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Bridges and Mission

Building a bridge across the Danube has some interesting lessons for cross-cultural mission.

It is quite common for people who write or speak about mission to use the metaphor of a bridge or bridge building to explain their work. Yesterday, however, I heard a new take on this from Anne-Marie Kool who was speaking at the European Evangelical Missionary Alliance conference.

Anne-Marie took as her starting point the Chain Bridge in Budapest and made three interesting points.

  • Scottish engineers were brought in to help build the bridge. It was a collaboration between foreign and local workers which did a huge amount of good for the country.
  • The bridge allows traffic to flow in two directions, not just one.
  • Although the bridge has linked the twin cities of Buda and Pest, they have not lost their individual identities. Union has not brought uniformity.

The implications for cross-cultural mission work are clear and thought provoking.

I realise that the photograph is not of the chain bridge in Budapest (or of any other bridge come to that), but I don’t have any bridge photos stored on my laptop. I will try and blog other reflections from this conference as time allows and I may just have some good photos to go with them.

8 replies on “Bridges and Mission”

Good post, and…

…did you know that the designer of the bridge in Budapest also designed the bridge across the Thames in Marlow. I think the bridge in Budapest is better suited to modern traffic.

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