Avoiding Parallax: Embracing Hope - The State of Europe revisited

Such is the diversity of today’s Europe as a context for mission that any individual viewpoint necessarily suffers from a certain degree of parallax.  For most of us our physics and astronomy classes are only a distant memory, so it is worth reminding ourselves of what a parallax is.

Parallax is defined as the apparent displacement of an object caused by a change in the position from which it is viewed.  Even the letters of this page of Vista appear in a different place when viewed through one eye than they do through the other.  Fortunately, most of us have two eyes enabling us to enjoy stereoscopic vision which gives us not only greater acuity and depth but the ability to precisely locate the object under observation.

In an analogous way, when researchers are seeking to understand a reality they often engage in triangulation, where data derived from many different sources is used to integrate, verify, and interpret the subject under consideration.  That is what we have sought to achieve since our very first edition of Vista, to gather considered perspectives on mission from around Europe which might enable us to achieve greater acuity, depth and positional understanding: “where we are”. 

In Vista 13 we sought to gain even greater perspective by asking critical friends to give their viewpoint on the State of Europe.  In this edition we provide four alternative viewpoints from within, which are crucially important if we are to have a clear and “stereoscopic” view of what God is doing in Europe today.

Together they coincide in a vision of a renewed hope for Europe, not in some misplaced political project or sense of progress but in rediscovering, reimagining and renewing our hope in Jesus Christ and his church.  What a Vista that is!