A new series of international online seminars sneaked quietly onto the internet last month. It comes from the International Congregational Fellowship’s Theological Commission – not a snappy title, I’ll admit! But it brought echoes of hope from another continent, from the vast country of Argentina, the second largest country in South America, and eighth largest in the world.
Revd Dr Harding Stricker grew up in the far northeast of Argentina. His father established an amazing Christian outreach in the favelas surrounding their home church and that story has been told in the pages of the International Congregational Journal over the years. Harding trained as a GP, so that he could set up a clinic in the favela, and has built up a wonderful mission, including community farming and gardening, educational and medical facilities, focused on a lively congregational church.
Dr Stricker is a theologian, who studied in Argentina and Germany, assisting for a while at the University of Heidelberg course in Medicine in Developing Countries. As well as writing about his medical and mission work, over the years, Harding wrote a series of articles in the ICJ exploring his theology of practical mission in the light of Scripture and his own experience. Last year, these were published in his book, Under the Southern Cross: Some Congregational Perspectives. (Paraguay: Libreria Akadía Editorial, 2023)
We were delighted that we were able to use one of these articles for our very first online seminar, and that Harding was able to introduce his article, and speak about the practical theology of mission ‘under the southern cross’. The article was, ‘The Timeless Mission of a Timebound Church’, and in it, the author explores mission in the context of the present ecological crisis. Practical mission encompasses both the whole of human experience, and fullness of life in Christ.
He gave us this challenge: firstly, to come to God with all the honesty and reality of human life, not hiding anything from ourselves or each other. As human beings we have access to amazing resources of scientific knowledge, great depth of thought and a kaleidoscope of artistic expression, capacities that can be used in compassion or cruelty, to bring life or to destroy. We are on the threshold of unimaginable discoveries about the vastness of the universe, and (in Harding’s own field) incredible breakthroughs in medicine and health.
But the other side of the challenge is to look into the face of the created world with the steadfast, loving gaze of God in Jesus, reflecting God’s true image. As Christians, we have a mission to demonstrate the practical compassion of God, in all that we do.
Harding, and those who work with him, show how this can be achieved in their setting, by working with the people of the favela to build new communities in the name of Jesus. The question is, how can we express that timeless mission effectively in our own timebound churches?
Janet Wootton
Comments