During my working life I had the pleasure to work, then live and work in the USA. This adventure exposed me to the truism "two countries separated by a common language": It is true that our language is similar, but I found our cultures to be vastly different, to the point that sometimes I thought I might be living on a different planet. I made a couple of close friends with whom I am still in contact with today some 20 years later, but most of the people I worked with, socialised with, even had Thanksgiving Day dinner with, were only ever acquaintances. This is because the middle-class conservative culture of the mid-West meant people were friendly, welcoming and very sociable, but as you drew closer you met with a barrier; their private lives were very private and it wasn't often through the formalities of socialising that you were invited in. To their culture this was a boundary, to me it often felt like a barrier especially being in a new country where things were much more different than I had expected, and making new friends was very important.
As a church, rather than trying to draw people into the building we are working out into the community to engage with people hoping to have the opportunity to share the love and light of Jesus with them. On the Ivy Estate the community has its fair share of vulnerable people, who through their life experience are used to others in authority doing things to them 'that are good for them' and because of this may struggle to trust a church with good intentions. The culture may be quite alien to some of you, the way people choose to live their lives may shock you, but it is a rich culture, one that I come from and one that I was raised in. Houses tend to be lively with friends and especially their children coming and going, friends that support each other and often share what little they have when you have nothing. People that journey with one another through good times and bad, through illness and celebration. Yes there may be a threatening undercurrent which demands that people respect each other and causes one to be careful that one is being taken advantage of, but the culture is rich, vibrant and fertile.
I am often accused of not having boundaries as I share my life and what I have with the people of the Ivy Estate, yes there are boundaries that we have to have with children and vulnerable adults, but we have to be very careful that those boundaries do not become barriers. If we are truly going to follow the path and example of Jesus we must make sure that we are not doing ministry but living ministry, that we are not on the Ivy Estate to do things that will make people come to Jesus, but to live our lives there and to let the people of Ivy Estate live their lives amongst us so that as we 'live a life worthy of the calling we have received' we expose people to the love and light of Jesus. Jesus made himself vulnerable, even to those authorities who eventually killed him, and countless missionaries have done the same over the centuries. We too must be prepared to surrender ourselves, to make ourselves vulnerable even to the point of making the ultimate sacrifice, so that we will be accepted, trusted and welcomed in the communities in which we are ministering. It is only then that people will not see barriers, but the love and the light of Jesus who "though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross."
