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Camp Reflections from Brian Winslade


By Karen Vanlint | March 12, 2009


Brian is the director of Crossover Australia, an arm of the Baptist Union of Australia, which is focussed on helping the churches to better reach out to their local communities and bring people to faith.


The church is in decline, so how can we reach out to non-Christians, many of whom have no church background to refer to. What does evangelism mean in our context?  BW thinks that it is more a slow process of education through friendship rather than telling someone the four spiritual laws and praying the sinner's prayer with them. This kind of evangelism will be based in small groups and the community they exist in. Most people are happy to be prayed for if you offer that. Perhaps bringing them to church isn’t the first step, and church can be an alienating and scary place because it is so foreign to other places people go. When you go to the cinema, the usher doesn’t shake your hand and introduce himself. Nor do other patrons turn to greet you and ask you how long you’ve been coming here. Some churches ask new people to stand and introduce themselves - this can be very threatening. Even a meet and greet time can alienate if the 'in' crowd just greet each other and leave the newcomer alone.


As a church do we over-program so much that we don’t allow people time to spend with others who are outside the church? Do we need to de-structure our program so that we have more time for community?  How can we support people in their workplace? Give people validity for not being at church functions. Pray and lay hands on  people for the job that they do. Pastoral visits at work?  Maybe we would talk at member’s meetings about how we do mission and church. Hearing people’s stories is a valuable tool for mission, even the one’s which aren't 'happily ever after'.


Who is church for? Is it for the community of believers, or is it for non Christians to come and hear the word of God? How would our church look different if it was for non believers? Consider the kind of music we sing/play, the style of communication, the décor, the seating. Are we more concerned with our own comfort and what we are used to than what would better reach out to non believers? Maybe we would have café church and a regular meeting?  For the sake of our guests, perhaps some explaining would take place, making bridges between what they know and what is going on. For example, instead of "Please turn in your Bibles to the book of Zephaniah", the leader might say: "In the book in your seat, please turn to page 1004, where you’ll find the biography of Jesus written by Luke".  Anyone can find a page number, they might not 'understand 'gospel', but people know what a biography is. BW related a story of some nonbelievers who came to church for a special event, and said that they enjoyed the singing and the preacher had some good things to say, but why were people giving the Nazi salute (raising their hands in worship)? Building bridges of interpretation and explanation helps people to understand what's happening in the service.


Questions from this session:

Q: If change must take place, how do we help people through the grief and loss that come as a result of losing things that are important to them, eg pews?

A: Pews were not part of the original church. People stood in church for hundreds of years and when pews were introduced, it was a scandalous change that was like bringing in lounge furniture. Many things that we hold as being integral to our church experience were at one time new and radical changes that brought division and dissent. How selfish will you be when faced with the gospel? i.e. using the pews example: 'Pews are an important part of my church experience' vs 'Pews are an uncomfortable form of seating that do not enhance the experience for someone new to the church, so I will give them up'. Change is always difficult, and we need to help people through it.


Q: Is the sermon still a valid form of communicating God’s message or a hangover from Victorian times?

A: We need to keep evaluating what we do, and in these times, using multimedia is a good tool. Effective communication is important, however that is done.


Q: How do we balance the demands of being part of the church community and ministering to people outside the church?

A: BW had no answer for this one.




Session 2


Baptists are notorious for leaving their church and starting a splinter group rather than confronting and resolving their conflicts. Many people leave the church because of hurts or unresolved conflicts. Church in general gets a bad press- full of hypocrites, bigots and paedophiles - why would anyone want to go there??

The church today is like a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy ... of a photocopy of the original church, so that possibly it bears little resemblance to the one Jesus founded. We have the original in the Bible that we can refer back to.

Acts 2:42-47 gives a picture of the first church.
They were devoted to:

  1. the apostles’ teaching. They had a desire to be fed spiritually
  2. the breaking of bread- sharing meals, fellowshipping over food. They opened their homes to each other
  3. prayer- wonder, miracles and signs happened. They were in touch with the power of God.
  4. the fellowship- koinonia. They shared life together, rejoiced and mourned together, had everything in common. Stewardship means that all I own belongs to God and I cooperate with what he wants to do with his stuff. Selling their possessions, they gave to all who had need. “ Our care for the derelict and acts of love became our distinctive sign”. Christians were the ones who cared for the sick and those who were unwanted by anyone else. The love we have means that we lay down our lives for each other. 1 John 3:16-19. 1 Tim 6:17-19. Have we delegated pastoral care to the professionals? How much are we a community known for our love for each other and for strangers?