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

Researchers are rightly both curious and skeptical. They want to know how things work and whether what is claimed is really so. While I do think there is a great deal to encourage us over the reception towards and spread of Mission-shaped Church (MSC) thinking, my curiosity and skepticism still operate. Only its use enables us to see various features: how far it is understood and practiced, in what ways it is not understood or badly practiced, where it is understood, but either avoided, neutralized or rejected.

The danger of domestication
My first headline is that often the core thought of MSC is domesticated as too dangerous for church as we have known her. Several examples include the way the language is now used, but nothing of substance changes within existing church. I was disturbed that a mission minded northern Archdeacon reported very recently that on the one hand, 30% of his diocese reported now having a fresh expression of church, but on closer inspection, he found all but one were examples of recent children’s work done by existing churches. Or take the wider phenomena that the database of the organization fresh expression contains over 500 cases of fresh expressions of church but several observers, including our team, think perhaps half of the cases are pieces of community activity or even examples of mission, but they are not church. Some are what has been done for years is now being branded as a fresh expression.

So in November 2004 the amusing cartoon of the Mission-shaped dog appeared. The language, especially of fresh expression, has become trendy, but what has actually changed? Sometimes the church just changes the labels on the bottles and then pretends that the contents are somehow different. I am suspicious of Mission-shaped labeled placebos. Consider this Church council agenda list. I doubt placebos really create health.

Do note that the report was called Mission-shaped Church, but the buzz word has become fresh expressions. Already mission is drifting out of the centre of the picture. Often what then happens is that fresh expressions are identified by looking in the rear view mirror to old expressions. So a traditional congregation might decide to start a monthly family service and call this their fresh expression. That is hardly a mission-shaped process. It is more likely to be church-shaped mission.

Only if we make looking at the mission context central to the process, will we be doing mission-shaped church. Ironically then, the results might surprise us. In some cases, like connecting to our fringe or reaching out to de-churched older people, the mission-shaped process will create an Old Expression of Church. The real point is not being trendy or doing what we like – but letting mission shape church. For the same reason, some mission contexts will lead to fresh expressions of church. This is validated, not by their being new, but because it has been through the double listening process, and the willingness to die to our preferences so that others may live, both of which encapsulate the process of being mission shaped, rather than focus on a result.

Double Listening
This in my view is the crucial skill, within the mission-shaped process, that will lead to the starting, and assist the sustaining, of various expressions of church. For journeys to Samaria or The Ends of the Earth they will be fresh ones. I am serious about the word skill. It takes skill, humility and perception to read a culture. There will also be skill, humility, boldness and experience to interpret and apply the core of being Christian, to that culture. It also is probably a matter of intuition, to see how the culture itself affects our previous understanding of being Christian. It is not like buying and making prefabricated bits of furniture – it is like being a skilled carpenter who designs and creates what is needed for a particular function and space.

Various errors and distortions have already arisen about the meaning and practice of double listening. As the person who believed at the time that he coined the phrase, I have some justification to explain what I meant by it.[1]

Listening to God
One cardinal distortion is that some imagine double listening is a purely human activity; a thinking skill to be mastered. That was not our intention, and two correctives are needed. This is essentially a spiritual activity, listening to God, but which also involves mental alertness and agility. It is also an art, not a science, that we could call discernment. It is inexact and in part will be subjective. We will practice it imperfectly, as 1Cor 13 tells us about all our knowledge and even prophecy.

Another distortion comes about the sources to listen to. Here is an example from the Church of England Board of Readers website "Double Listening is the faculty of listening to two voices at the same time, the voice of God through Scripture and the voices of men and women around us." This builds on the John Stott view that we listen to God’s Word and God’s world. I agree that both belong to God. I agree that the Word has a higher authority for us in determining what we believe and do.

However this view is narrow in two ways. It separates out listening to the Word, from the listening that comes from knowing the living tradition, which has grown from the word, and helps us be more humble and flexible in returning to the Word, but which never has a higher authority than the word. It also separates listening to the Word, from listening to the Holy Spirit, who will be active in the world and the particular culture to which any apostolic person is sent. There will also be the factor that God, as Creator, has left some finger prints of himself within that culture. The classic NT examples of this process of listening to God through the world would be Peter learning from the Cornelius story and Paul learning from his Athens visit.

So double listening, as I meant it in Mission-shaped Church , is seriously saying that the voice of God is being sought with both ears – the ear that listens to the living church tradition and the ear that listens to the culture to which a person is sent.

What are you listening for?
If double listening is about listening to God through two sources, what is it listening for? This process of finding that out, involves two things. Double listening means entering and understanding the culture in which a future church might be established, 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 finding its core not its skin, its foundation, 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, and is better for determining what expression a new church might take.

There are dangers if we listen only, or even mainly, with only one ear. Only listen to culture and you will end up with syncretism – in which either or both of gospel and church are perverted and distorted by the culture. Only listen to the inherited tradition and the life and message of Jesus, or the life of his people, will not engage the culture. Nothing is gained because they will be irrelevant.

In mission we do not come with empty hands, hearts or brains, but it is key to have open ears. In this sense there is an order to this double listening process. We do bring what we have inherited, but we suspend that to pay attention and listen to the mission context, to culture and the world. This comes before discerning how the inherited Christian tradition works within that culture. Mission precedes the shaping of the resultant church, when the seed of the gospel and church roots in the mission culture.

The danger for evangelists is to think that listening to context is necessary for evangelism, and listening to tradition only applies to church. Worse, they can think they only need to work hard at evangelism and culture, and they can ignore church questions altogether. I’d say that was disastrous. Using a farming metaphor, that’s the way some 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, please note that Jesus talked about the need for new skins for new wine. Harvest and Storage are not to be separated. We work at double listening over how to plant both Gospel and Church. Creating Fresh Expressions of church is listening with two ears, over those two tasks, in the ongoing spiritual discernment of what is sown and how it will grow.

Lets go back to the order in the double listening and the different dynamics as the discernment within the process unfolds. Listening to the cultural context shapes the gospel bearing church that emerges. Mission shapes church. Then the second ear of double listening – hearing our inheritance of the faith uniquely revealed in the Scriptures - validates and assesses what the expression of gospel and of church that is emerging. Even then it is sometimes possible that those in the context will rightly challenge how we, the incoming outsiders, have understood the Word and they may be right. Examples of this are found in the classic mission book, Christianity Rediscovered. At points Donovan found that the Masai understood better than he did, as a highly trained Jesuit missionary. So 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. Remember too that the order of double listening is very like the theological principle of following the Jesus pattern; firstly incarnation into culture, then counter cultural engagement with it.

Triple listening?
One more current distraction is that some are teaching that the reality is triple listening, explained as listening to the word, the world and oneself. I think this is to misunderstand and distort the role of the listener. In coining double listening, I did not imagine that the listener is some dispassionate neutral observer, who does not affect the process. I know that is modernist nonsense. However equally to think there is no objective core, or foundation, to the faith is but post-modernist doctrine. The history of the Jesus events and story will not allow that convenient side step.

But asking for a third ear is also unhelpful. Firstly no one has three ears so it is a bizarre picture. Secondly why mess up a valuable tool being offered, just as people are getting used to it? Thirdly if the point about subjectivity is accepted then really it becomes 6 ear listening – 1 to the word and 2 how I hear it, 3 to the world and 4 how I hear that, 5 to myself and 6 to the distortions I bring to my self understanding. That is too complicated to be helpful. If we talk about “double listening with internal awareness” I think that might meet the objection, it keeps the analogy of two ears and a self aware person using them, and holds onto the useful thought through language of double listening.

It will take some serious work and rigorous discipline to do Double Listening well. Too often people simply proof text to justify a view, or make a wild leap from a text to a highly idiosyncratic meaning, or they impose their favourite expression of church onto a target group. I would like to commend that growing in the skills, order and patterns of double listening becomes a core competency in all our people and thus will affect both initial training and life long learning.

Arches and Bridges
I have drawn your attention to the prevalence of fresh expressions language, over mission–shaped considerations. I have offered you a framework for the church to assess how fully mission-shaped it is, and the balance of where it is making its journeys to – Judea, Samaria or Ends of the Earth. I have talked up the necessity of keenly understood double listening as a key skill to be trained in.

Both arches and bridges exist to cross gaps that people need to cross. They might carry walkers, or water, cars or trains. Sometimes bridges are a single arch, sometimes many arches. I have often observed that in evangelistic processes and starting churches we are confused about arches and bridges. Often we find something that seem to work – Alpha is the classic case, but some fresh expressions have similar hopes, though less resources. By work, we mean more people are willing to come and try something and there is some level of response.

But often we don’t ask does this process start far enough back to connect beyond our existing fringes and does it take people far enough on into being life long disciples of Jesus Christ. Rather we start to say what a wonderful arch it is. We paint it, put battlements on the stonework, put preservation orders on it, and write books about what a good arch it is. I begin to see the same with Fresh Expressions. Note that term. Fresh expressions of what? Are they fresh expressions of community involvement? That will be good, but it will be an early arch – not a bridge. Are they fresh expressions of evangelism? That could be good too – but will they go back enough and do they go on far enough? Are they fresh expressions of worship? It is almost certain they won’t go back far enough.

With arches and bridges – it’s not so much what they look like – ask whether they do the job. You only know they are bridges when they reach both sides and safely carry the traffic they were designed for. My guess is that today usually we need bridges made up of many small steps and we hanker for one stunning span that will do all we need.

What are the tests spiritually? Jesus told us to look for fruit and not expect figs from thistles. If something is producing disciples – it is probably church. If it only creates interest, it might be community action – but without the later arches. If it produces enquirers – it is the pre-evangelism from changed lives. If it creates only converts, then it is the arch of evangelism – and need the arch of discipleship

If it is meeting people in their cultural context and creating people who are disciples of Christ who can continue in mission to that culture – then it is inculturated church - and that is the bridges we are most looking to design and create.

The absence of a framework to assess what is done in mission
I want to offer a framework that helps the church to assess what it is doing in mission, but which also creates some imperative to keep asking what else God might call us to and send us beyond our comfort zones. It is bold, but it comes from an impeccable source. They are words of the risen Jesus, about the effect of the Spirit, upon the church. It is hard to imagine a higher or more pertinent authority.

[1] It is historically true that Double Listening was a phrase used by John Stott in the Contemporary Christian published in 1995, but I only discovered it after MSC came out. He uses it in an overlapping but not identical way.