Tag: Mission

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Thy Kingdom Come

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Today is Pentecost Sunday
The last of the questions I’m thinking about is:
How do we allow God’s kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven – in this place?
I’m coming to the end of the book ‘Church After Christendom,’ and I’ll just have a few thoughts here.
1   
De-emphasise worship, and make Mission and Community Building just as central
2   
Reduce the number of church focused commitments to allow congregation members to be involved in other activities and mission opportunities outside church.
3   
Cultivate simplicity – which does not necessarily mean blandness or lacking in creativity.
4   
Take a long look at ourselves, using tools that are there to help us identify areas of strength and weakness – especially in areas of conflict within the church.  Use resources such as Appreciative Inquiry, The Healthy Churches Audit, Bridgebuilders.
5   
Promote lay participation and become less ‘leader centric.’ Encourage multi voiced worship.

7   
Refocused commitment – we live in an age when it is often said that people do not want commitment – yet movements like extinction rebellion show that where people see something worth struggling for, they will do it.

I love this prayer, with four words that are used to describe the way we are called to be … full of generosity, joy, imagination and courage

Living God, draw us deeper into your love;
Jesus our Lord, send us to care and serve;
Holy Spirit, make us heralds of good news.
Stir us, strengthen us, teach and inspire us,
to live your love with generosity and joy,
imagination and courage;
for the sake of your world,
and in the name of Jesus, Amen.


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That reminds me

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… Of the blog by Jonny Baker, which I haven’t looked at for ages.


In his blog post on flipped church, he refers back to some questions he was asking himself nearly 15 years ago …

can we imagine…
church beyond gathering?
church beyond once a week?
church as always on connectivity to christ and one another?
church where community is the content?
theology and resources of church being open source?
church valuing the wisdom of the crowd rather than the knowledge of the expert?
our church/spirituality being easily found by seekers because we tag it that way?
an ethos of low control and collaboration?
an economy of gift?
church as spaces for creative production and self publishing?
church as providers of resources for spiritual seekers and tourists?

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How is God asking us to reach out ?

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This is the seventh question to think about as our church is called to think and pray about the future.
I’m reading a book by Stuart Murray – Church After Christendom.
It has some really helpful things to say about what healthy churches might look like in a Post Christendom world.
The thing that struck me in relation to the above question is a passage from Paul’s letter to the early church in Ephesus.
Ephesians 4:11&12.

“So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers,  to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up ….. “

The passage does not mention leaders, but gifts.  it is clear that these are ‘leadership’ gifts, but we have identified gifts almost exclusively with officially recognised and often paid leadership roles in the church, requiring years of training.  In my context, it is clear that the vicar/minister is the main pastor.  A Lay Reader would usually be one of the main teachers.  I’m not sure where the other three gifts mentioned here appear. 

There are several passages in the New Testament that talk about the gifts that are needed for a healthy church.   In Christendom, the gifts that were prominent were Pastors and Teachers.  In Post Christendom, we can no longer rely on people being familiar in any way with the Christian story. Gifts that take the faith beyond the bounds of the Christian community become vital.  That means that our very structures need to change to allow this to happen.

“Ephesians 4 focuses not on church leaders, but on a harmonious church.It is the empowered community that engages in works of service.Its multidimensional activities result in the church functioning properly and becoming mature. It is a long way from this to the clerical (i.e. top down – my addition) models in which the laity support gifted clergy who perfom the worls of service. These models exalt or exhaust those designated as leaders and disempower community” Murray p. 189.

When thinking about the ‘How’ questions, like the one I’m thinking about today, it might be easy to draw up a list of actions a local church might take to reach out to their community.  That’s fine, but there might be other ‘how’ questions that precede these very practical ideas – questions that are more fundamental to enabling long term change.

For example:

How can the church be less hierarchical, and promote and encourage a much wider participation, as envisioned by Ephesians 4.

How can churches be better at exploring difference, and resolving conflict, and so be the kind of communities that people want to join ?

How can funds be redistributed so that reaching out becomes a major item of expenditure in a church’s budget ?

…. perhaps you might make up a question …





Church

Work Of Love And Grace

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Today’s question  – What could be different about church ?
I came across a verse today in psalm 68 – I’m reading the New Revised Standard Version
verse 9:
Rain in abundance, O God, you showered abroad;
you restored your heritage when it languished;
I’m taking God’s heritage here as the Church of God.  And in this country and in so many secular, Post Christendon societies, the Church of God has lost its edge. 
So the hope held out here is that God will restore the Church.
Rain in abundance: this reminds us that this restoration will be a work of God.  We do not send the rain, this is not something that we can control.
You showered abroad: I realise that translations vary enormously, but the word that came to me today through this phrase was another hope – that God’s renewal would be widespread.
In the latter half of the 20th century, there was a widespread renewal in worship, with greater openness to the work of the Holy Spirit.
What I am praying for is a greater openness now to the Holy Spirit breaking down the walls of the church to spread God’s goodness and grace.
There’s a story in the Gospel about the woman who brought a jar of precious perfume to Jesus – she broke it open and poured it over Jesus’ feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.
What I pray for is for the world to filled with the gracious works of the Holy Spirit through God’s church.  Of course those works of love and grace are not absent now, but we long for more. 
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What is Church?

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Yesterday was Ascension Day in the Christian calendar.  It’s the day when the church remembers Jesus’ return to the Father – 40 days after the resurrection.  Jesus left his follwers with a command to pray as they waited for the promised coming of the Holy Spirit.  That would happen on the day of Pentecost, 10 days later.

In recent years, many Christians have used these 10 days between Ascension and Pentecost to pray ‘Thy Kingdom Come.’  This is a prayer that we offer continually, but we are called to pray this prayer especially at this time.

In our congregation in Gloucester, we are praying that we will learn new lessons about what it means to be church at this time of crisis.

We are considering some questions to help us with this prayer:

  • what is church to you?  
  • what is the spiritual bread you need each day?
  • why St Paul and St Stephen’s?  why do you come to church here?
  • what is it that you cherish about our community?
  • what could be different in the days ahead?
  • what could we hold onto?
  • how is God asking us to reach out to others?
  • what are the temptations we need to avoid – as a church?
  • how do we allow God’s kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven in this place?

I’m thinking about the first question today.

One model of church (Purpose driven church) has these five priorities: Worship, Evangelism, Discipleship, Fellowship, Ministry.

(I won’t unpack any of those words here)

Others will have other models to describe church … One that I have found helpful is found in a book by Eugene Peterson: Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work.

He has five – Prayer Directing, Discipleship Making, Community Building, Pain Sharing and Injustice Resisting. (I’m actually paraphrasing his categories, which he describes slightly differently)

Notice the absence of Worship and Mission ….

I think that’s because Worship and Mission are not things that we do but more about who we are. Worship is at the heart of all of the five categories above.  As is Mission.  To share the pain of another in works of service and compassion is a missional activity.  To resist injustice is a mission activity.

So I would argue that one of the ways we need to see church is with Mission at its heart, not simply a set of activities.  The famous analogy of fire works well – As a fire only exists through burning, so the Church only exists in mission.

For many churches, this is about changing a mindset.  Having a complete revolution in the way we think, so that we see everything in our lives through a lens of mission.

And at the heart, this mission is not ours to contain and own, but it is the mission of God, expressed most completely in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. And God invites us to be a part of his saving mission to the world, bringing reconciliation through forgiveness and peace through justice.

It’s good to remember another recent well used phrase – It is not that the church of God has a mission, but that the God of mission has a church.

It is only when we are people defined by mission as much as worship that we will see the world blessed by the church. Otherwise, we remain behind the doors of our churches, in a different kind of lockdown, unable to be the agents of blessing to the world.