An interview with Roger sutton
What are the key things that you feel are happening in the Asian cities?
Well, firstly, it’s fast moving and expanding. The expansion in the last three or four years has been considerable and getting wider to other places, including places like Pakistan and Nepal and Vietnam and Sri Lanka. They’re going fast!
And they’re actually really quite well organized, but also they’re ambitious. There’s a really big drive right now to keep moving across the whole of Asia. Those two things particularly struck me.
The amazing thing for our own context here or for a Western context is that we’re talking about exactly the same values, and exactly the same vision. It’s just expressed differently because of the different issues. And that’s quite extraordinary, really. I don’t know of any other movement around the world, not in my lifetime anyway, where there’s been that ability. Whether in Fiji or Orange County or Quebec or Berlin or Durban or an Asian city. I think that’s extraordinary because there’s no one influence on that. But it makes you feel as if you come home. You’re with your people, even though it’s a very, very different context, it’s the same conversation.
What are the unique challenges of the Asian context that you observed?
A lot of them were talking about corruption being one of the unique challenges. It’s very hard to get anything done without corruption involved. It’s not that we don’t deal in the West, but it’s much more out in the open in certain parts of Asia. Then of course, there is strong persecution in some places. So that mixture of wading through the mud of corruption, and a strong wind against you at the same time. I’m just, I’m full of admiration for them. I came back just bowled over by their bravery, their courage, their resilience.
What could Gather Movement and UK unity movements learn from the Asian Cities?
It’s just the sheer ambition! They want every city, and they’re not content just in their own country, so they want to keep expanding out. I think of Europe on our doorstep, which is actually our unreached area. Now, there are great movements in Germany, Norway and Netherlands, and it’s beginning in Switzerland. But the Asian movements are praying in some pretty big goals, and they’ve got some pretty big visions.
That is something that I think we could learn from. They have a drive and an energy and a way of approaching the gospel, which is personal, but it’s also more than that, it’s about the transformation of our whole places. I think we just need to become more ambitious, more confident, and we need to push ourselves out a bit.
