It is a pleasure to have three contributors to this short series ‘Reaching the Unreached’ from Hope Church, Luton, ODILS (Open Doors International Language School), Plymouth and Action Foundation, Newcastle, each considering a different aspect of the topic. Tony Thompson, from Hope Church, begins by thinking about how to love our neighbours, a timely word.
Love your Neighbour
Jesus has called us all to love our neighbours, but what does that really mean? And who is our neighbour? With the continually changing demographics in the UK, oftentimes our ‘neighbour’, the one who crosses our path, may be someone from an entirely different culture from our own. The Lord is bringing unreached people to our doorstep and is asking us to show them love.
We are all on a journey of learning how to do this, how to understand, relate to, and engage with people from other cultures. In this series we will look at how some organisations and ministries are actively living out the call to love our neighbours by reaching out to the nations on their doorstep. The first is Hope Church, Luton
Christianity – foreign language
“For the vast majority of people in the UK today, the church is an alien culture and Christianity is a foreign language.” This is a quote I found in the Times a few years ago that really resonated with me.
As believers, Jesus commands us to love our neighbours. With the gap between church culture and the pervading culture widening by the minute, nearly all evangelism in the UK is becoming cross-cultural. This means that loving our neighbour does not simply mean loving those who are the same as us. At the heart of the gospel is Jesus’ love for us all, his coming to earth to live among us and pour out his life for us. If we are to share the gospel effectively in the present-day UK, which is becoming more and more diverse, we must learn how to embrace and celebrate people from different cultures without forcing them to become culturally like us. This includes reaching out to both the poor and the rich, those living in housing estates and those living in mansions, and it absolutely includes reaching out to people living in the UK who are from many different nations.
Listen well
To show love to someone will involve relating to them in some way. I have found that the key to relating to those from other cultures is to start by listening to them. Listening builds connections and demonstrates love in a way that often leads to opportunities to share the Good News of Jesus and to help people find a home in the local church. We listen to understand; to understand who someone is, where they have come from, what makes them tick. And when we understand a little bit about who someone is, then we will learn how to show love to them.
In Luton, we have a heart for reaching the unreached, and listening is our foundation. ‘Unreached’ is not synonymous with ‘impoverished’. An unreached person is someone from an ethnic group which does not have an indigenous, self-propagating movement of Christianity. Learning to listen is what underpins our work with the Muslims in Luton. We work together with Muslims on social action projects where possible. We host a joint Christian/Muslim enterprise looking at CSE (Child Sexual Exploitation) from a faith perspective, and we host training for faith leaders on CSE while working with the church and mosque youth groups to expose the dangers of grooming. Our goal is to work with other agencies to bring a faith perspective to the subject, and the first step to this perspective is to take the time to listen. This allows us to build friendships between faith leaders and encourages relationships to grow.
Alongside social action, we listen to and build relationships with many Muslim families. We run homework clubs, youth groups, and holiday clubs after which families are invited to a church service. Many Muslim families regularly attend.
Listening also underpins the work that we do with those who are poor in Luton, including a 3-day-per-week drop in where people can come for a meal, chats and activities, as well as a service designed for those not used to a traditional church setting as a transition into the wider church body. We have seen a lot of people from a variety of backgrounds come through – many of whom have committed their lives to Christ.
Learning to listen to our neighbours – those all around us who may or may not be like us – gives us a better perspective on how to show love to them as we seek to love the way that Jesus first loved us.
If you have any questions or would like to chat more, please contact Tony. Or visit our website.
Tony Thompson has spent 17 years leading Hope Church, which he helped start in Luton. He says he has learnt much, but has much more still to learn!