Pastor Oloyede: A New Britain?

|PIC1|I will touch on a vision for Britain under seven broad topics; Community, Church, Culture, Cohesion, Corporate, Country and Creed. It is more of a journey than a vision. Each heading is a compressed summary on the subject and will take many more pages to fully elaborate.

CHURCH
A Country rises or falls by its leadership. Make no mistake, the ecclesia of Christ are first called to lead by example. You are the Light of the World. One of the key features of a healthy human body is coordination between its organs. The Body of Christ is uncoordinated and fragmented. One of the key features of Islam is that you are first a Muslim before colour or creed. Unity and cooperation is key to the future of Christendom in Britain. By this I do not necessarily mean the historic model, but a biblical model of incarnation and servant-leadership. The Church and State divide has led to Secularism....a soulless society and a country divorced of conscience. The journey ‘back’ will take a lot of wisdom, patience and character.

CORPORATE
By corporate I refer to the marketplace, commerce, business, the workplace, the judiciary, education and government. Jesus said go into ALL the World... He also said ‘I have come to save THAT which was lost’. The great commission is not just about saving Souls but also salvaging Systems. There is a need to support and raise a crop of highly successful professionals and entrepreneurs as a showpiece to cities and counties .A prophetic statement that there is an alternate and fair way to govern, transact, teach and lead.

COMMUNITY
I will deftly define community as a collection of people within a loosely demarcated geographic or ideological sphere who have a common sense of belonging, identity, history, experience or worldview. If the Country is the substance, Community the molecule then Family is the atom. By family, I refer to both the Nuclear and Extended prototypes.|TOP|

Any wise government will place this societal atom in the epicentre of all its policy portraits. The family is the nerve ending of society. Strong families equate to strong economies and reduced vice statistics. The heads of families should be supported, trained equipped to lead their clans. The tension between the classic Tory/Labour forms of government may always exist. The choice between state run industry versus family/business empires is an age long debate. I dare say it is not either or but both/and.

COHESION
We need to mature out of our nervousness of heterogeneous and homogenous communities. Both are legit. Asylum seekers, immigrants and ethnic minorities should be made to feel as British as Mrs Joan Smith with a genealogy dating back to the 12th century. Post Stephen Lawrence and Victoria Climbie, I would love to see a Britain at ease with itself on the issues of race and nationhood. In Newham where I work alongside colleagues and friends from various nationalities and faiths, I see the dawning of a vision.

Transform Newham, which is a loose affiliation of various Churches, has made giant strides to achieve a level of cohesion rarely seen amongst Christian Leaders. I believe the same principles can be grafted regionally and nationally. If you can unite Christian Leaders then you can unite anybody!!

|AD|CULTURE
Culture is an evolving word that means various things to different people. In simple terms it can be defined as the collective customs, civilisation and achievements of a particular people, sometimes in a particular time. There is Youth Culture, Pub Culture, Street Culture, and so on.

It has been well documented that acts become habits, which inform behavioural patterns and then mature into lifestyles. Collective lifestyles then coalesce into culture. The living Church needs to permeate the root causes of acts and habits by providing creative alternatives.

CREED
I would love to see a universal identity with the future of the Country infused into the Education system. A kind of British Creed, a mindset or paradigm that is positive, holistic and moral. One of the underlying tones in the fabric of the American life is a positive “I can do it” mentality. This I believe is reflected in the number of gold-medals at every Olympic games. I am not implying an extreme narcissistic mentality or an obsession with self but a worldview that is less self-effacing or self-degrading.

COUNTRY
Assuming that Great Britain was a person, I would love to give her a sanguineous personality with some good doses of the melancholic. A confident woman with a listening heart, she would not wear a large label on her blouse that screamed, “Jesus is Lord”, but conduct herself in a respectable, amiable and stately manner commanding respect and honour.

Great Britain would never be the biggest in the world, but she can be one of its finest. With an internal code she would battle for justice, negotiate international/ inter-continental disputes and intercede for fair international trade. She would tow the delicate line between nuclear power disarmament and international arms dealing amongst many other complex issues.





[Pastor Jonathan Oloyede is the senior Associate Pastor Glory House Church London, the Borough Dean of Newham Council, and the Leader of London wide Mission of Soul in the City London. He is also an Executive Member of the Board of Trustees of the African & Caribbean Evangelical Alliance, a Member of the Values Steering Group of the Evangelical Alliance UK, and a Regular Feature on Premier Christian Radio’s Thoughts for the Day.]