8/9/12 BLOG: “DESCRIBE A CONGREGATION GETTING IT RIGHT”

8.9.12 BLOG: “DESCRIBE A CONGREGATION GETTING IT RIGHT.”

One of my wonderfully provocative friends sent along this comment to my last blog: “I’m eager to hear you describe a congregation getting it right.”

Bingo! This comment nails, quite precisely, the very crisis that Lesslie Newbigin discovered about the diminishing influence of the church in the West. The scarcity of churches “that get it right” is at the heart of the problem. And the reason they don’t get it right is because they were, for the most part, not established to get it right. They were founded on the foundations of a static Christendom concept of the church. In its early centuries the church was a disenfranchised missionary movement, without buildings or carefully defined clergy or permanence. It was focused on its message, its mission, and to that end it was contagious and it made disciples of every baptized member. The result? It grew exponentially.

But somewhere several centuries down the road, when it ceased to be outlawed, and became the new-found faith of an emperor, he did it a great disfavor by wanting it to have all of the accouterments of the pagan religions of Rome with which he was familiar. It acquired, thereby, buildings, priesthood, choirs, and developed a liturgy. The church ceased to be primarily a missionary community, became, rather, a place to which one went and participated in the liturgical performances. And since the empire now smiled upon the church, the church no longer needed to focus on “storming the gates of hell.”

In the Christendom era which followed—right down to this post-Christendom present—the pattern for church-planting was on this model: a place, a permanence, a performance, a professional clergy, and members who participated (often quite passively) in these ecclesio-centric institutions. The very idea of: “the church as the hermeneutic of the gospel,” as per Lesslie Newbigin, became foreign to the community.

Please don’t get me wrong: there were unbelievable things that took place in the intervening centuries, acts of faith and ministry that are mind-boggling. But Christendom churches were planted along the pattern inherited, i.e., with an activist clergy and passive laity. The missionary effort was an outreach by church professionals …  and not the essence of every member’s calling.

A subtle shift in focus. The church was to be a community called out of the dominion of darkness to incarnate the new community of the dominion of Light, … from the power of Satan to the dominion of God’s dear Son. Somewhere in there one senses the “relentless darkness” seeking to render the church impotent, sterile, non-reproducing, … comfortable with being forgiven and celebrating the liturgical year, … but not necessarily being a community “where men and women are prepared for, and sustained in, the exercise of the priesthood in the world.”

In answer to my friend: Yes, there are communities getting it right, but they tend to be much smaller groupings, colonies or cohorts inhabiting those institutions, or perhaps (as in my experience) in homes, around tables, meeting in coffee shops and pubs, … because the participants know they need to be nurtured and held accountable for that priesthood in the world.. (To be continued.)

About rthenderson

Sixty years a pastor-teacher within the Presbyterian Church. Author of several books, the latest of which are a trilogy on missional ecclesiology: ENCHANTED COMMUNITY: JOURNEY INTO THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH, then, REFOUNDING THE CHURCH FROM THE UNDERSIDE, then THE CHURCH AND THE RELENTLESS DARKNESS. Previous to this trilogy was A DOOR OF HOPE: SPIRITUAL CONFLICT IN PASTORAL MINISTRY, and SUBVERSIVE JESUS, RADICAL FAITH. I am a native of West Palm Beach, Florida, a graduate of Davidson College, then of Columbia and Westminster Theological Seminaries.
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