Using the Gospel to Build Bridges in Rome
Editor’s Note: How to Reach the West Again is Timothy Keller and City to City’s book on starting a new missionary encounter with Western culture. We invited ministers from around the world to respond to, extend, and engage that vision.
Ten years ago, I moved from Brazil to Italy to plant a church, Hopera, because I had a passion for engaging post-Christian people with the hope of Christ. The chapter I wrote for Movements of the Gospel explains some of our efforts in this area. Here are some additional thoughts that emerged as I read Timothy Keller’s How To Reach The West Again.
A Post-Christendom Evangelistic Dynamic in Action
Keller rightly observes that “For 1,000 years, the Western church’s basic ministry model was premised on the social reality that people would be coming, prepared, and positive and we could simply preach our sound biblical sermons to them.”
In our local context, we have found both the power and the limitations of religious services and Bible studies. God blesses the preaching and study of his Word, certainly, but the number of Romans who are “coming, prepared, and positive” to hear it is small. Most residents of Rome do not have any interest or inclination to visit a Protestant church.
To engage our friends who do not yet display spiritual interest, we organize a number of initiatives every year. Some are cerebral events such as talks and debates. Some are creative, such as plays and concerts. Some draw from the liturgical year, such as Christmas and Easter services. Some are social gatherings that celebrate certain groups or phases of life, such as 70s parties for the 50+ crowd, Valentine’s Day Banquets for couples, and events for women by women on International Women’s Day.
“events that ask people to say their piece, give a contribution, and ask questions engage them better than events where they are mere recipients.”
In addition to our church’s efforts, we launched a Creative Collective to inspire artists and professionals to use their creativity for the common good. People’s first initiatives were an arts festival, an interactive seminar at a public library, and painting part of a mile-long wall in Rome that became Rome’s Artistic Mile. These efforts helped us realize that events that ask people to say their piece, give a contribution, and ask questions engage them better than events where they are mere recipients.
This constellation of gatherings and conversations succeeds if believers nurture close relationships with people they can invite. To facilitate these connections, we encourage our people to take practical steps, such as holding parties to get to know neighbors of the building they live in. Recently, we distributed 1-euro coins and challenged people to use them to treat a work colleague for coffee to nurture that relationship. Our hope is that our people can nurture loving relationships where they live, work, play, and shop together, and that friends can get invited to events that engage their interests, raise spiritual questions, and set them on a faith journey.
Collaboration Across Cultures and Nationalities
Timothy Keller also writes that, in our Western context, it is missionally effective “to be as multi-ethnic as possible and to learn from and be connected to the multi-racial global church. In a world divided by tribe and race, there is no greater witness to the power of the gospel.”
At our church, we’ve been similarly struck by the power of aligning contextualized foreigners with culturally-aware nationals. People who come from other nations, often as missionaries, sometimes don’t master the local language and culture. At the same time, nationals may lack an external viewpoint and perpetuate traditions and modes of witness that may no longer be relevant to their context. The result in both cases is ministry that doesn’t gain traction or introduce people to faith.
But when nationals and outsiders work alongside each other, study that country’s culture together, and craft a pertinent philosophy of ministry, creative ideas for witness emerge. The gospel sounds fresh to seekers’ ears. Their personal and collective idols are exposed. Deep commitments to Christ develop. Churches display racial reconciliation.
This issue is vital in contexts where the church is small and many of the laborers are foreign missionaries. And it will increase in importance due to migration of Christians to the West. At times they form ethnic churches in the receiving nation, or international churches that gather several ethnicities but fail to reach a substantial percentage of nationals. But when contextualized foreigners work alongside culturally aware nationals, much fruit can ensue.
Engaging in civility, peace-making, and bridge-building
In Rome, we’ve found that organizing debates with representatives of other religious viewpoints helped us form respectful friendships with them, engage people we wouldn’t otherwise come in contact with, and model civility and bridge-building.
We first invited the Italian Union of Atheists and Rationalistic Agnostics to two debates about the existence of God at a local university. I was surprised at how easy people found it to invite friends to these events. It was a step of growth for us, too, to hold events that did not proclaim our perspective alone, on our turf and in our terms, but interacted with another worldview on public grounds and in equal terms.
We then held debates with leaders of the largest Buddhist group in Italy on the meaning of life and with a representative of Rome’s Mosque on how religion can be a force for peace in the world. The Buddhists were positively surprised by our invitation, and accepted it eagerly. In the event we held with them, half of the audience was Buddhist. One attendee, who had been invited by a Buddhist friend, subsequently started to attend Hopera, was baptized in the following year, and is currently training for ministry.
The Muslims were initially reticent. I attempted to contact them four times, but received no response. But after a Muslim student we befriended at a university Bible study told a leader at Rome’s Mosque that we were “serious people,” he agreed to meet me. We developed trust over a handful of meetings, as he gifted me a beautiful edition of the Quran and I gave him a Bible. He confided to me that he appreciated that we too believed that sex should happen only in the context of marriage, a common value which spoke to our shared attempt to be true to our beliefs as religious and cultural minorities. Our series of meetings culminated in a respectful debate at a literary café in Rome. At the end of the event, the director of the World Muslim League in Italy thanked us with a silver tribute plate.
Stretching ourselves, and even having positive reactions, reinforced our conviction that Christians should be pioneers in civility and bridge-building. People of other persuasions long to be invited, appreciated, and respected. And these debates are tremendous opportunities for witness, for the message of Christ shines when it is presented alongside a different viewpoint.
The West’s shift away from Christendom reduces the effectiveness of traditional evangelism methods. But this fact should not be a cause for discouragement. It should be a call to creativity. If people know less about the Christian faith than they used to, their joy will be greater when they discover it anew.
About the Author
René Breuel is the Lead Pastor of Hopera, a church in central Rome that hopes to spark a movement of new churches in Italy, and is the author of The Paradox of Happiness. René loves his wife, Sarah, their two boys, and lemon and hazelnut gelato.