| Surinam Toad Spells Hope for the Church
By Brendan Munro
The humble Surinam Toad is, I believe, a beacon of hope for the church of Jesus today!
That’s it Munro – you’re definitely off yer trolley this time. What are you on about?
If you rely on the mass media for signs of the church’s future, you could easily be discouraged and disappointed. At times it looks as if Christianity is fast becoming a persecuted religious minority. Hardly a day goes by without some new story in the headlines of how Christian thought, practice or liberty is being silenced or sidelined, mocked and marginalised. In the rush to be accommodating in a multicultural society, it seems as if the very tolerance being afforded others is being denied to Christians.
Yet I believe the answer has more to do with challenging the church than changing the world. Jesus has put us here as salt, light and yeast – agents of preservation, illumination and transformation. But if we adopt a siege mentality, the world around us is being denied access to God’s antidote.
The insidious thing about a “siege mentality” is that we don’t think we have one – we’re convinced we’re reaching out to the world. But in truth, most of us are waiting for the world to come to us. Even our outreach programmes are really in-grab programmes – sorties into enemy territory. The root problem is that we’re pre-occupied with building our “churches” while we leave the “kingdom” to others. In actual fact Jesus told us to seek the Kingdom and leave the building of the church to Him.
This is what I mean about “siege mentality” – it’s a state of mind, a mindset. Even when we’re outside of the four walls of the “church” – in our minds we’re still thinking of how we can get the world into the church – instead of getting the church into the world! Jesus didn’t tell us to stay, He told us to go. He didn’t tell us to build beautiful barns and sit around waiting for the wind to waft the harvest in through the door. He encouraged us to look up and see that the fields are white unto harvest and to pray that more of us would get into the fields. This is why Jesus said the gates of hell would not prevail against us. When were you last attacked by a set of gates? No, the obvious inference is that it is we who should be doing the assailing.
I’ve recently heard two separate prophetic words that I thought very interesting when put together. In one the Lord was saying we should be prepared for a season of persecution. In the other, the thought was that if Christians are embedded and enmeshed in the fabric of society, then it will be very difficult to “clobber us”! Put simply, if we draw our wagons into a circle, we make ourselves an easy target.
The thought struck me that it may even be God himself who is behind, or at least allowing, this season of persecution. It happened in Acts – the early church was sent out to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the uttermost parts of the earth. But by the end of Acts 7 they were all still hobnobbing in the capital. Shades of Babel! Anyway, the persecution following Stephen’s death certainly had the desired effect of moving them forward with God’s plan.
We’ve got to make the subtle yet crucial switch to encouraging and empowering believers to get meaningfully involved in the mechanics of community life. I’ve been stunned recently at the new openness within both local and central Government towards the involvement of Christians in the structures of society. Yes it’s true they’re not keen on us proselytising and they’d prefer it if our projects and initiatives didn’t carry the label “christian”. But they are keen on the “common good” – people working out of mercy and grace to benefit anyone and everyone. Sounds suspiciously like God’s idea of “kingdom” to me. Even sounds like a better definition of “witnessing” as well! They may not be so keen on helping us build our churches, but they are keen on building the community. Dare I say it, but is it just possible that God is using what we think of as public persecution and secular intolerance to force us to work smart, to witness in a far more effective way than we’ve ever dreamed? It’s like the dear lady who was suspended by British Airways for wearing a tiny cross. She said she wore it so that people would know she was a Christian. Now I fully believe B.A. was wrong in denying her the right to wear it, but I also think that the wearing of jewellery isn’t the best way to demonstrate we’re Christians. Surely we’re salt, light and yeast? Jesus said they would know we were Christians by our love. They should know we’re Christians not because we’re sporting a cross or cornering them in the corridor and slipping a tract in their hand. They should know we’re Christians because of our honesty, integrity, love, compassion, mercy, grace, helpfulness, patience, kindness and generosity.
There is a subtle but significant mind-shift that needs to take place. Instead of harnessing people to fulfil our vision of “church” – we need to release people to fulfil Jesus’ vision of kingdom. It will require courage and faith from church leaders to equip and release people to pursue their God-given dreams. It will also require humility, vision and discipline to engage in a process of relational unity that makes strategic and effective use of all our resources in reaching our communities.
But what, I hear you screaming, has all this got to do with the Surinam toad? No doubt the only reason you’ve read this far is because of a maddening curiosity to learn why an obscure South American amphibian spells hope for the church. Well, you see, the Surinam toad is a real thorn in the flesh for evolutionists. The toad is a living example of something Darwin himself said would completely undermine his theories.
The Surinam toad has a weird and wacky reproductive procedure involving water aerobics with her partner, a longer than normal oviduct to get her eggs on her back, and skin on her back that grows around the eggs to form a nursery. How could such an arrangement have evolved? Darwin said "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down." There are several, complex, interdependent elements of the Surinam toad’s breeding mechanism, each of which would have required the presence of the others to necessitate development. External environmental conditions could not possibly prompt the development of all the interdependent elements needed at the same time. But if you had to wait for each element to evolve separately, the species would be long extinct before it could solve any reproductive crisis.
This, for me, is cause for much hope. You see, our God is a creator and thankfully we live in a creationary landscape. If transformation is to ever come about, then significant changes need to take place in the church – in our unity, in our mindsets, in our networking, in our release of people, in our attitudes towards kingdom and community. If we’re waiting for such changes to come through evolutionary means, we’ll be waiting an awfully long time. But in a creationary landscape – new life can and will spring up anywhere and everywhere.
Isaiah says in 45:8 "You heavens above, rain down righteousness; let the clouds shower it down. Let the earth open wide, let salvation spring up, let righteousness grow with it; I, the LORD, have created it.” (NIV)
All across Britain today there are encouraging and fascinating signs of spiritual renewal – they’re just not in the expected places. Unity is breaking out in countless areas; believers are rising up with dreams and engaging with their community; different congregations are networking with a vision to truly impact their cities. God isn’t just doing something new – He’s doing it everywhere at the same time – and it is cause for much hope!
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Brendan Munro, 16/01/2007 |
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