Graduates' Christian Fellowship

In Australia and the US recently, there have been a recent spate of medical malpractice lawsuits where patients have successfully sued their doctors for failing to warn them that an abortion might increase their risk of subsequently developing breast cancer. These lawsuits were settled, without trial, by the payment of damages. Even more dramatic, an abortion clinic from Portland, US allowed judgment to be entered against it for damages when it was sued by a 15 year old girl. It paid a substantial cash sum as compensation for not warning her of the increased risk of breast cancer due to her abortion.

What are the repercussions of these cases for us? They raise important public health issues, particularly that of women, which need to be addressed, as well as legal issues pertaining to medical malpractice.

A medical concern is: does an abortion lead to an increased risk of breast cancer (“the ABC link”)? There are many studies which show a statistical link between induced abortion and the occurrence of breast cancer. A study by Dr. Janet Daling published in 1994 made national headlines in US. It reported that “among women who had been pregnant at least once, the risk of breast cancer in those that had experienced an induced abortion was 50% higher than among other women.”

In 1996, a comprehensive review of all previously published studies including data specifically on abortion and breast cancer incidence was published by Dr. Joel Brind. The study found that 19 out of 23 studies from the worldwide literature indicated an increased risk of breast cancer.

However, other studies, like the Beral and the Melbye studies, have denied the ABC link. The Planned Parenthood of America, one of America’s largest abortion providers, finds it unnecessary to warn its patients of the ABC link because the research community has not reached a consensus on this matter.

Although medical opinion remains divided, the studies on both sides of the debate recognize the biological hypothesis for the ABC link. This is a relevant factor. Where statistics show a link between abortion and breast cancer, there must be a biological explanation to support the view that the abortion caused the breast cancer. There are studies which show that upon pregnancy, the rise in the hormonal level in the woman increases her vulnerability to breast cancer, that full term pregnancy has a protective effect. There is agreement that there is a “hormonal disruption that occurs when a woman’s pregnancy is interrupted”. The question then arises: will this disruption eliminate the protective effect of full term pregnancy?

The whole issue is highly politicized and controversial, particularly in the US. There is an urgent need to depoliticize this controversy and within the context of Singapore, an objective analysis of the many comprehensive medical and scientific studies should be undertaken. This should be followed by appropriate measures to safeguard the health of the public.

(1) Doctor’s Duty to Warn: When is a doctor under a duty to disclose an ABC link? The cases do not require a consensus of medical opinion nor medical certainty. A risk is sufficient. The question then is what is the level of risk which will trigger this duty?

(2) Level of Risk: An analogy may be drawn from a birth defect case. A US court ruled that the duty to warn a patient of the potential risk of taking Dilantin during a pregnancy arose when there is a “potential risk” rather than a “conclusively determined risk”; that even if these risks are not “documented or accepted as a fact in the medical profession”, they should be disclosed so that the patient is able to give an informed consent. The court held the doctors in that case liable for failing to warn their patient of the potential risk of deformity when Dilantin was taken during pregnancy.

In a law journal article, it was observed that the body of scientific evidence showing an ABC link is stronger than that for the Dilantin link. The conclusion drawn was that doctors are legally required to warn their patients of the ABC link. This warning is to enable the patient to make an informed consent. Legally, a consent made in ignorance of relevant facts does not constitute consent.

(3) Regulatory Approach : The ABC link raises public health issues. US federal regulatory decisions show that a minimal level of risk is sufficient to trigger intervention by the regulators. The level of risk was one lifetime death per million population at risk. In 1990, Perrier Corporation discovered that its bottled water was contaminated by benzene. The risk assessment of the US regulators was that the lifetime risk of cancer from drinking two bottles of Perrier per day was one death per million exposed. This low level of risk was sufficient to cause a recall of the entire worldwide stock of bottled water, at a cost of over US$70 million in the US alone.

On this analogy, the degree of risk which will trigger regulatory intervention is low.

(4) Other Risks: Has medical science revealed other risks arising out of abortion? The risk of psychological damage is well documented in medical studies. Other risks may include premature birth in subsequent pregnancies, cerebral palsy in babies due to premature delivery, sterility, subsequent miscarriages, ectopic births and maternal deaths.

The medical, scientific and legal communities together with the relevant authorities should prioritise examining these issues. Women would want to know the truth about the ABC link, as breast cancer is a life threatening disease. For the medical profession, it needs to be aware of the legal parameters of its disclosure obligations.

The year was 1856 and the place, the state of Missouri in the United States of America. Dred Scott, a Black slave, had been taken to the state of Wisconsin where slavery was prohibited by the Missouri Compromise.

Scott claimed for his freedom in court but lost. The US Supreme Court ruled that the Compromise was unconstitutional. Congress, they said, had no authority to limit slavery in that way.

In the Court's mind, the choice to own slaves was an individual decision, a private matter for each citizen to struggle with apart from interference by the state. If a person, in an act of conscience, chose not to keep slaves, that was his own decision, but he could not force that choice on others. Every person had a private right to choose.

You see, the US Constitution at that time made no distinction between slaves and other types of property. Dred Scott, as a slave, was declared human property. He was a possession of his owner, and the owner had a right to do whatever he wanted with his assets. It was reasoned that the Missouri Compromise deprived slaveholding citizens of their property in the form of slaves and that therefore the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional. Three of the justices held that even a Negro who had descended from slaves had no rights as an American citizen and thus no standing in the court.

After a civil war and 100 years of oppression, the status of the slave shifted from being a property to being a human being. Today, slavery is a thing of the past and African-Americans are well into the mainstream of American life. In a context of civil rights and civil liberties the question "Are Blacks human beings?" sounds so bizarre and so political incorrect. Who could ask such a thing today?

The question, however, is still being asked, this time in a different way: Is an unborn baby a human person? Or is the unborn a property of the one who is carrying it and therefore she can choose to do whatever she wants with it?

The International Society for Stem Cell Research, on its website, has a section on the moral treatment of embryos. A part of the section reads: “Ancient religious texts provide little guidance. The ancients did not understand embryology, did not imagine that scientists might create and nurture what we now understand as embryos in the laboratory. Nor can we get an answer from laboratory experiments. There is no test for whether an embryo is a person. Instead we are left to our own devices, to our own moral reasoning.”[1]

Is this really the case? Are we left to our “own devices”, our own moral interpretations as to whether the unborn – be it an embryo or a fetus, a human person who has all the rights of being a protected member of the human community? If our understanding and conclusion about the unborn is really up to our “own moral reasoning” then how can any regulation be instituted laws when there is no agreement?

It is observed that much of the debate surrounding the abortion issue is really on the confusion about whether the zygote, the embryo or the fetus is a human person – in other words, when does life begins? At which point can you consider the unborn a human person?

Abortion on demand, up till the 24^th week, is legal in Singapore. Clearly, the embryo and the fetus before the 24^th week is not considered a human being under the Singaporean law. If the unborn is deemed as a human person, then regardless of the age or reason, any abortion is immoral as it is the termination of the life of another human being.

A good analogy is given by an Apologist friend of ours, Greg Koukl: “Your kid runs in from behind you while you are doing dishes at the sink and asks you, Mom, can I kill it?” Wouldn’t you want to know what “it” is before you respond to your child? If it’s a bug, then, yes. If it’s the family dog, then, I am guessing, no!

As we examine the Scriptures, there is nothing that is explicitly instructive about abortion or about the status of the unborn. Nonetheless, we can look to many passages in both the Old and New Testaments and discover that the Word of God teaches that human life is sacred and this sacredness is in continuity right from conception:

A research by Frederica Mathewes-Green in the United States, indicates that the central driving force behind abortions lies in the network of relationships in which the women has around her. In other words, if a pregnant woman cannot find in her intimate social circle (i.e. family, spouse, boyfriend, friends) the love and support she needs to carry her pregnancy to term, she is likely to seek abortion.

She also adds that such pregnant women usually have some idea of the trauma that an abortion will entail to their emotions and their bodies.

She is probably not eager to undergo such trauma but when presented with the choice of either facing social rejection or even violence at the hands of those whose love means the most to her or abortion – in other words, abortion or rejection, at least during the height of the crisis when a decision has to be made, the abortion option would seem like the least worst alternative.

Therefore, Christians, the church, as the body of Christ, is the extension of Christ’s compassion, acceptance and help. And this mission of the church should never be on the abstract level one but should be lived out in real and tangible ways:

Concrete support (financial, spiritual, healthcare, etc), encouragement and compassion for the women who face crisis pregnancy (teen pregnancies, difficult pregnancies, etc)

2) Development of a Christian (ecclesial) context where abortion is generally unthinkable or not considered

“Recall that the young Mary was pregnant under circumstances that today routinely terminate in abortion. In the important theological context of Christmas, the killing of the unborn child is a symbolic killing of the Christchild.”

[1] http://www.isscr.org/public/ethics.htm

[2] Scott B. Rae and Paul M Cox, Bioethics: A Christian Approach in a Pluralistic Age (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1999), 132.

[3] David Atkinson, “Some Theological Perspectives on Human Embryo,” in Ethics and Embryos: The Warnock Report in Debate, ed. Nigel M. de S. Cameron (Edinburgh: Rutherford House Books, 1987), 43 – 57, at 47.

[4] Donal O’Mathuna, “Abortion and the ‘Image of God,’” in Bioethics and the Future of Medicine: Toward a Christian Agenda, ed. John F. Kilner et al. (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1995), 199 – 211, at 202.

[5] Glen H. Stassen and David P. Gushee, Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary Context (Downers grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 220.

[6] Greg Koukl, www.str.org

[7] Naomi Wolf, “Our bodies, our souls,” The New Republic (October 16,1995)

[8] Stassen and Gushee, 229 – 232.

[9] Stassen and Gushee, 224.

Fifty years ago, on 25th June, 26 graduates met in the home of Dr. and Mrs Benjamin Chew. There, they made a decision that has left its mark on the Singapore church scene.

Singapore then was in the midst of change. She was still recovering from the devastation of the Pacific War. The population was expanding rapidly; education, housing and jobs had to be provided for the people. On the political front, discussions were taking place to transform the island from a British colony to a self-governing state.

Amidst these challenges, the question was raised: what role could Christian graduates play? What kinds of contribution could they make? It did not take long before that small group of graduates agreed that God had brought them together precisely for such a time as this. They all shared a common vision and decided to form the Graduates’ Christian Fellowship.

It was a simple and imaginative vision which set the direction for the Fellowship over the next 50 years. Tonight, I want to share with you my understanding of that vision. We, also, want to ask ourselves: what does that vision mean for us today?

In a way, there was nothing new about this. 600 years before the coming of Christ, a Jewish boy had been taken away as captive from Jerusalem to Babylon where he was educated and later enrolled into government service. Maintaining faith in a foreign land whose value system differed radically from his own was not easy. But Daniel was a God-fearing graduate. During the next 60 years, he not only kept his faith, but also provided exceptional service in professional life (Daniel 6:3-5). Over the years, the story of Daniel as God’s faithful witness has inspired countless generations of graduates.

It is because of this vision that the Fellowship encouraged the formation of various professional sectional groups, eg medical, lawyers, teachers, care-givers, etc. Through annual dedication services, forums, seminars and conferences, attention is focused on what it means to be a Christian in the respective professions. Like Daniel, our concern is how can we maintain faithful witness in professional life and to give excellent service.

In recent times, much has been said about Singapore’s rise from being a third world country to a first world nation. I would like to believe that Christian professionals, given their significant numbers in the various professions and administrative services, played a noteworthy part in that development.

From the beginning, the founding members of GCF were themselves active church members. You have the examples of people like Benjamin Chew, Phoon Wai-On, Khoo Oon Teik, James Wong and many others. They were concerned not only with serving their own churches, but also had a vision of the larger body of believers in Singapore.

For instance, in 1970, the Fellowship held a three-day Church Strategy Conference. Major changes were taking place in the island-state: young people were turning to the Lord in large numbers, there was a lack of premises to house new congregations, expatriate pastors were being replaced by Asian leadership, but there was a lack of trained local personnel. What role could GCF play? That conference recognized the challenges that we faced and made a number of recommendations. A follow-up Church Growth Study Group was set up and it called for greater use of house churches. Working in cooperation with Discipleship Training Centre, GCF formed the Lay Institute of Theology. Over the next eight years, 18 courses were conducted and some 500 persons registered in the various courses. At the same time, the Fellowship of Evangelical Students was encouraged to start the Frontier’s Group which sought to draw the attention of students to ministry opportunities in churches. Within ten years, scores of students went for further theological studies. GCF set up a theological education fund. Today, many of our former students are serving as church pastors, parachurch workers, lecturers in Bible colleges and overseas missionaries.

Because the Fellowship had a macro-vision of the church, its members also played key roles in other Christian organizations, such as Scripture Union, FES, Navigators, Campus Crusade, Youth for Christ, Bible Society, CBMC, etc. In 1978, the GCF undertook a major effort in writing up the history of the church in Singapore. From the beginning, it was obvious that such a project which required extensive research and interviews, would need the cooperation and goodwill of many churches and organizations. That the book In His Good Time could be completed and is today in its third edition was made possible because it was a project under the sponsorship of the GCF.

In the Parable of the Wise Steward, Jesus emphasized the need to be faithful in whatever the Lord has entrusted to us. Concluding, he said, “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded” (Luke 12:48). The Lord has entrusted much to us as graduates and he expects much from us.

Two years ago, I was invited by the NCCS to compile the book Many Faces, One Faith. Its objective was twofold: to show how the church had grown alongside the nation and to show how the church had contributed towards meetings the needs of society. In the course of researching, I was not surprised to discover a number of graduates who made significant contributions to the community over the years. There was Song Ong Siang (b. 1871), brilliant scholar and lawyer and who was also an Elder and preacher at the Prinsep Street Presbyterian Church. Together with others, he produced the Straits Chinese Magazine to which he contributed regular articles discussing the many challenges the community faced. He also helped to found the Singapore Chinese Girls’ School. His monumental work, One Hundred Years of the Chinese in Singapore, remains as an important work of reference. There was also Chen Su Lan (b. 1885), a Methodist Christian who hailed from Fuzhou and who was in the first batch of doctors to graduate from the KE Vll Medical College in Singapore. After graduation, Dr Chen was not only an active preacher and lay leader of his church, but was also much involved in community work. He campaigned against the open sale of opium and the widespread practice of prostitution. He took a lead role in setting up the Chinese YMCA and, together with others, helped to establish the Singapore Anti-Tuberculosis Association. His Chen Su Lan Trust benefited scores of charitable organizations. Then you have Khoo Oon Teik (b. 1921), medical doctor, Methodist churchman, pioneer member of GCF and Scripture Union work. In the mid-60s, at a time when Singapore was undergoing rapid and profound changes, and many people required special counseling help, Dr Khoo and others helped to set up the Churches’ Counselling Service. From this humble beginning have emerged the Samaritans of Singapore and the Counselling and Care Centre today. A nephrologists, Dr Khoo also helped to set up the National Kidney Foundation which, today, is the world’s single largest charitable organization to provide dialysis care. All these graduates took the exhortation of Jesus seriously. The Lord had entrusted them with much, and much was expected of them.

Individually, many of us have also sought to find ways to meet the needs in society. In recent times, the Fellowship came together and helped to found St Luke’s Hospital. This was a major undertaking. GCF provided the glue that brought together eight different churches and organizations. Today, the 200-bed Hospital is accepted by the community as providing good medical care. It is also a recognized centre for the training of post-graduates doctors doing Family Medicine.

At our recent annual general meeting, Dr Tan Tee Khoon, FES General Secretary, reminded our members of how we ought to be the “salt” and “light” of the world (Matthew 5:13-16). I have often suspected that when Jesus spoke those words, he had graduates in mind. We must always be concerned for the kind of society we live in. Furthermore, given the roles that we can play, we often exercise an influence that far exceeds our actual numbers.

Over the years, the Fellowship has sought to do just that by making representations to the Government on matters that affect the shape of society, eg formation of Malaysia (1962), Constitutional Commission (1966), Women’s Charter Amendment (1979), Abortion Laws (1985), National Agenda (1987), Detention of Christian Books (1988), Religious Harmony Bill (1990), Censorship Review (1991) and Advance Medical Directives (1996). We have reasons to believe that these representations, together with those from other Christian bodies, were not made in vain.

In recent years, new issues have surfaced which challenge the Christian conscience. They include the casino debate, researches into the life sciences and the introduction of alternative lifestyles in Singapore. As a Fellowship, we need to be constantly on the alert and to ask ourselves: what does it mean to be “salt” and “light” in times like these?

The founding members of GCF were themselves students not so long ago. Not surprisingly, their feel for student work remained strong. They even worked into the GCF Constitution in Aim 2(d) the following statement “To encourage and support evangelical student work”. In the early years, most of the speakers on campus came from graduates. The Fellowship set up a library of books for students and published a magazine called Student Clarion. An Education Trust Fund was set up for needy students. The FES, which brought together student witness in the various campuses, was set up with the support of graduates.

Graduates have always recognized the strategic nature of student ministry. It is from our institutions of higher learning that will emerge administrators, academicians, researchers and policy-makers who will shape the nation. That great churchman and student worker, John R. Mott (b. 1865), realized this when he noted in an address: “Without question, in many respects the most important field which the Church of Christ has entered is the field of students, because that field furnishes a vastly disproportionate number of leaders in the various realms of thought and action. It is therefore high strategy, high statesmanship, and high churchmanship to lay hold upon these centres of learning and go with Elisha to the springs of the waters and cast the salt in there” (The World’s Student Christian Federation Vol 2, Addresses and Papers of John R. Mott, NY 1947, p. 517).

Tonight, we celebrate 50 years of GCF ministry. In the history of nations, 50 years is a short period but for Singapore, profound changes have taken place during this time. To begin with, the demographic world has changed. In the 50s, the population stood at 1.4 million; today it is 4.4 million. The people are better educated and better informed. In the 50s, there were just one university, one polytechnic and one teachers’ training college. Today, there are four universities, five polytechnics and 16 junior colleges. Furthermore, moves are afoot to make Singapore into a major educational hub for the region. Presently, there are just over 50,000 foreign students studying in Singapore. This number will increase to 150,000 in 10-15 years time. Already, the Singapore Management University has opened its campus in the heart of the city. It is projected to have an eventual enrolment of 8,000 students. By the year 2007, the University of NSW would have opened its campus in another part of the island. It will be Singapore’s first foreign private-run university and it will eventually have an enrolment of 15,000 students. All these developments present great challenges for our student and graduate ministries.

Secondly, the religious landscape has changed. In the past, because of its organizational structure and educated leadership, Christianity has always had an edge over the other religious groups. This is no longer true. Religious groups today are better organized and they receive good support from the community and the mass media. One needs only to look at the performance of the Soka Association on successive National Day Displays to realize their commitment and discipline. These groups now also have more educated leadership. Some years ago, a Buddhist Graduates’ Fellowship was formed. Its membership is said to be in excess of 2,000. There is also an Association of Muslim Professionals. All these developments mean that Christians function alongside groups that are well-organized and are led by people with vision and commitment. We need to ask ourselves: what does it mean to proclaim faith in a multi-faith society today?

And thirdly, the church scene has changed. In the 50s, those professing the Christian faith numbered less than 4% of the population; today it is 15%. These believers worshipped in about 80 churches; today, there are over 450 churches. Furthermore, churches today manifest a vitality that was unthinkable in the 50s and 60s. In some ways, churches have also begun to compete with parachurch organizations in their traditional roles, such as overseas mission and campus ministry. For instance, recent years have seen the emergence of church-based ministries in various campuses. In NUS alone, there are at least eight churches that operate their own student work. In graduate ministry, GCF can no longer claim a monopoly. The Population Census (2000) revealed that there were 66,581 Protestant university graduates. Contrast this with the meager 600 on our membership list. Where are the other graduates? They are out there in society, in the churches and various organizations. Surely, this ought to cause us to see how we can remake ourselves and to work with others.

The times have changed but the vision which launched the GCF 50 years ago, remains valid. I believe that there is something timeless about it. As a Fellowship, we must always have a vision of our role in professional life, church life, service to society and support of student work. If we lose this vision, we lose the raison d’etre of our Fellowship. May God raise up a generation of good people who understand the times, who have a macro-picture of the church and who will come forth to help us to fulfill this vision.

My message will focus on a missional spirituality because we want to keep constantly in focus that we want to bring God glory by being His servants and witnesses in the world as salt, light and leaven.

We are all aware of the fact that there are great missional challenges that face us at this time in history. There are two billion people in the world, who are largely unevangelised. Our world is characterised by all kinds of injustice. We are also aware of the radical and ongoing de-Christianisation of the Western world. The Western world is deeply in trouble politically, morally and spiritually. Therefore, we are now living in the time where the West needs to be evangelised.

Several centuries ago, the West was the heart of Christianity, bringing Christianity to the rest of the world. The situation in which we find ourselves now in is that a European, in particular, but the West, in general, has become one of the most significant mission fields of our time. We are living in uncertain times - very significant cultural shifts are taking place.

The reality of post-modernity is that younger people are fundamentally questioning many of the certainties that we once took for granted. In many ways, our churches are struggling. In fact, in many churches, there are people who are less and less committed to coming together as a worshipping community. Recent statistics in North America have indicated that 65 per cent of Christians no longer primarily look to the church for spiritual and theological guidance. Their basic idea is - I will work this out for myself. So this rampant form of individualism is having very serious implications for what it means to be the people of God and the body of Christ. So, we are faced with very significant missional challenges at this time in history.

What is encouraging is that theologically, there has been a wonderful movement with regard to theological thinking, to the mission that God has called us to be a part of. Today, in theological language, one of the things that we talk about is that mission is really what God is all about. That mission has to do with us as the people of God, joining God in His mission and love for the world. Mission theology is no longer centred in the church, but centred first of all, on who God is, then secondarily, in the nature of the church as the people of God.

We will quickly realise that our role in the world and our being servants of Christ involves also a commitment and a participation in a missional spirituality. Not just the matter of head knowledge, it is more a matter of being animated, moved, empowered by a Christian spirituality that comes out of the gospel and is empowered by the Holy Spirit. We cannot play the role in the world that God is calling us to play unless we are sustained and carried along by the wind of the Spirit, and unless we have bread and drink for the journey. So what that means is that we need to be attentive not only to the needs out there, to who God is but we also need to be attentive to our own hearts and lives.

Many of you have heard about the Lausanne Mission, which in the years 1974 to 2004, drew many evangelical Christians from all over the world together in various conferences. What I find interesting in reading all those documents is that there is very little attention given to the issue of Christian spirituality. It mentions that it is important for us to pray but basically that is about all that these documents have to say.

By way of contrast, the present Pope John Paul II, in 1990 wrote a very important missional document entitled “Redemptoris Missio”. While that document talks about the importance of the church and all sorts of missional strategies, it also speaks about the importance of a spirituality that must animate and sustain in power our role as Christians in the world. It talks about the fact that our missional spirituality involves an intimate communion with Christ. A missioner or missionary or a person who is a witness, must be a person who has found his or her true centre, true life and true hope in the person of Jesus Christ. Such a spirituality requires the empowerment of the Spirit, the gift of fortitude and discernment. It requires a recapturing of the missionary enthusiasm of the early churches.

So what I want to do as an evangelical Christian is to dip into Scripture to recapture what an evangelical missionary spirituality would look like.

Firstly, by missional spirituality, I am not talking about a form of Christian spirituality that is only concerned about the inner person and prayer. The missionary spirituality that I have in mind is a spirituality that has to do with looking towards God, a life of prayer on the one hand and a spirituality that reaches out towards a neighbour in need in the other. What I have in mind is the spirituality that does both - that moves in both directions, always at the same time.

Secondly, I am not talking about a spirituality for professional missionaries because we are all missionaries, but talking about the people of God, who have been called to be the salt, light and witness in the world. What I am talking about is a missional spirituality that is to characterise all of us as God’s people as we are called to a life of witness and service in the many circumstances and situations in which we find ourselves.

What do I mean by Christian spirituality? Firstly, Christian spirituality has to do with the motivation and the shape of a life of following Christ in the power of the Spirit. Spirituality has to do with everything that we do as Christians. What that means is that we are always to be prayerful. We do not only pray when we are on our knees, or when we have a quiet time. You can be having a conversation with a friend and eating a good meal, and you can be praying at the same time.

This is what the church has called the prayer of the heart. It is a prayer that you are praying even when you are not praying. That prayer may be as simple as “Lord, have mercy”, or “Lord, be with us” as we are having this meal, and as I am talking to this colleague. It may be as simple as “Lord, as a school teacher, I see this particular student who is having problems and seems to be in some sort of pain. Lord, even though I am not saying anything directly to this person, send your comforting Holy Spirit to bless this student in my class even now I am giving a lecture”.

That is what Paul was all about when he talked about the fact that we are to pray always. Praying always does not mean that we have to be always on our knees. It has to do with a posture of the heart, a matter of the heart. It is about having the presence of Lord Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit in all that I do and wherever I am. One of the things that you do not want to do as an evangelical Christian is that you want to shut off certain areas from God’s presence.

In thinking about a missional spirituality, we want to bring together both the love of God and love of neighbour. You can see very clearly in Matthew 22:37-40 : “…love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the first and greatest commandment. The second is like it, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself”. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments”.

Secondly, in this missional spirituality, we want to think about how prayer and the work of justice come together. I like to turn to Isaiah 58:6-7 where the prophet is saying that doing the work of justice is a way of worshipping God: “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen to loose the chains of injustice and untie the chords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter - when you see the naked, to clothe him and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?” In other words, one way of worshipping God is in terms of serving the neighbour who is in need, bringing together the love of God and love of neighbour.

We also want to bring together the inner journey and the outer journey. We see that most clearly in the mission, life and ministry of Jesus. Mark 1:35-39 gives us a really profound insight into the style of life, the way that Jesus lived - this intimacy with the Father and engagement in mission and ministry. “In the early morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went to a secluded place, and was praying there” - and got interrupted. That is what a life of prayer should really be all about. We should always be praying and be interrupted. Jesus got interrupted. He did not say to His disciples: “Buzz off, this is my quiet time, get lost. Can’t you see that I am in fellowship with the Father?” Simon and his companions went to look for Him, and when they found Him, they exclaimed: “Everyone is looking for You.” He said to them, “Let us go somewhere else to the towns nearby, so that I can preach there also.” Here, we have this wonderful picture of inner journey connected to the outer journey.

Finally, what we want to bring together is - the relationship between contemplation and action. Contemplation is the attentiveness to God and to others. Have you ever have this incredibly frustrating experience when you are talking to another person about matters that concern you deeply and you can see that person’s eyes wander away.

The worst thing that can happen is the telephone they have got in their pocket rings and suddenly, right in the middle of this incredible conversation where you are talking about things that are deep in your heart and mind, this person suddenly becomes absent. It is awful when you have that kind of experience. The sad thing is that we are sometimes also absent when we are with God. We need to learn that what contemplation is all about is the gift of attentiveness. God is very attentive towards us and is inviting us to be attentive towards Him. That, of course, means that we need to give God time.

Psalm 46:10 speaks of the notion of attentiveness and presence. “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted in the earth.” When we are attentive to God, one of the things that will well up within us is a prayer we find in Psalm 51:10: “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.” Contemplation is attentiveness to God so that we can then attend to others. What the psalmist goes on to say in Psalm 51:13 is that after he has said: “Restore to me the joy of Your salvation and sustain me with a willing spirit. Then I will teach transgressors Your ways and sinners will return to You” is that as God renews me and creates a new heart within me and as He gives me the joy of salvation; then what I will do is to reach out to other people in the power and strength that He has given to me. So, there is a direct relation between contemplation or attentiveness to God and action.

The Latin American theologian Segundo Galilea in his book “Following Jesus” calls us Christians to “double-movement” contemplation. He says that first of all and always as Christians, we are called to contemplate the face of God in Christ Jesus. God invites us to be with Him. Do you know that God actually says: “Steven, would you mind spending some time with me?” That is how God talks to us and invites us to be with Him. We are invited to contemplate God face to face. We do that by reflecting on the Scripture, in prayer and in the practice of solitude. The practice of solitude means that as evangelical Christians, we are invited, of all things, to be still and to wait and to be in God’s presence. This is what we call the “movement of transcendence”.

We get a wonderful picture of what that movement is in Psalm 130:5-6: “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits.” Do you know how difficult that is? So much stuff going on, so many things that we need to think about and want to do, decisions to make, programmes, projects, work issues, relational issues, church issues. What do you mean wait, should not I run, run and run? Now, we do need to run, but you can only run well if you learnt how to wait. “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in His Word I put my hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning.”

This is particularly relevant for Christians in the marketplace. You cannot go into your workplace and just try to change that place overnight. In fact, you need to be very sensitive in the way you seek to be a witness to your colleagues. You need to realise that your workplace is your marketplace. You need to understand the reality that you are an employee and at the same time, what is in your heart is that your colleagues may come to Jesus Christ and that your workplace may become a good place that brings glory to God. But if you rush in like a bull, you will do more damage than good. One of the things that we need to do is to have this posture of “Lord, I wait on you. I am looking for the stirring of waters, the signs of the Spirit. I am looking in terms of what You are doing so that I can be attentive to what You are doing, and to what You are wanting me to do with this particular situation. My soul waits for what God will do. Now, we are not only called to be involved in this transcendent movement of contemplation, we are invited to contemplate Christ in the face of our brothers and sisters and to contemplate the need of the neighbour, the stranger and the poor. This is the type of “movement of incarnation”.

We need to make sure as evangelical Christians that we are not running so fast that we are running past the very people that God is calling us to be attentive to and serve. Slow down when everything in our culture says speed up. We live in a fast culture. It is incredible to wait, trust, pray and to be contemplative in action.

These two movements of contemplation – transcendence and incarnation, contemplating the face of God and contemplating the face of a neighbour who is in need - are the two ways that we come together in our life of prayer and in the practice of spirituality. Whenever you turn to God in prayer, faith, hope, trust, the practice of solitude, God welcomes and embraces you and sooner or later, will turn your face back towards the world and its need. Whenever you turn your face towards the world in need, the needs you see in others, the brokenness you see in people’s life, and whenever you turn your face in that direction, then you will again turn your face toward God in prayer saying “Lord, bring your blessing to this person, to this work situation. Lord, we need you”.

What happens is that contemplation as an act of transcendence and as an act of incarnation are constantly like a circle. Christian service should lead us back to God in prayer and moving to God in prayer will move us to Christian service.

Evelyn Underhill in the amazing book written in 1937 “The Spiritual Life” speaks about this similar theme - in terms of a triple movement of the movement of adoration, adherence and cooperation. Underhill says that in adoration or worship, what we need to seek to do is that we delight in who God is and in all that God does. That is saying something that is incredibly profound because we do not always like what God does because God’s way with us is often different from what we expect. To truly love God, and to truly adore God is not just that I need to delight in who God is - but also to delight and say thank you, Lord for your strange and mysterious way with me. God has a strange and mysterious way with us. “Lord, why did you do this? Lord, why did you call me to this kind of job? I would really like to be something. Lord, why have you made me in this kind of way? I am an accountant, but I would like to be an artist.”

But adoration means that we delight in who God is and in all God does. What we do is we cling to God. One of the things that we need to realise is that God is a person who welcomes us, but He is also a God who calls us to seek Him. Seek the Lord while He may be found, so i.e. clinging to God, who loves us, and for us, to constantly open our lives to Him.

Underhill says that we are invited to join with God in His love and concern for the whole world. What we have to do is that we have to find our small place in the total interest of God’s purposes for the world. One of the things that I have noticed among evangelical Christians is that they try to do too much. We try to do everything. We cannot be a prophet, a healer, a good organiser, a good community developer and a good Bible teacher all at the same time because what the New Testament teaches us is that the Holy Spirit gives different gifts to the body of Christ. The key thing about Christianity is not that we are solo heroes but we are a body working together, and it is the body that manifests these different gifts of the Holy Spirit. For you and I to find our small place in the vast thing that God is doing - to call all women and men to redemption, healing and wholeness.

A great missional challenge is first and foremost to be a Trinitarian Spirituality. What that means is that God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit may have said this to you and me: “Come and make your home with me and I will make my home with you.”

In John 14:23, Jesus replied: “If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come and make our home with him.” God invites us to make our home with Him in the love of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and God makes His dwelling place with us. We are a people who have been welcomed home by the love of God. We have been embraced and God has invited us to His banquet table.

The second characteristic is that missional spirituality is a Pascal Spirituality. Pascal is the Latin word that has to do with the fact that the work of God is in Christ, a work that has come about through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Romans 6:3-4 speaks about the fact that we have been made alive in Christ Jesus through His death. Now this death and life is something that is always at work within us.

Living the Christian life always involve the movement of death followed by life. One of the debts that we are called to as Christian is the willingness to practise renunciation. God asks us to let things go, surrender things, give things up, relinquish things. Don’t hold on to that, let it go. Don’t cling to that, hand it over to me. Don’t strive about this issue; don’t force your life in this particular way. Open your hands. This movement from clenching to opening your hands - a life yielded to God. We are called to die to things. The amazing thing is that when we let things go, God gives us the desires of His heart. When we say no to certain things, God blesses us in other ways. This amazing movement of death and life is at work within us. One of the things that God calls us to is not only to do certain things, but also to let other things go. Renunciation or relinquishment is part of the posture of living the Christian life.

A missional spirituality is also an Exodus Spirituality. What I mean by that is, motivated by the love of God, we are always called outwards towards others. To befriend, engage, join, journey with, to be alongside, witness to, love, serve the people that God has place within our circle of influence. The movement of exodus, the movement outwards is costly, right? Because we have to give of ourselves, of our time and attention. Therefore, it is so important that we have resources from which to draw in terms of the work of God within our life so that we can reach out to those around us.