the sayc conference has finished. the theme of the conference was ‘gospel and globalisation’ with a mix of speakers, workshops and cell group formats. like every other conference i have ever been to the best part was meeting the people. it was wonderful to meet people from the countries of south asia. it was a particularly special moment when the delegates from pakistan arrived and were embraced by the indian christians.

most speakers take on globalisation was talking about it in very negative terms. some of the speakers were excellent – the christian politician margaret alva was outstanding for example. coming from the west hearing an indian perspective was an eye opener though i felt the critique by some speakers was very muddled at times – globalisation, global, western and even american were all getting merged together, sometimes as though they were the embodiment of evil!

bangalore is an example of somewhere that is booming with 25000 new people apparently arriving in the city every day? call centres, software firms etc are springing up everywhere – there is an astonishing amount of building work going on. this is bringing much needed money into the economy but the concern is at what cost?… i am very aware of the dangers and idolatry of global capitalism but my fear with this negative stance is that the church is just going to end up sounding very negative about the cultural world of young people and alienating them. we have seen this again and again – whether over rock music, or pop culture or postmodernity. the church’s reflex action towards these things is usually negative. the young people i spoke to were excited about working in call centres (it’s a well paid job here), enjoying the fruits of globalisation, and they were all of course on mobile phones…

the one session that i went to that countered the negative stance was a workshop by ellen alexander who gave a very good overview of the changes taking place. her message was that this is here to stay so we had better work out how to live with it and do youth ministry in it. one of the things that interested me about her talk was that she painted a picture of a coming crisis in the mainstream churches. religious identity is strong in families. so if you are a christian family you will go to church. however more and more young people when they move to the cities to study or for work are opting out of going to church once they are away from their families. an over riding negativity about the world young people moving to the cities are excited by isn’t going to change that trend. i am not suggesting that there aren’t problems with globalisation – of course there are and the church should engage in campaigning for justice and helping develop indian entrepreneurship amongst other things. but it must also free young people up to do the imaginative work of incarnating the gospel in a globalised world.

at the end of the conference a resolution was produced of the way forward. the young people all seemed to want to develop the relational network which is great. i hope the momentum is carried forward for that. i hope to encourage one or two to start blogging… the closing communion in the outdoors was very good – i particularly liked the tablas and indian singing – and it was moving and a privilege to share bread and wine with people from those countries in south asia before departing for mysore on the next bit of our trip…

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