At our 4pm service on Sunday we explored the theme of ‘Breaking down Barriers’. If you’ve not yet had a chance to listen to Keith’s talk you’ll find it here.
Between finishing teaching and starting as a full-time Baptist minister I spent four years at college. The first two years were full-time at All Nations Christian College and the second two were as a student minister. I was a student minister at a church in north London and then spent a couple of days a week at Spurgeon’s College in south London.
When I went to All Nations, I was planning on returning to teaching overseas. I hadn’t got as far as thinking as who that would be with – but BMS World Mission was a serious contender. All Nations specialise in cross-cultural training. Training missionaries is what they do. The course I took was in ‘Biblical and cross-cultural studies’.
There is a saying that goes something like, ‘a goldfish isn’t aware that it’s surrounded by water until it’s taken out of its tank’. And culture is a bit like that. Generally speaking we’re unaware of it until we’re taken out of it and put in a different culture. We’re unaware of how much of our lives are shaped by our culture – and how other people might think and behave very differently.
One of the great things about the courses at All Nations is that they didn’t necessarily give many answers – but they taught you to ask the right sort of questions.
The apostle Paul understood culture. He straddled the Jewish and the Roman worlds. He travelled extensively. His strategy as a missionary was to adapt his methods of sharing the gospel depending on his audience (1 Corinthians 9:19-23). He didn’t compromise the message – but he wanted to remove unnecessary barriers. That’s why he used his Jewish name, Saul, when talking with Jews and his Roman name, Paul, when talking with Romans.
We talked on Sunday about ethnic differences as well as generational and class differences. And there will be other differences that will be relevant for our context. My original presentation was black writing on a yellow background – but after a visit to the Sight Loss Friendly Church website I changed it to yellow writing on black background. Just one less thing to get in the way of someone responding to the gospel.
How much of what we do as a church is cultural? And how much of that is a barrier to the community we are trying to reach?
