Friday, May 29, 2009
Christianity Explored & Challenged
The Christianity Explored course has now been running for two weeks at St. Rollox. It has already proven to be a great challenge and blessing. We are not trying to be exclusive in our programmes: in other words, we don’t want to mirror the existing divisions in Sighthill between refugees and Scots in our ministry. Practically, this means that anything we do for the refugees we want to make available to the indigenous community. We decided that the Christianity Explored course should be no different. It would probably be easier if we did the course only with homogenous groups. Yet doing what is easy is not necessarily the best preparation for the long-term.
Currently, two Afghans, two Iranians, a Ghanaian believer, and two Glaswegians have attended.
As it stands, I’m not sure if Rico Tice would recognise this as the course he wrote. The structure is helpful, but we’re letting the guys’ questions give direction to the course (the course was created for man, not man for the course?). Ultimately, this stems from pastoral concern: the guys have genuine questions and hurts and it would be insensitive to ignore these issues.
I would like to hone in on two stories from recent Christianity Explored sessions:
‘N’ is an Iranian seeker with an incredibly sharp intellect. When he asked to come on the course he told me a goose-bump causing story about how he has seen Jesus in his dreams. In one particular dream, N is in the church he currently attends and singing along to the worship songs. Jesus is sitting in the back of the church and walks up to N and asks, "tell me, what are you doing here?" N says that he is still unsure, but looking for answers, to which Jesus replies "when you are ready, remember that I am waiting for you."
It is clear that N is open to the Holy Sprit to move in his dreams. He already knows a lot about Christianity, but has particular difficultly accepting the Jesus’ cry of "Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?" The God-forsakenness of God incarnate is a difficult concept for Christians and there is no simple, nor logical, conclusion to this mystery. I believe it will take some sort of revelation before N will take the step to believe. We know he is open to dreams, so pray that he remains open to how God might reveal himself.
‘G’ is a local who came along to St. Rollox for the first time last Thursday at the drop-in café. Life has been difficult for him. His father died and then his mother committed suicide shortly thereafter. He had an emotional breakdown and gave up on God in the wake of this tragedy. For him the question of the existence of pain and suffering is not merely an abstract question. G seems to be enjoying that the course is a safe place he can talk about his questions, as well as engage with others, as he admits that after such hurt he attempted to cut himself off from other people.
Keep these guys in your prayers, as well as James (the minister at St. Rollox) and I, as the course continues.
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