ITeams.ca: What exactly is the True City movement all about and what is your role?
Greg Reader: True City is a movement of churches inspired by a verse in Jeremiah 29 that talks about “working together for the good of the city”. Specifically it says “the shalom of the city” which has been described as “the total flourishing of the city in every dimension”. This happens at the leadership and congregational level. What we want to see is a glimpse of the city of God reflected in Canadian cities. My role is coordinating focus teams. Focus teams are made up of two or more churches that cooperate in a particular area of city missions. I’ve been working in this role since last summer.

I understand you’re completing a degree. What are you studying?
I’m completing an M.Div. “In Ministry” degree at Tyndale. It’s very practical. It’s focused on the nature and mission of the community of the church.

I’d like you to talk about what you’re passionate about as an academic. So what is Greg Reader reading at present?
I’ll mention two names, two schools of thought that actually come together. Right now I’m reading ”Bonhoeffer as Martyr” by Craig Slane. Bonhoeffer says as long as we’re alive we’re in the process of becoming something. So who is Greg Reader? Who is Greg Reader gonna be in two years? Is my present stage contributing to or distracting from my ultimate calling? It’s really not until we’re dead that we’re complete.

That’s a cheerful thought!
Well, if we get what baptism is all about it’s an incredibly cheerful thought because if we finished our course well then we are now what God always intended us to be. Bonhoeffer says instead of avoiding death maybe we should actually be asking ourselves: how well am I going to live my life in accordance with the purposes of God all the way through? What decisions am I making today that are actually propelling me toward the end that God has given me? Utlimately, it’s not really about me. It’s about Christ and the people of God. So the individual plan for me is just a piece of the calling that God has for all His people. So we could ask ourselves, have we laid down our career to the actual purpose that God has for all people? If I’ve already laid down my life then we can look back from the point of death and ask, how was this life lived? How have I contributed to God’s ultimate purposes? Bonhoeffer is a good example of that because he sided with the Jews and ended up on a gallows. He could have escaped. Just before the war started he was in the States and he could have stayed in the States but he chose to go back.

What is the other school of thought you mentioned earlier?
The other school of thought has to do with the nature and mission of the church based on the writings and thinking of Lesslie Newbigin. He was a British missionary pastor commissioned to India whose experience in another culture and language and discovering other values and seeing how the gospel challenged that culture made him realize that his own church had accommodated itself to western culture rather than being a true witness. Newbigin argues that the people of God are called to be at the point of pressure between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of this world. The question is, if we aren’t feeling the pressure is that because we’re comfortable with our culture or is it because we’ve actually been successful at aligning our culture with the kingdom of God. The only way we’re going to figure that out is by getting an outside perspective, by getting inside another culture. And that’s why the world of IT is crucial because they’re actually connecting churches from all around the world with each other and they’re able to shape each other. There are aspects of the church in North America that could be very important for the church in other parts of the world and there are aspects of the church in the Philippines, Vietnam or in Rwanda that could be crucial for the church in North America to learn about.

Which Lesslie Newbigin book has influenced your ideas?
The best one is “The Gospel in a Pluralist Society” and also “A Word in Season” and “Foolishness to the Greeks”. When we think of missions we tend to think of being “over there” among “them”. We tend not to see mission as right here. Actually what we’ve done here and worldwide is we’ve turned missions into a form of volunteerism. So Christians have their career and then they carve out this extra time to do missions. We tend to approach missions as paid staff and volunteers. I think we need to be asking, how is mission lived out in the place where we spend most of our time and energy – in our workplace? Are the decisions made by Christians working in City Hall shaped by a vision of the city of God or is that a separate thing?

Practically speaking, how can Christians influence government or municipal policy?
That’s where Newbigin was really brilliant because he didn’t want us to go back to a form of Christendom where the church was powerful and at the very centre of society and making all the rules. But if you ask a Christian psychiatrist, for example, he would say my faith motivates me in what I do but when I’m counselling someone I would never mention my faith because that would be unprofessional. Why would that be unprofessional? What we’ve done is relegated our faith to the private realm. But if our faith is true and if that’s what our whole life is oriented toward, how can it be relegated to the private realm? It’s gotta be out there as public truth is some way.

Aren’t there policies that prohibit expressing a bias toward Christianity in certain fields? Haven’t we gone down that path so far that we can no longer go back?
Yes, and Bonhoeffer is a great example of someone who said the laws have become evil and he was willing to pay the ultimate price to change the laws and continue to witness.

Do you see a lot of people who would be willing to make a sacrifice like that?
I think part of the problem is that the message of the church has been primarily about individual salvation and about how I get to heaven as opposed to what is our shared purpose of mission? And I think we need to shift the message of the church so that we’re calling people to a shared purpose rather than holding out this individual escape ticket. Newbigin acknowledged that it’s extremely difficult for people to make the gospel public truth in the workplace. So he suggested that churches form groups composed of people who work in the same field who could wrestle with what it means to let the gospel shape policy in their workplace. Churches often pray for and bless and commission the missionary going over to Africa but what about the guy who has just finished his political science degree and is looking at running for office or getting a job at City Hall? Are we rallying around him and understanding what it means for him to be a witness? What we need are Christians motivated by a vision of the kingdom who work in places of legislation and are willing to make changes to unjust policies. That is going to be much more effective in bringing in justice than just having a few people writing letters to the editor or getting a few volunteers who have a little spare time. If we’re only functioning on a volunteer basis we can cry out about injustice but I think the real question is, how can the church be living out its mission in the workplace? BLM