Global

City, Global Perspectives, LBA Ministers Conference Jan 2016. Thinking Local.

Session 1: Thinking (& speaking & acting & living) Locally

Micah 4:1-5

In days to come
the mountain of the Lords house
shall be established as the highest of the mountains,
and shall be raised up above the hills.
Peoples shall stream to it,
2
and many nations shall come and say:
Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
to the house of the God of Jacob;
that he may teach us his ways
and that we may walk in his paths.
For out of Zion shall go forth instruction,
and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
3
He shall judge between many peoples,
and shall arbitrate between strong nations far away;
they shall beat their swords into ploughshares,
and their spears into pruning-hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more;
4
but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees,
and no one shall make them afraid;
for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken.
5

For all the peoples walk,

each in the name of its god,
but we will walk in the name of the Lord our God
for ever and ever.

Global City, Global Perspectives, LBA Ministers Conference Jan 2016. Thinking Local.

Introduction [S7]
Coming south warnings have included the general, careful now and the
specific, dont drink the beer! But truth is not only have I ventured south
of the Meresey Humber // Ive even lived down here!!!
South Oxhey Methodist Church
Does your accent matter to God? What about your ethnicity? Yes! Of
course it does!
Not like Egypt, not like Cana but like God Holy as God is holy.
If we are to be like our God then in an age of globalization the local will
matter deeply to the people of God.

A local church [S8]

[S9] Daniel Kemmis, professor of law from the university of Oklahoma and
author of Community and the Politics of Place has defined community as
the efforts of unlike people to live well in specific places
For all our talk of the authority and priority of the local church we as
Baptists have too often fallen pray to the dangers of our congregations
becoming free-floating entities that might be specific and particular but
which are anything but local.
[S10] Cf Andew Walls indiginising principle and pilgrim principle inter
planetary space professor still same church but radically different
shaped by and responding to its time and its place.
Cf ABC au pairs lunch
Cf Ward Green prayer meeting, Gary, Pete and Geoff - rooted in local
community tensions difficult but real.
Cf Failure of our southern congregation poor estate
Cf Clare and Tim outer suburb and leafy oxfordshire asylum seekers,
mental health, credit union, self sustaining micro business. houses and

Global City, Global Perspectives, LBA Ministers Conference Jan 2016. Thinking Local.

church pulled down around them, now on verge of signing a deal to build
a new community church building,
Cf Change of WBC changed as the city has changed from student
centred large(ish) n lively to homelss ministry, to asylum seeker minister,
smaller.
Cf My deal with God. Thats not just because the north matters to me but
because I believe it matters to God.

A local gospel [S11]

I mentioned earlier that the importance of place can be overlooked by
those like Baptists for whom the basis of church life is the gathered
congregation. This especially true when such churches have an
understanding of the gospel that is otherworldly and reduced to
supposedly universally standardized propositions. Even if they take
seriously local culture so that we can reach them its not just about
reaching them its about loving them and real love shares life. Long
distance love affairs are notoriously difficult to pull off.
The gospel is not precious like glass in that it needs to be protected. It is
precious like a seed in that it needs to be planted and nurtured. What
grows will be determined both by the seed and by the soil. Hydrangea
blue acid, pink - alkali
[S 12 & S 13]
[S14] The overtones of the good news that people need to hear will vary
according their circumstances.
Barlick story. God didnt build a spectator gallery onto the universe we
cannot sit outside and take it all in, we stand within and the things we see
and hear will differ according to where we stand.
Jo K and W theology not answering the questions that he as an African
was asking.
Alpha good but.
Jesus didnt present the gospel of the kingdom as if it were a standardized
brand.

Global City, Global Perspectives, LBA Ministers Conference Jan 2016. Thinking Local.

The gospel should never be addressed to whom it may concern. If the
gospel doesnt come with a postcode attached its unlikely to be the
gospel of Jesus.
The good news that Wakefield needed to hear changed as the community
changed. Im pleased that my last church has changed. Not because
change in itself is good but because the city has changed and the part of
the gospel that the city needs to hear has changed.
Also pleased because more directly addressing the poor. The gospel must
be a local gospel because the local matters most to the poor.
Marxist sociologist and anthropologist Professor Davie Harvey:
when capital has moved on the importance of place is more clearly
revealed. 71 [S15]
cf Lanre village cocoa cf Guinee coffee fields
Globalisation is of course strongest among those who are on the move
and in touch those with the technology, the time, the money and the
freedom to participate.
But how can you watch your TV screens and not realise that the poor are
also on the move. Yes. But on the move for very different reasons to the
rich. These are the ones who far from having their hands on the levers of
power are swept along by the forces unleashed on the world when those
levers are pulled.
To what extent are poor migrants part of the global culture and to what
extent are they its victims? Were slaves a part of the Roman Empire?
As Jim Wallis has said recently, if the gospel we live and preach isnt
good news to the poor it isnt the gospel of Jesus. [S16]
And if the gospel is to be good news to the poor then for many it will need
to be a local gospel embodied and interpreted by a local congregation.
Hospitality. Where mobility is more important than roots spirituality can
die. Beware putting all the emphasis on go if that means there is no longer
any room for come for come and see, come and belong. Yes, gospel is

Global City, Global Perspectives, LBA Ministers Conference Jan 2016. Thinking Local.

about going and telling, going and doing but it also about staying and
being and welcoming.

A local Saviour [S17]

[S18] What is wrong with In Christ God became man
At heart of Christianity is not a philosophy or a set of timeless doctrines
but an historical person who lived in a particular place at a particular time.
[S19] C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle
Yes, said the Lord Digory, Its inside is bigger than its outside.
Yes, said Queen Lucy. In our world too, a stable once had
something inside it that was bigger than our whole world.
God located in a patch of earth less than a metre square (manger), no
more than 200 cm square (2 X surface are of a human foot) and 100 cm
square (the cross section of the vertical beam on a cross) [S20]
As the first Adam is fashioned from the very ground upon which he was to
walk so the second Adam was rooted deep in the soil of Palestine.
The muck that got under Jesus fingernails was Palestinian muck.
Incarnation is all about being rooted in place and time.
And the church is called to be the reincarnation of Christ in a million
places with a million different hues a million different accents.

Conclusion: The Empire and The Theologians [S21]

No just accepting of the local but positively committed to it, committed to it
and resisting its reduction tothe bland and the homogenous.
[S22] Blue Mink melting pot
[S23]
Take a pinch of white man
Wrap him up in black skin
Add a touch of blue blood
And a little bitty-bit of red indian boy..

Global City, Global Perspectives, LBA Ministers Conference Jan 2016. Thinking Local.

Curly, black and kinky
Oriental sexy
If you lump it all together
Well, you've got a recipe for a get-along scene
Oh what a beautiful dream
If it could only come true
You know, you know..

What we need is a great big melting pot
Big enough to take the world and all it's got
Keep it stiring for a hundred years or more
Turning out coffee-colored people by the score
thats not coffee-coloured, its beige, its not a vision of eutopia is recipe
for hell or at least sheol.
[S24] Globalisation Calcutta McDonalds, (or Chinese) but also church.
[S25] I believe that the church and indeed the world is meant to be tribal.
Typically in The Bible (as in Star Wars!) it is the empire that is the enemy.
While tribalism is used in western discourse as entirely negative, not so in
the Bible the where the emphasis is on the divine blessing of the 12 tribes
and a welcome for every tribe and people and tounge before the throne
in New Jerusalem a place a place with a name and a history as well as a
future.
Im aware that I speak to you as ministers pastors, evangelists, chaplains,
church planters. Whatever form of ministry however that might vary I
think you share one important characteristic you are called to be local
theologians.
What advantages do you have over The Apostle Paul? Not many but this
for sure: inspired by the same Spirit, you are here and now and he is not.
The churches you serve and the gospel you preach must also be a here
and now gospel. Because all of us together serve a here and now saviour.
And hes the real global power and its ultimate local manifestation.