We have moved to www.theprognosis.org

Well, it’s happened, has come and gone. To be honest I’m a little weary about going into the office in the morning, it’s been a while since I went into work proper and I’m not quite sure I’ll remember what to do. Hopefully you’ve been following eagerly these little snippets, checking out additional info on the www.ammanfordchurch.com site and now you want a debrief, a summation of the fortnight and some parting musings. Well since you asked, it went well, very well in fact. “Each event exceeded our expectations” - said Jonathan Thomas this Sunday (although to be fair he was quoting me).

Discover wasn’t a normal mission, it was never meant to be and it never turned into one. From the off our focus was on personal invites rather than standing on the corner with a mega phone. We didn’t poster blitz, flyer’s for each event were limited to about 100 (just enough for those people in church who were interested to take an invite) and the style of events across the fortnight really did cover all the bases.

If I could identify one factor which seemed to be running through all the events all week long it would be the way in which people who had never attended church, or a church like meeting, or had really negative views about who we were and what we were about, that those people got what they needed. A positive experience.

One voice inside keeps telling me this, “It’s all well and good giving these kids a positive experience of church, but what they really need to do is except Christ. This week they didn’t, therefore mission failed.” and I’m inclined to agree. That is until of course I consider the climate in which we carried out this mission. The vast majority of people really did fall into one of those two categories, either a) had never experienced anything remotely close to church or b) had very negative views about what it is we are and what it is we are about. Now then, when I think about the start we’ve given some people this week or the ‘wrongs’ we’ve righted, I start to get a little more optimistic.

“Come on Sam, we aren’t trying to convert people to church, we’re trying to convert them to Jesus.” Um, duh. Do you know me but at all? But lets face facts. Our (the British and especially Welsh church) credibility is really low, and no matter how much we try and jam Jesus down Jon Boyo’s throat, he doesn’t want to listen. Discover for me was a stepping stone for a large number of people. People who in June would never have paid any attention to what we do, live or preach, those people in August might just take note.

As I said, the entire mission was marketed at helping the people in our church with their ongoing witness to friends, family, neighbours and work colleagues. And I think we achieved that. Every event was welcoming, cringe free, had gospel content (that’s including the open mic event Jonny, didn’t you listen to Elfyn’s songs?) and absolutely full to bursting! As we’ve been going through Acts together as a church these last few months Jon and I have been preaching about how we are all missionaries, on mission to Ammanford, together. Last fortnight our church showed us that was true. Amen for that!

In summary? Well you don’t finish the race without starting it. And there’s no point in starting unless you run the middle bit. I’m not sure exactly where we are as a Church, but I’m sure now we are in a better place to reach Ammanford together and Ammanford is in a better place to be reached. And what’s even more lovely, it’s all for Jesus.

Since technically I am a student, (although I rarely feel like it—there’s too much work involved in a Bible College to call myself a normal student!) I’ve gotten myself involved in this mission that’s currently going on in Ammanford. Tonight we had an open mic night. Four acts performed with various different styles, three guitar based and one piano. It was all very fine and dandy: lovely atmosphere, good coffee and some nice sweeties and lollies to chew and suck on! There was no message, talk, address, testimony or preach. The nearest it got to that was one guy’s song which was basically his testimony and the brief adverts for two of the events on over the coming week and the Christianity Explored course starting in September.

Now, I’m not going to get into a discussion on whether we’re going to call it evangelism or whether it was simply a bridge-building event. I guess if we’re going to get technical then it shouldn’t be called evangelism because there was no proclamation of good news, but then was good news subtly portrayed through the lives of those who were Christians there? Well, you know… whatever… that’s not my beef!

My point is this; it is really valuable to put on ‘church’ events where there is no gospel proclamation for a few reasons:

1. It allows people to enter a church environment without the threat of being preached at.
2. It allows people to see that Christians are normal people, well, at least that some Christians are normal people.
3. It provides an opportunity to build real relationships, not just a fleeting ‘relationship’ with the transparent agenda of only wanting to share the gospel.
4. When there is a real relationship, the gospel can be shared more appropriately and more naturally.*

It’s fair to say that there are negatives to this ‘non-proclamation events’ process too:

1. It is a process and so does take a long time and a big commitment to see people through.
2. Results are seen only in the long term so it can be less encouraging.
3. One event doesn’t cater for all so it takes a lot of different events to catch all different types of people.
4. It means that your average church member needs to be more equipped to share the gospel themselves down the line rather than relying on the preacher for the evangelism.*

But these aren’t impossible to overcome. With the first three, so long as you’re aware of the need for these types of events and you’re aware of the downsides then you can put them on realising that it is going to be a long process and it will be less encouraging at times and will take up a lot of time with less obvious results. And as for the fourth one, surely that’s something that ministers should be doing and encouraging both in the pulpit and in seminars/training courses.

The need is great. And as Jesus simply ate and drank with ’sinners and tax collectors’ so should we.

*The lists provided are not exhaustive. There are other positives and negatives that could be included, I just can’t think of them this late at night!

As a church we have a 2 week mission going on at the moment in partnership with UCCF. A team of students have come down to help us run . During this week they have been doing questionnaires in the local ‘big day out’, handing out flyers, taking assemblies and classes in the local comprehensive schools, and running a ‘big brother’ rip-off youth event. To be fair, they are doing a great job. Actually, an amazing job.

As the mission progresses I want to make some observations:

1. We have religious freedom. It’s true. We can go and share Jesus in the public and in schools. Last night we used the local coffee shop to debate Dawkins’ delusion (conclusion: Dawkins is the deluded one), and people came to listen and debate. So often Christians say that we must be careful what we say and keep it down - I agree we should be wise and gracious - but we must never self - censor.
2. The next generation really are Post-moderns. The hardest part of the school lessons was that the children had next to no ability to use logic. In fact, they didn’t even grasp antithesis. For them empirical evidence and reasoned logic had no place in a discussion about Jesus. But a very wise teacher said to us, ‘Well, if I didn’t believe in the Holy Spirit I’d just give up - but thankfully He can get through anything.’ Even Post modernism!
3. My church believe in evangelism! Last night was such a joy to see 30 regulars turn up to welcome guests and then chat to them afterwards. They made me proud to be there pastor (if that’s allowed?).

More to follow.

Praise God for this great mission He’s given us!

It seems to me that every where you turn at the moment there is talk about the ‘theology of the city.’ Everyone is speaking about it*, Don Carson, Tim Kellar, Steve Chalke, Queen Elizebeth, hey if Mark Driscoll says the word city one more time he’s going to find out what sort of manly man he’s bred. Everyone is just now figuring out the whys and hows of reaching and using cities for Christ.

Great isn’t it. Only thing is, I live in a little ‘hick’ town. My experience in my whole life has been pretty anti-city. I grew up on a hill, choose a university to stay rural and have come back, settled and plan to live in the wilds when I get married in 3 months. What the heck can I learn about mission when all everyone is talking about is the city? I’m scared of the city, it’s too bright!

As I showered this morning, thinking about this city obsessed Christian age, I wondered, ‘Do I have to move to the city to be a good christian?’ Is there any point in rural folk reaching other rural folk or should we all go beef up city churches and send a monthly food package to our closely bred cousins in the valley?’

The answer I guess has got to be no, emphatically no. But here’s thing, I’m not quite sure why. As I’m bombarded with city talk I think my mind is slowly being eroded. I could give you a hundred and one reasons why we need to reach the cities, but I can only think of one reason to reach the rural. May I at this point reference our very own JTizzles sermon from this Sunday gone, a first in a 3part series on ‘The art of Contextualisation’ (part two by our very own Sammy Davies). Point two was this, “Go to where people are.”

See, this is my conclusion. As long as people live in the rurals, we have to reach the rurals. As long as people live in the city, we have to reach the city. The only difference is volume. If we have a passion to see lost people come to know Christ (price check on that passion, I’m sure that’s to wishy washy for prognosis, please replace with something more suitable such as ‘to see Christ glorified as filthy sinners bath in the redeeming blood of the cross’) then we have to reach people, WHERE EVER THEY ARE. That’s the key to contextualisation. We reach them where they are at, be that location, language or level of understanding.

Theology of the Rural - Simple, Christ came to save the lost. Lost people live in the country. Let’s be part of what HE’S doing.

*not all of these people are necessarily talking about the theology of the city.

Week in, week out, I remember plugging from the front the fact that CU was not a church. Oh we had all sorts of reasons why not, most pretty weak, but I was positive that it was not, nor should it be. My opinion hasn’t changed.

You see while I was at university my mission field was the university. I spoke with passion at large CU meetings about how we were a missionary group, that even though we weren’t in China or Montinegro (the vogue places to go do mission in Warwick) we were still missionaries, ’sent’ from our home churches to impact on the campus. It was brilliant, I had CU for witnessing to students and my University church for doing church things.

The greatest thing about CU was its focus on the gospel. By its very nature (multi-denominational) we were obsessed with focusing on Christ, the cross and His ressurection. Possibly our motive was to avoid any disagreement amongst us rather than a St.Paul realisation that that was all that mattered, but still, that was our obsession and is the obsession of CU’s all over Britain. Focusing on the cross made us extremely missionally minded. We used the tag line, “Mission and Maturity” but with our focus on evangelisinig the lost and getting them into local churches (as CU was most definitely not a church) we were actually more realisticly about, “Mission & maturity”.

So, why the title? Well as I’ve returned ‘from the mission field’ to the day by day slog of the local church, one thing has struck me more than anything. That is the need for people to realise that they are missionaries, that they’re place of work, friends, family, these are their mission fields and if they are truely maturing, then they would be witnessing all the more. Unfortunately we have this idea that doing ‘maturity’ is seperate from doing mission. How wrong could we be! The greatest source of maturing is sharing the gospel and anyone who is truely being matured will be driven more to mission and sharing Jesus. That’s a fact. Our churches are far to inward looking, thinking that if we ’send’ some students out, ’send’ some people abroad, then we fill our missional quota and the rest of us can get on with worshiping God and getting to know Jesus better.

If our Churches could steal just a small amount of that passion from our CU’s, well the kingdom of God would be in much better shape here in Wales. A church that is more interested in the style of songs we play, or why there isn’t an evening service any more, or why Mrs. Smith has started coming to our Bible study when we were quite happy as we were, a church that is more interested in this, I’m not sure is a church any more. At the very heart of a church must be the urgency to let people know about Jesus. If that is lost (if it is not over emphasised to the extreme) then we are nothing more than a social club and a very odd one at that.

Hats off to CU’s across the nation, they are more of a church than most of the churches that we’ll ever visit.