George Lings, Address -Leicester Diocese- Encounters on the Edge

This morning I gave a lecture called 'Foundations for a Mission-shaped Church ' in which I opened up thoughts from its theological chapter. I propose repeating as little as possible of that material, in order to take this subject seriously in its own right. I will try to alert you to connections as this talk progresses.

I am not very interested in defending the reputation of a particular book, which eventually turned out to be called Mission-shaped Church , even though I am one of its authors. I admit I am glad that after its publication in

England

in 2004, by Anglican standards it has become a best seller. Despite having one female and several male authors, with hindsight if we could have hinted at some deep conspiracy theory lying behind it, it might have sold yet more copies.

I am much more interested in whether the term mission-shaped Church helps us recover a better view of the reciprocal relationship between mission and church. As such the phrase Mission-shaped Church is not so much a report as a concept. I am fascinated by what I see as some fresh connections in our thinking, most of which turn out to be recovery of past insights, but all of which promise to be deeply helpful to us in our practice.

Is this just a desperate response by the existing church in England in the face of a twentieth century that has been a steady story of decline? Some of the secular press have thought so.

I’d like to make two points by way of response. The story of how the report came to be written is quite the reverse. I was part of the conversations that led up to the report being commissioned and we were clear throughout that it was written to describe and analyse creativity and growth, that was already occurring – even in the Church of England. This unusual mix of radical starts out of a supposedly stable pedigree is part of what has made other bodies say – well, if they can do it, so can we.

The second point to acknowledge is that awareness of decline does play a positive role. It helps the existing Church to admit that past strategy and patterns do not answer all the current questions.

This climate made it possible for us to tell the Church of England the unpalatable truth, that the parish system alone would not suffice. It assists the church in a willingness to explore fresh expressions while keeping the best of the old as well – the so called Mixed economy view. It begins to open the mind of the church to thoughts such as the provisionality of all expressions of church. The reality of knowing we can’t go on as we are makes it easier to hear the call that all expressions of church face the call to become mission-shaped. This should be out of theological conviction, not desperation.

I actually agree that marrying the spirit of the age is liable to make you a widow in the near future. That is about not being mission shaped, it is solely being trendy, or changing the shop window of the church, but keeping everything in the back room the same. By contrast, to follow the process of a church being shaped by mission, will leads us into specific skills like double listening. This in turn leads to serious two way engagement with any culture to which we are sent. This broad topic of inculturation was section four in the morning lecture.

The skill or art of Double Listening is far more than a search for relevance. It involves two things. Both are forms of attending to what God is saying. Double listening means entering and understanding the culture in which a church might start, truly listening to the mission context, like Paul did in Athens in Acts 17.

It also means sifting the inherited tradition of both gospel and church and locating its core or heart, not its forms. This is what Paul is doing when he rejects circumcision as necessary for new Greek Christian believers. Double listening is complex, but it enables hearing a richer, more accurate sound. It is better for determining what expression a new church may take.

In mission we do not come with empty hands, but it is key to have open ears. In this sense there is an order to this. Attention to the mission context, or listening to the world, comes before discerning how the inherited Christian tradition works within it. Mission precedes the shaping of the resultant church. We really meant the phrase Mission-shaped Church . It was intended to be substance.

Some think listening to context is all about evangelism, and listening to tradition is all about church. That is disastrous. Using a farming metaphor, that’s the way fruit of evangelism might be gained, but then it gets left to rot in the fields, because the barn of the church is no good to store it. Changing the metaphor, though still staying biological, Jesus talked about the need for new skins for new wine. We work at double listening over Church and Gospel. Creating Fresh Expressions of church is two listenings across those two tasks.

Listening to the cultural context shapes the gospel-bearing-church that begins to emerge. Then the second aspect of double listening – hearing our inheritance the faith uniquely revealed in the Scriptures - validates and assesses what is emerging. Double listening is a process which enables something to evolve as its context changes. It holds in tension both a creative engagement with context and a faithfulness to the good news in Jesus. It is not easy, not simple, but essential and creative. It is far more than mere relevance.

The language of expressions could be revealing. If the response to this report is that the church only has a make over done on its face, by way of a nose job, then that change is largely superficial. If instead of a grimace it learnt to smile then some would be pleased, but I would want to know what development of character was taking place. Without that superficiality is fair criticism

Inculturation and Double Listening goes a lot deeper than the facial expressions of the church. It delves the depths of incarnational thinking as a source of understanding how we can pursue both profound change and yet retain continuity in what remains truly ecclesial– though it might look radically different. It also embraces the central Christian motif of dying to live, shown by Jesus and passed onto us through the call to discipleship, and is embodied in baptism. But these matters were also covered in 2^nd point this morning.

Let me illustrate this point by saying that the changes before us are not so much an update of our image from what is still nice but quaint, to becoming rather more technologically contemporary, more fuel efficient and with a modern look. This task involves more fundamental questions. Where are we being sent to travel to, what is essential to take and must the answer be a car? Within the analogy I am asking. “Is Church necessarily a car? Could it rather be a form of transport?” It is separating out outer form and inner substance. This is not cosmetic change.

A more serious criticism is whether Mission-shaped church is what some missiologists would call ecclesiocentric. That is to say, is this thinking and thus the report only interested in the Church. Is this about the church regaining more status in society and putting back the clock of Christendom. Is the report only interested in the creation of more churches which are no more likely to be outward looking, socially engaged and involved in justice issues, than the failing models that preceded them?

I would want immediately to say that if that is all that comes from Mission-shaped Church , then it will have largely failed. I would be glad that there might be some more individuals who became Christians. But I would be very disturbed that we had ignored the lessons pointed out to us in the 1990’s when some church plants were like that. Sadly some were more about the church I like to belong to, than church which serves those around them. However I must add that this criticism can equally be made of most existing congregations– not just the new ones.

The nature of the relationship of church to kingdom and mission was the 3^rd point explored in this morning’s address. I don’t want to add to that. I will however show you the kind of teaching that is given to those considering leading fresh expressions, to give some substance to the claim that to be too church-centred is indeed a serious mistake.

Take two slides of comments from a leading writer on Church planting, the Anabaptist Stuart Murray. He makes it quite clear that we are called to engage with the width or breadth of God’s mission. That is the call, even if we have to take it in stages to get there. Doing all that at once is quite a tall order. But you will see that part of God’s mission is to build the church.

This is not a contradiction, for the church has a part to play in God’s mission. The people of God are graciously given a role in assisting the mission of God. It is a tragedy that the topics of mission and of church have too often been separated from each other. The very creation of Mission societies, that were not church, institutionalised this ungodly divorce over 200 years ago. We are still recovering from this distortion. I would argue that bringing them back together is one valuable contribution that church planting and fresh expressions have offered to the wider church. Mission and Church are not to be opposed. They are partners who need to move together.

Not only that, but by all means let the kingdom, with its values and agenda, reform the priorities and practice of the church. This would be entirely healthy, though it will be as demanding as it originally was. Once again I show you the kind of values that are taught, at least in some of our theological colleges to would be leaders.

By all means look at this morning’s text for my understanding of ways in which to express how church and kingdom relate. It includes some emphasis on the role of the Spirit. He is literally vital and the church cannot do what he does.

Again let me use a simplistic analogy. Mission and Kingdom are powerful and essential, but they aren’t the whole story. They are like ideas that need to born in people. Church without them is a sorry, stationary spectacle that needs serious attention. Put them all together and we shall begin to get somewhere.

Professor John Hull has written a booklet as a critique of the report Mission-shaped church although some of its more radical spirit and aspirations he praises highly. I hope those who read his work will go back and see where the critique is deserved.

His booklet also fosters a way of looking at mission that he approves of and doesn’t find in Mission-shaped Church . He thinks it helpful to posit there have been broadly three paradigms and stages in the church’s mission after the initial years. The first is the age he calls CHRISTENDOM and its key text would be “compel them to come in”. It is a mission style and biblical misuse of texts that we both disapprove of. The second paradigm from the 18^th century onwards is called CHRISTIANITY. Its watch word would be “go and make disciples of all nations”.
The third arising at some point in the 20^th century he calls CHRISTIANNESS. Its guiding light is deemed to be “proclaim good news to the poor”. His view is that in each case the emerging view surpasses and removes the legitimacy of the previous views. He thinks, rightly, that Mission-shaped Church is still operating in Christianity mode. Thus he criticises it for making the church too much a part of mission, he sees its talk of evangelism as proselytising, and thinks we have no mission to those of other faiths. There is one major area in which he and the writers are coming from different and disagreeing view points. As such his is not so much a critique but an advocacy of his own view.

Our response is that Anglicans have said “no” to his third stage as dismissing the 2^nd one. I put on the screen what the Anglican Communion has stated some year ago about mission and evangelism. I am glad that our denomination wants to hold together evangelism and mission. It has a broad view of mission and it embraces those dynamics of loving service, justice and care of creation that do honour the values of the kingdom. This is what all expressions of church, fresh and fully matured, old and young should aspire to.

I begin to think that the title is setting me a problem, a kind of catch 22. In this first half I have tried to respond to some of criticisms have are made and to rebut the charge that this report is superficial, driven by need and only addressing surface changes.

However I then am aware of another danger that if its ideas have substance and they call for change, then the charge against it will change and its proposals will be dismissed as ill founded. Some do take the view that all that is important about church is already known and practised. So any change from that is illegitimate.

1 Is there a case that real change is allowable?
Should being in Mission be allowed to shape our Theology?

Revd Alistair McGrath was the principal of Wycliffe Hall an Evangelical Theological College in Oxford . In his book The Renewal of Anglicanism he makes two fascinating points that apply here.

In 1908, near the end of his life (1835-1912) The German theologian Martin Kahler wrote “ Mission is the mother of theology... Theology began as an accompanying manifestation of the Christian mission”.[1]

This is not new, nor was it at the start. Think back to the foundation of the living Christian tradition. What changed in NT with the advent of Cross cultural mission?

I suggest that among the changes were from working among Jews, to creating communities that were a mix of Jew & Gentile. The language spoken and even the sacred texts moved from being in Hebrew & Aramaic to Greek and Latin. Dominant models of atonement shifted from sacrifice to Justification and Reconciliation. Synagogue gender segregated patterns shifted to Ecclesia patterns that more widely included women and slaves. Gathering at the Temple moved to dispersed ecclesias in each small town, and in various households in large towns.

Highly important, previously non negotiable distinct cultural and theological values were changed. Circumcision was no longer required – which from the start of the OT story had been a familial and personal mark of belonging to the people of God. Also the food laws were largely suspended, including whom one could eat with. Neither of these were trivial in their day, though we tend to assume this change now. It took conflict and council to establish that this was a change that needed to be made. Even then some parts of the church – called the Judaisers – resisted the changes and saw them as betrayal and fatal compromise. This process of change is not novel nor was it thought illegitimate.

Mission changing your theology is actually in the Bible - its part of the story of the Bible. Being with the God of mission, when he is doing mission, changes what we believe about mission.

“Theologians today are afraid of the word “experience”. There are some good reasons for this and also some bad ones. But I do not think it is possible to survey this NT evidence… without recognizing that the NT writers are free from this fear.” [2]

Planting Churches to create fresh Expressions provokes amendment of our doctrine of the church. Mission-shaped Church argues that it should be revised to include the point "the Church is God's community with a mandate to reproduce".

There is only time to sketch a Biblical base for such a bold assertion. It is wider than New Testament stories of church planting. These stories do not make the case, they can only illustrate it. They are the consequence of the doctrine not the rationale. I want to go deeper. Salvation History is an appropriate framework: If the theme of reproduction is not there, it is only an invention and not woven into the narrative of what God has done and shown.

The Genesis of the Church
Adam and Eve is, at least, the story of God's intention for humankind, and thus, in one sense, it is the story of the ideal for the church. This is to be a community in unbroken relationship with God and mandated to take responsibility for care of the earth with justice. But the method for that mandate is to reproduce. From its inception, God's human community is to reproduce itself to fulfil the divine purpose.

Now note that Jesus, the Lord of the Church, is called the Second Adam in the NT. Moreover the Resurrection is linked with the birth of a second Creation. Both bear witness to this notion that the Church is intended to reproduce and so fill the earth. Parts of the doctrine of creation lend credence to belief in the Church as the community mandated to reproduce itself.

The Covenant's challenge to the Church
The covenant with Abraham particularised God's call, to an individual. His whole family and community was called to restored relationship with God. But this community did not exist for itself. There is a dynamic at work; from the few to the many. Through reproduction, the community was to be the way all the nations of the earth would be blessed. (Genesis 12.3) The rest of the Old Testament story shows a tension in the way that ideal was held. At one end of the rope is the inward pull of being a nation, the magnetism attraction of Jerusalem and the call to be separate from everyone else. Pulling at the other end, note the prophetic outward thrust of the covenant people Israel , who are called to reach the nations. These Servant songs of Isaiah are applied later both to Christ and the Church. The purpose of God’s covenant with Abraham underlines this call to reproduce to reach the world.

The Gospel imperatives for the church.
I understand the Kingdom and the Church are overlapping realities. The Church is a way of making the Kingdom visible. The Church is called to be a sign of Christ's present and coming Kingdom.

A good number of the Kingdom Parables are about reproductive growth, usually of the organic variety. For example, in Luke consider the following; Trees that bear fruit Luke 6, the Sower Luke 8, the spreading branches of the mustard seed tree, and the yeast that works through the dough Luke 13, and the Talents Luke 19.

Beyond the parables, consider the miracle of the reproduction of the loaves and fishes, present in all four gospels. C.S. Lewis describes it as a Miracle of the new Creation, and so suggestive of God's long term purpose for the church. John 8 sees Jesus' followers as the true children of Abraham, who was to bless the world in his fruitfulness. All these are echoes of what I’ve mentioned so far from the Old Testament.

John 15 explores the image of the Vine. What is the purpose of remaining in Christ? It is to love and obey Jesus certainly, but also to bear fruit which is to the Father's glory v8. The key question is what is fruit for?

Certainly fruit is to be enjoyed and to nourish, but is it a total accident that fruit is the biological way of reproduction? Seen in that light is it far fetched to see here too some indicators that the Church is the community mandated to reproduce itself? Fruit and fruitfulness in Scripture have a connection with reproduction, as in the Hebrew phrase for a child as "the fruit of the womb"? Fruit in John 15 could suggest that the ability to reproduce, physically and spiritually, is part of how God intends his people, the Church, to be. There are elements of Jesus' teaching in the Gospels that underlie the call to reproduction.

The story of the young church - Acts and Epistles
By now we can expect that the story of Acts is not simply a general one of mission, but a more specific one of church planting. It is right to say only after Antioch (Acts 13) can we most accurately talk of church planting; the model of starting new communities, containing both Jews and Gentiles. That realisation came through the Spirit's vision given to Peter and the missionary call of Paul (Acts 9-10). But the essential planting mentality that says "Go" not “Come” is written into both the Matthean Great Commission (Mt 28) and the Lukan purpose of the Spirit (Acts 1.8). Both presuppose that the church is to be reproduced, by disciples from as many ethnic groups as there are in the world.

Remember also the Ephesians 4.11 list of Christ-given ministries; apostles prophets, evangelists, pastors/teachers. The apostolic corresponds with the planting / reproductive function. This is part of what apostolic people do; like Jesus they are sent to start churches. This role comes first because church planting is foundational to all other ministries. Planting begins the forming of the community from which prophecy and evangelism proceed and which, through pastoring and teaching, grows to maturity in Christ.

Revelation of the ultimate destiny of the Church
The Bible runs from creation to heaven restored. In a 1991 address to Canterbury Diocesan Synod, George Carey spoke of the Church as those on the Way and of the Way.

"The moment the doctrine of the church loses its eschatological reference it becomes static, in danger of becoming fossilised by its past, by its traditions or by its culture."

To see the Church as the Reproducing Community helps us to realise we have done our job incompletely. We should be humbled and motivated to discharge our responsibility under the great commission. It is no less than a call for the existence of mission-shaped churches in all places, at all times, for all peoples. Movement and reproduction will be essential to co-operate in God’s mission to fulfil that. Only in heaven will mission and planting cease. Only then will gifts of Spirit, essential to that mission task, will be redundant (1Cor 13). Only then worship by the heavenly community will replace the dynamic rhythm, of worship and mission to which we are called on earth as the church grows. Growth, by reproduction, will be vital to fill the earth. The whole sweep of salvation history suggests it should be so.

These are the headlines of the raw material from Genesis to Revelation, that claim a wide biblical base for the notion that our view of the church should change to include its being the community mandated to reproduce under the guidance and inspiration of God.

I have chosen this one example of a change of substance in our doctrine because it opens the door to several other perceptions and connects with other important thinking within Mission-shaped church and the current scene.

This view is an important change from previous church growth school thinking that centred around getting bigger or better. This is about multiplication not addition; it is about giving away people more than attracting them. It therefore challenges all Mecca-like ministries which suck people in, either for the quality of word preached or styles of worship offered. Ultimately this is not the point.

It connects up with ideas that I have received from colleagues like Bob Hopkins that the NT shows patterns of God gathering resources in order later to disperse them. We see this is the life of the church in Jerusalem , in Antioch and in Ephesus . Yes God does do this because he seeks to reproduce yet more communities of people who are centred around Jesus and seek to follow him, including his pattern of self giving to others.

This means we also need to re-evaluate our inherited emphasis on church as gathered. This view is reinforced by emphasis on such models as being a city set on a hill, the light of the world. This works in particular ways most of which are to attract. Church is also dispersed such as the model of it being salt and notably yeast. They disperse to permeate the whole.

Reproduction as a model makes some more sense of the apparently opposing dynamics of “come” and of “go” both of which are found in scripture. It fits with the view that holds mission is essentially "go" shaped because it is apostolic. Reproduction is rightly concerned with life beyond our own. Sending and movement is foundational to mission and being church. Yet within that pattern there are “come” phases in which the community sent out is built up in faith, hope and love, so that it is ready again to send out by reproduction part of its life in the next go phase.

We see across the human generations how our daughters and sons inherit our characteristics and yet are also themselves. Those who look at our three see the connections. Though they are not the same as their parents they are still fully human. So it is with church that reproduces. Here is some further basis for understanding our call to live with diversity. Diversity is legitimately caused by engagement with different mission contexts which leads to diverse expressions of church. Reproduction in both human and church life cannot be reduced to mere replication, for then there is no engagement with culture or mission context.

But diversity happens also because reproduction is genuinely creative. Each expression of church has something of its own to add to our understanding of the whole. Reproduction also underlines that we have familial connectivity to one another and there is a vital sense of mutual belonging which is the call of true catholicity. We are all part of the whole body of Christ. Elegant fingers, beautiful eyes, snotty noses and smelly feet are all part of the body. Only together is there a whole which can function as intended. Reproduction sits easily with the doctrine of the church as the body of Christ which is wonderfully diverse and well as intensely valuing unity. Yet that unity can no longer be made to mean uniformity. Thus monopolistic ways of thinking - that there can only be one way to be church are shown to be false. We have to confess that as Anglicans that has been our history, of which we need to repent. The reality of unity is deeper and more subtle.

Seeing the Church as the Reproductive Community also makes us take a significantly different view of church and mission. It holds together two thoughts: that church is the community that is involved in mission and it is the reproduction of the church that is one goal of mission. Mission then is the natural task of the whole church.

I was delighted that no less a figure than Stuart Murray writes on p60, Laying Foundations

“Adding “reproductive” to the lists of epithets normally associated with ecclesiology such as “one holy catholic and apostolic” might be a significant component in the integration of Missiology and ecclesiology that is important for the health of both disciplines.”

Mission and Ecclesiology, in this Church Planting view, are even more than fish and chips which happen to sit well together. They are chicken and egg, intimately related, intertwined and inseparable with it being hard, and precipitate, to say which came first.

No other model of the church holds these two in such powerful adhesive bonds. Change the analogy. The Reproduction model is like a superglue when it comes to connecting the doctrine of mission and of the church. It is about both and it committed to both.

I have never claimed that church reproduction is an end in itself; many more questions have to be asked about what is being reproduced. Churches are not to breed like rabbits. We do not, for example, need the spread of small, inward looking, marginalized urban churches. Cities are already littered with their remains. Nor usually do we need to build more rural church buildings; they adequately decorate the national landscape and are the bane of the local church purse.

Let's explore the linkage of church and mission doctrine. I think we can argue that what is happening in fresh expressions is recovering a vital lost dimension of both and their connections. For if what we say is true

Humbly should we not dare to say that by being in this mission with God, the Holy Spirit is leading us back into more of the truth about the mission of God?

Thus the claim of substance behind Mission-shaped church is that the process of church planting which leads to the creation of fresh expressions, is not only a movement of God, but a pointer from him about he wants his church to be.

Then, I believe, we shall not only make progress with our mandate to be Churches that reach others but we shall have recovered something of our lost identity.

We, by the grace of God, are the Community called by God, with the Spirit led task to reproduce, to fulfil the purposes of God, for the sake of the world that belongs to God.

[1] Quoted by David Bosch : Transforming Mission : Orbis Books p 16

[2] Lesslie Newbigin The Household of God 1953 pp118-9