Crossing Borders
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The Brandenburg Gate in Berlin stands as a metaphor for many things. Having made a visit there a few years ago and nonchalantly wandering through while drinking my Starbucks coffee I was struck by how my action seemed almost obscene when compared to those who had lost their lives attempting to follow the same route just a few decades ago. This most poignant of all European landmarks remains a strong symbol for us today. The gateway between old and new, modernity and post-modernity, repression and freedom, secularism and Christendom. For Christians it is also a reminder that coming to faith is a journey. For those attempting an escape from east to west during the cold war days it represented changing sides and changing authorities, risking everything to step across into a new world. Making the crossing was for some a frantic dash to freedom while for others the result of years of meticulous planning. Today we can casually step over what was once the most fortified border in the world without fear of guns, dogs or mines. The Brandenburg Gate is however also a symbol of something more subtle. It could be said to represent the transitionary stage of life that the church in Europe is experiencing in the early part of the 21st Century. Finding its way in a post-Christendom environment it is anchored via its history into what is regarded as safe and known while at the same time having to engage with a ministry context that is unsure and untested. In its modernal setting the church is becoming increasingly marginalised while in its post-modernal one it seeks to contextualise the gospel message to a spiritually hungry culture. This juxtaposition creates some major challenges for those tasked with leadership. The reality facing established churches right across Western society is that it takes far more energy and time to move into and inhabit the new than it does to just keep doing more of the same. There is a default button built into the psyche of most churches, and most Christians as well, which restores the original settings if things start to move too far too quickly. It requires determination and courage to cross over as well as faith and calling to live on the other side of the border. Those making this most perilous of all journeys out of East Germany had a resolute sense of purpose combined with hope and a clear vision of what the future could be. We need no less today. May 2011 be a year of adventure as we re-imagine a church equipped and intentional about living incarnationally on the far side of the dividing lines. Chris Stoddard December 2010
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