Tourists? Missionaries?
This report indicates that the importance of France as a missionary target is because France is so secular. I won't argue with that because France has been trying for over two hundred years to be secular.What I contend with is that there is no one within France's own borders to preach the gospel? Not even the late Brother Roger of Taize, where tens of thousands of young people turn up? Phooey.
I believe that, like Christians in so much of the western world, would-be missionaries want to have their cake and eat it too. Saving souls in a country with good fashion, good beaches, good wine, and good food and beautiful scenery and a useful language to learn sure beats the wilds of Papua New Guinea and the desertification of Kenya. The article doesn't mention the age of the missionaries to France but that could give some additional insights - probably into a generation that considers itself post-modern.
In Australia, we have a third, fourth, fifth world country in the midst of our First World economy. We have young people who are cut off from their own culture and spirituality and far from inclusion in the mainstream of white society. For someone concerned with tackling the spiritual void in the life of another, I thought this would be just the place. There would be the option of going with a missionary agency or of going as a tent-maker and living in a small outback town. One might even get to be a reconciler - a bridge between colonized indigenous people and the dominant colonizers. One might actually learn another language - not spoken by as many people as French but you would become a vital link in maintaining that language and its contribution to indigenous culture. Not only that, one might get to look at one's own country, environment through the eyes of one of the oldest, if not the oldest, living cultures on earth. As a tent-maker one could earn good wages and still be in touch with one's extended family - they could visit you and you them much more easily than with an overseas posting.
But the Australian Outback is challenging: to comfort, to ideas of dominating the landscape. It is not comfortable - the threads of Western culture and civilization become quite attenuated out there. Years there makes commonality with white urban communities who know nothing of your experience very difficult.
So Christian communities in the Australian Outback struggle. Struggle with tiny numbers. Struggle to get decent music with which to sing God's praises. Struggle to do anything meaningful to evangelize their own young people let alone the community's. In my experience, the smaller communities outside major towns are not well networked into the wider Christian community - even within their own denominations.
With the exception of two institutions that cater to theology for indigenous Australians an one Assemblies of God college (one of which, as far as I am aware, award degrees), there is no theological institution north of the Tropic of Capricorn in Australia. There is no institution that awards Christians for deeper study within and relating to their own environment. But from Australia, too, missionaries go to Paris.
But the Australian Outback is challenging: to comfort, to ideas of dominating the landscape. It is not comfortable - the threads of Western culture and civilization become quite attenuated out there. Years there makes commonality with white urban communities who know nothing of your experience very difficult.
So Christian communities in the Australian Outback struggle. Struggle with tiny numbers. Struggle to get decent music with which to sing God's praises. Struggle to do anything meaningful to evangelize their own young people let alone the community's. In my experience, the smaller communities outside major towns are not well networked into the wider Christian community - even within their own denominations.
With the exception of two institutions that cater to theology for indigenous Australians an one Assemblies of God college (one of which, as far as I am aware, award degrees), there is no theological institution north of the Tropic of Capricorn in Australia. There is no institution that awards Christians for deeper study within and relating to their own environment. But from Australia, too, missionaries go to Paris.
