Us Nairobi-based lot visted a lot of different projects last week. We have visted a heap of churches and Christian organisations doing their best to meet the practical needs of people here... The basic theory seems to be that God wants to capture all of creation into his purposes - not just salvation of people, but transformation of every aspect of our lives, including economic and health needs. Meeting the practical needs is as much part of expressing God's love as 'saving souls'.
One of my favourite projects is run by Diasy, she runs a micro-enterprise business that gives loans to groups within a community. The model is basically to get them to save money, then approve a loan relative to their savings; they pay it back, and can then work towards another, bigger loan. She started this business because her house maid and house guard approached her for a loan - meetings with them grew to meetings with 40 people, and then she decided to formalise things. She now runs the programme with accountability through her church.. the church is now essentially supporting her vision.
We have seen heaps of examples of people trying in different ways to meet the practical needs of their community.
The church that I have known and seen in NZ has focussed a lot on evangelism (probably up to the mid-late 90s) and community, but has struggled with local mission. I think it has definately struggled with practical mission within the community, perhaps because of a tendancy to over-spiritualise church. I think Christians in NZ acknowledge that God is a Sunday to Monday church, but many churches struggle as a community to give effect to that acknowledgement outside personal frienships of church members. Sometimes our leaders have struggled to mobilise an apathetic congregation, sometimes our congregation has struggled to apply the relevance of Jesus to our communities where we don't talk about God with people until we have earned the right.
The spiritual context is different in Nairobi. The church is unashamedly passionate about Jesus. The community has so many needs (different to those we face at home), but people get on with praising Jesus for what they have. Here you have buses and cars labelled with slogans about faith, God and Jesus. Talking about God with people is normal, and can happen within a few minutes of meeting. Some churches struggle with the few people doing most of the work of the church, others manage to develop leaders and send them out.
I have found the spiritual expression really refreshing and inspiring. Oh, and these guys can SING ; )
I have seen that the Kenyan church has different struggles from ours, and there are a few challenges I'd like to bring back home. The first is about practical mission to meet the needs of the community. I don't think it needs to be done with banners and songs celebrating Jesus. In our context I suspect that love is the gateway to talking about Jesus. Whether it's helping out in Prisons to look after children while parents visit, or helping with trouble kids at school to stay in school... there are plenty of needs. I think there's room to just get started on the practical needs and see the opportunities that creates to talk about God.
Second, I'm not really sure when the NZ church became less confident about the power of the gospel. I'm not sure exactly sure how it can be overcome. I think that materialism has something to do with the problem - that we have so much, and have come to have security in our stuff... when we don't have it we are less likely to trust God to look after us because we are so used to looking after ourselves. I don't know that removing the stuff would solve the problem, but definately I think there's opportunity to take stock of our attitude to stuff and consider how it affects our view of God.
The church in NZ is really blessed...we have abundant resources, we have a mature church that probably needs a bit of a refreshing, and many of us have learned over the years that God is faithful. We have a lot to offer our communities...
Let the love of God explode from us.
