This week has been a painful week for many with whom I work. Words like 'betrayal', 'blood' and 'death' have been muttered. At times it felt like Golgotha but of course it was only a faint hazzy shaddow of that history changing moment suspended in God's eternal time.
Traditional mission agencies (like those we seek to serve through Faith2Share) rely on regular giving and when recession hits, incomes shrink, jobs are 'retrenched' or 'restructured' and people suffer. In a close community that suffering is corporate and so it should be. We sit and listen, mop up spilt emotions, and try to understand ... and feel guilty that it was not us. When blood mixed with tears on Golgotha worlds were about to change (as indeed when blood was spashed on doorposts in pre-Exodus Egypt), and I sit here tonight wondering whether our world might also change. Of course it will, but in what ways?, how dramatically?, and what will survive or be lost? I have felt for some time that the hegenomy of professional mission agencies (which of course was only ever an imagined hegenomy! - don't we love to fool ourselves) cannot go on. Mission is changing, God is doing new things, and we must be ready. Whether you call them 'involuntary missionaries', 'non-professional missionaries', 'buisionaries', or just 'God's people living for him', mission is for all children, women and men and we may well find that 'the business of mission' will soon 'employ' very few of us. But none of the excitement of the new ( and it is exciting) takes away the reality of the pain right now - it only offers hope.
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Vince Cable was at the NCVO annual conf earlier this year and warning of cuts in funding for stautory services and charities. His message was go out and be entrepreneurial to raise the funds you need. that needs some punctuation but it is hard to edit this text.
ReplyDeleteThe challenge is here and we will increasingly see the pressures on charities and missions.. Hopefully we will also see some creating sustainable, ethical missional businesses.
I know how they feel, having been 'retrenched' myself by my last employer. We heard from germany that some folks with CMA have also been informed that their contracts are not being renewed this summer. n my own case, I didn't feel betrayed, but the feeling of rejection and disappointment were very real. It takes a while to regain perspective and realise that, whatever happened, it didn't catch God by surprise. He had a plan, a good one at that.
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