CMS Ireland Spike Corbridge

A Reminder from Southern Sudan...

2009-06-22T00:00:00Z

This year will see CMS Ireland providing more financial support to our partners in Southern Sudan than ever before…but this piece from the Observer online yesterday is a timely reminder that there is much still to be done…

Challenged...

2009-05-08T00:00:00Z

While doing a little research online this morning I stumbled across the blog of Paul Ritchie – a Methodist Pastor in Richill, Co. Armagh – thanks to Jools for the pointer.

Two of Paul’s posts in recent days really struck a chord with me – both essentially about our real commitment to the things we say we believe in. Do we really act on the words of Jesus? What are we prepared to give when it comes to global mission?

If you have five minutes then the two posts are worth a visit. Click here for the Radical Jesus, Non-Radical Followers piece or here for the Cost of Commitment post.

The bit that challenged me most was a quote from an author called Michael Hart, “Most Christians consider the injunction to love your enemy at most an ideal which might be realised in some perfect world, but one which is not a reasonable guide to conduct in the actual world we live in. We do not normally practice love for our enemies, we do not expect others to practice it, we do not teach our children to practice it. Jesus’ most distinctive teaching therefore remains an intriguing but basically untried suggestion.”

Thought provoking stuff…

Church for the Night...

2009-04-07T00:00:00Z

The Easter edition of emergingchurch.info is online and features a great idea from some Christians in Bournemouth. How many of our towns and cities could do with something like this…or even the willingness to make our church buildings more open to the communities around them?

A blog worth visiting...

2009-03-18T00:00:00Z

Tom Sine has started blogging. I’m looking forward to following his thoughts – his book The New Conspirators was one of the best things I read last year. Genuinely radical mission thinking.

Worth a look…

Unreported World

2009-03-13T00:00:00Z

The ‘Unreported World’ stuff is usually excellent. Tonight they’re showing a piece on LRA activity in DR Congo. I haven’t seen it yet and I don’t think it’s a repeat. Probably worth a watch for anyone interested in Central Africa. Here’s the link to the Channel 4 webpage about it…

Two Great Watches

2009-02-03T00:00:00Z

Following hot on the heals of my last post, which recommended a few things to read, here are two TV programmes that I reckon are worth a watch…not that I want to dominate your leisure time or anything!

The BBC’s Explore programme was excellent on Sunday and featured a journey along Africa’s Great Rift Valley. At times the camera work was beautiful and the stories that the programme told were really engaging – an hour well spent on Sunday night. If you’re interested in Ethiopia or Kenya in particular you can watch the programme on iPlayer.

Last night I caught part of Dispatches on Channel 4 – which featured a report about the effects of DR Congo’s recent conflict on children who live in the east of the country. Sometimes when we think about things like this it’s easy to fall into the trap of concentrating on the ‘big’ statistics and to lose sight of the impact on real people. The programme makers did a good job on making the story personal. If you have an interest in what’s going on in east or central Africa (and are a PC user!) then you can see the programme for the next month on Channel 4’s website.

Two Great Reads

2009-01-30T00:00:00Z

In the past week I’ve come across two pretty interesting reads – both of which have set me thinking about ‘mission stuff’…

First up is a piece that was in the Times over Christmas. It’s by Matthew Paris and is entitled As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God.

Robert Ferris blogged about it a while back and I was reminded about it by a few emails this week. If you haven’t seen it yet it’s definitely worth a few minutes of your time…

Secondly, iMonk has posted a series of three articles on The Coming Evangelical Collapse. There is some pretty heated debate going on in the comments – and the implications of these kind of discussions are significant for mission and mission agencies. As I read through each of the pieces (and the subsequent discussions) there are bits that I agree with and bits that make me disagree vehemently – however it’s good to read something that evokes a response!

One of the statements that jumped out at me was from the second piece, “It is time for missionaries to come to America from Asia and Africa. Will they come? Will they be able to bring to our culture a more vital form of Christianity? I do not know, but I hope and pray that such an effort happens and succeeds.”

This hope that the Church at ‘home’ can be enriched and blessed by opening itself to the mission being undertaken by the world church has been really significant for us in CMS Ireland and is one of the important threads in how we see ‘partnership’ being lived out – it’s good to see other people talking about similar ideas…even if they’re coming from a different context and perspective.

Anyhow, if you’re not easily offended, are willing to be challenged and have some time to think a few issues through, then pop over and have a look.

DR Congo and Our Limited Attention Span...

2008-11-19T00:00:00Z

So I haven’t posted for a month or so – please forgive me!

I’ve enjoyed a couple of weeks off and since my return have been pretty much immersed in helping to produce the upcoming edition of our latest magazine. It’s looking good and should be available for download next week.

While I’ve been away it’s struck me how quickly things change…

Just a week ago events in DR Congo were headline news on the BBC and ITV websites but now, if you want to find out what’s going on, you have to dig deep into the Africa pages. I wish that this was because the situation had eased – because things were getting better. Unfortunately that doesn’t seem to be the case and reports from our partners in the eastern part of the country are still talking about hundreds of thousands of displaced people fleeing the worst of the fighting. People in DR Congo are suffering atrocities that we can’t even begin to imagine.

Community groups, including local churches, are making impassioned pleas for peace (check out the BBC story for more info) but the sad reality is that we, in ‘the West’, seem to have lost interest. The news cycle has moved on and we seem to be more concerned with John Sergeant’s withdrawal from ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ than we are with the plight of our Congolese brothers and sisters.

Are we really that fickle or that lacking in compassion? I hope not. So rather than just rant, let me instead urge you not to forget, not to lose interest and to find some way of responding…

Being Church?

2008-10-08T00:00:00Z

Recently I’ve been thinking a fair bit about what it means to “be church” and specifically to “be part of a church”.

It is, I admit, a pretty foundational issue for someone engaged in mission – but one that I can honestly say still leaves with me with lots of questions.

I often use the quote, “It’s not the church of God that has a mission but the God of mission who has a church”…and I believe that…it’s just that sometimes ‘church’ (as we live it and express it) can be difficult.

As I’ve been thinking and reading I stumbled across the latest edition of emergingchurch.info which asks some pretty big questions, from some key thinkers, about trends in the emerging church/fresh expressions world…definitely worth a look. For me, the piece by Mark Sayers raised a few thoughts that resonate pretty loudly…

On a slightly different note ASBO Jesus hits the nail on the head again…

Mission Matters

2008-08-22T00:00:00Z

At the start of the summer we launched a questionnaire/survey thing to help us get a better idea of how people think about mission.

It started at our ‘Global Pavilion’ venue during this year’s Summer Madness festival and will be continuing until early Autumn on the website.

The questionnaire is entitled ‘Mission Matters’ and should only take about 5 minutes to complete…so if you’ve got 300 seconds to spare… fill in the form and let us know what you think…

You never know…you might even win an iPod Shuffle!