27 September 2021 | Binfield, UK [Helen Pearson] <\/p>\n
The challenges to young Christians in urban communities were the focus of the first Diversity Lecture of the 2021-22 academic year at Newbold College. The featured speakers were Pastor Lorraine (Lolly) Fontaine, a pastor in central London and Thomas Mwadim\u00e9, Youth Ministries Digital Co-ordinator for the Adventist church in southern England.<\/p>\n
When the pandemic struck in the spring of 2020, paid Adventist youth leaders were furloughed and the responsibility for youth leadership was taken up by Mwadim\u00e9 and supported by Fontaine and others. They set up a series of \u2018no holds barred\u2019 online discussions. With young people, most of them living in urban contexts, they discussed the challenges to faith in all parts of their lives \u2013 especially during the pandemic. The need for more \u2018safe spaces\u2019 like this was a recurring theme of the evening.<\/p>\n
The two speakers had requested that Newbold\u2019s ecclesiologist, Dr Tihomir (Tihi) Lazi\u0107 joined them to comment on their observations with biblical perspectives. He brought to his comments his own experience as chaplain to Adventist students at secular universities whom he had asked the question, \u2018What tensions are you experiencing between your student\/professional life and your Christian faith?\u2019 The three speakers had all met young people whose faith was being \u2018challenged in robust ways not acceptable in church\u2019. They agreed that young people are leaving the church but not faith. They are looking for an individual journey with Jesus. <\/p>\n
Questions about the role of a pastor in the church since lockdown began the discussion. \u2018What is the space for the pastor now\u2019 asked Fontaine \u2018when so many online church meetings proceed with no pastor?\u2019 Many young people also had difficulties with trusting church leaders after accounts of sexual and financial exploitation and official over-protection of the institution at the expense of individuals. Young people feel the need for a pastor who is able to create safe spaces for them to wrestle with issues for themselves and think critically about their faith without the need for spiritual \u2018achievement\u2019. They yearn for the space to experience Jesus wherever they are and to learn about deep transformation rather than superficial behavioural changes in their lives. They want to see a church where values are embodied by the members rather than imposed from the outside in. They want relational religion rather than proclamation. They want to find God in their entire lives \u2013 in social, ecological, political, racial, and gender issues. They want a focus on expressing faith in community and social justice.<\/p>\n
Lazi\u0107 suggested that the \u2018safe space\u2019 model of church, which Mwadim\u00e9 and his colleagues had offered, was \u2018close to the \u2018communal\u2019 model that Jesus offered where there exists a continuously \u2018improvised balance between community and the person\u2019. This is a model where there are clear values and where failure and brokenness can be accepted, where authentic differences can be expressed without being suppressed, where people can grow authentically without being expected to change overnight.<\/p>\n
Mwadim\u00e9 identified a misconception held by some church members. \u2018They think young people just want a hippy lifestyle,\u2019 he said. \u2018But one of the deep questions that was driving many of the conversations we were having is, \u2018What does the Bible say about these things?… A lot of young people were looking for \u2018a much more clarified understanding of what the Bible is actually saying. Many of them have a sense that our cultural lenses have blocked our understanding of a full perspective on what the Bible says about the role of women, race, sexuality and other difficult topics.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018The question is,\u2019 said Mwadim\u00e9 \u2018How can we have an honest interaction about these difficult topics without just trying to find one answer that we can give in a young people\u2019s meeting? What we pass off as Bible teaching is often a very thin outer crust which doesn\u2019t properly represent the richness and depth of what the scripture is actually teaching.\u2019 He described the richer experience of God which follows from \u2018liberation from the shackles of a particular kind of thinking\u2019.<\/p>\n
Fontaine identified tensions between theologians and old un-biblically based rhetoric from the local church pulpit, board meetings and camp meetings where calls to uniform action do not motivate an authentic change of mind. In the talk and the lively Q&A which followed, Fontaine and Mwadim\u00e9 talked about the patience of God who \u2018allows us to grow in our own lane and own time\u2019 and the need for leaders and parents to develop that patience.<\/p>\n
Lazi\u0107 talked about the need to recognise the dangers of binary approaches to change. He described the frontier-mentality progressive who asks new questions and encourages adaptation to new environments but too harshly and quickly disregards the preservation of what is important in the past. At the other extreme is the traditionalist who maintains the need to return to past purity while fearing to embrace change.<\/p>\n
The evening demonstrated that the Adventist search for God and for present truth is alive and well in the 21st<\/sup> century. As one older listener commented, \u2018Encouraging to hear these younger folk grappling with the real stuff \u2013 gives one hope for the church.\u2019<\/p>\n A report like this can only give a glimpse of the riches of this evening\u2019s discussion. The full recording can be viewed here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n
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