The theme of the 2020 London Gospel Partnership Conference was ‘City of Nations’. How encouraging, on Brexit morning, to be reminded that London’s multicultural mix is something to be celebrated as an unprecedented opportunity for the gospel!
At St Anne’s, Limehouse, the LGP conference (like the South East Gospel Conference before that) is a regular fixture on our staff and Parochial Church Council calendar. It is a great time to listen to challenging talks together as a team, and to discuss during the coffee and lunch breaks how what we have heard might apply in our own context.
At the start of the day, Nigel Styles reminded us, from Acts 1:1-11, that Jesus claims the whole world as His, empowering our evangelism by His Spirit and Himself directing operations from heaven. Moreover, in a city of nations, local outreach is global!
At the end of the day, Neil Powell showed from Romans 15:14-33 not only that gospel ambition is the greatest ambition and leads to global ambition, but also that it can only be fulfilled through gospel partnership. We go in the power of the Spirit, but not as self-contained congregations. The churches of London need each other.
In between, we heard wonderful examples of how the nations are being reached in London. The morning session was a panel discussion from those working in settled communities: an Englishman working with Bengalis, a Russian reaching Russians and a Brazilian growing a multicultural congregation.
One challenge that struck our team was to give up our privileges and preferences and allow the congregation to learn to disciple one another, even if they don’t do it the way we would and even if they make mistakes along the way.
The afternoon session consisted of short presentations from those working with transient communities, again showing different approaches for each community. For Chinese students in London for a few years, the priority is to evangelise and train them in expository Bible study using Mandarin, to prepare them to return home. The lonely wives of Japanese businessmen respond initially to English classes and friendship. All transient communities need to be introduced to good churches when they return home, and some Singaporean students described how well their community cares for one another both before, during and after their stay in London.
The most vivid of the glimpses we had into the cultures around us was when David Kim, LCM missionary to North Korean refugees, gave us a taster of a Korean prayer meeting – getting us all to pray aloud at once!
The opportunity to reach people from all nations without even leaving our city is unprecedented. None of our congregations can do it by themselves. We came away thinking about which particular communities are around us in Limehouse and not just how we can reach them, but also how we can, in the power of the Spirit, partner with others to do so. Nigel Styles had put a date in our diaries: Jesus is coming back!
