South Asian Forum newsletter issue 11 June 2013

South Asian Forum of the Evangelical Allaince Newsletter

Issue 11: June 2013

S outh As i a n F orum of the

Evangelical Alliance

connecting, uniting, representing

The South Asian Forum (SAF) is a grouping within the Evangelical Alliance, set up to provide a place for South Asian Christians in the UK to encourage, support and equip each other for mission, and to represent their concerns to government, media and the wider Church. With the support of both individual members and church members totalling more than 20,000 people, SAF is steadily growing.

Visit www.eauk.org/saf to get involved in supporting this wonderful

ministry by becoming a member of SAF. Once you become a member, you will receive idea, the Alliance’s bi-monthly magazine, as well as regular newsletters from SAF detailing our progress. If you are already a member of the Evangelical Alliance you can add SAF to your Alliance membership at no extra cost. In this instance please send an email to saf@eauk.org

Reaching South Asians

with 40 per cent of the country’s population but is less than one per cent Christian. We are excited as we see the Lord work through our partners as, combined, they have seen over one million come to faith in the past 15 years and engage with many, many more.”

South Asian Concern (SAC) was started in 1989 with a burden to reach out to the South Asians wherever they are – in the UK, South Asia and the wider diaspora. Since that time, it has worked with churches throughout the UK and further afield, resourcing them to make the gospel real, relevant and understandable to those from Hindu, Sikh and Muslim backgrounds. Alongside this work, SAC has worked in partnership with various people and projects in South Asia, primarily in north India, enabling them to share the good news of Jesus through both words and actions.

SAC is at an exciting stage at present as they welcome Kevin Wren as their new director. Kevin has been in post now for five months and he was asked what he saw as his priorities for the coming year.

Kevin said: “I see that we have three main priorities at present: To develop our relationships with churches which have large South Asian communities around them but are just not sure of how to go about reaching them; to grow our support for projects in South Asia from the strong base that we have in Uttar Pradesh; and to encourage support primarily in terms of prayer but also in finances so that we can continue to serve the Lord in this work.”

Kevin went on to explain: “It is so exciting to work with churches as they see both the needs and the opportunities that surround them in their South Asian community. We work with the church in various ways, encouraging them to look at all that they do and say from a South Asian mindset. We offer various ways of involvement including preaching on a Sunday morning, running a training event or undertaking a church audit. We also supply resources such as books – a great one is Notes for the Journey – Following Jesus, staying South Asian – music and study materials. Our website is also full of great tools that can be used to equip individuals and churches, as well as enquirers.

“Here in the UK we have over 1.4 million Hindus and Sikhs and three million South Asians, making up over 30 per cent of the population in some areas. We have a responsibility to understand our neighbours’ faith and culture, and to show them that people can follow Jesus and stay culturally South Asian.

“We have seen examples of believers from a Hindu background who struggle to relate to their church due to misunderstandings and miscommunication, and we want to enable churches to reflect Revelation 7:9 where people from all nations, tribes and tongues worship the Lord together! We work with churches in order to enable individuals to reach out and welcome in people from other faith backgrounds and introduce them to Jesus in ways which are real, relevant and understandable.”

When we asked Kevin about South Asian Concern’s work in north India, Kevin explained: “We partner with a number of projects, including medical, education, church-planting and encouraging emerging leaders. This is an area

Kevin went on to explain that people can engage with SAC through prayer, inviting them to their church or group, contacting them with regards to specific issues and supporting them financially. SAC’s contact details are as follows: Email: info@southasianconcern.org Tel: 0208 770 9717 Web: www.southasianconcern.org Post: PO Box 43, Sutton, Surrey SM2 5WL

Naujavan: brand new British Asian beats On Monday, 22 April, Naujavan officially released their first single Walls from their upcoming debut EP. The song speaks of God’s patient love as He seeks to rebuild and restore us. The opening phrase “our walls have crumbled down, broken head to toe” starts with the reality of our brokenness and celebrates that as God repairs us, we too are called to offer the same to those around us.

For all the years Naujavan has been in operation (15 years this year!) there have been countless requests for the ‘sound of worship’ so often experienced at events to be recorded and released. This sound that often blends Asian and western rhythm, combines languages and still has a distinct current and ‘British’ edge has taken time to pin down. At the heart of it, music is an incredible gift that can be used to worship God. Songs travel and speak truth into lives like nothing else.

The prayer here is that many young people would get a taste of who Jesus really is and would grow closer to him through it.

The Naujavan band led by Sanjay Rajo, along with other friends, musicians, writers, producers and worshippers, have gathered together to carve out anthems of worship with this British Asian flavour - many hours in the studio, honing the detail and seeking to communicate the message most powerfully. The result? A new six-track EP written by the collective of Naujavan, speaking of God’s goodness and crying out for Him to lead us on as a united people.

It may be focussed on the British Asian scene, but this message is most certainly for everyone.

The EP is set for release at Naujavan’s EP launch party on 29 June at All Nations Christian Centre in Wolverhampton. All the details are on the Naujavan website (www.naujavan. com). This is going to be a significant night celebrating what God has done over the past 15 years within Naujavan and catching a glimpse of the future vision. There will be some special guests performing on the night and it will be first opportunity to get your hands on the EP. If you can’t wait until then, you can download the current single Walls from iTunes (and most other online stores), watch the full-length music video and get the chord chart for the song on the Naujavan music page: www.naujavan.com/music

SAF profiles its work, partners and resources in the quarterly Newsletter and on our website www.eauk.org/saf

The Burning Ones: empowering leaders SAF speaks to Steve Uppal about his new book, The Burning Ones, and his upcoming event on empowering leaders to cultivate their anointing.

I have had the privilege of being a part of the All Nations family for over 20 years and during this time much has been learnt.

However, the last three and half years have been hugely significant for us. During this time, we have been on an intentional God-led journey and this has led us to focus on the spiritual health of the Church.

Healthy things grow, so we have focused on health before vision and strategy. A part of that has been developing a culture (or personality) that attracts the Holy Spirit to us. I am convinced that scripture and history reveal that the Lord can be attracted or repulsed by an individual or people, or church. That may appear too strong but I believe we see this in God’s relationship to the Israelites in the Old Testament and also in the New Testament in the letters to the seven churches in the book of Revelation.

As a church, we have therefore made it our focus to continue to grow in our understanding about the heart of God and to be shaped by this, so that we become attractive to Jesus as his bride, believing that his presence and anointing makes all the difference. This journey as a church has made us realise that we don’t want just a brief visitation or a good meeting with God but a habitation marked with God’s strong presence.

I know some reading this may think this is strange because God is always with us and has promised never to leave or forsake us.

I understand that and believe that too. However, as A W Tozer said: “To have found God and to pursue Him still is the soul’s great paradox of love.” In Revelation 2 Jesus rebukes a church which seems to be doing everything right but has forgotten their first love for Jesus. In Revelation 3, he threatens one church with vomiting them out of his mouth. Yet both these churches thought they were doing well and perhaps from the outside looked good. However, as we know the Lord always looks at the heart.

So how do we attract the Lord to us? I believe this comes through a fiery and passionate love for Jesus in our churches. Sadly, many

Christians have lost their passion for Christ and the joy of their salvation. This led me to write my latest book, The Burning Ones.

For when we are ‘burning’ for God, we not only have the privilege of enjoying an intimate relationship with the Lord our God but the potential as a church to bear much fruit. In previous generations there have been notable examples of believers who saw God move in power through the completeness of their surrender to His Holy Spirit. Today, I believe God is raising up a whole army of like-minded, passionate warriors.

I believe every heart was created to burn - to be set aflame with the radiating glory of God’s presence. Many have settled for much less than this. The Burning Ones is written to help people move into a life of fiery passion for Jesus and give them tools to help fuel the fire.

As a church we are passionate about equipping others to realise their potential in Christ and it is for this reason that we are holding an event on 5 July for leaders wishing to understand more about God’s anointing, how to grow in it and use it in their everyday lives.

Steve Uppal is senior leader of All Nations Christian Centre, Wolverhampton, a vibrant multicultural church which reflects the diversity of the city.

The Burning Ones is available from Christian book shops and Amazon. Booking is now open for the Fuel the Fire Leaders Day at: www.companyofburninghearts.net/leaders-day

Practice spirituality – the new social phenomenon Practice spirituality is the new zeitgeist, the new social phenomenon. We have had dwelling spirituality and seeker spirituality, and now it is all about spiritual practices.

This can be seen through the social phenomenon that is mindfulness, built as it is on mindful awareness practices, or meditations, that come from a spiritual background.

As we enter festival season it can also be seen in the rise of festivals offering a wide range of spiritual and health practices. This cultural shift to practice spirituality was presciently tracked by Robert Wuthnow as far back as 1998 in his book After Heaven: Spirituality

WWW.COMPANYOFBURNINGHEARTS.NET

South Asian Forum of the Evangelical Alliance

in America since the 1950s. What is interesting is that this is largely happening outside the Church.

Bill Hybels and Rick Warren caught the zeitgeist of seeker spirituality through seeker-sensitive services and purpose-driven lives, and the Church needs to wake up to how culture has moved on. The problem is that culture doesn’t think the Church has anything to offer in this area.

We need to rediscover our rich history of spiritual practices in contemplation, not just for the sake of the world, but for our own sake. These practices must indwell us rather than just be taught as ingredients to be put together in formulaic and inauthentic teaching.

Too often we teach things that are not being practised.

This is not just about our witness or the potential of authentic contemplative evangelism through mindful Christians. It is also about our discipleship. Our discipleship is built around teaching people information, knowledge and what to believe – and people are largely untransformed. We need to develop a discipleship that is based on spiritual practices, or spiritual practices that transform character.

Why is this important?

In understanding depression, and relapse into depression, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) has a working model which says that the self is seen or felt “as inadequate, worthless and blameworthy, and negative thoughts are seen as accurate reflections of reality”.1 This is not just a concept or idea of the self in our minds, it represents “the distilled essence of many experiences of mind, feelings, and body”.2

Become a member - www.eauk.org/saf

to include practice spirituality as a central strand.

Something must be done about being. We inhabit dwelling spirituality as the church, and have moved in part to seeker spirituality. We need to embrace practice spirituality. The danger is that in a church largely run by activists, the call for a paradigm shift to include contemplative practices may fall on deaf ears.

As the mindful Jesus said: “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

Shaun Lambert is the senior minister of Stanmore Baptist Church and the author of A Book of Sparks – A Study in Christian MindFullness.

A Book of Sparks is a 40-day devotional book that invites us to enter into a practice-based spirituality that is rooted in the gospels and Christian contemplative tradition. It also draws on the wisdom of modern psychology.

Segal, Z., Williams, M., & Teasdale, J., (2002). Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for depression. London, The Guilford Press, p.67.

2 Ibid, p.67.

3 Ibid, p.67.

4 Quoted in ‘Mindfulness in Schools’, a dissertation by Richard Burnett, p.23.

1

Home for Good

It is not new conceptual information that provides transformation but rather the provision of “new experiences for the mind and body, over and over again, that will accumulate to create an alternative view”.3 These new experiences are provided through meditative or mindful awareness practices.

Christian meditative or mindful awareness practices need to be put at the heart of a new type of discipleship, drawing on ancient sources as well as creating new ones that emphasise our embodied reality.

Christina Feldman, who teaches mindfulness, says that people “practising Buddhist mindfulness are seeing liberation in bite-size pieces”.4 Of course, once they have experienced a bite-sized piece of inner freedom, people want more of it, and will then often go on a spiritual quest.

There is a spiritual awakening happening in our culture alongside and fuelled by this practice-based interest in mindfulness and related phenomena. It is not that dwelling spirituality and seeker spirituality have had their day. People like to visit sacred places but they don’t stay; they are seeking a charged moment with the numinous in the fleeting visit to the cathedral or ruined abbey.

Growing up in Kenya and going to a boarding school in England gave me a desire to find a home, a dwelling place. But I also learnt that stability-in-place is hard to find; we have homes as we move on, not just one home. In the same way, we often realise our status is not about being knowers but wise learners, seekers after wisdom.

My stumbling into practice spirituality was a life-and-death matter, as stress and anxiety brought me to a place where I felt I was falling apart.

The spiritual and reality-focused practices of the Jesus Prayer, Lectio Divina and mindfulness threaded me back together again. The Jesus Prayer is an ancient prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner”, which is repeated with the breath. Lectio Divina is a slow, prayerful, meditative reading of scripture. The rich indwelling of Christ that comes from practising Lectio Divina will lead us to the values and beliefs that give us stability.

In a world that is in the grip of anxiety, fear and depression, we mustn’t promise to be the church that solves people’s problems. We must offer them the tools to help them take responsibility for their own spiritual journey. We may see Christian festivals being reshaped

Could you use your home for good by providing a foster placement for a child? Or could you provide a child with a home for good by adopting them into your family?

Every day more than 50 children are taken into care in the UK. They are removed from chaotic, traumatic, abusive, neglectful or desperate situations. Some of them need a home in an emergency. Some of them need a temporary home until they can return to their families.

Some of them need an occasional home to give their families a break.

Some of them need a permanent home with a new forever family.

Our churches are uniquely placed to help. We could offer all sorts of families to step forward to foster and adopt vulnerable children, and a wider supportive community. We also have our own adoption story to inspire us as we have experienced being welcomed and included into God’s family and our spiritual home for good.

After a period of extensive consultation the Home for Good initiative was launched by Care for the Family, CCPAS (The Churches’ Child Protection Advisory early this year. It aims to encourage and equip local churches to develop an intentionality about the recruitment and support of foster and adoptive families. In addition we will seek to build stronger relationships between churches and social services, and where necessary, develop services that will support Christians involved in fostering and adoption.

For more information, visit www.homeforgood.org.uk

Could you be a foster or adoption champion?

We are currently looking for people who are (or have been) involved in fostering and adoption and would be interested in championing this important issue in your church, and other churches in your area. To find out more, contact Phil (p.green@eauk.org)

SAF profiles its work, partners and resources in the quarterly Newsletter and on our website www.eauk.org/saf

Book review: God Has No Favourites Everybody engaging with people of other faiths should read this book. That means all of us in our pluralist society today. The writer examines what the New Testament teaches about other faiths and their followers – Greek and Roman religions, Gentiles who met Jesus, and the Jewish faith. The results are surprising and challenging.

The first chapter of God Has No Favourites: The New Testament on First Century Religions by Basil Scott examines the Greek and Roman religions that Paul encountered in Acts, as well as studying all the Gentiles who responded to Jesus or his followers. The book is worth buying for this chapter alone. There is much here for us to learn in our attitude to people of other faiths, as the writer draws out many similarities in religious practice then and now.

Surprisingly, the New Testament does not condemn other religions as such, though it is sharply critical of false worship, false wisdom and false ethics. God wants to draw all to Himself and so He “deliberately embraced all nations in the full knowledge of their religious

upbringing, allegiances and practices” (page 53).

The chapter on relations between Christians and people of other religions is full of practical advice on issues affecting food, work, family, conversion and persecution, based on careful study of all the relevant texts.

The book’s message is summed up in the title: God has no favourites. There is only one way to God’s salvation. It is the way of faith – complete dependence on God and His grace. Abraham is the classic example, but not the only one. We who have heard the good news of Jesus are privileged to know this truth clearly and simply. But God does not treat people of other faiths as second class citizens.

He does not label them according to their religion, race, gender, education or wealth. As in New Testament days, there may be ‘Godfearers’ in all religions.

There are many questions to which we do not have answers, as we think of God’s dealings with people of all faiths and none. You may not agree with every conclusion in this book. But you will be refreshed and encouraged by what the New Testament clearly teaches. And you will be challenged to deal with all people with love, respect and hope, confident both in the way of faith that we have received through Christ and in God’s amazingly generous love for all.

God Has No Favourites: The New Testament on First Century Religions, Basil Scott, Primalogue, Bangalore, 2013. 208 pages Available from South Asian Concern, PO Box 43, Sutton, Surrey, SM2 5WL // info@southasianconcern.org // 020 8770 9717 £7.50 plus p & p and Amazon

Has Jesus ever stirred your heart to consider His great love for the local South Asian community?

Do you sense our mutual need to !receive mercy and "nd grace to help us# $Hebrews %:&'( share the good news of Jesus in ways that are understood and received?

You are invited to)))

!Let"s Pray Together"

a local expression of a national initiative of prayer for the good news of Jesus to !spread rapidly and be honoured# among British South Asians $* Thessalonians +:&( Saturday #$ July % &:$'am%#pm (concluding with Indian lunch) All Saints Church* Belgrave +' Kerrysdale Avenue* Leicester* LE, -GH The event is free but donations towards the cost are welcome) RSVP: m)raithatha@eauk)org or terri)skinner@btopenworld)com by ,th July Organised by Leicester Churches and Fellowships in partnership with Jewels in His Crown and South Asian Forum