How (not to) engage in mission with young children

Image: jannoon028 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I have a vivid memory from 2007.

It is etched on my brain because it became a “kairos” moment for me and my husband, Rich. At the time we were living on an inner-city estate. Part of our “missional activity” involved weekly door knocking to various houses .We would often be invited in to chat, pray, and read the bible with people. I would take our eldest son, Josiah, who was at the time around 18 months old. On this particular day we were in one home praying for one of the women who had broken her leg. I had left Josiah to amuse himself. Mid-way-through-prayer-for healing I became distracted by a loud unceasing banging. I peeked through my closed eyes to see my adorable toddler whacking the woman’s washing machine with one of her crutches. I guess maybe he wasn’t so enamoured with the “missional activity” as I was.

That moment confirmed what I was beginning to already conclude: mission with families is a different ballgame. We had moved specifically to the area because we wanted to reach out to the local community, but with a toddler and another baby on the way we needed to re-think. Being missional couldn’t look the same for us as it did to most of the other young adults who were part of our team.

So I swopped the door-knocking with trips to the park, the library, and the local baby groups. Having a baby (or a dog) instantly opens up relationships. We invited people into our family activity. We had one woman who would turn up on-the-dot- at 5.30 every evening. She would come in, put the kettle on for us all, help bath Josiah, and then sit down and read the bible with us as a family. Our friendship with her developed from a simple act of inviting her to choose a Christmas tree with us.

When we miscarried a baby we invited people in the community to join with us in a ceremony to plant a tree in remembrance. Allowing others to minister to us in times of sorrow is a powerful thing, and we found relationships deepened so much in doing this.

Some other things we have tried:

• Litter-picking and prayer-walking in our local area as a family.
• An alpha-course in our front room with another mum who was keen to learn more of Jesus.
• Opportunities to pray for other mums just by being present at toddler groups.
• Just this morning we simply took the kids with us to a few of our neighbours to give out small Christmas gifts, and a card with a little prayer for the family inside.
• Kids parties
• “Hanging-out” with other families and mums

These are ‘normal’ things we can do as a family, not additional missional-add-ons. They are small, simple acts of engaging with those who don’t yet know Jesus. And they are completely accessible as a family. We haven’t always seen much visible fruit from the things we’ve done, and we’ve made many mistakes along the way, but it’s a journey God is taking us on. We are constantly re-thinking what it looks like to reach out to those God gives us; we now have three children and with each season of life our approach needs to adapt according to the demands and needs of family life. What worked 5 years ago with one child no longer works with three children. I know that as we offer ourselves and our family to God even in the simplest of ways he can use it for His glory – because that’s the kind of amazing God we have.

How have you engaged in mission with children – we’d love to hear your stories and testimonies to encourage and inspire one another.

Written by Anna Robinson

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Missional Communities with Youth, Kids and Families.

This week we begin a new series exploring developing missional communities with Youth, Kids and Families.  As I write I honestly don't feel like I have lots of tips and ideas for how to make this work.  In fact in our context this is one of the key questions that we are trying to crack.

What I do have is conviction backed up by story.  My conviction is this:  the best missional communities are the ones that start to function as family and family includes more than one generation.

A little bit of our story:

A few years ago we were sat with some now-very-good friends talking about our lives.  We were both couples about to start families and both recognised we needed some back up going into that new phase of life.  So we started meeting once a week and having dinner then doing the pub quiz.  Time went on,  babies came and so did new members, some who were also young married couples about to have kids others who were young adults.  We were never an exclusively family focussed community; we were just a family.

Community life began to change a little to accommodate the arrival of little people. We couldn't just meet on nights any more,  so we set up a weekend brunch.   Babysitting rotas and plans had to be co-ordinated and plans for worship or mission had to accommodate the potential risk of loud crying,  cold children or the need for feeding.  All of this I think humanized the community,  made it more real.

We had lots of picnics and barbecues,  we did a few dedications or baptisms,  we planned some family fun days and somehow the boundaries between the community life and just family life began to get very blurred.  Young adults came to take our young kids out for trips and give us a break.  Community members became lifelong friends and god-parents.   We took little faith-risks together, and involved our kids.  We went and served our community together,  with our kids.  And all this seems to have been attractive,  other people joined us and we grew.

Our kids knew they were part of that family,  their closest friends were from the community,  they got to experience being raised by a group and so the faith of the community started to become their faith too.

We've moved on to a different place now,  God called us there to work specifically with Children,  Youth and Young Adults.  We're trying to figure out how to connect them up with missional communities.  We don't really have a set of ten easy steps to do that yet,  just a desire to try it out and a personal experience that it can work,  can be a lot of fun,  can be beautiful.

Maybe there are some readers out there who have stories similar to this.  If so I'd love to hear your thoughts: How do you include kids and youth in your missional community?

Discovering and Developing Missional Vision

Today I would like to share some thoughts on the mindset change I believe needs to take place in order for anyone to discover and develop real missional vision.

The starting point in mission for any follower of Jesus has to be that WE ARE SENT. After all, being "sent" is what "mission" or "missionary" means. We use these words because it's what Jesus said about Himself and His disciples (see Luke 4:18 and Matthew 10:3). The whole essence of mission is captured from this viewpoint. So how do we apply this? Well, as always, the best place to start with any question is to look at the life of Jesus. In scripture, I think we see 3 key elements to Jesus being sent:

Jesus was sent by God.....

Jesus was totally dependent and given over to the Father. He would continually spend time in communion with Him (Mark 1:35) and only do what He saw the Father doing (John 5:19). He had laid down His life long before He was crucified. He knew Father had sent Him. Often, the problem with being sent is that we are not the ones calling the shots. Missional vision comes from the Father. After all, it's His mission anyway isn't it? It's about choosing submission (being under His mission) and partnership (working with Him). I think the first part of discovering and developing missional vision is getting close enough to the Father so that His heart can be impressed upon ours.

Are we really listening?

Are we soft enough to Him?

Jesus was sent with a community.......

In order to carry out His Father's work, Jesus chose to seek out and surround Himself with people who were hungry for the Kingdom. In many ways they were nothing special, but they were the ones who would drop everything to follow the Messiah. This community wasn't ready made and good to go. It took Jesus time and effort to grow something around Him that reflected the Father He knew and loved. They had great times together (Luke 10:17) and tough times together (Matthew 17:17), but in the end they were the ones who would go the distance and change the world forever. I think the second part of discovering and developing missional vision is surrounding ourselves with people who are hungry for God's Mission and committed to seeing it through. Doing this allows us to grow and refine the vision that God has put in us.

Are we seeking out these sorts of people and committing to them in the context of shared vision?

Are we becoming the sort of person that others are drawn to do this with?

Are we speaking out what God is saying to us?

Jesus was sent to the world......

Jesus never lost sight of where He was sent to or what He was sent to do. He immersed Himself completely in His mission field, taking His disciples with Him and becoming totally accessible. He was often moved by the people He met as the Father's heart stirred within Him to reach out to the leaper, the prostitute or the demon-possessed. He understood people, because He lived like one of them. Nobody walked away without experiencing a tangible sign of the Kingdom. I think the third part of discovering and developing missional vision is to immerse ourselves in the context God has called us to, so that the Holy Spirit is able to show us HOW our missional vision can made real.

Are we making time and space to go and meet the people God has called us to?

Have we discerned how God wants to make His Kingdom real to them?

Do we ACT on this discernment?

Do we keep going even when it's hard or inconvenient?

Allowing God to change our way of thinking to being SENT in these 3 ways will ultimately grow and develop missional vision in us which is strong enough to last beyond any good idea, feelings, or fashionable activity. It will also start to make it possible for God's Kingdom to be made real and tangible to those He has called us to.

By Simon

Connections

Let me introduce you to a couple of my friends, Debs and Angela*. Debs lives in Perth, Australia and Angela lives in Sheffield, UK.

Debs is someone I have known for nearly 3 years. I coach her, over skype, in planting Missional Communities (which she has done a great job of!) as part of her Church in Perth. Their vision is to welcome newcomers to Perth and there are many internationals who move to the city through various business links. They also look to be good news in their neighbourhoods, create authentic community and support each other in sharing their faith across the city. We've had a couple of stories from Connect Perth on our website before.

I met Angela about 2 years ago when I re-located from my office to be out in my local community every Wednesday. She owns the coffee shop in Hillsborough that I work from each week - having space to read my bible, pray and reflect; doing emails; having meetings and chatting & getting to know the regular customers. Over the past few years the coffee shop has hosted missional community gatherings and also a Christmas carol service!!

This week Angela told me she is emigrating – to Perth, Australia!!!

I will be able to connect a person of peace from my local community with someone on the other side of the world, who I am coaching and who has a vision to welcome newcomers - it’s a small world and God is good!!

Written by Rich Robinson
*Name changed for privacy

In opposition

Remember the main point I tried to make last time? It went like this:
If you want to experience the joy and depth of community, you’ve gotta work on unity.
One of the questions I asked specifically was
Where can I make a start pursuing unity?

Let’s start talking about some of the hindrances I’ve encountered on that pursuit and also some hopefully useful suggestions for overcoming them.

When hitting against things like jealousy or prejudice the question I’ve asked myself was: how can I tackle this “in the opposite spirit”…Now, is that another one of those nice little Christian phrases? Maybe, but so much more than that, as I've come to believe. I think it’s at the heart of the message of the cross as Jesus has lived it out for us to learn from. And that it’s to do with living the life of the Spirit rather than giving in to our foolish appetites. I also think that it’s a really good way of learning to become mature children of God, who, whether we like it or not, does discipline us for that purpose.

And all time favourite apostle Paul sums it up nicely when trying to persuade us to “live in accordance with the Spirit” and have our “minds set on what the Spirit desires as the mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace”, This is in Romans 8, verses 5 and 6.

Let me illustrate what it might look like practically – bearing in mind the context we’re focusing on is to do with building unity into our relationships.

Hindrance No 1: being deceived by jealousy
Have you ever found it hard when someone you’re beginning to form meaningful relationship with is seeing success in an area you’ve so far only experienced failure in? Maybe thought they don’t really deserve it? Or contemplated backing off the relationship because it’s just too painful?

A massive killer, isn’t it, to living in unity with them, cause what’s happening is that you’re bound to interpret at least part of your relationship through that lens of feeling jealous. Worse even, you might look at them through it, too. Essentially, what you’ve got is a crack in your relationship, even though you may not be in outright conflict with them.

Well, here’s for some opposite spirit remedy if this is something you’ve ever felt your soul has suffered from:
No 1: Remember, remember, remember and speak out thanks for
all the good things God has invested in you, like your family, your job, your creativity, your athletic ability, your health, your language skills, whatever it may be.
No 2: Invest what’s been invested in you, go out there, be a giver. I promise it’s a soul saver that, as it’s living out of the faith that comes from recognizing God’s blessing and turning that into action. Plus, there’s always the bonus of a double whopper promise made by God (look up Luke 19 or Matthew 25 for the rather fascinating context); that “whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance”.

Apart from that, my strong assumption is this; you’ll start being able to not have to focus on that which your brother or sister (cause that’s what they are!) has or does, but on how you can bless them with what God’s given you.

If jealousy is something you have long tackled in your life, be looking forward to the strategies for hindrances no 2 and 3 ☺

Laugh-out-loud perspective

I had a moment on my own the other day and found myself laughing out loud. I was reflecting on a situation I was finding difficult which basically centred around 2 things: i) how important or not I might be perceived by others ii) how difficult it can be to let others reap some of the seeds I have planted in people's lives.

And then I had a little glimpse of meeting Jesus face-to-face in heaven. And all of a sudden I realised how wrong my perspective was. It caused me to laugh-out-loud at how ridiculous and self-centred my thoughts had become!

How important (or not) I am, how much I appear to be advancing God's kingdom, whether I'm the one who reaps or sows... it's not what Jesus is looking at. There are two things that Jesus tells us to be concerned about. In Mark's gospel when one of the religious teachers asks Jesus which is the most important commandment Jesus replies "The most important commandment is this: 'Listen, O Israel!" The Lord our God is the one and only Lord. And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind and all your strength' The second is equally important: 'Love your neighbour as yourself.' No other commandment is greater than these." (Mark 12: 29-31)

Paul says in 1 Corinthians "We are only God's servants through whom you believed the Good News. Each of us did the work the Lord gave us. I planted the seed in your hearts, and Apollos watered it, but it was God who made it grow. It's not important who does the planting or who does the watering. What's important is that God makes the seed grow. The one who plants and the one who waters work together for the same purpose." (1 Corinthians 3:5-8)

I wonder how much time, effort and emotions we waste by having the wrong perspective? How much of our time is spent worrying, striving, engineering, self-promoting...? We are simply God's servants. He's the one who makes the seed grow. We just need to focus on doing the work the Lord gives us (v5), and doing it with a heart of love for Him and for our neighbour.

We need to keep an eternal perspective and remember who Jesus calls us to be and how he calls us to live. I wonder how different our lives and our communities would look if we really lived this out.

Written by Anna R

Creativity

For me, variety is the spice of life. I love that God is infinitely creative and has made such an amazingly varied world. As humans, we are all unique - some of us are introverts and some of us are extroverts; some of us like noise and some of us prefer silence; some of us learn best by reading and some of us learn best by hearing; some of us enjoy making a mess and some of us enjoy bringing order; some of us like to use our voices to worship and some of us like to dance; some of us love to paint and some of us love to write ... I could go on and on because we are infinitely different. Our communities should be places to live out this creativity.

Loads of people say, "Oh, I'm not creative at all" - and it's complete rubbish! We are ALL made in the image of a creative God who lives in us and we are therefore ALL creative. But creativity is so much broader than we think. It's about knowing who we are and being released to live that out. There are so many ways in which we differ from one another and bring a different perspective or gift. We need to realise that creativity is not just about painting! And it shouldn't just be limited to the prayer/worship slot either - we need to be creative in where we make space for creativity! For example, there may be people in our communities who have new and exciting ideas for a social activity we could do together.

Having space for creativity in our communities releases us to be who God has made us to be and can also be a great opportunity for people to step up into leadership. Community members can take responsibility for a particular aspect of our community life (worship, prayer, food, a social activity, Bible study ...) but with the freedom to lead it in a way they're comfortable with. This releases them from the pressure of doing things the way they 'should' be done and feels a lot less daunting. Communities are a great place for this as they are a smaller group of people who already know us and support us. Our communities are safe and secure (hopefully!) and we can be who we are and have the confidence to try something new in them. They allow us freedom to risk and fail as well as a place to learn from our failures.

Releasing creativity in our communities brings freedom as we learn to be comfortable with who God has made us to be. It can be incredibly powerful and even lead to freedom in other areas. As we risk and experiment in one aspect of our faith (with the support of a community) it can empower us to be adventurous in other ways. (See Ben's post about The Ordinary Adventure.)

This isn't to say that things should be different just for the sake of it. Creativity comes from knowing who we are - it's a way to live out our uniqueness, not a case of doing something new just because it's different. It is also important to have a framework based on our vision and values and the balance of Up-In-Out (the Triangle lifeshape). But the framework provides a support for freedom and creativity which allows our communities to stay flexible and open to God's leading. Instead of being tied into a set way of doing things and building an unchanging structure, our communities can be innovative and experimental and organic. They become more multipliable because they are not limited to the small number of people who lead in the same way. If nothing else, a community where creativity is released is interesting!

And because we are all different and our own communities are different, I'm sure that the way you release creativity in yours is different to how I would in mine! We need to learn from each other - How have you given room for creativity in your community? How have you encouraged your community members to know who they are and live it out? Which ideas have worked well and which haven't? Let's encourage each other to live creatively - knowing who we are and living it out freely.

Picture by Francesco Marino from www.freedigitalphotos.net

Grand Designs

'No-one can lay any other foundation than the one we already have -Jesus Christ. Anyone who builds on that foundation may use a variety of materials -gold, silver, jewels, wood, hay, or straw. But on judgement day, fire will reveal what kind of work each builder has done. The fire will show if a person's work has any value. If the work survives, that builder will receive a reward. But if the work is burned up, the builder will suffer great loss. The builder will be saved, but like someone barely escaping through a wall of flames'. 1 Corinthians 3: 11-15

What is the foundation we build our lives upon? It's Jesus -his grace to us in relationship, in freedom and in securing our identity with our Father. God is very concerned that we build on the right foundations. Sometimes our foundations are a bit shaky, sometimes we’re not on solid ground and maybe we haven’t realized. Fear, insecurity, wrong identity, misunderstanding the character of God, striving for acceptance, achievement and status in places other than our Father – all of these things need to be dug out and rebuilt on truth to make sure our foundations are strong, secure and will stand the test of time.

But God is also bothered about how we then build on that foundation.

This little passage from 1 Corinthians makes it clear that He puts value on how and what we build our lives with. Gold, silver and jewels indicate that there are things worth building that are of great value in the Kingdom. But it also suggests that there are things we can build that are of no eternal value and which will be burned up. The Bible is absolutely clear in this passage and in other places that what we do cannot earn us salvation -that is only possible through grace - but it seems that God does have an agenda for how we live our lives once we are in relationship with Him. So my question is, what are you building with?

How are you building the things of God and His Kingdom in your life, your family, your community, your workplace?

I'm not sure there is a list anywhere of what activities God does or does not consider valuable. I do think that the Bible makes it clear of one thing that is important, and that is LOVE. 'The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love' (Galatians 5:6); 'These three things will last forever -faith, hope, and love -and the greatest of these is love.' (1 Corinthians 13:13)

Love. Does your community, your ministry, your daily interaction with people ooze love? How is our motivation? Are we motivated by wanting success, by wanting influence or power, by wanting to look good in other people’s eyes, even wanting to achieve great things for the Kingdom? Or is our primary motivation to love the last, the least and the lost? In everything we do? It’s tough! Ask the Holy Spirit to help you examine your motives today in what you’re building.

Whatever you do, however you build, build it with love and I reckon you can't go far wrong.

Kuh-myoo-ni-tee

The English language has a marvellous repertoire of word play options. I like word play. And deciphering its meaning.

I think thinking about the words and phrases we use and what they actually say can create surprising insights, funny recognition, and astonishing revelation about ourselves and how we talk. I wonder whether we always know and mean what we say...Want an illustration?

• Well, it applies to whole expressions: “I don’t suppose you could possibly spare a second to assist me with this?” means “Please, I need some help.”

• With single words you might think it’s a bit easier. In church we have:
• marriage = you get married, then you age - or
• holiness = sacred monster - and
• leadership = Paul Maconochie’s new yacht

But it does get trickier with some of our other lingo:

Say, we want to decipher the meaning of the word ‘community’.

• Let’s base this on the assumption that most of us refer to community as a place of belonging and a form of togetherness.
• If you look at the term’s components from its Latin origins, you see it consists of the terms ‘com’ and ‘unity’.Com translates simply into ‘with’, or more profoundly into ‘by means of’. Unity translates into ‘being one’ or ‘one-ness’.
• Putting those two together, you could read the term community as ‘by means of one-ness’ and realize that the word some of us use about a hundred times a week stands for a whole concept of togetherness: community as a place of belonging by way of one-ness.
• Or: We’re community, because we’re one. That sounds kind of nice, doesn’t it? After all, it’s not that difficult to agree that in Jesus we’ve come to be one with the rest of his body, the church, our community (Rom 12).

• Something slightly more interesting happens when we turn this round: If community means ‘with one-ness’, then it must also be true that where there’s no one-ness, there’s no community. Now, I personally find that this hits a little harder than my friendly agreement to some abstract, metaphysical one-ness I share with the rest of you all.
• It hits, because it confirms the sneaky suspicion that the absence of unity might be a painfully real part of my life. One that hinders me from entering into the sense of fellowship and relationship I desire so much. So, from a purely selfish point of view: I think it’s about time I work out the essence and meaning of unity! After all, it might get me better community.

Now, you might think that we can’t just base our understanding of unity on a little word play. That’s right: Let’s come up with some scripture to back up the newly found project pursuit.

Why unity? And...what is it actually?

Here’s for a starter:

• Jesus thought it would help his recognition in the world if his people figured out how to be one like him and his Father (John 17).

To me that sounds like some proper incentive, if effective mission is something we’re after. Besides, doesn’t it just seem clever to put it on our wish list if even Jesus asked for it?

• Then we’ve got Paul who says it would make him happy if the Philippians were like-minded, having the same love and being one in spirit and purpose (Philippians 2).

Now, while making Paul happy might not be the prime motivator of our lives, my guess is, he may just have had a point.

So, I can see this unity theme crop up in our very bible and it confirms that I want to ask a few more questions about it. Hopefully, next time I get to write on here, we’re a bit further on in our appreciation of what? why? and even how? Yeah, that’s right, I do mean we, cause after all, I can’t do unity by myself, can I?

I’d like to ask for some help, then, in asking these questions:

1) What is unity in our contexts? (and is it achieved by drinking tea at uni?)

2) What is its potential?

3) And where in my life can I make a start pursuing it - as of today

Let’s get cracking – by way of asking the Father, I’d say.

And on the 8th day God created…

How do you feel about time?

Have you ever heard those in your communities say things like “We’re just too busy” or “We don’t have enough time”?

Given that there are just 7 days in a week, how can we choose to invest our time well?

We want to live lives of adventure but can often end up just about surviving the busy rush of daily life and then crashing in exhaustion. How can we do mission in a way that is honouring to our call and and yet doesn’t lead to burn out?

Here are 3 thoughts from our experiences about how to Reduce, Re-Use and Recycle from the perspective of time:

Reduce the number of things your community is trying to do at once
Rather than attempting to do everything at once try to articulate with the group what God is currently teaching you about. Do this for the areas of worship, of mission and of community. To invest time in these 3 things you may need to reduce time spent on other good things. Within the missional community members will have taken on different responsibilities. Encourage group members to take an honest look at what is absorbing time and give permission for some things to stop or be done less well.
Consider - What am I doing that could be done with less investment of time? What am I doing that I can stop doing all together?

Re-Use the life rhythms of your group members
Missional Communities are about a lifestyle of worship, community and mission. Instead of adding on extras to an already busy lifestyle try instead to think about what things you already do. An easy place to start is with meals. Invite others over for dinner. Over the dinner think about how you want to use this time and use a question to direct conversation. Maybe ask that everyone shares something they are thankful for while you eat. Re look at your everyday life of shopping, exercise, walking home and think about how to re use the time you already spend to include others.
Consider - What do I already do that I can include others in?

Re-Cycle the time your community spend together
Take a look at the next few months and what the group has planned to do together (including time spent at small, medium and large church gatherings.) Think about if some of these opportunities can be recycled and used differently to more match what God is saying and what the opportunities or needs that you can see. For example, if someone is moving house, your group could spend the time normally given to meeting together that week to help with the move.
Consider - What time have I already committed which can be used differently?

These are some practical ideas. The foundation to getting healthy rhythms always needs to come back to grace: If you’re feeling tired, overworked and low on time as a resource, the answer isn’t to try harder. It’s to come to Jesus and ask him to teach you how to do it.

"Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly." Matthew 11:29-30 (The Message)