gerard kelly

A Open Door for Mission in Europe?

The global car manufacturing industry is not having a good time in 2009 – but that does not diminish the value of the lessons learned within it over the recent generations. Among these, the work of Toyota in creating a global learning culture is astounding: an authentic industrial success story of the 20th century. At the heart of this story has been the creation of the Toyota ‘Global Knowledge Centre’.  Determined to both foster and resource a culture of continuous improvement, President of Toyota USA Yoshio Ishizaka, created an environment that was neither academy nor school and yet contributed to learning and innovation. Without such a centre, the question was asked, where does the knowledge go? Unless we keep our stories – exploring, and exchanging them and learning from success and failure – how will we improve? Ishizaka’s bold approach contributed enormously to the success of his own company and shaped the thinking of a generation of industrialists.

Quite recently, Professor Jim Saker, Director of the Centre for Automotive Management and Ford Professor in Retail Management at Loughborough University asked me a simple question. Why can’t we do the same for Christian mission in Europe? We face challenges easily as great as those faced by Toyota through the 20th Century. We need innovation. We have stories to draw on. Where is our knowledge centre?

Jim’s question brought remarkable clarity to a quest that has gripped my heart for several years: to create on mainland Europe a centre where mission, spirituality and learning can come together; where thoughtfulness and conversation are encouraged, not despised, and where young leaders can gather to consider the historic challenges facing the churches of Western Europe. Tied to no particular denomination; serving all equally; competitive for the Kingdom of God rather than within it, such a centre could foster missional imagination across the European landscape. It could touch ancient churches deeply embedded in our culture and history and equally resource new and emerging movements. Its aim would be simple:  to empower young Europeans to believe in their churches and transform their world.

We now have the opportunity to create such a centre on an ancient farm not far from Lisieux – France’s second most significant place of pilgrimage after Lourdes. Operated for fifteen years as a centre of healing and renewal, Bethanie Christian Centre has served Catholic and Protestant believers from France, the UK and beyond, and has a deep reputation as a place of prayer and learning. There is an ancient well at the very centre of the farm: and many visitors report that they have found ancient wisdom here. The new owners of the centre will be The Bless Network, a UK-based mission agency who since 1995 have been training and mobilising believers in mission and prayer in the UK, France, Croatia, the Netherlands and Spain. Directed from the beginning by Gerard and Chrissie Kelly, Bless has never claimed the economic clout of a Toyota Corporation: but it has aspired to the innovation. It is an agency that has always sought to live at the meeting-place of past and future: carrying the treasures of an ancient faith into the changing landscapes of the 21st century. Working primarily (though not exclusively) with the under-30’s, Bless has sought to nurture and develop young leaders and release their talents into serving the churches of Europe and the communities they, in turn, serve: to discover through missional engagement what it is to ‘live for others’.

The new ‘Missional Knowledge Centre’ at Bethanie will provide a hub for this growing movement and allow many others to engage with it: coming together to foster and resource missional imagination for Europe. At the heart of the project will be amissional community – a group of people resident at the centre who through their shared work, prayer and rule of life will provide its living heart. This community will create and resource a permanent prayer room, modelled on the 24/7 movement, and will encourage all who come to see prayer as the heart of mission and mission at the heart of prayer. Out of this will flow training and mobilization – those engaging in the Bless programme of gap-year and summer-team missions will be able to gather and find mutual inspiration and learning in the vital task of re-engineering Christian mission for a post-Christian Europe. And beyond this there will be learning opportunities for a wider network of partners and participants: all those sharing our desire to see the churches of Europe renewed and the communities they work in transformed.  

Community, Prayer, Mobilisation and Learning: four strands woven together to create a Knowledge Centre. If this sounds a little like a Monastery, perhaps this is no accident. New monastic communities are flourishing across Europe and North America as young people find in intentional community and a shared rule of life the sustainable faith they have been longing for. And more, weren’t the monasteries of Europe at one time theKnowledge Centres from which our culture grew? Hasn’t God once before in our history created islands of work, prayer, learning and innovation from which Christian mission has flowed: into education and art and the service the poor?  Perhaps even the innovators at Toyota were reviving an earlier model and memory….

The story of The Bless Network’s move to Bethanie is told on the web at http://blessatbethanie.tumblr.com and there are more pictures of the property on Ihardlyknowher. We are still on the lookout for partners in this project; both now, at its inception, and into the future. Contact Gerard Kelly at Gerard@bless.org.uk for more information.