Cell Church and Anglicanism

Section 1. How does Cell church sit with Anglicanism?

A) Questions of Government and Authorisation.

It is not fanciful to think that cell church is merely the latest, though perhaps more radical, manifestation of a 30 or 40 year trend by which we have seen the diversification of lay ministries and their recognition. Longer roots lie in the nineteenth century beginnings with the Reader and subsequently the Church Army Evangelist. More recently in the 1960’s some dioceses invented the Pastoral Assistant, in the 1970s others recognised public healing ministries and in the 1980 four dioceses created lay evangelists. All these groups have had some form of diocesan, although not, national recognition. Not only that, but in parishes Sunday school teachers and youth group leaders as well as pastoral visitors, baptism teams and housegroup leaders have all been part of a trend where by the locus of authority has shifted from the Bishop to the Incumbent. 
The exercise of that authority has the counter balance of those ministries being known by the local church and in some sense endorsed by the PCC. In all these cases, as the exercise of ministry has moved down from clergy to collaborative lay teams and indeed teams within each team, the local minister in functional terms operates less in presbyteral mode and exercises episcope, while not in current system, being recognised in any sense as an episcopos. Cell Church, in one sense, is only a continuation of this path where, for discipleship, pastoral care, some forms of worship and engagement in mission, the cell group leaders take on a presbyteral role. While the incumbent and any others who have the care of leaders exercise “oversight” of those cell leaders. In such a view Cell church only an extension of existing patterns

Another strand of this question is the role of the PCC. To understand that, it will be helpful to relate it to an Anglican view of dispersed authority. Just as Anglicanism believes in a Church which is both Catholic and Local, in having a Diocese and a Parish, in leadership shared between a bishop and a synod, so this is expressed at parish level in the employment of an incumbent who comes from the wider church thus being a model of its Catholic and Apostolic character. He or she is to work in partnership with the PCC who are representatives of the Local church and it is to be hoped that the relationship will be marked by other key historic characteristics of Church - that they will work as One and their relationships shall be Holy, though regrettably this cannot be guaranteed. It is worth setting down the asymmetric roles in this partnership:

Vicar PCC
Vision Testing Vision
Pastoral Care Parochial representation
Mission Finance
Conduct of Worship Overall worship choice
Teaching & Training Legalities

There is not always a direct parallel between the rows in each column, though some of them have clear relationships. What I note, in over 30 years experience of various PCCs, is that in local churches which experience constructive change, the creativity for that change almost always arises outside the PCC, either in clergy staff teams, think tanks, sub- committees or the bright idea of an individual. The recent development of collaborative ministry has been, in effect, not the extension of the PCC role, but rather the devolution of the incumbent’s role which is then shared with others. I am intrigued to note a similar trend in the ministry of Bishops who now talk more of Episcopal staff teams and who in ministering to the clergy choose to share their appraisal and pastoral visit roles with their Archdeacons. For all practical purposes the latter exercise Episcopal roles. In such a parish model of devolved responsibility, whatever the form of collaborative ministry, the team who work with the incumbent become in practice, more like the Cabinet in our political system and the PCC has a role not dissimilar to the Houses of Parliament. 

Cell Church does not essentially disturb this pattern, with which many local churches have worked, but it is important and right that they should be accountable. Any comparison between the key values of cell and the role of the incumbent show that the accountability should work through that side of the governmental structure and through the incumbent back into the partnership with the PCC. In the past some people have criticised church planting for being congregationalist and where an insufficient instinct for inter-dependence was missing that then was just. There could now be the new charge of being “cellist” but it is to be hoped that the accountability structure and ongoing training of leaders will resist this in practice, though it may help some people to see the connections explicitly in terms of church doctrine and not just in terms of practical support.

B) Here come Network Churches!

In urban areas, parishes have accepted for many years that where there is a house group system then these will sit very untidily with parish boundaries and generally speaking this has not raised alarm. However, as the profile and frequency of cell grows, the more theologically acute will recognise that small churches are being formed across parish boundaries and it would be better practice that this should be by mutual agreement rather than by stealth. There will therefore need to be some agreement on what are appropriate styles of evangelism from cells, the members of which may still come from another parish. An example of a responsible view might be to agree not to engage in house to house visiting in another parish but there may be mutual agreement that evangelism through friendship networks is natural and should be encouraged. There should also be specific agreement that the aim of cells is not to engage in sheep stealing but it is impractical to agree a policy that refuses to accept any immigrants, as some may be seeking religious asylum! There will also need to be co-operation between local clergy about what forms of sacramental life may be appropriate in a cell meeting in another parish. Part of me groans at the thought of protracted negotiations and I suspect they are only smoothed by prior healthy relationships between clergy. Another part of me rejoices, to think that network styles of church may come to be recognised as a healthy and necessary complementary form of ministry of the parochial system, as indeed is envisaged in the vision espoused by the House of Bishop’s Report, “Breaking New Ground” (1994).

C) The heart of Cell and hidden imports

We need to distinguish between what are the essential values of cell and implicit theological and ecclesiological constructs brought by some its best known international proponents. Reading some of the literature from the States there are some problems, which need to be recognised, and in my view resisted. Steve Croft the Warden of Cranmer Hall set me thinking in this direction in a very helpful paper he gave at the June 1998 Cell Conference. 

a) Some of the literature on cell, principles and its teaching materials for small groups contains a different theology of authority showing themselves to be very conservative about scriptural interpretation and also therefore making guidance and theological conviction heavily dependent on the right of private judgement. Anglicanism with it’s dispersed view of authority based on the primacy of Scripture, tested by the Church and Reason will want to resist this. It will also want to hold on to its ability to think more flexibly, by an instinct to work theologically rather than just textually. We will also want to attempt to distinguish between primary and secondary level issues and retain liberty to agree to disagree over the latter.

b) Secondly there is a Free Church ecclesiology limited to seeing Church as local, supplemented by an understanding of the Church as invisible at the global level. Allied to this there is insufficient stress on the Church as interdependent, though the method in cell ought to be able to recognise this naturally. It should be quite possible to say Cell is Church, but then so is Congregation and Celebration, therefore not a great step to recognise the Church beyond the local such as expressed by a diocese, denomination or ecumenical awareness. All convinced Anglicans would want to hold firmly to interdependency and not restrict that view to groupings within one parish. 

c) Thirdly, cell literature appears more akin to an early Quaker idea of worship and thus to undervalue the liturgical and the sacramental. Anglican cell churches will need to teach not only the value of liturgical instincts for shape, flow, familiarity and the Christian formation that occurs through liturgical usage, but also impart that different liturgical styles are appropriate for different size gatherings. Existing accessible books in these areas would be Michael Marshall’s “Renewal in Worship” and John Leach’s “Liturgy and Liberty”. 

d) My conviction is that ecclesiology and missiology should never be separated, not least because the purpose of the church is to become caught up in the mission of God and thus its missiological identity is fundamental. Missio Dei thinking will set valuably wide parameters for that task. Because cells are necessarily small and strongly relational, it will be a natural temptation to them to reduce the scope of mission down to evangelism, partly also because their unit size makes it less clear how they can influence wider society in forms of social transformation. Theologically it will be important in their opening of the Word and their engagement in Witness to realise their mission is not just to extend the church but to build the Kingdom. 

Stuart Murray’s material in “Church Planting- Laying the Foundations”, is very helpful in enabling church plants to realise the width of the mission call that they should embrace and the second chapter could be a good basis for a session training leaders of cell churches who need to adjust their horizons accordingly. Their witness therefore, will not be restricted to prayer and relationship building, in a sensitive process leading to conversion, but also seeking guidance for appropriate levels of social transformation in a community engagement. For example, they could explore community service as a group, either on their own, or in concert with a need identified at congregational level. 

e) Through a right awareness of community engagement, Cell can connect with its pre-disposition to focus on network and should become alert to the danger of ignoring neighbourhood. It is likely that both realities will continue to be mission fields for UK Anglican churches in the foreseeable future. In the swings that sometimes happen in society, should there be a return to family or extended family then there will be a stronger need for inter-generational cells and perhaps even a return to congregational size gatherings to reflect the dynamics of the extended family. Neighbourhood work is also associated with an Anglican instinct of accessibility for all sorts and conditions of people - the ability to live tolerantly with fuzzy edges and to embrace a diversity without asking too many excluding questions. Behind all this is a theology of Church, dating back at through Luther, least as far as Augustine of Hippo, which regards it equally as a hospital for sinners, as a barracks of soldiers. Cell church should not be allowed to become a justification for church becoming only a group of Christian commandos. There will be this tension for the cells themselves when they engage, in practice, in evangelism and discipling of those from needy backgrounds, and what the literature can sometimes portray as a fast track approach for highly motivated disciples.

My own view of cell is that its essential dynamics are not dependent on any of these imported theologies and it will be perfectly possible and proper to develop cells which have an Anglican view of authority, reflect an Anglican ecclesiology and value Anglican instincts in worship. But local church leaders will need to address these issues directly and not merely hope that some Anglican ambience in the ether of congregational life will do the work for them. Relying on implicit values will be insufficient particularly in the face of highly explicit teaching of Cell values – with some of these more contentious imports. It may be that there will be a market for people like CPAS or ARM to produce training materials that reflect Anglican convictions. 

D) Sacraments

The question frequently comes up about the celebrating of communion in cell groups. I believe, as usual, that only by going further back is it possible creatively to go further forward. Part of the philosophy of cell church is what is called the two winged approach, popularised in Bill Beckham’s book The Second Reformation. In it he argues that in the New Testament, the small group and the celebration group were the practice of the early Church and that these are to be likened to two wings which enable a bird to fly. (In the analogy, the two wings are of equal significance. The terms large wing and small wing refer to their values, not their dimensions on a bird called Church.) He also believes that the “small church” wing atrophied at the time of Constantine, briefly reappeared at certain points in church history and it is only now that it is recognised as widely as it should be. Others such as Bob Hopkins argue, that in the Christendom model, being a Christian in the home and the provision of church schools considerably compensated for the formation and accountability which the small group provides in the two wing church. 

Whatever is the best historical interpretation, there is no doubt that in our day, that the recovery of the small group as part of the essence of being church has been with us in various forms for over 30 years. The two winged church helpfully expresses the theological perception that the Church should reflect the character of God and in its life, to experience Him more authentically, we need to be aware of his Transcendence which is more naturally mediated through a big group and also to sense his Immanence which is made accessible through the small group. 

I believe it is poor theological logic to let the sacraments shape the Church and far better that the sacraments should serve the Church. After all there would be no sacraments without the Church and eschatologically the Church will outlast the sacraments. I suggest it is theological sense to let the nature of the church influence the nature of the sacraments. If then a contribution of cell thinking is to make us ponder more deeply the nature of a two wing church, then both its advocates and its observers should ponder the dynamics of two wing sacraments. Curiously, this has already been experienced for decades in the sacrament of communion. Many British Christians have experienced not only the splendour of a well thought through diocesan cathedral eucharist but known too, the memorable intimacy and integrity of a house group communion. Here is two wing Eucharistic understanding under our very noses. 

The sharper challenge is to work this through in terms of Baptism. Unless we can treat the two sacraments in a similar fashion, we are probably doing violence to one of them. It seems to me, we shall need to move to some expression of the Baptismal Rite which gives adequate place for the adult convert to celebrate their Baptism with the group “where I came to faith”, as well as to express the sacrament of conversion in the bigger celebration or congregation. I am aware that there are different theologies of Baptism and myself am most convinced by one that rests upon a covenant theology. I do not believe Baptism is only a witness to others, though it may be that. Still less, is it a spiritual trip in search of an emotional high, though it may contain that too. Nor am I much convinced by a ex opere operato view. Within the framework of Covenant theology it seems to me appropriate to think of it being like a public contract. 

In that sense it is not unlike a wedding and weddings also have something of a two winged character. The large church wing is manifested in the public service in church followed by the reception. But there are also the more intimate family gatherings - both in preparation for the event, and the “shoes off and feet up” family gathering after the event. It cannot be beyond the wit of liturgical man to reflect that kind of shape and dynamics in a two winged baptism liturgy. Some people make the small group, or its leader, part of the baptising role in the church building but I don’t think this goes far enough in expressing small group engagement. Some funeral rites have already provided for just these two wing dynamics with provision of prayers at home as well as the service in the congregational context.

If we were to make these kind of changes, it could be helpful to remind ourselves of our history and think back to the fourth century where a mission need drove a liturgical and sacramental change. The number of people coming forward for Baptism ended the practice whereby the Bishop Baptised. The Presbyter then became the baptiser and the Bishop administered the laying on of hands, which became ritualised as Confirmation. Contemporary echoes of this pattern emerge when baptisms occur at the Congregational level of Church and subsequent Confirmations take place in Cathedrals – a Celebration level.

How then in practice do cell churches handle Communion? As far as I can tell, six different stances have been taken. The first and last of which are the least satisfactory:

1. The group operates a self denying ordinance and never experiences communion together, which is a denial of the two winged conviction in practice.

2. People use extended communion which in itself raises theological and psychological questions not least the dislocation of leadership and celebration, but it also does violence to a sense that communion arises out of the life of a Christian community rather than just being dispensed to it. 

3. The group operate on something akin to a multiple benefice model and an ordained member of staff rotates around the various groups. Whilst legally secure, this will also be open to the weaknesses of lack of identity and continuity felt by congregations in many rural areas.

4. Some choose something more like a Presbyterian model in which the importance of the sacrament is inversely related to its frequency - leading to annual or termly reception, supplemented by more frequent reception at the congregation or celebration level. This may be satisfying to some.

5. Since the late 1970s a curious fiction has lurked in the wings of the Anglican liturgical stage. The members of a group, without the presence of an episcopally ordained Presbyter, look solemnly at one another and say that that their meeting is but a harmless Agape, not a problematic Communion. By omitting the prescribed Eucharistic prayer, purely co-incidentally taking bread and wine while vaguely having in mind the death and resurrection of Christ, they wander down the sign less path of maintaining that as this is not a valid communion, it does not need the legally required priest. Readers will detect I am not entirely convinced by the fantasy, but I readily grant it is an expression of a two winged diverse approach.

6. There are a few cases of people at least being more honest that a communion is a communion is a communion and take the view that it is more important that it arises out of the life of the community rather than restricted in distribution according to church rules. They simply have what would technically be an illegal communion. I doubt that God is fatally grieved, but there are some dangers both of independency and again an eclipsing of the two-wing approach this time by severing the large church wing.

Section 2: Can Cell really be Church?

One initial way of evaluating this question is to compare the key values of cell with some key components of church, as indicated by Robert Warren’s work in Building Missionary Congregations, or by making brief associations with historic formularies or views. 
The “ten commandments” of cell The Robert Warren categories of Church Other comments
Jesus is at the centre of everything Spirituality A Trinitarian expression would be better but the N.T. church itself moved from a Jesus centred confession into Trinitarian categories. 
The small group is fully church This claim must be tested by all that follows
The Bible is applied as an authority for faith and life and all are accountable to each other for ensuring this. Spirituality This resonates with Biblical verses such as “Let the word of God dwell in you richly” and historic categories such as Article 6 of the 39 Articles
Discipleship changes lifestyle making people positively different to the surrounding society Spirituality An early confirming mark of the church was the attitude of surrounding people- “see how these Christians love one another”. There should always be a sense that the world is able to recognise the church. If it is invisible it is failing to be a sign of the kingdom.
Leaders are made through apprenticeship at every level of cell. Spirituality How such leaders are recognised and authorised in an Anglican context is addressed in section one, but leadership is a charism in the church and the apprentice model is strongly endorsed by the pattern of Jesus and the disciples in the Gospels.
Every member ministry is valued and pursued Spirituality Lay ministry was highly valued in the New Testament (Ephesians 4 is a classic text) and the recovery of lay ministry is a high profile contour of contemporary ecclesiology.
Evangelism is a way of life and is best done from the small group. Indeed the smaller it is the higher the proportion who must evangelise. Mission Mission and evangelism have not been used as historic marks of the church but the uncovery of Missio Dei thinking, the influence of Building Missionary Congregations and a more dynamic interpretation of the Apostolic dimension all suggest this should be defining mark.
Cells multiply because small is good. Mission I have argued elsewhere that the potential for reproduction is theologically a mark of the church and this was recognised in the nineteenth century by missiologist Henry Venn in his 3 self principles
The small group seeks to be real community. Community Small size has never been an excluding characteristic for what it is to be church. For example we recognise 8 ‘o’ clock congregations, small rural congregations and the church underground in persecuted countries, necessarily in small cells.
Discover the joys of creative small group worship Worship Worship has always been characteristic of church and some churches, like the Anglicans, have taken this far further through their Acts of Uniformity. Contemporary instincts are far less coercive as illustrated by Canon B5. 

Such a simple table cannot constitute an effective knockdown argument to prove that cell is church but at least it shows a prime facie case for illustrating that it does exhibit required contemporary characteristics. It does resonate with many historic marks of church, so it would be profitable to carry on looking further. A future Encounters on the Edge issue in 2000 will take up the topic more fully - of validating and giving recognition to emerging forms of church.

Section 3. Creative criticism of the specific Ecclesiology of the Church of England, from Cell church convictions.

In order to make these criticisms sharp, I am pointing up amendments to what might be called a popularised version of Church of England ecclesiology - one which the Church of England appears to hold by its current forms and shapes, rather than draw upon a refined academic Anglican ecclesiology. 

Very often, Church is shorthand for a Vicar who is expected to bring ridiculously wide generalist leadership. Cell is rightly pointing that ministry and leadership are exercised by many more people than that. Such a transition sharpens the role of the incumbent to being more of an overseer, visionary, trainer and carer of the carers, which may be very helpful in both building missionary churches and in the ongoing debate about the role of full time clergy.

The Church of England seems to set vast store by congregation as the sole expected and legitimated expression of being the local church. Cell helpfully goes beneath this, pressing us to accept that church is indeed communal, but that corporate life needs expression at different levels for different purposes. Congregation is not the sine qua none of Church. Indeed a reason it may be under severe attack now, is because we have over invested in this model in the past. On the one hand congregation sometimes tries to ape celebratory or cathedral values and skills, without the musical excellence or the number of people to make that style credible. While almost at the same time we can insist perversely that congregation be intimate enough to engender and sustain cell level relationships. The poor beast is dying of diverse expectations.

In Anglicanism, church is a building. Cell church affirms that the Church needs to be visible, through its attractive kingdom communal dynamics and it must be capable of being found, through its network of relationships, but cell churches round the world know there is no theological requirement for a dedicated building.

Some members of the Church of England sound as though they would be willing to sell their lives dearly in order to maintain the parish system. World-wide Anglicanism knows that parish boundaries, in the way we know them in the Church of England, are a local historical arrangement, not an international reality. Cell has no commitment to destroy parish, except as an exclusive view of how mission should be conducted. I myself concur with the view that it maybe much more helpful to use the word “local” rather than “parochial”. The former retains the notion of proximity but embraces traditional parishes, neighbourhoods which may straddle parishes, and networks which will invariably cross them. Good missionary thinking will also want to insist, both for cell and parish thinking, that Church must be encultured. To be fully local is not just geographical it is embodiment in a culture.

The Church of England can give the impression that only centrally devised and legalised forms of worship are acceptable. Patterns of Worship (1991) began to argue for a challenge to that view, for cultural reasons. Cell is rightly asking that small group resources and their differing instincts in worship also be allowed within the fold of Anglicanism. Perhaps it is also asking that a Church which has historically defined itself by its liturgy whether the boot should now begin to come onto the other foot and for diverse expressions of church to be allowed to dictate what liturgy is appropriate.

A system of ancient parish churches lends credence to a view of Church in which being static and permanent are tests of effectiveness. Cell church is part of a broader spectrum of changes in the current scene that encourage us to think that a more healthy missionary ecclesiology will make the ability to multiply, and the ability to diversify, far more valuable and authentic. One might say the Church of England has had an ecclesiology more based on the Temple and Cell church is wanting to rediscover the Tabernacle. Allied with this, the Church of England often feels institutional. This does not have to be characteristic of the church, though it would be an illusion to think that it is possible to be functional without having any organisation. Cell undoubtedly has organisation and some even think it is too tight.

The Anglican Church is without doubt Episcopal and thus also committed to being Interdependent, Connectionalist and not Congregationalist. My assessment is that cell church does not challenge this perception that the church is instinctively multi-layered. It recognises church at cell, congregation and celebration levels. But because cells are church, it does promote the emergence of “episcope” functions lower down in the tree of managerial responsibility and not just at the diocesan summit.

Such a list could be read as though cell church were making massive and savage criticisms of the Church of England, as we have known it. My own conviction, which I hope is clear from the way I have written this, is that cell church actually values many of the deep instincts that lie behind the various forms and shapes of our current popular ecclesiology. The change asked for is not to the heart of those values, but the end of the pre-dominance of their historical expressions. 

Moreover, this should be of a piece with a church that has a Reformation inheritance; part of that chapter of our history was to insist that the Church should embrace the value Semper Reformanda. At that time it was conceived that this should be in the light of Scripture and that category still stands. In our own day it seems to me that the Church is being reformed because God is dragging it into new forms of his Mission which then leads to a re-reading of Scripture. This is a process which has happened before and notably within Acts Chs. 8-13 in which we see the infant church being challenged about both its ecclesiology and its missiology. It was compelled through the initiatives of God, on the boundaries of what it thought was acceptable mission, to move not only its epicentre but its thinking. Thus it was changed from being little more than a Jewish sect to a multi-cultural church, from uniformity to diversity and from seeing growth merely by addition to growth by multiplication.

Section 4. What may be the Constraints on Cell Church?

Glass Ceilings

Recent history shows us that, in various movements of growth there are, in effect, invisible constraints which come in to prevent what looks very promising from developing much further. So for example, in retrospect, the Renewal Movement of the 1970s, the Church Growth Movement in Britain and the Congregational Church Planting movement of the late 1980s- mid 1990s were unaware that they would encounter what some have called a glass ceiling, or invisible constraints, to continued growth.

For Renewal the inner transformation of individuals and even communal church life never seemed to be matched by an outward emphasis in evangelism and service. Worship and healing among the Christian community seemed to eclipse witness and wholeness in the wider community. 

For the Church Growth Movement, in the majority of cases, congregations were unable to break out of the 200 barrier, other than where there was the independence and money to sustain permanent and larger full-time staffs. Visions could not be matched with resources and few clergy were equipped for the skills or style of leading larger churches.

The church planting movement has encountered vulnerability to change of incumbent, inability to survive the loss of the pioneer leader, difficulties in maturing the plant without reverting to a pre-dominant pastoral and maintenance mode, and in the majority of cases the planting has been by addition rather than by multiplication. Moreover shrinking numbers of full-time ministers has led to a number of plants becoming voluntarily lay-led. In the work culture of the late ‘90s these stalwarts often only have the time available at the cost of considerable personal sacrifice and thus there is a limit to the number of years of service before burnout. So the original goal of Saturation planting has failed to be realised.

My guess is cell church will encounter various components that could impose a glass ceiling.

a) Vulnerability to the change of incumbent is significant. Cell church especially needs a secure minister, happy to be a trainer and a discipler of other trainers and disciplers. Cell church depends on a vision held by the leader of leaders. This will make it even more vulnerable than church plants to such changes. It is hard to envisage a thoroughgoing cell church continuing, if the incoming incumbent does not espouse these values. It may look as though it may flourish for a while, but eventually it will either wither because the leaders will not be supported, or a breakaway church will form which will be a tragedy of a different kind.

b) Achilles – leader with a heel problem Another cardinal difficulty is that of avoiding dilution of the quality of the leadership necessary to keep cells on their evangelistic and discipling tracks. The original visionary may well be able to instil this among members of the original group of leaders. However, when those leaders themselves are responsible for groups of leaders it is less certain that this second generation will have the theological depth, the missionary passion, the people skills, the pastoral experience, the disciplinary wisdom, the educational insight, the years of spirituality and simply the time to impart all that to the third generation. Achilles was a mighty warrior but as mythology records, his heel was not dipped in what gave him his invulnerability. This led to his downfall and death. Cell church is a powerful newer way of being church but if it has an Achilles heel, then it is this issue of reproducing the quality of leadership necessary to sustain that vision. I do not say that every Achilles has to go out and get shot in his heel, but I do say that he would be wise to know that is his weakness and take all steps possible to protect it in any adverse environment. 

d) Another dynamic is that the formation of thorough going cell churches assumes a greater depth of commitment in the membership than is exhibited in most congregations. The danger is that it will be adopted by those with energy, drive and enthusiasm but that it will fail to transform the less motivated and less available. Thus to adopt another metaphor the minister will be left riding two horses undoubtedly travelling at different speeds and eventually in differing directions. Certainly for churches in transition to cell, the strain on collaborative ministry teams to provide both for emerging cell church and resistant congregational church is considerable, particularly as this stage may endure for a number of years. All of this connects with the ecclesiological points about the church being both as a hospital and a barracks. Some recognize this reality and suggest the most churches in the West will only become Meta-Church – that is on the way towards Cell Church but agreeing to operate full Congregational models as well as having Cells. Others are dismissive of such a stance which for them bears a stench of Institutionalism.

e) The house is the family castle. This quite different dimension to the glass ceiling exists in some cultures, such as in working class urban South Yorkshire, but doubtless existing elsewhere. Where there still is some sense of the extended family living locally, incomers to the area will be conversed with over the garden wall, and perhaps invited in for a cup of tea, but at that point a barrier to deeper relationships springs up. Meals as hospitality in the home are taboo. So Cell meetings will be deeply foreign to the culture. Cell church cannot be content with that dynamic, but equally it will have to learn to work with it.

These are the factors which contribute to a glass ceiling that I can foresee. In some cases, I suspect I will be proved most gloriously wrong, but over 20 years I have seen enough of the gradual reversion to original type in British Christianity to have grounds for my fears.

As a person who takes a certain delight in DIY, cell church strikes me rather like being given a new power tool for ones birthday. For example, from personal experience I know how a Bosch Jigsaw has taken a lot of the hardwork out of laborious hand sawing. For many jobs around the house it is a convenient and effective tool in the armoury of the carpenter. But like any invention there is at least one constraint. It is impossible to use the jigsaw to cut a piece of wood that is deeper than that covered by the downsweep of the blade. To try to do so simply makes the entire tool jump up and down in your hand, which is both ineffective and highly dangerous. 

Not only that the jigsaw is no substitute for a carpenters skill or a carpenters experience. In particular it heightens the dictum, “measure twice and cut once”. Fellow DIY enthusiasts will probably smile and rue the times when they have ignored that invaluable piece of advice. Not only that, but a jigsaw can be no substitute for a carpenters commission. Only because you have to mend a chair or build a set of shelves does there come any point in using it. There is no sense in which cell is an end in itself, but it is an exceedingly flexible tool. It releases considerable power in the church, but it needs to be used with wisdom with the goal of building the kingdom, knowing what it can and cannot achieve, then it will prove to be a good servant and not a bad master. 

Cell Church is not unworthy of such a name. It is not dependent on the spin that some of its American free church advocates put upon it. It exhibits many of the characteristics of Church and brings a welcome pendulum swing back to the emphasis on the small unit of church. Pendulums do have tendency to over swing as far in the opposite direction and this needs guarding against, from the heart of our Anglican instincts, though we should allow it to challenge the present forms by which those instincts are expressed. 

George Lings
Director : The Sheffield Centre
July 1999