Co-Chairs Report #1 October 3, 2008

Japhet Ndhlovu, Neil Crosbie, Alan Roxburgh

Dear Friends:

Warm greetings to each of you in the diverse contexts of ministry around the world where we live and minister in the name of Christ.

It is hard to believe our meetings took place more than a month ago.  After the Lusaka meetings each of us returned to busy lives.  We determined that Neil, Japhet and Alan would co-chair the next stages of our work and shape the agenda around the steps forward we had agreed on together.  Both Neil and Japhet had to travel extensively outside their own countries in August so it was only at the beginning of last week that the three of us were able to arrange a Skype call with one another.  We appreciate your patience.

One of our first tasks was to personally review the Lusaka meetings.  Our common experience was that Lusaka had gone very well.  We achieved the community and communication we were seeking across a diverse, multi-national and multi-cultural set of relationships.  The three of us felt we were able to integrate “Western” and African voices thanks to the wonderful preparation and guidance of key people like Frederick and Jurgens.  We believe that Lusaka was a special event of potential Kingdom significance.  We recognize the responsibility and gift we have been given to guide this process forward and recognize the level of challenge this project will require of us all in terms of communication and the actual implementation of the decisions we made.  Thank you, each one, for contributing to making Lusaka something we might have dreamed of happening but probably didn’t imagine possible. The Lord was with us.

Third Annual Consultation in Lusaka, Zambia of the Mission in Western Culture project

(2-9th August 2008)

I always seem to require a week at least to both intellectually and emotionally process my trips to Africa and this time I asked myself why? I have come to the conclusion that travelling to sub Saharan Africa and really experiencing the enormous economic and social transitions that are presently going on as well as enjoying the natural hospitality of the African people is probably a picture of what it was like to move into London or Manchester during the industrial revolution of the 19th century. All around you watch and experience the disorientating effects of modernization while still enjoying, for the time being at least, traditional African values and ways of life.

Lusaka seemed to me to be much like Nairobi or Johannesburg. On every street corner there is much evidence of those who have found their way into the new world of economic success and social mobility juxtaposed with mind shattering and gruelling poverty and injustice. Dusty streets choked with exhaust fumes; women and children breaking rocks by the roadside; expensive new hotels and government buildings often sponsored and built by the new colonialists, the Chinese; sprawling shanty towns and piles of degradable rubbish. Taxi’s crammed full of people on their way to low paid jobs. Young boys forlornly endeavouring to sell plants or meaningless modern bric a brac by the roadside and everywhere, just under the surface of the vibrant hustle and bustle of city life, the daily pressure and ocean of sorrow and heartache associated with a worldwide pandemic, HIV/AIDS.

Modern Africa is a snapshot of what happens when the global viral economies and epidemics of late modernity invade, consume and explode from inside the settled, and to a certain extent more sheltered, way of life previously sustained through the agrarian economies and social hierarchies of traditional tribal society. The effects are devastating, more losers than winners, more problems than solutions, more challenges than available resources. What is being birthed, however, is the possibility of enormous new wealth creation and a ticket into to the 21st century. Progress? Well, maybe, but one thing is for sure we cannot stop this global march toward – toward what? To a certain extent that was what our consultation was all about.

Listening to personal stories of transformation on the missional journey at our recent cluster 9 meeting, I was amazed at the depth of the life change pastors and other task team members reported.

Until quite recently these very same people were struggling on the road, still integrating new knowledge and experience in a Christendom framework, envisioning de facto church-with-a-mission projects instead of a deep cultural shift towards being missional church.

Just the week before I attended the seventh cluster in another partnership, where we faced the reality of this struggle:
- how to make lists shorter;
- how not to be everything to everybody;
- how not to operate with existing “how-to” knowledge and approaches.

“Christendom” means the dominion or sovereignty of the Christian religion.

The Christendom phase of the Christian movement is drawing to a decisive close.

The question is: Can we get over regarding this as a catastrophe and begin to experience it as a doorway into a future that is more in keeping with what our Lord first had in mind when He called disciples to accompany him on his mission to redeem the world through love, not power?

The decline and fall of Christendom