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 PrintableVersion Imagine (DVD)Are you briefed, trained, resourced and supported?‘How can we reach the UK? The new Imagine DVD is an exciting, innovative resource from the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity, for Christians who want to address the challenge of living well as fruitful, missionary disciples in today’s rapidly changing culture.’ When I received this advertisement via email from LICC recently I ordered the DVD immediately and wasn’t disappointed. For everyday lifePresented by Mark Greene, it asks some poignant questions of the Christian community whose cultures can so easily be characterised by task-orientated relationships and the programme-driven activities in the world around us. It challenges a target-driven attitude to mission that is more focussed on making converts than making disciples. It asks: Are we a whole-life community, committed to addressing all of life? Are we a disciple-making community, committed to developing the kind of relationships where we are genuinely helping one another to live, grow and flourish in Christ, through all the seasons of life? Suitable for use with whole churches, leaders, small groups and for individuals, the film is concerned to help people make the connection between the living Word of God and the issues facing them in their everyday lives. It casts a compelling vision for churches to be places where people can be real with each other about real issues and help each other. Two areasThe film explores two main areas, ‘Living as a Christian in today’s world’ and ‘The whole-life disciple-making Church’. It contrasts Christians to Bond … James Bond, who for every mission to save the world is properly briefed, trained, resourced and supported. LICC research reveals that the average Christian doesn’t feel these things. It is not suggesting big new programmes, but a change of values that make the world of difference. It begins by assessing where we are at as a nation, quoting the defunct youth culture magazine which, after its Young Britain 2002 survey, wrote: ‘Our status as the most boozed up, drug-skewed, pregnancy-prone wasters in Europe is pretty much unchallenged’. People are looking for something more, a sense of purpose. They can relate to the emotional warmth of Friends yet most feel they live in an episode of Lost. Mark’s typically perceptive analysis of our culture is both helpful and stirring. He says: ‘You don’t have to be a Christian to be concerned about the emotional state of the country, you just need to be awake’. Uncomfortable analysisHis analysis of the church is equally perceptive, if uncomfortable. Mark identifies a sense of bewilderment in the church as well as in the world. Nationwide research for the ‘Imagine Project’ revealed that while the majority of Christians felt helped and supported by their churches in their devotional and church life, issues relating to home, work and leisure were not generally addressed. Searching questions are raised: If we can’t show people how the crucified and risen Lord shapes our everyday life, then what kind of gospel do we have? — just a leisure time gospel? If the good news of Jesus doesn’t speak into our daily lives, are we just offering pie in the sky? Why is it that so many Christians are saying that their church community life together falls short in helping them live out the gospel in the family, and among friends, neighbours and colleagues? Sacred-secularThe ‘sacred secular divide’ is identified as the cause. While we say all life matters to God, in reality there is a pervasive belief that some things (church-related) are all important to God and other things aren’t. At best, work, rest, art, sleep, etc. are neutral. This was helpfully illustrated with an interview from a teacher who explained that she had been given a slot in a Sunday service to talk about her work in the Sunday School, which she did once a week for 45 minutes with churched kids, but had never been asked to talk about her work as a teacher at school which she did for 45 hours a week, with unchurched kids. With a tour round a specially designed gallery, divided into sacred and secular exhibits, Mark explains how that the sacred secular divide has had a devastating effect on two key areas: our mission and our living. We simply don’t see that people in our every day context are the people we are to pray for, to bless and to witness to. We have a leisure time view of Christianity rather than a whole life Christianity. This is in contrast to Jesus who taught on a whole range of issues and gave his life that all of life might be transformed. Mark humorously illustrates how that the King of the Universe cares about everything by recalling the day God brought the animals to Adam to see what he would name them. Our Creator God is concerned about the details of life. He is intensely interested in us wherever we are, whatever we do. With him there is no sacred-secular divide, for, as Paul says in Colossians 1.16, all things were created by him and for him. The film highlights that the salvation that Christ brings us is comprehensive, not partial. In Colossians 1.19-20, Paul explains that God was pleased to have all his fulness dwell in Christ, and through him to reconcile to himself all things. In Christ we are promised the complete future renewal of all things. For now we are given abundant life, but this is not some ethereal disembodied life in the Spirit, unrelated to everyday issues. It involves purposeful life in this world. Train and releaseThe Christian community is urged to take seriously its responsibility to help God’s people live purposefully, teaching and equipping them for whole-life Christianity. For Jesus’s mandate was not to go and make converts but disciples. People who are resourced and envisioned to see themselves as full-time Christian workers in the situations that God has placed them, missionaries to the lost around them, leaving traces of grace in the world, agents of transformation like yeast in a lump of dough. The film contrasts the contemporary church’s ‘convert and retain’ strategy with Jesus’s ‘train and release’ strategy. The case is made that, just as in the first days of creation God made an environment for Adam where he could flourish in relationship with himself, so the task of church leaders is to create an environment where believers are encouraged, supported and resourced that they might flourish in their mission as agents for transformation in the world. This was a helpful and refreshing insight, with a far bigger, more biblical vision for promoting the gospel in the world than the localised, empire building that can so easily underlie our programmes. It focuses on equipping the church in the world, on the front line, where people spend most of their time, with the colleagues, family members and friends they are already in relationship with. Having helpfully analysed where so many of us are at in our churches, the film starts a discussion about the way forward. How can we ensure our church communities are really addressing all of life not just bits of it? How can we be the disciple-making communities Jesus calls us to be in Matthew 28.19, where we are active, intentional learners, accountable to others as we seek to live all of life Jesus’s way? Changing church cultureTo make progress in becoming whole-life disciple-making churches, the point is made in several ways that it’s more about building a particular culture than about doing a particular programme. As the Spirit of God disciples the people of God through the Word of God, I would have liked more help at this point on creating a culture where the Bible is faithfully and creatively taught into our contemporary situation. However, the film is a discussion starter on whole-life discipleship and the suggestions made are well worth hearing. I found two particularly helpful. Steve Prince, from Brookside Community Church in Reading, shared his vision to work out the priesthood of all believers in the local church. So, for example, they have a forum in church life to present people’s work situations, or interest situations where they meet unbelievers. He explained how they had prayed for one of their members who was an estate agent, much like they would have prayed for an overseas missionary. The second pointer that I found helpful was to develop an apprentice culture in church life, where we all see ourselves as growing learners and doers, willing to accept help and correction, intentionally helping each other live whole-life Christianity. The film comes with a number of extra resources including: a list of ideas on how to use the DVD in churches and small groups; discussion guides to use with the film; extended interviews with three church leaders, each with useful insights; a couple of helpful but provocative questionnaires — ‘Issues you are facing in today’s world’ and ‘How whole-life is your church?’; a document for personal application — ‘20 small steps towards whole-life apprenticeship’; and a PowerPoint presentation of ‘Imagine how we can reach the UK’. The DVD-ROM resources are also available at www.licc.org.uk/ imagine/resources. This resource is a passionate plea for churches to be real with each other and take seriously the command to encourage one another, spurring each other on towards love and good works. A great resource, well worth £10. Pete Hitchcock,
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