Andy McCullough leads the team that leads the Unreached Network, which facilitates best practice in cross-cultural mission across the Newfrontiers family. He and his team recently launched The Hummingbird Trust as a legal home for the Unreached Network and his ministry, and discusses the name of this new charity below.
Why Hummingbird?
Why did we decide to call our new charity The Hummingbird Trust? This new legal home for the Unreached Network and for my ministry has an unusual name. What does it mean?
As a team, we felt led by the Holy Spirit to choose this name, so we obeyed, and have really enjoyed, since that time, reflecting on hummingbirds and working out what this prophetic leading signifies. Here are a few reflections on this rare, beautiful, specialist bird:
1. Small, light, agile
Hummingbirds are miniscule. The smallest species – bee hummingbirds, are the size of a human thumb and weigh 2g – the weight of a penny. They are highly agile – they can even fly backwards!
We feel led to operate in a similar way. We are not looking to build a large organization, heavy with processes and weighed down with infrastructure. We have seen that agility is vital cross-culturally. Larger organisations can struggle to generate the flexibility necessary to contextualise, to adapt, to maneuver in the unpredictable terrain of unreached ecosystems.
In a world which tends to value size, we see the importance of smallness.
2. Specialised pollinators
Cross-cultural cross-pollination within the Kingdom of God is our great aspiration, what we are calling the exchange of good practice – helping to transfer the sweet nectar of hard-won experience in one arena to those in another arena who might be enriched by it. Mission in hard places is the Research and Development department of the global church, but too often the lessons learned don’t get shared with those who most need to receive them.
Hummingbirds uniquely fulfil a role as reliable pollinators in harsh environments inhospitable to ordinary pollinators like insects. There are certain places and certain flowers which cannot be reached by common pollinators like bees. Hummingbirds have adapted (been created!) especially to operate in these circumstances.
Bees, for example, are red-green colourblind. Thus, many red and orange flowers are invisible to them – but hummingbirds can see what is otherwise neglected and service these flowers. Some flowers are too unusually shaped for ordinary pollination, so the Sword-Billed Hummingbird (whose beak is longer than its body) can reach the Angel’s Trumpet flower, and the Sickle-Billed Hummingbird (with a curved beak) can reach the Heliconia flower.
We have found over the years that some people, projects and situations fall through the gaps of standard support processes, or are beyond the reach of ordinary mechanisms of care and encouragement. We have sought to serve the wider body of Christ by bringing encouragement and connection to those who, either because of their unusual shape, or their geographical situation, are otherwise under-resourced.
3. Colourful beauty
Hummingbirds are strikingly beautiful. They are multicoloured, iridescent. They even fight off their enemies by displaying their colours!
We believe that intercultural diversity is beautiful. Ephesians 3:10 says as much – even speaking of the spiritual warfare potential of the multicoloured wisdom of God displayed through His church. In the horizontal spaces which we seek to create of cross-cultural connection and cross-pollination, we often find that the sheer beauty of multi-polar dialogue and shared wisdom is moving, enriching, and powerful. Mission in the 21st Century cannot be monochrome, and the opportunities for intercultural cross-pollination are breathtaking!
4. Broadly unseen yet essential
Because of their diminutive size, and because they operate in inhospitable spaces, hummingbirds tend to be hard to spot. Yet they are essential for global biodiversity. David Attenborough said of hummingbirds, “they live at the limits of what is possible.”
I reckon 80% of what we do through the Hummingbird Trust is unseen, but of enormous value to the mission of God. When Jesus turned water into wine at Cana, very few people were aware of what he had done, but he saved the whole wedding! In the footsteps of the Master, we seek to add value to what others are doing.
According to Mayan legend, after creating the earth, God noticed that he was missing someone to take his wishes and thoughts from one place to another, so he created the hummingbird, celebrated in various indigenous American cultures as “the courier of the Gods.”
