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| Book Review Revd Canon John Thomson, Director Of Ministry October 2009. |
| posted: Friday 23 October 2009 |
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Just occasionally a book really hits me between the eyes and Just Walk with Me is one of those books. It is a vey straightforward book marrying a diary narrative by a youth worker, Niki and reflective commentary on the Bradford 4 youth project, e:merge by Yan, the project’s director. Yan described Niki when she arrived as ‘a very Christian Christian. A stereotypical evangelical full of ‘Ooh, Jesus is good, I’m so happy, the world is such a great place’ Yan confesses that he too shared this approach but the experience of working in one of the most deprived communities in England, Bradford 4 as it is called, had made him revise many of his uncritically held assumptions about God, Christ, grace, mission and evangelism. Niki’s story is also his and the team’s story and it represents a raw and refreshing recognition that ways of mission are not portable but are discovered in the context by those prepared to inhabit that context alongside those they are called to serve. This is mission for the long term, a stripping down of naïve faith and its replacement with mature discipleship. It reminds us that mission takes time, relationships are key, trust is always fragile in broken communities and that the complexity of damage experienced by many in ‘deprived communities’ subverts ‘quick fix’ spiritualities. Yet along with the stripping there is the stretching as the youth project workers learn a new way of walking with others that enables them to talk about faith, of staying with others to embody the commitment of Christ and of being vulnerable and learning from those they serve. When much talk about mission emerges from relatively powerful and secure stables, this sort of story and its profound theological reflection on the practice of mission in challenging contexts is both refreshing and disturbing. Though rooted in the evangelical-charismatic stable, its insights are pertinent to the whole Christian Community for all mission thinking. Borrow this copy from the Resources Cent
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| © Diocese of Sheffield
2007 |
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