Faith in Practice
Reading people
Hannah Kowszun
Dealing cards to people at fairs
for pagans seems suspicious to some Christians. But for
Andrea Campanaleit's the best way to engage with people whose
understanding of spirituality has very little to do with
church.
There's a lot of fear about
pagans, witches, people who have alternative spiritualities. I
think there's a worry that they'll convert us more than we'll
convert them. But I believe that my faith is deep enough and strong
enough to cope with being challenged, being stretched. It's not
about us seeking to change them, but allowing us to be changed by
their spirituality and their experience of the supernatural.
A lot of Christians have forgotten
that we have spiritual practices and there is a spiritual aspect to
our faith. Spiritual practices we think of as the occult have their
origins in a Christian understanding, for instance meditation.
These are things that can sustain us and enrich our faith to be a
disciple for the whole of our lives.
What I do is outreach to spiritual
seekers. About seven years ago I started to see in my friends, who
weren't Christians, an interest in spirituality. And as I became
aware of it I noticed in that culture there was much more
willingness and openness to talk about spiritual things. It came to
a head when a friend of mine rang me and said she had had a
spiritual experience. Because I was her Christian friend and
because I was in church leadership at the time, she wanted me to
explain what that was about. I felt like I was completely
unprepared for that: the idea that people were experiencing God
outside of church and how it might reference Christian
faith.
A few months later I heard Yvonne
Richmond talk about her experience of researching people having
spiritual experiences outside of church. She was saying that rather
than seeing it as the occult and having nothing to do with it,
there was a hunger and an interest that we should engage with. This
resonated with me and what I had observed. She mentioned a group in
Guilford called Eden People, who were putting up tents in fairs and
offering to pray with people. I knew in that moment that this was
what God was asking of me.
Kingston, where I live, used to have
the largest environmental fair in London. I knew that God wanted me
to go and offer to pray with people and see what would happen in
that space. It turned out another church group had been in contact
with them; they had felt the same thing. We got together to prayer
walk the site and persuade a few more people to join the
team.
On the day of the fair I remember
thinking, 'What have I done?', not really knowing what to expect
but having other people looking at me as if I knew what might
happen. Colin, the guy from Eden People I had heard about, was also
there at the fair on the invitation of the organisers. I asked him
whether anyone would come to us and he just said to wait and see:
we had queues of people who wanted to talk and pray with us all
day. We had Hari Krishnas to one side, mediums on the other side
and a guy with a healing gong opposite us. It is quite fearful
walking into that environment when you have been brought up with
the attitude that this is of the devil. It opened my eyes: these
were people who were searching and yet this was a place where
Christians weren't.
One of the more controversial
aspects of what I do is use cards. They're not Tarot, rather they
have Bible stories on them and bits of scripture. For a lot of
Christians because it's on a card they think there's something
demonic about that. For me it's contextualising our scripture into
a form in which that person can receive it, because that's how they
experience the spiritual. In my experience it's a fantastic tool to
speak about and introduce them to God, as a God who cares about and
who matters to them. They get to take the card away and I'll see
people a year on who show me the card they've kept in their wallet
for that time.
For people who come from that seeker
background setting foot into normal church would be too big a jump.
Going to the fairs is very much a one-off encounter. I want to
engage with people the rest of the year, so what are the other
connection points? I set up Sacred Space Kingston and we started
doing art exhibitions, using that as a way of introducing
spirituality and entering into conversations. Since then I've
worked with the interfaith forum and I'm currently working in
partnership with the YMCA: I've developed a meditation course and
the idea is to meet people at events, then invite them to the
course. I already have a missional community of mature Christians,
most of whom still go to their own churches, and my hope is that
they will disciple the spiritual seekers who want to explore
Christian faith and practice with us in the future.
I'm currently on the CMS Pioneer
Mission Leadership Training course. For me it's been quite healing
because I've had a lot of problems with church: people
understanding who I am and what I'm trying to achieve. Doing this
course gives me a credibility, gives me a place. The course has
given me a theoretical framework for what I was doing quite
instinctively. It's provided me with a community of people that
understand what I bring, affirm that and encourage it, rather than
seeing it as a problem or something to be avoided.
I don't see myself doing anything
radically new or different. I want to use the experience I have to
train other Christians to engage with spiritual speakers and
encourage people to step out. There must be loads of other
Christians out there who have these kind of feelings but don't have
the space or confidence to try sit. If we're serious about seeing
people engaged with the Christian faith we've got to be willing to
take some risks and make mistakes.
I think I wasted a lot of time
trying to explain to people what I wanted to do and get them
onside. When I actually went ahead and did it, they got
it.
Andrea Campanale was talking to Hannah
Kowszun