Posts Tagged ‘Missional church’

The media this week carried the news of the arrival of a delegation of Muslim scholars at the Vatican for a serious dialogue designed to deepen mutual understanding in the hope that the tension and hostility between Christianity and Islam can be lessened. It’s a worthy aim and behind it stands some longer-term developments. For some 100 years, Islam has been experiencing a deep-seated renewal of its life and witness after several centuries of decline and self doubt.

That renewal is complex and contains many competing schools, ideas and ideologies. Those who have come to the Vatican represent a more mainstream opinion as compared with the radical streams that have given rise to terrorist ideologies. There is a competition within Islam for the minds and hearts of Muslims.

This 20th century development within Islam raises many broader questions for Christianity. Not the least of these is whether Christianity, so vibrant in many parts of the world, can be renewed in its western expressions. In asking this question we are bound to ask, what is it that causes major faiths of any kind to be renewed and how would we begin to recognise such developments?

The answer to the second question about how we would recognise renewal, is not in the first instance about numbers. Certainly, at a later stage, growth in numbers follows renewal but it is not what we would look for initially.

I would suggest that the early signs that we should look for would be anything that is redolent of deep intellectual and spiritual renewal – not one of these but both working together in a symbiotic relationship. So, looking at Christianity in the west, can we see the stirrings of spiritual and intellectual renewal?

A further question flows from these considerations. Callum Brown in his book The Death of Christian Britain, suggests that the 1960’s witnessed a decisive break in the pattern of western Christianity. He describes in a fairly convincing manner the failure of Christianity to transmit its faith from one generation to another. He takes this as an indication of the final and possibly permanent death of Christianity in Britain.

If one is talking about the continuation of denominational life in a rather unchanged format then Brown is almost certainly penetratingly accurate. However, we do need to ask the deeper question, how is religious faith actually communicated and how do religious institutions renew themselves?

John Finney’s groundbreaking research into how people become Christians reveals that the role of family in the transmission of faith may not be as crucial as Callum Brown seems to suggest. Finney’s work is a helpful start but we need much more work to help us understand the complexity of the renewal of faith. Such work might help us in the delicate task of interpreting the complexity of what we see around us.

According to press reports over Christmas the UK became a Catholic country recently.  A combination of a census of sorts, a desire for a headline and the formal admission of Tony Blair into the Catholic church produced a news item worthy of the silly season.  What the headline alluded to was the contentious claim that more people worshipped in a Catholic church on one particular Sunday than worshipped in an Anglican church on the same Sunday (a statistic contested by the Anglican church). The rise in Catholic participation at Mass was less to do with the rush of the English to convert and much more to do with the presence of large numbers of Eastern European migrants (mostly Poles) in church.

Harmless enough you might think and at one level its on a par with a poor Christmas cracker joke but at another level this kind of headline carries with it a huge amount of mis-information that can be distinctly dangerous.  The more significant figure is that 1.7 million Anglicans attended church as an average over a single month – a fascinating figure – and that the Catholic Church is in freefall as far as the indigenous population’s attendance at Mass is concerned.

And that is why the attempt for a cheap headline is dangerous – it actually conveys the exact opposite of the truth in terms of mission trends.  The broader measurements suggest that something very interesting is going on under the surface.  There are some signs that the Anglican church is coming to grips with the challenge of mission in the UK and equally there is a huge danger that the Catholic church – so important in the long term for mission in Europe – is in danger of being lulled into a sense of false security over the temporary rise in attendance produced my migrant workers.

This short piece is part of a much longer article to be available on the Together in Mission web site at the end of January.

Over the last few years I have been hearing rumours about Portsmouth football club and the high number of Christians in the first team. As Portsmouth have done better and better in the league these stories have been getting more attention. On Friday of last week the Daily Telegraph carried a story in their sports section. They describe a pre-match meeting:

“Harry Redknapp has just given his pre-match talk and then something happens that would be alien to most football clubs, amateur or professional, in Britain. Much of the first team, as well as several of the backroom staff, crowd together and begin to pray. A peaceful calm comes over them, the overwhelming pressure has been eased and they feel ready for their match.”

The article goes on to identify this development with one particular player who became a Christian a few years ago—Linvoy Primus. He hopes that in the future, he will become a full time worker in mission both overseas and in this country. Linvoy’s decision to become a Christian began when a former player and two other Christians (one of whom now plays for Derby), offered to pray for his persistent knee injury. Not only was he healed but he felt the power of their prayer both in a tingling sensation in his knee and in the fact that he fell over and could not get up.

The fact that ordinary Christians, not clergy or the chaplain to the club, prayed for him made an impact. The demonstration of power also spoke loudly. Its fascinating to see what happens when mission gets out of the pulpit and into everyday life. Linvoy’s story is published in a book called Transformed, Legendary Publishing, £18.99.

It is sometimes tempting to imagine that our current concern for missional thinking is relatively new in its origins. Admittedly, we easily acknowledge the earlier thinking of those such as Roland Allen who understood very deeply the missionary nature of the church. But generally we have a tendency to imagine that we are wrestling with new problems, new situations and creating new solutions.

It was therefore with a sense of delighted déjà vu that I re-read a book given to me by a friend, published in 1959 under the title The Missionary Church in East and West. This series of essays from Charles West, Lesslie Newbigin and others, sounded strangely contemporary. We hear of a “broken west” where for example in Germany, 90% of the population are baptised but only 6% attend. We understand from that author that this had been the situation for decades prior to the 1950’s.

We read of the hallmarks of a missionary church, how mission in the very nature of the church, of the foolishness of distinguishing between home missions and foreign missions, of the dispersed nature of the church in mission and of the vital importance of the laity.  It all sounds very familiar!  It seems that the problems of mission in the west have long standing roots, we are a part of a very long standing discussion.

It is always likely to be fascinating to have a conversation with Alan Roxburgh and the Reaching the Unchurched Network (RUN) team over coffee in Kensington – and it was. Amongst other issues we grappled with the tendency for Christians to want to constantly raise the question of the church rather than mission. THE CHURCH IS NOT THE ISSUE. The constant default position of church leaders suggests that if we can only get the form or model of the church right, then people will come.

The misconception that is to do with the church – its programmes, its shape, its form, its structures simply misunderstands the reality that it is much more to do with the mission of the church – how it does or does not engage in mission, and in particular how it works with the issue of power and mission, is much more critical as an issue.

That poses a number of problems for the church because whether we like it or not, those of us who are “professional” Christians – in paid leadership of one kind or another, are always draw to a right and proper concern for the church and we find it very difficult to move into other kinds of imagination. That does raise the question about whether we should be involved in Fresh Expressions of Church or Fresh Expressions of Mission. Those who are involved in Fresh Expressions of Church are inclined to say that those who move in such matters are aware of such issues and that may very well be true. But moving the debate to mission when we begin with the issue of ecclesiology is in truth very difficult.

It was fantastic to spend a day with a group of Christian workers who have taken a decision to plant 10 new churches from a network of around 30 churches. They are calling that initiative – First Wave. (The suggestion in such a name is that they envisage a second, third and more waves). A signal of their seriousness flows from the hard work that is going into the process. They are determined to plant churches that will plant churches and they have asked the tough question – what do such churches actually look like? To give you a flavour of their work, here are 3 insights from amongst many insights:
1. They want to ensure that the churches they plant have identified the person or persons who will plant the next church before they begin each church plant. That suggests a strong intentionality.
2. They intend to support church planters once they have begun with a system of mentors and coaches that will try to ensure that accountability is in place and burnout does not occur.
3. They are creating a central resource to help with the process of research such that new locations (or types of church) are well thought through. That central resource is not limited to research but also includes prayer/ regular envisioning meeting/ identification of future resources/ and recruitment of church planters.
When I first got involved in church planting activity (now 30 years ago) I rarely if ever encountered this level of determination, seriousness and thoughtful engagement. Its exciting to see that the people of God are convinced that good things can happen and are matching that enthusiasm with creative action.

Together in Mission has developed a partnership with the Australian College of Ministry (ACOM).  The primary basis for this partnership centres on a B.Th in Mission.  Two key features of this course matter to TiM.  First, the course teaches everything – Bible, Church History, Practical Ministry, from the perspective of Mission.  That critically includes the insight that personal spiritual formation is as important as knowledge and the two need to developed alongside each other.  Second, around one third of the course centres on a practical placement. That could be in a youth ministry or some other expression of ministry.  Doing and learning also belong together.

Randy Edwards from ACOM was in the UK this week to cement the relationship and sign the partnership agreement with TiM.  Apart from teaching at ACOM, Randy practices what he teaches.  He and his wife have spent the last 7 years working with a simple church experiment.  Beginning in their home and working with those who had not found a church home or who were struggling in their church context, they have developed a home based expression of church that significantly connects with unbelievers.

Since its inception the group has divided as it has grown and now has 4 groups with some 40-50 adults and around 18 children.  They only ever meet in their small groups apart from one annual get together in a summer camp setting.  Amongst the group of 40-50, around 5 have become Christians in the small group setting and another similar number are those who have yet to become Christians and also meet regularly for study, discussion, prayer and some worship.

Randy does not claim that this way of doing church is the blueprint for the future.  In fact some who were part of their group system have since found their way back into traditional churches.  What he does claim however is that they are training the participants to be disciples in terms of their own lives and to connect significantly and regularly with non Christians.

Perhaps it is the case that until the church learns to connect outwards on a regular and natural basis, that we will need a whole series of provisional, experimental and temporary structures that will help the church to re-orientate its life and witness.  As we learn to respond to the “new mood” of spiritual interest and enquiry, local churches need to learn how to listen to and connect with their local communities in ways that used to happen in times past but have not happened regularly for some time.