Why not come and visit a Mission Year house, meet the team and ask them some real, honest questions about how they’ve found living together and serving in the inner-city.

When:
Thursday May 24th
Thursday June 28th
Wednesday July 25th

If you’d like to come, email jessica.davies@act-network.org.uk to sign up. If you’d like to visit a team and can’t come on any of the dates above, just let us know!

Andy Walton on why he’s left suburbia behind

I first became inspired by the idea of Incarnational Mission by reading about examples of where it has flourished. Shane Claiborne’s Simple Way community in Philadelphia has been a model for many, and his books “The Irresistable Revolution” and “Jesus for President” were my gateway into attempting a new way of life.

Claiborne’s gift is in rooting what he is doing (something which is a ‘new’ concept to many Christians and non-believers) in the ancient tradition of the Church. He quotes the great Desert Fathers and Mothers as well as Mother Theresa with whom he worked in Calcutta.

Having spent my twenties living in comfortable middle-class areas, I was pining for a more ‘real’ experience of London. At the same time I was aware that I was ‘going through the motions’ somewhat it terms of my faith. The answer to both these problems presented itself in the form of the organisation Mission Year. It’s a simple idea which began 15 years ago in the USA. Participants commit to living in a house with others, praying and eating together and giving some of their time to the outreach work of a local church for a year.

This has seen me end up in a wonderfully vibrant, yet deprived part of East London. My church – St Peter’s Bethnal Green – is an experimental hybrid of traditional Anglo-Catholicism and contemporary Charismatic Evanglicalism. It is a place desperate to reach out into its local community and change it for the better, while telling more people about the good news of Jesus. As Mission Year participants, we help to make this happen by resourcing the church’s outreach through Alpha courses, Foodbank, Caring for Ex-Offenders and working with local projects to serve vulnerable women.

I’ve thrown myself into involvement with Citizens UK, a broad-based Community Organising coalition, which campaigns for more jobs and a Living Wage for local people as well as an end to exploitative lending . The church is a member alongside local Mosques, schools, colleges and residents’ associations. It’s a fantastic way to campaign for the common good, but also get to know others in the area.

Living with others and sharing things in common can be inspirational, but it can be difficult too. Incarnational Mission may not be for everyone – but it’s by no means just for young, single people. Some of those I look up to most are those who are committed to living in community with others even when they have a family, and every societal urge is telling them to find their own place, gated off from the rest of the world in an affluent suburb.

The main reason I’m doing this is because it’s the closest I’ve found to the early church in the book of Acts. I’m heartened that many others in cities and towns across the country have felt the same calling, and that churches of all shapes and sizes are helping to make these dreams a reality.

Our little fellowship is a motley crew, but we get along pretty well. I’m not saying we don’t have our share of irritation and conflict, but between our various faith commitments and our various experiences of failure and disappointment, we generally have plenty of grace to draw on when things go wrong. Which, around here, is almost always. I’m not sure how many Bible verses you could prove by us, but this one for sure: Love covers over a multitude of sins.Then again,

sometimes a multitude of little sins is a whole lot easier to cover than one great big one.

I would be lying if I said anyone was excited when Michael told us his wife Judy was pregnant again. After all, Michael and Judy were barely managing already, with three pre-schoolers, a slew of debts, convictions, and other children by other partners back in Georgia, and Michael working only sporadically as a welder. He’s a long way from his drug-dealing, meth-addict days, and she’s closing in on her certification and a job as a bookkeeper, but all that growth has required lots of investment already, and as a family they still have a long way to go. As Michael knew better than anyone, another baby wasn’t part of the plan.
 

When I chided him for not using protection, Michael said that Judy caught him off guard just once, after a long hiatus, and immediately became pregnant again. I must be the unluckiest man alive, he told me.

Of course, no matter how inconvenient they are in theory, babies have a way of making themselves welcome once they are born. By the time Michael and Judy brought little Janine home from the hospital, everyone wanted to hold her, and Michael most of all. After a few weeks, however, everyone who held her could see what Janine’s mother had managed to conceal until then: Michael isn’t the little girl’s father.

Honestly, at first I was afraid to talk to him about it. Michael is a big man, after all, with a short temper and a long history of violence. But then I found out he’d already talked about it with Austin, who in our fellowship plays the part of Michael’s big brother.

Austin told me Michael had long suspected that her ‘one night only’ offer was Judy’s way of buying time, but that instead of judging her infidelity, he had decided to forgive her and raise Janine as his own. That mess ain’t the baby’s fault, he told Austin, and besides, I done plenty’a worse things than her momma done in my time.

It was just that simple.

I would be lying again if I said it would be that simple for me, or for Austin, or for any of the other less-vulnerable men in our group. We’re the ones who moved here on purpose, to shower our neighbors with that extra-strong, faith-based love we so like to talk about, but I daresay the folks we’ve dropped in on know better than any of us about covering one another’s sins. It would be easy enough to say that they just give each other more practice, but after watching Michael for the past few weeks, I think his kind of grace is less about what you learn to do and more to do with how you learn to think and feel about yourself.

Living in a place like Walnut Hills, it’s not hard for me to think of myself as a good man. It’s not hard for me to feel like a good man, either, or even for my love to cover a multitude of sins. To cover a great big sin, however, takes more than the love of a good man. What is takes is the love of a man who’s learned the hard way that when push comes to shove, he isn’t good enough.

God knows I’m getting there.

Bart

You can sign up to receive Bart’s newsletters at: http://thewalnuthillsfellowship.org/

Listen to her audio ‘My Mission Year‘

‘Learn more’ to read her poetry

My Mission Year is at home,

Writing words whispered at heaven’s door,

Crossing the threshold of heaven

And bowing on the marble floor.

Everything in me struggles,

An activist at heart,

But my ears are poised to brightness

And I’m compelled to play my part.

I play and play and play and play.

When people ask me what I’m doing

I say, “I’m not sure at the moment,

I’ll send you a postcard from Bermondsey.”

There’s lots to see –

Southwark Cathedral, Chaucer’s Inn,

Shakespeare’s Globe and Tower Bridge.

Lots to hear – stream of sirens at night,

Cursing, anger, hatred, pain.

So daily under the strain

Of working alone, I wake up,

Greet my God and say,

“I am your servant,

What would you have me do today?”

***

 Come closer. Listen.

The din of heaven sets in

To your soul.

I want to show you

Mysteries of things unseen,

Clean and unclean;

I want to show you

How filthy your rags are,

What riches I’ve put in store

For you: how precious your heart.

I want to teach you

About LOVE:

Love which is more precious to me

Than suits.

Love which changes lives more

Than prophecy.

Love which will not let me go!

I have come to give you life

And set your sights higher

Than you ever thought imaginable!

I have asked that you might be one with me,

Doing the things that I do,

Caring for the sick, the lame and wounded

From London living, from battle bruised.

I have come that they might have life –

All the people in your neighbourhood!

I care about your next door neighbour,

That man on the street.

It’s no mean feat

To save the world

And I’ve already done it.

***

Incarnational.

Word made flesh.

Dwelling amongst us –

Takes out the trash.

Comfortable with strangeness

And dead to ambition,

Living daily in his life long mission

To feed the world

From spiritual hunger

Lays out a feast

On a wooden table:

“Come. Eat.”

Rest.

He is the best

Cure for sickness

And moral disease,

He can satisfy you

More than all these

Trophies you hold to

For fame and recognition.

He knows you. He sees you.

Your sins are forgiven.

]]> http://www.missionyear.org.uk/news/programme/i-want-to-teach-you-about-love/feed/ 0 http://www.missionyear.org.uk/news/programme/1583/ http://www.missionyear.org.uk/news/programme/1583/#comments Tue, 06 Mar 2012 15:40:41 +0000 Susannah http://www.missionyear.org.uk/?p=1583 IDEA Magazine has written a feature on the Act Network, and how Mission Year is helping churches in the heart of their communities.

IDEA also spent a day meeting lots of amazing people who are showing their dedication to social transformation by getting involved with the ACT Network and Mission Year teams. They filmed interviews with church leaders, debt counsellors, Food Bank clients, women’s outreach workers – and just ordinary Christians who feel called to live out their lives in community with each other and with those in need around them.

You can read the article and watch the film here

Are you going to the Speak Souncheck 2012 gathering this weekend?

If not you should be! Mission Year, along with Servants UK, are hosting a workshop – ‘Living for the Kingdom: in Community’. We will be exploring what makes and breaks community, and why we should even bother with it all.

Come along  and join us for some lively discussion. Read on for more info.

Day tickets are available and you can buy on the door.

http://www.speak.org.uk/gatherings/soundcheck/soundcheck-12/practical-info

Date: Saturday 25th January 2012, 11:00 – 22:00 (Mission Year Workshop, Session 3 @ 15:30)

Place: The Rag Factory, 16-18 Heneage Street, London, E1 5LJ

We’re heading off to relax and rest in the sumptuous settings of Letton Hall for the Mission Year retreat weekend. As well as resting in God’s refreshing waters, spending quality time together and having lots of fun, Mission Year teams will be hearing from John Hayes, director of InnerCHANGE, a Christian order among the poor.

As the InnerCHANGE website professes, “We are moved by the life and love of Jesus, enticed by his goodness. We have sensed his call to take up our crosses and follow: knowing that as we lose our life for his sake, we will truly find it. Despite the enormity of the missionary task, we do not pursue this work with long faces. Rather, we rejoice in our opportunity to be messengers of the King as he invites all people – poor and rich alike – to his banquet table”.

John’s example of seeking to live out the good news of Jesus among the poor, in places most people want to avoid or ignore, continually inspires us to reach out to the brokenness and pain in our own marginalized neighbourhoods in the UK.

We’ll be taking a look at John’s book Sub-merge: Living deep in a Shallow World. You can read the blurb from  the book below, and check it out here:

http://www.innerchange.org/submerge-book

Plunge in. Go deeper. Sub-merge yourself. Two-thirds of the world’s population lives in poverty. Children go to bed each night hungry, while despairing parents wonder where the next meal will come from. It’s not enough to feel compassion or guilt about this desperate situation. It’s time to make a difference. Join director of InnerCHANGE, John Hayes, as he takes you into the heart of some of the most distressed ghettos and neighborhoods in the world. From the streets of Los Angeles to the forgotten villages of Cambodia, you’ll find that the face of poverty is as close as your own backyard and as widespread as the furthest continent. Learn what it means to do more than give a handout. Discover how building authentic faith-based relationships through can change the world one person at a time.

Calling all Cambridge Students! Fancy working with us to change the world? We believe the local Church has a huge part to play in seeing social and spiritual transformation in our communities and our nation. Come and visit our stand on Thursday at the Work to Change the World Event run by the Careers Service.

When: Thursday 9th February, 1-6pm

Where: Examination Halls, New Museum site, Pembroke Street, CB2 3RS

We’ve got all five recordings for you to hear – on topics from poking the box to shaping dreams. Click on ‘Learn more’ for the rest of the recordings.

Thought for the day 1 – loving one another

Thought for the day 1 – loving one another Why the first place to start has to be loving one another.

Thought for the day 2 – food for thought Hospitality can be done by receiving just as much as giving.

Thought for the day 3 – doing it together ‘Poke the box’ and make a difference as a team.

Thought for the day 4 – shaping dreams Whose dream can you help make a reality?

Thought for the day 5 – a year for change? What things do you want to properly change this year?

So how do we break out of the bounds of our normal social settings and stereotypes, to break down barriers and break through with the boundary-less and boundless love of Christ?

Mission Year participants meet regularly for training evenings covering a range of topics, and last Thursday saw the start of the new term begin with a fantastic talk on challenging class divisions from Paul Brown, leader at City Hope Church, Bermondsey.

Paul has over 17 years experience leading an NFI church Bermondsey, and spoke about the challenges of class divisions that still exist in the UK, and how this is an issue often not spoken about in churches. He cited the statistic that the church in the UK today is roughly 34% male, 66% female, and 98% middle class, challenging us that we will not really see revival in the UK until the church begins to break more beyond the bounds of the middle class. Paul spoke in an honest and refreshing way, and feedback from the evening was extremely positive.

Next Thursday, Jonny Douglas from Christchurch Spitalfields will be speaking about Healthy Christian Discipleship, and one of the highlights of the term will be our Mission Year retreat weekend in mid-February, in Norfolk, with guest speaker John Hayes from Inner Change.