This is only a menu. I’ll unpack each in turn.
1
How we think of church, must be
rooted in both THE BEING AND THE MISSION
OF GOD. The inner life of the
Trinity and revelation in salvation history show God himself to be
community-in-mission.
“Mission
comes from the Father, through the Son, in the power of the Spirit”. p85
For
the theologians I add would add don’t separate the significance of the
immanent and the economic trinity, but always take them in that order. Being
comes before doing. Church is to
express the same dynamics.
I think we were inexact in the
next phrase. I agree the Church is
the fruit of the Mission of God in Christ. But
thereafter it is also the bearer of the Gospel – it becomes the sower, as well
as the fruit. What began as a straight line drawn from mission to church does
help justify the claim that historically mission shaped church.
However thereafter the progression is more complicated – perhaps like a
spiral or helix in which mission and church follow on after one another.
I don’t agree that church is
the agent – I believe LN is right to insist this is the Holy Spirit. God alone
brings life. However to talk of the church as a sign – like a city on a hill
or a light in the house - is entirely acceptable.
MSC was written in reaction to
a distortion that held church as central and primary. At best mission was one
important task for her, at worst it was ignored. All of this we challenge,
following thinkers like Moltmann, Bosch:
“It is not the
Thought about the being of
church and that it could take, and has taken many forms, led to the helpful
analogy of DNA. So we speak of
Church having a DNA. There are values for such a church. We sought to be
consistent with the theological stand point that ecclesiology should take its
shape from who and how God is, and how the Trinity have acted in mission.
In
Anglicanism there has been helpful work on naming five strands of what is
mission. The so called 5 marks of mission. We offer 5 strands of the DNA of
Church.
We
have called them a Trinitarian focus, insisting that how the church is, must be
reflection of Trinitarian life. The report here argues for the priority of
worship. I would argue that this is response to the Trinity, not learning in
imitation from them. To learn from then teaches the priority of loving community
before all else and an instinct to balance that inner life with outward loving
mission – as do the Trinity in Creatoin, Salvation and Transformation.
Thus my next mark is
Relational Life, again echoed what is found within the Trinity. Mention of
perichoresis here is appropriate. I just wish we used simpler language to
express that depth of interpenetration into one another’s lives. Perhaps the 3
Musketeers catch phrase “One for all and all for one“ does part of it.
Unless Church is deeply and effectively relational we shall neither follow the
example of God, not connect with his world.
3rd comes
incarnational instincts. The divine
community in mission willingly underwent change and loss to enter humanity. The
laying aside is notably celebrated in Philippians 2 and John 1.
But sacrificial entering of,
and identification with any different culture is not enough. A subversive
operation is at work. Proclamation of a different Kingdom is accompanied by the
call follow me. Christ-like disciple making is the next DNA strand. This is both
following his example and the creating of community – which is outworking of
the first and second strand of DNA. Disciples are a community following Jesus.
Just like the divine community
the process does not stop there and seeking transformation of creation is the 5th
strand. Just as the divine community
reach beyond themselves, so the Jesus community look beyond themselves to a
kingdom centred, counter-cultural affect upon society.
You
will I hope have noticed that I believe therefore the order of the five marks
given on pp. 81-82 should adapted – as on the slide -
to focus on the ontology being prior to the activity.
Does that tell us that we need greater certainty over what church is –
and less focus on what is does.
DNA
may be a helpful analogy is that it creates realistic hope that if you are
confident in the DNA, then there is less need to worry about what it will
produce or do.
//
Let me show you pictures of my wife Helen and myself.
Then I pose a question. What will our children look like ?
If you have never met them, of course you cannot know.
However when you see them, the links become obvious – facial features,
face shapes, even casts of mind. Looking back we can see the family likeness,
but we also encounter individuality. So it is with DNA and Fresh Expressions of
Church. You can’t know what they
will be like at the start. When they are grown it is apparent.
Bishop
Jonathan Bailey of
Behind that tidying up of our
work, I think there is an enormous and essential change of mind, or a change of
centre that is being set out in MSC.
// Nicholaus
Copernicus was a polish astronomer who wrote a booklet -
The Little Commentary - in 1514.
He proposed among other things that the earth was not the centre of the
universe, rather it went round the sun. It was – excuse the pun –
revolutionary.
The Church is entering
a Copernican revolution. We
are being forced to shift away from thinking that the Church is the centre of
life to which we draw others, to realising the Son's mission – that’s S O N
of God - is the centre. Jesus’
ongoing mission is the centre. It is discerned and disclosed in the world,
outside the existing church. So only being in the mission context can properly
shape what the resultant church will be.
2
THE
INCARNATION, CRUCIFIXION AND RESURRECTION of
Christ underlie the patterns of “dying to live” which crop up throughout the
report. I’ll open that idea up under methodology. Suffice it to say that Dying
to live was a contender for the report’s title but the publishers refused it. I
believe Jesus patterns help us resolve what sometimes is presented as an
argument between a preference for incarnational instincts and the different call
for counter cultural ones.
Let us operate
the theological method that patterns of God the Son in mission do determine what
the church should be and do. Following the patterns of Jesus, this section roots
the incarnational entry to any culture, as necessary before the later
counter-cultural engagement with a culture.
Jesus entered human culture even to the depth of death by it’s hand.
Loving engagement with a culture leads to incarnational processes. However, in
that process the miracles and parables began to reveal a counter cultural
kingdom at work. This was supremely demonstrated in the Resurrection and
focussed for early Xtns in the classic confession: Jesus is Lord not Caesar.
So it is Lordship that underpins being counter cultural. Thus it is
plausible to affirm that Incarnation and Counter cultural are not opposed.
Rather it is the case that they have a Christ given shape and order. The
Church is called to follow what pattern in all its expressions.
3
The report explores “INCULTURATION”.
This term is close to another term, more familiar to some, known as “contextualisation”.
Both terms are
about how the gospel and the church truly enter a culture from below, in order
to transform it from within, rather than acting from outside and above and so
imposing values upon that culture. These are classic errors from past mission
practice.
Are
inculturation and contextualization exactly the same? They do overlap but
perhaps the shades of difference are as follows. Inculturation has tended to be
used by Catholic sources and has been more focused on processes around church. Contextualisation
has been the language of evangelicals and focused upon gospel.
Both are about the processes by which something that comes from beyond
becomes truly indigenized. Here is a cases where I do not want to try to
reconcile friends.
I think it is a
pity that the report does not read as evenly as it should at these points.
It can read occasionally as though gospel does not need to be incultured,
but only church must be – or vice versa. It
can read as though either gospel or church is a given which is simply imposed.
I am clear that both the gospel and the church must be incultured if they
are to be comprehended and effective. Neither should escape this process and
neither can because they are intrinsically bound to each other. The gospel is
carried by the church, encountering church should be to meet gospel; responding
to gospel leads to church. They are
chicken and egg.
Clarity I think
was given by the wording of the definition of the Church Planting process.
“Church planting is the process by which a seed of the life and
message of Jesus, embodied by a community of Christians, is immersed for mission
reasons, in a particular cultural or geographic context. The intended
consequence is that it roots there, coming to life as a new indigenous body of
Christian disciples well suited to continue in mission.”
The wording
shows us clearly that seed containing both
gospel and church enter the soil of the mission context. From this the plant
grows. Neither the gospel nor the
church, brought in through the planting process, can assume a fixed or prior
form. We must not fuse their meaning
and their form, as was upheld by the Lausanne Haslev Consultation of 1997 about
Gospel. But this principle applies to both church and gospel.
4
VARIOUS
MARKS and connections of the Church are explored.
These also air the case for the more recent assertion that the Church is
designed to reproduce, which fits well with the seeds and dying to live notions.
Perhaps this is not the time to argue that case. Read the report, or the work on
which it is based,[1]
and decide if this assertion is indeed biblically and theologically grounded.
There
is also a reworking of the historic four marks from a mission shaped church
perspective: one, holy, catholic and apostolic.
MSC then includes how fresh expressions fit in with specifically Anglican
issues and categories of being authentic church like the Lambeth Quadrilateral
– with its focus on Scripture, Creeds, Dominical sacraments and Episcopacy
locally adapted. The last has
historically being the ecumenical sticking point.
We do need values expressing
the essence of church, that can be applied to any context and with any size of
church grouping – a small cell or a large Minster. They help us create what is
healthy and valid. MSC suggests thinking of them as being like four dimensions
of a journey, none of which exist without reference to the others.
All expressions of church are
drawn into a journey with an UP
dimension – the journey toward God in worship. It must equally be about
seeking God himself and about becoming like him in his holiness. Without the
transformation that should gradually result, we are only playing liturgical
games. Then our worship will be hollow. Here is expression of the church seeking
to be Holy.
Church community is led into a
journey containing an IN dimension. It is a quality and unity in relationships. It exists to
express, in practice, the oneness of the Trinity and of the body of Christ. The
Trinity show us the quality of diversity held in unity because of their eternal
love. Unless such love is the base of oneness in community, gatherings of the
church, at whatever size, and of whatever antiquity, will only be held together
by organisational artificial glue. Here is demonstration of the church seeking
to express its being One.
The nature of the church
includes that it is sent onto the journey OUT.
The sending in mission embraces with the breadth of the holistic mission of
Jesus. This journey outward, is fulfilment of our apostolic call; we but follow
Jesus the Apostle. Without this the church is not only in danger of
introspection, becoming fixed and complacent, but enters the realm of
disobedience. Here is manifestation of the church seeking to live out being Apostolic.
To be church, it is called to
walk the journey which has an OF
dimension. None in the Body of Christ exist for themselves, or by themselves.
All of us came from some part of the wider church. We are called to relate
together. This connects local church to the wider church now. ‘OF’ also
celebrates the connection of the church of earth with the church in heaven and
the church of now with the church from history.
There is a history of which to be proud, in part, and from which to
learn. It’s part of what MSC calls double listening.
It is expression of a deliberate interdependence. Paul urges this value
in 1 Cor 12 within his image of the Church as a Body. This is the church seeking
expression of being Catholic –
being whole and interconnected.
I would add that a community
following the dynamic balance of these UP IN OUT OF journeys may find different
ones have greater emphasis at different points in the story. Those who have seen
the uneven way puppies grow have a ready picture that the processes towards
maturity are not followed in a stately and balanced way, in the short term. But
eventually all four aspects of the journey need to be playing a part.
Even then the four may well also have their own seasons of prominence.
Health is determined not by an instant snap shot but by observation of longer
rhythms.
Not only that, but the four
journeys are not the whole reality. It
would be possible to imagine an Al Quaida group claiming to be Holy is pursuit
of Allah, one with other Muslims, Apostolic in being sent to do their Holy War
work and Catholic in relating to the wider Muslim world.
The journeys in themselves do
not fully explain or validate the centre from which they all spring. Here are
the core values that inform the content of the 4 journeys. To be Christian,
we are talking about a Jesus centred community.
As Archbishop Rowan has put it in minimalist language : “Church … is
any expression of the life of Jesus in communal form “
Jesus Christ is the head, he is the inspiration, his values in relating UP to God the Trinity and growing trinity like community IN with each other are an aim; joining his OUT mission is the task, and being part OF his wider body is an indispensable part of our identity. Knowing, loving and following him is the deal.
This last value or journey ,
of catholicity, is that most often ignored , both by other writers and also by
practitioners of Fresh Expressions of Church . Even the excellent Frost
and Hirsch book Shaping of things to come draws
a triangle on p 77 of what the essence of Church is.
I love the titles of the sides of the triangle Communion, Community and
Commission. They are warm responsive and corporate – but none of those does
the OF work. You can’t get and OF from an IN – it is it’s own category –
and utterly necessary theologically. Why? At
least because there is only one body of Christ, and making conscious
relationship, with those other parts of the body that are not our part, is the
instinct of Paul in 1 Cor 12. So I
humbly suggest to them possible C words; communicate if it must be a com word.
I’d actually prefer better words like connectedness or continuity.
Let me summarise in a few
sentences
·
We know what Church is – by
focus on who God is and how the Trinity conduct their life and mission.
·
These instincts not only cover
Church ID, but also missionary practice, in which we must
not treat gospel and church separately.
·
DNA thinking will give us better
instincts and freer practice.
·
Incarnation and Lordship will take
us into a particular shape of inculturation.
·
The historic marks of the church
also guide the journey, which must be from Christ and for Christ.
·
That’s a sketch of
the Theological section of MSC
[1]
pp. 93-96 First explored in a 1992 sabbatical dissertation by