these days such an approach comes across as false and overbearing. Somewhere in between hiding our faith when we are in public and imposing it upon others is a way of being Christian that pays attention to what God is doing. God is always at work, creating a trustworthy world, always forming kind, loving, gentle community. After all, that is who God, as Trinity, is.

In our world today, there are many forces at play which block people’s view of God at work in our world. Here are just three:

• How human behaviour is destroying our planet through climate change and species extinction.
• How peoples are being driven apart through nationalism and isolationism.
• How the “bubble-fication” of our lives prevents community, since we stay within our chosen group of people that look, think and act like us.

I suggest that in such a world, it is perhaps easier than it used to be to be caught being Christian in public. So how to go about it? In the PMC process we have six mission practices, two of which are particularly relevant. The first is Dwelling in the World, where a local church identifies a public “Kingdom”-type issue that God is calling and sending the church to address, such as poverty or loneliness.

As part of this practice, church members are encouraged and equipped to form relationships with concerned people outside the church (we call them “people of peace”). We show them how to set up and have one-to-one meetings with these people of peace. When enough of these people outside the church have been identified, a bridge-community can form which acts together on this public issue.

When something good happens in that action, which looks like the activity of the God who is always at work, it is pointed out by church members, so that everyone else has the chance to notice God at work. For example, a Christian might simply look at some progress made and say something like, “Looks like God to me.” We call this second practice Announcing the Kingdom. This is one simple way in which the body of Christ and her individual members can overcome the public/private split, take up an authentic role in society and be caught being Christian.

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John Taylor, former general secretary at CMS, called mission an adventure of the imagination. Yet many people think creativity is a gift you either have or you don’t – and often they conclude they don’t have it. But it is more like a muscle that is strengthened through use – we all have it, but need to practise using it. So how do we get started?

By Jonny Baker, director of mission education at Church Mission Society

One way to be creative is to combine two things from different areas. Einstein called this combinatory play.

A classic example is the printing press: Gutenberg famously observed the way that a screw press was used in winemaking to press grapes and combined that with typesetting to create the printing press. A more recent example is James Dyson observing dust extraction at a factory and combining that with a vacuum cleaner to come up with the Dyson.

Something old, something new

Jesus told a very simple parable saying that the Kingdom of God is like a teacher who took something old and something new out of the cupboard (Matthew 13:52). He too knew this art of combinatory play. His parables were invariably this kind of combining of, say, yeast and messianic expectation or Jacob and Esau with a story of homecoming. The essence of contextual mission is exactly this kind of combinatory play. It’s an adventure to combine the story of Christ with a culture or context.

Let me give you a few examples. When I have helped at Mind Body Spirit fairs sharing Christ with spiritual seekers, I use something new – a pack of cards called the Jesus Deck – with something old – lectio divina. The Jesus Deck is a set of cards with four suits of scenes from the Gospels. Using something from the culture of spiritual seekers, card reading works amazingly well combined with an old method of Scripture reading.

Combine the unexpected

Jo and Darren Howie have combined coffee with communion to develop the Sacred Bean eucharist. They work with ex-offenders and have set up a coffee roasting business around which they are building community and training people so they can get jobs. They have developed a wonderfully creative ritual to remember Christ which the guys absolutely love.

KimSon Nguyen has written a brilliant book on contextual theology in Vietnam in which he explores combining the Vietnamese spirituality of the Dao (the way) with the gospel. In this case he is combining something old with something old to come up with something new!

A fresh expression of church in Brighton called Beyond combined beach huts with Advent to create a beach hut Advent calendar. This ran for 11 years and really caught the public imagination.

A beach hut was opened each day with an art installation about the Christmas story and people gathered to share a short reflection, mulled wine, mince pies and carols. Simple but so Brighton!

Don’t get stuck in your bubble!

In the wake of George Floyd’s tragic murder, I read James Cone’s book The Cross and the Lynching Tree. The book explores the combination of Christ’s death and lynching. This has largely been avoided by white theologians in America but Cone demonstrates how artists combined these two things in very powerful ways. CMS’s much-loved resource The Christ We Share is really combinatory play like this – combining the image of Jesus with representation in local cultural forms.

What’s great about combinatory play is that it is really easy and anyone can do it, including you. It just requires a couple of things.

One is getting outside your area, so don’t remain stuck in a church bubble. Crossing cultures is brilliant for this.

Secondly, it requires practice, and as you do that you will get better at it – that creative muscle I mentioned can go flabby through lack of exercise.

Creativity in practice

So to help you get started, here are a couple of exercises to try. It’s actually more fun being creative with other people, so why not do these with a friend or a small group?

1. Choose one of the Gospel stories where Jesus encounters someone, such as the woman at the well. Combine it with your village or neighbourhood and retell the story in an imaginative way with characters and places from there.
2. Take a photograph of something that catches your attention in your neighbourhood. Combine that with an approach to prayer you are familiar with such as confession, the Lord’s prayer, silent prayer, praise, the examen, or a communion prayer. I tried this out and took a photograph of a parking sign and combined it with communion at home. For me this was a powerful reaction to the Church’s response on communion at home during lockdown.

Recently Cathy Ross and I have really enjoyed exploring John Taylor’s themes and imaginative approach to mission in his CMS newsletters. We have just released a book which is really combinatory play in itself – combining Taylor’s insights with mission challenges in today’s world. We conclude each chapter with an exploration like the ones above to help people exercise creativity and imagination.

Imagination may well be the church in Britain’s biggest challenge.

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Clean for Good is a social business (which Church Mission Society invests in) that enables cleaners to thrive not just survive. Tim Thorlby was part of the founding team and is currently its managing director. Here he shares lessons learned.

Listen

In the City of London, every morning, thousands of well-dressed people hurry to work: financiers, lawyers and others who work in the City’s glass and steel skyscrapers.

At the same time, thousands of other workers are going in the opposite direction, back home or on to their next job. There is an unheralded army of hidden workers who keep the City of London running – the cleaners, security guards and couriers, among others – whose work is essential, but often overlooked. Their invisibility has worked against them as their jobs have been outsourced and budgets downsized. Out of sight, out of mind. Many of them now rank among the lowest paid and worst treated workers in the UK. This is not just a problem in London; some five million workers earn less than a Living Wage in the UK today.

In 2014, a small church in the City of London conducted a listening exercise among low paid workers in its parish, asking them what they wanted. A very simple but powerful question.

They didn’t want more church services, or any kind of charity. They just wanted fair pay and respect at work. Justice, not charity.

Respond

The church was St Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe, whose vicar at the time was Guy Treweek, newly ordained after a financial career in the City. He was particularly moved by the challenges the area’s cleaners were facing. He was open to the idea that “good news” for the cleaners of London might actually mean creating an ethical cleaning company which would deliver the fair pay and dignity that they were asking for. His colleague Miriam Goodacre, the parish’s new Commission for Social Responsibility officer, enthusiastically took on the challenge and helped to turn a crazy idea into a real project.

Church Mission Society is entwined in this story too. St Andrew’s is the church where CMS held its first meetings in the late 18th century, around the kitchen table. The idea for an ethical cleaning company took shape in that same kitchen. Having completed CMS’s Make Good missional entrepreneurship course in 2014, Miriam was able to craft the idea into something deliverable.

The project also benefited from technical support in creating a detailed business plan (by the Centre for Theology & Community), a few grants to help pay for the development process, and of course, identifying investors to fund the new business. The founding team raised capital investment of nearly £90,000.

Deliver

On Valentine’s Day in 2017, our start-up manager, Catherine, began getting Clean for Good off the ground.

Clean for Good is a business with a social purpose. Cleaning offices and workspaces across London, the business aims to deliver an excellent professional cleaning service, but also to deliver a fair deal for our cleaners. The broader vision is that by setting a new standard for how cleaners are treated – and sharing this – we can impact the cleaning sector more broadly. We want to see every cleaner paid fairly and treated with respect.

Clean for Good is a business, not a charity. Our cleaners are not looking for sympathy, just fair pay and respect in return for delivering a good service.

We are now in our third year and have grown steadily to an annual turnover exceeding £0.5m. We have won contracts from businesses, charities and public sector organisations. We currently employ over 40 cleaners. We are aiming to achieve a small surplus this year. We recently helped to launch the 2019 Living Wage Week, alongside the Mayor of London.

Are we really different?

When Clean for Good was launched, we made three promises – to cleaners, to customers and to the planet. Are we delivering?

Firstly, our promise to cleaners. We are a Living Wage Employer, always paying the London Living Wage (£10.55 per hour) or more. Nearly 90 per cent of our recruits get a pay rise when they join us. We also offer decent terms and conditions above statutory minimums – sick pay, pensions, holidays – and actively train and manage our team. Clean for Good has built a reputation for treating its cleaners fairly.

Secondly, we deliver a good, professional, reliable cleaning service to our customers. In our last customer survey (September 2019) we achieved excellent satisfaction ratings for our service.

The third promise we made is to future generations. We have chosen to set high environmental standards as a company so as to tread lightly on our planet. We minimise the use of chemicals, but when chemicals are needed, we use independently eco-certified products. We minimise our carbon use.

We launched this business to be the best cleaning company in London – good news for cleaners, customers and the City.

Learn

Some lessons we have learned: There are no heroes, only teams – Clean for Good has always been a collective endeavour.

Many of our workplaces need a renewed focus on what dignity at work looks like. The cleaning industry is one example. The Church and its members need to be fully involved in the marketplace. Sometimes the answer to a social problem is not charity, but justice.

Find out more

For more information and to get a free quote for cleaning your London offices, go to cleanforgood.co.uk

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It is estimated that more than 200 million girls and women alive today have undergone the ritual of female genital mutilation (FGM), and current trends indicate that each year, approximately three million girls under the age of 15 are added to these statistics.

By Ann-Marie Wilson, a mission partner who founded the Anti-FGM charity 28 Too Many

Some facts: FGM is a traditional cultural practice involving the cutting or removal of the external female genitals. It results in pain and emotional and physical health problems, often life-long. Most FGM takes place in 28 African countries and in some communities in the Middle East and Asia. As a result of immigration and refugee movements, FGM can also be found in other countries including most European countries, the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Since 2004 I have worked for eight overseas relief, rehabilitation or development agencies in 18 countries. In 2005, working in West Darfur with Medair, I met a girl who had had FGM at the age of five, who was then raped and orphaned at 10 during a military attack on her village, and gave birth to a child conceived from the rape. I cried out to God to ask who would look after girls like her. In response I heard him say, “You will.” That was all I needed!

I came home, told my church, closed my business and started to undertake research and training into what was needed in the FGM sector, so as not to duplicate existing work. I founded 28 Too Many in 2010. I realised that there was a lack of support and practical information for those trying to end FGM, so we provide the knowledge, tools, best practice models and support networks to enable anti-FGM campaigners and organisations working with communities to bring about sustainable change.

Over the past few decades, there has been enormous momentum within the international development community towards ending FGM. This has translated into a large number of laws, policies, campaigns and programmes at international, national and local levels, yet results remain mixed. While there is evidence that the most extreme types of FGM are slowly declining in prevalence, the overall rate of decline does not always reflect the huge amounts of money, time and energy invested.

Learn

It is often felt by many FGM-practising communities that local priorities are ignored by visiting development “experts” and that their cultures and traditions are framed as problems to be solved. At the same time, for women and girls who are at risk or have experienced FGM and wish to end the practice, often the only perceived solution is to fight against their loved ones and risk losing their place in the community.

In contrast, 28 Too Many believes that the most effective approach to reducing FGM lies in culturally sensitive, community-based programmes encouraging changes to social norms.

What are social norms?

Social norms flow from our beliefs about what others do and about what others think we should do. There is an increasing consensus that FGM is often a social norm – the practice continues because “everyone does it”, or people believe that everyone does it. Individuals practise it because they have never questioned behaving otherwise, they receive social benefits from conforming to the norm or they fear social sanctions from others for deviating from the norm.

The culture of FGM-practising communities

The relevance of culture to FGM is always challenging in our work. We must be aware that in most FGM-practising contexts there are strong collectivist values which encourage conformity to social norms, including those that support FGM.

In many African societies, the role of elders is also key. They transmit knowledge to the younger generation, play a key leadership role and ensure the social cohesion and survival of their family and community. The presence and role of elders is particularly felt when people live in extended family settings with several generations living close together.

Another characteristic we must appreciate in FGM-practising societies is gender specificity in the activities of different family members. Here, the roles of men and women are generally quite distinct. Cultural norms dictate which activities males carry out and which ones are reserved for females. So, a key starting point for working with communities on FGM, and women’s and children’s health generally, is to understand how they are organised with respect to gendered roles.

How can we change social norms?

At 28 Too Many we recognise that many of the popular FGM-abandonment strategies have limited effectiveness unless they are accompanied by community-wide processes of dialogue and consensus-building.

While many strategies try to bring about changes in individual behaviour, this fails to take into account the influence of social structures and cultural values on people’s beliefs and actions, especially in contexts with collectivist values. Evidence shows that, rather than focusing on individual behaviour change, it is more effective for programmes to focus on promoting changes in social norms, which in turn will influence individual behaviour.

To successfully shift social norms and end FGM we first need to identify the characteristics of FGM: which practising communities to focus on, why they practise FGM, at what age girls are cut and what type of FGM is performed. We even need to consider what FGM is called in that community. (There are many different terms – we use the local term when working in a community and FGM when working internationally.)

We need to understand the decision-making processes (who decides that a girl will be cut, and when?) and the power dynamics. Recognising who exercises authority and power within a community, and whether or not that authority supports the desired change, is essential.

In our work on social norms and FGM we always try to identify the influencers and decision makers: these are most commonly the religious or traditional leaders, elders (such as grandmothers and chiefs) or parents. It is then essential to catalyse community dialogue and collaborative problem-solving with these decision-makers and influencers and support those stakeholders who have the most cultural authority to shape, and ultimately end, the practice of FGM in their community.

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Rev Sameh Metry, a church leader in west London, shares what he has learned about sharing Jesus in interfaith contexts.

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news (Isaiah 52:7).

We are called to bring good news. Yet often people find this nerve-wracking, especially with those from a different culture. So here are some tips I have learned in my context:

1. Speak to God before speaking about God

This is the starting point – asking God for a divine appointment. We see this in Scripture when Jesus meets the woman at the well (John 4). I experienced this on a train in Egypt. The Holy Spirit prompted me to talk to a man sitting near me. I was tired and reluctant, but I eventually spoke with him. It turned out that this man had stopped going to church and was in a difficult situation. Out of our conversation he recommitted to faith. In the end he became like my right hand in ministry.

2. Be led by the spirit

You don’t need a plan or a formula. You don’t know someone’s situation – but God does. It is by the Spirit that we know what people need to hear. Every person is unique and every conversation is a different story. I once met a guy from Sudan. The Holy Spirit encouraged me to speak about being born again. To me, this didn’t seem the right place to start, but I obeyed. The man was amazed, as the previous night he had dreamed that he had been reborn. Our conversation therefore confirmed the dream and he accepted Christ.

3. Find common ground

Try to find common ground – where you are from, a shared interest, current events. This breaks the ice, and you can use common ground to introduce faith into the conversation.

We see this as Jesus speaks to the Samaritan woman in John 4. They are both seeking water to drink, so Jesus spoke about water. This led to talking about living water, and from there to who Jesus is. Paul too takes this approach in Athens in Acts 17. He found idols and reference to an unknown god, so he takes this as a starting point to talk about the God who can be known.

Think how often conversations turn to subjects like Brexit; what if they naturally turned to God instead, as the only one who knows what is best in the midst of confusion?

4. Build a bridge

Introducing people to Jesus may be a long process, so we need to make sure that at the end of each conversation there is a bridge for the person to follow up, ask questions or respond. Leave your contact details or another way to get in touch.

I was surprised once when a man came into my church. As we talked, he told me that two years earlier I had given him a Bible. Over that time, he had been reading and thinking about it. Because he had my address and phone number, he came back to say “I’m ready.”

5. Be relational

Evangelism is much more successful when it is based on a relationship.

Sometimes we have a choice to win the person or win an argument. For me, the person is more important and to win them, we need to build a relationship. We don’t want to hurt someone by attacking their faith or worldview. There are ways to disagree without being hurtful, perhaps saying “I see that another way…”

We can talk, offer to pray, follow up – people can be moved more by relationship and love than all the theology you know.

Someone coming to know Jesus is a process. It takes patience, but God is so patient with us, so we can be patient too.

6. Be culturally sensitive

We need to know about someone’s culture to avoid causing offence. We need to know what is appropriate in terms of conversations between men and women, and what the implications might be of eye contact, for example. What we wear can also have an impact on how our message is heard.

Many cultures are represented on our doorstep, making it both easy and important to ask questions if you don’t know what is and isn’t okay. Let people explain their culture to you as you build relationship.

7. Share your testimony

People like stories! Jesus used stories all the time. Telling your own story is great because it is authentic.

Try to learn how to tell your story in different ways with different emphases and lengths. Think about what you can cut: sometimes you can spend an hour with someone and take your time – but if you are in the street in the rain, you need to be quick.

Practise this with others in your church or small group so you can be confident when an opportunity comes – it doesn’t come naturally.

8. Share good news

There is depressing news all of the time. People are in a hard world, where it can seem nothing is certain. We need to be good news deliverers in our smile, our body language and our words. We are not about scaring people, but about giving them hope. Try to make them feel there is hope in what they are going through – that God’s arms are always open and they are welcome, even if all feels dark.

9. Fear not

We experience fear when we don’t know someone, or because we have experienced aggression or arguments and difficult questions. But we need to trust the Lord and resist fear, because fear and love don’t go together.

If God is speaking through me, I don’t know what will happen, or how someone will respond, but I do know that God is with me.

You don’t have to know the answer to everything – be honest and don’t be afraid. Don’t fear but be ready to give reasons for your hope.

10. Use the spiritual gifts

We need to use the wisdom of God and the spiritual gifts we have been given (1 Cor. 12) to facilitate sharing the good news.

Praying for healing can be an example of this. I met someone who was sick and sensed it was the right time to pray for healing. This man then came back to the church and explained that he was feeling better.

Romans 10:14 asks: “How are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him?” The world needs us to be those who proclaim Jesus with confidence – and have beautiful feet in our communities.

Rev Sameh Metry is founder and pastor of Living Water Arabic Church and minister in charge of St Hugh’s Northolt. He is Egyptian and came to the UK because of the persecution he experienced because of his faith. He contributed to CMS forMission training for short-term people in mission.

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By David Palmer, pioneer minister working with older people in Market Harborough and former CMS pioneer student

Starting points

Twelve years’ working with the international charity Torch Trust was foundational for what I now do as a pioneer minister. At Torch I was responsible for leading and developing the UK network of local groups of blind and partially sighted people. These were largely older people, facing isolation and social exclusion along with sight loss.

Within my own family I also witnessed decline and accompanying loneliness in both my mother and my father-in-law. Despite being in supportive care homes, they lacked social interaction and mental stimulus.

While loneliness can affect people of any age, I was struck by the previous Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt speaking of loneliness having reached “epidemic” proportions, particularly among the elderly. Priest, broadcaster and ethicist Samuel Wells describes the dangers of “ghettoising” old people. [1]

When someone stops contributing to GDP or is unable to continue an active church life, they become marginalised. They are seen as of lesser importance, a burden that needs resolving rather than an asset to be valued.

Preparation

As someone with many ideas and a tendency to rush headlong into new initiatives, I found the basic premise: “See where God is already at work and join in” to be good advice. I spent around a year praying, listening to God, listening to the community, finding out what was already happening and identifying areas of need and opportunity. I talked with key people in the church and the community; I questioned the older generation.

First steps

In the end, the opportunity to be involved at a care home happened almost accidentally. The home’s manager wanted to see more people of all ages participate in the life of the home. I heard the shameful fact that only four of the 49 residents received regular visitors. With my encouragement, three different types of services began to be run each month by different local church teams.

Measuring response is not easy, as many residents have dementia. I gain motivation from Professor John Swinton’s conviction that “any diminution of the self is first and foremost a diminution of community”. [2]

The focus of the services, then, is to trigger good memories and rekindle embers of faith in imaginative ways and, importantly, to honour people and their stories.

A special highlight from last year was the baptism of a 70-year-old man from the home. This year I was privileged to attend and lead the prayers at the marriage of the manager. She and her husband are not part of any church community.

In my role of chaplain to the home, I am grateful for advice, support and resources from Bible Reading Fellowship’s The Gift of Years team. [3]

Further opportunities

Visiting the care home with its overgrown courtyard garden and large expanse of lawn at the rear presented me with another opportunity. So, supported by a team of volunteers who are mostly unchurched, Elderberries was launched: a ministry “with people of all seasons”, bringing together different generations. [4]

In the courtyard area we have created a dementia-friendly, multi-sensory space for residents to access and enjoy. Familiar texts, verses and sayings inscribed on pieces of slate are placed in the beds, each of which highlights one of the senses with assorted plants.

To the rear of the home, an extensive area has been cleared to make way for six raised beds and four ground-level beds in which are grown a variety of organic fruit and vegetables for the residents. Any surplus goes to the team and to a small ethical cafe in town – an outlet which in time could provide us with a source of income. A local doctor who is passionate about preserving fruit trees grown in Leicestershire from the late 1800s has kindly donated a dozen to our site. These, together with more modern hybrids, reflect the ethos of Elderberries – old and young complementing each other.

Partnerships

Building partnerships is crucial. Volunteer Action South Leicestershire run a very successful scheme called Community Champions, matching volunteers with lonely people. A number of referrals have come through this scheme, adding to our volunteer team.

Another supportive partnership has been with the Soil Association, which runs Food for Life, linking schools and care homes and addressing the major social issue of childhood obesity by promoting healthy eating. The Soil Association considers Elderberries a standard bearer for utilising green spaces and is keen to use it as a showcase to other homes in the UK. As a result of this partnership, nursery children have been coming fortnightly to join the older residents in gardening and other activities.

Practical help in the garden for the past two years has also come from employees of a local solicitor’s office who usually give us a couple of days a year to assist with various tasks.

Motivation

Being intentionally missional and part of the Fresh Expressions movement of Church, I aim to make the three-way connection between land, God and community. This is achieved by using resources drawn from Iona and the Northumbria Community, and by observing traditional festivals such as Rogation Sunday and Lammastide.

Throughout my Christian journey, the opening verses of Isaiah 61 have been a source of challenge and inspiration. With Jesus as our example, our calling as his followers, under the guidance of the Spirit, is to creatively bring good news alongside the work of binding up, releasing, comforting, rebuilding, restoring, renewing. To God be the glory!

[1] How then Shall we Live?, Samuel Wells, Canterbury Press, 2016.
[2] Dementia: Living in the Memories of God, John Swinton, Eerdmans, 2012.
[3] Living Liturgies, Caroline George, Bible Reading Fellowship, 2015.
[4] Read more about the Elderberries garden on the Leicester Diocese website.

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I’ve worked for both secular and faith-based humanitarian organisations in post-disaster and post-conflict response since 2010 and I am now a mission partner.

By Fiona Kelling, CMS mission partner in Jordan

In these roles, I’ve come across suspicion and sometimes antagonism from various sides: people working in mission who think NGOs are wasteful and bureaucratic, international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) who think faith-based organisations are only out to convert people, local faith communities who feel unrecognised or excluded from the humanitarian system.

These assumptions and experiences are symptomatic of a gap in understanding between humanitarian organisations and faith-based communities.

While often engaged in similar types of work, mission has a complicated history in humanitarian response and development.

The historical legacy of colonial missionaries has left many humanitarians sceptical about the activities of faith-motivated groups. This is especially true in relation to their knowledge of, and adherence to, the Red Cross Code of Conduct. This was established in the 1990s to set ethical principles by which organisations involved in humanitarian work should abide.

In addition, the past decade has seen an increase in the professionalisation of humanitarian response, advocating that good intentions are not enough and creating standards relating to engagement with communities in need.

However, this has often isolated faith groups who have long been involved in responding to crises and human need on a more personal but ad hoc basis.

Nonetheless, local faith communities are increasingly recognised by the humanitarian system as valuable partners due to their knowledge of and long-term links in their society. Faith communities are often first responders and are frequently sought out by residents, not only to provide physical help, but also emotional and spiritual support in times of crisis.

Although motivated by their faith to respond to people in need, many local groups do not have a good understanding of established humanitarian response frameworks and can therefore be overlooked. While proselytism (which is coercive) may not be prevalent, there is a wide range of motivations and practices when it comes to evangelism.

A lack of dialogue around differences in approach has led to misunderstandings and can cause tensions when local partnerships are established. Mission partners working with or embedded in local institutions may have the potential to be a bridge that can increase effective engagement.

Recognise mutual benefits

Local faith communities have certain strengths: knowledge of the community and culture, established trust and an ongoing presence long after INGOs have come and gone. While most of the world identifies with a particular faith, faith literacy is generally low in humanitarian organisations. Local faith groups therefore have relatability and understanding that most humanitarian organisations lack.

But humanitarian organisations also come with strengths. Few faith-based groups or institutions could provide the same range or scale of support. Much effort has also been made in INGOs to establish systems to ensure quality control, avoid dependency, ensure accountability and to try to transfer learning from past projects.

These strengths can complement each other: as INGOs use their access to resources to serve populations, and their knowledge and experience to build the capacity of local institutions, so local faith communities can provide access to vulnerable groups and the pastoral care that most humanitarian organisations can’t.

Learn the language

As a mission partner, learning the language and culture of our host country and community is vitally important. Similarly, every profession also has its insider speak, and the humanitarian system is well-known for its generous servings of alphabet soup.

While not becoming fluent in the various acronyms, it is useful to have a basic understanding of the established frameworks and in particular the coordination system in your country, as all aid is tracked to try to avoid duplication and overlaps.

Seek out information on how to coordinate, be willing to share information on what assistance you are providing and be open to contributing to the creation or updating of relevant context specific standards.

Recognise elements of concern

The key concern humanitarians have with mixing religion and aid is highlighted in the Red Cross Code of Conduct, which was set up in order to ensure dignity, non-exploitation and the building of local capacities.

The Code of Conduct states that aid should be provided on the basis of need alone, without adverse distinction of any kind and without any expectation of doing anything to receive the aid. It also asserts that aid is not used to further a particular political or religious standpoint. Rightly or wrongly, assumptions may be made that faith groups give assistance in order to proselytise, or that they may be prioritising their own faith community members over others.

Some churches may see the distribution of assistance as a good starting point for relationship. Although not intended as such, even an invitation to church may be misunderstood as a stipulation to continue receiving assistance.

However, the Code of Conduct does not prevent different viewpoints from being shared, only that assistance is not made dependent on adherence to them or provided with this ulterior motive. Notwithstanding recipients’ own agency and choices, be aware that some actions may be misinterpreted and make clear that that there are no strings attached to the assistance being provided.

Challenge assumptions

While some INGOs may think they are immune to proselytism, secular doctrines can sometimes be as strong as religious ones. These doctrines are often more foreign to highly religious communities and less readily identified by their proponents as such.

Critics of faith groups often cite the Code of Conduct, but can be blind to the evangelism of secular doctrines and political viewpoints embedded in their own organisations, or that sometimes come as conditions of funding.

Any situation, religious or otherwise, where the giver assumes they know best about what the recipient requires without attention to their wishes undermines human dignity. Be ready to challenge wrong assumptions and call out double standards.

Be challenged

There is a valid question around tactics and power dynamics when sharing a certain worldview while giving aid.

Recipients of aid are often in a vulnerable position, and while faith communities may often be better placed to meet people on a human level, even when there are no conditions attached the giving of aid can be perceived to be conditional or unintentionally put pressure on vulnerable groups.

NGOs and faith communities alike need to critically reflect on their own imposed values and practices. The good news Jesus proclaimed was one of action that healed the sick, sheltered the widow and gave food to the hungry. In crisis situations, the biblical mandate to relieve suffering is the sharing of the gospel itself.

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“It’s important that you know this was unanimous. We all believe this is the right step for you at this time in your life – hold on to that in the tough times.” These were the words I heard when I was selected as a mission partner. Little did I know how much they would come back to me over the next eight years.

By Ruth Radley, CMS mission partner in Birmingham

I have been with Church Mission Society since 2001 when I was a short-termer in Tanzania. I stayed in touch while back in the UK and when I realised I was heading overseas again – this time long term, or so I thought – I naturally went back to CMS.

Did I suffer from poor mental health previously? Not at all. My personality was such that I was always quick to feel happy and rejoice about certain situations, and quick to weep and feel sad or angry about others, but I would always bounce back fairly easily.

Did I expect that almost eight years after leaving I would return burned out and with clinical depression (which I had almost certainly been living with, but hiding well – even to myself – for at least 18 months)? Or that two years later I would still be on medication? No, I did not.

But that is where I now find myself. CMS have been amazing, supporting me with debriefing and friendship, but it’s a long, painful road. Would I have fallen into this depression had I been living in the UK? It’s hard to say – perhaps, perhaps not. Yet here I am, clinically depressed and STILL a mission partner, doing my best to go forward with life and mission amid many questions.

So here are a few small things that I have learned along the way. 

Be real

About five months into an intended six month leave in the UK, I finally accepted returning to the place I loved and had called home, and which was suffering terribly through war, was not going to happen. I was no longer healthy enough to live there and be effective.

It was one of the hardest decisions of my life, having believed I would be there for at least 10 years. Calling a few important people in South Sudan to tell them I was not returning was incredibly tough. I loved them and had invested so much into what was my home.

Life is anything but simple or predictable. Life is what we live in the middle of, affected by all kinds of things around us, and sometimes that is simply overwhelming.

After a long while I was strong enough to think about my future, and grateful that working in chaplaincy at Birmingham Children’s Hospital fitted with both the hospital and CMS, as well as me. The team have been amazing – they don’t know my whole story, but know that I was broken, am still healing and see this new mission work as part of my healing story.

Accept you are human

One of the hardest things has been being put on a pedestal as an “amazing person”. I am who I am – flaws and warts and all – doing what I have been called to do, no different from anyone else. In some ways perhaps that has made accepting my present situation harder – feeling I had let down so many people who had supported me so faithfully.

However, I am learning that life isn’t perfect, and at times that imperfection overwhelms us. We are not lesser Christians because we are struggling with mental health. Our bodies can get sick at different times, and so can our minds. I prayed so hard for God to help me, I begged and begged, but continued spiralling downwards. I recognised that sadly, although I was blessed to be able to return each year to South Sudan, I wasn’t strong enough to live there. That was, and is, a tough reality. However, it doesn’t mean I can’t still support friends there. I am regularly in contact with South Sudanese friends sharing life, and the encouragement goes both ways.

It also doesn’t mean I am no use in the kingdom, but I did have to relocate. Perhaps, as Henri Nouwen says, I am a “wounded healer”. I know first-hand some of the darkness of life, and how, despite the best intentions, it is not always possible to control your mind when it is sick. This is something I never experienced previously and I would have been critical of anyone who said that. However, it is the story of many people and I hope my experiences, even when I am healed, will lead me to greater compassion and understanding.

Don’t go it alone

Another thing I struggle with is doing mission as a single person, though this may not be everyone’s experience. It is a reality that, however great your friends, you do have to somehow fit in with their family commitments. And when you move somewhere new, there is no one who knows you – everything is an effort, even coming home to get to know more people.

However, whatever I may feel at times, I am not alone. I have a small team of people around me who have been faithful in supporting me and have not been too fazed by the emails they have received. (The deal was they would pray for me, challenge me and wouldn’t tell my mother!) And there are others who have kept in touch and been concerned.

Back in the UK, I live in a house-share, not alone. I have a spiritual director who accepts me and my struggles, and has experience of living overseas for a period of time. And I have my team who understand life is tough as I continue to try to make sense of those years. I have four CMS mission partners, past and present, who regularly check up on me, as well as friends from other organisations and, of course, the wider CMS family.

Accept, no matter how long your faith journey, you will never know it all or have it all sorted

In some ways, I am now reconstructing the faith I have held for 42 years. There is so much of my last six years or so that I simply do not understand, but I still serve a God I believe wants to be known to all. Who is for us, not against us, though at times I struggle with that. I also know disappointment with God and am still working through that.

I know that life doesn’t always go the way we had planned or hoped, both for nations and personally – and that is also the experience of many of the parents and families I walk alongside through the tough moments in hospital. I haven’t got life sorted, I don’t have answers, and I don’t pretend I do. I listen, and sometimes I can empathise with some of what is said. I perhaps have a deeper understanding of the difficulties people go through in this area that may somehow stay with me as I continue in this life of mission we are called to.

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Picture for a moment an infant’s baptism in your church. The congregation swells with far-flung family and friends and among those in attendance is the young woman invited to be the infant’s godmother. She has but dim memories of coming to church, and dimmer still are her memories of what she learned. She never saw what church had to do with her – or what she could have to do with it. Yet as the baptismal service begins, a statement catches her attention: “God calls us to fullness of life.” What on earth could that mean? What could it mean for her?

Tara Martin reflects on how the church can model gender equality.

To be called to fullness of life is to use all the gifts and passions you possess to fulfil the role in God’s plan that he designed specifically for you. As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 12:4, “There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them.” Verse 12 continues “Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ.” Our core belief in Church Mission Society is that all God’s people are called to join in mission, and our core purpose is to set people free to put that call into action within the body of Christ that is the church. What roles the church may offer the would-be godmother, however, have a tendency to centre on her gender rather than her gifts.

Historically, the church has served as a patriarchal institution that rendered women invisible, or at the very least marginalised them. Certain callings and gifts were ascribed to certain genders. Consequently, women traditionally occupied silent roles of service that were essentially extensions of their domestic duties. With women now in every level of church leadership, it cannot be denied that things have changed. Yet it would not take many conversations with women, nor glances around a church, to discover that sexist stereotypes and attitudes remain rife. Women are the flower-arrangers, the cake-makers, the tea-servers and Sunday School teachers. They sing the harmonies in worship and are there to pray with people quietly at the end of the service. Their “callings” are supportive and decorative. I do not mean to discredit the value of any of these roles – all parts of the body are vital, and those called to these ministries are a part of that body. Yet it is all too common for women to be expected to fulfil these types of roles, or for it to be assumed that only women will be called into these areas. Often, they are the only active roles available to women. But what of the women who are not called to any of these? And what of the men who are?

As the belief that men and women should be recognised and treated with equal value as fellow humans (otherwise known as feminism) proliferates through society, and movements such as #MeToo highlight the disproportionate injustices experienced by girls and women daily, the church needs to be at the forefront of change. The church needs to model that the equality and freedom we all innately crave is found only in Jesus and his plans for us. If we continue to perpetuate sexist stereotypes, we limit how far men and women can go in fulfilling their calling. We restrict them to life in measured portions rather than God-ordained fullness.

In the baptism, our young godmother will be asked to “help [the child] to take their place within the life and worship of Christ’s church”. But are we doing so for her and every individual in the church? How do we prevent gender stereotypes from stunting mission? Here are some suggestions; the first step, of course, is admitting there might be a problem.

1. Make women valuable and visible

Begin by highlighting traditionally feminine roles and acknowledging their importance – don’t take them for granted. Doing so tackles damaging stereotypes applied to men as well. Relegating supportive and creative roles to women in the background implies that men cannot be creative, caring or subservient, as that is not really masculine. Instilling value into traditionally feminine roles instils worth into traditionally feminine qualities and thus puts them in their rightful place as esteemed gifts anyone would be glad to possess.

Moreover, make sure that women are heard as well as seen. Give them access to prominent roles where they have a valid voice. This doesn’t have to be leading the service or preaching; it could be leading the prayers or actively participating on the PCC. When women speak, listen to them.

2. Challenge your assumptions

Take some time to consider what you might expect of men and women. Do you tend to associate particular traits and roles within the church with particular genders? For example, picture a drummer in the worship band and a volunteer in the creche. What is your response if the drummer were a woman, and the creche volunteer a man? There is nothing wrong with being surprised, but a problem arises if you are somewhat disturbed by the idea of a man quietly taking care of the children in the back of the service. It may be worth examining your associations and the reasoning behind them.

3. Speak life

From throwaway comments to metaphors in sermons to common misinterpretations of Scripture, the way we speak to and about women and men has incredibly powerful repercussions. They not only denote attitudes outright, but generate subliminal messages that travel far beyond the church doors. It is due to such subtexts that much of secular society views the Bible as a misogynistic text rather than one of radical inclusiveness. Often the men who have served faithfully and remarkably are those we find spring to mind quickest as our examples, yet we have a heritage of women who have changed the world too. Do we speak of Hannah More alongside William Wilberforce? Or of women who throughout the history of mission overseas have also made sacrifices and taken risks? Even the way we speak about God should be considered; if we only dwell on masculine imagery, we perpetuate a limited and unbiblical understanding of God. It is man and woman together that are made in the image of God. We must speak life and encouragement into all aspects of humanity if we are to set men and women free to put their call into action.

4. Respond with grace

Finally, what do we suggest you do if you witness or experience sexism?

Allow the Spirit to speak for you. Most importantly, do not allow it to prevent you from using the gifts God has given you. Pursue the mission you are called to, irrespective of your gender. This will be a powerful testimony and a light in the church and beyond.

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Innovation is what happens when God’s future comes head to head with the present. The promised kingdom transforms the world through innovation – a process that changes the rules of the game for doing something. Indeed, the kingdom itself has innovation at its heart. God is taking what exists in the universe and changing the rules by which the components relate to each other. The kingdom is innovation on a cosmic scale.

By Rev Dr Michael Moynagh

Some innovations change the rules of the game radically. The first Messy Church radically changed the rules for all-age worship. Others change the rules incrementally: leaders of a Messy Church might change the sequence of craft activities, worship and food. Whether radical or incremental, innovation is the Spirit’s vehicle for pulling the present toward God’s future.

Dissatisfaction

In Church in Life I have described six overlapping processes of innovation. One is dissatisfaction. Innovation does not happen unless there is dissatisfaction with the status quo. No one would do anything new unless they were discontented with the present. Perhaps the present isn’t working. Or perhaps they can see better ways of doing something. The person feels dissatisfied because the present could be improved.

That was Caroline’s experience. She was a school teacher in northwest London. The local population had changed, with a growing number of people from ethnic minority backgrounds. Caroline felt frustrated because her local church had so little contact with this changing population. Her discontent fuelled a determination to do something about it.

If you like, innovation starts with “holy discontent” or “prophetic discontent”. It begins with a dissatisfaction that says, “The situation could be better.” The old must be revealed as inadequate before the new is born. This is a challenge to leaders who believe that the main task of management is to keep everyone happy. If you want improvement, you need some people not to be happy.

Exploration

Another process is exploration. An innovator, or an innovating team, explores how something new might work within their context. Caroline, for example, began to explore how her church might make connections with its new neighbours. How might her church change the rules of the game to build relationships with recent migrants nearby?

Caroline explored in three ways. Firstly, she started with what she had – who she was, what she knew and who she knew. She was a primary school teacher. She knew that many of the mothers of her students could not speak English well. She also knew how to teach. She wondered if she could use her teaching skills to help these mothers learn better English. She knew people in her church who might be willing to help her.

Secondly, she began to ask herself “What if?” “What if I did this or that?” This is an important part of the exploring process. In Design Thinking: Understanding How Designers Think and Work, Nigel Cross describes how engineers, architects and other designers approach design problems by thinking about possible solutions. They keep asking “What if…?” until a solution emerges.

Caroline was designing a solution to the challenge of women not being able to speak English. She began to think about possible solutions. One was to run a language course. But she realised that she would have to write course materials and set assignments, which would take more time than she had. She would also probably need qualified helpers and these were not readily available. So she dismissed the idea. Eventually, she asked herself, “What if we run a weekly language cafe – invite the women to an English afternoon tea, sit round tables and invite them to discuss a topic in English?”

I don’t know if she said “Wow!” at this point. But often when you repeatedly ask “What if?” and the apparent answer finally pops into your head, you exclaim “Wow!”. And then, as happened with Caroline, you try the idea to see if it will work. Cross points out that experienced designers do not foreclose the “What if?” process too quickly. They keep options open to avoid missing a good idea. Neither do they give up too soon. Often you have to persevere, imagining one solution and then another, until you hit on a brainwave. This was true of Caroline. If she had not persevered, she might never have come up with the language cafe.

Thirdly, she listened carefully to the mainly Sri Lankan mothers she hoped to serve. She knew some of them through her teaching. So quite a bit of this listening was implicit. She held conversations in her head. She imagined herself inviting these mothers to afternoon tea in the church hall. And as she did so, she realised that many would find it quite daunting. The church was not part of their housing estate. She decided to use the community hall instead. The facilities were not as convenient for her, but it was familiar territory for the women involved. Besides listening implicitly, Caroline consulted some of the women as her plans took shape.

She started with what she had, which meant that she didn’t waste time on ideas that were beyond her resources, nor did she try to innovate in a field with which she was unfamiliar – she built on her existing expertise. She kept thinking of possible solutions, which widened her thinking to embrace an unexpected possibility. And she listened carefully to check her idea would work and then shaped it around the women concerned.

Re-formation

Through prophetic discontent and prayerful exploration, God’s future began to re-form the present. The result was not the obliteration of tradition. Caroline’s church was infused with new life. Innovation fertilises tradition, while tradition is the soil in which innovation grows.

The Rev Dr Michael Moynagh is based at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, is a member of the CMS community and works for Fresh Expressions in the UK. He is author of Church in Life: Innovation, Mission and Ecclesiology, London: SCM, 2017.

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