Working With London's Churches

Evangelists serve on the staff of 12 churches, to visit homes in the neighbourhood, to be involved in all kinds of evangelism, and to train church members in the work.     The Mission has recently conducted a Strategic Review of its activities and the extract below asserts our continued strong commitment to work with churches in London in the task of urban evangelism.  To read an historic example of  Church and Mission in fruitful partnership see the article on Spurgeon and the LCM.   To read about the present-day role of a church-based missionary see the article Church-based mission work – what is it?   Both these articles appeared in the Mar/Apr 2005 issue of Span magazine, which also contains background information and stories from our church-based missionaries.     Extract from the Strategic Review - Jan 2005      In a period when the Christian church is very weak (representing less than 10% of London’s population) there is more need than ever for Christians to work together.

To ignore existing churches and ministries leads to a diversion of time and energy away from evangelism. It also undermines the claims of the gospel in the minds of non-Christians. Yet it is not easy to overcome the suspicion and parochialism that often stand in the way of genuine co-operation, at both a London-wide and a local level.

Recent developments, especially in the Church of England, involving the re-planting of inner-city churches provide new opportunities for LCM to work closely with the churches.

LCM’s Mission Statement affirms that it is our goal to ‘enable people to join Christ’s church’ in London. To achieve this, LCM must work closely with as many churches as possible, and must ensure that it is not viewed as a rival.   From its inception, LCM developed a distinctive approach that limited an evangelist’s ministry to a specific geographical district or people-group community. This was of a size limited enough for the evangelist to be able to visit everyone within it frequently enough to build relationships of trust and friendship. These relationships in turn provided the opportunities for sharing the Gospel by word and deed, and led on naturally to involvement with a local church.   This approach works best where churches and missionaries co-operate in encouraging and enabling contacts to attend the church. The involvement of volunteers from the churches in the work of the LCM is one important way of expressing that co-operation.   LCM is convinced of the relevance and value of this church-engaging ‘City Mission’ approach to urban mission, and commits itself to applying, reviewing and improving it in patient, long-term ministries.   In particular, LCM will:

direct its ministries in a way that maximises co-operation with local churches; aim to increase the number of missionaries directly attached to churches; review the work of its Christian Centres, seeking to avoid all inappropriate duplication of church-based ministries; build active links between the Centres and local churches; make the number of converts joining a local church a prime measure of the effectiveness of its ministries.

Please pray for the Mission as we try to work through this agenda – and for London’s churches, that they all may grow in numbers and in every grace.