It's time for me to take long service leave. Ten years out of college friends started doing the drive around Australia or jump onto a plane break. Long service leave began in Australia to allow colonial public servants to sail 'home' to England, safe in the knowledge that they were able to return to their positions upon their return to Australia.

We haven’t made firm plans yet but would love to get back to London where we did a short stint years ago. That was a six month exchange in the last year of theological college. Some lessons learnt then stuck:

In many ways English evangelicals face similar challenges to us. The culture is secular and western . Growing healthy churches with evangelism is hard hard work. 

There is enormous pressure to bow before secularism - to act only for those within the church and not to speak to the world outside. The temptation is to be more ‘open’ and less hard nosed and thereby win influence by winning the approval of the watching world.  The effect of this is to look in vain for the approval of the cultural elites.

English Christians seems to turn their back on Europe in similar ways Australian Christians do to Asia. They know its there and there are enormous gospel needs and opportunities but its mostly a place to holiday. The focus of mission work was Africa and South America.

You don’t have to get on a plane though. At CMS Summer School you hear good gospel hearted brothers and sisters talking about God’s work beyond the Diocesan boundaries. In one day you can be given a window into the richness of African revivals, or the secular poverty of Europe, or the dangers of Muslim work. These missionaries are there longer than those of us who blow through on long service leave.

What about you? What have you learned from being somewhere else?