Faith to Faith

The other day one of the young ladies we work with told me about a conversation she had had with a guy of a different faith. She said: ‘He didn’t say in words ‘you are wrong’, but I felt like that because he told me that if I’m not saved by Jesus I will go to hell. That just made me feel like…wow! It’s a bit harsh to say that when you’ve only just met me.’

She was a Muslim and the young guy was a Christian. I understood but cringed at what must have transpired. I know where this young man was coming from. He was passionate about his faith, keen for all people to know about Jesus and really concerned for those who did not know. But his approach was wrong.

At The Feast, we help young people talk about their faith, with peers of a different faith. We show them how to do this with respect and based on honesty and trust. Instead of each of us saying to a person of a different faith ‘your problem is …’, we believe it is much better to speak positively about our own faith.

I may be stating the obvious, but our faiths are different. That means that they are not the same. And that means that there are things that I believe that my Muslim and Sikh friends do not, and vice versa. In fact, there are very likely to be things that offend.

However, to us at The Feast, pointing out a problem with someone else’s faith seems a crazy place for anyone to start a conversation, or friendship. Our young Muslim girl shared: ‘I have learned with The Feast how to accept things others believe and say. It is ok if I disagree with you, but we can still be friends. In some way I felt like he was saying I’m right and you’re wrong. He was trying to have a respectful conversation but he just didn’t know how to.’

Remarkably, even though she had been hurt by this new encounter, because our young lady had the skills and confidence to engage in healthy faith conversations, she stuck at it. The young Christian guy later told her that normally he ended up in arguments that ended badly, but that this was the first time he had really been able to talk to a Muslim about their faith, and make a friend.

The fear

Diversity is a modern and some would say a dirty word in the UK today. We may enjoy going out for a curry or cheering on Mo Farah to win gold, but many of us have deep and unsettling questions about being surrounded by people of different colours, cultures and faiths.

Muslims in particular push our buttons. This is in part due to 9/11 and acts of terrorism done in their name, but it is also because they seem to be growing, building places of worship, winning converts and asking questions of British culture. The Church has varied with its response, varying from direct evangelism to more liberal interfaith dialogue, to avoidance.

I confess to once holding these mixed feelings towards Muslims. I learnt about them from TV and newspapers, prayed for Christians persecuted in Muslim countries and observed from a distance their distinctive clothing and practices. Often what I heard was negative and left me feeling very defensive, worried about their influence and at a total loss of how to engage with them.

When speaking recently to a youth leader in a mainly white and affluent village near Birmingham, I asked how he felt about Muslims and reaching out to them. His response was like mine had been. ‘To be quite honest, I am really nervous,’ he said. ‘I’m not afraid of them, I just don’t know what to say or how to relate, and don’t want to offend or make things worse. And because there are none around here I just leave them in the “too hard” basket.’

As we talked however I learnt how natural he was at getting to know the Asian guys who ran his local curry restaurant, and as a natural people-person he had absolutely no problem relating with them as people. But to talk about his faith with them was unsettling, in a way he did not experience in other environments.

The feast

The Feast was created in large part because of this dilemma - to overcome the debilitating perceptions we hold of people of other faiths, and to enable the healthy sharing of our faith in a way that builds friendships, without causing more conflict and division. Founded in Birmingham in 2009, and currently developing new projects in Bradford and East London, The Feast is a Christian charity specialising in interfaith youth engagement. We spend time in schools, youth groups and other faith or community settings in order to build up trusting relationships with young people of different faiths. Then we invite them to meet each other at what we call faith encounter events, where, for example, five young Christians will join five young Muslims, to do something fun like drama, art or sport.

Once together we have three objectives. 

• Explore faith - the starting point is an acknowledgement that each of those present has a faith, which informs everything from their world-view, family practices to aspirations for the future. We set safe ground rules, called our Guidelines for Dialogue (see below), which create the environment for openness and honesty. Through this time the participants learn how to share the best of their faith, and listen to their peers who do the same.

• Creating friendships - the trust and vulnerability needed for the young people to talk honestly about their faith creates a powerful environment for genuine friendships to form, based on respect and mutual understanding. Much to their surprise often, we find them relieved to discover they share things in common (like music or morality) and that the stereotypes they had come with were well off the mark.

• Changed lives - a natural consequence of the new friendships formed is change, both personal and communal. Young people, and their leaders, confront their personal prejudices and consider ways they had behaved negatively toward people of different faiths. And as a group the young people are invited to work together in small ways to improve the world, addressing problems they agree on, such as litter in their neighbourhood or the global scourge of slavery.

The fruit

By now you may be wondering if we have seen ‘fruit’ from our ministry, as you grapple with the orthodoxy or danger of working with young people like we do. Firstly let me say that no, The Feast does not exist to evangelise non-Christians, but yes we do see plenty of fruit that honours God. And yes we do accept that there is risk in inviting Christian young people to engage with others. But I recall Jesus doing something like this with his disciples. I believe this can have a profound impact on their walk with God.

I met up with a group of Christian girls at their church after one such faith encounter event, and one confessed to me that she came away quite worried. ‘After we talked about our faiths it struck me that I was not sure what I believed’, she said. ‘I thought I knew Christianity, but I found out we had lots of similarities. Now I want to work out what I really believe and what difference Jesus makes.’ This must be a risk worth taking, to hear our young people awaken to the wonder of being a follower Jesus, not just a person of religion.

In Jesus’ day people thought they understood what was meant to ‘love your neighbour, as you would love yourself’, but in fact they had to be confronted about the true depth of this love. To do this he wowed them with a parable about a Good Samaritan, someone the Jewish people despised and tried hard not to associate with. To glimpse the shock Jesus intended, let us today replace the Samaritan with the Good Muslim. How would you respond to a devout Muslim lavishing you with sacrificial and generous care in your time of need? To love as Jesus taught us, we need to cross our personal barriers of fear, prejudice, culture and faith. This means we must choose to love and do good even when we don’t have all the answers, when we are scared or when we cannot point out their problems.

On a regular basis I am humbled by the genuine kindness and hospitality given to me and my family by my actual Muslim neighbours and friends. We receive many gifts of food, are invited into their homes, our children play together and one neighbour is a mechanic who services my car. My father is ill in Australia, and they ask often how he is and have even offered their own financial support to enable me to return to be with him. My Good Muslim friends have taught me so much!

Please do not dismiss engagement with people of other faiths as optional or too hard. The community you minister in at the moment may not have any Muslims or Sikhs or Hindus, but every single person in the UK is going to be confronted with the reality of our diversity at some stage.

Are your young people equipped to live their faith in a positive and vibrant way when they head off to university or the workplace, or when they see a different faith group discussed in the media? Will they be able to love as Jesus taught us, and be ready ‘to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have...with gentleness and respect’ (1 Peter 3:15).

To be a follower of Jesus will sometimes mean weighing up difficult decisions. If making disciples could be done over games at youth group or Bible studies in cell group then the Church today would be heaving. But that was not how Jesus worked. He took them to parties with sinners, he walked them through the backwater of Samaria, he asked them to feed 5,000 and he invited Peter to get out of the boat. He mixed them up. He trusted God in the face of uncertainty. He did not allow complacency or avoiding of awkward topics. He loved them enough to force them to change. And they changed the world.

Let your engagement with people of different faiths be a powerful step in your personal spiritual growth, and that of the young people you serve. May you find like we have, that not only will you make lots of new friends, but God will reveal to you more of his love and grace at work in our big, mixed up world.

Guidelines for dialogue

This may be a bit like giving away our secret sauce, but I would like to let you in on The Feast’s Guidelines for Dialogue, which form the basis of our faith discussions and whole project. Sharing these may do me out of a job, as we really hope many more Christians and young people will pluck up the courage to meet with a person of a different faith and form a life-changing friendship.

We ask our young people to:

• Listen to what people say.

• Be honest with our own thoughts and feelings.

• Speak positively about my own faith, rather than negatively about other people’s.

• Respect other people’s views, even if I disagree.

• Not treat people here as a spokesperson for their faith.

• Not tell others what they believe, but let them tell me.

• Acknowledge similarities and differences between our faiths.

• Not judge people here by what some people of their faith do.

• Not force people to agree with my views.

• Make every effort to get along with everyone, regardless of their faith, gender, race or age.

The Feast won the Most Innovative Youth Work Award at last year’s Youthwork Awards. Have you voted online yet? If not, get involved at www.youthworkawards.co.uk 

Agree with this ? Disagree ? We want your feedback! Email youthwork@premier.org.uk and let us know what you think.