A few years ago - the sight of a tanned, heavily braceletted 19 year-old with braided hair strolling through the doors of church after a life-changing six months in Africa was a fairly common one. The pendulum of missional thinking now seems to have swung in the opposite direction – with less and less young people travelling abroad, choosing instead to spend their year out in the UK on an urban mission placement or church internship. National leader for YWAM England Carl Tinnion can’t help but ask: have we forgotten about overseas mission?
All humans crave adventure to some degree or another. Some crave it on a Bear Grylls level, others just want to experience something outside of their normal rhythms of life. In looking at the whole topic of empowering young people into mission, is it OK to describe a mission trip as an adventure? I am always careful not to describe missions overseas as an experiential, self-centred endeavour that is all about the individual and their relationship with God. There is the danger of missionary tourism with this kind of approach, when it can become about my ‘gap year experience’ when ‘I did my God thing and wasn’t it fun’. However, as someone working with Youth With A Mission who is passionate about discipleship among young people, I know that the topic of mission takes a while to enter deeply into our consciousness. Missions, or more trendily, missional thinking, is a bit of a process that develops as we expand our experiences of serving God in different contexts, with different peoples, and importantly, in different nations.
I am totally convinced that mission trips, particularly overseas, are a fantastic place for young people to begin their journey of moving beyond their comfort zone, looking less on themselves and more onto God, and are an essential element of discipleship. I am not suggesting that a 15 or 16 year-old should launch straight into a poor community in India; there must be incremental steps that broaden our experience and what we can cope with. So it might be Brick Lane in London or an ethnic community in Germany as a starting point, and then, further along, somewhere like India. Ever increasing circles of experience that stretch the confines of ‘normal’.
Years ago I took a youth group to Poland to help out a YWAM team working in an orphanage. Most of my young people were aged between 15 and 16 and had not been exposed to this kind of an environment before. I had taken them the previous summer to work in a youth café in Northern Ireland so they had a little experience behind them (what I believe was an essential incremental step). We participated in a variety of activities and my intention was always to help them process their experiences and connect them to mission at home as well. Each day we would talk about what we had experienced and what we were learning, what we found difficult and what we loved. These times often led into praying for one another, and they grew more confident - both in stepping out in talking about their faith - but also in their prayer life and their understanding of God and his ways. One of my questions towards the end of the trip was: what are we learning here that might be applied back home in our town?
In the context of living in the middle of Poland, huddled in our small lounge, blowing on steaming hot bowls of stew, these teenagers came alive with ideas for the expansion of God’s kingdom in the UK. They decided to start taking sandwiches and hot chocolate out to the homeless on a Friday night. Their perspective had changed, in addition to their newfound love for a foreign land such as Poland. One of the knock-on effects here is that for some people, these kinds of experiences lead to a heart for a longer term mission calling overseas. But for most, it inspired and changed their thinking about mission in the UK.
Discipleship key one: EXPANDING WORLDVIEW
One of the key aspects to any discipleship is expanding a young person’s worldview; taking young people out of their normal contexts enables this process. Through an expanded worldview young people can develop a biblical worldview: to view the world around us through God’s eyes. This is the important difference between UK-based mission and overseas mission. Of course, taking your youth group to the next city along from you will still be challenging and it might even create a healthy stepping stone to overseas missions. But there is nothing like landing in a completely different culture and having to work out how to adjust your lifestyle in such a way that fits into a culture different to your own.
This is best expressed in the words spoken by Jesus in Acts 1:8. ‘But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.’ As Christians, we have a tension here to be a witness in our locale (Jerusalem), our wider nation (Judea), other nations that are near us, such as Wales or France (the Samaria part), and then to the ends of the earth. How we translate this differs considerably. Some churches might interpret it as meaning that their main focus should be their locale only and I suppose this is true on a weekly basis. But what responsibility should we have for the wider nation, surrounding nations or further afield? Is this focus reserved for the domain of ‘missionaries’? That special and holy word that we either love or hate! Do you think the word missionary refers only to those in full-time ministry as opposed to those who are not full-time? If you feel like ‘to the ends of the earth’ is for missionaries only, does that get you off the hook from being a witness overseas? What I really love about England today is that in most cities, many of the nations of the earth are already living on our doorsteps. How can we also be missionaries to the ‘ends of the earth people’ who are living in our Jerusalem?
My challenge here is that somehow, we must be working out with God what our response should be in these three geographical realms. Giving money to projects overseas is a good start but it is not enough. Could it mean – in addition to linking with churches and praying for them - committing to supporting and sending out ten per cent of your church into the nations as representatives of the gospel and your community? And if that were true, would we ever dare to give away our best people? These are not easy topics to discuss and hence we tend to sideline them. I look at the increase of Church missional activity in this country and I am so encouraged: more focus on the cities, joined up thinking with initiatives such as HOPE. But can we really justify saying that our mandate is to receive power from the Holy Spirit to be witnesses to Jerusalem and Judea only? That the Samaria and ends of the earth bit is too overwhelming so we will leave that to someone else, or to other churches?
Discipleship key two: LETTING GO OF RIGHTS
The second key aspect of discipleship, in relation to overseas mission, is the giving up of rights. It might be taboo to say – but we here in England don’t like to give up our rights. We think that our culture is the ideal, or the best in comparison with others. We might have aspects in our culture which are really great but other cultures have nuggets of gold within them that we can learn from. Paul states in 1 Corinthians 9:19-23 that he became a Jew to the Jews and a Gentile to the Gentiles. What he meant by this is that in order to reach different ethnic people groups he needed to give up his rights (the lifestyle he felt he deserved) in order to be able to communicate appropriately. This would have applied to language, but also to clothes, food and even values to some extent. Life is not all about us, but about other people being able to come into a new relationship with Jesus. I believe this is such a healthy experience for young people entering adulthood. It enables new levels of empathy, sensitivity and grace to how we view the world around us. I strongly believe that you can only learn these lessons when you are completely removed from your own cultural context. It is not an easy process and includes frustrations and feeling stretched beyond your comfort zone. But I crave this experience for all Christians because the lesson, once learned, will change the way you view and treat people where you live.
A few years ago I was in a queue in an English café and there was a Polish lady in front of me trying to order a specific type of cake from a selection behind the counter. The English lady serving her was not very patient and was making it difficult for her, pretending to not fully understand. This went on for a bit until the English lady suddenly said, ‘Why can’t you speak better English?’ She looked at me and said: ‘These people should go home if they can’t speak properly.’ I suppose she felt I would be sympathetic to her as a fellow English citizen. But I was angry and my blood was boiling. Angry because this poor Polish lady looked very embarrassed and put down, angry because deep down within me I knew how Jesus would respond to the person who didn’t fit in with the norm. So I leaned forward and looked her in the eye and said: ‘I LOVE Polish people.’ The room went quiet, the Polish lady looked shocked and the lady behind the counter went red and muttered in a slightly ashamed manner. Where did I learn this view of the world? What was the process of learning to love different cultures in the same way that God loves the nations? Simply, I learnt to love and appreciate Polish people…in Poland.
I know we can’t just drop everything and move to other countries. But the challenge to find balance in our missiology remains. God is interested in the whole world and his strategies span many continents. And God’s mission for the whole world is inextricably linked to how we disciple our young people.
CARL TINNION is the national leader of YWAM England.
Youthwork acknowledge that the following list is by no means definitive. Christian Vocations (www.christianvocations.org) is a huge database of Christian projects – searching is easy and can be defined by age groups or the duration of time available, and throws up hundreds of options.
Overseas mission www.oasistrust.org www.ywam.org www.mercyships.org.uk www.cms-uk.org www.latinlink.org www.interserve.org www.ngm.org.uk www.soapboxtrust.com www.worldhorizons.co.uk www.aimint.org www.awm.org www.hopenow.org.uk
