With over 400 million users, you’re obviously not the first person to succumb to peer pressure – or curiosity – and sign up to join the busy Facebook community!  I’ve been plugged in for years, but it’s only in the last year or so that I started to find it interesting and fun.  Prior to that, it was basically the same people who I interact with in other forums and mailing lists, so there wasn’t much news.  Now I keep in touch with dozens of friends who otherwise are far beyond my usual circles.

It’s actually pretty easy to sign up, but if you want to do it right, allocate enough time to fill in at least some of the basics.

To start, go to http://www.facebook.com/ and you’ll see right on the home page:

Fill this in and click on “Sign Up”.  You’ll be asked to verify that you’re not a robot (really!) – it’s a measure to prevent spammers infecting Facebook with bogus accounts):

Enter the two words you see – in this case “view” and “doorways” – and click on “Sign Up” again on this page.  You’re in!  You have an account set up on Facebook.  You’re not done, however.  First up, it’ll suggest some friends you might connect with:

I have no idea who these two people are, so perhaps they’re special potential friends to everyone who joins Facebook, I dunno. .  Since Facebook isn’t much fun without friends being online and connected with you, the system tries all sorts of ways for you to identify your potential friends. Next up is its ability to scan your address book:

If you’d rather not have Facebook scan your mailbox and figure out your correspondences, no worries, just click on “Skip this step”.  Next attempt to match you: enter your high school, place of work, or some other sort of identifying information:

Still want to stay relatively anonymous? Click on “Skip”!  Next step is to set up a profile picture for yourself, something I highly recommend as it will help your friends out there recognise you:

Click “Save & Continue” and you’re set and will be dropped onto your new, relatively austere, Facebook newsfeed page.  Along the top it’ll remind you that the system has sent an email to confirm your email address, entered in step one, and in your email inbox you should get a message that looks like this:

Click on the link and you’ll have confirmed that the email address you entered is legit.  Now you’re good to go on Facebook and it’s time to start sending friend requests and filling in all your personal information so others can find you too.

Adam Brown, Technical Director

Last October we featured OSCAR, an amazingly useful website with all sorts of resources and handy information for mission workers.  Another feature of Oscar which we didn’t discuss on that occasion is the OSCARactive interactive community.  The words ‘interactive community’ might speak dread to those of you who are reluctant users of the internet, but this social media tool is really easy to use and is a good resource for connecting mission workers.  There are over 300 people working all over the world in this community and it’s growing rapidly.  You might even be able to connect with someone you didn’t previously know working in the same town as you.  I have.

On one level it functions a bit like Facebook: you can connect with friends, message them, be prompted when it’s their birthday and send them ‘gifts’, but the added advantage is that the only people in this community are those actively involved in missions, so we’ve all got something in common right away.  Members are spread round the world, although you might easily bump into old friends from Bible college through this community.  There is also a live chat function for those whose work leaves them feeling a bit lonely, and online meetings are arranged.  You can uploads photos and videos too.  I’ve made new friends in missions through this community.

You can post any needs you have and people are able to help each other out with advice.  I often post the availability of the Syzygy car when nobody’s using it, and usually it’s booked out within days.  You can advertise your own events, or look at a comprehensive calendar of what’s on.  There are a large number of groups set up for those with particular interests, and I’m a member of several.   They include finance, mission-minded church leaders, ICT and Mentors for mission.  I’ve made some very strategic links with people through these.  You can also join a discussion – an open forum which gets started when one member asks a question, or makes a statement, and others support/critique/argue.  Recent subjects include Fair Trade: Think Again, Doing Mission With a Disability, Useful Apps, and Measuring the Success of Integral Mission.

I’ve not illustrated this article with screen dumps as the web pages have lots of photos of members on them, just like Facebook, and I don’t want to be responsible for inadvertently compromising anyone’s security.  But give the site a visit, you may make some good connections through it.  Go to http://oscaractive.ning.com/ or just click here:

This month’s guest blogger is Charlotte Wright, who shares a retrospective on an ‘unsuccessful’ short-term experience.

I spent a year in Uganda working with a mission agency after university, with the aim of considering longer term mission work.  I thought I had an idea of what life in Africa could be like, but my expectations were wildly misplaced!  I had the opportunity to go as part of a team, but as I had significant other overseas travel experience, the agency were happy for me to go out on my own and “tag” onto another team already in place.

Looking back, my faith was very shaky at that time, but I was certainly not aware of it.  Once I was resident in my first location, the loneliness of mission work set in and I felt totally isolated, despite there being lots of people around, both African and from overseas.  I missed my life in the UK – my family, being able to go out for a drink with friends and also playing sport, especially as women taking part in sport was frowned upon by those around me.  I was told that I could not wear trousers as it was not culturally appropriate and I really fought this rule – I simply couldn’t understand how this might upset people, despite being told that it would!  On the back of this, my faith faltered and I realised later that this was because I had always used friends and family to prop up my faith rather than relying solely on God.  I simply wanted to go home!  Thankfully however, I am stubborn and refused to give up.  I rode the loneliness out and I also had friends kindly organise to come out and visit me which was a massive lifeline.

Charlotte setting off for an island in Lake Victoria

After 4 months I moved to a different location and found myself with more emotional support from other mission workers around me.  My faith started to recover and I felt a little more settled.  However, I found myself time after time questioning the long term beliefs of the African women around me – I couldn’t understand why they would be happy to be so subservient to men…. My western views often caused upset and anger from those around me.

Over the final six months, I took part in a biblical foundations course and God spent significant time putting my faith back together, for which I will always put as my major lesson from the trip, learning to rely solely on God and nothing else.  Once that foundation was in place, I found I could withstand so much more.  However, being forced to preach most weeks was very difficult, as I never felt called to preach and I found this very stressful.

Looking back over the time I spent away I am not sure that I was a blessing to those around me……. I clashed with the culture, did not enjoy the subservient role that women are obliged to take and generally missed being at home.

Some would therefore see this year away as a failure.

However, God used the time to rebuild my faith, for which I will be forever grateful, and I have also developed a passion for the African culture and country.  I have subsequently come home to be involved in financially supporting mission as well as understanding how difficult mission workers can find things whilst away, hence my involvement in Syzygy.  I would therefore not say that the experience was a “failure”, just a massive learning experience as well as strengthening my faith hugely over the time.

Charlotte Wright is a stockbroker who is Chair of the Syzygy Trustees.

The legal situation of Christianity in the UK is something that has been slowly giving cause for concern over the past few years, and has become more serious in recent months.  Although our religious freedom is obvious to the many millions of Christians worldwide who can be oppressed, imprisoned, or even lynched with impunity because they lack any form of legal protection, an aggressive secularist agenda has been building up momentum, prompting well-known Christian apologist Michael Ramsden to observe recently that whenever Christian rights come into conflict with rights based on sexual preferences, they will be trumped.

Much of this situation has resulted from the Equality Act 2006, which (quite rightly) made it illegal to discriminate against anyone on the grounds of their religion or sexuality.   However this left an area of uncertainty over what happens when rights collide, resulting in a number of court cases as pressure groups (and their lawyers) endeavour to get more clarity.  We report on a number of cases so that you are informed about the issues.

Cross – For many years the wearing of a cross has been a issue which emerges occasionally in the popular press.  It is not unusual for employers to ban the wearing of jewellery in the workplace and wearing a cross is not deemed to be essential to Christianity (unlike a Sikh Kara bracelet).   A BA employee was banned from wearing a cross and in a high profile case BA was found not to have discriminated against her.  A Christian taxi driver was ordered by York City Council to remove a palm cross from his cab in case it caused offence to passengers, though the council subsequently relented.

Public witness – two Christians were warned by police that they were committing hate crime by handing out tracts in a predominantly Muslim area of Birmingham.  A university CU was reported to police for handing out gospels to students.

Homosexuality – A Christian couple running a B&B in Cornwall refused to let a homosexual couple share a double bed.  They argued that they were not picking on homosexuals, but because of their beliefs only supply double rooms to heterosexual married couples.  The court found them guilty of breaking the law, but reduced the fine out of respect for their religious beliefs. This couple subsequently admitted that they knew they were breaking the law but felt they had a right to set their own standards for their own business.

Faith in the workplace – A Christian doctor with an unblemished record may be struck off after discussing his faith with an adult patient who agreed to the discussion.  A Christian nurse was suspended for offering to pray for a patient.  A Christian registrar lost her job for refusing to officiate at same-sex civil partnerships.  It is now illegal to advertise for a Christian to fill a job in a Christian organisation if when the job could be done just as well by a non-Christian.

Gay marriage – Earlier this year the Government announced plans to create same-sex marriages on the same basis as heterosexual ones.  At the moment homosexual partnerships are recognised on a different basis to a marriage and there is no requirement to carry them out in churches.  There are significant concerns that once gay marriages are legalised, it will be a discriminatory offence for a church minister to refuse to perform one.

After centuries of Christendom in Britain, Christianity is now actively being relegated to an obscure private viewpoint which is not allowed to have any impact on how Christians behave or speak in public.  Christians are not actively persecuted yet, but it is clear that attempts are being made to disempower Christians so that they have no legal defence for traditional Christian activities and opinions.

While each of the above cases is worrying in itself for Christians, it is clear that the purpose of the law is good: that Christians can no longer discriminate against others because of their beliefs.  The result however is bad: that others can discriminate against Christians because of their beliefs.  Lions: 1 – Christians: 0

For further information visit The Christian Institute‘s website.

For an update on the current situations see A little more secular?  The Lions have scored again.

Is this church?

When you hear the word ‘church’ what image comes to mind?  A building?  A community?  A service?  A family?  Perhaps all of these do, or perhaps only some of them.  What do you think is essential for church?  Your answers to these questions may vary significantly from those of people of a different generation to you.  They might also acquire additional significance if you’re working in a missions community where the local church may have lengthy services in uncomfortable conditions, with repetitive singing in a language you don’t fully comprehend, and loud sermons that are not aimed at your needs.  And that’s just if you’re lucky enough not to be preaching or leading the worship.

For most older mission workers, church may not be an enjoyable experience, or even a relevant one, but it’s part of the job.  You go to church, because you should.  It’s expected of Christians, particularly of mission workers who should set a good example to the local believers.  And what happens there is pretty standard: Acts 2:42 sets out the four pillars of church: teaching, fellowship (whatever that is), communion and prayer.  Though we always leave out the embarrassing bit about having all things in common and nobody being poor – that was just culturally appropriate to the Jerusalem church.

Is this church?????

Somebody I spoke to recently was completely unable to understand why young people did not want be part of an experience like that.  They’re just not committed, she complained.  I was able to explain that young people (postmoderns, Gen X) are able to be highly committed, but only to things they believe in, and not merely to things somebody else thinks they ought to be committed to.  So younger mission workers are increasingly spurning traditional ways of doing church, just like young people in Europe.  They are finding new ways of doing things, and making them work, but this doesn’t always look like church to an older generation.

Why is it not church when a group of people meet regularly together in someone’s house for prayer, or worship, or Bible study?  Because they don’t do them all at the same time?  Because it’s not Sunday?  Because there’s no leadership?  Is that really what defines church?

This conflict has its roots in a transitional phase that the western world is going through at the moment: the much-talked-about but little-understood transition from modern to postmodern.  It’s not merely an intergenerational conflict where the old don’t understand the young and vice versa; it’s a change of epoch on a scale of the fall of the Roman Empire or the rise of the Enlightenment out of the middle ages.  It involves fundamentally different worldviews and ways of doing things.  Including church.

Is this church?

Here in the west there are already many different ways of doing church which do not fit the traditional model.  House church led to cell church, and 50 years later there are simple church, messy church, cyber church, deconstructed church, and an awful lot of people who love God together but don’t do church at all.  While this development may not have touched the cultures of the two thirds world in the same way yet, it has had an impact on a large number of young people who have grown up among a postmodern generation who are passionate about church in a different way.  When these young people enter the mission field, they want to keep doing things in a different way, but often the older generation not only sees this as a threat to the work they’ve spent their lives establishing, but doubts the very genuineness of the young people’s relationship with God.

I write this brief introduction to a highly complex issue in the hope that older mission workers will be able to be tolerant of younger ones who want to do things differently, and that younger ones may understand why the previous generation just can’t see what they see.  This of course relates only to the church needs of the mission worker; how it impacts on the church needs of the local believers is an entirely different matter!