Pioneering and Planning in the Pandemic

There is an old Jewish joke: how do you make God laugh? Tell him your plans! Certainly true of this year. How many churches in January toyed with the cliché of ’20:20 vision’? How many of those ambitions now lie in tatters? Even as believers our presumption has been exposed by circumstances. We need to submit again to God’s sovereignty (Jas. 4.13-16).

However, we are also therefore free to experiment. ‘Pioneering’ is a buzz-word among missiologists. Many so-called pioneers, however, fall short in three ways. Firstly, seeking to identify incarnationally with a given sub-culture, they jettison distinctive or challenging Christian teaching. Secondly, they want a salary, where genuine pioneers will do it gratis, and therefore take a regular pastoral job for security. Thirdly, there is often nothing new. Darren Cronshaw and Kim Hammond’s book, Sentness, punctures such talk about being entrepreneurial or innovative, and suggest this question to test whether you are genuinely a pioneer: have you ever done anything new?

Not that it needs to be new in any absolute sense – there is nothing new under the sun, not even in church strategies (Ecc. 1.9). But it can be ‘new to you’, a slogan used for charity thrift shops.  So we can borrow from others. Copying Edward De Bono’s book, Opportunities, we need to become skilled at spotting opportunities for the gospel, for service, for outreach. To help us, we also have the discernment of the Holy Spirit, to prevent as well as prompt us (Acs. 16.6-10).

Sometimes opportunities arrive on a plate. We’ve developed a relationship with the Peel Centre, a local community organisation. Because of the trust we earned, they’ve invited us, in partnership with YWAM’s choir, to deliver online sessions for their elderly clients, preparing for Christmas.. Our youth worker is also cooperating with the Peel, to serve young people in Kings Cross. We’re also beginning a new series of programmes on Instagram, about Apologetics. We’ve noticed that many people are asking deep questions during this pandemic. And, I’m told, Instagram is the platform best suited to reaching young adults.  

But will it work? We don’t know. It’s an experiment. Today, when traditional methods of outreach certainly cannot work, we need to attempt fresh initiatives. The leadership expert, Tom Peters, writes that most business start-ups fail. Hence his saying: “Those who try the most things succeed”. But ironically, his corollary is: “Those who fail most succeed”.  This is a valuable corrective. His earlier emphasis on “excellence” was part of problem, condemning those of us who are merely average. Much more freeing is the permission to try and fail.

A friend of mine, Ron Nathan, used to say: “If they define you, they confine you”. He was referring to racism, but it’s true of everything. Our hope is unconfined. Christ invites us to participate in the coming of his kingdom now, but its future consummation is future-proofed, assured by his word. Moltmann, in his book Hope and Planning shows we can plan backwards from this eschatological promise.