Canon Mark Ashcroft reflects on what lessons he's learned during 10 years in Kenya that can apply to his home in Manchester. Debbie from Harpurhey, Manchester, is a bright 18-year-old but five years ago she was excluded from school for bad behaviour. It was mainly because her lack of reading and writing skills meant she couldn’t keep up in any subject.
Her Mum loves her, but is addicted to heroin and resorts to prostitution to fund her habit. Debbie’s elder sister is one of many who have escaped from home pressures by becoming pregnant and moving out into her own flat.
Despite all this, through the love and patient testimony of our Eden team of youth workers, Debbie has begun to turn her life around. She has become a Christian, given her testimony before hundreds of people and has been baptised – in a birthing pool!
Debbie’s journey is still not smooth, she still struggles. But she is in college studying, and has a heart to serve and worship God day by day, week by week.
David from Nandi, Kenya, is 22 years old, the son of subsistence farmers who spend much of their scarce resources on the local brew. They love their children and value education for them.
At the local Anglican church school, David has done well and has since found a clerical job. Recently, he converted to Christianity at a youth camp and now feels called to ordination. However, as the eldest son and the only one in his family earning a salary, his parents are unwilling for him to go to college. How will the family survive without the money he earns?
These stories are typical (though I have not used real names) of the mission that I have been part of for the last 20 years, first in Kenya and now in Manchester. Coming from rural Kenya, with its steady pace of life, to bustling city life in Manchester was something of a culture shock; and we have been wondering what the links are between the two places. What did we learn in Kenya that applies to Manchester?
For me, mission is about seeing Jesus at work, transforming lives and communities. So although the context is very different, the principles we learnt in Kenya apply equally to Manchester.
Jesus came to bring life in all its fullness – that means that the Gospel impacts the whole of a person’s life, including their health, education and relationships. Mission has to be people-centred – that’s how Jesus worked in his day; we too easily get caught up with programmes that sometimes depersonalise people.
Mission begins with incarnation: getting alongside people, learning their language, the culture and the context, and listening to them – preferably visiting their homes. You never know a person until you see them at home – as true in Kenya as it is in Manchester.
Mission is about enabling and empowering people to take responsibility and control, under God, of their own lives. It’s all too tempting to do good to people; but no progress can be made unless they want it for themselves, including that all-important decision to ask Jesus into their lives. You can’t force development or salvation on anyone.
Mission involves partnership. Both in Kenya and Manchester, it has been a privilege to work with other agencies such as CMS, Tearfund, the Message Trust.
In Kenya, the issues have been around such things as healthy water, sustainable farming and fuel conservation. In Manchester, it has been to do with community building, drugs and alcohol work, and alienated young people.
Yet in both cases, working in partnership with others has been crucial. Mission requires teamwork. In Kenya the Church grows because lay people take responsibility for evangelising in their area. Christians work together in planting Sunday schools and growing churches.
For us in Manchester, we not only have the Eden team, a group of people working with unchurched young people in the community, but we have a Church on the Streets team bringing an experience of church to people without homes, and we have developed a Shared Leadership team that hands real responsibility to lay people in church for our evangelism, discipleship, pastoral care and communications.
Kenya or Manchester – it’s the same Jesus and the same Gospel!
Canon Mark Ashcroft is a former CMS mission partner and rector of Christ Church Harpurhey