By Andrew Irwin, Juicy Ecumenism. (Photo: Unsplash)
The bleakness of winter can leave us wondering what to do; recognising that we have absorbed a poverty of hope is perhaps the first step. The greater challenge is learning to live hopefully when the surrounding culture, its institutions, and the hard soil all whisper that this winter will linger longer.
How do we resist the limiting-enchantment of managed decline that some would cast on us? It is not about the latest strategy from the institution’s management expert-waffler; nor is it about hollow optimism carried by a weak smile.
How? By remembering the signs before the darkness: that the Aslan who called us is still roaring this day, regardless of the challenges ahead, and that one day, by his roar, winter will be no more.
Remember the Signs
In C.S. Lewis’ The Silver Chair, the lion Aslan calls three unlikely people to his service, and gives help before it is needed on their journey; the signs protagonist Jill Pole is given to help the characters along the way – they just had to hold on to them even when the moment demanded otherwise. The challenge is not that God has failed to speak, but that, as we walk, the road gets noisier; his truth feels less tangible; and we begin to listen to noise, wondering if He gave us signs at all.
Are we willing to see ourselves, our churches, our faith in the plodding and fading memories of Jill and her companion Eustace Scrubb as they stumble along the way, wondering if they have even got the direction right?
We know all the right things; we can recite all the truths of the faith and their related Scriptures! We believe Christ has died, Christ is risen, and Christ will come again; and his Gospel still saves! We know it and recite it. Yet the way we now ‘do’ Church/mission in difficult places has become hopeless because the truths of the faith no longer shape our hearts; instead of seeping deeper into us, they have leaked out. They begin to feel like the outside world as the enemy whispers to us that they were never really there.
This is third in a series on hopeless mission, and how author C.S. Lewis’ works call Christians to faithfulness amidst times of figurative winter. Read part I here and part II here.