All posts by Matthew

Bosch on Dimension and Intention

ecclesiology, mission, worship

Bosch, Witness to the World (London: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1980), pp. 199-201.

Bosch offers here a thought-provoking, if not immediately obvious discussion on the relation between mission and church and in particular on whether mission is an essential aspect of the church. He uses a pair of concepts from H.-W. Gensichen: ‘dimension’ and ‘intention’.

‘Intention’ refers to an explicitly missionary act, something that is primarily intended to be an expression of the love of God, and of the Church, to the outsider.

‘Dimension’, somewhat opaquely, refers to manner in which every aspect of the Church’s life must have a missionary element or, perhaps better, must have a character derived from that of God, who in Christ has shown himself to be ‘missionary’. The Church’s nature is missionary, taken as it is from Christ, the Son of God who who created and redeemed the world as an expression of the love of God.

Therefore, everything the church does must have a missionary dimension, not everything must have a missionary intention.

The church is missionary when she is welcoming to outsiders, open to change for the sake of others, when she upholds the and defends the truth the Gospel, even though there may be no explicitly missionary intention in any of these acts. She has to be this in order to perform mission at all. Intention can only exist on the basis of dimension.

Useful texts listed are:

Phil. 2:14-16. ‘Do everything … as you hold our the word of life.’

Col. 4:5. ‘Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity.’

1 The. 4:9-12. ‘Now concerning love of the brothers and sisters … so that you may behave properly toward outsiders and be dependent on no one.’

1 Pet. 2:12. ‘Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.’

1 Cor. 5:12-15. ‘What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked man from among you.”’

2 Cor. 3:2-3. ‘You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everybody. You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.’

More generally, I’m reminded of Barth’s discussion of Salt and Light in CD IV.3.2 par.72 and, unsurprisingly for us, the manner in which the Church’s nature is to be shaped by her source in 1 Corinthians: we are the body of Christ. If Christ is the Son of God, and we are the body of Christ, how can our nature be anything but self-giving for the world? Even when we prophesy to one another, our words will point to the one who sets the world free (1 Cor. 14:24-25).

Experimental Church (Part 1)

mission

An ‘Experimental’ Church

Here at NYNO, we suggest that it can be really helpful to think of the life of a church (a new church plant or an existing church) as an ‘experimental’ work. By using this term we are making an analogy to science … but it is only an analogy and all analogies have limits. So, please don’t be put off by something that might sound intimidating. What we actually mean by this is relatively simple and also, we believe, quite important.

So, what do we mean by ‘experimental’? In very brief and broad outline, the term is useful in at least two ways: firstly, in the educational relationship between our church plant and the wider church; and, secondly, in the manner in which our church communities handle the adaptation that is necessarily at the heart of a missional life. This post will address the first of these and hopefully a second post will follow to take up the matter of experimentation in a local congregation.

‘Experimental’ Church Work in the Context of the Wider Church

The Goal of ‘Experimental’ Church Life

What everyone wants to see in the Church is faithful communities growing through mission. We would all like to see this, but few of us do. This just seems an empirical fact given the ongoing shrinkage of the Church in the Western world in the twenty-first century. We use the term ‘faithful’ because numerical growth is not everything. Filling an arena is not an end in itself. Christ must be at the centre of our lives as individuals and as a community. We use the term ‘mission’ because we want to insist that out new communities come from an engagement with the world outside of our existing church communities. It doesn’t really prove much, at least with regard to the questions NYNO is interested in, if a church grows through attracting people who are already Christians. All this being said, this is what we hope for our churches: faithful communities, growing, engaged in mission. The problem would seem to be, though, that none of us really know how to do this.

No-one Has the Answer

When we say, ‘we don’t know how to do this’, this is no exaggeration! If there was an answer, we would all be using it. Part of the issue is that the Church as a whole has not come to terms with its new position in society after the end of Christendom. Whether we are dealing with the Church’s relationship to other faiths, what we have to say with regard to society’s attitudes towards money, sexuality or celebrity, as a Church we struggle to convince one another and arrive at a common mind, let alone speak with a provocative and faithful clarity to the world. Now it may be that my search for a common mind that would speak powerfully to the world is all a bit of a power trip on my part, but that’s not really my point. The issue is rather that the Church feels as though her anchors have been lost and she has been cast adrift. We feel as though our faith necessitates that we should have some answers – even if that answer is a practice of prayerful silence in the face of the world! – but we don’t. There is lots we could say. Many doctrines we could rehearse but too often, to our consternation and the test of faith, they seem empty and powerless, dry, dusty, dead.

The Difference ‘Experimental’ Churches Could Make to the Wider Church

In this context, in our context, we think ‘experimental’ church is important. Here is why.

An experiment is a step into the unknown. We create a hypothesis and then we test it. The hypothesis might be, ‘Could a Church prosper, meeting in the context of a library’, or ‘Is it possible to create an diversely aged church that is particularly accessible to older people’ (that one might sound familiar to you), or ‘Is it possible to make our musical worship feel fresh and joyful without feeling as though our attention is constantly drawn to performers on a stage?’. The point about the hypothesis is that it sounds like a plausible and attractive solution to a problem, but we don’t know whether it would work. Hopefully our ideas will be informed by the needs of the people in front of us, the state of the wider church, the priorities of Scripture and doctrine and the wise counsel of those who went before us in Church history. Hopefully they will be great ideas, inspirational and exciting. Testing these ideas might involve a new direction for an existing church, or might involve the creation of a whole new church shaped in an important sense to address this pressing issue. The grand hope would be, whatever our hypothesis that we wish to test, that we will learn from from our experiment and be able to pass that information on to others.

We said above that we wanted our churches to be ‘faithful communities growing through mission’. In this world, where the church feels cast adrift we need to learn from each other’s successes and failures. This is particularly true for church planting which is an especially challenging task, often working without the established structures and support of an institution. The principle applies, though, to all churches that want to try something new. Lessons can be learned from success and failure, if we’re humble and honest enough to listen to others and to tell our story.

The Problem of Success

As was discussed above, we all need and want success. This is true when you face up to the general situation of the Church in the western word: what is the answer that might turn our situation around, fill our buildings and our coffers? This is also true on a local level: what might bring our church to life, fill our services and encourage the world outside of the church to look on us with respect. On the one hand, we need more people. Without them, the future looks grim as our churches will be unable to sustain their existing infrastructure. On the other hand, we want to be the people with the answer, the people with the thriving church, the people others look to for the answer. This second issue is made all the more tempting because of the seriousness of the first.

The problem is, that this need and desire for success actually gets in the way of our achieving it. What we need in order to achieve success is freedom to experiment, freedom to follow the priorities of the Gospel, even if that leads us into apparently unpopular places. We can only have that freedom, if we give each other permission to ‘fail’, if we value and support each other as we learn together, irrespective of whether things do or do not lead to the conversion of towns and cities en masse.

While we value success, we will be tempted into pragmatism, doing ‘what works’ or trying to follow the models of apparently large and ‘successful’ churches. Let me give an awkward example. A successful church might have a number of talented musicians who produce a rock concert like experience for a large number of people. This looks like success. Smaller churches will try to emulate their performances, perhaps without the same slick professionalism. Other churches with no musicians will feel hopeless, unable even to begin to emulate such success. A better way forward for the small church is to experiment, to try something completely different, to question these established norms that seem to doom our meetings to ‘unattractive failure’; believing that God is with us and that must count for more than the presence of a skilled guitarist and large amplifier. To do this, we would seek to base our existence as a community afresh in the life of the Holy Spirit. We would pick up inspired Scripture and try to read it afresh as it points us to Christ. We would start a conversation amongst God’s people, trusting that God has given us the people we need for this place and that these people are endowed by the Spirit with gifts for the equipping of his church (and that these gifts might not be the conventional tools of ‘success’ that we hope for). We would try to be students of the Church’s history, listening patiently to those who went before us, trusting that they were no more fallen and no less indwelt by God’s Spirit than ourselves. And finally, we would seek to do this in supportive conversation with other churches doing the same thing. We don’t know what might result for all of this, but I suspect that at the least it might be a community that knows it has a purpose and that values its own members and that those would be an improvement on feeling hopelessly small, uncool and under-skilled.

All of this is to say that we need churches – and projects that are not yet churches but want to be – that are willing to try something different. But it is hard for these new churches and new initiatives because they may not be able to offer the prospect of immediate ‘success’. They will feel self-conscious, under pressure to produce results, and possibly under-valued if they perceive themselves to be evaluated according to ‘success’. What might an alternative be?

The purpose of viewing our churches and initiatives as ‘experimental’ is that everyone might recognise the need to try new things and the challenge and risk involved in that. To view a new church plant as ‘experimental’ would be to expect that church plant to try new things and that this is a worthwhile thing in and of itself. Such a project should not be evaluated according to success, but rather promise and progress. The question might must simply be ‘are they successful?’ but rather, ‘are they learning something that can be shared with the rest of us?’. Those lessons might be small things, questions of pastoral wisdom, advice on organising events, or bigger notions to do with society’s response to a certain presentation of the Gospel. The lessons might come from apparent success or failure. Both should be valued. Individuals and teams embarking on experimental projects need to feel valued by the wider church not because they have all the answers, but because they learning. If we were all involved in this task, learning and listening to one another, is it possible that our Church would be better equipped to witness faithfully to the world in our new and disconcerting age?

More Bosch, this time on Missio Dei

ecclesiology, mission, Uncategorized

Bosch, Witness to the World (London: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1980), pp. 179-80. My underlining.

The mooring of mission to the doctrine of the Trinity led to the introduction of the expression missio Dei (God’s mission) at Willingen. The term was in all probability coined by Hartenstein. He intended it to give expression to the conviction that God, and God alone was the subject of mission. The initiative for our mission lay with him alone (missio ecclesiae, the Church’s mission). Only in God’s hands our mission could be truly [sic] called mission. In the period after Willingen the concept missio Dei gradually changed its meaning. It came to signify God’s hidden activities in the world, independent of the Church, and our responsibility to discover and participate in these activities.

It’s interesting how the final idea is, at least in part, the basis of Roxburgh’s advice. Again, strange to see ideas from 1952, reported on in 1980, offered as the latest and greatest solution to the Church’s problems.

Just to repeat what was in the previous post, and speaking more generally of the use of missio Dei: the missionary focus on the world as we follow God’s initiative is right. The side-lining of the Church is a grave mistake.

The Church Inside Out

community, discipleship, ecclesiology, mission, worship

I discovered the following in Bosch, Witness to the World (London: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1980), pp. 176-78.

The theology of the apostolate soon underwent a certain radicalisation due to Hoekendijk’s contribution. He polemicised against the church-centric mission that had been especially in vogue since Tambaran 1939. The Church was an illegitimate centre. Not the Church but the world, the oikoumene, stood in the centre of God’s concern. Van Ruler’s thesis that mission was a function of the Church, was inverted by Hoekendijk: the Church was a function of mission. There was no room for a ‘doctrine of the Church’. We should refer to the Church only in passing and without any emphasis. Ecclesiology should not be more than a single paragraph in Christology (the messianic involvement with the world) and a few sentences in eschatology (the messianic involvement with the world) … 

From the outset Hoekendijk could not accept a ‘theology of mission’. If he did so it would imply that mission would once again be an extra. There would then also conceivably be other ‘theologies of …’. He therefore pleaded not for ‘theology of mission’, but for ‘missionary theology’ as expression of all authentic theology. …

In this way Hoekendijk’s theology of the apostolate became a theology of the world. Theology is God inviting us to share the world with him. For precisely this reason it was a theology of the Kingdom. Mission was not the road from church to church: mission or Church was the interaction between Kingdom and world, involved in both … The form which this involvement took he called shalom, Hebrew for ‘peace’, which he described as a ‘social happening’, and which was an ethical rather than a soteriological concept. Reconciliation became a universal humanisation process. In his earlier writings he did characterise the task of the Church as kerygma, koinonia and diakonia – proclamation, community, and service. In the course of time, however, he increasingly moved towards the last of the three.

I find it curious that the following theology derives from the 1960. Theological language along these lines is, I find, being used with plenty of enthusiasm today. Not having read Hoekendijk’s theology at first hand I should be cautious speaking directly about him. An English translation of some of his shorter works was published in 1966 with the title ‘The Church Inside Out’ (SCM). It’s another one to add to the list …

I am all the more interested having just read Barth on the Church as witness (CD IV.3), and also John Flett’s head spinning The Witness of God. When I hear this language used today, it is in my experience without reflection on Bosch’s concluding analysis (from 1980!): you get rid of the Church  and something essential is lost.

It’s not as though I don’t have sympathy for Hoekendijk’s frustration with the Church. It is only because of faith that I stay loyal to the church structures and institutions. Yes, I have enough self-knowledge to know that I am no less fallen than the next church member, but that doesn’t make identifying with and living with and in the Church any more comfortable.

As an attempt to flesh out something more positive, here follows a brief summary of something I was going to provide more detail of later … some Barth inspired thoughts.

The move from missio dei to church-less service (identified by Bosch above) seems to stem from an absence of Christology. The language of mission and kingdom seems to have been abstracted from Christ himself. One often hears today this language used in connection with discipleship. On the face of it, this sounds quite Christocentric! With it, though is a closely connected assumption that the discipleship of the gospels has no direct relationship with the Church. As Barth points out, this is a case of not seeing the wood for the trees. The ‘absence’ of Church from the gospels is because it is everywhere assumed! Of course it is, the gospels themselves were written from within ecclesial community, often addressing the concerns of that community (the assumptions of form and canonical criticism spring to mind).

This being so, the Church’s existence is determined (skirting over a discussion of actualistic ontology) by her saviour, by whom the covenant between God and humanity is concluded. Christ is about his Father’s work. Humanity is called to witness to that, to echo Christ’s words and actions as the covenant partner and so point others to him. The Church follows the attitude of Christ, who is about his Father’s business. God’s concern firstly is for the world and in Christ the world is justified. We come to faith and join the Church as members of the world. The Church is composed of those brought to the knowledge of this salvation found in Christ and so are called to participate in their own proper way in the loving work of God. The Church therefore cannot be and must not be firstly concerned with its own life, or see itself as an end in itself. To do so would be to be radically incoherent. The Church is called, and therefore the Church must follow Christ and do the Father’s work. But because it is called it is the Church and it is as a community that the Church can witness in a manner no individual can (Stringfellow springs to mind for the ability of the Church to witness politically today). Think of the roles of forgiveness and accountability. The Church here is not somehow establishing a perfect society on earth, it is pointing in a faltering manner to the one who has already forgiven them. Of course, I can forgive people outside of the Church and this can be a witness, but in the Church I don’t just forgive. In the Church I can be forgiven too.

The future of popular missionary theology is not the removal of ecclesiology. It is rather having a good ecclesiology by which the Church can understand her very nature is to be outward focussed, in which even her most private worship in word and form, can be a witness to the world of the coming kingdom.

The State of Play, Autumn 2014

Uncategorized

I thought I’d provide an update as to what NYNO has been up to and what we hope to be doing in the near future.

We continue to run our two groups in a sheltered accommodation complex. The first group meets monthly and has moved from being a familiar minister led service to one based around a communal meal structured by set prayers and actions in which all participate together. The second group is smaller and meets most weeks, and would have been recognisable to most as a Bible study. That two has moved to so as to have a worshipful meal format in which young children and be kept at the heart of the meeting, rather than kept quiet during the adult talking time.

Over the summer Julie and I have really begin to give our attention to the practical questions of an every age meeting, particularly accessible to older people. The change in our worship to a format based around a meal was done with the idea in the back of our minds of finding a format in which young and old and can worship together. But it was, if you like, only a first step. There remains the question of how to invite the younger people to worship with us!

As with everything we’ve done, we’re not rushing to answer this question. One step at a time! That has, so to speak, been our mantra: take one step, reflect, listen, take the next step. You have to have some plans, but you need to hold them lightly, letting everyone be involved as you take the next one step.

Perhaps strangely, taking your time such a big change and allowing people to contribute can mean you have time on your hands, so in the meantime, I’m planning to put together a small booklet. This would together our reflections to date, and more easily allow people to follow what we’ve been doing date and amongst other things, get to grips with our notion of ‘first class church’, put into practice a reflective and participative cycle of leadership, pick up and use our liturgies and – if you like! – follow our bread recipes …

In addition we’ve been compiling some notes on Barth’s Church Dogmatics, IV.3.2 par.72 on ‘The Holy Spirit and the Sending of the Christian Community’: very helpful for clarifying the relationship between Church and mission. Hopefully they will be posted before too long.

Of course, once again, if you’d like to know more about NYNO, or have a conversation about starting your own church in Sheltered Accommodation (or indeed in a care or nursing home) we’d be more than happy to talk to you.

Matthew

Liturgy for a Meal

Uncategorized

Background and Introduction

Our first meal together was a breakfast. It came after a number of months of preparation. The gathering into which we were introducing this innovation met once a month, and so it was important to make the most of each opportunity to meet and discuss, taking one step at a time and trying to allow space for people to respond to that step. Change too much too quickly, and it risks being too much for people to process and give considered thought to.

So, having on one month introduced our feedback forms and insisted that people’s opinions really do matter, we then embarked on a series of four sermons on texts in 1 Corinthians 10, 11 and 12. Each of these sermons explored the notion of the body of Christ, in the context of a small gathering of older people. You can read these sermons here.

The sermons describe the nature of the church as a community constituted by Christ. In him there is a unity that is not based on common interest, social status or age. All are to be welcomed and can participate most fundamentally through their presence, rather than their service or public performance. These words are fine words but, like much of preaching can seem, they risk being abstract, describing a coherent theological worldview that is yet disconnected from a discipleship of faith, let alone the questions of curious observer, looking in from outside. The embodiment of these ideas, indeed of the spiritual reality of Christ amongst us, is found in our practice of communion. In communion, we come to the table at the invitation of Christ. In communion, we bring no justifying abilities or status, but merely receive. In communion, we find ourselves one because we all share in the one loaf. Here, all of NYNO’s concerns over the exclusion of older people and the benefits if a diversely aged community are founded in the central communal act of the church. With the loaf and wine before us, questions and solution are heard in a new way.

Our next steps, then, were to change the way we sat together. Instead of, largely speaking, sitting in rows facing a pulpit we sat in the round, facing one another across a table laid with the elements of bread and wine. The sermon was about community and participation in Christ and so in the community of his body was being illustrated physically by the way we sat together. It is true that disputes over pews and internal arrangements of churches can exemplify our ability as churches to lose direction and sense of proportion, and yet here such matters seemed imbued with spiritual resonance.

Having taken these steps, the most obvious way forward for us, to encourage the valuing and participation of older people and to enable to a truly diversely aged community to worship together as the body of Christ, was to build our worship, quite literally, around the table. If God has mandated a meal at the heart of our worship, why do we not make more of it? By placing this central to our worship there is the possibility that we will enable young and old to worship together in a way that sidesteps the issues that have frequently driven them apart. If we say, to put it simplistically, that sitting round a table can be worship then a nine year old and a ninety year old can enjoy tea and cake together in God’s presence without the inevitable stress of keeping folk together during age specific teaching or entertainment.

The Spiritual Dynamics of Worship

As we suggested way back here, if you’re going to innovate in worship it will be important to have an appreciation of what is meant to happen, spiritually, in worship. If in describing worship we find ourselves using effectively secular terms (such as communicate, engage, atmosphere) it may be that we’re not thinking as faithfully or deeply as we could be.

The reformed approach to Word and Sacrament offers an important perspective. Here, divine communication of the promises of the Gospel found in Scripture is most important. Both preaching and the sacraments offer the Gospel in word and symbol and, by the enabling work of the Spirit, our response is to grasp hold of those promises in faith. The whole service then is to be oriented around the presentation of these promises by the minister of the Gospel. The people may be active in singing and praying, but in this most important matter they are passive and rightly so because of the one way nature of grace.

In Calvin, the communal nature of the Lord’s Supper is touched upon (e.g. Inst. IV 17.44), but – given that his context is significantly different – it is hardly surprising that this is not given the emphasis that we have found helpful.

Our own feeling is that, through a loss of confidence in the spiritual reality and power of the word and sacrament, we have come to offer psychological explanations for their effectiveness or significance, effectively making ministers primarily educators and our churches primarily classrooms. Perhaps one consequence of this is that, with our educational outcomes as a goal, we prepare age specific teaching and struggle to retain old and young together. NYNO is not wishing to say that education is unimportant, but rather to argue that if we place it central to our worship, young and old will struggle to worship together.

For ourselves, what we understand to be the spiritual dynamic behind NYNO worship is the presentation and sacramental enjoyment of the Gospel in a worshipful meal. Education is, for the moment, understood as a secondary task. When we gather together, we remember and repeat the story of God’s salvation, we read from the scriptures, we pray, we eat and drink of Christ and so are one with each other and we expand that participation into fellowship of a meal, foreshadowing the final banquet of the Lamb.

Participation and Performance

This is a generalisation, but it seems to be true in our context: many older folk – perhaps used to the imposing liturgical performances of ministers of Word and Sacrament – find the notion of public participation in a worship service unappealing. At the heart of NYNO’s ethos, however, is the importance of the active participation of the laity in Christ and in community. We do not simply visit older people, give them a spiritual blessing (for instance, a monthly service of preaching and hymns) and then depart, but instead we build our church community together, living with one another, bearing with one another, disciples old and young together. We both want to build a spiritually nurturing community, and yet avoid making intimidating public charismatic performance an essential membership requirement. These issues are part of the reason why we turned to written liturgy to shape and guide our worship together. Well written words, allow us to repeat the Gospel to one another and to pray without demanding any individual be in the pressured situation of speaking aloud. Further, and this is no small point, they also potentially allow a congregation to develop without requiring the expense of a professional minister. In the Church of Scotland ministers are in short supply, and there is hardly the finances available to place them in experimental church plants for the time necessary for such communities to flourish and for lessons to be learned.

Does all of this guarantee a lively, diverse Christian community committed to mission, seeing others come to faith? Hardly, but it may be putting in place a framework that allows God’s people to worship faithfully in a particular context. We hope that it might be something by which God would continue to work through his church.

The Liturgy

So, finally, let’s describe and comment on the first liturgy that we used. Please note, that this is our first attempt, warts and all, so to speak. NYNO continues to be experimental. We’re not trying to present a perfect solution, but instead think that there’s more to be learnt by honestly going through the cycle of experiment and reflection. In that spirit, future posts will describe the continued development of the liturgy.

The sheet we used can be found here.

In broad outline, the service is one in which we speak to God and to one another. The congregation enters and sits around the one table (or our best approximation of this). Food is already set out before us on the table. Communion is brought towards the front of the service, and the opening section prepares us for that. Our agape meal is placed after communion so that it is understood to be dependent on our prior participation in Christ. Once the meal begins there is an opportunity to offer subjects for prayer, and we interrupt the meal for intercessions and a concluding hymn. The fellowship and eating can continue but we put a limit on the formal aspects so that people feel free to leave.

The opening prayer describes what will come.

We don’t have too many comments to make about the hymn. Music is an area in which we’d like to have something more constructive to say, but it’s hard to get away from the necessity of technical expertise! The words are written in the liturgy for simplicity. We do have someone who can play a keyboard, but we often use simple MIDI hymn tracks (either with a MIDI keyboard or converted to MP3). The emphasis – as below with our prayers – should always be on the human voice, on corporate singing. Part of the thinking here is an unease about a psychological model of communion with God, where the powerful performance of a worship leader is used to bring the worshipper to the appropriate devotional attitude. Not only are we doubtful about this psychological model, but would suggest that this can also tend towards a clericalism, where the worshippers are again made passive. Instead, we feel on safer ground emphasizing the singing voices of the congregation. We are ministering to one another.

We read from the Old and New Testament, and we would want this to retain its identity as a worthwhile activity independent of the sermon.

The sermon was kept as short as we’ve ever had it, again seeking to set out the Gospel on the basis of the texts, and being cautious about being distracted by the task of education. This is important, but possibly needs to find an alternative setting.

The confession beings to the fore the work of Christ, hopefully explained in the sermon, and our appropriate response and attitude to it.

The Thanksgiving is the catholic traditional prayer. The assertion that this was the privilege of the bishop or presbyter as the authorised mouthpiece for church doctrine seems unnecessary given there is no restriction on the laity saying the creed. Of course, reserving this for the bishop would make more sense if the prayer was made extemporarily. Even so, we realize that some discussion with those in your church with responsibility for guarding these things may be advisable. Back to the matter in hand: before the beginning of the service, the congregation is split into two groups (A and B) and we say the thanksgiving together.

The Words of Institution are reserved for the minister to keep us legal in the Church of Scotland. The congregation continues to interject their praises.

The Grace is, slightly confusingly, not the scriptural mutual benediction but the opening prayer for the meal. It attempts to set the kingdom banquet, of which our meal is a foretaste, within the context of the work of the Trinity.

The Meal itself is described in another post. It takes some planning and effort, but we attempt to keep it simple and special.

The Prayers emphasize the prayers of the saints, rather than a representative prayer. To this end, what we pray for is guided primarily by what is suggested by the congregation during the meal. And when we pray, again to highlight the laity’s participation, we pray in silence together. Of course a representative prayer can be a good thing, and can help us pray when we don’t have the words. However, for us we want people to realise that their prayers are important.

We concluded with the Lord’s prayer and a hymn. Perhaps a little more work needing to be done there to give the meeting a sense of ending!

Once again, I just want to add that this was our first attempt at putting a liturgy together. Subsequent posts will cover how we developed things over subsequent months.

A Sermon on 1 Corinthians 11:17 – 12:1 (Meeting Posts 4)

community, ecclesiology, Meetings, Uncategorized

A Sermon Given in 2014

You may have noticed we’ve included thought forms with your notice sheets this morning, and we hope to always have these available when we meet. The purpose of these is to encourage a conversation amongst us all about our life and worship together. You can use to them to note down anything you feel is of particular significance that strikes you as we worship. Occasionally, if Julie or myself have introduced some innovation in the form of our service, as we did last time with the chair layout, then we’re likely to invite you to comment on your responses to these things: is it helpful, thought-provoking, how?

I don’t have a specific question for you to reflect on this morning, although you’d be more than welcome to reflect on the chair arrangement, but just wanted to explain again what the forms were for and to invite your contributions.

1 Corinthians 11:17 – 12:1 17 In the following directives I have no praise for you, for your meetings do more harm than good. 18 In the first place, I hear that when you come together as a church, there are divisions among you, and to some extent I believe it. 19 No doubt there have to be differences among you to show which of you have God’s approval. 20 When you come together, it is not the Lord’s Supper you eat, 21 for as you eat, each of you goes ahead without waiting for anybody else. One remains hungry, another gets drunk. 22 Don’t you have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you for this? Certainly not! 23 For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” 25 In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 26 For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. 27 Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. 28 A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup. 29 For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgement on himself. 30 That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep. 31 But if we judged ourselves, we would not come under judgement. 32 When we are judged by the Lord, we are being disciplined so that we will not be condemned with the world. 33 So then, my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for each other. 34 If anyone is hungry, he should eat at home, so that when you meet together it may not result in judgement. And when I come I will give further directions.

The church is the body of Christ. That is, in the words of the apostle Paul, ‘a profound mystery’ (Eph. 5:32).

The force of that word, ‘mystery’, is of something long hidden, now made known. What has been hidden and is now revealed is, of course, the great work of God in Jesus Christ, in which humanity is redeemed from its slavery to the worship of any- and everything except God.

In Jesus, humanity is invited to participate in new life, eternal life. We realise that we cannot escape our broken selves and see that that which we cannot achieve, God has done for us.

But again, what is the significance of this phrase, the body of Christ, and how does it relate to this mystery now made known? Well, of course, the term draws us back to the Lord’s Supper, bread and wine set before us this morning and the passage that we read earlier that describes the supper’s institution.

Followers of Christ are invited to take the bread and wine, called Christ’s body and blood, and consume them. We may be inclined to shy away from the unpalatable aspects of this act: it was not without reason – even if it was mistaken – that the early Christians were accused of cannibalism. And yet the body and the blood are significant. This act signals to us that a change in who we are has taken place. No matter who we were before, no matter what we have done, now we are identified with Jesus Christ. All that has gone before finds its redemption and fulfilment in him. We lack the everyday language to describe this, and that perhaps is why we are left this sacrament, this physical act to perform, rather than mere words. But even so, by taking Christ’s body into us, we are declaring – proclaiming – that we belong to him and he to us.

But more than this, as the context of the Last Supper implies – which is that of the the passover feast and the consumption of the slaughtered animal by which the Israelites escaped slavery in Egypt, and more importantly, Christ’s crucifixion – as all this implies, we are consuming a body that has died. We are finding ourselves identified with Christ and particularly with his death: “For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”

And this death is for us: “This is my body, which is for you.”

In this supper we identify with and participate in the death of Christ, so that it becomes our death. So that what we were, is laid to rest in the grave, and what we are is now to be bound up with the life our Lord, the risen Christ. Paul’s words about Baptism point us to the same thing: this from Rom. 6:4, “We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.”

And so there we have it. The promise of God of physical resurrection, of sharing in Christ’s eternal life, is given to us in physical elements. A bodily promise – of flesh and blood – that indicates to us that our old bodies that we still carry around with us and in which we are contribute to the brokenness of the world, is laid to rest with Christ, and a new hope of bodily redemption, of resurrection is set before us. This promise is no mere aspiration: the Son of God did not taken on flesh, die and be resurrected merely to offer hope, but to achieve it. This promise is a commitment from God, sealed in the blood of the divine Son. We are to take it and eat it, to drink, with enthusiasm, awe and gratitude.

But there is more, one further aspect not yet explained that I want to conclude with. In our reading, Paul expresses frustration at the manner in which some in the Corinthian church are conducting themselves at their celebration of the Supper.

The Supper is taking place within the context of a wider shared community meal: something I would be eager to try here incidentally. However, some bring their own choice food and wine and share and consume it among their friends. Others, likely poorer and not able to arrive earlier or to bring much food, come to the gathering and find themselves ostracised, humiliated and hungry. And then note what Paul says: “For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgement on himself.”

I don’t have time to address the question of the judgement falling on that Church this morning, but the force of Paul’s words remains enlightening. The Corinthians are excluding their fellow Christians, and Paul accuses them of eating and drinking the bread and wine without recognising the body of the Lord.

Body here refers to the community of the church, but not only so. There is a logical connection of course: we eat the bread and wine, given to us as the body and blood of Christ and we ourselves join the body of Christ: we become the Church, we become the body of Christ in which no human accolade or achievement or privilege can have significance or value before one another: because all must die with Christ, because all are dependent on him to know eternal life now and at the resurrection.

And so the church is the body of Christ. It is so in a global sense: Christ creates within himself a new humanity. The scope of Christ’s work is not to contribute to human life and culture, to be one aspect of many, but, universally to found once again who and what humanity is as God’s creation, to direct and inspire us to live in humility and compassion now, with the hope of the renewal of all things at his return.

But this term, the body of Christ, has significance on a local level as well, it has significance for us. Remember what Paul says about the rich and the poor, the privileged and the dispossessed. This applies to us. We often describe gatherings like ours, this morning, as a service. We come, we listen (or speak), we sing and we depart. Our religious duty is performed, we return to life. But perhaps our language could be different. We are part of the body of Christ. In this place, we are the body of Christ. God’s Spirit resides in us no less than in others. Have we not died in Christ, like all other Christians? Is our hope any different?

Therefore, without arrogance or rancour, we have justification to think more of ourselves as a group, as a church in this place. As we gather in this place around the table we are reminded again of all that Christ has done and all that that means for us: that we have died with him and that now we live in the Spirit, as his body, in the hope of everlasting life: and that as we do so we proclaim to the world that there is hope and meaning and peace.

Thoughts for NYNO on ‘Reformed, Reforming, Emerging, and Experimenting’ (5)

Uncategorized

(5) Being a ‘Real’ Church

Towards the end of the report, the question of ‘structures’ is addressed, and in particular membership and sacramental validity. The mixed-economy model offers diversity within the church, and the prospect of emergent churches sitting alongside traditionally ordered ones with equal respect and validity. This shouldn’t mean conformity to one shape of church and should allow developing emergent congregations to be valued and nurtured for what they are, rather than what they are not.

So, with regard to membership, the report has this to say:

In the final analysis, if people whose only ‘real’ church is an emerging group are then required to become members of traditional churches, this is not only a denial of the ethos of the mixed economy church but is also a recipe for ensuring the non-sustainability of emerging groups, and for those that begin without the support of an existing parish, the question will be more urgent still.

For NYNO, as it works within Stockethill this is less of a problem. Stockethill Parish has worked hard to develop a multi-congregational understanding of its parish ministry. The origins of this probably lie in the decision to be a parish church without a building. Once this decision had been made, and many different meetings, potentially with different people at each, make up the life of the church, then it’s far less obvious where the ‘centre’ of the church is. And further, when it comes to membership in Stockethill people are committing to a local group of people that exists as part of something larger. We become members of the parish church, but the parish church is composite body of many congregations. It is, if you like, the pattern of relationship that exists between the Church of Scotland at a national level and an individual parish church repeated within the scope of the parish with its constituent congregations. This really is a mixed economy, where new congregations are peers of other congregations. In this case there is no compromise with having to join a traditional church; in Stockethill we’re joining a wider body than merely ourcongregation – and everyone in every group has to do the same.

As I’ve explained, this works well in Stockethill parish. Things will become less clear if NYNO groups are created in other parishes. We can’t worry too much about that right now. If we come to deal with it, a lot will depend on personal relationships between ourselves and any hosting parish. I’m guessing that it may also prove helpful if at least one elder of the local session decides to be part of the leadership team for that new group.

There’s one other, perhaps more important, issue that I want to address here. This one, I fear, cuts to the heart of the difficulties facing emerging ministries in the Church of Scotland. In the Church of Scotland, and indeed according to the Westminster Confession (27.4; 29.3), only the minister is allowed to administer the sacraments. At the same time, it probably wouldn’t be an understatement to say that the whole point of emerging ministries is that it should facilitate and acknowledge the latent gifts of the laity in the church in order to multiply the times and places where the church is able to meet with the world and witness to Christ. A not insignificant benefit of this approach is that it doesn’t require the expense of a minister of Word and Sacrament, at least as we currently conceive of them as parish ministers with a stipend.

So, we have a whole discussion focussed on advocating the use of the anglican-birthed expression ‘mixed-economy’ in the Church of Scotland, and so a search for new forms of church to sit alongside our traditional parish congregations, but in the Church and Scotland, and according to a significant aspect of the reformed confessions, the celebration of the sacraments is a necessary mark of any church and this is forbidden the leadership of every single one of these emerging churches unless they have been ordained. As far as I am aware, this isn’t possible for a local leader, committed to developing an emerging church for their local context without them having their attentions distracted from their church by the challenges of the selection and education procedures for ordination that purposely take place outside of the local context. As far as I can see this is still the case for Ordained Local Ministry, which would potentially see pioneer ministers working on behalf of the presbytery to create new forms of church.

Emerging churches, to be churches in the fullest sense and perhaps in the smallest sense, need to be able to celebrate the Lord’s Supper. This is not optional. Emerging churches are meant to be flexible, to innovate and be inspired by the energy and ideas of laity. It is impractical to ask a pioneer of an emergent community to have to occupy themselves with ordination and education and then to come back to their project when all the criteria has been fulfilled, especially when their funding is likely to last for a maximum of three years. I suspect as well that there are cultural issues surrounding the ministry of word and sacrament that involve social status, hierarchical ministry and the perceived aggression of the presbyterian court system that would make many emergent pioneers run in the opposite direction.

What solutions might there be? Well, it seems to me that the reservation for the ordained of the administration of the Lord’s Supper is a sensible ordinance. The Lord’s Supper is the act of unity amongst the church; it wouldn’t make sense for anyone to be able to celebrate whenever they wanted to. Reserving its administration to the ordained is a hierarchical way of forcing the church to come together and acknowledge its unity. However, if this is the rational for this Reformed law (that’s speculation on my part, I haven’t researched it) then there is nothing ontological in the minister that means he or she is the only person who can preside. If this is so, then it should be possible for a minister to grant another to preside in his or her place. No authority is lost, the authority can be withdrawn, the authority could be delegated specifically for individual celebrations rather than given to an individual in perpetuity.

The other option would be for the church to become far more flexible over the selection and education procedure for Ordained Local Ministry. Emerging Ministries in the Church of Scotland is putting its weight behind the Mission Shaped Ministry Fresh Expressions Course. This is fine, but I don’t think there’s any likelihood of this being sufficient preparation for ministry. The course is also, to my mind, not a theological course. It offers more functional guidance than theological reflection.

In summary, if emerging churches are an essential part of the Church of Scotland, then the sacraments need to be at their heart. Two options occur to me. Firstly, allow delegated authority for the administration of the sacraments. If not this, then I’m guessing that the church needs to offer a path to ordination that is directly targeted at giving education and training for the work that a candidate has embarked upon. I should add as well, that the dual demands of pioneer ministry and education would be significant, and that it would be impractical to ask someone to do this in their spare time while working for a living: there should be the option for these candidates to be supported for the important task to which they are called.

Matthew

Thoughts for NYNO on ‘Reformed, Reforming, Emerging, and Experimenting’ (4)

Uncategorized

See 1.2.4 of the report.

Personality Types and Planting a Catholic Church

I don’t warm to the use of personality tests and types. I’m not sure why. It’s probably my personality … I think that while I know I have a certain character and limitations, I don’t like to be limited. It feels to me that the whole of life is about growth and overcoming of obstacles that at one time seemed insurmountable. I don’t want an excuse not to try to learn and adapt.

At the same time, this section of the report points out something that I can’t ignore.

Working with an understanding of personality types in terms of four polarities (introverts and extraverts; sensers and intuitives; thinkers and feelers; judgers and perceivers), it can be demonstrated that conventional churches attract high proportions of introverts, feelers and judgers. Anecdotal evidence suggests that fresh expressions of church are probably redressing the balance by reaching more extraverts, thinkers and perceivers, though at present no empirical evidence is available to either confirm or deny that.

Broadly speaking this analysis seems intuitive: it fits with some of my personal experience. This has implications for NYNO in a couple of ways.

At the heart of the NYNO ideal is a view of the local church that is ‘catholic’. As far as I understand, the term has a number of different but related meanings. I want to use it here in the sense in which it’s used in our title, Neither Young Nor Old: we want our churches to be open and accessible to all types of people. We don’t want our churches to appeal only to intuitive radical thinkers, or to traditionalists. We all need each other, we miss out without each; this is the body of Christ metaphor expanded beyond the local church to the whole of humanity. We might be tempted to think that life would be easier if our church simply contained the like-minded, but we have to believe this is not in fact the case, even if it doesn’t actually feel that way some or most of the time!

Quite practically for us, this is going to affect how we try to shape worship in NYNO congregations, the resources that we provide, the music that we use. It’s also going to be a question that we keep returning to: are we shaping churches in our own image, or Christ’s.

I think as well, that this could prove a challenge. A socially or culturally homogeneous congregation will be (I predict!) more attractive to folk, than one that genuinely values people with diverse character types and the preferences for styles of worship and forms of church that they will likely bring.

To conclude my train of thought, here’s a few more general thoughts on the churches, culture and the emergent missionary theology which does seem to being widely advocated.

All churches have a culture. That can’t be avoided and is necessary for group formation and identity. At the same time, there is only one church and it is universal (catholic in another sense) and this is the case because Christ became incarnate, one of us, a human.An unnecessarily divided church is a denial of our mutual humanity as it exists in Christ and, perhaps, a denial of the incarnation.So, the Church Catholic has to be able to reach beyond social and cultural divisions. A big task for a small church? Well, yes, but all it really comes down to is trying to recognise the unhelpful things that divide us unnecessarily from other people, perhaps naming them, and seeking to go beyond them. This is significant for life within the church, but also as the church reaches out and is open to others in mission.

The current use of contextual missionary theology could, no doubt unfairly, be caricatured as colluding in the sinful division of humanity in the way it encourages emerging ministries to locate and adapt themselves to a local cultural and social context. What needs to be added, I’d suggest is a recognition that culture and society is fallen and that therefore there is a real danger in a church culturally adapting itself. It may be a necessary activity, but it’s also a dangerous one. A ‘catholic’ ecclesiology that offers an alternative societal picture, one that recognises the diversity and unity we have in Christ, might be a helpful companion as we plant churches in our divided society.

Matthew

Thoughts for NYNO on ‘Reformed, Reforming, Emerging, and Experimenting’ (3)

community, ecclesiology, leadership, money

The previous post hinted at one of the limitations (or liberations!) of emerging church work in the Church of Scotland: there are currently some finances available for salaried pioneering work, but this is not available for the long term. From what I understand, no one could really hope for more than three years.

In the previous posts we were still dwelling on the task of being a creative, participatory church (whatever that means) and the probable need for a curating leadership in that. At the same time, NYNO can’t be dependent on paid ministry in the long term.

There’s lots to be said about the status of emerging ministries with respect to the wider church (it’s an ongoing conversation, which needs to keep going), but as things stand, financially, any model of emerging church can’t sensibly be dependent on paid employment. NYNO is therefore working on the basis that the current paid project workers can’t make themselves indispensable as paid employees to any church they found. Our reasoning is that we want a NYNO congregation to be something that any church could set up. Therefore we can’t establish a model based on having paid employees.

All congregations will need leaders, it can hardly be avoided, but we need to be facilitators, resource givers rather than a primary source of spiritual care. We can lead NYNO congregations but in not in a way that they depend on our personal genius(!) or charisma. If someone else tries to create a NYNO congregation but concludes, ‘We couldn’t do it because we’re just not you’, then we will have failed.

Matthew