The God Who Walks Slowly

Benjamin Aldous

Description

We live in a world in which the church inhabits a deep existential anxiety about its future, feels pushed to the edges of society and doesn’t deal well with its marginalisation. Kosuke Koyama’s writing most notably in his famous Three mile an Hour God acts as an antidote for the preoccupation with speed, size and the spectacular - “God walks slowly because He is love.” In The God Who Walks Slowly, missiologist Ben Aldous explores how Koyama’s theology encourages an approach to mission which truly reflects the rhythm, pace, vision and surrender of Christ.

Sujets

• Religion
• Christianisme
• Christian Theology
• Philosophie et théologie

Informations

• Publié par: Hymns Ancient & Modern Ltd
• Date de parution: 30 octobre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780334061137
• Langue: English

Extrait

The God Who Walks Slowly
Reflections on Mission with Kosuke Koyama
Benjamin Aldous






© Benjamin Aldous 2022
Published in 2022 by SCM Press
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Ben Aldous has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the Author of this Work
Scripture quotations, unless otherwise marked, are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version (Anglicised edition) copyright © 1979, 1984, 2011 by Biblica (formerly International Bible Society). Used by permission of Hodder & Stoughton Publishers, an Hachette UK company. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are from the New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
978-0-334-06300-1
Typeset by Regent Typesetting
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd



Contents
Preface

1. Introduction
2. Walking: The Importance of Slowing Down
3. Seeing: Notes in the Margins
4. Talking: Shut Up and Listen, Will You!
5. Surrendering: Nailed Down!
6. Conclusion: In Him All Things Hold Together

Bibliography




Preface
This book is, in part, the product of cultural discombobulation. When I returned to the UK in early 2019 after 15 years in Cambodia and South Africa I was profoundly aware that coming back was not necessarily ‘coming home’. Crossing boundaries, making home in other parts of the world for extended periods, is a common occurrence for more and more people. In fact, it might be one of the defining traits of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Some of us have chosen or felt called to these relocations. Others have been forced to cross borders through no fault of their own. Whatever the particular conditions, writing about these experiences can be liberating. The critical theorist Theodore Adorno wrote, ‘for a man who no longer has homeland writing becomes a place to live’. Writing this book with Koyama as my friend and guide has been about reflecting on my own experiences through his lenses and bringing them into dialogue with the UK context. Writing has helped me, to some extent, ‘land’.
Discovering the work of Kosuke Koyama was like finding a fellow pilgrim who seemed to reflect back to me the dangerous ideals of power, speed and the desire to be spectacular. These are problems that the Church tends towards at times. Koyama was a gift to me when much of my ministry had taken place among the powerless, the slow and the lowly – in short, those clinging on to life.
This book, then, is the product of 15 years of life and work outside the UK and I am thankful to those who I have had the enormous privilege of working alongside, particularly in Cambodia and South Africa. My life has been overwhelmingly shaped by the opportunity to work with colleagues in churches and communities in Phnom Penh, Neak Loeung, Durban and Cape Town. I’m thankful to Hak Hyun and Soeung Won, Nobue, Srey Mom, Vachana, Catherine, Ali and Juliet, Vicky and Bruce, Matt and Sean, Etienne and Beth, Keegan and Lindsay, Auntie Rae, Dean and Miché, and others in those locations.
I’m also thankful to my wife Sharon and my children Talia, Amelie, Reuben and Esther, who have been constant companions and friends in the writing process, and especially Sharon for the lino cut she made which became the cover of the book you are now holding. I am grateful to Peter Houston, Al Barrett, Steve Hollinghurst and others who made helpful comments on early drafts of chapters and made insightful observations about flow and structure. Any inadequacies in the final text are my own.
Parts of these chapters often started life as blog posts (musings of the jazzgoat https://thejazzgoat.wordpress.com ) and versions of some chapters appeared in various guises at workshops and conferences. I am thankful to all those who commented, gave helpful suggestions and were generally encouraging, including members of the Mission Research Network and staff and students at the Queens Foundation in Birmingham, where I am an honorary research fellow. Various versions of Chapter 2 appeared at a workshop at Queens, Birmingham and in Kampen, the Netherlands. I’m also thankful to the staff team at Churches Together in England (CTE), especially General Secretary Paul Goodliff who gave me specific weeks to write during my work, and Bishop Mike Royal for his enthusiasm.
Benjamin Aldous
Pentecost 2022



1. Introduction
Like many children who can remember back to the days of the BBC’s Record Breakers , presented by trumpeter Roy Castle and the mega-brained Norris McWhirter, I remain fascinated by the Guinness Book of Records . I still have the 1989 edition which was a Christmas present when I was 13. It contains a collection of records of human endeavour and oddness. Perhaps, like others, I have been particularly interested in records concerning the fastest, the heaviest, the loudest, the biggest, the longest. For example, the curious pictures of Robert Wadlow, the tallest man in the world at 2 metres 72 centimetres according to irrefutable evidence, always fascinated me, probably on account of me being the smallest boy in my class. Or the longest moustache in the world belonging to Ram Singh Chauhan at an unfathomable 4 metres 29 centimetres.
Apart from the sloth, which is recorded as the slowest-moving mammal in the 1989 edition, there are almost no other celebrations of being slow. Being the slowest at something is not celebrated in most cultures. But this book is rooted in the idea of slowness; of a God who is slow, who slows us down and invites us to live in a more ‘ time full’ way.
The ‘turn’ towards slowness in the frantic, hectic modern world is well embodied in the story of Carlo Petrini, who is the founder of the slow food movement. This movement was, in part, a protest against McDonald’s who were trying to open a restaurant on the Spanish Steps in Rome in the mid-1980s. The slow food movement stands as an alternative to fast food. It takes seriously regionality, locality and time – lots of it – in order to eat a good nourishing meal. As a result, we are seeing a resurgence in artisan processes, from brewing beer, distilling whisky, exploring ancient rituals for making cheese; the list goes on.
My guess is that we have all had moments in our lives when we have just wanted to get off the treadmill that is life. I wonder if that has been an ever-increasing problem from the advent of the industrial revolution when human beings’ daily rhythms were increasingly mechanized. This is in contrast to an agrarian society which revolves around seasonal, communal and intense work patterns at planting and harvest followed by the patient work of waiting and watching. In an industrial society, human worth is reduced to factors of production which results in the loss of cyclical and seasonal time. An industrial society feeds the beast of factories, nourishing the machines that never sleep. This shift has been a turning point in human history.
Subsequently, the world is exhausted because it has been going too fast. People have been living beyond their natural capacities for too long. Our world is time squeezed, condensing lives and livelihoods into shorter and shorter timescales. We watch global events unfold in real time from multiple angles, often on our smartphones, while slumped on the couch. Our expectations of how quickly events should unfold are shaped by these contractions in time and perceptions of how fast we can go. This ranges from my mild irritation that my emails are not receiving the instant replies I think they deserve to the time it takes for a dictator to be removed from power as the population take to the streets, mobilized via WhatsApp and Facebook messenger.
Our inability to live timefully spills over into our ministry and mission. This is fuelled by an existential anxiety about the Church in the future and fearing that our place in the world may be less significant than we’d like. We have often been caught up in survival mode. That was at times my experience leading a congregation in Cape Town. I felt as if I was spending the vast majority of my time making Sunday happen, and when people dropped out or didn’t turn up I’d fill the gap. Jump on the guitar, do the notices, be the service leader, all making me feel tired and resentful. It’s a story I’m sure many reading this book will be familiar with. We are drawn into the narrative that ‘to be busy is to be important’, a signal of how much we are doing and how much we are needed. We are suspicious of those who have the capacity to waste time with others, who aren’t hardwired into the Protestant work ethic. The answer seems to be – obviously – to stop and then slow down to walking pace.
As mentioned in the Preface, much of my own theological journey is rooted in 15 years of living and working in Cambodia and South Africa. From late 2004 until 2010 I lived in Cambodia, a nation largely overlooked in the f