Missional Encounter

Dr Rod Thompson
 Bring me the Horizon

Mahalia Jackson (1911-1972)

Missional Encounter
Who gets to narrate the world?
Robert Webber
 Equipped for missional encounter – we
must be and equip others to be people who:
Celebrate
Critique
Confront with grace

Grow in character
Encounter one another in community
Develop clarity

Deeply immerse in the scriptures

Deeply engage with our cultures
Embrace significant tension
 Missional Encounter
Play the music of Mahalia Jackson as people enter ...

I came to Christ in 1971. In those early years I loved the powerful voice of Mahalia Jackson
and her renditions of gospel music from the 19th and 20th centuries. One of those songs was
“Tell me the old, old story” ... do you remember it?

Tell me the old, old story of unseen things above,

Of Jesus and His glory, of Jesus and His love;
Tell me the story simply, as to a little child,
For I am weak and weary, and helpless and defiled.

Tell me the old, old story,

Tell me the old, old story,
Tell me the old, old story,
Of Jesus and His love

Tell me the story slowly, that I may take it in,

That wonderful redemption, God’s remedy for sin;
Tell me the story often, for I forget so soon,
The “early dew” of morning has passed away at noon.

Tell me the story softly, with earnest tones and grave;

Remember I’m the sinner whom Jesus came to save;
Tell me the story always, if you would really be,
In any time of trouble, a comforter to me.

Tell me the same old story, when you have cause to fear
That this world’s empty glory is costing me too dear;
And when the Lord’s bright glory is dawning on my soul,
Tell me the old, old story: “Christ Jesus makes thee whole.”

What a song. How times have changed – not only more widely, but for me ... this past year
my interest in theology and worldview took me to my first ever screamo concert. One of my
students asked me if I would go along, after he experienced the disconnect of going from
studying NT Greek here at Laidlaw College to seeing Bring me the Horizon perform one
Tuesday evening. So I went along – the bands performing that night at the King's Arms
Tavern weren’t quite of the ilk of Bring me the Horizon. The musicians were drum driven,
heavy rhythm, deep bass, guttural screamers (I am told there are two types of screaming,
melodic and non-melodic. I guess they were doing both, though I couldn't pick it). We all had
our ear plugs in. And as the event revved up, members of the audience – only males that I
saw – rushed into the “break down”, a dance pit of sorts, where participants kick and punch,
and perform turns and jumps, like this … Video clip

Mahalia Jackson, “Tell me the old, old Story” and screamo music, the break down ... for me
these in part capture the idea of missional encounter. And this is deeply at the heart of
Laidlaw College and I believe this is the character of ministry and indeed human life. We are

1
caught up, wonderfully, in a missional encounter, not of our doing – it is the LORD’s
initiative into which we are invited, indeed compelled by the gospel.

What do we mean by missional encounter? What is its nature? And what sort of people
(individuals in churches and other communities) do we need to be if we are to faithfully
engage in missional encounter as agents of the gospel of God’s kingdom? Let me begin with
some reflections on my own journey.

In 1971 I turned in faith to Christ after a lecture from British evangelist Michael Green when
I was studying for an Arts Degree at Sydney University. I immediately joined the Navigators
and was discipled and taught to evangelise, memorise scripture, have quiet times etc. I look
back on those formative years now with some critique. However in many regards they were
wonderful. I learned much about the beauty and power of the gospel as well as the centrality
of discipleship and evangelism for faithful living. That remains with me today. These are
crucial to our understanding of missional encounter.

Several years later, in 1976, Rosanne and I married. We moved to Mount Druitt in Sydney’s
Western Suburbs, widely reputed at the time as the least desirable suburb in Sydney. Mount
Druitt (x3) was and remains a cluster of about a dozen suburbs – Hebersham where we lived,
Bidwill, Hassall Grove, Emerton, Lethbridge Park, Dharruk, Willmot, Shalvey etc. We lived
in Mount Druitt for 27 years from 1977-2003 when we came to New Zealand. We raised our
four children there. During those years I also studied at the Presbyterian Theological Centre
(PTC) in Sydney, was ordained a Presbyterian minister and was then asked to plant a church
in the Mount Druitt suburb of Plumpton. We did this in 1987. I remained the pastor there for
some 12 years.

I became deeply convinced of the power of the gospel to renew life and to meet deep
problems, particularly for people with no formal educational background during that period.
Our missional encounter was with, among others, street kids and drug addicts, the homeless
and recently arrived refugees, indigenous Aussies and hardened Scottish migrants who had
settled into the first wave of Mount Druitt housing built in the late 1950’s. We sat and talked
the gospel hour after hour with people who didn’t read and whose homes were often troubled
and even chaotic. The gospel was frequently powerful and transformative.

In studying for the ministry, I also came for the first time to love the full scriptures –
Lamentations as well as Luke, Habakkuk as well as Hebrews, wisdom literature as well as
NT letters. And I began to understand how the gospel is deeply rooted in the history of
creation, humanity, Israel and the nations told through the OT Torah books, Prophets and
Writings. The unfolding unity of scripture thrilled me as I came to understand the dying,
burial and rising of Jesus as the culmination of a long story of God’s love for the world.

We came to New Zealand in 2004 after completing doctoral studies at Macquarie University
in Sydney. My thesis explored how educators in Christian schools moved from the scriptures
to their practice of education through schooling. I came here to write a Diploma in
Worldview Studies for MASTERS Institute. During those 3 years I began making new
connections between God’s account of truth, beauty and goodness in the scriptures and
accounts told by sociologists and worldview thinkers, philosophers and educators, historians
and advertisers, the ancient Greeks and the new atheists. I came to understand that the Bible
gives us an account – replete with others types of literature, laws and poems, genealogies and

2
prophecies – nevertheless a grand narrative, of God’s gracious intervention to bring renewal
to humanity and creation through Christ.

In his final book, Wheaton College theologian Robert Webber asked the question: “Who gets
to narrate the world?” Along with Webber and many others, this is now how I now
understand the heart of missional encounter. The missional encounter of which we speak and
for which we contend is critically about the confrontation of visions for life. These visions are
most powerfully recited and displayed in storied accounts of how to live well and how to
make sense of our lives, both the trivial and the tragic – accounts that bubble with
assumptions and statements about truth, purpose, suffering, God, evil and most significantly,
what it means to be human. These are storied visions that intend to fire imagination, shape
longing, woo loyalty and finally capture minds and hearts. They undergird political speeches,
blockbuster movies, educational policies and church visions.

Let me show you an example of such a storied vision as repeatedly told by advertisers. It is
both fun and troubling, enticing and destructive ... Visa advertisement

What are we seeing and hearing?

Visa tells a story about a person in need. The central character is alone, lonely and crippled –
her shoe breaks as the story commences. She is rescued by a person who comes alongside
and takes her by the arm, leading her into a new world of music, light, relationship and hope.
She becomes a new person who is no longer crippled. The future in which everything is
waiting for her breaks into the present. She can forget all her troubles and cares. Now she is
really alive. And the key to life in this story is Visa – everything takes Visa. This is a gospel
(good news) story! It is the same story we hear in 100’s of different locations every day – a
story of hope and healing, of love and transformation.

The essence of the missional encounter to which we are called lies in the fact that the ad
makers have taken aspects of reality which are in and of themselves wonderful and good –
music, people, shoes, clothing, cars, shops, wealth, colours, dancing – but wrapped them up
in the wrong story.

It would be so simple if we could simply stand against everything in this ad and declare it to
be bad. But we can’t. Rather, what must happen is that we tell the true story of people, shoes,
clothing, cars, shops, wealth, colours, dancing, hope and love understood in their relationship
with the gospel account of the triune God known through the Christ who died and rose from
the dead. Herein is the key to missional encounter. It is confronting alternative and ultimately
false accounts about the good things of life with the true story of life in relationship with God
in Christ. And as people are confronted with and wooed by that true story, grounded in the
scriptures, their hearts are turned to Christ, their lives filled with the Spirit of God and they
begin to live in and out of the gospel, 21st agents of the kingdom of God.

What sort of people do we need to be for such a missional encounter? Might I suggest the
following ... and in doing so, might I say that these are the types of people we intend to be at
Laidlaw and these are the types of graduates we intend to equip and support.

3
 • Celebrate – God is good. God’s world is wonderful. In a cynical, suspicious age, an
age so often spoken of as without hope, our beginning point is one of gratitude and
celebration. We need to learn how to celebrate the richness and beauty of life.

• Critique – good things have been twisted and distorted. Genuinely good aspects of
God’s world have been reimagined and worshipped as idols. Some things have been
absolutised. Others have been diminished. Connections have been broken. Coherence
lost. We begin to embrace a real tension in life when we begin to celebrate and
discern God’s world.

• Confront with grace – we are not invited to merely celebrate and critique, rather to
move towards all things and reclaim them for Christ. Finally we have a redemptive
commitment to bring renewal and healing to God’s world.

• Grow in character – this renewal begins with my own life, our own lives. We step
into relationship with the triune God and then everything can change. All things! I am
working on three aspects of character at the moment which I believe to be crucial:
courage, kindness, and our use of power

• Encounter one another in community – genuine community is a robust engagement

with others in love, faith and hope – in conversations that sharpen and shape life.

• Develop clarity – our worldviews must become gospel grounded. Out making sense
of reality will be in the light of the gospel and all things in connection with Christ.

What will this require?

• Deeply immerse in the scriptures that bear witness to the gospel

• Deeply engage with our cultures, in our times and places

• Embrace significant tension – in Lesslie Newbigin’s terminology, an “unbearable

tension”. I think that term is too strong and I would prefer to say significant tension ...
for this sort of tension, we need to be people of perseverance. We need to rest well.
We need to be in it for the long haul.

Responses to missional encounter may vary from complacency to hostility to transformation

and renewal. The responses that we meet are not our main concern. That remains our
faithfulness to the gospel as agents of God’s kingdom in our times and places.