No Longer at This Address

Well, Tesco managed to mess up the delivery of a box of groceries to Colin’s latest address in Bristol. It was supposed to be a welcome box, as he has just started a new job and settled into new accommodation out there in the west country, and to remind him of parents in far distant Lisbon who were thinking of him. 

But such is the lot of students and the recently graduated. To be “of no fixed abode” for months on end and to move from pillar to post before eventually settling down into some semblance of routine, and have a place to sort of call your own.

I was reminded of this transitory lifestyle recently, by a quote I read from a German theologian, Helmut Thielicke, of the last century in an article in the Evangelical Alliance’s online magazine “Idea”.

“The Gospel must be constantly forwarded to a new address
because its recipient is constantly moving house.”

Even back in the 1950’s, he recognised how rapidly the goalposts were being shifted, and how the way we communicate the eternal truth about Jesus Christ to one generation will not work for the next. And here we are in 2012. And I don’t think we’ve learnt an awful lot in the evangelical churches, how we need to keep on re-addressing the package, so it gets to it’s destination.

And, by the way, Colin did get the groceries!

http://www.eauk.org/idea/is-there-a-theology-for-pioneering.cfm