“It is winter in Narnia and has been for ever so long … Always winter, but never Christmas,” the faun Mr. Tumnus responds to the despair of Lucy Pevensie in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Haunting, beautiful, and powerful imagery that author C.S. Lewis used to describe life in Narnia under the White Witch. Imagery that I loved, but will now confess, I had never really understood, until God called me to minister in the place that is now home.
Winter is not simply the weather; it is the horizon of possibility in which spring is no longer possible, and the hope of new beginnings has been buried under winter snow.
Even though I am from the countryside, I have always loved the city. In the last four years of my life, as I have had the privilege of ministering in North Belfast, I have begun to wrestle with the poverty of hope; a poverty born when the imagination is buried because of the heavy snow of the lasting winter. Indeed, this city has shaken in the last few months as violence spilt onto the streets and old fears, anger, and wounds were pushed to the surface, and even now, as different people try to exploit fear for their political advantage rather than foster the new beginnings of true hope. Old wounds have been opened, but they do not sit in isolation, nor have they been opened because of one event. The weight of winter has grown in this city through generations of fractured relationships, limited opportunity, trauma, neglect, and the weakening of the church in the places that need it the most.
I love where I have been called to serve, and I want to be careful – there is much richness and life to be experienced in a place like this that cannot be known in different contexts. This is not a place defined by lack, nor is the challenge that people face a set verdict on those who inhabit these streets. There are homes full of love, resilience, humour, loyalty, generosity, faith, and determination. Yet, the experience of poverty seems to shape what is believable and what is attainable. How could it not? When people have lived through generations of instability and every institution has disappointed them to the point of neglect and the stain of violence spills out onto the streets in an almost regular rhythm – hope becomes a luxury.
Sadly, the facts speak to the reality of the story that so many people are living in; according to the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency 12 percent of our population lives in relative poverty, and 15 percent of children province-wide experience the weight of winter as their horizon. Belfast itself has the lowest life expectancy of any region in Northern Ireland, with some of the most challenging statistics for anywhere across the UK. It is in the places where hope is lacking, and the winter is the longest, that surely the churches’ witness is most vibrant and bright – but does it?
Poverty is real, and Belfast is simply a microcosm for so many urban communities across Ireland and Britain. Yet, the material realities are not the main problem facing the church in these places: the deeper poverty may be that of hope. Why? Because in these places, the learned suspicion that nothing really changes, the failed promises and the lives shaped by perpetual decline mean that the understanding of hope has no real foundations. Poverty of Hope is real, and sadly in many cases it has infected the church’s existence and view of worship and mission amid communities that need Christ the most.
Sadly, as evangelicals, our churches, denominations, and structures can fall under the same winter when we start to think about worship and witness in areas like this because we have little experience of life in Narnia and life in the eternal winter. Therefore, we begin to speak about the city and our churches in these areas as a problem to be managed, or a permanent crisis to be pitied, or a vocational calling for the select few.
What has become of us when the places of most potential are often met with the least interest because the mass of potential is met by contrast of limited resources. We have become a people who mourn the state of the church in challenging places while quietly expecting little renewal or having any real desire to invest in the work of God’s Kingdom. Why? Maybe it’s easier to support something a thousand miles away than to confront the winter of hopelessness next door.
Yet, does the gospel really permit us to ignore the reality of potential that remains so close to home? Ezekiel faced perhaps the most challenging and hopeless ministry situation in a valley of dry bones, the remains of a long forgotten people who had been taken so long ago that they were beyond any intervention and yet God asks him a startling question: “Son of Man, can these bones live?”
Ezekiel is not blind to the hopelessness of the winter before him as he answers: “Sovereign Lord, you alone know.” And then he watches as by God’s word and the Spirit the life of God ends the grip of Winter and hopelessness in the valley as that which was once dead now lives.
Hopelessness will never have the final word in the Kingdom, because Hope became incarnate among us in a place of hopelessness – Jesus, born in the stable and who lived his life towards the Cross, is that constant reminder that God will breathe new life into dry bones. He entered into our eternal winter, bore our sin and its curse on the Cross and brought the hope of the eternal Spring by his resurrection. We are those who know the winter is real, but it is not final because in Christ new life is assured. The Narnians survived their long winter with the hope of an old song:
“At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more, When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death, And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.”
The old song did not make the winter less severe, but it allowed hope to remain even when the winter felt heavy because one day Aslan would come – in Christ, we know that he has. This is not about naive hope; it is about Kingdom hope in the face of places of great challenge. God does not promise us that if the church is present, old wounds will quickly close because of faithful ministry. It is simply a refusal to let despair have the final word and the winter reign where hope of Christ can breathe the spring of new life.
Our Gospel hope is not denial of the valley, but that God is present there, moving, and building his church. It is confidence that the gospel will work even amid worlds we have not wandered, those places that feel like Narnia in the winter. Perhaps the greater challenge for many of us is to let our eyes set on the mission fields nearby that we might find easier to ignore.
It is both the greatest challenge and privilege to minister in a place so full of life and potential as this. North Belfast needs your prayers, friendship, and support. Indeed, renewal will only come in places like ours if the wider Church begins to see what God might do. Yet, Belfast is not unique – every denomination or network has churches in places where the winter has been long. Perhaps now the question that lingers is not simply how can we help, but what is it that we need for our spiritual life in the places where winter has been long, and hope has been thin? That reminder that Gospel hope and work belong precisely in the places that feel beyond repair to us. What can you do? Partner with whatever church and minister comes to mind as you read this: pray for them, support them, encourage them, contend for them as they seek to make Jesus known – and perhaps even move you to an understanding of global mission that begins at home by supporting a church ministering in the face of great need and potential often with the least resources: pray for those local leaders, give generously, visit, listen, and learn because it is often when those winters end that the most vibrant life will come.
Our institutions and structures might expect too little in the places of great need, but our God is still breathing new life into dry bones; I have seen it. The winter is real, but it is not final because Aslan is on the move in the places that we might have forgotten; or as Mr. Beaver posed, “perhaps he has already landed.”
The Rev. Andrew Irwin is a Doctor of Ministry candidate at Asbury Theological Seminary. He also holds postgraduate theological training from Trinity College Dublin and serves as Minister-in-Charge of St Paul’s and St Barnabas in inner-city North Belfast.
More from IRD:
C.S. Lewis against the Darkness
Better Stories, Stronger Spells: Anglicans Consider C.S. Lewis
‘That Hideous Strength’: a Fictional Tale Becoming Reality?
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