The Ministry of Reconciliation

Tony Peck, EBF General Secretary

EBF Council - Lisbon, Portugal - 25 September 2008

All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 2 Corinthians 5 v18-20

Brothers and sisters in Christ, my Report is in the Report book and you can of course ask me questions about it a little later. But as I have done since I became General Secretary I use this opportunity in the Council to pick out a theme and seek to address it in away in which we seek to bring together the faith of the Gospel with our EBF life as I have experienced it over this past year.

This year I choose the theme of reconciliation and focus on that verse from Paul’s Second letter to the Corinthians:

… in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.

What does it mean that God in Christ is reconciling the world to himself in Christ?

And what does it mean that he has entrusted to us the message of reconciliation?

And what do both of these mean for the EBF, its churches and Unions?

These words of the Apostle Paul are of course about individual salvation, the individual reconciled with God through Jesus Christ, his death and resurrection. Next year we celebrate 400 years of Baptists life in Amsterdam. But it is also the 175th Anniversary of the first baptisms performed by Johann Gerhard Oncken the Father of Baptist life on the continent of Europe. I have been reading something of his story recently and what comes across is a great missionary vision a great desire for Europe to known this reconciling love of God in Christ. And from Hamburg that remarkable movement of the Spirit of God which spread to central Europe and Czarist Russia, often encountering fierce persecution. When Oncken made his famous remark, ‘Every Baptist a Missionary’ he was building on his own vision and passion to see new churches established and men and women in Europe come to Christ.

So in 2009 I hope we will recover this vision. Already we have seen remarkable growth in some parts of the EBF. In other places the work is hard. But still people are stepping out in faith in obedience ot the call of Christ as at this baptism service which I witnesses at the end of the Summer Festival of the Estonian Baptists.

This year our Mission Conference focused on new ways of mission and being church in Western and Central Europe. We had 20 younger mission leaders with us. They have this same passion of the gospel but they are thinking in very different ways about how to reach new generations of secularized people. We heard of a mission to people who fly kites in competitions using an inflatable church building; we heard of a hip-hop church in Denmark.; and other interesting and exciting initiatives.

In Russia we have seen those great mission journeys by vehicles and bicycles to take the same message to all the parts of that vast country. In Moldova and Romania in the past few years have been large-scale mission which have resulted in many committing their lives to Christ.

And the desire to see men and women reconciled to God this is the driving vision of our Indigenous Mission Project about which you will receive another encouraging report later in this Council. This year as soon new churches planted, new believers added We continue to believe that enabling and empowering indigenous leaders to plant churches in their own culture and context is the most effective form of evangelism and church planting.

At our mission Conference earlier this year Teddy Oprenov told us of the mission among the Roma (gypsy) people, people still despised and discriminated against in many parts of Europe. Our Hungarian, Romanian and Czech Baptist Unions are also working among the Roma people.

And here reconciliation is not just only about the individual person being reconciled to God in Christ. The work among the Roma people is also about working for reconciliation of those who are on the margins of society or those who are rejected, persecuted or oppressed. I believe that this is also what Paul means when he talks about Christian believers being entrusted with the ministry of reconciliation.

This year we celebrate the fact that ‘our’ seminary IBTS in Prague is 60 years old. In some of our cultures 60 years is called a diamond Jubilee. I hope that the whole EBF will join the Trustees and Staff of the Seminary in giving thanks to God for this great resource for forming men and women for leadership in our Unions, seminaries and churches. Many of you have been sending your gifted young people there to be educated to a high level and to have wider vision of what God is doing right across the EBF.

But let’s remember that it began in 1949 as a vision of the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board to help bring together in reconciliation students form countries which had so recently been at war with one another. Those first students lived in dormitories together and learned how to relate to one another in Christ even though their countries had just fought such a terrible conflict.

IBTS continues to bring together students for very different cultures, language groups and still sometimes still those from nations in conflict with one another. Here is a picture from two years ago and shows Liridon, and Albanian Christian from Kosova with Dejan from Serbia. Today the situation between Kosovo and Serbia is still tense after Kosova declred its independence. BMS mission worker Justine Horsfall has been there for several years now working to brining together the activities if different Christian mission agencies in the work of mission and reconciliation. And even one of the small fragile churches in Kosovo is called the ‘House of Peace’ expressing everyone’s hope for the future of Kosova.

This kind of reconciling work is not always easy but it shows that we are first of all brothers and sisters in Christ from every nationaility and whatever language we speak.

This year a group from the EBF went to Israel and Palestine. We stayed in Bethlehem for three days before going on to Nazareth. I think that it is an experience which Anna, Regina, Toma, Graham and myself will not forget. Because in this place where Jesus was born a wall now surrounds the heart of old Arab town. If the Wise Men came to visit the baby Jesus today they would have to take a very roundabout route, pass through numerous checkpoints and have the proper permit on their passports to reach the stable in Bethlehem.

The Palestinians who live behind this wall are effectively imprisoned behind it with permits needed to travel the 15 minutes to Jerusalem and these difficult to obtain. One brother in the Bethlehem Bible College said it us. ‘It is like living in a huge jail with the sky as the roof!’ We met this young student at the Bethlehem Bible College who was almost finished his Masters study course at a university in Jerusalem when the Israeli government withdrew his permit so he could not take the final classes he needed.

We don’t need to get involved in all the tragic politics of Israel, Palestine and the Middle East or in any way be anti-Jewish to recognise that these our brothers and sisters in Christ, Baptists and other evangelicals who are suffering injustice and restrictions on their lives in Palestine today at the hands of the modern State of Israel. . Not only in Bethlehem but the Wall goes throughout the West Bank cutting off farmers from their land, communities from one another.

What does gospel reconciliation mean in this situation? Both Israelis and Palestinians live in fear of one another. During our visit we met with with an Arab Christian lady who is a member of the Israeli Parliament the Knesset and is working for reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinaians.

We also met a Palestinian Baptist we visited who owns a piece of land outside Bethlehem which has been in his family for several generations. Now it is under threat to be taken from him to be used for a Jewish settlement. He says that as a follower of Jesus Christ he does not want to become bitter in the situation. So he brings groups of young people from the different communities to his land to something called the Tent of All Nation where they can learn to be reconciled to one another.

Behind the wall are 16 Baptists and evangelical churches in the Evangelical Council of the Holy Land. We met with their pastors and discussed their situation which often feels lonely and cut-off and how the family of the EBF could help them. We met Hanna Massad the gifted pastor of the Gaza Baptist church. He and five other families have had to leave Gaza and live on the West Bank for the moment because of threats against the lives by Muslim extremists in Gaza.

The Churches of the Evangelical Council need our support and our encouragement. Later in this Council we will consider their application for Membership of the EBF. We are glad to welcome our friends Munir Kakish who pastors two churches, one in Israel and one in Palestine to represent them and he will tell us more about the situation there.

So brothers and sisters, I believe that in the EBF God continues to entrust us with the message of reconciliation in Jesus Christ, that in him human barriers can come down.. But first we must demonstrate this reconciliation among ourselves. At the moment a group from the EBF is working with one of our smaller Unions where there has been a sad conflict for some time now. Relationships have broken down and the work of the whole Union is affected. We are not find the task easy but we hope and pray that individuals can be reconciled and the Union unite once more in making Jesus known to their society.

And this week on many of our hearts is Georgia and Russia. We are glad that representatives of both Union are here and will be spending time talking to and praying with one another before they talk to us in the Council tomorrow. What does reconciliation mean in this situation? - between Baptists who have very different ways of being Baptists; between representatives of nations where the recent conflict has caused death and destruction and political turmoil and deep hurt.

I believe that this is where it matters that we unite at the Cross of Christ and around the truth that we all believe that in Christ God is reconciling the world to Himself. That in Christ our national allegiances are of secondary importance to us experience unity in him. That in Christ we can listen to one other’s deep concerns and hurts, and yet can be those who stand for a Gospel peace and justice.

God has given us the message of reconciliation; in our evangelism and mission; in seeking to act as reconcilers and peacemakers with those who are in conflict. And in this Council we are considering God reconciling the world to himself in terms of our commitment to caring for that world and our physical environment. Paul talks in his letter to the Romans about the whole creation waiting to be set free. In that reconciliation of God’s created world we too can play our part.

So as we come to this important year leading to Amsterdam 400, let us remind ourselves again that those first Baptist believers meeting in Amsterdam were a group of people who sought to be faithful to the Scriptures and God’s call, and as a result they dared to be different. Theirs was a new and distinctive witness to the reconciling love of God in Christ and from that our Baptist identity was formed. Please God that 400 years later we too can dare to be different in the ministry of reconciliation which God has entrusted to us.