This may not be the most original observation, but I think its a big issue and a real one for me.
I guess many of us evangelicals had formative experiences of ministry in University Christian Unions and at summer camps for young people.
So what does effective evangelical ministry look like in other contexts - such as 3 rural parishes or an enthic minority majority inner city or....?
For example, reading the Bible one to one seemed to work really well with students. Is it the thing to do in a less intellectually minded, less bookish, practical hands-on no nonsense context?
Sunday, May 05, 2013
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
6 comments:
Hello Marc,
I too am in a rural parish (though not overseeing 3 parishes) so I can sympathise with what you say. I think a major part of the answer is to visit the parishoners (regularly/systematically?) & to open the bible informally with them + obviously pray whenever you visit, (rather than formal one to one studies). One of the blessings of this is it that it lets you apply the bible to the issues people are grappling with while at the same time demonstrating the relevance of the Bible to every area of life. I do a fair bit of visiting and have found this to be a good and natural way to present the Word and pray specifically with people + it allows the minister not to be too tied down with only a few but to visiting and seeing many in the parish and hopefully if you're there long term all of them?
Obviously there's also the usual stuff of doing church well on Sundays incl. LS every week, and a fair bit of hospitality.
Some thoughts from a still learning curate. Hope it's useful.
Kip'
Thank you. Yes, I am "trying" to visit my way systematically through the electoral roll: one person or couple a week for a routine, non unrgent visit. But in fact its a struggle even to fit that in often.
I am looking forward to reading Tim Chester's "Unreached", which deals with those questions in a less/non-literate, inner-city sort of context. I wonder whether there might be any mileage in reading his book and seeing how he (as a middle-class conservative evangelical) applies things to his situation, and how they might work differently in your context. I could bring it along to camp training day, says the Christian Union worker! D
:) Thank you, yes, that's an interesting idea. I happened to see the book on a bookstall this weekend but I thought "oh, well, interesting, but not our context".
Hi, Marc,
I too am in rural ministry - although at the other end of the country (Carlisle diocese).
I have actually found reading one-to-one to be quite helpful. For example, I have been meeting up with one of the sheep farmers round here (although that was interrupted by lambing season and we have yet to re-start) reading John's gospel together.
Each time we read a chunk (say, a chapter or half a chapter), and we ask three questions: (i) what jumps out at me? (ii) what don't I understand? (iii) what is the big thing that this is saying about Jesus?
That has worked really well - especially encouraging has been seeing the guy I am meeting with discover that he can read the Bible and understand it.
It helped that we had already established a good relationship and knew each other, and it is probably the case that when I was in London I could have suggested meeting up sooner in the relationship, but in London people are used to always making new friendships, which is not the case in rural areas like here.
I found Unreached really helpful and could see lots of parallels between a rural context and an urban working class one, which is probably because of the fact that both are often deeply geographically rooted to a similar extent.
Tim
Thank you, Tim. Very interesting.
Post a Comment