What is success?

English Lessons - to get work in England! 

What is the measure of success in Christian mission?  The temptation is to do what the world does.  Count numbers.  Count smiley faces. Have an impressive story to pass on to others.   What impresses me most about Jesus' mission isn't about outward signs of success.  What is most attractive and compelling is the fact that he hung in with people however dysfunctional they were. "He loved them to the end." As I reflect on our fledgling Roma Church here in Luton, I realise that the greatest triumph is always to stay on course, even when the whole world seems to be falling apart around you.  Yesterday's second gathering was like this.  But amidst the chaos some beautiful things were germinating.  It would be easy to miss them. 

English Lessons - for fun! 

See here our first English lessons in our Roma church.  Richard has them eating out of his hand.  See also Ramona above teaching the adults English.  "Do you have any work for me to do?"  They need to know how to say things like this if they are going to hack it in England.  Using "gadjikanes" (Romanian, the second language of the Romanian Roma)  she is able to quickly get them speaking grammatical English. 
Meanwhile, during our worship we introduced the first of what will be 33 bible stories.  These cover the whole story of salvation from Genesis to Revelation, are only 3- 4 minutes long.  Developed for use with unreached people groups, the idea is to communicate the biblical message in the simplest and most memorable form possible. A few days earlier I had worked on the first story with a Roma mother and her two sons.  It took about and hour to make a rough translation into the actual dialect of Romani they speak.  This is an important point, as both vocab and grammar vary quite a lot from both Kalderash translations I am using.  But God seems to delight in entering into human limitations and forging something new.  My Romani and their English are both rudimentary and we are stretched to the limits.   But having read the story at our second gathering yesterday (see below), I invited them first to have a go at telling the story themselves in their words.  There's a lot of work to be done here, but what they pick out is always illuminating.  The joy at the dawn of creation - beauty emerging out of nothing-  the sadness that some of the angels chose to fall from glory -the first signs of disfunction in an otherwise perfect creation order.   I try to glimpse where we might be when a body of Roma here can tell the story of salvation in their own words using these simple stories.  The vision is important.  But infinitely more important is the question "what is success?"  Jesus alone embodies the answer.  "Whilst we were still sinners he died for us".   

This story is true. It was in the beginning. 

kade istoria si cheches. Sas ando gor.

There was noone on earth, 

but we know the truth through God's prophet.

Nas les khonik pe puv, numa ame jenas o chachimos lesko profeto.

In the beginning when there was nothing

there was only God.

Ando gor kana nas kanch, sas numa o del.

At that time only God existed.

Ando kado timpo  existilas numa o del

He was with together with his angels

Wo sas peske injerensa

The angels gave glory to God

Le injeri del gloria le develes

and helped him in his work

Hai ajutil le ande leski buchi

the angels sang joyfully

Le injeri gilabenas bokorime

God made the world as he wished

O del kerke la lumia sar wo kamle

(let me know if you would like the whole story!)