Reimagining Ministry 9780334046905, 9780334043676

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Reimagining Ministry David Heywood

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© David Heywood 2011 Published in 2011 by SCM Press Editorial office 13–17 Long Lane, London, EC1A 9PN, UK SCM Press is an imprint of Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd (a registered charity) 13A Hellesdon Park Road Norwich NR6 5DR, UK www.scm-canterburypress.co.uk All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, SCM Press. The Author has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the Author of this Work Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version published by HarperCollins Publishers, ©1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council Churches of Christ in the USA, and are used by permission. British Library Cataloguing in Publication data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library 978-0-334-04367-6 Typeset by Church Times Printed and bound by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham, Wilts

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Contents Acknowledgements

v

Introduction: Imagining Ministry

1

1

Mission: A Quiet Revolution

15

2

Kingdom: Yeast in the Loaf

68

3

Church: Foretaste of the Kingdom

109

4

Ministry: Agents of the Kingdom

154

Conclusion: Reimagining Ministry

199

Index of Scripture references

209

Index of names

213

Index of subjects

215

iii

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Acknowledgements

No book of this kind could be written without the help of a large group of people, and I am very grateful to all those who have been involved, some of whom have devoted considerable time and effort. Andrew Meynell and my colleagues on the staff of Ripon College Cuddesdon took over many of my teaching and administrative duties while I was on the sabbatical that allowed me to concentrate on writing. During that sabbatical I had significant conversations in several parts of the country that gave me glimpses of what God is doing on the ground and allowed me to test out and develop my ideas in dialogue with people in ministry. Thanks are particularly due to Bob Burston, Sandy Christie, Lloyd Cooke, Bill and Karen Crooks, Rob Dewing, Sue Faulkner, Stephen Herbert, Neil Hudson, Paul Hudson, Tom Johnston, Rob Kelsey, David Linaker, Kevin Malloy, Peter Mockford, Rob Mountford, Jackie Mouradian, Peter Robinson, John Sadler, Geoffrey Smith and Rachel Wood. My thanks go to John and Kath Alexander, Pauline Gilchrist, Jayne Gould, Phil and Heidi Huntley, David Linaker, Emma Street and Linda Williams, who gave me permission to quote their stories. Tina Hodgett, Neil Hudson, Debbie McIsaac, Matthew Rushton, Graham and Kate Stacey and Tim Treanor read an earlier draft of the book and gave me valuable feedback. Needless to say, responsibility for any remaining shortcomings is mine. v

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It has been an immense privilege to have been teaching mission and ministry to the students at Ripon College over the last few years and their reflections on their ministry and the discussions that arise in the course of teaching sessions have greatly helped me to work out what I think. My usual practice is to alternate between male and female for the representative person, thus avoiding the ugly ‘him or her’. This is what I have done in this book. Accordingly the representative minister is sometimes ‘he’ and sometimes ‘she’. I hope readers will bear with me if this should be confusing. Virtually all my experience and most of my examples come from the Church of England. I hope that what I write will have some relevance to churches of other denominations and to Scotland and Wales, but I leave the reader to judge. Finally, without the support of my wife Meg neither the writing nor the experience of ministry on which it is based would have been possible. David Heywood, September 2010

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Introduction Imagining Ministry

The church in Britain is journeying through a time of transition. Over the past 20 to 30 years our understanding of mission has changed out of all recognition. A generation ago most Christians in this country understood mission as something that took place overseas – on the ‘mission field’ – or as an occasional event often involving a big name such as Billy Graham, or as an activity for churches of a particular kind, usually evangelical. Since then this picture has changed radically. Not only has mission become increasingly important, but our understanding of what mission entails has grown and developed. Mission has moved from the periphery of the church to its centre. Today mission audits and mission action plans would not be seen as out of place on the agenda of the PCC or deacons’ meeting of churches in any tradition. However, our understanding of ministry has failed to keep pace. In many ways, the roles expected of clergy have changed very little in more than a century. And as society changes at an everincreasing rate, the strains are beginning to show. The reason is that our current ‘model’ of ministry, our expectations of what the church and particularly its clergy offer to society, took shape as long ago as the nineteenth century. As a result the demands and expectations of our existing approach to ministry are increasingly out of touch with the requirements of mission in contemporary society. Hardly a year goes by without the publication of at least 1

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one and usually several books voicing a sense of dissatisfaction or examining the related subject of clergy stress. The present volume is a response to that swelling tide. Its purpose is to explore the way the church’s mission has developed over the past 20 years or so and ask what effect our newly emerging theology of mission should have on our understanding of ministry. My conclusion is that, after a generation of transition, the outline of a new model of the church’s ministry, and with it a positive and hopeful account of the role of the ordained minister, may be within our grasp. To understand the present, we need to understand the legacy of the past. First published in 1980, Anthony Russell’s book The Clerical Profession charts the process by which, during the nineteenth century, the clergy of the Church of England came to occupy the status of a profession.1 In the mid to late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the typical clergyman was a member of the landed gentry. His income was derived from the land attached to his benefice and the tithes paid by the local parishioners, and in an age when farming was becoming better organized and more productive that income was rising. As a landed gentleman the beneficed clergyman was expected to take part in the occupations of the gentry: he hunted and shot and accepted invitations to dine with his wealthy neighbours. He was usually a magistrate and played a role in the administration of the Poor Law. He acted as registrar, dispensed charity and ran schools for local children. The taking of services was very much less important than it was to become. In the eighteenth century James Woodforde was pleased if he had ‘two rails’ of communicants at Christmas or Easter – that is, about 30 from a population of 360 – and was quite likely to administer baptism in his parlour if the church were too cold.2

1 Anthony Russell, The Clerical Profession, London: SPCK, 1980. 2 ‘Introduction’ by Ronald Blythe to A Country Parson: James Woodforde’s Diaries 1759– 1802, London: Tiger Books, 1985, p. 11.

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But the days when the clergy could be reasonably sure of a good living from the land were numbered. The industrial revolution generated a new source of income which was not tithed; drew vast numbers into the expanding cities; and saw the rise to prominence of the middle class at the expense of the landed gentry. The professions formed the vanguard of this rise in social status. In an increasingly technical age a professional was someone who specialized in a branch of socially useful knowledge, such as medicine, the law, finance, architecture or teaching. With the possession of specialist expertise the foundation of their status and income, the professions typically became the domain of the upper middle class. Over the course of the nineteenth century the clergy made the transition from the landed gentry to the professions. Beginning in the 1840s, colleges began to provide specialist training. There was a growing sense of apartness and specialization. Clergy adopted distinctive dress, the clerical stock, shovel hat and gaiters. They abandoned the habits of the gentry, such as hunting, dancing and race-going and developed a self-consciously serious lifestyle. The rules for the newly established college at Cuddesdon in 1854, still displayed in the college library, forbid smoking as ‘a habit repugnant to the formation of Clerical character’! Most important, the ‘charter elements’ or defining features of their clerical calling began to take centre stage. Some former aspects of the clergyman’s role were taken over by other professions, such as teachers and the new body of professional registrars, leaving them to concentrate on the conduct of Sunday worship and occasional offices, preaching and pastoral care. Russell concentrates specifically on the Church of England. For other denominations the history was different, but most embraced a similar professional model of ministry. Once established, the professional model has persisted for more than a century. Comparing the clerical handbooks published in the 1970s with those of a century earlier, Russell notes, ‘It is the similarities rather than the changes that are the most striking. Though the 3

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detailed advice takes account of the differing circumstances, the headings under which it is given, and the assumptions on which it is based, are largely unchanged.’3 Towards the end of the twentieth century developments in role of the clergy continued to mirror those of the professions generally. Most professions have seen encroachments on their territory: teachers have had to allow teaching assistants to take over some of their duties, solicitors to open up some aspects of conveyancing, doctors to allow nurses to take over some treatments. Complaints at the lack of qualification of those taking over these roles are echoed by similar complaints voiced in some quarters about the perceived lack of training of non-stipendiary and locally ordained clergy. And just as the twentieth century saw the professions opened up to women, so the churches have followed, with varying degrees of protest. Russell’s clear analysis inevitably prompts the question as to whether the professions supply the appropriate paradigm for the church’s ministry. ‘In any institution,’ he concludes, the growing awareness that the deficiencies are beginning to outweigh the merits will cause more radical questions to be asked … Therefore, it may be regarded as legitimate to question whether the dysfunctions of the … clergyman’s role as traditionally conceived and structured have not now reached a point where they are beginning to outweigh the undoubted advantages.4 Among the ‘undoubted advantages’ he concedes we may want to list the emphasis on training and a suitable manner of life, the increased attention given to preaching, worship and pastoral care and the much improved care of church buildings that followed from these. But over a generation after he wrote, the dysfunctions to which he drew attention are growing even more obvious. 3 Russell, Clerical Profession, p. 274. 4 Russell, Clerical Profession, pp. 291–2.

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The first set of problems emerged from the nature of the transition to the professional model. As Russell points out, for the Church of England at least, the potential advantages of the professional model were never fully embraced. The system of patronage did not change, so that the clergy were never able to exercise control over recruitment and deployment. As a result there were huge disparities in income between men who were essentially doing the same job and uncertainty about career development in a situation where preferment depended on favour. No professional equivalent of the General Medical Council developed and, because of the persistence of the parson’s freehold, no system of discipline, no way in which the bishops could uphold basic standards of performance, no co-ordinated professional development nor even the expectation that there should be such a thing. Among the professions, the clerical profession remains the most unprofessional! The second area of dysfunction applies more widely than the Church of England: the existence of a professional clergy creates a passive laity. Congregations become the clients of the clergy, whose role is to minister to them: to provide the services they want and the pastoral care they need. With the growth of consumerism in the twentieth century, this tendency has become even more marked. The pressure is on, in the words of one Pentecostal minister, to ‘pull off a good Sunday’, to send the congregation home satisfied enough to come again. The other side of this coin is the myth and expectation of clerical omnicompetence. In 1983 John Tiller drew attention to a vocational leaflet entitled Wanted: Leaders in Tomorrow’s Church, describing the work of the clergyman in the following terms: He will be a leader of the church’s worship and a man of prayer, whose oversight encourages others to discover and exercise their vocation and gifts. He will be a planner and thinker, who communicates a vision of future goals and seeks with others to achieve them. He will be a pastor and spiritual director, who is 5

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skilled in understanding, counselling, supporting and reconciling both groups and individuals. He will be a prophet, evangelist and teacher, who proclaims and witnesses to the Gospel, and who makes available today the riches of the church’s tradition and experience. He will be an administrator and coordinator, with responsibility for the Christian management and organisation of the local church’s resources … As Tiller comments, such a description is likely to attract only the foolish or the conceited. ‘There is little point in writing job descriptions of this sort,’ he writes, ‘because there are few people with the necessary skills to fulfil them.’ 5 Yet nearly 30 years later the myth and expectation of omnicompetence persists. Justin Lewis-Anthony’s book If You Meet George Herbert on the Road, Kill Him! is but the latest protest.6 The professional model, with its separation of active clergy from passive laity, further means that the primary reference group for the clergy is other clergy. Anyone who has ever been to a deanery chapter or ministers’ fraternal will know how quickly and easily the conversation turns to the professional concerns of the clergy. The church of which I was vicar, St Paul’s Edensor, now St Paul’s Longton Hall in Stoke-on-Trent, gradually developed an increasingly significant role in the local community. As we did so, our church co-ordinator Linda Williams became the principal hands-on leader of this aspect of our ministry, managing our church’s youth project and developing our relationship with a local Residents’ Association. It seemed logical that when our diocese set up meetings about the relationship of church and community I should ask her to attend as our representative. After two or three of these meetings, however, Linda asked if I would stop sending her. Everyone else she met at such meetings was a member of the clergy, and few had any idea how to treat her. It 5 John Tiller, A Strategy for the Church’s Ministry, London: CIO, 1983, p. 101. 6 Justin Lewis-Anthony, If You See George Herbert on the Road, Kill Him!, London: Mowbray, 2009.

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was as if, despite sharing the same ministry, she, a lay person, was separated by a glass wall from them, the clergy. This separation of the laity from the world of the clergy and the clergy from that of the laity leads directly to the third area of dysfunction: the marginalization of the clergy. In an industrial society work becomes separated from home. Work is the defining activity of the public sphere, predominantly rational, technical, financially rewarded and thus of high status. Separated from these are the concerns of home, the domestic sphere, largely unrewarded, the domain of women and thus in the prevailing culture of lower social status. And it is with the private, domestic sphere, the worlds of home and leisure, that the work of the clergy is principally concerned. In these terms, much clergy ‘work’, visiting people in their homes and organizing leisure time activities, becomes ‘non-work’, constantly struggling to be taken seriously. Moreover, the second half of the twentieth century has seen the rise of a pluralist culture in which the specialist knowledge of the clergy is no longer self-evidently valuable to society. Unlike teachers, doctors and architects, there is no commonly held sense of where the clergy ‘fit’ in society, or even whether they fit at all. At the same time, even more of the clergy’s distinctive roles are being taken over: that of pastoral care by an increasing army of counsellors, rehabilitation centres, advocates, pregnancy advisers and life coaches, while even their liturgical functions are being taken over from within the church by readers and lay preachers. As John Bowden concludes, the clergyman is [m]ore often than not an odd man out, involved in great pastoral tension over what he should or should not do, puzzled over his status and above all isolated and removed from the general life of society, following a completely different lifestyle and being robbed by virtue of his status of the involvement with others which he so much needs.7 7 John Bowden, Voices in the Wilderness, 1977, p. 67; quoted in Russell, Clerical Profession, p. 289.

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This isolation of the clergy from the ‘general life of society’ coupled with the pressure to make church life satisfying and attractive to an increasingly sophisticated culture means that whole areas of mission may easily slip below the radar. Imagine, for example, a couple bringing a child for baptism. The minister’s concerns are likely to be situated in the ‘explicit’ domain of faith. She will want to make sure that they are comfortable with the service and understand the promises they are to make. For the parents, however, there may be a range of other issues associated with the ‘foundational’ domain.8 Their experience of the miracle of childbirth and the new responsibility of parenthood may have heightened their awareness of the spiritual dimension of life. They may also be thinking about some important ethical issues. Within the baby’s lifetime the world is likely to face a severe environmental crisis and they are aware of the need for the present generation to take into account the needs and rights of their posterity. If both work full time they may prefer to arrange their lives so as to have more time at home as the child grows up, but with the financial pressures they face and uncertainty of the economic situation, this may not appear possible. What they may be looking for above all is help in finding a satisfying ‘wisdom for living’: the values that should shape their lives and bring a sense of wholeness and integrity to the choices they are faced with. Many church members face a similar situation. They face both ‘foundational’ issues and ethical challenges in their daily lives, whether in paid employment or simply on the ‘frontline’ of daily life. For teenagers the pressure of exams in a school system increasingly geared to the demands of paid employment raises foundational questions about human worth and identity. The increasing number of children being cared for by grandparents while both parents work full time raises questions about the shape

8 For the ‘explicit’ and ‘foundational’ domains, see Ann Morisy, ‘Mapping the mixed economy’ in The Future of the Parish System, ed. Steven Croft, London: Church House Publishing, 2006, pp. 125–37; and Journeying Out, London: Continuum, 2004.

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of family life and the relative priority of money and relationships. And those in paid employment face a range of ethical issues. Many would love the opportunity to reflect on these and arrive at a Christian understanding to guide and shape their daily lives. Moreover, as people of integrity, they may also be playing significant pastoral roles in their places of work as colleagues who would never dream of going to a Christian minister seek them out. The opportunity to think about the issues involved might help such people to provide an even more valuable Christian presence in society. But this is another aspect of mission that the professional model, with its concentration on church-related concerns, fails to address. Finally, not only does the professional model create problems of its own, but in contemporary society the standing of professionals in general is in question. Recent years have seen a spate of criticism of the work of architects and a catastrophic fall in the status of teachers. Whereas only a few years ago most people visiting a doctor expected simply to receive and follow her advice, now it is common to self-diagnose by means of the internet before making an appointment and if the patient is referred for a hospital appointment, she may be asked to choose the hospital she prefers. This decreasing respect for professional expertise affects the clergy in a similar way. As John Drane summarizes, ‘The old Christendom-style paradigm, which placed ministers on a pedestal, has no future in the culture of the Global North. The underlying assumption on which it all depends, with a clear demarcation between experts who know it all and other people who need it all, has long since been superseded.’9

The way forward The professional model of ministry is long past its ‘best before’ date. Over the past 20 years or so the search has been on for a new 9 John Drane, After McDonaldization, London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2008, p. 110.

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and more satisfactory model. In The Country Parson, published in 1993, Anthony Russell foresaw the need for the clergyman to train, equip and motivate a group of people in each parish who would form the local community ministry. Robin Greenwood writes of the priest as ‘navigator’ whose most important role is to offer oversight to the ministry of the whole church. John Pritchard calls the clergy ‘conductors of God’s local orchestra’. And David Clark, in Breaking the Mould of Christendom, makes a plea for the church to recognize the importance of the dispersed ministry of all God’s people in society.10 Explorations like these, attempts to ‘break the mould’ of our current understanding, are typical of a time of transition. But before exploring what such a new model might look like, it is worth pausing to ask what exactly the professional model is. Philosophers of science are familiar with the idea of ‘paradigms’ and system theorists and many others with the idea of ‘mental models’: deeply embedded shared assumptions about the way things are in a given field, from scientific exploration to running a business. Such models or paradigms are shared: they are the common currency of everyone working in the field – all the scientists in a given area of research, all employees of a particular business, all members of a particular church. And they consist of assumptions: things taken to be true without question that form the basis for resolving problems and planning courses of action.11 We might say that these paradigms or mental models are ways of imagining the situation. Many of the most profound and far-

10 Anthony Russell, The Country Parson, London: SPCK, 1993, pp. 182–8; Robin Greenwood, Parish Priest: For the Sake of the Kingdom, London: SPCK, 2009, pp. 90–120; John Pritchard, The Life and Work of a Priest, London: SPCK, 2007, pp. 101–10; David Clark, Breaking the Mould of Christendom, Peterborough: Epworth, 2005, pp. 102–29. 11 The idea of ‘paradigms’ as sets of shared assumptions in scientific research came to prominence with Thomas Kuhn’s book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962, although writers such as N. R. Hanson and Karl Popper had already begun to explore the area. The most accessible introduction to system theory in its application to the business world is Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline, 2nd edn, New York: Random House, 2006.

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reaching developments in the history of science, such as Newton’s gravitational theory and Einstein’s theory of relativity, involved an act of the imagination: a new way of seeing or imagining the universe.12 In business, write Peter Senge and his co-authors, progress depends on the ability to suspend existing ways of seeing in order to imagine new ways of working.13 But this work of reimagining is far from straightforward. Our existing shared assumptions are difficult to question and sometimes even to recognize. Whereas every situation is understood in terms of the model, the model itself is seldom open to analysis. Rather than look at our mental models, we look through them at the world. This means that mental models tend to gather up and shape all other relevant perceptions. So, for example, while in most churches the ministry of lay people is recognized and welcomed, it is largely clericalized. Lay ministers are trained to do the things clergy do, to preach, lead services and exercise pastoral care, because according to the professional model these things are what the ministry of the church consists of. Moreover mental models are highly resistant to change because they ‘take shape’ in institutions and shared practices. The leaflet quoted by John Tiller expresses the Church of England’s shared assumption about the recruitment of clergy: that omnicompetence is not only necessary but obtainable. His comment is rather like that of the little boy in the story, who pointed out that the Emperor had no clothes on. Yet these shared assumptions persist despite Tiller’s protest since to question the model would mean questioning the church’s entire approach to the training and deployment of the clergy.

12 This account of scientific discovery was pioneered by Michael Polanyi and Thomas Kuhn and can be explored in Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958; The Tacit Dimension, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967; and Kuhn, Structure. 13 Peter Senge, C. Otto Sharmer, Joseph Jaworski and Betty Sue Flowers, Presence: Exploring Profound Change in People, Organisations and Society, London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2005, pp. 21–68.

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What I am proposing is a different way of imagining ministry, an alternative to the professional model. This new model is already beginning to take shape in our current time of transition, and what this book will do is to weave together some of the theological strands beginning to emerge. One of the features of the professional model is that it lacks an adequate theological rationale. It evolved as an attempt, not wholly successful, to maintain the status of the clergy in a rapidly changing society. It is vital that any new model of ministry has a sound theological basis. Yet it must also be ‘cashed out’ in sociological terms; it must include an account of the relationship of the church’s ministry to society, including the social role of the ordained minister. The goal is a theologically grounded account of the church’s mission and ministry that not only ‘fits’ contemporary society and culture but also, precisely because of its secure theological foundation, plays a transforming role in it. If it is to achieve that goal, a new model will acknowledge and be built around the centrality of mission. The emerging theology of ministry will reflect and build on the theology of mission that has been emerging in the past generation. The next chapter will sketch the outlines of that theology. Another key characteristic is that it will be a model for the ministry of the whole church, rather than for the ordained clergy alone. The idea that the ministry of the church is ‘collaborative’ has become increasingly important and over the past few years several different approaches to collaboration have emerged. ‘Collaboration’ is a slippery term, both theologically and practically, so it is tempting to discard it altogether. And yet the idea of collaborative ministry, like the centrality of mission, has been steadily gaining ground and has begun to figure in the titles of important books on the subject.14 And as with mission,

14 David Robertson, Collaborative Ministry, Oxford: Bible Reading Fellowship, 2007. Sally Nash, Jo Pimlott and Paul Nash, Skills for Collaborative Ministry, London: SPCK, 2008. Stephen Pickard, Theological Foundations for Collaborative Ministry, Farnham: Ashgate, 2009.

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the story of the past 20 years or more is that both the theology and the practice of collaborative ministry have been gradually acquiring definition. Part of the reason is that mission and collaborative ministry have been advancing together. The recognition that the church’s ministry is collaborative owes much to the insight that the mission of God is the mission of the whole church. As mission has risen towards the top of the church’s agenda the key question in the theology of ministry has shifted. In the Christendom era, when the emphasis was on maintaining the Church’s institutional presence and power, the underlying question was: How is the church to be governed? Today, the relevant question is: How is the church to serve the mission of God? Along with this comes another key shift: from the clericalization of lay ministry, in which the ministry of the laity is seen as an adjunct to that of the clergy, to the need to discern how the ministry of the ordained serves the mission and ministry of the whole church. In Salisbury the Anglican rural dean co-operates with his Methodist and United Reformed colleagues in a ministry to the business sector in the city. At meetings of the Chamber of Commerce they are always welcome guests. The welcome extended to the clergy in situations like these might be seen to represent one of the advantages of the professional model, a benefit of our inheritance from previous centuries. The stipendiary clergy are recognizable and readily available as representatives of their churches. But is the professional model really the best way of imagining their role? Are they representing the churches as the sphere of the sacred over against the secular world of business, or as networks of people united by faith and involved in a variety of aspects of civic life? Is it the desire to uphold the churches’ institutional presence that takes them to these meetings, or a sense that the mission of God takes place in the secular sphere? And what of the local businessmen and women? Does their invitation express an interest in the doctrines of the Christian faith as taught in worship Sunday by Sunday, or in the presence of 13

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the clergy as a sign of the social, moral and even spiritual significance of business life? If the latter, then what is valued about their presence will be not so much what sets them apart as what brings them alongside: a shared humanity, vulnerability, a willingness to share the struggle, to explore the meaning of the mundane activities through which social life is maintained, perhaps to offer the hope of a better world. The question is one of seeing: are we to look at Christian ministry through the spectacles of the professional model, or do we need a different point of view? In the chapters to come my aim is to take a fresh look at the way the church’s ministry and mission is already adapting to a changing society and culture and to examine what this means for our theology, in search of a new way of understanding or ‘imagining’ ministry.

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Mission A Quiet Revolution

During the 1990s, adult attendance in the Church of England declined by 14 per cent and child attendance by 28 per cent. Baptisms declined by 24 per cent and confirmations by 43 per cent, Christmas communicants by 24 per cent and Easter communicants by 16 per cent.1 By any standards these figures are alarming. And the problem is shared by other denominations. The rates of decline of the Roman Catholic and Methodist Churches were faster than that of the Church of England. Others declined rather more slowly although the Baptist Church grew.2 The widespread perception of a church powerless to reverse the trend of decline was exacerbated by the fact that the Church of England had agreed to designate the 1990s as the ‘Decade of Evangelism’ and the Catholics the ‘Decade of Evangelization’. And yet, far from marking a resurgence in attendance, the decade saw the century-long trend in decline apparently gathering speed. Or did it? In fact, as Bob Jackson shows, the 1990s appear to have marked a turning point. While the rate of decline accelerated during the first half of the decade, from about 1995 it began to slow. Church attendance was still in decline, but more slowly than before.3 The Decade of Evangelism did not produce a resurgent church or even a marked turn in the tide of decline. What did happen was 1 Bob Jackson, Hope for the Church, London: Church House Publishing, 2002, p. 2. 2 Jackson, Hope, p. 14. 3 Jackson, Hope, pp. 11–12.

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something much more subtle but more far-reaching. During the 1990s mission began to move from the periphery of the church’s vision towards the centre. Since that time by a series of gradual steps the church has gained a new confidence in mission and a clearer understanding of what it entails. This chapter charts the ‘quiet revolution’ in the life of the churches over the past two decades, which has led to a new emphasis on mission and acceptance of its centrality in the life of the church.

Process evangelism In 1977 Charles Marnham, curate at Holy Trinity Brompton in West London, devised a short course that he called ‘Alpha’, designed to provide a basic understanding of the faith for new Christians. The course consisted of six sessions, each of which began with a shared meal. Over the next ten years or so in the hands of subsequent curates the course was gradually adapted and became an integral part of the life of HTB. When Nicky Gumbel arrived in 1990 he quickly realized that Alpha might be just as effective with non-churchgoers as with those already part of the church and adapted the course accordingly. With the publication of Questions of Life, the text of Nicky Gumbel’s Alpha talks, in 1993, followed by videos of the talks, Alpha became a national and then international resource used by an increasing number of churches of all denominations. By 2003 7,000 Alpha courses were being run across the country each year and by 2010 42,530 courses in 163 different countries. It was estimated that up to 2.5 million people in Britain and 13 million worldwide had experienced the course.4 Alpha was not the first attempt to use a ‘nurture course’ as a means of evangelism. During the 1970s Michael Wooderson, vicar of St Thomas Aldridge in the West Midlands, devised a scheme that he called ‘Good News Down the Street’. Wooderson had 4 Nicky Gumbel, Questions of Life, London: Kingsway 2003; www.alpha.org/how-alphabegan; www.alphafriends.org/facts-figures.

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realized through a chance remark after a funeral that there were far more people wishing to find out about Christian faith than willing to darken the doors of a church on Sunday, so he arranged for groups of three church members to take the faith to people in their homes in the form of a six-week course based on the Gospel of Luke. The choice of three people and six weeks was carefully considered to provide the right length of time and the appropriate number of people for a small group. In the first six years, according to Wooderson’s figures, 200 people received a team, and 136 made a commitment to Christ of whom all but ten went on to become members of the church.5 At the same time, in the Kensington area of the Diocese of London, the vicar of St Nicholas Shepperton, Peter Ball, was pioneering the ‘adult catechumenate’ or ‘Adult Way to Faith’, drawing on Roman Catholic sources, especially the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults. Ball drew his inspiration from the early centuries of the church, when baptism was preceded by long and careful preparation designed to provide converts from paganism with a solid understanding of Christian faith and practice capable of sustaining them in a hostile and noncomprehending world. A key feature of the Adult Way was the involvement of church members as companions and sponsors on a journey of faith, leading up to and then beyond baptism and confirmation. As with Alpha and Good News Down the Street, people arriving at a point of commitment had already become part of a community of faith through the friendship and encouragement of existing church members.6 The Alpha course reflected in its style and content the evangelical and charismatic strand of the Church of England, Good News Down the Street the more traditional evangelical, and the Adult Way to Faith the catholic part of the spectrum. The next major development was a collaboration between church leaders 5 Michael Wooderson, Good News Down the Street, Nottingham: Grove, 1982. 6 Peter Ball, Adult Way to Faith, London: Mowbray, 1992.

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of all three strands. The Emmaus course, launched in 1996, represented a conscious embracing of what was beginning to be called ‘process evangelism’, the use of a carefully devised nurture course to provide an ‘accompanied journey’ for people exploring faith in the context of Christian community.7 Among other features of the Adult Way to Faith, Emmaus incorporated short liturgical ‘celebrations along the way’, services of welcome, dedication, renewal and commitment to be used at the start of a course, the lead-up to baptism and confirmation and after confirmation. Versions of these short celebrations have since been incorporated into the Church of England’s official liturgy, Common Worship, as ‘Rites Supporting Disciples on the Way of Christ’.8 The Emmaus material also includes an extensive set of follow-up courses emphasizing the point that the journey continues beyond the point of commitment.9 Thus, although with the benefit of national publicity Alpha dominates the market, it is by no means the only nurture course available. Alternatives are available from outside the evangelical strand of the church, such as ‘Doxa’ from John Thomson, Director of Ministry in the Diocese of Sheffield,10 while Robin Gamble’s Start! attempts to correct the perceived middle-class bias of other courses.11 If the rich variety on offer represents an attempt to provide for people in every church and context, the logical conclusion is the ‘home-grown’ course, devised by individual clergy or parish teams. Mark Ireland describes how he would regularly gather groups of enquirers in his home and begin by asking them two simple questions: ‘What makes you think on a good day that there might be a God?’ and ‘What makes you think 7 Stephen Cottrell, Steven Croft, John Finney, Felicity Lawson and Robert Warren, Emmaus, The Way of Faith: Nurture, London: Church House Publishing, 1996 (2nd edn 2003). 8 Archbishops’ Council, Common Worship: Christian Initiation, London: Church House Publishing, 2006. 9 Stephen Cottrell et al., Emmaus, the Way of Faith: Growth, London: Church House Publishing, 1996. 10 John B. Thomson, Doxa: A Discipleship Course, London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2007. 11 www.start-cpas.org.uk/overview.htm

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on a bad day that there can’t be a God?’ Having discussed the responses, the group would decide which were the biggest issues for them and in subsequent meetings they would explore the Bible together for its responses to those issues. Through starting where people were, building relationships, and willingness to be vulnerable to questions and doubts, Ireland hoped to create a space in which God would be at work.12 Since the 1990s ‘process evangelism’ has become a recognized element in the life and mission of churches across the spectrum of theology and churchmanship. So what theology is implicit in this form of mission? First there is a recognition that people are asking searching questions – in the words of the Alpha course, ‘questions of life’ – and that these questions are potentially a way in to Christian faith. One of the key features of contemporary culture is a loss of certainty about fundamental issues such as the meaning of life itself, along with a wide variety of choice among possible answers in our diverse and plural society. In practice, different courses take different positions on the best place to start. The first Alpha talk, ‘Christianity: Boring, Untrue and Irrelevant?’ has been criticized as beginning with the question perceived as a major stumbling block to faith in the 1980s. Twenty years later it has been suggested that society has moved on; for many people the problem with the church is that it is not ‘spiritual’ enough.13 In any case, after the initial talk, Alpha quickly moves on to setting out the basic facts about Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. Emmaus attempts to begin further back with ‘God is there and he matters’ followed by ‘We all need God in our lives’. Few are as open as Mark Ireland’s flexible home-grown course. Despite this variety, the implicit assumption that people are drawn to explore Christian faith through common human questions implies that what they are looking for, and what Christianity provides, is a faith for the

12 Mike Booker and Mark Ireland, Evangelism – Which Way Now?, London: Church House Publishing, 2003, pp. 56–7. 13 Booker and Ireland, Evangelism, p. 14.

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whole of life, which makes sense of experience and ties together belief and practice. Second is the recognition that conversion is a process. In 1992 John Finney, then the Church’s Officer for the Decade of Evangelism, published Finding Faith Today, the results of research sponsored by Churches Together in England on the way people come to faith. The research identified 500 people in a variety of denominations who had made an adult commitment to faith through baptism or confirmation and asked them for the stories of how they arrived at that point of commitment. Of those who could recall a time when they were not Christians only 38 per cent described their conversion as a sudden experience; others described a process lasting in some cases longer than ten and on average four years. Even in evangelical churches, where stories of decisive conversion experiences are a widely recognized form of testimony, no less than 50 per cent described a gradual process. ‘The fact is,’ commented Finney, ‘that most people come to God much more gradually. Methods of evangelism which fit in with this pattern are urgently needed.’14 The development of the Emmaus course, of which Finney was one of the authors, was explicitly a response to these findings. The very name ‘Emmaus’ expresses the idea of conversion as a journey like that of the two disciples accompanied by Jesus on the first Easter evening, in contrast to the ‘Damascus road’ experience of the apostle Paul, which had previously been the paradigm for many churches. Increasingly it was coming to be recognized that the ‘crusade’ evangelism of the period from the 1950s right through to the 1980s, marked by the challenge to commitment at mass rallies, relied on calling people back to a faith which they had learned and practised as children. In contrast, it was realized that most people were now ignorant of the basic facts of Christianity and needed time to absorb them before coming to a decision. Not only may Christian conversion be a lengthy journey but it 14 John Finney, Finding Faith Today, Swindon: Bible Society, 1992, p. 25.

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is one that involves companions and takes place in community: an accompanied journey. As Stephen Cottrell points out, this model for evangelism and nurture comes from the catechumenate, based on the practice of the early church.15 It is a long-standing aspect of catholic spirituality now gradually being rediscovered by evangelicals and others. As the Emmaus course Contact booklet points out, the idea that someone hears the gospel, believes and then goes searching for fellowship is largely a fantasy and exceptions are few. The norm is that the enquirer has contact with Christians, joins their fellowship and only then comes to belief. Increasingly belonging comes before believing rather than the other way round.16 Thus, following the practice of Adult Way to Faith, nurture courses typically involve sponsors and companions whose role is to build relationships as much as to share the discussion, since it is in relationship that people find their way to faith. Associated with the involvement of companions and building of relationships is the recognition that evangelism is the task of the whole church. No longer is evangelism to be left to a few with special gifts: everyone can be involved, even if only to prepare and serve a meal at an Alpha course. Those who complete Alpha or Emmaus as enquirers frequently take part in another course as companions as well as for a refresher. The Emmaus Contact booklet, prepared to enable churches to think through the implications of opting for this form of evangelism, forcefully points out that evangelism should not be a ‘bolt-on extra’, reliant on the enthusiasm of the minister or a group of enthusiasts. Instead, the course should be integrated into the programme of the church in such a way that other activities fit around it and the nurturing of new Christians on the journey of faith becomes central to the congregation’s life.17 15 Stephen Cottrell, From the Abundance of the Heart: Catholic Evangelism for All Christians, London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2006, p. 38. 16 Stephen Cottrell et al., Emmaus, The Way of Faith: Contact, 2nd edn, London: Church House Publishing, 2003, p. 14. 17 Cottrell et al., Emmaus: Contact, p. 3.

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Moreover the church in which these shared journeys of faith take place will be a church with ‘fuzzy edges’. If belonging comes before believing then church membership will no longer be defined by belief. The congregation will include people at all stages of the journey, some of whom may be in the early stages of exploration, others, perhaps long-time members, struggling to find a faith adequate to challenging personal circumstances. Still others may be exploring faith with the help of members of the congregation but unwilling yet to identify with church. The ‘fortress church’, which restricts membership to those able and willing to make a specific doctrinal commitment, is increasingly out of step in an age of prevailing uncertainty, when what counts as sufficient grounds for belief and even the concept of truth itself are open to question and doubt. Rather, even long-held and relatively secure faith may be seen as a journey rather than place of arrival. Recognition that ‘church’ has fuzzy edges requires a reassessment of the relationship between church and the wider community. The practical question is: How are people to be attracted to join a nurture course? and increasingly the answer given is: Through service. In the words of Stephen Cottrell, ‘The first message of the gospel must be one of loving service. How can we bless people?’18 As Sara Savage points out, the Church of England, in particular, has a long history of open-handed generosity. Parish churches, as landmarks and sacred places, are ‘owned’ by the wider community; they help to guard the national heritage of art, music and architecture; Christmas is a community celebration at which the church plays host; clergy appear in the role of chaplains, whether so designated or not, to local schools; they provide care and spiritual guidance at times of birth, marriage and bereavement.19 A mission perspective potentially

18 Cottrell, Heart, p. 63. 19 Sara Savage,‘On the analyst’s couch: psychological perspectives on congregations and clergy’ in The Future of the Parish System, ed. Steven Croft, London: Church House Publishing, 2006, pp. 16–32.

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changes our understanding of these activities: the relationship between church and community becomes less about maintaining an institutional presence and more about the opportunities provided to demonstrate the love of God through our willingness to serve. Flowing from the idea of a permeable boundary and the emphasis on service to the community is the theme of hospitality. It emerges in the serving of a meal at the expense of members as part of the Alpha course; in the affirming of life stages and provision of opportunities to mark these in worship; or when a church makes its buildings available and even redevelops them for use by the community. The theme of hospitality is a powerful reminder of the importance of table-fellowship in the life of Jesus, who not only accepted invitations from the rich and influential but shared meals with outcasts and fed vast crowds; and whose teaching included stories of banquets where the conditions for invitation indicate the nature of God’s kingdom. It is to be remembered, too, that Jesus was more often guest than host, just as the church today is the guest of society as well as playing host on particular occasions. Originating in the 1970s and 1980s and crystallizing in the 1990s, in particular with the publication of Alpha and Emmaus, process evangelism marks a major development in the church’s life, witness and self-understanding. Significantly, it is the way things have developed on the ground that has posed questions and prompted a reappropriation of elements of the biblical and theological tradition. The theology that has emerged has drawn on the spectrum of Christian tradition, the catholic heritage of community and the journey of faith, the evangelical emphasis on proclamation and conversion and the disposition of the ‘broad middle’ towards the ministry of presence in society. We will discover that all these are relevant to the next significant step forward in mission.

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Community mission During the 1990s churches throughout the country began to learn through their engagement in process evangelism some important theological principles of mission: that evangelism is the task of the whole church; that Christian conversion is a process rather than a once-for-all event; that the boundaries of the church are fuzzy and permeable to accommodate people at all stages on the journey; and that hospitality has a vital role to play in mission. In practical terms the search for participants for the annual nurture course encourages churches to examine their contact points with the local community and places the emphasis in this relationship on demonstrated love and practical service. Theologically, this refocusing of the agenda for the church’s life and mission prepares the way for the next significant advance. The story of St Michael’s Blackheath, as told in the Sheffield Centre booklet Across the Pond, is an instructive case study of how one church found itself, almost by accident, learning the basics of community mission.20 St Michael’s is situated in a relatively prosperous area of South East London with a parish of roughly 3,500 and an average Sunday attendance in 1997 of 120. One third of its parish is made up of two Local Authority housing estates, originally built in the 1950s, Pond Road and Brooklands Park. Although the two estates between them represented some 35 per cent of the parish population, residents of the estates accounted for just 5 per cent of church attendance. The church’s response was to appoint a parish evangelist at a cost of £100,000 over four years with a brief not only for work with children and young people but also for pioneering work on the two estates. The accompanying plan for mission, as originally drawn up, foresaw a year of spiritual renewal in 1997 focusing on the existing congregation, encouraging discipleship both at work and at home. This was to be followed 20 George Lings, Across the Pond, Encounters on the Edge 6, Sheffield: Church Army, 2000.

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by a year of outreach to the areas at present under-represented in the existing congregation culminating in a parish mission in 1999. Actual contact with the communities involved, however, was to challenge some of the assumptions behind the original plan and change the nature of the church’s outreach. A survey of the estates with the help of a consultant from the Diocese of Southwark revealed that these were not ‘deprived’ areas in the commonly accepted sense. People liked living there, the houses were well maintained and the age structure of the populations showed a healthy mix of generations. The church already made positive contact through its regular magazine, but the church building was situated in the wealthier part of the parish: residents of the estates shared a feeling of being looked down on by their wealthier neighbours and there was a general suspicion of the church and what involvement might mean. In response to the survey, St Michael’s set about redesigning the parish magazine, the main source of positive contact, to be more culturally appropriate to the people of the estates. They then set up a small team working with the newly appointed parish evangelist to explore the possibility of setting up projects on the estates. In Brooklands Park they were considerably helped by the positive attitude of the natural community leaders, the chair, treasurer and secretary of the Residents’ Association. With their help and support, the team was able to establish an after-school club, a parent and toddler group and pensioners’ club and to run a barbecue and dance. At Christmas 1997 a carol service was organized with coffee and mince pies in the estate hall, including contributions from several residents sharing their memories of Christmas and what it meant to them. The next step was something that had not figured in the original plan but arose from the aspirations of the people of Brooklands Park themselves. The centrepiece of the estate was a large ornamental pond, complete with wildlife and landscaping, but sadly neglected and choked with rubbish. Despite requests from the community over a number of years nothing had been done to 25

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clean up the pond. In discussions with the residents it emerged that a key problem had been the lack of insurance cover for a volunteer clean-up operation. If such an operation became an official church project, however, it would be covered by St Michael’s insurance policy. With the agreement of the residents planning began: skips had to be organized, agreement with the Council to open sluice gates, suitable clothing provided and a proper maintenance programme put in place. On the day appointed some 80 people turned out from church and community provided with boots and waders paid for by wealthy members of the congregation; children’s activities were organized, a café and bar run by the older people, local TV arrived to film the action and a video was put together to be shown at a joint party a fortnight later. The result of the successful joint project was the evaporation of the mistrust between church and community. In the words of one resident, ‘Before it was them and us. Now it’s just us.’ The fact that something they had wanted for years had been achieved gave the people of the community hope; before long they were able to raise £1,000 for a fun day, a sum previously well beyond their aspirations. Some of the key community leaders whose support had been so vital came to church once or twice and began to pray again; and the local school, previously suspicious of contact with the church, opened its doors to St Michael’s. The next stage was a period of waiting. A teenage group for the community folded but the other projects continued. The second carol night drew 100 people. Then, after a sabbatical in his native Australia, the church’s community evangelist returned with a vision for a church on the estate following a cell church model. After sharing it with the leaders of the Residents’ Association, with whom he had now worked closely for over a year, he was invited to begin church services on the estate. Following the invitation, the leadership of St Michael’s clarified the vision for what would follow. The new congregation was to take its shape from the culture of the estate rather than that of St Michael’s. Key members 26

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of the church were to be released from their other tasks to form a core team for the new church. ‘Dissidents’ and ‘spectators’ either from St Michael’s or other churches were to be discouraged. The story of St Michael’s is just one example of many in which a congregation has sought to establish contact with its local community with a view to mission and had its plans, expectations and theology challenged as a result, and illustrates well some of the key theological principles behind community mission. In the first place, the episode places evangelism in the context of mission. The clearing of a pond did not involve directly preaching the gospel, but the building of relationships, increase in neighbourliness and well-being, and care for the environment that it represents also help to realize God’s purposes in the world. It illustrates a move from acceptance that evangelism is the task of the whole church to the realization that mission – in this broader sense – is integral to the life of the church. The clearest aspect of this shift is the change over a period of a few years from a ‘you come to us’ approach to mission to ‘we will come to you’. The expectation that a period of mission would lead to an increase in the number of people from the estates attending St Michael’s gave way to a recognition that any new church would need to be not only situated on the estate but shaped by the culture of the estate. Less obvious but no less fundamental is that community mission potentially redefines what it means to be a disciple of Christ. Through their initial commitment to mission the congregation of St Michael’s found themselves unexpectedly called to a risky and sacrificial venture in response to an agenda not their own but arising from the aspirations of the community. But as Ann Morisy comments, ‘Taking up the cross is about costly decisions for the sake of the Gospel, and it is in this respect that we are called to be like Jesus.’21 Drawing her inspiration from Karl Rahner and in particular Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Morisy suggests that discipleship itself needs to be defined not in terms of spiritual 21 Ann Morisy, Beyond the Good Samaritan, London: Mowbray, 1997, p. 108.

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disciplines or personal lifestyle but as ‘venturesome love’ involving a commitment to public action. She goes on to suggest that it is through this ‘venturesome love’ expressed in community mission that the crucial lessons of discipleship are learned. A group who engaged in a debt counselling project found their experience of shopping transformed as they learned to view consumer society from the point of view of those excluded by debt.22 In particular, Morisy suggests, it is through engagement with society at its point of need that we encounter and properly learn the seriousness of sin. In my own church of St Paul’s, it was through setting up and running a project for young people in the most disadvantaged area of our parish that we encountered sin in its various forms: the challenging behaviour of the young people themselves; the structural sin of society, which led to the need for the project in the first place; and the sinful attitudes within ourselves that arose from our struggles with the project. When mission is integral to the life of the congregation we grow in our understanding of God. Without it, it is easy to become selfcontained, protected by a veneer of ‘niceness’ from the reality of human fallenness. A key element of the enacted theology of community mission is the realization that God is active outside the boundaries of the church. This principle is already implicit in the understanding of conversion as a journey of faith in which it is possible to discern God at work in a person’s life well before they encounter the Christian community. In community mission it is extended in a variety of ways. Partnership with the community means recognizing that people who do not call themselves Christian and bodies other than the church, such as the leading members of the Brooklands Park Residents’ Association and the City Youth Service that oversaw my own church’s youth project, may be involved in the work of God’s kingdom. Ann Morisy records the example of her own Streatham churches who, on advertising in the local paper 22 Morisy, Good Samaritan, pp. 17–18.

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for volunteers to help with a project for the homeless, received over 200 offers in the first week.23 This willingness to be involved, she suggests, is an expression of the ‘vocational domain’: the desire in most people to contribute to something worthwhile that will make a real difference for good. Thus in community mission, the recognition that people ask searching questions about their lives is extended to a further vital realization: that many people, regardless of the faith they profess, are implicitly in tune with the values of God’s kingdom. Another major theological insight to emerge from the stories of community mission is that ‘the Spirit blows where he wills’. Not only did St Michael’s discover that the way into mission to Brooklands Park was already to some extent prepared through the favourable reception of key community leaders, but they learned to recognize and work with the unexpected. The fact that the parish evangelist they appointed came from Australia meant that he did not share the baggage of the previously poor relationship between the estates and the rest of the parish. More important still, the desire of the community for a clean-up of the pond was recognized as an area where the church could offer significant service. At each stage, plans carefully made in advance were adapted or put aside as the church attempted to respond faithfully to the way the Spirit appeared to be leading. Another important aspect of this principle is that significant areas for possible mission will not be touched. St Michael’s was able to work fruitfully in Brooklands Park but not in the Pond Road estate. In my own case, I have vivid memories of a day-long meeting of the church’s leadership team at the beginning of which most of us expected that we would be planning mission in one particular area of our parish, only to come away fully convinced through prayer and discussion that God was calling us to focus on a different area entirely. Community mission requires a continual process of choice as to which of the manifold needs of a given community 23 Morisy, Good Samaritan, pp. 23–4.

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God may be calling the church to engage with. The guiding principle in making this choice is not to try to cover every possibility, nor even to pinpoint the area of greatest need, but rather through prayer and discernment to follow the lead of the Holy Spirit. Finally, community mission is by its very nature incarnational. Not only does it require a willingness to ‘go where people are’ and ‘get our hands dirty’ following the pattern of Jesus’ own ministry but, at a deeper level entirely, it will mean allowing the presentation and even our understanding of the gospel and the life of the church to be shaped by the context. For the residents of Brooklands Park, the ‘good news’ was the involvement of the church as partners in the clean-up of the pond. Only when the church congregation was willing to become good news in a way the local community could understand and receive did it become possible to think about building a community of faith in response to the good news of Christ. And any church that emerged had to be shaped by the culture of the estate rather than the inherited tradition of the existing congregation. Moreover, the progress of mission was marked by a progressive ceding of control by the church to the community, the willingness to adjust plans in response to the community’s agenda while still investing sacrificially in terms of both financial support and the gifts and time of key lay members. As it engages in mission, the church is called to follow the example of God in Christ, who laid aside his power and status and came in the form of a servant. A crucially important aspect of the incarnational focus of community mission is the recognition of the special place of the poor in God’s purpose. Not only did Jesus deliberately avoid opportunities of status and power, but he aligned and identified himself with the poor and those on the margins of society. It is not simply that God sees the needs of the poor as important and expects his church to give them priority. But in a much deeper way, his identity is more clearly revealed and we come to a greater understanding of his nature and purpose when a society 30

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built on the scramble for scarce resources is experienced from the point of view of those who have least. In an age when the church is losing the trappings of status and power the opportunity arises to discover the influence of love exercised from a place of weakness. As Karl Barth writes, ‘The real church is the lowliest, the poorest, the meanest, weakest thing that can possibly exist under God’s heaven, gathered as it is around a manger and a cross.’24 Like process evangelism, community mission potentially unites the different strands of the church, drawing equally on the evangelical concern for proclamation, the catholic instinct for community and the traditionally liberal aspiration for social involvement and transformation. One of the most fruitful areas for ecumenical co-operation in recent years has proved to be partnership in mission to and with the local community. Theologically, community mission takes forward the insights that underpin process evangelism, adding the new discoveries that take place when churches seek to reach out in service to their community: that people tend not only to be asking searching questions about the meaning of their lives but also looking for ways of making a beneficial contribution to the world; that involvement in mission may become part of a journey to faith even before a point of conversion and commitment; that the fuzzy boundaries of the church may be expanded to embrace all those working for the kingdom of God and that the Spirit will be found at work well beyond those boundaries; that not only is Jesus the object of Christian faith but his life and ministry provide the paradigm for that of the church. Finally, we have seen emerging from partnership with the community the recognition that mission takes shape in a given context and that both gospel and church are themselves shaped by that context. This recognition forms the link with the next important stage in the church’s rediscovery of mission. 24 Karl Barth, Against the Stream, London: SCM, 1954, p. 65.

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Emerging church In his address to the General Synod in February 2004 Archbishop Rowan Williams identified the time as a ‘kairos moment’.25 The Synod was responding to the recently published report, Missionshaped Church. Ten years previously the church had received the report Breaking New Ground on what was then the relatively new phenomenon of ‘church planting’. Ten years on, a working party under the leadership of Graham Cray, Bishop of Maidstone, was set up to ‘review the original report, to assess progress and to consider new developments’.26 While staying within their brief, what they produced was a great deal more radical than had been expected. The ‘new developments’ they had been asked to consider consisted of a bewildering variety of new styles and shapes of church from ‘alternative worship communities’ to ‘youth congregations’ of which ‘traditional church plants’ were just one. Despite the fears of many the Archbishop’s warm support helped to ensure a favourable reception both for the report and the new developments it described. From his experience as Bishop of Monmouth he brought with him the phrase ‘mixed economy church’ to summarize the coexistence of traditional parish churches with experimental forms of church seeking to reach people outside the range of traditional, geographically based parishes. The phrase ‘fresh expressions’, drawing on the line in the Declaration of Assent, ‘which faith the Church is called to proclaim afresh in each generation’, was coined as shorthand for these new forms of church to give them a place alongside the ‘traditional’ expressions with which everyone was familiar. It also became the name of the network formed under the leadership of Steven Croft to share stories and examples of good practice,

25 Rowan Williams in the Mission-shaped Church debate, General Synod, February 2004. 26 Archbishops’ Council: Mission-shaped Church, London: Church House Publishing, 2004, p. xi.

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encourage and support the leaders of these new forms of church and promote theological reflection on the new developments.27 The phrase ‘mission-shaped’, which was adopted as the title of the report only at the last minute, expressed the recognition that these alternative forms of church were springing from the action of God in mission. In the next few years a series of ‘mission-shaped’ titles, not least Mission-shaped Questions,28 expressed a sense that the whole church is being called to assess its life and practice in the light of a theological understanding of mission. The stories of these new forms of church abound in books and articles, on websites and on the DVDs produced by the ‘Fresh Expressions’ network. Mention of a few may convey the rich variety of new developments taking place. Beginning with the vision of two members of St George’s New Thundersley in Essex, the XS Centre is a youth centre and skatepark attracting 250 young people a week. Of these up to 80 form a youth congregation for whom even skateboarding may become part of an experience of prayer and worship and where, because of the large number of young men, exploration of male spirituality is high on the agenda.29 Assigned to the centre of Liverpool following the closure of the last Methodist church in the area, Barbara Glasson began by walking the streets, praying about a way to reach the people of the rapidly changing area. The church that emerged began with a gathering to make bread together and grew into a small community known as ‘Somewhere Else’, sharing their lives and worshipping together.30 In Westminster, Moot is a gathering in which traditional liturgy is married with ultra-violet lighting and secular songs to produce a style of worship that plugs in to a

27 I am using the terms ‘fresh expressions’ and ‘emerging churches’ interchangeably in this section. 28 Steven Croft (ed.), Mission-shaped Questions, London: Church House Publishing, 2008. 29 www.legacyweb.org/; Steve Hollinghurst, Mission Shaped Evangelism, Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2010, pp. 229–30. 30 Barbara Glasson, Mixed-up Blessing, Peterborough: Inspire, 2006.

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renewed interest in ancient practice yet speaks to the young people of today.31 Re: New is a fledgling initiative for children and their parents in the Cambridgeshire villages of Lode and Swaffham Bulbeck. Originating in a Baptist-run holiday club, it now involves co-operation with the Anglican churches. Re: New offers ‘nonchurchy’ yet spiritually focused gatherings on Sunday mornings in parallel with traditional Sunday worship, and wherever possible the two ‘congregations’ meet over coffee afterwards.32 What changes in society are these emerging forms of church reflecting and responding to? Perhaps the most important are drawn together in Mission-shaped Church under the title ‘The Power of Networks’. The traditional parish is a geographical entity: the parish church is there to minister to those who live in a particular area. But in an age of high mobility geography plays a less important role in relationships: families may be scattered throughout several countries; colleagues at work are drawn from widely different locations; young people gather from a wide area in city and town centres; relationships may be formed and maintained in online communities. Many people now live and relate in networks rather than geographical spaces. Moreover, these networks are fragmented. There can be almost no one whose network of relationships is the same as anyone else’s. And for each person the networks in which they live will occupy positions of relative importance: for some the workplace, for others a particular interest group and for some their village or town, will be of primary importance. Seen from this perspective, the traditional, geographical parish is as much a network as any other and, unsurprisingly, those whose primary networks are based on locality, the elderly and non-working women, tend to be disproportionately represented in the congregation of the traditional parish church. Thus, as has frequently been pointed out, the growth of new forms of church 31 www.moot.uk.net/ 32 www.freshexpressions.org.uk/node/334

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for those whose primary networks of relationships are nongeographical – young people, interest groups, colleagues at work, those of a particular culture – is in effect an extension of the parish system to cover those who do not naturally relate to the geographical parish. Finally, we are living in a period when the influence of Christian faith is in rapid decline. Until the last generation it was possible to maintain that the prevailing culture was profoundly influenced by the legacy of Christian faith; in particular that the prevailing understanding of human life, the nature, destiny and purpose of human beings, was broadly based on Christian understanding. For some sections of our society this continues to be true. But with others mission today takes place in an environment where the basic facts of Christian faith are largely unknown. Yet far from being new and unfamiliar, the church’s message is generally regarded as ‘old hat’. The attempt to ‘do church differently’ away from recognized channels and buildings and the need to build slowly by word of mouth and personal relationships is in part an attempt to overcome the profound alienation from traditional forms of Christianity experienced by many and in particular though not exclusively by the young. What then is the theology that sustains and guides fresh expressions of church? The first and most important point to be made is about style rather than content. Emerging churches are breaking new ground. Although the insights and principles they need for guidance are present in the theological tradition, these need to be reclaimed. Traditional theology, taking the shape of the tradition as given and seeking to elaborate it, will not serve; what is required is a theology shaped by reflection on present action. And this is in fact what is taking place. The progress of the emerging church has the nature of trial and error as people on the ground set out to engage in mission to a particular group of people trusting to intuition about the way God is working and then reflecting on the results. Organizations like Fresh 35

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Expressions and the Sheffield Centre under the direction of George Lings act as networks for the sharing of stories and encourage reflection on practice through their publications and events.33 Thus gradually a theology of mission for contemporary culture emerges. This is perhaps the reason why Mission-shaped Church has been criticized for containing ‘no theology’. Its theology was fragmentary, looking to the tradition to make sense of what God appeared to be doing on the ground. In the years since, a theology has begun to emerge, but it is still incomplete and provisional and may remain so as long as the present age of rapid change continues.34 However, it is possible to discern some elements of the tradition brought back to prominence by the experience of emerging churches. First is the recognition that the form of the church and even our understanding of the gospel is shaped by culture. As we saw in the story of St Michael’s Blackheath, the church learned that what was good news for the community of Brooklands Park was shaped by their ‘bad news’. Their bad news included a neglected pond and a sense of being looked down on by their wealthy neighbours. A vital part of the gospel for that community was that the pond mattered and that the church was willing to work alongside them and respect their culture. These simple if partial truths have potential to begin a process of transformed identity for both individuals and community. They form key elements of the journey not only for the community but also for 33 The series of booklets, Encounters on the Edge by George Lings is published four times a year by the Sheffield Centre; see www.encountersontheedge.org.uk. For a reflection on the sharing of good practice see Michael Moynagh, ‘Good practice is not what it used to be: accumulating wisdom for fresh expressions of church’ in Future, ed. Croft, pp. 110–24. 34 An early and impressive example of theological reflection arising from Mission-shaped Church is Paul Bayes, Mission-shaped Church: Building Missionary Values, Cambridge: Grove, 2004. Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger’s Emerging Churches, London: SPCK, 2006, is based on interviews with 50 leaders of emerging churches in the UK and USA exploring the principles that guide them and lessons they are learning from experience. Missionshaped Questions asks what there is to learn from fresh expressions of church, though some contributions seem to be missing the point by asking what fresh expressions need to learn from what the traditional church already knows.

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the church, since the church, through its outreach to the community, was also rediscovering the gospel. A child discovering a church that cares, a teenager learning to worship through skateboarding, a young adult finding that traditional liturgy in a contemporary format can put her in touch with God are all experiencing the gospel in their context. One of the most important messages to emerge from the leaders of fresh expressions is the need to hold lightly to traditional formulations of faith. Several have been through a phase they described as ‘postevangelical’ to signal a breakaway from a position in which Christian truth was seen as cut and dried.35 Acknowledgement of the importance of context highlights the importance of Paul’s determination to become ‘all things to all people, so that I might by any means save some’ (1 Cor. 9.23), and reminds us that in so doing he was willingly laying aside his own cultural heritage in order to adapt to that of his hearers. It points us to the incarnation of Jesus in which the good news was communicated as much through personal contact as explicit teaching. Emerging churches are formed by laying aside the traditional shape of church culture and adapting to the culture of the host community. To do this it is necessary to transform secular space. Of the nine characteristics of emerging churches identified by Gibbs and Bolger, this is one of the three they list as applying to all such churches. The clarion call of the emerging church is Psalm 24:1: ‘The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it.’ For emerging churches there are no longer any bad places, bad people or bad times. All can be made holy. All can be given to God in worship. All modern dualisms can be overcome.36

35 Dave Tomlinson, author of The Post-Evangelical, London: SPCK, 1995, for many years led a new church called Holy Joe’s. He is currently vicar of St Luke’s West Holloway in North London. 36 Gibbs and Bolger, Emerging Churches, p. 67.

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‘Secular’ music may be used in worship as well as sacred. For emerging church, the distinction is a false one. Worship and teaching need to make connections between faith and everyday lives. According to Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch, ‘The missional church … does not create sanctified spaces into which unbelievers must come to encounter the gospel. Rather, the missional church disassembles itself and seeps into the cracks and crevices of a society in order to be Christ to those who don’t yet know him.’ 37 Next, emerging churches put community first. Most do not start out with a gathering for worship. They begin by developing networks of relationships, exploring faith and only gradually and often tentatively begin to look for appropriate ways in which to worship together. Cable Street Community Church in Shadwell, East London began with a team moving into the area in order to become part of the community. Meetings were in homes and around meals. ‘Deeper relationships are built over the intimacy of a meal,’ says one of the leaders, Janet Gilpin, ‘problems are more likely to be shared and worship is more likely to be multi-voiced.’38 At first worship emerged from the event around the meal and as the church developed they began to experiment with a labyrinthstyle quiet, contemplative prayer evening in the sanctuary of a local Anglo-Catholic church. Likewise in Somewhere Else, the church began with a community formed around the shared activity of breadmaking. Exploration of faith and worship together grew out of community. And the key to forming community is accepting and non-judgemental welcome. As one member of Sanctus 1 in Manchester commented, ‘It’s a community with whom I can be “me”, honest about my beliefs, questions, fears, hopes and dreams; it’s where I feel accepted and affirmed for who I am, as I am.’39 37 Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch, The Shaping of Things to Come, Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2003, p. 12. 38 Chris Stoddard and Nick Cuthbert, Church on the Edge, Milton Keynes: Authentic, 2006, pp. 148–9. 39 Stoddard and Cuthbert, Church on the Edge, p. 175.

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Another key characteristic is the whole-life focus. Activities like making bread and skateboarding are an integral part of the community’s shared life. Worship, teaching and other activities are, wherever possible, creative, often bringing together traditional and contemporary elements. Spirituality and learning is viewed as a journey, with space created where it is needed for the searching, the broken and those alienated from the traditional church. There is, moreover, a different style of authority: the ‘teacher’ is not an authority figure passing on a pre-existing and pre-digested form of belief but a facilitator for the journey, enabling exploration and self-discovery. Put all this together and what emerges is messy, in some places perhaps a reflection of a badly thought out experiment, in others of the Spirit blowing where he wills. But in contrast to traditional forms of church, many of the leaders of emerging church are committed to impermanence. Interviewed on the second of the ‘Expressions’ DVDs produced by Fresh Expressions they give voice to a sense that they are here for the time, to connect with society as it is now; in an age of rapid change, the shape of mission and the church that emerges may need to change equally rapidly. This is not always easy, and there is the possibility that fresh expressions themselves may get stuck in their own way of doing things rather than retain their adaptability. The quotation from the member’s story at Sanctus 1 sums up many of the characteristics of new forms of church. It continues: It’s a church where difficult questions about God, faith and life and the world can be asked without receiving trite answers. The chance to reflect upon and wrestle with issues of life and faith in God’s presence, rather than simply being told what to believe and do, is sometimes challenging but also hugely liberating and inspiring. It is wonderful to be a part of a community where God and the world, sacred and secular aren’t boxed up neatly and separately but rather where life and faith are integrated, where God is recognized to be present and active in our lives 39

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and in all of creation, if we just listen and look. This is a place where Christ’s love for all people and his passion for justice for the oppressed is taken seriously as a model for our own lives as his disciples. It’s a church where I can worship God in creative ways, where we are not constantly bombarded by words but where there is space to listen for God’s still, small voice … space to meet the living God and be transformed by the encounter.40 Earlier I suggested that what is happening in the emerging churches is that leaders are reclaiming from the tradition the resources to guide the church’s mission in contemporary culture. Could it be that through this process of action and reflection we are learning afresh not only what mission is but what the church is called to be: engaged with the secular world, flexible, creative, welcoming and accepting, a place of journeying rather than arrival? And if so, what are the implications for traditional forms of church? What might the Spirit be saying to those who lead the traditional churches and to the many for whom they are a place where God has always been accessible?

Renewing traditional church Traditional churches are not being slow to learn these lessons. Far from being marginalized by the growth of alternative forms of church, all the signs point to a renewal of confidence. One powerful symbol of this confidence is ‘Back to Church Sunday’, which has taken place each September for the past six years. From small beginnings in the Anglican Diocese of Manchester in 2004, by 2009 Back to Church Sunday was actively promoted by every diocese in England as well as Churches Together in Scotland, the Church in Wales, Baptist, Methodist and United Reformed Churches as well as some churches overseas.41 From the 800 who 40 Stoddard and Cuthbert, Church on the Edge, pp. 175–6. 41 www.cofe.anglican.org/news/pr5309.html

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accepted the invitation in Manchester in 2004, it was estimated that some 82,000 came ‘back to church’ in 2009, of whom, according to figures from Lichfield Diocese, between 12 and 15 per cent were likely to become regular worshippers.42 Returnees spoke of the warm welcome they received: ‘It was different to what I’d imagined, and the people were very friendly. I didn’t feel like they were trying to shove religion down my throat; they let me make up my own mind. It was a very relaxed and welcoming atmosphere, just like one big family.’ Others spoke of coming home: ‘For a few years I had felt lost, as if part of me was missing … I felt I had come home.’ The last quote is a reminder that Back to Church Sunday specifically targets the group known as the ‘open de-churched’, those who have at one time been regular worshippers and are still open about the possibility of returning, reckoned in 2004 to make up some 20 per cent of the population.43 The size of this group highlights the place of the church as part of the warp and weft of British society and culture. As Robin Gamble points out, the traditional parish church has advantages which, if they were offered to an emerging political party or religious group, ‘they would bite off our hand and beam with optimism’: a large, prominent building; a vicar with an instantly recognizable role to whom doors of all types are open; a congregation that makes up one of the most significant networks in the locality; a regular weekly gathering for worship; the annual cycle of festivals; significant presence in schools and colleges; and the continuing interest of the media, to name just a few. Moreover, the average parish church has also seen many significant advances in quality in recent years: deepening spirituality, liturgical renewal, increasingly generous financial giving, and the flowering of a variety of forms of lay and ordained ministry.44 42 www.backtochurch.co.uk/page/3009/BTCS+2009+Reviewed/17 43 Mission-shaped Church, p. 37. 44 Robin Gamble, ‘Doing traditional church really well’ in Future, ed. Croft, pp. 94–6.

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Like the emerging churches, traditional church inhabits a cultural niche, but it is a niche of significant size, well integrated with certain aspects of the surrounding secular culture. As an example of this, cathedrals have been hailed as ‘the success story of the Church of England in the late twentieth century’,45 a success that has by no means come to an end with the advent of the twenty-first. Since the turn of the millennium, attendance at regular weekly services has increased by 17 per cent.46 Attendance at Chelmsford Cathedral grew by 7 per cent in 2008 alone and on one October Sunday in the same year the congregation of Southwark Cathedral topped 1,000.47 Why do people come in such increasing numbers? The two most important reasons seem to be, first, the guarantee of anonymity. Without being cold and formal, cathedrals nevertheless embody a traditionally British reserve. For those who wish, it is possible to come and go without being overwhelmed or drawn in, without even being identified as a Christian, which makes a cathedral the ideal context for someone who wishes to explore faith on their own terms and in their own time.48 Second, the quality of the worship appeals to ‘people looking for mystery, beauty, stability and a sense of God’s presence … discovered in forms and styles that reflect the Church’s heritage in liturgy and spirituality, and sense of sacred stability in a fast changing world’.49 A further advantage for cathedrals and many parish churches, especially the recognizable ‘civic churches’, is the opportunity to engage with corporate and civic culture in their locality. John Holbrook, vicar of Wimborne Minster, records the story of the vicar of one city centre church who stood alongside members of the local council during a bitter planning dispute, 45 Mark Rylands, ‘Mission-Shaped Cathedrals’ inMission-shaped Parish, eds. Paul Bayes and Tim Sledge, London: Church House Publishing, 2006, p. 122, quoting correspondence with John Inge. 46 Rylands, ‘Cathedrals’, p. 128. 47 www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/in-god-we-trust-pews-fill-up-as-theeconomy-slows-down-1055690.html 48 Rylands, ‘Cathedrals’, p. 129. 49 Mission-shaped Church, p. 74.

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remaining neutral, offering pastoral support and speaking up for the integrity of the councillors involved; and the invitation from Purbeck District Council to the vicar of Wareham to chair its Ethical Standards Committee.50 In a situation where belonging typically comes before believing and where the church with fuzzy edges opens its doors to people at all stages of their spiritual journey, the culture of church plays an important role in nurturing faith. Some of the most significant mission thinking in recent years has concentrated on the nature of church culture and how it can become a faithful reflection of the gospel. In 1996 Janet Hodgson, Advisor in Local Mission for the Diocese of Durham, was examining the church attendance figures across the diocese for the previous five years. What she noticed was that over that period most churches had declined by an average of 16 per cent. However, there were 25 churches where attendance was markedly on the increase, in each case by more than 16 per cent over the same period. The most obvious feature of these 25 churches was their variety: they represented all the different social settings to be found in the diocese, a full range of church traditions and they were of all sizes, some small, others large. Their clergy represented a variety of ages, personality types and leadership styles. Rather than shrug her shoulders and take the figures as statistical oddities, Hodgson set out to discover what, if anything, these growing churches had in common. The result was the ‘seven marks of a healthy church’.51 The transition from ‘growing’ to ‘healthy’ represents a piece of theological interpretation. The underlying assumption is that ‘a healthy tree bears good fruit’: the gospel, like the word of God, is like a seed which tends naturally to grow in favourable soil. One aspect of this growth is likely to be numerical. While one growing church might represent a particular evangelistic style producing 50 John Holbrook, ‘Mission-shaped civic church’, in Mission-shaped Parish, ed. Bayes and Sledge, p. 92. 51 Robert Warren, The Healthy Churches Handbook, London: Church House Publishing, 2004, pp. 13–14.

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converts but not long-term disciples, another a distinctive worship style drawing existing Christians from other churches, 25 churches with a variety of styles and settings and yet exhibiting common factors in their congregational life should provide a clue to those features of church culture that genuinely reflect the influence of the gospel. The eventual outcome of the work in Durham, The Healthy Churches Handbook, provides a theological explanation of the common features discerned in this sample of growing churches. To be ‘energized by faith’ and to have an ‘outwardlooking focus’ is to be honouring the two great commandments, to love God with all one’s heart, soul, mind and strength and one’s neighbour as oneself. To be ‘seeking to find out what God wants’ and ‘facing the cost of change and growth’ is to be responding to Jesus’ challenge to die to self for the sake of the gospel. To ‘operate as a community’, ‘make room for all’ and ‘do a few things and do them well’ is to be signs of the kingdom of God. Thus growth is achieved not by slick technique but through corporately living out the values of Christian faith. Teachers will be familiar with the idea of the ‘hidden curriculum’: the implicit ways by which the school’s expectations and values are conveyed and reinforced. Pupils learn important lessons not only through the subject content they are taught in the classroom, but through whether or not uniform is worn; the level of formality in the way pupils are expected to relate to their teachers; the range of styles of teaching and learning used throughout the school; the degree to which the school’s code of discipline is imposed from above or through involving pupils in decision-making; the relationships modelled among the staff and between staff and pupils. The attitudes, values and behaviours implicitly modelled by the staff and encouraged in the pupils often teach more effectively than explicit statements. If principles of respect and co-operation run through the school like the name in a stick of rock, pupils can be expected to ‘pick up’ these principles in the course of their interaction with the staff, learn to behave in similar ways towards one another and gradually make them their own. 44

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In the same way, churches too have a hidden curriculum. Whatever a church actually believes about such things as worship, mission, the place of children and what it means to be a Christian, these will be reflected in the patterns of interaction that make up the life of the community and will be communicated to its members far more effectively than the explicit teaching of the pulpit or Bible study. A reverent but affectionate tone of voice used in leading worship conveys one picture of God, a formal and colourless tone another. The claim to be the ‘family of God’ will be undermined if the exchange of greetings at the Peace is nothing more than a perfunctory handshake or reserved only for intimate friends. The church’s commitment to mission is measured most effectively by the presence or absence of issues of evangelism or social concern from the agenda of the PCC, its understanding of Jesus’ words about the acceptance of children by the welcome actually afforded to children and their place in the congregation’s life. Attitudes are learned in relationships, ‘caught’ rather than ‘taught’. If ‘belonging’ is to lead to ‘believing’ those drawn to the traditional church in their pilgrimage of faith will need to experience God’s reality in the life of the congregation, the way people relate to each other and speak about God in everyday conversation, the ‘story’ they tell about God’s role in everyday life. Thus to place mission at the heart of the traditional church means more than to give prominence to nurture courses like Alpha and Emmaus or involvement in community mission. It means that qualities like grace and mercy, love, goodness and self-control, willingness to accept rebuke lovingly given, to forgive and be forgiven, will be evident and taken as normal. If we ask what key theological themes are to be found in the renewal of traditional churches for mission, we discover many, though not all, of those previously noted in relation to process evangelism, community mission and emerging churches. Just as for community mission we see that mission is integral to the life of the church and is incarnational. As Robert Warren writes, 45

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What we are called to do, tell and serve others in their search for our lost humanity, is also what we are called to be … In this way the whole life of the church becomes at one and the same time both pastoral (building up the faithful) and missionary (proclaiming the faith).52 Again, in common with the theology underlying process evangelism, conversion is a process, an accompanied journey that takes place in a church with fuzzy edges where belonging leads to believing. Two themes, however, emerge as particularly important, the first of which is shared with the emerging churches, namely that relationships are the heart of the church. To quote Robert Warren again, the renewal of the traditional church for mission involves moving from what he called ‘inherited’ to what he designated, before the days of fresh expressions and ‘emerging church’, as ‘emerging’ mode. Inherited mode he characterized as ‘church = building + priest + stipend’, emerging mode as ‘church = worship + community + mission’.53 The inherited understanding of church focuses on a building, usually open only on Sundays and available for baptisms, weddings and funerals, in which a priest or minister holds services, both building and minister costing a lot to maintain. In contrast, the emerging understanding sees community as central and understands itself in the words of Vincent Donovan as a ‘eucharistic community with a mission’.54 In the church in emerging mode building and maintaining Christian community takes centre stage. John Holbrook writes, ‘In Wimborne we have tried to engage in mission by prioritizing our outward-facing relationships with the wider society,’ and immediately goes on, ‘This means that we have had to be very 52 Robert Warren, Building Missionary Congregations, London: Church House Publishing, 1995, p. 23. 53 Robert Warren, Being Human, Being Church, London: Marshall Pickering, 1995, pp. 21–36, 83–98. 54 Vincent Donovan, Christianity Rediscovered, London: SCM, 1978, pp. 138–57.

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watchful of the quality of our inner community life.’55 Attention to the quality of community life involves a host of small actions in a variety of contexts. In our church of St Paul’s Longton Hall my wife Meg revolutionized our weekly intercessions by one simple step: she invited everyone on the rota to meet occasionally to pray together and support one another, each discovering their own personal style and sharing creative ways of leading the congregation in prayer. As a result the part of the service previously rated as the most boring became instantly one of the most interesting and involving for the congregation. What Meg had done was to replace a rota, which is a means of ensuring the completion of a task without the necessity of relationships, with a team sharing a common purpose. Another crucial element and one of the most important factors in creating community is hospitality. As Alison Gilchrist points out in her Grove booklet, the welcome extended to a visitor, whether on Back to Church Sunday or any week of the year, depends on more than a team of welcomers at the door. It requires a theology of welcome embodied in the church as part of its hidden curriculum, the willingness to overcome introspection and to create ‘space’ where the newcomer can feel the possibility of belonging.56 The second important theme in the renewal of the traditional church is the centrality of spirituality. As Warren explains it, the three interlocking circles that express the life of the church, worship (how we relate to God), community (the quality of relationships within the congregation) and mission (the church’s engagement with the surrounding culture) are united by spirituality, by which he means ‘our understanding and experience of how encounter with God takes place and how such an encounter is sustained’. It is spirituality that lies at the heart of the church’s life and the state of this ‘heart’ is the crucial factor in the 55 Holbrook, ‘Mission-shaped civic church’, p. 91. 56 Alison Gilchrist, Creating a Culture of Welcome in the Local Church, Cambridge: Grove, 2004.

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church’s effectiveness.57 Bishop Stephen Cottrell begins his book From the Abundance of the Heart with a chapter entitled ‘Prayer – the way we access and are renewed by God’s vision’. ‘On many occasions,’ he writes, ‘I would go to a church to talk about evangelism . . . and after about ten minutes I would shut up about evangelism and start talking about prayer instead.’ Prayer was the way – the only way – for the people of the church to get in touch with what it was they wanted to share, the thing that made being a Christian worth talking about, the relationship with God at the heart of it.58 Or, as Robin Gamble puts it, the key to ‘doing traditional church really well’ is passionate desire, ‘not just a human egotistical pursuit of desire for success’ but ‘something growing out of the very heart of God himself ’, ‘prompted by the Holy Spirit and at the same time the place in our inner self where we actually receive his empowering’.59 One of the most significant criticisms levelled at traditional church has been its lack of spiritual awareness.60 In 1992 Graham Cray wrote: Postmodern people are more likely to come to faith through experience … But one of the tragedies of today is that some elements of the Church are now so firmly secularized in their disbelief of the supernatural that they have nothing to say to a culture which increasingly takes spirituality and the supernatural for granted.61 Cray’s observation is backed up by figures from research such as the BBC’s ‘Soul of Britain’ survey of 2000 and Coventry Diocese’s ‘Beyond the Fringe’ project of 2003, which indicate an enormous change in the spirituality of British culture. For example, between 57 Warren, Being Human, Being Church, pp. 88–9. 58 Cottrell, Heart, p. 3. 59 Gamble, ‘Doing traditional church really well’, p. 97. 60 John Drane, Do Christians Know How to be Spiritual?, London: Darton Longman and Todd, 2005. 61 Quoted in Rylands, ‘Cathedrals’, p. 127.

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1987 and 2000 there was a 41 per cent increase (from 27 per cent of respondents to 38 per cent) in people saying they were aware of the presence of God, a 48 per cent increase (from 25 per cent to 37 per cent) in those who said they had had a prayer answered.62 And yet the worship in many parts of the traditional church had become so grey and formal, its prayer life so weak and its faith in the supernatural so low that it could be justly characterized as ‘a secular church surrounded by a spiritual culture’,63 with over 25 per cent of people leaving church giving as one of their reasons, ‘there was too little sense of the presence of God in worship’.64 Gradually, however, that is changing. Just as in secular culture, awareness of the spiritual dimension is on the increase, and the churches are learning to take prayer and spirituality seriously once again. Thus the renewal of the church for mission has been a gradual movement taking place over the last 20 years. We have traced successive moments when particular movements crystallized and gained momentum: process evangelism in the early 1990s, community mission in the late 1990s and the emerging church, or ‘fresh expressions’ of church in 2004. In the same period, many traditional churches have been gradually revitalized by a series of important steps: liturgical renewal, the development of a variety of forms of ministry, paying attention to the quality of community life, more generous financial giving, increasing openness to the wider community, and the deepening of spiritual awareness. It seems fair to discern in these developments a sign of the moving of God’s Spirit. And if so, the question we need to ask is: What unites them? What is the heart of mission? 62 For these figures and reflections on them see Steven Croft and others, Evangelism in a Spiritual Age, London: Church House Publishing, 2005; Nick Spencer and Graham Tomlin, The Responsive Church, Leicester: InterVarsity Press, 2005 and Lynda Barley, Christian Roots, Contemporary Spirituality, London: Church House Publishing, 2006. 63 Gibbs and Bolger, Emerging Churches, p. 72; and see Drane, Do Christians Know How to be Spiritual?. 64 Philip Richter and Leslie J. Francis, Gone but Not Forgotten, London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1998, p. 116.

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The mission of God Perhaps even more significant than the way mission has moved from the periphery to the heart of the church is the emergence of a changed understanding of what mission essentially is. Previously mission was something the church did: sending missionaries overseas, engaging in mission events, planting new churches. Increasingly mission is now understood as something God does, arising from his own intrinsic nature. This change has been magisterially charted by David Bosch in his book Transforming Mission. ‘In the new image,’ he writes, ‘mission is not primarily an activity of the church, but an attribute of God.’65 ‘It is not the church that has a mission of salvation to fulfil in the world,’ writes Jürgen Moltmann, ‘it is the mission of the Son and the Spirit through the Father that includes the church.’66 This activity of God in the whole of creation flowing from his own nature is known as the missio Dei, partly because, in the words of Paul Avis,‘The Latin term … holds a depth and power that English translation cannot capture … Missio Dei speaks of the overflowing of the love of God’s being and nature into God’s purposeful activity in the world.’67 At the heart of this new paradigm is the recognition that God’s work in the world is already up and running. The role of the church as God’s chosen partner is to discern it and join in with what he is doing.68 If the mission of God flows from God’s very being, it will reflect the nature of God as three persons in Trinity; Father, Son and Holy Spirit. At its heart mission is relational because God is relational. As Father, Son and Holy Spirit exist in a perfect relationship of love and the mission of God is the overflow of that love to the world, the passion of God is to bring the whole of creation into 65 David Bosch, Transforming Mission, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1991, p. 390. 66 Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, London: SCM, 1975, p. 64; quoted by Bosch, p. 390. 67 Paul Avis, A Ministry Shaped by Mission, Edinburgh: T and T Clark, 2005, p. 5. 68 www.emergingchurch.info/reflection/rowanwilliams/index.htm

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right relationship with himself and, through him, into right relationship with itself. Thus justice, right relating, human wellbeing and care for the created world all play a part in the mission of God. This is expressed in the ‘five marks of mission’ developed by the Anglican Consultative Council during the 1980s, which extend beyond the growth of the church through ‘proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom’ and ‘teaching, baptizing and nurturing new believers’ to a concern for right relating in the world as a whole expressed through ‘responding to human need by loving service’, ‘seeking to transform unjust structures of society’ and ‘striving to safeguard the integrity of creation’.69 In particular, since the love of God the Father centres on his Son Jesus, the overflow of that love is God’s desire to share his relationship with his Son with all who will accept the invitation to become his children. Drawn into the life and love of the Trinity itself, God’s intention is that believers come to share his heart for the world and become participants in the missio Dei. In this they will be guided and empowered by the Holy Spirit. In the words of John V. Taylor, the Spirit is the ‘go-between God’, the one through whom Father and Son relate. As the bearer of the love between Father and Son, the Spirit is the agent of the overflow of that love in mission.‘The chief actor in the historic mission of the Christian church,’ writes Taylor, ‘is the Holy Spirit. He is the director of the whole enterprise. The mission consists of the things he is doing in the world. In a special way it consists of the light he is focussing upon Jesus Christ.’70 If the ‘shape’ of God’s mission is derived from God’s own nature then the place in which it is to be discerned most clearly is the person of Jesus Christ, the ultimate revelation of God. His life and mission provide the model for the life and mission of the church. A striking feature of the growing centrality of mission in the 69 For further reflection on the five marks of mission see www.anglicancommunion. org/ministry/mission/fivemarks.cfm 70 John V. Taylor, The Go-between God, London: SCM, 1972, p. 3.

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church is a renewed emphasis on emulating the example of Jesus. Thus Gibbs and Bolger describe ‘identifying with Jesus’ as one of the defining marks of emerging church.71 For Steven Croft, ‘The compass and content of our vision for the church is Jesus Christ.’ ‘As a church we need to become more like Jesus. We need to live by the priorities of Jesus. We will only find the strength to change if we are deeply rooted in the life of Jesus.’72 And for Ann Morisy, the way to bring the gospel to a world lacking hope is not simply to follow the teaching of Jesus but to emulate his example.73 The Gospels portray Jesus as a man with a mission: some 20 to 30 times in the Gospels he is described as one who is ‘sent’ from God. He in his turn ‘sent’ the apostles to preach, teach and heal both during his ministry and then decisively after his resurrection. The training they received thus took place against the background of the mission of God in the clear expectation that to participate in this mission would be the essence of their calling as followers of Jesus. What then are the characteristics of the mission of God as portrayed by Jesus? Although all are important, perhaps the place to begin is with Jesus’ obedience to the Father. We have seen that a primary characteristic of mission is that it is something God does rather than the church. This is modelled in the Gospels by the fact that Jesus sees himself as participating in a mission that is essentially the Father’s. ‘The Son,’ he says, ‘can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing’ (John 5.19).‘We must work the works of him who sent me’ (John 9.4). ‘The word that you hear is not mine, but is from the Father who sent me’ (John 14.24). These quotations are from the fourth Gospel but the sense of a mission from the Father is equally strong in the synoptics. In deferring to the Father, Jesus models a particular kind of obedience: not that of 71 Gibbs and Bolger, Emerging Churches, pp. 47–64. 72 Steven Croft, Jesus’ People: What the Church Should Do Next, London: Church House Publishing, 2009, pp. 8, vii. 73 Ann Morisy, Bothered and Bewildered: Enacting Hope in Troubled Times, London: Continuum, 2009.

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a slave, for whom obedience is coerced; nor yet that of a hired servant, for whom obedience generates a reward; but the freely willed, loving obedience of a son. And this is an obedience without limits: facing the certainty of death, he prays, ‘Not what I want, but what you want’ (Mark 14.36). It is that kind of obedience, the willing obedience of the child, into which he seeks to draw his followers. The focus of Jesus’ mission was the kingdom of God. In the words of Michael Grant, ‘Every thought and saying of Jesus was directed and subordinated to one single thing: the realization of the Kingdom of God upon earth.’74 Grant goes on to summarize the conclusions of most New Testament scholars: most devout Jews believed that the ‘kingdom’ or rule of God would eventually come; what was unique and surprising about Jesus was his claim that the kingdom had already dawned in his own ministry and mission, that his ministry had inaugurated a new age in which the kingdom was at work and would eventually be fulfilled. The presence of the kingdom was reflected in Jesus’ words: his parables of the kingdom and the teaching he gave his disciples about the way of life he expected them to live. It was also reflected in action. His ministry of healing is only one aspect of the way Jesus’ actions restored right relationships, restoring people not only to physical well-being but to their place in society (for example Mark 1.40–44; 5.18–19), offering the forgiveness of sins as well as restoration of body (for example Mark 2.1–12; John 5.14; 8.10–11). Although Jesus, himself living out of obedience to the Father, enacted the kingdom or rule of God, it is also very apparent that this rule is non-coercive: no one has to earn its benefits, no one is constrained to accept it. Ten lepers are healed and only one responds by returning to give thanks, yet the nine retain their healing (Luke 17.11–19). A wealthy ruler is told what he needs to do to gain eternal life but allowed to walk away when he decides that the challenge is too great (Luke 18.18–23). Even Jesus’ own disciples 74 Michael Grant, Jesus, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1977, p. 10.

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are given the option of leaving him (John 6.67). The invitation is open and the cost is great but everyone is free to make up their mind. The Gospels also make it clear that Jesus’ mission was empowered by the Holy Spirit, the agent of the mission of God. Luke portrays him, having received the Spirit at his baptism (3.22), being led by the Spirit into the wilderness (4.1) before returning to Galilee ‘filled with the power of the Spirit’ (4.14). At the end of the Gospel and in Acts, it is clear that the Spirit is to continue to empower the mission that the apostles will inherit (Luke 4.49; Acts 1.4–8). John likewise places great emphasis on the role of the Spirit in the mission Jesus will bequeath to the disciples (John 14.18, 25– 26; 16.12–15; 20.21–22). In particular we are to see the miracles Jesus performs not so much as the actions of God in human form as of a man filled with the Spirit and obedient to the Father; thus, he can promise his disciples that they will do greater things when the Spirit comes (John 14.12–16). It is through the Spirit that the realities of God’s kingdom, which will be fully present only at the end of the age and fulfilment of all things, break in to the present day. The power of the Spirit offers a wealth of more-than-human possibility, the possibility of God’s rule, often as small as a mustard seed or hidden like yeast but nevertheless real, in the ordinary circumstances of everyday life. Jesus was also an exemplar of what has come to be called ‘double listening’: listening to God in the tradition of his people and in the culture. His teaching is firmly rooted in what was for him the Bible, the Old Testament. Not only did he frequently quote it directly, such as in arguments with the Jewish authorities, but he just as frequently alluded to it and drew images from it: the vine as an image of Israel, the waiting father in his parable of the prodigal son drawn from the prophecy of Hosea (Hos. 11.1–9). Equally impressive is his wide knowledge of everyday life. The subjects of his stories include farming, fishing, carpentry and the danger of robbery. He used examples from nature, politics, family life, and women’s and well as men’s experience. He was a man 54

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thoroughly in touch with the life of his society, and with a firm belief in the presence of God in the everyday. All this was undergirded by a life of prayer. Luke tells us that in the midst of busy times of ministry, ‘he would withdraw to deserted places to pray’ (Luke 5.16). The story in Mark 1.35–38, where the disciples find Jesus praying in the early morning, strongly suggests that it was through intimacy with his Father that Jesus derived his sense of purpose and direction. Jesus’ model of mission is radically subversive: it confounds almost any expectation based on the ‘mission statements’ of contemporary culture. In the first place Jesus consistently eschews power and actively resists anyone who wishes to place him in a position of influence.75 Realising they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, John tells us, Jesus ‘withdrew again to the mountain’ (John 6.15). And the synoptic gospels record Jesus teaching his disciples that the ‘greatest’ among them should be the ‘servant of all’. In secular society, he taught them, you are used to the people with the most power being looked up to as the greatest. You think it natural that the most powerful should be the most highly rewarded and treated as most important. That is not to be the way among his followers: here, it is the poorest and the powerless who are most important (Mark 10.41–45). In God’s kingdom there are no distinctions of status: the rich are to boast in being brought low and the humble in being raised up (James 1.9–10, echoing Matt. 23.8–12). In the face of a church that has for most of its history adopted a hierarchical pattern for its ministry, the example of Jesus powerfully reminds us that under God’s rule hierarchy has no place. In contrast, Jesus’ pattern for leadership is that of self-emptying; the slave who washes the feet of others (John 13.15), who humbles himself and becomes obedient to the point of death (Phil. 2.8). What he points to is an entirely different approach to power: in the kingdom of God 75 For this and most of the insights about Jesus’ mission that follow I am indebted to a presentation by Ann Morisy.

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power is no longer a ‘zero-sum’ game, in which more power for some is won only at the expense of others. In the kingdom, power functions more like love: it increases by being given away. Not only did Jesus take a radically different approach to power, he deliberately subverted the status quo. He constantly challenged ways of doing things that others took for granted, especially religious ways. He broke the Sabbath and taught that not only special need but ordinary human need took precedence over religious regulation (Luke 6.1–10). He neglected the ritual of hand-washing before meals and even provided a huge communal meal without any ritual safeguards (Mark 6.30–44; 7.1–8). He told stories in which surprising people, such as tax-collectors and Samaritans, became examples of faith and good conduct (Luke 10.25–37; 18.9–14). In relation to Gentile society, he refused to comply with the careful rituals designed to mark and maintain status. Instead he recommended people deliberately to choose the lowest places at a feast and to send out invitations to people of low status who could not hope to repay them (Luke 14.7–14). In place of the manifold distinctions of his culture, Jesus set out to create an alternative society whose membership would be drawn from right across the social spectrum. His followers included women as well as men, working people as well as the wealthy, scholars and simple, members of the establishment and political revolutionaries (Luke 8.1–3; 23.50 — 24.10). They were expected to accept invitations from tax-gatherers as well as the wealthy and pious (Matt. 9.10–13; Luke 7.36; 14.1). He taught that our ‘neighbour’ might include the hostile foreigner (Luke 10.36– 37) and that our concern for others should extend well beyond our own family or friendship group (Matt. 5.43–48). His own concern extended to touching the unclean and noticing the least important (Matt. 8.1–3; Mark 12.41–44). From his birth, when he was laid in a manger, to his death on the cross Jesus made himself vulnerable. We have already noticed his practice of listening and the non-coercive nature of God’s rule. We have seen that he both taught and modelled the need for his 56

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followers to act as servants and slaves to others. It is also apparent that throughout his ministry he took risks. He taught what he saw as being the truth and offered healing and forgiveness in the face of the powerful opposition of the religious establishment. Despite a pattern of deliberate withdrawal in the weeks or months leading up to his final journey to Jerusalem (Matt. 12.14–15; 14.13; 15.21; 16.4), he was well aware that the challenge of his mission to the authorities would eventually result in his death (Mark 8.31; 9.31; 10.32–34). As we have seen, Ann Morisy argues that, if it is to be authentic, ‘discipleship’ should be understood as ‘venturesome love’, the willingness to be involved in risky public action.76 Morisy is echoing Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who, in particular in his Letters and Papers from Prison, called for a church fully involved in the life of the world. ‘The church is her true self only when she exists for humanity,’ he wrote. ‘She must take part in the social life of the world, not lording it over men, but helping and serving them.’77 Such service would be costly. ‘Man is challenged to participate in the sufferings of God at the hands of a godless world … It is not some religious act which makes a Christian what he is, but participation in the suffering of God in the life of the world.’78 But the outcome of such venturesome love is often a ‘cascade of grace’: the outcome of one small act of risky and vulnerable service is that needs are met, attitudes changed, bureaucracy humanized and relationships enriched, and these results are felt well beyond the scope of original plan or intention.79 Christian witness that carries the authentic mark of the mission of God arises not from a position of influence but from vulnerability. Finally, the fact of Jesus’ incarnation demonstrates that the mission of God is contextual. Jesus was sent to a specific place at a particular time in history. The outward shape of his mission – 76 Morisy, Good Samaritan, pp. 14f. 77 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, London: Fontana, 1959, p. 166. 78 Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers, pp. 122–3. 79 Ann Morisy, Journeying Out, London: Continuum, 2004, pp. 32–4.

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the subject matter of his stories, the prevailing needs of his society, the social evils to which he drew attention, the conventions he subverted, the minutiae of the arguments with his opponents – all reflect the conditions of first-century Palestine. The heart of his message, the principles of his mission and the enduring characteristics of God’s rule were clothed in the conditions of his time. In the Britain of the twenty-first century the mission of God may appear outwardly very different. The task of the church, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, is to discern what shapes God’s mission might take, or is already taking, in each specific context. One of the reasons for the renewal of the church in mission is that this principle is being grasped. Community mission involves a careful listening to the needs of the context. The Church of England’s new liturgy, Common Worship, is an invitation to create acts of worship with a recognizable family likeness but adapted to the context in which they take place. And the ‘mixed economy’ in which traditional and ‘fresh’ expressions of church exist side by side reflects a willingness to allow outward forms of church to respond to the cultures of contemporary society. The rediscovery of the mission of God in the last generation is a genuine breakthrough in the life of the church. In place of gloomy prognostications of decline, it offers the hope of renewal. The church is gradually coming to realize with gratitude and relief that she is not reliant on her own resources. Mission is first and foremost the action of God: his mission is already up and running and the calling of the church is to recognize what he is doing in any particular place and to join in. The dynamic of mission is the power of the Holy Spirit, who offers a more-than-human possibility of transformation in any given situation. And the shape of mission is to be discerned in the life of Jesus; the more we seek to understand him and to be conformed to his pattern, the better prepared we are for mission and the more likely it is that we shall discover God at work. The story of this movement is of a progressive liberation of the way in which we understand the church’s life and activity. For 58

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example, process evangelism entails the recognition that conversion is a journey with others; whether people can point to a definite point of conversion and Christian commitment or, more often, cannot. Thus the governing paradigm or mental model for evangelism becomes an accompanied journey. The paradigm change from ‘inherited’ to ‘emerging’ modes of church is from understanding the church in terms of a building, a minister and the money it takes to maintain them to understanding church as a community of faith with a mission. To take a third example, the progressive and gradual paradigm shift from ‘come to us’ to ‘we will come to you’ as represented by St Michael’s Blackheath involved the realization that instead of trying to attract residents on the estates to the existing church, the culture of the estates themselves would be reflected in a new expression of church. Sometimes this process of action and reflection involved research. The Emmaus course was written in response to John Finney’s research in the early 1990s. The working party that produced Mission-shaped Church was established to look at what God appeared to be doing on the ground. A Diocesan mission adviser noticing something significant in the figures for church growth and decline led to a process of research and reflection whose outcome was the identification of the marks of a healthy church. At other times, it was simply a case of going back to Christian tradition to make sense of what God seemed to be doing and reading it with fresh eyes. The question thus raised is this: What further paradigm changes can we expect? Where next might the Holy Spirit be asking us to follow? How are we to imagine the mission of the future?

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of teenagers. On her retirement, in order to keep the regular contact with children and young people that had inspired and motivated her in her working life, she joined the church’s Sunday school team. Only then, for the first time, did her name appear in the church’s regular prayer diary. What does this tell us about the church in question – and about the thousands of churches in which this course of events would not be at all unlikely? Clearly the leaders of the church thought that their own children’s and youth work was important enough to ask members of the congregation to pray for. But the work of the schools in the city, even those in which members of their own congregation worked, were not. Did they see the mission of God as confined to what takes place in and through the church, not extending to the community outside its walls? Or were they so taken up with the time and energy required to maintain the church that it was difficult to give due attention to the wider concerns of the city? In a recent survey of evangelical churches 50 per cent said they had never heard a sermon about daily work. Almost three quarters said that their church helped them no more than a little with issues in the workplace and almost a quarter that their church provided no help at all. Even with the issues of home – parenting, coping with elderly parents, loneliness or finance – some 60 per cent rated the help they received from their church as inadequate.80 When I served as Chair of Governors of a church school, I was privileged to work with a head teacher who saw her job as Christian ministry. Jayne had applied as a result of a sense of call to work in a Church of England school. As head teacher she was in a position to model the values she wanted to see underpin the life and work of the school. She was never tired of repeating, ‘It’s the children who come first.’ She personally led an ‘Anti-Bullying Council’, teaching some older children the skills of peer 80 www.licc.org.uk/uploaded_media/1233749235-What%20the%20People%20Said% 20Survey%20Report.pdf

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moderation, making them visible and available as points of contact for the younger children and, through this initiative, inculcating throughout the school attitudes of kindness, fairness and self-esteem. She modelled and worked to an ethos of ‘everybody counts’ – the cleaners and dinner ladies as well as the teaching staff and classroom assistants. Teachers, classroom assistants and parent helpers worked in teams with their focus on the best learning environment for the children. Her spiritual resources came from her own prayer life and Bible study, the fellowship of other Christians in the church and school and support from one or two particular church members. The church was also able to contribute by prayer for the school and support for open days. As a result, the school became a haven of order, respect and even love in the midst of a community with multiple economic and social challenges. Teachers worked hard and rapidly improved their skills. Children loved coming to school. Their attitudes to learning improved, they developed social skills, their self-esteem rose and their academic results improved. Support for Christian discipleship and ministry at work is increasingly available. ‘Faith at Work’ is an ecumenical network aiming to empower people to ‘explore, discern and act on their many gifts and calls in the complexity of their daily lives for the good of God’s world’.81 The After Sunday project provides reflection on social and economic ‘hot topics’, guidance on discerning vocation and resources to help churches in supporting Christians at work.82 The London Institute for Contemporary Christianity’s ‘Imagine’ project similarly aims to change the mindset of churches by emphasizing the importance for Christian mission of discipleship in daily life, whether the world of paid employment or the ‘frontline’ of voluntary work or caring for family members.83 81 www.faithatwork.com/index.html 82 www.aftersunday.org.uk/ 83 www.licc.org.uk/imagine/

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The key theological understanding of the workplace for this movement is to be found in the work of Miroslav Volf.84 Taking his lead from Jürgen Moltmann and referring to other Protestant and Catholic sources, Volf develops an understanding of work as cooperation with God in the transformation of the world. Both Luther and Calvin identified human work as vocation, thus dignifying the daily life of ordinary Christians by refusing to confine the notion of calling to the lives of the clergy and religious orders. But Luther’s concept preserves a distinction between external vocation, the calling to a particular area of work, and spiritual vocation, the calling to become a disciple of Christ that comes through the gospel. As a result calling is virtually identified with profession and the theology of work limited to its role in creation. In the new creation, argues Volf, work has a vital role to play in helping to bring about the transformation God desires. Empowered by the Holy Spirit, human work helps towards the realization of the kingdom of God. Thus the work of a Christian head teacher becomes like the yeast in the loaf, the spread of the values of teamwork, mutual respect and love of learning become aspects of the rule of God with the potential to transform the world still further. The idea that the mission of God is served by Christian discipleship in the world of work and daily life echoes several of the key theological themes that we have seen to derive from the mission of God: mission is not an optional extra but is integral to the life of the church; it is the calling of all God’s people not merely of a few; God is active not only in and through the church but also beyond its boundaries in the wider community; the kingdom of God, which is the goal of mission, is not confined to the sacred but grows like a mustard seed in ‘secular’ space, in all the places that people live and work, enjoy leisure and build relationships. Imagined in this way, mission requires the gathered church to balance the ‘upward’ focus of its worshipping life with an ‘outward’ 84 Miroslav Volf, Work in the Spirit, Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1991.

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focus. Alongside the time and energy devoted to the maintenance of its regular worship there will be a focus on resourcing its members to recognize God’s presence and purpose in the many and various aspects of their daily lives: the concerns of their neighbourhood, their company’s attitude to its customers, the contribution to the well-being of their family of its older members, the potential of their ladies’ choir or ‘lads and dads’ soccer team for supportive friendships. The church will teach and encourage its members to ask where in these situations might God be kindling interest in spiritual things, drawing people into a relationship with himself, or seeking to transform unjust social structures. Where is God in the local supermarket’s application for an extension? How can we together identify and further the redemptive and transformative potential of the local primary school, the firm where we work, the Residents’ Association or Neighbourhood Watch scheme? Not only will the local church extend its focus beyond its own congregational life to the whole-life concerns of its members and its locality, but it will seek to encourage ‘literacy’ in the foundational and vocational domains of faith as well as the explicit. It will take seriously the deeper ‘foundational’ questions I mentioned in the Introduction: those relevant to the couple enquiring for a child’s baptism or the Christian grandparent caring for her grandchildren. People in parish churches, both clergy and others, will learn from those like chaplains, already deeply involved in these concerns, how to answer the questions of those who begin, ‘I’m not religious but …’ in terms they can understand and relate to. We will make it a priority to recognize and help people to reflect on the ethical issues they wrestle with in the course of their daily lives and work and those with a ministry to local businessmen and women will seek to give expression to the spiritual significance of the commercial life of a city. Recognizing the inaccessibility to many of the ‘explicit’ language of Christian faith and practice, we will nevertheless find ways of making Christian faith believable through helping people to identify God’s 63

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presence on the familiar territory of their daily lives and in their most pressing concerns. If this pattern of mission, and in particular the recognition that Christians are called to co-operate with the Holy Spirit in the work of God’s kingdom in their places of work, is to become widely accepted there are considerable barriers to overcome. A survey of Christians in the Anglican Diocese of Peterborough in the 1990s uncovered many who longed for support and help in identifying Christian perspectives on issues that arose in their lives. But equally there were many who thought the church could never understand the issues they wrestled with on a daily basis, or that the church might be capable of addressing the issues of ‘softer’ places of work, such as hospitals, schools and the home, but was out of touch with the ‘harder’ environments of business, commerce and manufacturing.85 The working party responsible for the Church of England report, Called to New Life, in which the Peterborough survey was reported, found that, despite diocesan initiatives with a well-grounded theology of lay discipleship, attempts to address the need foundered on a range of familiar obstacles: the apparent vastness of the area and the feeling of disempowerment when addressing it; the difficulty of defining the issues and of putting together good quality learning materials; the conservatism of church members used to a church-centred practice of faith and lacking a vision for discipleship in daily life; the prevalence in congregations of retired people who do not want to think about work; and the preoccupation of clergy with keeping the church running.86 One of the self-reinforcing features of a church-centred view of mission is the pressure on ministers to concentrate on building the church. Lay people are required to donate their own time and energies to helping with this task with the result that the minister 85 Church of England Board of Education, Called to New Life, London: Church House Publishing, 1999, pp. 1–13. 86 Called to New Life, pp. 20–36.

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relates to members of his or her congregation not as people with lives to live and responsibilities to fulfil in the world of work but as helpers in the project of keeping the church functioning. Robert Warren records how at a church function the head of planning for one of largest cities in the UK was introduced to a bishop as ‘one of our senior servers’.87 Another outcome is the frequently observed 80/20 split, whereby 80 per cent of the time, effort and money required to maintain the work of the church is given by 20 per cent of the members. As a result, for 20 per cent of the members their Christian discipleship may be identified with the work they do for the church, while the remaining 80 per cent are not being empowered to play their part in the mission of God. A further problem is the division of God’s people in a given area into churches of different denominations and a variety of preferred worshipping styles. At work, Christians encounter members of other churches with whom they might easily co-operate in discerning the way the Spirit is moving and the kingdom of God might come. But since no one church has enough members to make this worthwhile and each is concentrating on its own life and concerns, they receive no help or encouragement from their local churches to do this. The church-centred view is reinforced by the legacy of the modern age. In pre-industrial society work and home were largely integrated, whether for the gentleman landowner, tenant farmer, shopkeeper or artisan. In contrast the industrial revolution separated work and home: men and women went out to work in offices and factories and came home to their families. Work and home formed two separate worlds, with the churches relating and ministering overwhelmingly to the world of home and family. The separation of work and home was mirrored by an even more important distinction between public and private life. In the spirit of Enlightenment rationality, the public space was seen as rationally ordered, objective and value-free. As a matter of 87 Warren, Being Human, Being Church, p. 33.

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personal opinion, religious belief was confined to the private sphere and the public world of work and civic society became an alien and resistant environment for the expression of faith. If the legacy of the modern age is difficult enough to overcome, even more deeply entrenched is that of Christendom, which belongs to the pre-modern. Under Christendom, the church became one of the great institutions of society, alongside and often competing for power with the secular authorities. The life of society was divided into the spheres of the sacred and the secular with the church and its ministers acting as gatekeepers to the sacred and thus in control of access to God. To become a priest or join a religious community was thus a ‘higher calling’ than to be involved in agriculture, industry, trade or government and one for which a holier life was required. The real work of God’s kingdom took place in and through the church. And yet, as we have seen, for many people this pattern of church life, narrowly focused on its own concerns, is deeply unsatisfying. Increasingly, people are looking for a faith that informs, empowers and integrates the whole of life. Evidence comes not only from the enthusiasm expressed for churches like Sanctus 1 that appear to offer this, but from the number of people leaving traditional churches precisely because they fail to do so.88 What is needed is a reimagining of our commonly accepted patterns of congregational life and ministry in order to respond to the direction in which God appears to be calling the church in mission. The first step, I suggest, will take the form of a kingdom-centred rather than church-centred approach, based on the recognition that mission takes place outside the four walls of the church in the ‘public square’. The goal of mission, and the purpose of the church’s existence, is to realize the kingdom of God, to offer a

88 See Michael J. Fanstone, The Sheep that Got Away, Tunbridge Wells: Monarch, 1993; Richter and Francis, Gone but Not Forgotten; Alan Jamieson, A Churchless Faith, London: SPCK, 2002; Leslie J. Francis and Philip Richter, Gone for Good? Churchleaving and Returning in the 21st Century, Peterborough: Epworth, 2007.

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glimpse of God’s promised future in the present, of the new heaven and new earth he promises in the midst of the life of the old. To achieve this we need a strong and attractive ‘vision’ of what the kingdom of God might mean for our contemporary culture. If God’s people are to learn how to recognize where God is at work in their places of daily life and work, they will need to understand the nature of God’s kingdom and how it engages with the life of the world. Already we have seen that this vision is attractive. If, as Ann Morisy’s story suggests, it is possible to find two hundred people willing to help with a shelter for the homeless, this indicates that people are willing to respond to something worthwhile. This is because, as we shall see, the vision of God’s kingdom expresses the deepest longings of the human heart.

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In his Christmas letter of 2009 my friend Peter Mockford included a paragraph on the life of one of his churches: Blurton parish is into a big adventure in the large-scale refurbishment of St Alban’s to create a multi-functional community centre. We are very grateful to all the funders who have provided nearly £650,000. However, we do recognise that this is only a sign of God’s love, and we are undergoing a massive mind-shift in the church, seeing ourselves less as apart from the community, but much more as yeast in the loaf. One of the concrete ways in which this identification with the community is expressed is that a proportion of the parish’s charitable giving is entrusted to the local community advice centre. Another is the formation of teams engaging with each of the different statutory agencies working on the estate. In fact, as Peter commented to me, the refurbishment of St Alban’s had forced the local council to get its act together in order to decide which services were to be hosted at St Alban’s and which at its own centre. Blurton is part of the city of Stoke-on-Trent, where for the past ten years Christians from a number of different denominations have been praying together for the life of the city. At prayer meetings of several hundred, leaders of the various areas of the 68

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city’s life – the chief of police, Director of Public Health, leader of Children’s Services, the Chamber of Commerce and the Education Authority – have been invited to speak about their work, their concerns and to bring requests for prayer. Perhaps the most remarkable example of the growing relationship between city leaders and Christian ministers was the co-operation between these evangelical pastors and the city’s first elected mayor, who is a high-profile campaigner for gay rights. From the links created at the meetings for prayer developed cooperation in ministries to marginalized groups such as prostitutes and asylum seekers, for which a city-wide vision was required. To date those involved in ministry to such groups continue to share experience and support one another through the ‘Reach’ forum. A ‘faith action audit’ for the city discovered no fewer than 40 faithbased groups for elderly people, furnishing the evidence for a successful bid for a development officer, networking between the groups and sharing good practice. Partners in the churches’ work with the elderly include the Primary Care Trust, Age Concern, Social Services and the local newspaper.1 The key, according to Lloyd Cooke, Director of the Saltbox organization, through which these areas of co-operation were facilitated, was the absence of an ‘Alamo’ mentality: resisting the temptation to cluster together for support, the churches decided instead to follow the example of such biblical characters as Joseph and Daniel, working at the interface of secular and sacred, and ‘Seek the welfare of the city’ (Jer. 29.7). The willingness of church leaders to build relationships helped to overcome the stand-off from the other side, those secular leaders traditionally suspicious of faith groups. The result is the presence of Christian representatives on bodies overseeing the work of the police, education and the city centre, as well as a specific faith link forum involving civic and faith leaders. While Stoke faces problems of economic decline and social 1 www.saltbox.org.uk/community/

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dislocation in an urban context, Glendale in Northumberland faces similar issues in the context of a remote rural area. The tendency of ‘officialdom’ has been to see these remote rural areas as the hinterland of the nearby large towns and cities, with decisions about local resourcing made on this basis, resulting in shortages of affordable housing, lack of public transport and decreasing employment opportunities. An audit of the community, led by the churches, led to a determination to ‘mainstream the margins’, to see this rural area as a community in its own right. The principal agent of change has been the Glendale Gateway Trust, in which the church is a partner. The Trust began by taking the initiative to purchase three unused and run-down shops in the high street of Wooler, the main community, to refurbish these for community use and to provide affordable housing in the flats above them. Making the newly purchased shops available to local charities, even before they had been fully refurbished, proved to be a way of building relationships and creating partnership. When the Youth Hostels Association decided to close its hostel in the town, the Trust arranged to buy it and run it under licence. Ownership by the community proved the key to turning the business around. The overall outcome has been a move from dispossession, in which all major decisions were taken elsewhere, to a sense of empowerment in which the Trust plays an enabling role.2

The kingdom imperative In each of these examples, churches have looked beyond their own internal concerns to the good of the wider community. Their justification for doing so is a vision of the kingdom of God and what that might mean in their own circumstances. The kingdom of God, as we have already seen, is the goal of mission and central to the teaching of Jesus. But what does God’s kingdom look like? How do we discern signs of the kingdom? 2 www.wooler.org.uk/community

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To answer this question, we need to engage with biblical tradition, in which the universal kingship of God is a central theme. ‘Your throne is established from of old; you are from everlasting’ (Ps. 93.2). ‘The Lord, the Most High, is awesome, a great king over all the earth’ (Ps. 47.2). ‘Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and your dominion endures throughout all generations’ (Ps. 145.13). ‘The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth,’ ‘Even the nations are like a drop from a bucket, and are accounted as dust on the scales’ (Isa. 40.28, 15). ‘Who would not fear you, O King of the nations? For that is your due’ (Jer. 10.7). In this tradition, which Jesus inherited, the kingship of God was neither a theoretical religious concept, nor transcendent and removed from earthly reality, but dynamic and historical. To say that God ruled meant that he made a difference. ‘The Lord God comes with might, and his arm rules for him’ (Isa. 40.10). His word not only created the world (Ps. 33.6) but in the mouth of the prophets affected the destinies of nations and individuals. ‘See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant’ (Jer. 1.10). Nevertheless, although the kingship or rule of God was a present reality in the political, social and economic life not simply of Israel as God’s chosen people but of the whole world, it might be ignored or resisted. Even Israel was more than capable of rebelling against the divine kingship. Because of the sinfulness of humankind, the rule of God could not be fully realized in historical time. A final culmination, the ‘day of the Lord’, was awaited, when God would judge the world, evil would be banished and the kingdom come in its fullness. In all these respects the ‘kingdom of God’ that Jesus proclaimed was a familiar element of the tradition of Israel. What was decisively new was Jesus’ contention that the kingdom was ‘drawing near’ and was to be finally realized in and through himself. His miracles are signs of the kingdom arriving (Matt. 11.2–6). His power over evil reveals the presence of the kingdom 71

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(Matt. 12.28). His claim to forgive sins implies that he is exercising the authority of God himself (Mark 2.6–11). It is to his own followers that God will give the kingdom (Luke 12.32); to belong to him is to enter the kingdom, not to belong is to be excluded (Matt. 7.23; 25.41). What the Gospels also reveal, and here John is just as clear as are Matthew, Mark and Luke, is that the kingship of Jesus is achieved only through his triumph over the forces of evil in the crucifixion and resurrection. Alongside and in opposition to the universal kingship of God is another dominion, that of the ‘ruler of this world’ who must be ‘driven out’ (John 12.31). In the temptation stories, the devil claims to be able to confer on Jesus the glory and authority of the kingdoms of the world, ‘for it has been given over to me’ (Luke 4.5–6). During his life Jesus’ power over evil spirits demonstrates that he is capable of ‘tying up the strong man’ and ransacking his house (Matt. 12.29), but it is through the cross and resurrection that victory is finally achieved. Because his submission to the powers of darkness (Luke 22.53) was also a supreme act of obedience to the Father (John 14.30–31) his death overcame those powers and established his own rule. Thus the kingdom of the world becomes the kingdom of our Lord and his Messiah (Rev. 11.15): the Old Testament kingdom of God becomes in the New Testament the reign of Jesus at God’s right hand. As a result, the early church’s preaching of the gospel focuses on the status of Jesus, the king rather than the kingdom. For Jews, he is the long-awaited Messiah; for Gentiles the only true Lord. Even so, although Jesus himself is in the foreground, the kingdom is implicitly in the background. At the beginning of Acts, Luke tells us Jesus spent the 40 days prior to his ascension speaking to his disciples ‘about the kingdom of God’ (Acts 1.3). At the end, he portrays Paul under house arrest at Rome ‘proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ’ (Acts 28.31). To remain true to the New Testament witness, it is necessary to hold on to both aspects: a Christology ‘from above’, 72

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in which the focus is on Jesus’ divine status as expressed in the creeds, and a Christology ‘from below’, which concentrates on his life and teaching. ‘Through his history itself, Jesus’ gospel of the kingdom became the church’s gospel about Jesus,’ writes Jürgen Moltmann; nevertheless, ‘This cannot lead to a narrowing down of Jesus’ preaching of the kingdom, for the church’s proclamation of Christ is in essence the gospel of the kingdom.’3 One of the inspirations behind community mission is Raymond Fung’s The Isaiah Agenda, explicitly based on a vision of what God’s kingdom might mean. Fung presents three elements in what he calls ‘an ecumenical strategy for congregational evangelism’. The first arises from his interpretation of Isaiah 65.20–23. These verses present a vision of a redeemed Jerusalem in which there will be no more ‘an infant that lives but a few days’, nor yet ‘an old person who does not live out a lifetime’. Rather, ‘They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.’‘The God we believe in,’ writes Fung, ‘is one who protects the children, empowers the elderly, and walks with working men and women.’4 This is the God we wish to present to our non-Christian neighbours. We do so in the manner of the Stoke or Glendale churches: by seeking for ways in which to further these goals and inviting others to work in partnership with us. The second element in the agenda is worship. The work of bringing about the Isaiah agenda is difficult, time-consuming and there are many setbacks along the way. In order to stay focused we need regular worship, to refresh and strengthen us, to focus on the God who calls and empowers and to be reminded of our values. It may be possible to invite our partners to share in worship with us, or they may be drawn to do so, as the key people with whom St Michael’s Blackheath worked on the Brooklands Park estate invited the church to hold services on the estate. 3 Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, London: SCM, 1977, p. 82. 4 Raymond Fung, The Isaiah Agenda, Geneva: WCC, 1992, p. 2.

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The third element is discipleship. We engage in this work because we are followers of the Lord Jesus who proclaimed the kingdom of God and taught us to live according to its values. Our partners have joined us because they recognize the values of the kingdom as good and worthwhile. At the right time and in the right way it may be possible to extend an invitation to them to consider commitment to Jesus as Lord, to become his disciples and to join the community of faith. As a strategy for evangelism, the Isaiah agenda begins from what Ann Morisy calls the ‘vocational domain’. The vocational or invitational domain is about encouraging people – both inside the church and out – to discover their distinctive call from God. This domain relies on the assumption that everyone has within them an urge to be a better self. Furthermore, by enabling people to heed and respond to this calling within them, this in turn enables people to discover love of neighbour … and to discover God incarnate.5 The strategy ‘works’ because the kingdom of God is ‘the fulfilment of all the authentic yearnings of the human heart and the needs of humankind’.6 It reminds us that, in the words of Robert Warren’s title, ‘being church’ is about ‘being human’; or to use the words of Rowan Williams the church is a ‘campaign for real humanity’:7 not so much about adding a religious dimension as rediscovering God’s purpose for human life. But what is the kingdom or rule of God actually like? Fung’s hope is that the Isaiah agenda will communicate well because it is ‘minimalist in its approach to human need … its provisions 5 Ann Morisy, ‘Mapping the mixed economy’ in The Future of the Parish System, ed. Steven Croft, London: Church House Publishing, 2006, p. 131. 6 Thomas Groome, Christian Religious Education: Sharing our Story and Vision, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1980, p. 37. 7 In a conference address at Holy Trinity Brompton, 21 May 2010, see www.stmellitus.org/resources

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represent not so much the most that is pleasing to God, but the least that is acceptable to God’.8 It is a programme that people of other religions and none can recognize as worthwhile and sign up to. But the verses from Isaiah 65 on which it is based represent only one of several visions in the Old Testament of the fulfilment of God’s kingdom, one of many glimpses of its nature. Isaiah 2 and Micah 4 present a vision of universal peace in which the nations ‘beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks’. Isaiah 35 combines a vision of fertility through ‘streams in the desert’ with healing for the blind, the deaf and the lame. Chapter 61 looks forward to the end of oppression and ‘release to the prisoners’. Psalm 146 combines these themes: ‘justice for the oppressed … food to the hungry … the Lord opens the eyes of the blind … upholds the orphan and the widow, but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin’. Psalm 72 sees the blessings of a king governing with the righteousness and justice of God himself in terms of prosperity, with grain ripening even on the tops of the mountains, and justice for the poor and needy. And running through all these visions of the fulfilment of God’s rule is the note of joy and celebration. It is like ‘a feast of rich food’ (Isa. 25.6), it will cause the redeemed to enter Jerusalem with singing, and ‘everlasting joy shall be upon their heads’ (Isa. 35.10). To these Old Testament visions we need to add the life and teaching of Jesus, who not only proclaimed but also embodied the kingdom. In his personal practice he not only refused the possibility of status and power but criticized and subverted, both subtly and explicitly, the established networks of authority and power in his society, implying a wholly different approach to power and the use of power. In a context of sharp differentiation along lines of race, gender and religious practice, he made friends across boundaries and gathered a mixed company of disciples based on mutual acceptance and the assurance of forgiveness. As signs of the kingdom, his actions point to victory over evil and the 8 Fung, Isaiah Agenda, p. 8.

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overcoming of disease, disability and even death. His teaching emphasized the hidden nature of the kingdom, not only through its content (images of a seed growing secretly, treasure hidden in a field, the yeast in a loaf of bread), but also by his style of teaching, the method of parable, in which the full meaning is open only to those who approach with the right attitude. The right response to the arrival of the kingdom, he taught, was repentance and faith, a change in orientation. Finally, we can add the ethic of Jesus’ teaching and that of the New Testament epistles. The Beatitudes indicate a radical reversal of the standards of his own society and those of most societies and cultures, a promise of blessedness for the poor in spirit, the meek, the mourners, the merciful, even the persecuted. The remainder of the Sermon on the Mount calls for standards of outward behaviour and inward integrity more rigorous than could be achieved by obedience to even the most stringent legislation, a radical trust in God covering all the details of daily life, and a religious life thoroughly integrated with the concerns of every day. The New Testament epistles call for standards of behaviour not only within the Christian community but also in work, marriage and family life radically different from those of the surrounding culture: relationships marked by humility, forbearance and mutual submission ‘out of reverence for Christ’ (Eph. 5.21). In terms of individual character, the Christian disciple is to be ‘transformed’ by a ‘renewal’ of the mind (Rom. 12.2) progressively into the likeness of Jesus himself. In the remainder of this chapter I will propose three headings under which to describe the nature and action of the kingdom. They emerge from my own reflections over many years and I believe they are reasonably comprehensive, capable of drawing together the variety of biblical strands in an intelligible way. They consist of two of the great concepts of the Old Testament and one from the New. The Hebrew word shalom encapsulates a vision of harmony in relationships and resultant well-being that seems to reflect the essentially relational nature of the kingdom, springing 76

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from the nature of God himself as Trinity. The law of Sabbath expresses a radical dependence on the goodness of God in creation, a mentality of abundance in a world of scarcity and competition, and an approach to human work that places it in right relationship with God and the rest of life. Together, they offer us clues to the nature of God’s rule. The language of ‘principalities and powers’, which we find in the New Testament, does something different. It describes the struggle between the rule and authority of God and all that opposes it. Whereas Sabbath and shalom suggest the nature of the kingdom, the theme of principalities and powers shows us how the kingdom makes a difference and defines the victory over evil through which God’s kingdom comes.

Shalom Mission is relational because God is relational. It is the overflow of God’s love to the world, the passion of God to bring the whole of creation into right relationship with himself and, through him, into right relationship with itself. So, since the kingdom of God is the goal of mission, a crucial element of the kingdom will be right relationship. But what constitutes right relating? What will the good relationships that arise from the mission of God look like? The answer lies in the biblical concept of shalom. Usually translated ‘peace’, this word has, in fact, a much greater breadth and richness of meaning. To Isaiah, for example, shalom could mean tranquillity or contentment, confidence or assurance (Isa. 32.17), and thus refer to the inner state of soul of an individual. To a Psalmist again, it could mean the material security known to a group of people living in community (Ps. 69.32); while for Jeremiah it included the warmth and fullness of joy that one finds in true friendship (Jer. 20.10).9 9 G. A. F. Knight, A Christian Theology of the Old Testament, London: SCM, 1959, p. 250.

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According to the high priestly blessing of Numbers 6.24–26, the blessing of God consists in shalom. Commenting on this passage Rabbi Abraham Cohen writes that shalom is ‘the welfare in which all spiritual and material well-being is comprehended; health, welfare, security, tranquility … Whether for individual or for society, shalom is the harmonious co-operation of all human forces towards ethical and spiritual ends which men call the Kingdom of God.’10 For Walter Brueggemann, ‘Shalom is the substance of the biblical vision of one community embracing all creation. It refers to all those resources and factors which make communal harmony joyous and effective.’11 For Perry Yoder, ‘Shalom is the plan of God for human life and history, it is the sign of the coming of God’s rule on earth.’12 Shalom was in biblical times and is still today the way in which people wished each other good health and well-being both at meeting and at parting. When Jacob sends Joseph to visit his brothers in Genesis 37.14 and Jesse sends David to his brothers in the army in 1 Samuel 17.18 both are instructed to enquire into their brothers’ shalom. The psalmist of Psalm 38 laments that he has lost his shalom, his physical well-being, as a result of God’s rebuke. In Psalm 72.3 and 7 shalom is used to describe the prosperity in which grain ripens even on the mountaintops. And in Jeremiah 29.11 the prophet assures the exiles in Babylon that God’s plans are for their shalom, their well-being. By far the most common use of shalom is the description of good relationships. In Jeremiah 20.10 his close friends are literally ‘the men of his shalom’. In both Genesis 26.28–31 and Joshua 9.15 shalom is the outcome of a peace treaty. But it is the link between shalom and two other key words, mishpat and tsedaqah, justice and righteousness, that shows us the basis and indicates the content 10 Jewish Bible Commentary, Soncino, on Numbers 6.26. 11 Walter Brueggemann, Living Toward a Vision, New York: United Church Press, 1976, p. 16. 12 Perry Yoder, Shalom: The Bible’s Word for Salvation, Justice and Peace, Newton, KS: Faith and Life Press, 1987, p. 22.

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of such good relationships. The way these terms are used in parallel shows that genuine shalom is just and righteous relating. Thus in Psalm 85.10 ‘righteousness and shalom will kiss each other’; in Isaiah 48.18 the Lord laments, ‘O that you had paid attention to my commandments! Then your prosperity [shalom] would have been like a river, and your success [tsedaqah] like the waves of the sea’; and in Isaiah 32.17, ‘the effect of righteousness will be shalom’. The kind of relationships described by shalom are those that result from justice and righteousness. Thus in Proverbs 11.1 the opposite of a false balance is an ‘accurate weight’, where the adjective translates the word shalem, literally a ‘shalom weight’. More important still, in Jeremiah 6.14 and 8.11 Jeremiah opposes the false prophets who proclaim ‘shalom, shalom’ when there is no shalom. The false prophets took the nation’s economic prosperity and the absence of foreign threat as an indication of shalom. But Jeremiah saw the absence of justice, the ‘false pen of the scribes’, the widespread greed for unjust gain, and the failure to defend the rights of the needy (5.28; 6.13; 8.8–10) and asked how in such a society there could possibly be shalom. In Psalm 73.3 the psalmist laments when he sees what he takes to be the shalom or prosperity of the wicked, only to realize that what they enjoy is not really shalom at all. As Isaiah declares, there is no shalom for the wicked (Isa. 48.22; 57.21). If we are to visualize what shalom might mean in today’s society, we might look for situations where people get on well with their neighbours; where they are able to resolve conflicts peaceably, compromise and forgive; where justice works well, there is equal access to the law and equal treatment before the law; equal opportunities in education rather than a scramble for places at the best-achieving schools; equality of opportunity in employment between young and old, male and female; respect for people of different race or religion; provision for those with disability; equitable distribution of wealth; a harmonious community in which the rich and powerful acknowledge their responsibility for the poor and marginalized. As Jeremiah called upon the exiles to 79

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‘seek the shalom of the city where I have sent you’ (Jer. 29.7) so the mission of God calls the church to seek the shalom of its society. Where local churches provide family support or combine to provide resources to groups for the elderly, as in Stoke; where the work of a development trust brings hope to a small country town as in Glendale; when St Michael’s Blackheath offered its expertise and insurance cover and contributed the materials for clearing a local pond; when our own church stood alongside members of one of the Residents’ Associations, helping them to resolve their differences with the local council; and where churches contribute to the work of ‘re-neighbouring’ in areas of low social capital; in all these cases the work of shalom is taking place. On the national level the report Faithful Cities expresses concern at the kind of ‘prosperity’ that fails to increase life satisfaction, at economic growth coupled with an increase in inequality and for many urban dwellers the loss of access to ‘the most important life chances that a modern society affords’. The report challenges the churches to demonstrate by their teaching, preaching and practice that ‘wealth brings obligations to those who are less fortunate and these obligations go beyond simply paying tax’. In the words of one of the chapter titles, it calls for ‘regeneration for people: more than status, power and profit’.13 According to the biblical vision of shalom this will be a prosperity that flows from just and righteous relationships, the prosperity envisioned in Psalm 72, which begins with the prayer that God would bestow his own righteousness and justice on the king. It will be a prosperity that emerges from the right relationship between humanity and the natural world, a proper care for plants and animals, sustainable development in place of ruthless exploitation and a concern for just distribution of the world’s resources in place of international competition. Shalom also describes the type of person who promotes harmonious community. Here the emphasis is on straight13 Faithful Cities, London: Church House Publishing and Peterborough: Methodist Publishing House, 2006, pp. 30–45.

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forwardness: the person of shalom will display honesty and integrity. As Psalm 34 teaches in verses 12–14, ‘Which of you desires life, and covets many days to enjoy good? Keep your tongue from evil, and your lips from speaking deceit. Depart from evil, and do good; seek shalom, and pursue it.’ This aspect of shalom draws attention to the fact that psychological and social well-being go hand in hand: not only will the person with peaceable character contribute to shalom in society, but a healthy society characterized by just and peaceable relationships will enable its members to grow up psychologically well-adjusted. Like shalom, psychological good health is realizable only in and through communities that function in ways likely to contribute to individual well-being. Patterns of good relationships conducive to good health apply equally to families, organizations and societies. Repeatedly, studies suggest that these patterns reflect the nature of Christian love: spontaneous generosity, commitment freely given without dependence, freedom to express one’s point of view within clearly structured authority exercised for the common good, a rich diversity of relationships, open communication and the absence of ‘moralism’ (doing good for fear of condemnation).14 In the New Testament, the word usually translated ‘peace’, eirene, carries the same meaning as shalom. The eirene that the apostles wish for their readers in the greetings to the epistles is shalom. The ‘peace’ that Jesus left his disciples prior to his crucifixion (John 14.27; 16.33) is shalom, as is the ‘peace on earth’ that the angels announced at the birth of Jesus (Luke 2.14) and the ‘peace’ into which God promises to guide our feet in Zechariah’s song of praise (Luke 1.79). Thus, shalom turns out to be the purpose of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. The one in whom ‘all things hold together’ has reconciled to himself ‘all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace [shalom] through the blood of his cross’ (Col. 1.17–20). 14 Robyn Skynner and John Cleese, Life and How to Survive It, London: Mandarin, 1993, pp. 148–223.

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Our reconciliation or right relationship with God, won by Jesus on the cross, is thus not an end in itself but a means through which the vision of shalom on earth is to be realized. The next step is the creation of a ‘healthy’ church as a ‘colony of the kingdom’ and an expression of shalom. A church characterized by diversity in unity, in which all play their allotted part for the benefit of the whole and the weaker or inferior members are given greater honour, as portrayed in 1 Corinthians 12; in which the purpose of leadership gifts is seen as equipping the whole body to serve together, as in Ephesians 4.12; in which no distinctions are made between rich and poor but rather the ‘lowly boast in being raised up, and the rich in being brought low’, as in James 1.9–10; where there is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female but all are one in Christ Jesus (Gal. 3.29), stands as a model of shalom and foretaste of the kingdom of God. In this kind of community, Christians learn to become shalom people, capable of building and sustaining just, equitable, honest and wholesome relationships. But the creation of Christian community as a model of shalom is not the end of the story. One of the marks of a ‘healthy’ church is the ‘venturesome love’ that leads them to enter into vulnerable partnership with the wider community to build good and healthy relationships and contribute to the well-being of society. The Vineyard Church in Aylesbury runs Storehouse, a community clothes and furniture bank. When I asked its co-ordinator Pete Smith the reason for its existence his answer was very simple: ‘Because this is what Christians do.’ As Brueggemann puts it, ‘God has a vision of how the world shall be and is not yet. And the faith affirmed in the church is the twin resolve that we mean to discern God’s vision of what the world shall be and that we mean to live toward that vision,’ and a consequence of this resolve is that, ‘We really do choose to be changed and transformed by the gospel for God’s new age.’15 15 Brueggemann, Vision, p. 39.

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Sabbath As well as the traditional greeting of peace, or shalom, the writers of the New Testament epistles add the characteristically Christian wish for grace. Just as shalom refers to a concrete social reality, the result of God’s rule breaking into the everyday, so by ‘grace’ is meant not simply a state of mind and heart but a reality beyond human possibility in the everyday world. In addition to well-being and harmonious relationships in a world of conflicting interests, they want their readers to experience the abundance of God in a world of competition and scarcity. There are almost no major treatments of the Sabbath in Christian literature and readers may wonder why this theme is included in a book on the mission and ministry of the church. On the other hand, it is only relatively recently that we have begun to recognize that the mission of God engages with and transforms secular space, one of the most important elements of which is the world of work. If this engagement with secular space is to mean anything at all it will mean Christians taking to work with them a distinctively different set of norms, attitudes and goals so that the rule of God in their lives can begin to act as yeast in the loaf of work and working relationships. Just as the Old Testament’s concept of shalom provides the pattern for an alternative way of living and relating, so the institution of the Sabbath in Israel’s social and economic life points to the way in which work and all that flows from it can be transformed under the authority of God and become a vehicle of his grace and abundance. Most of us are aware from our own experience of the positive and negative sides of work: satisfying, creative, a source of identity and self-worth and yet so often frustrating, burdensome, subject to the limitations of illness and fatigue and the potential of colleagues to let us down. We find both sides of our experience illustrated and explored in the Old Testament creation narratives. At the creation the human being is placed in the garden ‘to till it and keep it’ (Gen. 2.15). Thus, ‘work was man’s sober destiny even 83

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in his original state’.16 It is the human vocation to care for and develop God’s creation, to decide and make of it what it is to become. The contrast in Psalm 104 between the animals ‘seeking their food from God’ and human beings who each morning ‘go out to their work, and to their labour until the evening’ (104.21– 23) suggests that work is a defining characteristic of human life. But in the ‘original state’, as portrayed in Genesis 2, work was no burden. Food was amply provided by means of the trees of the garden. Work was not a matter of fulfilling basic needs, but of the exercise of care and creativity, co-operating with God in the care and development of the created world. It is only after the disobedience of the first human couple that the negative side of work intrudes. God’s response to the Fall is the declaration: ‘cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you … By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread …’ (Gen. 3.17–19). ‘There is no suggestion in this text of work itself being a curse. But it clearly says that, as a consequence of the curse against the ground, work has assumed the character of toil.’17 No longer an end in itself, work now becomes a necessity to provide for basic needs. No longer a joy, it is to become frustrating toil. Even strenuous work cannot prevent the growth of thorns and thistles. Now there is a danger of shortage, with the ensuing possibility of inequality and injustice in the struggle for scarce resources. Economics, the science of scarcity, is born, and there will develop social and economic systems for managing the possibility of shortage and preventing conflict. Here portrayed in the creation narratives are the two aspects of work with which we are familiar. On the one hand, as our essential vocation it plays a large part in creating and maintaining our sense of identity and self-worth. Through work we build relationships, develop our potential, express creativity, build self-esteem and 16 Gerhard von Rad, Genesis, London: SCM, 1961, p. 80. 17 Miroslav Volf, Work in the Spirit, Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1991, p. 128.

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provide for our families. Yet at the same time work may become alienating drudgery, whose only purpose is to secure the means of living. It may also become a means of acquiring not only material goods but also power over others. In each case, work is instrumental, not an end in itself but a means to the control of one’s destiny or the enhancement of one’s wealth or status. Beset by anxiety and vulnerable to frustration, work may become an idol, demanding much in the way of service and granting little in the way of reward apart from the hope that by more work we will attain the as yet unrealized goal. The Sabbath is the discipline through which work is redeemed in order to serve the kingdom of God. The legal codes of the Old Testament set a clear limit not only on work but even on the fruits of successful work. The effect of these laws was to keep the people of Israel dependent on the grace of God rather than what they were capable of achieving for themselves. First there is the command to cease work on the seventh day, which applied to everyone, employer and employee alike: ‘you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns’ (Ex. 20.10). The amount of time to be given to work is clearly limited. In contrast to work, the Sabbath is an end in itself, a day for God with worship at the centre. Rest replaces toil, the instrumental relationships of work are replaced by friendships and family affection, patterns of identity derived from work yield to patterns that arise from relationship with God. But the Sabbath is far more than a weekly rhythm. Every seventh year the land itself was to enjoy a Sabbath, neither sown nor reaped. Instead, Israel was to depend on the abundant provision of God (Lev. 25.1–7, 18–22). In the same year came the release of debts, when all economic obligations were cancelled. In addition, anyone who, as a result of not being able to pay their debts, had fallen into slavery was released. And the law specified that the former slave was to be liberally provided for by his erstwhile master, so that he would have enough to set up on his own (Deut. 15.1–18). In this way debt slavery, a practically 85

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universal feature of ancient societies, was transformed. Instead of a means for the rich and powerful to add to their wealth at the expense of the poor, it became a reflection of shalom, harmonious community in which the wealthy accepted responsibility for the less fortunate. Even more striking is the institution of the year of jubilee every 50 years (seven times seven plus one). In the fiftieth year not only were debts released and slaves allowed to go free, but all landholdings that had changed hands over the previous 50 years had to be returned to the family whose they had originally been (Lev. 25.8–17). Israel was not to see the acquisition of land over a number of years as the fruit of merited success, to be passed on to the next generation. Instead they were to see those who ‘join house to house, who add field to field’ (Isa. 5.8) as enemies of society and sinners against shalom. Thus the Sabbath laws impose a clear limit on the possibility of success, whether through hard work or good fortune. In place of the individual desire to get ahead, if necessary at the expense of others, they require each person to play their part in ensuring a just and harmonious community. Instead of fear for one’s well-being, greed or acquisitiveness, the dominant attitude of the Israelite was to be a generosity reflecting that of God himself. The Sabbath thus formed the basis for Israel’s whole economy and is backed up by a series of other provisions designed to discourage greed and exploitation and encourage social responsibility and dependence on God. A field was not to be reaped to its border nor was the reaper to go back to collect anything dropped in the course of gathering the crop; the remainder was to be left behind for the poor to glean (Lev. 19.9– 10, see Ruth 2.1–7). An early crop was not an opportunity to exploit the market by charging high prices since the first-fruits of every harvest were to be offered to God (Lev. 23.10). And perhaps most radical of all from the point of view of contemporary economic practice, money was not allowed to earn money: the charging of interest on loans was forbidden. Rather, a loan was a 86

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generous response to a neighbour’s need. Even a cloak taken in pledge was to be returned at nightfall so that the debtor could wrap himself in it to sleep (Ex. 22.25–27).18 Commentators differ about the extent to which these provisions of Israel’s law were actually followed in practice. From a theological point of view, however, it matters hardly at all. What we have in these provisions is an ideal of social and economic life, the vision of a society and economy based on grace rather than greed. What John V. Taylor calls this theology of ‘enough’ is, a very positive ideal, enshrined in the Pentateuch, just as the ‘Kingdom’ is enshrined in the parables of Jesus … We are dealing with a way of life which God’s minority is called to take as its standard in the midst of the world for the sake of God’s majority … If we take the Bible seriously at all, then we must take seriously the idea that what was first offered to Israel was meant to be a model of the salvation that was to be experienced in the end by all.19 In other words, like shalom, this vision of ‘enough’ based on the institution of the Sabbath is a model of salvation, an equivalent to the ‘kingdom’. Perhaps its most significant aspect is that the entire system rests on the promise of God’s blessing and requires confidence in God’s provision as its foundation. In the words of Psalm 127, to ‘rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil’ achieves nothing; true blessing is the Lord’s gift. We are to seek God’s kingdom and his righteousness, in the confidence that food, clothing and all the things for which the ‘Gentiles’ strive will be graciously provided (Matt. 6.33). In the original creation, the purpose of work was co-operation with God to care for the world and bring it to its potential. In the

18 These points are derived from the analysis of Israel’s economic system in John V. Taylor, Enough is Enough, London: SCM, 1975, pp. 40–62. 19 Taylor, Enough, pp. 51–2.

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new creation, argues Miroslav Volf, the purpose of work is cooperation with God in the transformation of the world: empowered by the Spirit, it is a contribution to the coming of the kingdom. This means, as we shall see in a later chapter, that vocation plays a fundamental role in both discipleship and mission: vocation understood not simply as the calling to a certain type of work – the vocation to teach, to be a doctor, to work in business – but the particular vocation placed on the heart of each for the role they are to play in the coming of God’s kingdom. But if vocation holds the key to the ‘what’, the work to which each follower of Christ, indeed each person created by God, is called, the Sabbath holds the key to the ‘how’, the manner of that work: undertaken as an end in itself, in dependence on God, from a place of rest, in trust rather than anxiety and with due attention to the demands of shalom, just community and ‘healthy’ work–life balance. The way in which God’s kingdom infiltrates and transforms the structures of society will be the subject of the next section. In the remainder of this I will suggest some important aspects of the way individuals can incorporate Sabbath into their discipline of life and work. The first is the most obvious: by scheduling into our diaries regular periods of rest, a day each week, holidays, quiet days and retreats or at least times to reflect with God on our lives. These should not be periods merely of cessation but of celebration, the opportunity to pursue interesting hobbies, build relationships and deepen our appreciation of God’s world. The bad news for those unfamiliar with this discipline is that when we stop work the emotions that drive us, such as anger or anxiety, tend to come to the surface. I used to spend whole days off in deep depression until I realized that this was buried anger demanding my attention. Part of the health-giving character of the Sabbath is that without the opportunity to face and work through these things they become sublimated, used as energy for daily work, which in the long run can lead to breakdown and burnout. The good news is that days away from work are the opportunity to keep our lives’ goals and 88

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commitments in divine perspective. The story is told of the politician William Wilberforce, who campaigned for over 20 years for the abolition of the slave trade. In 1801, some years before the abolition was achieved, a new government came to power and Wilberforce was rumoured to be in line for a cabinet post. The possibility began to preoccupy him and he admitted to ‘risings of ambition’ which were crippling his soul. It was Sunday and the break from work that brought relief. At the end of that week, Wilberforce wrote in his journal, ‘Blessed be to God for the day of rest and religious occupation wherein earthly things assume their true size. Ambition is stunted.’20 The second important aspect of practising the Sabbath is the acceptance of limits. Just as Moses had to hand over to Joshua before the entrance of Israel to the Promised Land and Paul was conscious of working within the limits that Jesus had given him (2 Cor. 10.13–17), each person is given a specific calling. As the seventeenth-century French spiritual director Jean-Pierre de Caussade emphasizes in his letters, God has given to each of us certain duties, those of our particular state and those of our unique vocation. They are the duties through which he intends to make us holy. For each of us there are certain good things God intends us to do, and other good things he does not intend for us but for others. If we take on every good thing that comes in our way, we not only reach beyond our own limits but take the place of the person God had called to that particular task.21 The need does not constitute the call. Response to God’s call is not a matter of ‘calculating the need and the time’ but of ‘whispered promptings of encouragement from the Centre of our life’.22 Accumulation of commitments is the enemy of simplicity of life. 20 Quoted in Gordon MacDonald, Ordering Your Private World, Crowborough: Highland, 1984, p. 174. 21 Jean-Pierre de Caussade, Self-Abandonment to Divine Providence, London: Fontana, 1971. 22 Thomas Kelly, Testament of Devotion, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1941, pp. 113–14.

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Like a ‘healthy church’, a life based around Sabbath will mean ‘doing a few things and doing them well’. Third, it is of great benefit to learn and practise the difference between chronos and kairos. While chronos is measurable time, divided into hours, minutes and seconds, the amount available for the task, kairos is the ‘opportune moment’, the time at which the task is likely to be most fruitful. To order our working routine by kairos rather than chronos means liberation from the ‘unforgiving minute’ with its ‘sixty-seconds-worth of distance run’ of Kipling’s poem. Instead, it means getting to know our best working rhythm and using it to advantage, discerning the best time of the day or week to undertake particular tasks, in some cases waiting on God for an inner prompting before picking up the telephone or beginning an assignment. The discipline of Sabbath is more than a regular day off. It is a way of life, an approach to work based on confidence in God’s purpose and provision and leading to celebration. And observations suggest that this kingdom vision, based around Sabbath and shalom, is a widely shared human aspiration. In contemporary society the habits of acquisitiveness and desire for financial security struggle with an increasing emphasis on healthy work–life balance. As Anthony Seldon writes, The new debate is between those who see the prime objective of life as maximizing quantity – gross domestic product, corporate profits, exam results, throughput of patients and solved crime – and those who highlight quality of life issues – sustainable growth, corporate responsibility, rounded human beings, a healthy nation and safe communities. The public want the latter, but politicians are mainly trapped in a logic that sees the targets and materialism of the former as the only route to this.23 23 Anthony Seldon, Trust: How we lost it and how to get it back, London: Biteback Publishing, 2009, p. xv.

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A kingdom of Sabbath and shalom offers precisely the alternative society which Seldon claims most people are looking for and assures us that this is God’s purpose and the goal of his mission. The vision of the biblical way affirms that communal well-being comes before self-aggrandisement. The alternative is so to distort creation as never to know what it means to celebrate the Sabbath. Either we strive to secure our own existence or we celebrate the joy and rest of Sabbath, knowing that God has already secured it for us.24 The joy of Sabbath, the rest that is an end in itself, reminds us that we too are ends in ourselves. We do not exist for work; our work is intended to be an expression of our unique vocation. Rather, we exist for joy. ‘The play of celebration is … the doctrine of justification by faith (grace) alone brought to life … It is not useful work but only unmerited grace that can justify our existence.’25 To live this out in daily life is to plant a seed of God’s kingdom with the capacity to grow and embrace others in its branches.

Principalities and powers The kingdom of God, which is the goal of mission, is not confined to the sacred but grows like a mustard seed in ‘secular’ space. The values and practices of Sabbath and shalom are to infiltrate and transform human society like yeast in a loaf. They act as signs of God’s future world breaking into the present, a foretaste of ‘real humanity’. But how does this process of transformation take place? God’s people are taught to pray daily for the coming of his kingdom, but does their responsibility extend to any more than prayer? Are we called to act, and if so, how? The answer to this question, though found in the New 24 Brueggemann, Vision, pp. 20–1. 25 Jean-Jacques Suurmond, Word and Spirit at Play, London: SCM, 1994, p. 89.

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Testament, has long gone unrecognized. For many years biblical scholars assumed that the New Testament envisaged no engagement between the young and dynamic church and GraecoRoman culture, that the transformation of society was not part of the apostles’ agenda and that the radical practice and teaching of Jesus, his subversion of the culture of status and distinctions of gender, wealth and religious practice, applied to the church alone. Part of the reason for this is that they overlooked the language in which the social ethic of the epistles is conveyed. It is an element which, as Lesslie Newbigin writes, ‘[h]as been neglected in the modern period … but is – once you open your eyes to it – extremely prominent’: namely, the language of principalities, powers, dominions, thrones, rulers, authorities and several other terms that appear to be more or less interchangeable.26 In the Book of Revelation, these ‘powers’ are dramatized as angelic beings. They almost always carry an element of threat. In Ephesians 6.12 they are called ‘rulers’, ‘authorities’, ‘cosmic powers of this present darkness’ and ‘spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places’, and they are the enemies of God’s people. In Romans 8.38–39 ‘angels’, ‘rulers’ and ‘powers’ are among the things that will not be able to separate us from God’s love. And in 1 Corinthians 2.8, it is the ‘rulers of this age’ who crucified Jesus, ‘the Lord of glory’. The archaic nature of these terms and the impression that they refer to a world of angels and demons in which many people no longer believe led many scholars simply to ignore them. But in fact this is the language in which the supposedly missing social ethic of the New Testament is expressed.27 The relevance of ‘powers’ and ‘principalities’ to the kingdom of God is clear from the fact that they represent a language of authority and power. It is the language in which the confrontation between the rule of God and that of earthly powers of all kinds is conveyed. These texts

26 Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Culture, London: SPCK, 1989, p. 200. 27 John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1972, pp. 140–1.

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consistently describe the engagement between God’s kingdom and the powers of human society as spiritual warfare. They provide a breakdown of the enemy’s tactics, describe the weapons available to God’s people and, most important of all, define the way victory is to be understood by showing that the death of Jesus on the cross was the ultimate triumph and the pattern for that of the church.

The power of corporate mindset Exactly what are the epistle writers referring to when they use these terms? Newbigin suggests that one particular Greek word helps us to get at the heart of their meaning, the word stoicheia.28 Literally the word means ‘rudiments’ or ‘elements’. It is used in contemporary Greek for the letters of the alphabet or for the four elements of earth, air, fire and water. But when in Galatians 4.9 Paul warns his readers against returning to the ‘weak and beggarly elemental spirits’ he is trying to persuade them against returning to the Jewish Law. In Colossians 2.8 he equates the stoicheia to ‘philosophy’, ‘empty deceit’ and ‘human tradition’. The common factor in these references is what we might call ‘mindset’. Paul is warning against the adoption of a way of thinking at variance with the truth of the gospel, capable of leading people away from Christian faith and back into error. It is clear from the way the argument of Colossians 2 develops that Paul equates the stoicheia of verses 8 and 20 with the ‘rulers and authorities’ of verse 15, whom Christ has disarmed and over which he has triumphed through his death on the cross. His crucifixion has revealed the ‘human way of thinking’ (2.18) represented by the stoicheia as false and idolatrous. When Paul tells the Galatians that they had previously been ‘enslaved to beings that by nature are not gods’ (4.8) he means that their way of thinking had been dominated by obedience to the Law. But Christ has ‘set us free’ from this way of

28 Newbigin, Gospel, pp. 203–4.

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thinking and this hard-won freedom should make the choice to go back to living under the Law impossible. It appears then that what the powers do is to ‘enslave’ people through corporate mindset, ways of thinking based on falsehood. There was one particular community in our parish in Stoke-onTrent with a shared mindset I can best characterize as ‘defeated’. Built in the late nineteenth century, the area was next door to an estate owned by the Duke of Sutherland where the tenancy agreements had included a ‘morality clause’. This had meant that if any family had someone who was found guilty of a crime or an unmarried daughter who became pregnant, the family was forced to leave. Our community was where many of these families ended up: the bottom of the heap. Over a century later, the area was still at the bottom of the heap: it was the only area in the city without a Council waiting list. You only went there if you could get nowhere else. What the New Testament language of principalities and powers suggests is that these corporate mindsets have a spiritual dimension. The powers inhabit ‘heavenly places’ (Eph. 3.10; 6.12). In other words, they belong to what Tom Wright calls ‘God’s dimension of reality’.29 In his booklet, Demolishing Strongholds, Andii Bowsher writes: There is a certain ‘spirit’ which any institution has, perhaps a school, a soccer team, a supermarket chain, or a hospital. This ‘spirit’ is related to the people present in an institution, especially the more prestigious and powerful people. It relates to the laws and rules governing the institution, its customs, tradition and roles. These rules, traditions etc. are shaped by the history of the institution and its goals. All of these help support an ‘ethos’ – a spiritual dimension. That other dimension which seems to govern and uphold the whole ethos of the institution and which is even bigger than its cultural 29 Tom Wright, Surprised by Hope, London: SPCK, 2007, pp. 26, 122.

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identity is the ‘spirit’. Some people sense this when they walk in or join the school, hospital etc. They can ‘feel’ the ‘atmosphere’. I think part of what they are sensing is the ‘angel’, ‘principality’ or ‘spirit’ of the institution.30 Angela Tilby comments on the change she experienced when the BBC, for which she worked, decided to move its religious programme-making department from London to Manchester: By the time I left the BBC I felt I knew the angel of BBC North rather well. I knew it was a friendly but prickly angel, anxious to be liked, defensive, vain; envious of others, a bit of a loud mouth and bully, but kind and considerate if treated with respect … When I left the BBC, it was with a sense that attempting to discern the nature of the angel was a spiritually useful thing to do. Not only because it helps us locate ourselves within it, but because it helps us to discover what our mission is to the institutions and places we are sent to.31 This idea of group mentality is familiar in systems theory. In a ‘system’ everything is connected to everything else. Often the system is too complex for any one person to grasp, but it embodies the goals of the organization and dictates how those goals are to be realized.32 It is also familiar in critical theory and the social constructionist tradition of sociology. Social relationships are based on a shared ‘plausibility structure’. The power of the aristocracy over the peasants in traditional societies is only possible with the willing co-operation of those very peasants, who share the view of their masters as to the right and proper way in which society should be ordered. The subordination of women in

30 Andii Bowsher, Demolishing Strongholds, Nottingham: Grove, 1993, p. 13. 31 Quoted in Robert Warren, The Healthy Churches Handbook, London: Church House Publishing, 2004, p. 97. 32 Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline, 2nd edn, New York: Random House, 2006, pp. 3–16.

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much of the Islamic world is supported by a corporate mindset shared by most of the women as well as men; and the exploitation of women as sex objects in the western world similarly depends on a shared mindset enthusiastically embraced by women as well as men through the fashion and music industries. Thus governments, businesses, schools, or the local Women’s Institute group all have a corporate ethos, which may be described as a ‘spirituality’. This spirituality is embodied in the group and inseparable from it. It is also apparent that the ‘angel’ or ‘spirituality’ of any particular group or institution may be relatively good or bad, wholesome or unwholesome; it may encourage people to give freely of themselves or it may encourage them to be selfish and self-seeking; it may be competitive or cooperative. A business may genuinely put its customers first and pride itself on good service; or it may place profit above every other consideration. It may treat its employees well and fairly; or it may treat them as units of production to be exploited. In other words, as corporate personalities, the ‘angels’ or ‘powers’ of institutions are like people, a mixture of good and bad. In the middle of the community I described in Stoke-on-Trent was the church school, which had an entirely different ethos. It was one of those schools that made you feel good as soon as you walked through the door, a haven of love and care, teamwork and cooperation, a place most children looked forward to coming each morning; in fact, the incidence of truancy was largely confined to children whose parents kept them away either through neglect or for shopping trips.

The powers in creation So far we have not raised the ontological question: what the principalities and powers actually are. For the New Testament writers they were almost certainly angelic beings like those portrayed in the Book of Revelation, the ‘gods’ referred to in Psalm 82, who are in rebellion against the Lord and responsible for the injustice of the world, or the angel identified as the ‘prince 96

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of the kingdom of Persia’ in Daniel 10.12–20. There is thus powerful support for an influential group of modern evangelicals and Pentecostals including C. Peter Wagner and George Otis Jr, who see the powers as demonic beings against whom the church is called to wage ‘strategic level spiritual warfare’.33 The interest of this group is chiefly in evangelism and church growth. Seeking an explanation as to why one city or region may be relatively closed to the gospel and another much more receptive they find it in the influence of the governing powers or angels of those cities and regions. Their methods include ‘spiritual mapping’, the attempt to discern the principalities and powers affecting certain areas in order to pray, live and preach effectively in response. This process often makes use of the supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit, such as words of knowledge and wisdom, but most practitioners emphasize that it must be thoroughly rooted in research on the ground: the effort to discover patterns of life and events in the particular areas, in history as well as in the present. In contrast, the view expressed in Hendrickus Berkhof ’s pioneering Christ and the Powers and taken up by many since, has been to see the powers as the spiritual dimension of institutions.34 Thus in the Book of Revelation the ‘angels’ of the churches represent the shared mindsets of the different congregations. Ephesus is dogmatic and unloving, Smyrna poor but faithful, Laodicea complacent. Later in the book the Roman Empire is described as the ‘beast’ rising from the sea (13.1) and the ‘great whore’ seated on many waters (17.1). These are intended as glimpses into the underlying nature of the Empire, its ‘spirituality’.

33 C. Peter Wagner, Breaking Strongholds, Tunbridge Wells: Monarch, 1993. George Otis Jr, The Twilight Labyrinth, Grand Rapids, MI: Chosen Books, 1997. 34 Hendrickus Berkhof, Christ and the Powers, Scottsdale, PA: Herald Press, 1953; Yoder, Politics, pp. 135–62; Newbigin, Gospel, pp. 198–210; Jim Wallis, Agenda for Biblical Christians, London: SPCK, 1986, pp. 38–55; Walter Wink, Naming the Powers (1984); Unmasking the Powers (1986); Engaging the Powers (1992), all Minneapolis: Fortress Press; The Powers That Be, New York: Random House, 1998.

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It is not necessary to disbelieve in the demonic in order to recognize the powers as the spiritual dimension of corporate institutions. Andii Bowsher notices a crucial difference between the powers and the demons in the New Testament: the demons readily recognized Jesus for who he was whereas the powers failed to do so (for example in 1 Cor. 2.6–8). While accepting the view that the powers are inseparable from human institutions, he speculates that the presence of occult activity may help to strengthen their hold.35 Since the powers represent the spiritual dimension of institutions, they partake of the nature of all creation. Just as the world as a whole is God’s good creation, is broken by sin and in places manifestly in rebellion against God, and yet is in the process of being redeemed, so the powers are part of the good creation, may be in rebellion against God, and are redeemable. Walter Wink sums this up: This theological framework is of utmost importance for understanding the nature of the Powers. They are good by virtue of their creation to serve the humanizing purposes of God. They are fallen, without exception, because they put their own interests above the interests of the whole. And they can be redeemed, because what fell in time can be redeemed in time. We must view this schema as both temporal and simultaneous, in sequence and all at once. Temporally the Powers were created, they are fallen and they shall be redeemed. This can be asserted as belief in the final triumph of God over the forces of evil. But this schema is also simultaneous: God at one and the same time upholds a given political or economic system, since some such system is required to support human life; condemns that system insofar as it is destructive of fully human life; and presses for its transformation into a more humane order. Conservatives stress the first, revolutionaries the second, 35 Bowsher, Strongholds, pp. 12–14.

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reformers the third. The Christian is expected to hold together all three.36 The powers were created good. In Romans 13 Paul develops a strong doctrine of the state. The authority of government, he writes, was given to it by God and given for a purpose. The state is to punish bad conduct and reward good. State authorities are God’s servants to execute wrath on wrongdoers. How could Paul write this about the corrupt Roman Empire? Because he recognized that human institutions are necessary. Governments may be imperfect, but we could not do without them. We need institutions of all kinds. Without schools, hospitals, neighbourhood networks and even tax systems we could not live. Our very identity is formed in that most fundamental of all social groups, the family. All these are part of God’s good creation and the purpose of each is part of his providence. Each in its own way exists to contribute to human flourishing. But like the rest of creation the powers are fallen. They fall when they abandon their true purpose to serve God and contribute to human well-being and become ends in themselves. This is why Paul sees the Jewish Law as a power. Instead of recognizing the Law as a gift whose purpose was to enable Israel to live under the grace of God, the Jewish mindset was to make the Law an end in itself and to equate salvation with keeping it in all its detail. When national governments, instead of recognizing their God-serving functions, become self-justifying ends in themselves, they usually end up oppressive and tyrannical. Or, to give another example, a business can see its purpose as to contribute to human flourishing by providing employment to its staff and goods or services to the public at large. Or it can see its purpose as to make as much money as possible. Over 200 years ago, at the start of the industrial revolution, the economist Adam Smith wrote in his book The Wealth of Nations about an ‘invisible hand’ consisting of the laws 36 Wink, Powers That Be, p. 32.

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of exchange. Where a company sets out to contribute to the good of society the ‘invisible hand’ ensures that they will make a profit and thus be able to stay in business. Unfortunately in many western nations, including the USA and UK, public companies are bound by law to put the interests of their shareholders above those of their customers or employees. Their ‘vocation’ to benefit society as a whole has been abandoned in favour of a purely selfish pursuit of profit for its own sake. The result is the degradation of the environment and a world economy in which the weak are ruthlessly exploited in favour of the strong. But the powers are also redeemable. In fact, the redemption of the powers is part of the calling of the church. We are called to make known ‘the wisdom of God in its rich variety’ to ‘the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places’ (Eph. 3.10). In this area, the church has a good deal to learn from others. Systems theorist Peter Senge writes about the ‘metanoia’ or change of mindset that is required for system change, the outcome of a corporate process of reflection with a shared commitment to discovering and acting on the truth. Essential to this process is awareness and respect for the true purpose of the organization.37 Paolo Freire in Pedagogy of the Oppressed emphasizes that liberation of the oppressed is not achieved by the replacement of one group of rulers by another. Real liberation requires a change of mindset: instead of hankering after the wealth and security of the rich, the poor need to adopt a new identity based on what it means to be fully human.38

The church and the powers The first requirement is that the church itself be freed from the grip of the powers. All resistance and attack against the gods of this age will be unfruitful unless the church … demonstrates in her life and 37 Senge, Discipline, pp. 13–14, 163–252, 283–316. 38 Paolo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996, pp. 25–51.

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fellowship how men can live freed from the Powers. We can only preach the manifold wisdom of God to Mammon if our life displays that we are joyfully free from his clutches. To reject nationalism we must begin by no longer recognising in our own bosoms any difference between peoples. We shall only resist social injustice and the disintegration of community if justice and mercy prevail in our own common life and social differences have lost their power to divide.39 This, of course, assumes the centrality of Sabbath and shalom community in the way we both understand and ‘do’ church. Before it is equipped to battle the powers, the church must engage in its own process of reflection leading to metanoia. It must recover a sense of its true purpose and a God-given vision of true humanity. This means that the church must confront the influence of the powers in its own life. It must face up to the influence of ‘ways of thinking’ such as individualism, consumerism and ‘British reserve’. It needs, too, to recognize the inhibiting influence on its mission of the professional model of ministry, which originated in the pursuit of social status. The good news is that the church need not wait for perfection before taking on the powers. In fact, learning the nature of the weapons given to us and how to use them is a way by which the church grows in faith and begins to rediscover its vocation. The central truth to be grasped is the ‘asymmetric’ nature of spiritual warfare: the complete and utter difference between the weapons of the powers and those of Christ. Whereas the powers use domination, deceit and manipulation in order to enslave, the method of Jesus is the unmasking of falsehood through his obedience to the Father. It is evocatively described in this passage from John Howard Yoder: If God is going to save man in his humanity the Powers cannot 39 Berkhof, Powers, pp. 41–2.

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simply be destroyed or set aside or ignored. Their sovereignty must be broken. This is what Jesus did by living among men a genuinely free and human existence. This life brought him, as any genuinely free and human existence will bring any man, to the cross. In his death the Powers – in this case the most worthy, weighty representatives of Jewish religion and Roman politics – acted in collusion … Preaching and incorporating a greater righteousness than that of the Pharisees and a vision of an order of social human relations more universal than the Pax Romana, he permitted the Jews to profane a holy day … and the Romans to deny their vaunted respect for law as they proceeded illegally against him … Differing from Adam, Lucifer and all the Powers, Jesus did ‘not consider being equal with God a thing to be seized’ (Phil. 2.6). His very obedience unto death is in itself not only the sign but also the first-fruits of an authentic restored humanity.40 The cross unmasks the powers and destroys their pretensions. What had appeared self-evidently true and socially and politically unchallengeable is revealed as idolatry and falsehood. The only true authority in social, religious, political and economic life is that of Jesus. The first and most important of the weapons of spiritual warfare is the truth. For this reason, the straightforward preaching of the gospel has the potential to unmask the powers. Commending the gospel by word of mouth has its own power. The hold of the powers on institutions and localities is weakened when the message of God’s overwhelming love and grace and how it has been put into effect for us is preached to them. But the gospel is most effective when it is contextualized, when the good news it contains is directly related to the bad news of those to whom it is preached. Steve Hollinghurst suggests that the ‘Beyond the Fringe’ research carried out in Coventry provides clues to those aspects 40 Yoder, Politics, pp. 147–8.

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of Christian truth that will speak most directly to people in contemporary society. To those for whom the issue of destiny is important, the vision of the kingdom as a place without crying and pain may be a powerful message. To those for whom the main question is about meaning and purpose in life, Jesus’ call to join him in transforming the world provides an attractive invitation. To those for whom the question of suffering poses a major problem, the gospel offers a picture of Jesus as someone who stands alongside us in pain and bewilderment.41 In order to contextualize the gospel effectively, we need insight into the mindset of the people to whom we wish to bring it. This journey of discernment will reveal the powers that dominate their lives. The historical information about the community in our Stoke-on-Trent parish emerged as part of our research, aiming to reach a better understanding of that area. This was of immense help in coming alongside that community, informing both our prayers and our action. We knew that we could expect to encounter low self-esteem and suspicion of outside authority figures so it was important to go gently and do all we could to affirm the residents. As our involvement took root, the City Council began to become more interested in the area. The neighbourhood was granted a refurbished play area and an outdoor shelter for teenagers. We learned that there was no longer a Council waiting list and the area even saw the first bus service for several years. The hold of the ethos of defeat and all that went with it was gradually being loosened. A focus on the spiritual effects of history is one of the emphases of Russ Parker’s book Healing Wounded History. Parker points out what is common to most approaches to spiritual mapping: that the rule of particular spiritual powers is a response to what human beings have done over the years and continue to do. It is human actions and decisions which provide a right of access 41 Steve Hollinghurst, Mission Shaped Evangelism, Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2010, pp. 203–8.

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for the principalities and powers. Accordingly, says Parker, if we can get to the root of the human story which has led to the current state of affairs and bring healing to this story, we will have weakened the spiritual forces of evil and prepared the ground for the rediscovery of the true vocation of the particular locality or institution.42 Truth must be lived out. It must be proclaimed not only in word but in action. Another key weapon of Christian spiritual warfare is ‘living in the opposite spirit’. The call to live in the opposite spirit to that of the powers which dominate a society is a vital part of Jesus’ teaching. ‘You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer … You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, Love your enemies …’ (Matt. 5.38–45). ‘You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them … But it is not so among you …’ (Mark 10.42–44). ‘When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends … or rich neighbours, in case they may invite you in return … But when you give a banquet, invite the poor …’ (Luke 14.12–14). ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit … those who mourn … the meek …’ (Matt. 5.3–10). To live in the opposite spirit may include the contemporary equivalent of ‘not reaping right up to the edges of the field’: building a business around generosity rather than seeking for maximum profit. Some years ago I was course tutor to someone training for reader ministry who, with her husband, ran a printing business. Among their commitments was a desire to find as many employment opportunities as possible for disabled people and the willingness to print the church and community newsletter for free. Yet they had begun only a few years before by recycling ink cartridges in their kitchen. The rapid growth of the business was a concrete sign of God’s abundance. To live in the opposite spirit is sacrificial and may lead to 42 Russ Parker, Healing Wounded History, London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2001.

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suffering. It may include standing out against the culture of overwork by taking breaks while everyone else in the office works through their lunchtime; spending more to buy fairly traded produce wherever possible; taking time out to help colleagues in a busy workplace; showing consideration for a difficult customer; confronting a bullying colleague; refusing to take sides in a conflict situation. Just as Jesus won the victory over the powers at the cost of his own death so too do his followers, who are called to carry their cross and follow him. This is the challenge that faces many Christian teenagers, brought up to love and value themselves in a culture where many of their friends suffer from very low selfesteem. Their good self-image can often lead to such hostility that they suffer bullying because of it. The same may happen to the honest manager in a dysfunctional firm, whose colleagues refuse to trust him because he ‘marches to a different drum’. The willing endurance of suffering unmasks the powers. As Walter Wink reminds us, the victory of the Church over the Roman imperial system was not won by seizing the levers of power: it was won when the victims knelt down in the Colosseum and prayed in the name of Jesus for the Emperor. The soldiers in Christ’s victorious army were not armed with the weapons of this age; they were the martyrs whose robes were washed in blood. It was not that a particular Emperor was discredited and displaced; it was that the entire mystique of the Empire, its spiritual power, was unmasked, disarmed and rendered powerless.43 The discernment and proclamation of the truth, living in the opposite spirit, the willingness to suffer, and finally: prayer. We are taught to pray daily for the coming of God’s kingdom. Prayer for discernment of the influence of the powers, for wisdom in how to oppose it, for the strength and love needed to carry it through, are 43 Newbigin, Gospel, p. 210.

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all vital. The battle is fought ‘in heavenly places’ rather than against ‘flesh and blood’ and must be fought with heavenly weapons. ‘Unprotected by prayer,’ writes Walter Wink, ‘our social activism runs the danger of becoming self-justifying good works, as our inner resources atrophy, the wells of love run dry and we are slowly changed into the likeness of the Beast.’ On the other hand, ‘Intercession is spiritual defiance of what is, in the name of what God has promised. Intercession visualizes an alternative future to the one apparently fated by the momentum of current contradictory forces. It infuses the air of a time yet to be into the suffocating atmosphere of the present.’44 In the vision of Revelation 8, the prayers of the saints on earth are mingled with incense from heaven to bring about the will of God on earth. Our inarticulate groaning, writes Paul in Romans 8, echoes the groaning of creation in bondage to decay and waiting for the day of its release, and is taken up into the ‘sighs too deep for words’ with which the Holy Spirit prays in us according to the will of God. Thus the prayers of God’s people are a vital means by which the powers are overcome and the kingdom comes.

Your kingdom come Why is it important that churches are concerned for the kingdom rather than simply concentrating on building up the church community and adding people one by one? Why should they be devoting time, effort and prayer to bring about change in their neighbourhoods, the organizations that use their church halls, and the places where their members live and work? There are a host of reasons. ‘The idea that the gospel is addressed only to the individual and that it is only indirectly addressed to societies, nations and cultures is simply an illusion of our individualistic, post-Enlightenment Western culture.’45 And the individualism of western society is itself a ‘power’. A renewing 44 Wink, Powers That Be, p. 181; Engaging, p. 298. 45 Newbigin, Gospel, p. 199.

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of our corporate mind is needed to help us discern the way church and society are inextricably bound together, and recognize the influence of widely accepted cultural values, such as consumerism, on the practice of our faith. But equally, it is important to recognize that the domination of the principalities and powers in society has effects on individuals. Paul talks of people being ‘blinded’ by ‘the god of this world’ (2 Cor. 4.4) or ‘futile in their thinking’ as a result of failing to recognize God as creator (Rom. 1.21). The effect of the principalities and powers is to make it more difficult for people to understand the gospel. It is not difficult to see this in our own society. Individualism, materialism, low self-esteem, and the lack of ability to make and keep commitments all permeate our culture and effectively ‘blind’ people to the truths of the gospel. But the redemption of principalities and powers not only helps to make people receptive to the gospel. It also has value in itself. One church’s policy in the use of its hall was not to charge the highest rate possible but to encourage each organization that used the hall to join with at least one other organization at least once a year to put on an event which benefited the whole community. In this way, the church encouraged the growth of ‘social capital’, a spirit of neighbourliness, the growth of friendship and trust in its community. If a church, by praying for and supporting the school for which it is responsible, can encourage an ethic of love and service, see the effectiveness of the staff increase and the aspirations of pupils raised, is not this a worthwhile end in itself? Is it not also a sign of the kingdom, for which we are to pray? The goal of mission is the kingdom of God. This is the purpose for which the church exists. Engagement with powers and principalities is a vital part of its mission, inseparable from the proclamation of the gospel. Indeed, it is the proclamation of the gospel. ‘Through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety’ is to be ‘made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places’ (Eph. 3.10). Our exploration of the nature of God’s 107

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kingdom has been an exploration of the task of the church. So how is the church equipped for spiritual warfare against the powers that blight the lives of so many by leading them into false and idolatrous ways of thinking? What will be the key elements of its life? And how will it understand itself? These questions will be the subject of our next chapter.

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3

Church Foretaste of the Kingdom Mission-shaped church The title of the report Mission-shaped Church did much to alert not only the Church of England but the wider church in the country to the importance of mission. It also implicitly raises questions about the relation of ‘mission’ to ‘church’ and challenges the church to think about what it means to be ‘mission-shaped’. This engagement with God’s mission has provoked deep theological questions particularly about the nature of mission and its relationship with God’s Church. What is the relationship between the church and the kingdom of God? What was the biblical warrant for the kind of thinking contained in missionshaped Church? How should we describe or recognize a fresh expression of church? What should we call ‘church’ in any case?1 In the previous two chapters I have already begun to suggest answers to some of these questions. We have seen how the movement of mission from the periphery of the church’s life to its centre has raised the profile and highlighted the importance of some elements of the church’s tradition previously neglected or undervalued: mission is the calling of the whole church; it takes place largely beyond the four walls of the gathered church in the 1 Steven Croft in the ‘Introduction’ to Mission-shaped Questions, London: Church House Publishing, 2008, p. ix.

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wider ‘secular’ community; the church is first and foremost a community; as such it is the context for discipleship: it is not only conversion but the disciple’s growth in faith that is an ‘accompanied journey’. Finally, the incarnational nature of mission means that the church is ‘shaped’ by the surrounding culture. Its patterns of life, worship and ministry will not be the same in every time and place but will adapt and change to its context. All this implies the need to re-evaluate and perhaps rewrite traditional ecclesiology, the doctrine of the church. Whereas traditional ecclesiology tended to focus on the life of the gathered church, an ecclesiology for our time and context will balance this with a focus on the dispersed church. Its underlying understanding of the church as an institution will be balanced and perhaps brought into question by a new focus on the church as a mission movement. The ministry of the clergy, which lies at the heart of traditional ecclesiology, will be placed in the broader context of the ministry of the whole church. The underlying question of much traditional ecclesiology, ‘How is the church governed?’ will be replaced by a more fundamental one: ‘What is the role of the church in the missio Dei?’ At least two questions run through this re-examination of the church. The first has to do with the church and its social context. The requirement that the church take concrete shape in a given context sets up a tension between what we might call ‘syncretism’ and ‘contextualization’. In both the church adapts to society, adopting some of the outward trappings of culture, from the use of modern media in worship to managerial styles of leadership. But how do we tell whether in doing so the church is merely ‘conforming’ to the culture or ‘transforming’ it by investing it with gospel or ‘kingdom’ significance? Is a particular style of worship being used simply as a marketing tool to attract people of a particular generation or culture; or is it being used as a channel to enable a transforming encounter with God? Is a particular style of leadership a subconscious adoption of a particular business model, or is it securely founded on biblical and theological 110

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understanding? There are no simple answers to these questions. My suggestion is that such answers as there are lie in the sphere of what I have already referred to as ‘mental models’. They have to do with whether our understanding of what we are doing is being shaped more by the gospel or more by the culture. Are we using our understanding of the gospel as the lens through which to understand our culture or are we unwittingly viewing the gospel through the lens of culture? The second question has to do with the tension between the church as an institution and as a movement. The church as a whole has nearly 2,000 years of institutional life and history behind it. Part of this history is of the rise of a variety of new movements at various periods, such as monasticism or new denominations. The history of our own time illustrates the process through which new forms of Christian life and witness, such as what used to be called the ‘house church movement’, acquire the characteristics of institutions within two or three generations. The developing centrality of mission is a movement in the life of the churches, but they remain historically grounded institutions. Reflecting in Ecclesiogenesis on the relationship between the Roman Catholic Church and the base communities of South America, Leonardo Boff anticipates some of the questions arising from the presence of ‘fresh expressions’ within the historic denominations. Communities, he writes, can never replace the institutional church, but they can renew it. A community exists to seek a renewed expression for a particular time and location of all that lies at the heart of the institution’s life. In practice, though, it will never attain perfection. There will always be limitations of vision, inequalities and power struggles. The new movements need the institution as an ‘organizing element that transcends particular communities and procures the communion of them all’ through its creed and its authority structures.2 A renewed ecclesiology is thus an account of the movement of God’s Spirit renewing the 2 Leonardo Boff, Ecclesiogenesis, London: Collins, 1986, p. 7.

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institution by drawing from its tradition those elements that speak most appropriately to the church’s current situation. What should not be lost as the new ecclesiology emerges is the centrality of the church in God’s purposes. ‘It is surely a fact of inexhaustible significance,’ writes Lesslie Newbigin, ‘that what our Lord left behind him was not a book, nor a creed, nor a system of thought, nor a rule of life, but a visible community.’ Newbigin does not mean that doctrine, the Bible and regular worship are unimportant, but that the visible community of the church precedes them. It was not that a community developed around an idea, so that the idea was primary and the community secondary. It was that a community called together by the deliberate choice of the Lord himself, and recreated in him, gradually sought – and is seeking – to make explicit who he is and what he has done. The actual community is primary: the understanding of what it is comes second.3 We have seen that as he proclaimed the kingdom of God, Jesus gathered a community around him, an alternative society with members drawn from across the spectrum of society, in which the old distinctions of status, nationality and gender were to be broken down. The existence of this community was to be a visible sign that the kingdom so long awaited was actually arriving in him. It was to this community that Jesus entrusted the mission of God. ‘As the Father has sent me,’ he told his disciples, ‘so I send you’ (John 20.21). The word ‘so’ is a vital element in this commission. The embryonic church is sent in the same way and for the same purpose as the Father sent the Son. And the next verse records the gift of the same source of power, as Jesus breathes on them the Holy Spirit. As a result of this recognition, David Bosch records, ‘The classical doctrine of the missio Dei as God the Father 3 Lesslie Newbigin, The Household of God, London: SCM, 1953, p. 32.

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sending the Son, and God the Father and the Son sending the Spirit was expanded to include yet another “movement”: Father, Son and Holy Spirit sending the church into the world.’4 The centrality of the visible community as the bearer of God’s mission actually gives to Christianity its distinctive character: incarnational, contextual, open to the world and reflective. Rather than following a universally applicable blueprint, the community is called to discern the shape of God’s mission for each place and time, and to allow its own life constantly to be renewed by the Holy Spirit so as to fulfil that mission. The church’s corporate life is thus a journey of continual discovery and rediscovery, ‘rooted and built up’ in Christ (Col. 2.7). In the words of Martyn Atkins, ‘The essence of the church is its derived nature’, derived from its calling as the partner of God in his mission. Such is the symbiotic relationship between God’s character, God’s reign, God’s mission and God’s church that it is impossible to narrate the nature of one without reference to the others … The church derives its being from the missionary God and is created and shaped to share in the missio Dei, the goal of which is the coming of the kingdom.5 Atkins is saying that the church cannot be understood other than through the lens of mission. Its very existence is bound up with the mission of God, as both outcome and partner in that mission. Another way of saying this is that its existence is bound up with the coming reign of God. As the kingdom was inaugurated in and through Jesus’ incarnation, death and resurrection, but waits for its fulfilment, so the church is a product of and bears the nature of that ‘in-between’ time. It cannot be the kingdom, because it can never be fully obedient to the Father as Jesus was. But insofar as 4 David Bosch, Transforming Mission, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1991, p. 390. 5 Martyn Atkins, ‘What is the Essence of the Church?’ in Croft, Questions, pp. 17, 19.

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Christ is at work in and through it, it bears witness to the coming kingdom. Tainted by the fall and disobedience of the powers and principalities, it witnesses to the hope of their final redemption and looks for ways, in obedience to God and in the power of the Spirit, in which this redemption may become at least a partial reality in the present. In the words of Lesslie Newbigin, it is a ‘foretaste, sign and agent’ of the kingdom: a sign because it points beyond itself to the kingdom, an agent because it is charged with co-operating with the Spirit in the realization of the kingdom, a foretaste because, in the same way as the gift of the Spirit is a foretaste or ‘down payment’ on her ultimate inheritance, the church herself is a first instalment, a ‘flavour’ of the kingdom to come.6 The essence of the church is thus her temporary, provisional nature. When the New Testament writers sought for a word to describe her, they chose ecclesia, the gathering of God, the word used in the Greek Old Testament for the congregation of Israel in the wilderness, a people on pilgrimage. [The church] understands its movement as the new eschatological exodus … [It] sees itself as the beginning of liberation of the whole enslaved creation for its consummation in glory … It is not the church that has the gospel; it is the gospel that creates for itself a people of the exodus, which is the true church of Christ.7 The Church is not the kingdom of God, but it looks towards the kingdom of God, waits for it, or rather makes a pilgrimage towards it and is its herald, proclaiming it to the world.8 The church is also essentially local. As Newbigin points out ecclesia 6 Lesslie Newbigin, ‘On Being the Church for the World’ in The Parish Church, ed. Giles Ecclestone, London: Mowbray, 1988, pp. 37–8, reprinted in Lesslie Newbigin Missionary Theologian, ed. Paul Weston, London: SPCK, 2006, pp. 138–9. 7 Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, London: SCM, 1977, pp. 83–4. 8 Hans Küng, The Church, London: Search Press, 1971, p. 95.

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is used in only two ways in the New Testament. It is either ecclesia tou theou, the gathering of God, or it is the ecclesia of a certain place. It is a staple of ecclesiology, including, since Vatican II, that of the Roman Catholic Church, that the local church is not a branch of the universal but is the universal church present in each locality. While many theologians work out the justification for this position and the meaning of locality in terms of the Eucharist or the ministry of the bishop, Newbigin sees beyond these to the mission imperative: the local church is that part of the gathering of God entrusted with his mission in a particular locality.9 The meaning of a given ‘locality’ depends on the nature of the particular community. Mission-shaped Church was a call to extend the definition of locality beyond the geographical to reflect the fluidity of contemporary society. One of the implications of this way of understanding locality is to draw attention to the serious obstacle to mission posed by church’s current disunity. It suggests that the presence of several different ‘denominations’ in a particular locality is a standing contradiction of the church’s vocation and essence, unless those congregations recognize their call to be the church together for their community as transcending their denominational loyalty. It also suggests that the life and mission of the local church, and thus the ministry that serves that life and mission, are better shaped by the context than by denominational structures. The local church, as we saw in the first chapter, has ‘fuzzy edges’. It understands itself as a ‘centred’ rather than a ‘bounded’ set.10 Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch illustrate this difference in terms of wells and fences. In many farming communities, farmers use fences around their property to keep their animals in. They know that their livestock are to be found within a boundary and that the boundary separates them from the livestock belonging to other 9 Newbigin, ‘Church’, pp. 29–31; Theologian, pp. 132–3. 10 Stephen Cottrell et al., Emmaus, The Way of Faith: Contact, 2nd edn, London: Church House Publishing, 2003, p. 15; Darrell L. Guder (ed.), Missional Church, Cambridge: Eerdmans, 1998, p. 205.

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farms. In the Australian outback, however, cattle range widely and boundary fences would need to be hundreds of miles long. No matter – the farmer has another way of knowing where to find his cattle. Scattered around his property are a number of artesian wells and he knows that the cattle are always to be found in range of the source of life, the water.11 The local church does not set itself apart from its community by means of a boundary: demanding firm commitment to a doctrinal standard as a condition of membership. Neither does it allow itself to become simply the religious dimension of the community, maintaining a vicarious religious observance but remaining otherwise indistinguishable, lacking a missionary challenge. Rather, the church defines itself in relation to the ‘centre’, the source of its life. The relationships among its members are not created by a boundary separating them from the world, but through their mutual relationship to the centre. Among them, there will be those for whom the church’s centre is the centre of their own life, whose aim is to allow it to mould and direct their lives; others for whom the church’s centre is attractive but peripheral; some who are exploring with a view to greater commitment; and others experiencing problems of faith or fellowship. For all, their relationship to the church is defined by their relationship to the centre, the source of the church’s life. How are we to define the centre? Rowan Williams has said that ‘church’ is what happens when people encounter the risen Jesus and commit themselves to sustaining and deepening that encounter in their encounter with each other.12 It is, then, a question of spirituality, of, ‘Our understanding and experience of how encounter with God takes place and how such an encounter is sustained.’13 This means that in different churches, differing elements of the church’s life will be seen as important. The 11 Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch, The Shaping of Things to Come, Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2003, pp. 47–8. 12 Rowan Williams, ‘Foreword’ to Archbishops’ Council, Mission-shaped Church, London: Church House Publishing, 2004, p. vii. 13 Robert Warren, Being Human, Being Church, London: Marshall Pickering, 1995, p. 88.

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encounter may be in worship: the excitement of charismatic celebration, the solemnity of liturgical ritual, the ‘thin places’ hallowed by continual prayer and pilgrimage, or the Eucharist, in which the character of God and his mission is represented in bread and wine. It may, as the parable of the sower suggests, be through the address of the word of God: the Bible itself, a stirring sermon, thought-provoking book, a testimony to the gracious action of God in someone’s life. It may be in acts of service, through which God’s grace ‘cascades’ in surprising and unpredictable ways. But Jesus’ choice of a visible community as the bearer of his mission suggests that we should also expect to find him in Spirit-filled community. The church is to provide a ‘foretaste’ of the kingdom, a glimpse of what the reign of God is like. Its ‘centre’ includes its community life. At this point, we encounter a considerable obstacle. There is even a scandal in the idea that a community so divided, so prone to complacency, self-righteousness, prejudice and simple foolishness, so factious and argumentative, and so confused about its ultimate purpose, could possibly represent Christ in the world. And yet to seek to purify the church through the vision of a better community has been seen again and again to lead to precisely those sins from which the vision sought to rescue the church. As Bonhoeffer writes, ‘He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.’14 Perhaps the secret of the church’s attractiveness lies not in its being a community of the good but of the forgiven, not a group of people offering a standard to emulate but one whose members know their need of God. Before he said to his disciples, ‘As the Father sent me so I send you,’ Jesus gave them another command beginning ‘as … so’: ‘Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples’ (John 13.34–35). In 14 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, London: SCM, 1954, pp. 15–16.

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what did Jesus intend to be recognized? Is it in the personal quality of love displayed by each individual disciple or in the quality of the relationships themselves? John V. Taylor suggests that it is not so much the quality of the individual disciples but the quality of their relationships that is important. The Holy Spirit is the ‘go-between’, the one who provokes heightened awareness of the claim of the other and creates relationship.15 It is worth bearing this in mind as we explore the New Testament word for community, listed as a vital element of the life of the church from earliest times, the concept of koinonia.

Koinonia In Acts 2 Luke describes the earliest Christian community in the period following the day of Pentecost devoting themselves to ‘the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers’ (Acts 2.42). The word ‘fellowship’ translates the Greek koinonia; and in this verse it has a definite article: it is ‘the fellowship’ to which the newly baptized believers devoted themselves. So what exactly was this koinonia, which in the life of the early church ranked in importance with the church’s ministry of word, sacrament and intercession? In secular Greek usage a koinonia was a group of friends with a shared goal. Its members were linked by bonds of both affection and common interest. A group of fellow-travellers might form a koinonia, or the sailors in a trading ship, and the ultimate koinonia was the city government.16 In this sense it turns up in Luke 5.7, where James and John are described as ‘partners’ of Andrew and Simon. Thus the Christian community is a ‘partnership’, a friendship group with a common goal. To be a Christian is to be called by God ‘into the koinonia of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord’ (1 Cor. 1.9). As members of the Jesus partnership, we share a new 15 John V. Taylor, The Go-between God, London: SCM, 1972, pp. 126–34. 16 Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, viii. 9–12.

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corporate identity. No longer are we ‘in Adam’, sharing the corporate identity of humanity as a whole with its marred relationship with God based on independence and disobedience. To be ‘in Christ’ is to share in a new corporate identity, built on the reconciliation he achieved through his death on the cross, and marked instead by qualities of trust, obedience and mutual interdependence.17 The quality of life inherent in the Christian partnership is both given as a result of the renewal of our broken relationship with God and a goal to which to aspire. Corinth was a wealthy, multicultural society with enormous divisions between rich and poor and a relaxed approach to sexual morality. These aspects of the culture were all too present in the church: it was divided into parties; the Eucharist, the sacrament of unity, was a free-for-all in which the poor were overlooked; and it was tolerant of the grossest sexual misdemeanours. Paul’s reminder of their koinonia in his opening chapter provides the context within which he goes on to address these problems. In the case of Philippi, on the other hand, he rejoices both in the ties of affection that he shares with them and in their history of sharing in his mission, and urges them to go deeper in their appreciation of what Christian koinonia means. ‘If then there is any encouragement in Christ,’ he writes, ‘any consolation from love, any koinonia in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind (Phil. 2.1–2). The ‘mind’ they should aim for – the shared underlying values that will both express and sustain the church’s partnership – is the mind of Christ, the obedient servant. Thus koinonia is a transforming reality, a gift of grace whose purpose is to lead to both individual and corporate transformation. It is to be an exploration of all that it means to be fully human. The power and potential of transformation exists because of the Holy Spirit, the ‘go-between’ God, sustainer of loving 17 See Paula Gooder, This Risen Existence, Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2009, pp. 13–14.

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relationships. Christian koinonia is not only the fellowship of Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 1.9) but also ‘the communion of the Holy Spirit’ (2 Cor. 13.13). As the opening verses of 1 John make clear, our fellowship with one another is based on our fellowship with the Father and the Son. It is that participation in the life of the Trinity foretold by Jesus in his final words to the disciples in John’s Gospel (John 14.15–27; 15.1–17). The divine koinonia between Father, Son and Spirit is now to be shared, through the Spirit, with those whom the Son has reconciled to the Father.18 The Spirit, who for Christians is a foretaste of their full inheritance in Christ, moulds the Christian community in such a way as to provide for the world a foretaste of shalom, the essence of the kingdom. Our access to this life is through the risen Christ. As Jesus tells his disciples, we are to ‘abide’ in him and he in us. These words in John 15 are reminiscent of Mark 3.14, in which Jesus chooses the twelve first to be with him and then to be sent out, in other words to be a friendship group with a common purpose. Mission is to be an overflow from a common life. As John V. Taylor puts it, ‘The gift of the Holy Spirit in the fellowship of the church first enables Christians to be, and only as a consequence of that sends them out to do and to speak.’19 As the mission of God overflows from the mutual love of the persons of the Trinity, so the church’s participation in that mission is to be an overflow from that new quality of relationship, of which love is to be the central characteristic, both experienced and practised in the power of the Spirit. Like a peal of bells the word allelon – one another – rings through the pages of the New Testament.‘Accept one another … serve one another … wash one another’s feet … confess your sins to one another and pray for one another’ … Where two or three are given this togetherness in Christ’s name, though they are far from perfect or complete as individuals, the New Man is 18 On the koinonia of the Trinity see Moltmann, Church, pp. 60–2. 19 Taylor, Go-Between, p. 134.

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known in their midst … The church is not the new mankind; it only provides the medium through which the one New Man, Jesus Christ, is present … Not in our greater goodness, then, but in our openness to one another in Christ’s name, the Spirit possesses us.20 The essence of Christian koinonia is not to be found simply in a network of relationships: it lies in the quality of those relationships, a quality that flows from participation through the Spirit in the life of the risen Jesus and, through him, in the life of God the Trinity.21 An exploration of the way the word koinonia is used in the New Testament reveals some further aspects of Christian partnership. First, it makes a nonsense of the divisions of secular society, uniting as brothers and sisters those of different wealth and status. Thus, in his letter to Philemon, Paul expresses the hope that the koinonia of his faith may become effective when he perceives all the good that we may do for Christ (Philemon 6). As the letter goes on it becomes clear that Paul is asking his friend not only to forgive his slave Onesimus but also to consider granting him his freedom as an expression of their partnership in Christ. Second, koinonia implies the sharing of material benefits. In Romans 15.26 and 2 Corinthians 8.4 the gift Paul was collecting from the Gentile churches for the relief of the church in Jerusalem is described as a koinonia – an expression of affection and partnership. The same

20 Taylor, Go-Between, pp. 126–7. 21 It is reasonably well-known that in his book Being as Communion (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1985) the Orthodox theologian John Zizioulas bases his theology of the church and of Christian ministry directly on the way of existence of the Trinity. Zizioulas has had a significant influence on Robin Greenwood’s theology of ministry, among others. However, I have doubts about the way Zizioulas moves directly from Trinity to ministry. Of course, our understanding of the Trinity must inform all our theology, but its influence on ecclesiology and ministry is not direct. Trinity informs Christology, Trinity and Christology together inform missiology, which in turn informs both ecclesiology and ministry. It is only in recent years that the pivotal role of missiology has begun to be recognized.

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is true of the financial support of the Philippian church for Paul’s mission work in Philippians 4.15. For poverty or property, koinonia substitutes trust, acceptance and mutual help. A third aspect of koinonia is partnership in mission, whether joyfully shared as between Paul and the Philippian church (Phil. 1.5, 7) or painfully and with difficulty hammered out as between Paul and the Jerusalem apostles (Gal. 2.6–10). Fourth, the apostles make it clear that koinonia involves partnership in suffering. Indeed, suffering is only to be expected for the partners of the suffering servant of God and when it comes it should be a cause of rejoicing (1 Peter 4.12–14). To share in Christ’s sufferings was an aspect of his relationship with him to which Paul fervently aspired (Phil. 3.10). He was also aware that in some mysterious way in the Christian koinonia his patience in suffering on behalf of Christ might work for the strengthening and consolation of the churches he had founded (2 Cor. 1.3–7). L. S. Thornton sees this as an aspect of our participation in the Body of Christ: St Paul believed that the sacrificial life of the Christ overflows into the mystical body, so that the sufferings endured by our Lord in his Passion are reproduced in the Church. To the scars in the risen body correspond ‘the afflictions of the Messiah’ in the mystical body. His conflict with sin is reproduced in us because we are the hands with which he inflicts defeat upon the powers of darkness in this present world.22 Finally, all these aspects of koinonia are brought together in the Eucharist, the shared meal in which we participate in the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus. There, portrayed in bread and wine, is the pattern of Jesus’ life, of the Christian life and the mission of God. ‘Every eucharist is a renewal of our initiation into 22 L. S. Thornton, The Common Life in the Body of Christ, London: Dacre Press, 1942, p. 305.

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the sacrifice of Christ, with its pattern of suffering and glory.’23 In John’s Gospel, the Eucharist is placed in a mission context in the reflection that follows the feeding of the five thousand. Jesus has just met the physical needs of those who flocked to him; now he urges them to seek for the satisfaction of their spiritual needs. To eat the flesh of the Son of Man and to drink his blood (6.54) parallel to ‘believe in him’ and ‘come to him’ as the ways to eternal life (6.35, 40, 47). It is those who eat and drink who abide in Jesus and he in them (6.56). In chapter 4 Jesus has told his disciples that his food is to do the will of his Father. So in the Eucharist,‘We feed upon him who feeds upon the Father’s will. His whole life is one of filial response to the Father.’24 Thus the Eucharist expresses and renews the Christian partnership with Christ, a common life with a well-defined pattern, a partnership of equality, in giving and receiving, in shared mission and shared suffering, all based on the loving obedience of Jesus to his Father that lies at the heart of mission. As members of this partnership, Jesus calls us friends (John 15.15). Friendship, writes Jürgen Moltmann, is a relationship not just of affection, but of respect, loyalty and freedom. It emerges from a common joy and leads to shared sympathy. Theologically, the many-faceted work of Christ, which in the doctrine of Christ’s three-fold office was presented in terms of sovereignty and function, can be taken to its highest point in his friendship. The joy which Christ communicates and the freedom which he brings as prophet, priest and king find better expression in the concept of friendship than in those ancient titles. For in his divine function as prophet, priest and king, Christ lives and acts as a friend and creates friendship.25

23 Thornton, Common Life, p. 349. 24 Thornton, Common Life, p. 428. 25 Moltmann, Church, p. 119.

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This friendship with Jesus is, moreover, a foundation for mission. Like the ‘friend at midnight’ (Luke 11.5–11), in prayer for the world we act as friends of God, asking on behalf of others all that is appropriate within a relationship of freedom and respect. To pray in Jesus’ name, as he invites us to, is to pray as his friends (John 15.15–16). Moreover, Moltmann reminds us, in the ancient world friendship was not merely the private relationship for mutual emotional support that it has become in our individualist society. Friendship was a public concept, appropriate to a business partnership or participation in political life. To be known as a ‘friend of sinners’ was part of Jesus’ public persona and his disciples were open to challenge about his behaviour (Mark 2.15– 16). In the same way the church’s friendship with God and with one another – as too its friendship with sinners – is to be public, known by all and open to all. Its allegiance to him is to ‘sound forth’ in local communities (1 Thess. 1.8), its light to shine before all by means of good works (Matt. 5.16) and to silence the criticism of the foolish (1 Peter 2.15). As Graham Tomlin writes, the Protestant church in particular has found it difficult to reconcile the call to good works with the doctrine of justification by faith. But, ‘The true location of Christian behaviour is not in the doctrine of salvation but in the doctrine of mission.’26 It is when we realize that the church’s call is first and foremost to mission that the importance of a common life which matches that calling begins to come into focus. Koinonia, public partnership with Jesus, a common life based on friendship and a common goal, is of the essence of ecclesia, the pilgrim congregation. This common life is first a gift of grace, brought to fruition by the work of the Holy Spirit. But it is also a goal to aspire to. A church may fall short through the toleration of

26 Nick Spencer and Graham Tomlin, The Responsive Church, Leicester: InterVarsity Press, 2005, p. 99.

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sin in its midst, as at Corinth; and those for whom the presence of genuine koinonia is a cause for joy might still be urged to grow deeper into Christ, as at Philippi. In the next section we will ask how the goal of koinonia, mission-centred partnership in the power of the Holy Spirit, is realized.

The learning church As a public friendship, the church’s koinonia offers a foretaste of the kingdom. It acts as an attractive centre, drawing people to the source of the church’s life. Thus, a major element in the church’s calling is to ‘abide’ in Christ (John 15.4), deriving the quality of its life from his in the power of the Holy Spirit. This does not mean that ‘being’ comes before ‘doing’ in the sense that the church needs to pay attention to the quality of its life before embarking on mission but rather that mission is an overflow from the quality of its life. The church’s life is part of its mission and, conversely, a church without mission at its heart is failing to pattern its life on Christ. The focus of this section is on how the church achieves this. How does a congregation ‘pay attention to the quality of its life’? What processes are involved? What, in short, needs to happen if a church is to be growing into a pattern of life, worship, mission and relationships that is a genuine expression of Christian koinonia or ‘partnership in mission’? Many readers will assume that if the focus of this section is on the church as a learning community we will be paying attention to the church’s ‘learning activities’: sermons, small groups, youth fellowships, Sunday learning for children, and so on. I am not going to examine these activities, however, except in passing, and the reason is that although each has its place they are not the most important learning activities in the church. The most important learning activities in any church are not those which are ‘formal’ and deliberately planned. They are the ‘informal’ processes of formation and reflection, which are taking place all the time. What is required for the church to be faithful to its calling is that these 125

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processes should be working in such a way as to build koinonia and equip the church for mission. The reason that in so many churches they fail to do this is that they are so poorly understood and receive such scant attention. Formation Writing about the renewal of traditional church in chapter 1, I referred to the concept of the ‘hidden curriculum’, the learning that does not appear on any timetable and is rarely the subject of formal assessment but which contributes to the pupils’ learning in manifold ways that are rarely measurable. Like a school, a local church also has a hidden curriculum, which conveys powerful messages about what it means to be a Christian. It includes the layout of the church building: whether its focus is on the altar, the pulpit, the music group or the projector screen; whether the seating all faces in one direction, emphasizing impersonal formality, lack of interaction and dependence on the preacher or worship leader, or whether it is arranged in an arc or circle, emphasizing community. The way children are treated and the facilities provided for them express the priority given to their nurture. The agenda of church council or congregational meeting may major on finance and the maintenance of buildings and include little about prayer or mission. The meetings may be conducted in a spirit of anxiety or trust, contributions made with respect or hostility, the chair may encourage mutual listening or be anxious to persuade the meeting to endorse his or her agenda … And so the list might go on. Each of these elements in the life of the local church expresses far more effectively its real beliefs than do the words of a sermon or any other kind of formal teaching. These ‘hidden’ and informal messages are also picked up and learned more effectively than anything explicitly taught in sermons or study groups. The study of how this takes place is the field of ‘socialization’. Its importance can be demonstrated by the way in which culture is passed on from generation to generation 126

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as children learn values in informal ways from parents and peers; the way the working practices of businesses, hospitals and offices become embedded; the difficult to measure and yet powerful effects on society of television and advertising. It is perhaps enough to observe that it is a characteristic of human beings that we are able to ‘read’ each other at a very deep, subconscious level, that we pick up from the tone of a person’s voice, the expression of her face and a multiplicity of non-verbal signals not only a verbal message but the attitudes and even the values that lie behind the message, and that we are influenced by these. We are back in the territory explored in the section on principalities and powers: the way in which the ‘ethos’ or ‘spirit’ of an organization or place perpetuates itself, the way mental models that we rarely even examine mould our thinking. Socialization, or ‘formation’, is the most powerful and pervasive form of learning taking place in any Christian community. From this it follows that the most effective strategy for Christian learning is to seek to form the church as a Christlike community so that it provides a powerful expression of the values that should shape Christian life capable of forming its individual members. Thus Denham Grierson writes: ‘To educate a people of God is to call forth a community which by faith seeks to conform its life to the pattern of Christ, and to embody in the style of that life a distinctively Christian confession about human existence,’27 and John H. Westerhoff III: ‘A Christian character is the aggregate of qualities resulting from life in a Christian story-formed faith community.’28 These writers stand in the ‘faith community’ tradition of Christian life and learning. Their emphasis on the importance of community over the individual and informal socialization over formal learning in Christian education offers a

27 Denham Grierson, Transforming a People of God, Melbourne: Joint Board of Christian Education of Australia and New Zealand, 1994, p. 11. 28 John Westerhoff III, Building God’s People in a Materialist Society, New York: Seabury, 1983, p. 90.

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corrective to much of the church’s practice.29 The weaknesses of their position are twofold. First, they tend to emphasize the gathered over the dispersed community: their emphasis is on learning how to live as a community together to the neglect of learning how to live an effective Christian life at home, at work and as a citizen. Second, they fail to explain how a local congregation is to become and then remain an authentically Christian community. Thomas Groome sums up his critique of these theorists: ‘They are perceptive in explaining how the whole Christian community educates but are not nearly so clear on how the community can be educated.’30 As Groome points out, there is a vital role for critical as well as formative education. As an element in Christian learning, formation through socialization in community is both powerful and unavoidable. But in order to be effective it requires an equally powerful complement in which we stand outside the church’s life and think critically about it. Reflection Like socialization, reflection is going on informally all the time. Every time someone draws a conclusion from his experience, applies his reading of the Bible to his daily life, or seeks to take his Christian faith into account when facing an ethical dilemma or important decision he is reflecting. The all-pervasive nature of reflection arises from the fact that we are learning continually from experience. Planned formal learning experiences, such as reading a book, taking a course, or listening to a sermon, form only a tiny

29 Key books in the ‘faith community’ tradition include C. Ellis Nelson, Where Faith Begins, Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1967; Berard Marthaler, Catechesis in Context, Huntingdon, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, 1973; John H. Westerhoff III, Will our Children Have Faith?, 2nd edn, Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing, 2000; Building God’s People in a Materialistic Society, New York: Seabury, 1983; Generation to Generation (with Gwen Kennedy Neville), 2nd edn, New York; Pilgrim Press, 1979. For an overview, see Charles Foster, ‘The Faith Community as a Guiding Image for Christian Education’ in Contemporary Approaches to Christian Education, ed. Jack Seymour and Donald E. Miller, Nashville: Abingdon, 1982. 30 Thomas Groome, Christian Religious Education, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1980, p, 126.

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segment of our learning. Coping with new demands, making decisions, having a friendly discussion or heated argument, or reacting to a TV programme are all learning situations. Moreover, the learning that takes place in these informal situations is often far more powerful and effective than formal learning because they require us to examine our assumptions – to question what we think. The ‘cycle’ of experiential learning is now widely recognized. Its four elements are experience, analysis (alternatively labelled ‘response’ or ‘reflection’), concept formation and action. ‘Experience’ comes in a wide variety: a meeting, an accident, a conversation, TV advertisement, lecture or novel … the list is endless. To any and all of these there is a response: the thoughts it provokes, the memories it brings to mind, the questions it raises, the feelings it evokes. In the ‘reflection’ or ‘analysis’ stage of experiential learning we work with these, considering them, deciding which are the most important. This leads to ‘concept formation’, the stage at which the meaning of the experience becomes clear. It might involve coming to see the experience as an instance of something already familiar, an argument with a friend as ‘just him going on again’, a new task at work as similar to, though in some ways more demanding than, a process already mastered. Or it might involve changing the way we see things: an argument might lead us to change our mind, a TV programme make us more aware of the importance of the environment, for example. But learning is not complete unless it changes the way we act. Really to ‘learn’ about our responsibility to care for the environment means making changes in the way we use energy and recycle waste. To know that Jesus sought to form a diverse community and welcomed the outcast and stranger raises the question as to how the contemporary Christian community goes about welcoming the challenging stranger. Without the appropriate action nothing can really be said to have been learned.31 In ‘theological reflection’ learning from experience is given a 31 For experiential learning and the learning cycle, see David Kolb, Experiential Learning, London: Prentice Hall, 1984; Jennifer A. Moon, A Handbook of Reflective and Experiential Learning, London: RoutledgeFalmer, 2004.

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Godward dimension. Reflecting ‘theologically’ means bringing into the appropriate phase of the learning cycle such questions as, ‘Where is God in this situation?’ and ‘How is God calling us to respond?’ Most commonly, theological reflection goes on informally as Christians individually or together seek to make sense of their lives and experience or to discern God’s will in particular situations. Laurie Green provides an example as a way of introducing the concept in his book, Let’s Do Theology. Freda has been told by the management of the chain of stores where she works that she must make a member of her staff redundant. The first thing she does is to read up on the law relating to employment and redundancy and to check the facts of the case. As a Christian, however, she also seeks God’s help in the challenge before her. She prays about it; shares the problem with fellow-Christians, perhaps at her regular small group meeting; she talks to her minister; she may find help in an article in a Christian magazine, from the worship of her church on Sunday or in her reading of the Bible. In all these ways she is ‘drawing on the wisdom of the Christian tradition’.32 She is, Green argues, ‘doing theology’, a theology in which the Christian faith is brought into contact with day by day experience. Green goes on to explain the ‘pastoral cycle’, a more formal process by which Christians bring their faith to bear on everyday learning and decision-making.33 A variety of other approaches is available, each of which seeks to recognize the presence of God in the cycle of experiential learning.34 ‘Theological reflection,’ write Ballard and Pritchard, ‘is one of the crucial arts of ministry … the art of making theology connect with life and ministry so that gospel truth comes alive.’35 32 Laurie Green, Let’s Do Theology, 2nd edn, London; Mowbray, 2009, pp. 6–9. 33 See, for example, Paul Ballard and John Pritchard, Practical Theology in Action, London: SPCK, 1996; Helen Cameron, Resourcing Mission: Practical Theology for Changing Churches, London: SCM, 2010. 34 See Charles Chadwick and Phillip Tovey, Growing in Ministry Using Critical Incident Analysis, Cambridge: Grove, 2003; Patricia O’Connell Killen and John de Beer, The Art of Theological Reflection, New York: Crossroad, 1994; Sally and Paul Nash, Tools for Reflective Ministry, London: SPCK, 2009. 35 Ballard and Pritchard, Practical Theology, p. 116.

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The art and importance of reflective learning is widely recognized in professions such as medicine and teaching and in the business world, and there is much that the church can learn from these areas. In this respect, Peter Senge, whose book The Fifth Discipline is subtitled ‘The Art and Practice of the Learning Organisation’, is a useful guide.36 As Senge points out, reflection is about discerning the difference between ‘espoused theory’ and ‘enacted theory’, between what we say we believe and what our actions demonstrate that we actually believe. As a church we may say that we believe that God loves us and wants to be involved in the details of our everyday lives, but if our worship is cold and formal we demonstrate that we do not really believe this at all: our real belief is that he is distant and somewhat indifferent to us. We may say that we believe that the church is called to be a loving fellowship but if we make little effort to get to know each other, much less care for and support each other, we give the lie to our supposed belief. By asking questions about experience, reflection enables the church to get beyond its ‘espoused theology’ in order to examine its ‘enacted theology’. In reflection honesty is required. We are exposed to the power of reality. It asks us to become aware of what we think, to examine our assumptions to see whether these are securely based on the facts. As a result we move from ‘this is how things are’ to the more humble recognition that ‘this is the way I see things’. The outcome of this openness to the power of truth is the possibility of what Senge himself calls ‘metanoia’, a change of mind, or, as Laurie Green has it, ‘new-mindedness’.37 Individuals and whole churches are enabled to see things differently, to change their minds and thus their actions to fit with what they recognize to be the truth. No one reflects alone. Even when an individual Christian ponders on her own experience she is drawing on the ‘wisdom of 36 Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline, 2nd edn, London: Random House, 2006. 37 Senge, Fifth Discipline, pp. 13–14; Green, Theology, p. 84.

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the Christian tradition’, a tradition formed in community over many years and expressed in hymns, poetry, liturgies, Bible commentaries, other Christian writings and the visual arts. Reflection takes place in community and may be most effective in teams and groups. A group can bring a variety of perspectives, ensure that all relevant points of view are respected, and prevent an individual member from rushing to conclusions. On the other hand, a group may fall into unexpressed consensus, which may need to be challenged by individual members if it is to maintain its openness to truth. Most importantly, members of a group reflecting together need to approach the task as colleagues. Hierarchy stifles reflection, as group members come to be more concerned about what the superior may think than about honestly expressing their opinions and insights. Finally, reflection together enables the community to recognize and clarify its shared goals and shared values in the light of Christian tradition. Reflection allows the community to embrace its own story, a story that incorporates a host of individual stories, and to see it in relation to the Christian story as a whole. Reflection thus forms, affirms or corrects the church’s identity as a local expression of Christian community. Reflective community In Glendale, Northumberland, this reappropriation of identity through the churches’ involvement in the Glendale Gateway Trust has been a gift from the churches to a whole community. The tendency of ‘officialdom’ had been to see these remote rural areas as the hinterland of the nearby large towns and cities, with decisions about local resourcing made on this basis, resulting in shortages of affordable housing, lack of public transport and decreasing employment opportunities. The outcome of reflection on their context, led by the churches, was a determination to see this rural area as a community in its own right. The result has been a move from dispossession, in which all major decisions were taken elsewhere, to a sense of empowerment in which the Trust 132

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plays an enabling role in the provision of housing for young people and the revitalization of local businesses. Liberation from economic and social oppression may not be the overriding need of the churches in every community. But we do suffer from more subtle forms of oppression. We are defined and tend to define ourselves by the perceptions of our society. We accept the place and role that secular society has granted us and our internalization of the professional model of ordained ministry is part of this process. As a result, we aspire to ‘liberation’ through the recovery of a supposed past of full churches, financial security, social acceptance and political influence. This very acceptance of the definition of church and its role offered by society at large may mean that when we look at new and different ways of being church our existing mental models blind us to what they mean. What is needed is a change of mindset and with it the ability to recognize the church’s subversive calling to be the ‘sign, agent and foretaste of the kingdom’ and to work out what that will mean in terms of the shape of its ministry. The key to reflective community is to bring learning and ministry together. In the pattern of church with which we are familiar, learning and ministry are kept in separate boxes. In one box are the officially recognized learning activities: sermons, Lent courses, house groups, children’s activities and so on. The work of the church council, the choir, missionary support group, magazine production team, and all the other groups that make up the church’s ‘ministry’ are kept in another box. Thus learning and ministry remain separate and reflection on what we do as a church and why we do it, which ought to be a matter of course, rarely takes place. The solution is to bring the two together, to facilitate reflection on ministry throughout the church, so that even the choir and the flower arrangers are encouraged to reflect on the contribution of their ministry to the church’s mission. In many places, this is such a new concept that it is hard to know where to begin. In chapter 1 I quoted Stephen Cottrell’s experience as a diocesan missioner visiting a PCC to talk about evangelism 133

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and being forced after about ten minutes to switch from evangelism to talking about prayer instead.38 It took this amount of time to realize that the church had nothing to share. Evangelism has to arise from ‘an authentic and lived spirituality’ and without the ability to recognize and articulate that spirituality evangelism could not even begin. Instead, Cottrell realized that he would need to initiate a process of reflection, beginning in prayer. Some tools for reflection do exist. The Emmaus course begins with the booklet Contact, which invites churches, before embarking on a nurture course, to reflect together about what evangelism is, how people come to faith, how a course is to fit into the life of the church, whether they see their church as having fuzzy or defined boundaries, and the role of the congregation as companions on a spiritual journey.39 Alison Gilchrist’s booklet Creating a Culture of Welcome in the Local Church includes a hospitality audit inviting churches to evaluate the welcome they offer and provides pointers to the theological issues that need to be addressed.40 In the Healthy Churches Handbook theological reflection is already provided through the explanation of the seven marks. Its strength is that the model of a ‘healthy church’ is based on research and reflection. Its weakness is precisely that so much of the work of reflection is already done and that the initial ‘reflection’ asked of members of the congregation consists of a subjective response to a pre-existing model.41 Finally and more flexibly, in Let’s Do Theology Laurie Green offers a toolkit of resources for using the pastoral cycle in the life of the church. Beyond the corporate life of the local congregation, reflection is an essential component of its mission. It is now widely recognized 38 Stephen Cottrell, From the Abundance of the Heart: Catholic Evangelism for All Christians, London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2006, p. 3. 39 Stephen Cottrell et. al., Emmaus, The Way of Faith: Contact, 2nd edn, London: Church House Publishing, 2003. 40 Alison Gilchrist, Creating a Culture of Welcome in the Local Church, Cambridge: Grove, 2004. 41 Robert Warren, The Healthy Churches’ Handbook, London: Church House Publishing, 2004.

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that engagement with the community requires a mission audit, through which the church seeks to discern the direction in which God is calling it into mission and service.42 Once the church embarks on mission, the discipline of reflection is required to prevent it from falling into the trap of needs-meeting. Reflection enables the church to keep the call to mission in the forefront of its thinking, maintaining its own kingdom-centred approach to its service to the community rather than adopting the definitions of the secular agencies with which it may be working in partnership or from whom it may be accepting funds.43 As it embarked on mission, St Michael’s Blackheath was faced with the need continually to adapt its strategy in the light of the community’s response. Rather than simply implementing a pre-existing plan, they reflected and thus discerned the leading of God as they went along. In the rhythm of action and reflection, the church’s tradition came alive as a resource for mission in the present day. Leading the learning church Enabling a local church to become a reflective community requires a revolution in leadership. When congregations become learning organizations, church leaders reframe their basic tasks and responsibilities. Pastors cease to perform ministry on the congregation’s behalf. They instead foster learning environments where the whole people of God can shape and reshape meaning within a community of shared practice, continually clarifying those meanings in the light of a deeper understanding of the revelation made known in Jesus Christ.44 42 Steven Croft, Freddy Hedley and Bob Hopkins, Listening for Mission: Mission Audit for Fresh Expressions, London: Church House Publishing, 2006; Mike Chew and Mark Ireland, How to Do Mission Action Planning, London: SPCK, 2009. 43 Ann Morisy, Journeying Out, London: Continuum, 2004, pp. 21–43. 44 Thomas Hawkins, The Learning Congregation, Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997, p. 11.

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In order to nurture reflective community professionally trained ministers need to lay down the authority of their expertise. In a group gathered for reflection, the presence of someone identified as ‘the expert’ stops the process dead in its tracks. The first task for professional clergy is to help their congregations to recognize the areas in which they are the experts: what it is like to live in the area, to be a member of the church, the kinds of challenge and dilemma they face in daily life and work, and so on. It is not that the expertise of the clergy has no value; simply that this needs to be balanced by the very different kind of knowledge held by the community. Laurie Green christens the required role ‘people’s theologian’.45 Rather than relating as professional over against the community, she works within the community in something of the same way as the animator in community work, exercising the skills of the adult educator. While soaked in the Christian tradition, she must remain the servant rather than the controller of it, using her expertise to guide the process rather than claiming the right of final judgement, a role that requires considerable spiritual depth. She will need to have been accepted as a member of the community, living with integrity in its midst and becoming conversant with its language and story. In many places this will mean embracing ‘downward social mobility’ in order to identify with the poor. Finally, from this vantage point she will need to guard against the ever-present temptation for the community to adopt the mindset of its ‘oppressors’: as church members to undervalue the gifts they bring and the knowledge they hold simply because they are the ‘laity’, as members of the koinonia of Christ to be moulded by the mindsets of the wider community. The leader within the reflective community will also be a conflict resolver. The raw material of theological reflection is the ministry of the church, and thus its several separate ministries. These are the sphere of volunteers and thus very often of the 45 Green, Theology, pp. 134–6.

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‘volunteer mentality’ described by Sara Savage.46 In a Christian environment, especially one in which the professional minister bears ultimate responsibility, volunteer workers often see themselves as having taken on a particular task as a favour. They may expect appreciation but not accountability, to be allowed to do the task their own way and not be subject to evaluation. The introduction of reflection in this context poses an immediate threat to the volunteer’s autonomy. The role of the leader is to help her to recognize that the threat is at the same time an opportunity to grow. The ‘volunteer mentality’ is an example of what Peter Senge calls a ‘defensive routine’.47 Defensive routines are always evoked in a reflective environment because reflection asks us to examine the way we think and question our assumptions. Learning like this is always a threat and, because we are fallen human beings, we tend to wrap ourselves up in defences to avoid this threat. The ‘culture of niceness’ so prevalent in many churches, of which the volunteer mentality is but one manifestation, is in itself a defensive routine: the avoidance of conflict masquerading as mutual concern. A group may tacitly agree to avoid reflecting deeply on a particular issue in order to avoid conflict, or to spare the possible pain of one or more of its members. An individual may appeal to authority in order to avoid having to admit a lack of understanding. There is the temptation to reach for an immediate and attractive solution or simply the fear of change and of the unknown that may follow. But defensive routines are more than a problem: they are also part of the solution. This is because they express underlying mental models, the very mindsets that the process of reflection seeks to identify and work with. A church warden and long-time member of a congregation once said to me, ‘You’ll only take any pews out of here over my dead body!’ The church was full of pews, 46 Sara Savage, ‘On the Analyst’s Couch: Psychological perspectives on congregations and clergy’ in The Future of the Parish System, ed. Steven Croft, London: Church House Publishing, 2006, pp. 16–32. 47 Senge, Fifth Discipline, pp. 232–40.

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most of which were sat on only at the most well-attended funerals, and there was no room for people to gather for coffee, to read the notice-board without getting in each other’s way, and no quiet space for personal prayer anywhere in the church. Was this church warden merely being obstructive? Or was he expressing a deeply held mental model of church, one which may have been widely shared in that congregation? Had I been able to ask him why he felt so strongly, I might have discovered something extremely valuable about the story and identity of that church. Thus reflective leadership requires expertise of a different kind from the professional model of ministry. In fact, the professional model may be a hindrance to the church becoming a reflective community, placing the minister in the wrong role and putting the wrong expectations on his shoulders. Taking up the role of ‘people’s theologian’ or animator of a learning church requires a rebalancing of the value of the minister’s knowledge of the church’s tradition against the congregation’s experientially based knowledge of life and work in their own context. Only when this takes place can the minister become an effective enabler of the church’s mission. But he will also be doing much more than this. Many people both within and outside the church are looking for a ‘wisdom for living’ by which to integrate what for many are very fragmented lives. A Christian faith that depends on the expertise of professional ministers passed on through authoritative instruction can never become that ‘wisdom for living’ that more and more people are seeking. Such ‘wisdom’ is practical rather than theoretical. It can only emerge from and be integrated with experience; it is the outcome of experiential learning.

Reflective discipleship Transformation As it becomes a reflective learning community, the local church will begin to change under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. It will grow in its understanding of Christian tradition, its ability to 138

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discern the mission of God in its own context, and its capacity to respond to God’s call. Hand in hand with this process goes the transformation of individual believers. As Rowan Williams puts it,‘To come to be “in Christ” involves a far-reaching reconstruction of human life.’48 The expectation that every disciple grow to Christian maturity is part of the warp and weft of the New Testament. To the Colossians Paul describes himself as ‘warning everyone and teaching everyone in all wisdom, so that we may present everyone mature in Christ’ (Col. 1.28). The prayers with which he begins his letters are a balance between thanksgiving for the change wrought in his readers thus far and his desire to see further growth. In Galatia, where the churches were in danger of slipping back, he describes himself as ‘in the pain of childbirth until Christ is formed in you’ (Gal. 4.19). Nor was this a preoccupation of Paul alone. The writer to the Hebrews upbraids his readers for their failure to progress to maturity (Heb. 5.11—6.12) and James exhorts his readers to allow their trials to make them ‘mature and complete, lacking in nothing’ (James 1.2–4). The word translated ‘mature’ (or in some versions ‘perfect’) is teleios. It carries the sense of being fitted for a telos or goal. For the Christian disciple, that goal is the kingdom of God. The desire of the apostles was to see Christians living the life of the kingdom in the present age. And since the kingdom has arrived definitively in Christ, he is the ‘form’ of that life. Christian maturity means that Christ is ‘formed’ in the believer. The purpose of this section is to explore what that might mean and how it takes place. Since the kingdom has already arrived in Christ, there is an ‘already’ dimension to Christian transformation. ‘To all who received him,’ writes John, ‘he gave power to become children of God’ (John 1.12). If we are children, writes Paul, then we are heirs, ‘heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ’ (Rom. 8.17). Already we are adopted into God’s family as his children. But like the 48 Rowan Williams, On Christian Theology, Oxford: Blackwell, 2000, p. 138.

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kingdom, our transformation will only be complete at the last day. ‘Beloved,’ writes John, ‘we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is’ (1 John 3.2). ‘Now,’ writes Paul, ‘we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known’ (1 Cor. 13.12). The emphasis on ‘seeing’ in both these texts is significant. It recalls the longing of the psalmists to see the face of God in worship (Ps. 42.2; 84.7). It also bears a relation to the way a child is said to derive its identity from the mother’s gaze. Finally, it is a reminder of Paul’s statement that ‘the God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” … has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ’ (2 Cor. 4.6). Between our adoption as God’s children and the final revelation of our true identity comes the gradual process by which we grow into the family likeness. It is described in the New Testament in a multitude of ways, but everywhere taken for granted as the essence of discipleship. In the letter of James it is about letting those trials that God allows have their full effect in the development of character. The same is true of Paul’s thought in Romans 5.3–5. In Romans 12.2 he appeals to his readers to be ‘transformed by the renewing of your minds’; in Ephesians 4.24 he urges them to ‘clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God’. In 2 Corinthians 3.18, in words in which he again uses the metaphor of seeing, he describes the way in which we all ‘with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another’. Most of these passages, though not all, are in the passive. This again reflects the thrust of the New Testament’s teaching about Christian transformation. Sometimes the emphasis is on what God does; at others on what we need to do. If we ask which is correct, the answer is clearly ‘Both’, so that Paul can urge the Philippians to ‘work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in 140

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you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure’ (Phil. 2.12–13). In a recent book, Tom Wright, rightly, I believe, explains the New Testament’s approach to ethics by means of the virtue tradition of the ancient world, albeit a tradition radically reshaped in the light of the incarnation of Jesus and the gift of the Spirit.49 For Aristotle, the virtues were the strengths required in order to lead the good life. Of these strengths, the most important were courage, justice, prudence and temperance, the so-called cardinal virtues. In the New Testament the concepts of a goal and of the qualities of character through which it is to be attained are both retained. But the content of each is radically transformed. In his incarnation, Jesus has given us a pattern of what it really means to be human. God’s pattern for human well-being is the kingdom, with its qualities of Sabbath and shalom, harmony and right relating based on the joyful celebration of God’s abundance. The qualities through which the kingdom is to be attained have also been radically revised: not only does Jesus’ example redefine what the four cardinal virtues look like, but he adds others, including some, such as humility, which the ancient world would not have recognized as a virtue at all, and above all agape, now defined as sacrificial, self-giving love. Finally, in the Christian virtue tradition there is a different account of how the virtues that make up a Christian character develop. They are not seen as latent capacities to be developed through regular exercise. Rather, what is required is metanoia, a radical change of direction that echoes the pattern of Jesus’ death and resurrection, empowered by the gift of the Holy Spirit. Thus Christians are called to ‘anticipate’ the fulfilment of the kingdom in the age to come by living their lives in the present age within a kingdom framework. In order to achieve this we need continually to ‘put off ’ our old habits of thought and action in order to ‘put on the new’ (Eph. 4.22–24; Col. 3.5, 12). At first the 49 Tom Wright, Virtue Reborn, London: SPCK, 2010.

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new way of living feels strange and difficult, but through constant acts of mindful choosing we become habituated: the virtues grow in us and become second nature. This radical transformation realizes the rule of God. The destiny of humanity, according to the creation stories, was to have been to ‘have dominion’ over creation (Gen. 1.28). As a new creation, Christians are called to recover that destiny by ‘reigning with Christ’ (Rom. 5.17; Eph. 2.6). The outcome of their rule and reign is to bring the Sabbath and shalom of God’s kingdom into the contexts of their daily life and work. But that rule is to be exercised in the same way that Jesus exercised his: by living in perfect obedience to the Father to the point of giving up his life. The work of the Spirit Although the emphasis in Wright’s book is on the active, human side of the equation, the call to work out our own salvation, he acknowledges that this is not the whole story. He recognizes that the qualities of Christian character urged by the apostles are the fruit of the Spirit and, most helpfully, notes the fallacy of the idea that what we do God can’t do and vice versa. In fact, as we have seen, in the New Testament, active and passive, what we do and what God does in us, go together. Our submission to God and practice of the Christian virtues is at the same time the work of the Holy Spirit, the agent of God’s mission. There is a mystery about the relationship of Holy Spirit and human spirit. New Testament scholar C. F. D. Moule writes about the Spirit ‘impinging’ on the human spirit to make God known at a deep level of human personality.50 Paul has to invent curious Greek constructions to convey a sense of this relationship. In Romans 8.16 the Spirit summarturei or ‘bears witness with our spirit’ that we are children of God. In verses 26 and 27 the Spirit sunantilambenetai, or ‘takes hold with and over against us’ to help us pray. Here and more especially in 2 Corinthians 2.6–16 the 50 C. F. D. Moule, The Holy Spirit, Oxford: Mowbray, 1978, pp. 15, 17.

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Spirit, by his presence ‘with, alongside and in place of ’ the human spirit conveys to us the ‘mind of Christ’. These passages make it clear that when Paul urges the Romans to be transformed ‘by the renewing of your minds’ (Rom. 12.2) and the Philippians to aspire to the attitude of Christ Jesus (Phil. 2.5) he believed that this transformation was one in which the agency of the Spirit and that of the individual believer were involved together. What is also clear is that the Spirit does not override human freedom but enhances and strengthens it. As a wooer calls forth love in the beloved, so the grace of God through the gift of the Spirit enables us to respond.51 To use Paul’s words the ‘law of sin and of death’, which prevented us from becoming the people we wished we could be, has been overcome by ‘the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus’ (Rom. 8.2), not only restoring to us the power to realize our own best ideals but enabling us to become like Jesus himself. The Spirit brings ordinary people into a realm of extraordinary possibility. ‘We become subjects of a quality of existence and activities which go back to God’s sphere of existence and activity.’52 Christian discipleship is thus far more than attempting to live a good life guided by the New Testament. It is participation in the life of God himself. We are always involved, but so too is God the Holy Spirit, at the very core of our being. We are called to a ‘transforming, personal, intimate relationship with the triune God’.53 ‘We enter the dance of the Trinity not as equals but as adopted partners.’54 When, as a result of the choices we make in the joys and stresses of daily life, we begin to exhibit qualities of compassion, goodness, gentleness or self-control, these are not simply the outcome of own efforts. They are the fruit of the Holy Spirit, enabled and empowered by the grace of God. It is, in Paul’s 51 Clark Pinnock, Flame of Love, Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996, pp. 157–9. 52 Yves-Marie Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1983, vol. 1, p. 32. 53 Pinnock, Flame, p. 149. 54 Pinnock, Flame, p. 157.

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words, ‘no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me’ (Gal. 2.20).55 Thus, ‘to be conformed to Christ is not an ideal to be striven after. It is not as though we had to imitate him as well as we could. We cannot transform ourselves into his image; it is rather the form of Christ that seeks to be formed in us, and to be manifested in us.’56 Christian learning In my earlier book, Divine Revelation and Human Learning, I showed, by exploring the psychology of learning and theology of revelation, that the way Christians learn and grow in their faith involves the same processes of learning through which we learn ordinary everyday things and grow in maturity as people. Just as the Holy Spirit does not override but enhances human freedom, so the Spirit does not bypass the natural processes of learning but works through them.57 It follows that the principles which have been shown by experiment and experience to lie behind effective adult education apply equally in church settings. Adults learn best when their existing experience is respected and when they have the opportunity to connect new information to this existing experience. They learn best when they are allowed to set their own goals and when they can see the direct personal relevance of any new information. They learn best through interaction with others on the same learning journey as themselves, when offered a variety of activities through which to learn and where they can evaluate their own progress. The reason so many adults fail to grow in their faith is that, sadly, in many Christian contexts these principles are ignored. Leon McKenzie’s observation, though relating to the United States, is equally applicable to much British experience: ‘In too many places, teaching is apprised as authoritative telling; learning is equated as listening and accepting. The faith-process 55 Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge, Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2005, pp. 49–52. 56 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, London: SCM, 1959, p. 341. 57 Divine Revelation and Human Learning, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004.

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becomes the receiving a cultural hand-me-down and not the wrestling with Jacob’s angel that leads to authentic commitment.’58 The difficulty expressed by many clergy in conveying the idea that discipleship embraces the whole of our life may be due to the professional model of ministry, which risks overemphasizing the specialist knowledge of those with the requisite training and disregarding the wisdom of the adult educator. Most people today seem to believe that the Church is out of touch. It does not touch their everyday lives, it does not touch their concerns, their routines or their struggles . . . Christianity is a transforming and vibrant faith, which holds the key to our deepest concerns, and yet we are beset with a constant difficulty of trying to find a fulfilling way to integrate our Christian belief and our daily life.59 The expectations surrounding the professional model can create a situation in which Christian teaching is expected to consist of authoritative telling. But Christians do not learn simply by listening to sermons or talks; they learn by applying what they hear to the issues, problems and challenges they encounter in their daily lives; or, like ‘Freda’ in Green’s example, through beginning with a challenging situation and being helped to draw on the wisdom of the Christian tradition to discern the presence and call of God. It is vital that in sharing their specialist knowledge ordained ministers avoid relegating the experientially based knowledge gained by ordinary Christians through reflection to second-class status. If Christians are to be empowered to take the ‘reign of God’ into their everyday working contexts what is required is a profound change in the way we expect to learn and grow in the faith. 58 Leon McKenzie, The Religious Education of Adults, Birmingham, AL: Religious Education Press, 1982, p. 11. 59 Green, Theology, p. 3.

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Reflection is thus a key element in learning and transformation not only for the church as a whole but for its individual members. One way of empowering Christians for daily discipleship is by equipping them with the skills of what Roger Walton calls ‘faithful reflection’, the skills required to learn from experience.60 An example is the course known as Twenty-Four/Seven offered by the Diocese of Lichfield’s Local Ministry Training Scheme, in which candidates for local ministry gather a group from their own home church, invite each member of the group week by week to bring a story from their daily life and work, and lead the group through one of several methods of reflection in order to discern the presence of God and the possibilities for ministry in that situation. I have successfully adapted this course for use with ordinands at Ripon College Cuddesdon as part of their training and know from experience that it is a very rare occasion when the group process fails to throw new light on the situation brought for reflection. Beyond the specific insights gained through bringing everyday experience and Christian tradition into creative dialogue in a context of corporate attentiveness to the Spirit, the practice of reflection leads to familiarity with a different type of ‘knowing’. Rowan Williams summed up the resulting change of perspective in a lecture in 2004: A theologically educated person is someone who has acquired the skill of reading and interpreting the world in the context and framework of Christian belief and Christian worship . . . not someone who simply knows a great deal about the Bible or history of doctrine but somebody who is able to engage in some quite risky and innovative interpretation.61 The key to taking Christian faith outside the four walls of our 60 Roger Walton, The Reflective Disciple, London: Epworth, 2009, pp. 111–42. 61 Rowan Williams, CEPACS lecture, Birmingham, 3 November 2004, www. archbishopofcanterbury.org/1048

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church buildings and seeing it effective in the world around is that ‘skill’ or ability to recognize the kingdom dimensions of ordinary situations, which is developed through the practice of reflection. Equally important are the attitudes and practices that need to underlie the discipline of reflection. Walton suggests that these are fourfold.62 First, there is ‘courageous openness’: ‘a faith that is open to the possibility of God at all times’. Such openness to the presence of God in any and every situation is courageous because it may involve exploring places of failure and pain, or being open to recognize areas of prejudice. To engage in reflection is always to face the possibility of change, something particularly difficult for those for whom faith may be a protection against the very challenges they face in daily life. The second is ‘careful accountability’. Reflection takes place in community. It is not the case that any and every insight or interpretation is as good as any other. Openness to the Spirit in reflection requires openness to others, whose insights may provide a caution or corrective. The third discipline is ‘conscientious immersion in the tradition’. In order to draw on wisdom of the Christian tradition, we need to know what that is. This requires above all familiarity with Scripture. It is also the place where those familiar with the tradition may be most help and where sermons and traditional Christian teaching come into play. Finally, there is ‘constant prayerfulness’. Whatever we undertake in order to grow in Christian understanding and maturity is done in partnership with the Holy Spirit and is a response to grace. We therefore require a conscious openness to and dependence on the wisdom he brings in order to discern ‘the mind of Christ’ for the situation. As I have suggested in the previous section, reflection is likely to be most fruitful when it arises from ministry. When Jesus left his original disciples to carry on his mission they were far from ready. One had denied him and all had deserted him at the point of greatest pressure. But Jesus did not mean to wait until they were 62 Walton, Disciple, pp. 104–10.

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fully prepared before commissioning them for ministry. His plan was that they would continue to learn on the job and his promise of the Holy Spirit was precisely for this purpose. We have already seen that effective corporate reflection arises from and helps to guide the ministry of the whole church. The same is true of the individual Christian. The call to ministry is thus a vitally important element in discipleship. Vocation Emma was married and in her twenties and worked as a housing officer. Her mother is a primary school teacher, and Emma had vowed that she herself would never become a teacher. One summer I ran a course for the church on adult learning, which Emma joined out of interest. In the course of eight weeks she discovered that she was a brilliantly creative teacher with a real love for it. She is now happily teaching in a primary school! Phil is married to Heidi, who was recently ordained. During their last year in college my wife Meg ran a course called ‘Shape’ for the college spouses’ group, exploring gifts and passions.63 Through the course, Phil was drawn towards ministry to the bereaved. The following term he enrolled with the ordinands for their week-long course on death and bereavement and left college with Heidi with a desire to explore how he could offer his training and concern to the church. John is a member of our church in Stoke who, like most of our church, had taken a course called ‘Network’, like ‘Shape’ exploring gifts, passions and Christian service.64 At the end of the course the gifts people had discovered or had confirmed were recorded. When the head teacher of our church school asked if there was anyone in our congregation who could take care of the school

63 ‘Your Shape for God’s Service’, created by Amiel Osmaston, available from Diocese of Carlisle, Church House, West Walls, Carlisle CA3 8EU. 64 Details of the Willow Creek ‘Network’ course are at www.willowcreek.org.uk/ resource.php

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fund, I turned to the list and found John’s name among those with gifts of administration. For several years, John carried out a hidden ministry to the school, collecting, banking and keeping the accounts for the school fund, acting as a responsible outsider for the school. Pauline was a member of a Bishop’s Certificate course that I led, whose final unit is on ministry and vocation.65 At the end of the course, four members of the group went on to train for local ministry. But for Pauline the outcome was different. At the time of the final unit, she was exploring a new direction in her work. She had worked as a shop assistant and then shop manager and had applied for a job as manager of a charity shop. Her new job had several new dimensions: the management of volunteers, the maintenance of the right ambience for the shop and the exploration of how to express the charity’s distinctive values. Through the unit Pauline was able to explore how her new job could be a vocation, the task God was calling her to carry out for him, her way of contributing to the coming of the kingdom. Understood in this way, vocation has both an inward and an outward aspect. Inwardly, vocation arises from a sense of the gifts that God has given us and the passion he has placed in our heart. In the words of Francis Dewar, vocation is, A task or activity engaged in for the love of it by which others may be enriched or released: something you do as a freely chosen expression of your nature and energy, something that expresses the unique essence of yourself which God calls out from you to be a gift to others.66 Outwardly, vocation is the recognition of our gifts by others and 65 Lichfield Diocesan Bishop’s Certificate, created by David Sceats and Pauline Shelton, published by Lichfield Diocesan Board of Ministry. 66 Francis Dewar, Called or Collared?, London: SPCK, 1991, p. 2.

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the call to offer them in service. Exactly how the opportunities for service, the job that is actually required, matches up with personal gifts, makeup and passion, the yearning to make a difference, is a matter for exploration and often personal growth.67 Dewar has several suggestions for recognizing genuine vocation. It will, he says, involve risk of some kind; it will be a generous giving of what we truly are and can be. It will be something that in some way enriches the impoverished, gives sight to the blind, release to prisoners or freedom for the oppressed; that is to say, it will be an expression of God’s kingdom. It may not be lifelong but something that changes and develops; in most cases it will not be something we are paid for doing. And finally, in most cases it will be something in the secular sphere rather than the church.68 This understanding of vocation, championed by Dewar for many years and expressed in courses like ‘Shape’ and ‘Network’, expresses several important theological insights, most of which are now well-established and widely recognized. First and foremost, Christian discipleship is response to a call. In Jesus’ own words, ‘You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit’ (John 15.16). Christian faith is not primarily assent to a set of propositions but a life to be lived in obedience to one who calls. That call is to become a partner in the mission of God. This is what the original disciples were trained to do, and participation in the mission continued to shape them after the resurrection as they went on ‘following Jesus’. Second, ministry is the task of the whole church. Through baptism we become part of a ministering community. Third, that community is the Body of Christ, within which there are a variety of gifts, callings and ministries. In the light of our developing understanding of the mission of God, we are beginning to see that most of these gifts are to be exercised in the secular sphere, that the church is called to be

67 The classic exploration of this theme is Elizabeth O’Connor’s Journey Inward, Journey Outward, New York: Harper and Row, 1968. 68 Dewar, Called or Collared?, pp. 5–6.

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an outward facing community, whose ministry is exercised in the world that God created and loves. Another vitally important component of this understanding of vocation is the theology of work as co-operation with God in the transformation of creation. In other words, it involves recognizing with theologians like Moltmann and Volf that work has a kingdom dimension. As, in the original creation, human beings were commissioned to ‘subdue’ and shape the created world, so in the new creation, human work is to contribute to the world’s redemption. It follows that it is only too likely that Christians will discover their vocation in the sphere of everyday work and life, since this is the world God seeks to redeem. Moreover, Dewar’s experience leads him to assert that response to God’s call is likely to involve risk. Discipleship, as Ann Morisy maintains, is a matter of ‘venturesome love’, a commitment to public action that may run against the grain of culture and society. It is through such ministry that we are formed in the likeness of Jesus, growing in compassion, as we are brought into contact with the world’s need, and discernment, as we seek, by means of action and reflection, for a faithful response. Finally, and fairly recently, there is the recognition that vocation in the sense we are exploring is not confined to Christians. ‘Deep within each one of us,’ maintains Stephen Covey, ‘there is an inner longing to live a life of greatness and contribution – to really matter, to make a difference.’69 This longing is an expression of what Ann Morisy calls the ‘vocational’ domain of faith. ‘The response to a call from within to be better than we are,’ she writes, ‘is a democratic, all-including, human phenomenon.’70 Increasingly, it is one of the ways that people find their way to Christian faith, perhaps through joining in partnership with a local church in its service of the community. ‘Monica’ was an occasional attender at a church I was asked to 69 Stephen Covey, The Eighth Habit, New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004, p. 28. 70 Morisy, Journeying Out, p. 204.

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care for temporarily and asked to be confirmed. As a receptionist with a local company, Monica cared deeply about the quality of the reception area. She had reorganized it and was passionate about keeping it clean and tidy in order to offer a welcome of real quality to customers and clients. When part of it was appropriated for a new office leaving her with less than adequate space for the kind of welcome she wanted to provide, she was deeply disappointed. After the confirmation service, when she had gone back to being an occasional attender, I began to wonder whether an exploration of God’s quality of hospitality would have been more effective as a way in to faith for Monica than the standard confirmation course. The call to ministry is a Christ-centred and mission orientated expression of the vocational dimension of faith. It is thus an important, if not essential, part of the way in which Christian faith breaks out of the ‘religious’ compartment of our lives to become a wisdom for living, providing meaning for the whole of experience. The leadership task linked with vocation is to help people to recognize their gifts and passions and to discover avenues for service that allow them to express their inner sense of calling. Stephen Covey writes, ‘Leadership is communicating to people their worth and potential so clearly that they come to see it in themselves.’71 His words tie in closely with a definition of love drawn from Kierkegaard: ‘The non-possessive delight in the uniqueness of others.’72 This style of enabling leadership involves setting people free to discover themselves in Christ’s service. The next element of the leadership task is to enable people to think along theological lines about their work. Trevor Cooling laments the failure of many Christian teachers to perceive the kingdom dimension in their daily work:

71 Covey, Eighth Habit, p. 98. 72 Quoted in Sara Savage and Eolene Boyd-Macmillan, The Human Face of Church, Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2007, p. 148.

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Far too many of them assume Christian ministry and mission are what I call Christian empire building, which they know raises many issues in educational contexts. Therefore they shy away from thinking of their professional work as kingdom work. We need to build their theological competence before they will be confident to be distinctively Christian in their professional role.73 Building theological competence for daily discipleship will involve both direct teaching about the character of God’s mission and passing on the tools of reflection to enable people to discern the mission aspects of their specific calling. Christian vocation, like Christian transformation, lies at the heart of what it means to be church, a Spirit-filled koinonia, a friendship group with the shared task of participating in the mission of God. But far from vocation applying to a few specialists, it is a universal element of Christian discipleship. And rather than confined to ministry within the gathered congregation, most vocation is to serve God in the ‘secular’ sphere: the world he loves. Any model of ministry with the mission of God at its centre must therefore describe the ministry not just of the ordained few but of the whole people of God.

73 Trevor Cooling, Called to Teach: Teaching as a Missional Vocation, Cambridge: Grove, 2010, p. 10.

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4

Ministry Agents of the Kingdom

Diakonia In the previous chapter we encountered two examples of contextualization in the New Testament: the way a word with a recognized meaning in contemporary culture is carefully chosen to describe the new Christian reality. The church is ecclesia, the ‘gathering of God’, with its overtones of both the assembly of citizens and the pilgrim congregation of the exodus; and it is a koinonia, a Spirit-filled partnership of Jesus’ friends. As the New Testament church reflected on its own life, these words helped to locate the new reality that was the Spirit-filled Christian community in the culture and society of its time. In the process, their meaning was transformed by that new reality, just as the virtue tradition was transformed in the light of Christian faith. In this section we will be looking at a third example of contextualization: diakonia, the New Testament’s word for ministry, and its related diakonos, ‘minister’ or ‘deacon’. The next few paragraphs consist of a quite technical discussion, which I will try to make as clear as possible. For at least the last 200 years, the root meaning of diakonia wherever it occurs in the New Testament has been understood as ‘humble service’. The church’s calling has been understood as service to society, following the example of Jesus who came ‘not to be served but to serve’ (Mark 10.45). The ‘deacon’ has been understood as an order of ministry 154

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with a distinctive calling to humble service representing the character of the church’s ministry as a whole. More recently this understanding of diakonia has been convincingly challenged by the Australian scholar John Collins, who has shown that the root meaning of diakonia in secular Greek usage was not ‘humble service’ but ‘commissioned service’.1 What follows from this is that, while in some circumstances diakonia may be about humbly meeting human need, the emphasis is not on the person with the need but on the person who commissions. The essence of diakonia is ‘agency’ or carrying out a mandate, with the commissioned agent as an emissary or ‘go-between’. In the New Testament diakonia appears with its ordinary secular meaning in relation to the collection made by the Gentile churches for the church in Jerusalem, in which Paul and Barnabas acted as emissaries or representatives. Elsewhere, in its new ‘theological’ sense, diakonia describes the ‘ministry’ or ‘commission’ of the apostles (Acts 1.17, 25), Paul and his companions (Acts 20.24; 21.19; 2 Cor. 4.1), Archippus (Col. 4.17) and Timothy (2 Tim. 4.5). Like diakonia, diakonos also had an ordinary meaning: it meant an attendant, someone who acted on behalf of another. Sometimes the diakonos had the humble duty of waiting at table, like the ‘servants’ of John 2.5 and 9, who filled the six water-jars at the wedding at Cana. But the diakonos need not be in a humble position. It all depended on the status of the person whose attendant he was. In 1 Corinthians 3.5, where Paul describes himself and Apollos as diakonoi, he means that they are ‘men with a commission from God’. The point he is making in this passage turns on precisely the same distinction I am highlighting here between the two meanings of diakonia: he is not the ‘humble servant’ of the Corinthians but the ‘commissioned agent’ of God and, therefore, responsible to God rather than to them. Equally telling are the other words he uses to describe his ministry and 1 John Collins, Diakonia: Re-interpreting the Ancient Sources, New York: Oxford University Press, 1990 and Deacons in the Church, Leominster: Gracewing, 2002.

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that of his team to the critical and unruly Corinthian church: literally God’s ‘fellow-workers’ (1 Cor. 3.9), Christ’s ‘administrative assistants’ (4.1), ‘stewards’ of God’s mysteries (4.1) and ‘ambassadors’ (2 Cor. 5.20), each one stressing the ‘commissioned’ nature of the service rather than its humility. How are we to apply this new insight to ministry today? Among those who have taken note of Collins’ work to date there is no unanimity.2 But I would like to suggest that our developing understanding of the missio Dei, on which this book is based, provides a perfect theological framework within which to locate the meaning and significance of diakonia. First, and most important, if the root meaning of diakonia is ‘commissioned service’ then the outstanding thing about the diakonos, or person with a diakonia, is that they are ‘sent’. ‘Ministry’ is thus the counterpart of ‘mission’. We have seen that mission is first and foremost something that God does. But we have also seen that he invites our participation. Part of the church’s call is to be an ‘agent’ of the kingdom. ‘Ministry’ is then, quite simply, our part in the mission of God: it is the ‘administration’, ‘stewardship’ or ‘mediation’ of the missio Dei. The relationship between ecclesia and diakonia, ministry and the church, will therefore reflect the relationship of the church to the missio Dei. The church is not the originator of mission; it is called into being by the mission of God to be the sign, foretaste and agent of his kingdom. It participates in God’s mission by discerning what God is doing in a particular situation and following the guidance of the Spirit about how best to join in. Because the church ‘exists by mission as a fire exists by burning’,3

2 See Paul Avis, A Ministry Shaped by Mission, London: Continuum, 2005; Steven Croft, ‘Serving, sustaining, connecting: Patterns of ministry in the mixed economy Church’ in The Future of the Parish System, ed. Croft, London: Church House Publishing, 2006, pp. 75–90; Paula Gooder, ‘Towards a diaconal church: some reflections on the New Testament material’ in The Diaconal Church, ed. David Clark, Peterborough: Epworth, 2008, pp. 99– 108. 3 Emil Brunner, The Word in the World, London: SCM, 1931, p.138.

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and is called to be an agent of the kingdom, ministry is of the essence of the church. As R. Paul Stevens declares: ‘The church does not have a ministry (or a minister); it is ministry.’4 The church does not originate ministry nor control it: ministry is given to it by God through the Holy Spirit to serve his mission. Yet the church is called to participate in what God is doing; and this participation includes recognizing the ‘shape’ of the ministry to which it is called, and the gifts allotted to its individual members, and authorizing particular people for ministry of various kinds. Ministry is of the essence of the church, but just as it errs when it loses touch with its raison d’être of serving the mission of God, it errs in the same way when it seeks to take the control of ministry away from the Spirit into its own hands. Like mission, ministry is the task of the whole church. Each of its members is called to ministry by virtue of his or her baptism. And just as the Body of Christ has many members, each person plays his or her part in a different way, exercising the manifold variety of gifts that God gives. As we have already seen, it is not so much in the individual contributions that the risen Christ is encountered but in them all working together. It is Christ ‘from whom the whole body, joined and knitted together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love’ (Eph. 4.16). And yet, since mission largely takes place beyond the four walls of the gathered church, most of the church’s ministry will be exercised through the dispersed congregation in the wider community. The church’s task will be to recognize the many and various vocations of its individual members and to provide the support and equipping for them to fulfil their ministry in the course of their daily lives and work, to become, in the words attributed to Theresa of Avila, the eyes and ears, hands and feet through which God is to bless men and women now. Ministry 4 R. Paul Stevens, The Abolition of the Laity, Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 1999, p. 139.

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thus emerges from and is part and parcel of daily discipleship. Every Christian is called to live a transformed life in the world, to witness to the truth, to pray for the people with whom they come into contact and the situations of which they are a part, and sometimes to suffer on Christ’s behalf, either because of the opposition of those who are hostile to the gospel or, through compassion, sharing the suffering of others. These are the ways in which we contribute to the redemption of the principalities and powers, helping where possible to transform the shared mindsets of the institutions and localities of which we are a part. Specific calls to ministry arise from and continue to be a part of our daily discipleship. They are one of the most significant ways through which we continue to grow to Christian maturity. Finally, humility and service do not belong to a specific order but are the mark of all Christian ministry. Whatever the form, its character is that of Christ’s sacrificial, self-giving love in obedience to the Father.

The ministry of the whole church Essential to a model for ministry for the twenty-first century will be that it will centre on the ministry of the whole church. Accordingly, the model of ministry I wish to offer is one that describes the ministry of the church as a whole rather than simply that of the ordained. This ministry or diakonia is the church’s participation in the missio Dei, the way that God’s mission is expressed in a given situation. What then will be the elements of that ministry? Worship Worship offers God his due and places ourselves in right relationship with him. In particular, the sacraments represent in tangible form the death and resurrection of Christ at the heart of faith. Without the rhythm of regular corporate worship a congregation will lose sight of the mission to which it is called. Unless 158

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sustained by regular worship, its vision of God will blur and become distorted. And yet for hundreds of years the church has pursued a rhythm of regular worship without this resulting in awareness of its call to mission. For the last 150 years much of its experience of worship has been as clients of religious professionals. This indicates the need for ‘liturgical renewal’, which has been a largely ‘professional’ enterprise, to see itself as preparation for a more wide-ranging renewal of worship. Already we have discovered that community provides the context for worship. In the genesis of fresh expressions of church, it is the common life that comes first and worship emerges from this, often designed and led by the people themselves as the expression of a shared relationship with God. The same is true for traditional churches. The church in which I was a curate in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, had only one regular Bible study group; the bulk of its congregation met only for Sunday worship. For one period, however, the majority of members met in small groups for a stewardship programme we called ‘Step Together’. The increased ‘buzz’ about Sunday worship during those six weeks was noticeable. Without koinonia, corporate worship is hollow. In May 2010 I had the privilege of hearing Jürgen Moltmann describe his own local church, the Jacobuskirche in Tübingen, to a gathering at Holy Trinity Brompton in London. Its pastor for some 15 years had begun with the approach that every believer is an expert, in their own life, faith and gifts; that nothing was to be done in the church that could not be done by the lay people for themselves; that nothing was to be started that could not continue to develop. On the basis of these principles the church became a community, valuing the gifts and contribution of each, reaching out in service to the needy of its district, its worship maintained and led by small groups drawing on the gifts among them. With the pastor having recently left, Professor Moltmann testified to the way the worshipping life of the church was continuing without 159

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him, and new things continuing to emerge ‘from below’, from the common life of the church. Returning from the conference, I picked up the week’s Church Times and read a letter from Neil Spencer, head of RE at St Hilda’s C of E High School in Sefton Park, Liverpool. He described how the school has developed a eucharistic service in which pupils and staff play a significant part, leading the service, administering the sacrament, preaching the sermon and leading the intercessions. He reported that the worship led and prepared by the community had strengthened the faith of many of the pupils, given them a sense of purpose, and encouraged the exploration of faith; how the school chaplain and visiting clergy who consecrate the elements were refreshed, and several of those taking part had been encouraged to think about their vocation. ‘Our school worship,’ he writes, ‘may not be perfect; our liturgy might not be acceptable to the purists; but what we have is a worshipping school community.’5 Attention to its own life The initial call of the first disciples was to ‘be with’ Jesus (Mark 3.14). The earliest church following the day of Pentecost devoted itself to the apostles’ teaching and the koinonia as well as the breaking of bread and the prayers. Attention to the church’s ‘health’ is itself an element of mission. Learning the faith, caring for one another, learning in the context of Christ-centred community to love both God and neighbour, are all essential elements in the church’s ministry. We have seen in the previous chapter how the church that becomes a learning community, reflecting together, challenging its ‘defensive routines’ and discerning its mission and ministry together has the potential for ‘building itself up in love’ (Eph. 4.16). Prayer When a group of Celtic missionaries moved to a new area, the first 5 Church Times, 21 May 2010, p. 36.

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thing they would do was to establish a rhythm of corporate prayer. Only when the prayerful heart of the community was securely established did they begin to venture out in mission. In the eighteenth century, the Moravian community at Herrnhut in Bohemia maintained a rhythm of continuous prayer that lasted 100 years. Inspired by the example of the Moravians, the 24–7 prayer movement maintains a network of prayer through a combination of the internet and personal friendship, interceding for reconciled relationships through justice and evangelism.6 Jesus taught his disciples that prayer would be a vital part of their mission. In the parable of the ‘friend at midnight’ he gave them a model of prayer as an expression of friendship. Needing to provide for a friend on a journey, the householder knocks up another friend in the middle of the night asking him for the loan of three loaves. Failure to provide for the traveller would have meant falling short in the duty of hospitality. Jesus dramatizes the difficulties and potential discouragements of the situation – the friend’s disinclination to disturb his family by getting out of bed at such an hour – precisely to emphasize that God is not like that. He can be relied upon to answer. All we need is the confidence to ‘ask’, ‘search’ and ‘knock’ (Luke 11.5–13). In his final discourse to the disciples in John’s Gospel, Jesus gives the same assurance: they are to see themselves as friends rather than servants, chosen to bear fruit, and granted the privilege of asking for anything in his name (John 15.15–16). To intercede is to use the privilege of friendship as members of Jesus’ koinonia to ask for God’s intervention in those situations that concern us. As the church in Britain gradually recovers its focus on mission, one aspect of this renewal is a rediscovery of the centrality of prayer. Interest in retreats, pilgrimages and the use of spiritual direction seems to be on the increase. The remarkable story of the way in which the 24–7 prayer initiative came about virtually by accident and quickly grew beyond the intentions of its founders is 6 www.24-7prayer.com/about/what

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a testimony to God’s desire to see his people praying. During my time in Stoke-on-Trent the years following 2000 saw a monthly gathering of several hundred from many churches to pray for the concerns of the city, and Stoke is just one example of churches sharing in united prayer for the wider community. Without the ministry of intercession the church’s attempts to co-operate with God in mission are likely to be barren and fruitless. First of all this is because prayer changes the pray-ers. ‘In the prayer room,’ writes Pete Grieg, ‘we pick up God’s mannerisms; we grow in his likeness.’7 For Walter Wink, the importance of this is that in our mission we are engaging with the spiritual powers and authorities in heavenly places. Unless we place ourselves in a position to be changed by God, we will be changed by the powers. Prayer is, ‘[t]he interior battlefield where the decisive victory is won before any engagement in the outer world is even possible’. It is where the ‘secret spell [of the powers] over us is broken, and we are re-established in a bit more of the freedom that is our birthright and potential’.8 But prayer also changes the world. Its purpose is ‘to move God to do something which otherwise he would not do’.9 The Bible’s picture of God as someone who encourages and answers prayer, frequently ‘changing his mind’ in response to his people’s prayers, is undoubtedly a problem for many western Christians. I think there are two reasons for this. The first is to do with world-view. We have grown up with scientific materialism. We believe, with the rest of our society, in a mechanistic universe, in which events take place within a closed system of cause and effect. Nature and history have their own laws, and while it would not be true to say that these have no place for God, a miracle of healing or divine influence on a political event requires him to suspend or overturn the laws he has put in place. In fact, there is a good deal of evidence 7 Pete Grieg and Dave Roberts, Red Moon Rising, Eastbourne: Relevant books, 2003, p. 71. 8 Walter Wink, The Powers That Be, New York: Doubleday, 1998, p. 181; Engaging the Powers, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992, p. 297. 9 Rudolf Bultmann, quoted by Wink, Engaging, p. 302.

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from areas like sub-atomic physics that the mechanistic view of the world is inadequate.10 The problem is that without a new scientific paradigm it is hard for scientists to know what to do with this evidence. Because most scientists have invested heavily in the old paradigm and work with it on a daily basis, it is difficult if not impossible to conceive an alternative. For Christians, however, the Bible stands as a rock-solid authority, borne out by multiple experiences of answered prayer, testifying that our western worldview is flawed. Unsurprisingly, Christians from other parts of the world do not share our problems to anything like the same extent. The second major reason why so many Christians in the West are uncertain about prayer is disappointment: we know from experience that some prayers are answered and others not, and we do not understand why this should be. How can some Christians claim that God finds them convenient parking spaces when the evils of war, poverty and injustice continue? It has to be acknowledged that unanswered prayer is a mystery and for many a source of pain. But for some occasions it may be possible to discern an answer to the question. There may be occasions when we are praying for the wrong thing, and fail to hear the voice of God guiding us towards greater wisdom. If we have prayed for someone to recover who nevertheless died, this may have been because it was their time, which, in our grief, we found it hard to acknowledge. On other occasions, perhaps, God is waiting to know how much we really want the thing we are asking for. How much do we really care about war, poverty and injustice? Biblical descriptions for prayer include terms like ‘struggling’ (Col. 2.1), ‘wrestling’ (Col. 4.12) and ‘in the pain of childbirth’ (Gal. 4.19). God is looking for a people who share his heart, who really care for the world and its suffering, and one of the purposes of prayer is to change us. A delay in the answer may in fact be a challenge to go deeper in our relationship with him. 10 See, for example, David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980.

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A third possible explanation is put forward by Walter Wink: in prayer we are combating the principalities and powers that hold the world in slavery. Do we really expect them to relinquish their dominance that easily?11 Although rebellious, the powers represent those institutions God has constituted his agents, through whom the rule of humankind over the created world is to be exercised. ‘We have long accepted that God is limited by our freedom,’ writes Wink. ‘The new insight … is that God is limited by the freedom of institutions and systems as well.’12 But on the other hand, ‘The sobering news that the Powers can thwart God is more than matched by the knowledge that our intercessions will ultimately prevail.’13 The powers are the spiritual representatives of human institutions, maintained by the willing co-operation of human beings. In prayer we release God to act. The desire of just a few human beings for the defiance or redemption of the powers gives him the freedom to intervene. But as we have seen in recent years, the answer may be delayed and even when it comes the battle in the heavenly places may not be over. That the current fragile peace in Northern Ireland should have come about only after years of prayer is not surprising when we consider that inter-communal violence has been a feature of Irish history for thousands of years. In 1989 South Africa celebrated the end of legal apartheid, a victory that according to Archbishop Desmond Tutu had been won in prayer, only to find that the social attitudes that had sustained the apartheid regime were still firmly in place. In the same year over ten years of united prayer finally culminated in the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of communism in Eastern Europe, only for rampant consumerism to sweep in to take its place. Despite the difficulties and setbacks it is an integral part of the church’s ministry to pray. This becomes clear in Romans 8, the 11 Wink uses the story of Daniel’s prayer and its delayed answer in Daniel 10 as a paradigmatic example of his approach, Powers That Be, pp. 187–96, Engaging, pp. 308–14. 12 Powers That Be, p. 192; Engaging, p. 311. 13 Powers That Be, p. 195; Engaging, p. 313.

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culmination of Paul’s theological argument about how we are to be set free from sin in order to live the new life that God gives us in Christ. Paul explains that the gift of the Holy Spirit gives reality to our new status as children of God. The Spirit ‘witnesses with’ our spirits, enabling us to know our adoption as a fact of experience. And if we are children, then we are also fellow-heirs with Christ to all the privileges of our new position, providing ‘we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him’ (Rom. 8.17). The suffering Paul is talking about means bearing our share in the suffering of the world. The created world is ‘groaning in labour pains’, waiting for its eventual redemption, and we too, while we await the coming of the new creation, groan with it. Our fellowship with God through his Spirit not only enables but constrains us to share his heart for the suffering of the world. And as we do so, the Holy Spirit himself prays with, alongside and through us, enabling us to pray according to God’s mind and heart. As God’s redeemed, we become the people God needs to share his concern for the world and enable him to act. The church that responds to the call to pray can expect to suffer. Not only will it carry its share of the burden of God’s suffering for the world, but it will find itself resisted, sometimes ruthlessly, by the powers. But it will also be changed into the likeness of Christ and know the joy of seeing signs of the kingdom coming on earth. To these signs we now turn. Transforming creation The goal of the missio Dei is the realization of God’s kingdom, and the church is called to be not only a ‘sign’ and a ‘foretaste’ but also an ‘agent’ of the kingdom. In the risen Christ, the rule of humanity over creation, which was God’s original purpose, has been restored. As his Body, the church is called not only to witness to that rule in the face of hostile powers and principalities, but to exercise it on his behalf. In doing so, she is expressing the purpose of human work in the new creation as co-operation with the Spirit in the transformation of creation. A vitally important element in 165

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the church’s ministry is, therefore, as Tom Wright puts it, ‘building for the kingdom’. The hope of resurrection, he argues, impels us into mission. It means that, ‘What you do in the present – by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbour as yourself – all these things will last into God’s future.’14 They are, in fact, the ‘treasures’ we are called to ‘store up’ in heaven (Matt. 6.20) for the coming kingdom. When I was a curate, my training incumbent, Jeremy Whales, was also a borough councillor. Later he served a term as Cheltenham’s mayor. Jeremy used to say that if it were possible to bring all the Christians in Cheltenham out on strike, the town’s voluntary organizations would collapse. In the same vein, Tom Wright rejoices that so many of the Christians he used to meet in his role as Bishop of Durham, went straight from worshipping Jesus in church to making a radical difference in the material lives of people down the street, by running playgroups for children with single-parent working mums, by organizing credit unions to help people at the bottom of the financial ladder find their way to responsible solvency, by campaigning for better housing, against dangerous roads, for drug rehab centres, for wise laws relating to alcohol, for decent library and sporting facilities, for a thousand other things in which God’s sovereign rule extends to hard, concrete reality.15 As we have seen, when the church engages in community mission, clearing a pond can become an expression of God’s rule. God’s call is to discern the signs of the kingdom and the rule of the powers in the wider community, the ways in which the church is 14 Tom Wright, Surprised by Hope, London: SPCK, 2007, p. 205. 15 Wright, Hope, p. 279.

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called to serve, either alone or in partnership with other agencies, and in so doing to be itself transformed through its obedience to Christ. In the mission of Jesus the ministry of healing is the commonest and most characteristic sign of the arrival of the kingdom. So close is the connection between healing and salvation that in several of the Gospel stories it is difficult to decide which of these Jesus’ words refer to: is he saying, ‘Your faith has healed you’ or ‘saved you’? It is therefore crucial to recognize the importance of the ministry of healing as an element in the local church’s mission. ‘It is part of the wider mission to bring healing to the Church as the Body of Christ and to our society. Ultimately we are being led to the healing of God’s creation and the coming of the kingdom.’16 The ministry of healing points forward to the Christian hope for the healing of all creation. Its different aspects, including physical well-being, the forgiveness of sins, freedom from painful past memories, reconciliation, and the healing of wounded community history, are all expressions of that quality of shalom which is of the essence of God’s kingly rule. The local church belongs to a network of local congregations that together make up the people of God throughout the world. Accordingly another element in its ministry is to contribute to addressing national and international concerns. Such concern begins with prayer and giving. Financial support for national and international agencies such as Christian Aid, Tearfund and World Vision not only contributes materially to their work; it is also an expression of koinonia with Christians overseas, the vast majority of whom live in material poverty. And financial sacrifice is one of the disciplines through which Christians set aside participation in the world of ‘this present age’ in order to prioritize the ‘age to come’. Some churches and individuals will also become directly 16 Archbishops’ Council, A Time to Heal, London: Church House Publishing, 2000, p. 259.

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involved with campaigns for justice, shalom and the values of Sabbath in the face of the world’s greed-based economic system. Despite the failure to ‘Keep Sunday Special’ in the 1990s, recent opinion polls suggest a widespread desire for a day of rest rather than shopping.17 And this failure has been balanced by a notable success in recent years, to which Christian advocacy has contributed: the increasing visibility and acceptability of fairly traded produce. Make Poverty History, an enormous alliance in which many churches were involved, officially ceased campaigning in 2006, but continues to publicize ongoing campaigns on its website.18 Stop the Traffik, founded by Steve Chalke in 2006 to coincide with the anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade, is now a global coalition seeking to highlight and prevent modern forms of slavery such as the trafficking of women for prostitution.19 Citizens UK is an alliance of faith groups, trade unions, schools and individuals which campaigns on a variety of issues of social justice and promotes community organizing.20 But in addition to national and international campaigns and local community mission, individual Christians have a vital part to play in the transformation of society through their daily discipleship. The ethical instructions of the New Testament, and in particular the ‘household tables’ of Ephesians 5.21—6.4, Colossians 3.12—4.6 and 1 Peter 2.13—3.7 challenge Christians to live their daily lives in the spheres of marriage and family, work and the state ‘in the opposite spirit’ to that of their society and culture. In these passages the key note is that of freely chosen submission, or what John Howard Yoder calls ‘radical subordination’: in the words of Ephesians 5.21, submission to one another ‘out of reverence for Christ’.21 17 www.keepsundayspecial.org.uk/ 18 www.makepovertyhistory.org/ 19 www.stopthetraffik.org/ 20 www.citizensuk.org/ 21 John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1972, pp. 163– 92.

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Many commentators misread these collections as moving away from the radical ethic of Jesus towards a social conservatism based on pagan philosophy. But Yoder demonstrates that they not only go back to the earliest church but are fully in tune with Jesus’ life and teaching. In fact, their ethic of radical subordination is an expression of the loving, self-giving obedience of Jesus to his Father. As Jesus’ obedience was neither that of a slave, who is constrained to obey, nor of a hired servant, who seeks a reward, but the freely chosen obedience of a son, so the freely chosen submission of the Christian in his or her exercise of their social roles reflects the confidence of the child of God. By living out their new kingdom-based identity, Christians help to transform the present age. In New Testament times, marriage was a hierarchical relationship, in which absolute power belonged to the husband. In Christ, however, husband and wife enjoyed equal status as children of God and members of Jesus’ koinonia. The obvious way to express this in the sphere of marriage, by living out a marriage of equals, was impossible: in the conditions of the time the husband could not, for example, transfer his property rights to his wife. And in any case the New Testament approach is far more radical. Husband and wife are called to live out their new identity in marriage by freely accepting their respective roles but expressing them through self-giving love. The subordinate partner transforms her subordinate status by lovingly and sacrificially submitting to her husband’s authority while the husband expresses his authority by self-giving love to the point of laying down his life for his wife (Eph. 5.21–30). In contemporary society, the ancient world’s expectations of marriage no longer apply: marriage is understood as a partnership of equals. However, it is also understood as a private and conditional contract, a 50:50 arrangement in which each partner gives and receives no more than the other. In these conditions, Christian couples will seek ways of expressing their radically different understanding of marriage as a public, lifelong and unconditional covenant, giving 169

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100 per cent commitment to one another through mutual submission and self-giving love. Likewise in the master–slave relationship of New Testament times, the brotherhood of master and slave might be expressed by the freeing of the slave, which is certainly what Paul hoped would be the outcome of his letter to Philemon on behalf of the slave Onesimus. But in a society in which a freed slave could easily find himself without a livelihood this might not be possible, so masters were to ensure that they treated their slaves with justice, caring for them rather than exploiting them, while slaves were to show their masters the love of Christ by working for them as if they were working for him, submitting even to injustice when necessary (1 Peter 2.18–21). As in the case of marriage, in contemporary society expectations of the workplace have changed: contracts of employment are the norm and Trades Union representation is widely available. The task of the Christian is to discern how the call to loving subordination arising from her identity as a child of God is to be expressed in her own workplace. As a team vicar in South Croydon I found myself one year praying for discernment about which member of the church to ask to take on the role of church warden, only to find, on asking the person I believed would be the right choice, that he was not available because he had just become a governor of his daughter’s school. Reluctantly, I had to admit to myself that his choice to serve the school in this way was at least as important as the possibility of serving the church as warden and might well be God’s call. I could have gone a step further: by gathering the several members of our team of churches who were school governors to support one another, pray for our schools and reflect together on the issues involved with a view to making an informed, kingdom-centred contribution to the life of our community. This emphasis on daily discipleship requires a number of changes in the familiar life and worship of the churches: in practice, an accumulation of small changes that, taken together, 170

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make a big difference. At a teaching day arranged as part of the London Institute of Contemporary Christianity’s ‘Imagine’ project Paul Hudson, a Pentecostal minister in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, described some of the changes that had taken place in the life of his church to enable them to support Christians in daily life and work. The emphasis in Sunday sermons and house groups had changed to highlight application to the demands of work and home. Sunday services include commissioning for people newly promoted or beginning new jobs. Prayer services feature particular areas of discipleship, at home, in daily work or in the neighbourhood. Leadership training is offered for leaders at work as well as in church roles. Testimonies are invited to situations that remain unresolved, shifting the emphasis from the outcome to the journey. Music in worship is carefully chosen to reinforce, and not to detract from, the emphasis on daily discipleship. In addition to these and other possible changes that represent this shift in emphasis, I have suggested that the skills of theological reflection are a key tool by which the people of God might be equipped for daily discipleship. Such skills need to be rooted in an approach to theology that sees it, in the words of Ian Fraser’s title, as ‘the people’s work’.22 It requires an approach on the part of the clergy that involves respect for and understanding of the ‘ordinary theology’ of the non-specialist church members23 and the desire and willingness to see their equipping for ministry during the week as a vital part of a kingdom-centred approach to mission. On the Dewsbury training day I met Richard, who runs a business employing about 150 people. He had been able to introduce with the agreement of his employees a commitment to shared values, such as integrity, in the workplace and a willingness to be held accountable for the way they lived out these values as

22 Ian Fraser, Reinventing Theology as the People’s Work, London: USPG, 1988. 23 See Jeff Astley, Ordinary Theology, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002; Jeff Astley and Ann Christie, Taking Ordinary Theology Seriously, Cambridge: Grove, 2007.

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part of their annual appraisal. The beneficial effect on his office had been so great that the company of which he was a part had introduced the same scheme for all their 1,200 workers. Evangelism The division between different theological traditions of the church over the relative priority of social action and evangelism, which persisted for much of the twentieth century, is redundant in the twenty-first. In the first place, in contemporary culture ideas of truth are relative. The strategy of commending a message and expecting people to receive it simply because it is true has limited effectiveness. Rather, in contemporary society people want to see credible outcomes. The message to the church is, ‘Don’t talk of love – show me!’ But the division is also abolished in our renewed understanding of the mission of God. The growth of the church through successful evangelism is not the goal of mission but the means towards a larger vision: the realization of the rule of God ‘on earth as it is in heaven’. Rather than divided, evangelism and social action belong together. A church involved in community mission needs to be honest and upfront about its motivation: ready to explain that the deepest, most real and long-lasting transformation is found in a relationship with God through Jesus Christ.24 An evangelism securely embedded in the wider mission of God eschews the ‘soft sell’, in which people are attracted by the benefits of Christian faith and only subsequently informed of the call to sacrificial service, in favour of a fully rounded call to commitment. This is the approach of Andrew Jones of the emerging church Boaz: Our mission is what gives us purpose, which is what attracts others to us. If we are not bringing justice and transformation to the world, we should ask if we have the right to exist. We 24 Ann Morisy, Beyond the Good Samaritan, London: Mowbray, 1997, p. 5.

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share our mission and social agenda with seekers first, since it is often the first thing they want to know about us and may determine if they will invest their lives with us or not. In the traditional church, such an honest explanation of mission was reserved for the mature in Christ and was discussed subsequent to personal spirituality and what the church offered. Now we are up front with it. Our mission defines us more than our worship.25 Placing evangelism in the broader context of the missio Dei also reminds us that it is the Holy Spirit, the agent of God’s mission, who is the converting agent rather than human persuasion. Whereas the apostles are Jesus’ witnesses, the Spirit is the advocate. Christian social action provides a witness to Christ, displaying his compassion and transforming power, especially through the ‘cascades of grace’ described by Ann Morisy,26 converting and transforming those involved by the renewal of the mind, and through all this the Spirit draws people towards the source of life at the centre of the church, Jesus Christ himself. In 1998 St Margaret’s Church in Thornbury, Bradford was replaced by the Thornbury Centre, designed to address the needs of a community in which crime and drug abuse were endemic. Retaining a worship area in the centre, the church entered into partnership with local charities, statutory agencies and other faith groups to provide a variety of projects designed to restore hope and promote social cohesion. Among the outcomes was a steady stream of enquirers on the church’s Emmaus course, drawn through their involvement with the work of the centre, and a doubling of the congregation in just a few years.27 But the existence of the Emmaus course highlights the

25 Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger, Emerging Churches, London: SPCK, 2006, p. 58. 26 Ann Morisy, Journeying Out, London: Continuum, 2004, pp. 32–4. 27 Paul Hackwood, ‘The Thornbury Centre, Bradford’ in Faithworks 2: Stories of Hope, ed. Steve Chalke and Tom Jackson, Eastbourne: Kingsway, 2001, pp. 13–30.

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importance of the other side of the equation: although evangelism is but one element of the mission of God, it is nevertheless both integral and indispensable. God’s mission includes a call to men and women everywhere to repentance, renewal and transformation. The church needs to provide places of nurture where people can engage with Christian faith. Without a maternity ward, Stephen Cottrell points out, a hospital will see no babies born; and without attention to evangelism and the nurture of new believers the church is unlikely to grow and renew itself.28 In his recent Mission Shaped Evangelism, Steve Hollinghurst of the Sheffield Centre sets out a theologically grounded approach to evangelism in contemporary culture based on the twin disciplines of listening to God in the culture and in the theological tradition.29 In the twentieth century the church’s tendency was to present the gospel as a package, a proclamation with a set form to which a standard response was expected. This approach, he argues, was rooted in the mindset of modernity, which expected universally applicable rationally argued frameworks for belief. In post-modern society not only is this approach unconvincing for a generation that places more emphasis on emotion and experience but it actually provokes suspicion as designed to increase the power and influence of the preacher rather than for the benefit of the hearer. In any case the call to conversion on the basis of a straightforward ‘gospel message’ tended to rely on the basic facts of Christian faith being already widely known and understood and the residual guilt of the non-believer in a society broadly accepted as ‘Christian’. The situation in our culture, Hollinghurst argues, is actually quite like the one faced by Paul and the other apostles: pluralist and tolerant but with a civic faith requiring universal allegiance. In this context it is possible to see Paul recognizing and affirming the 28 Stephen Cottrell, From the Abundance of the Heart: Catholic Evangelism for all Christians, London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2006, p. 50. 29 Steve Hollinghurst, Mission Shaped Evangelism, Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2010.

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signs of Christ in both Jewish and Gentile culture and religion, but nevertheless boldly proclaiming Jesus, rather than the emperor, as Lord and preaching resurrection and the coming of God’s kingdom in the face of Jewish hostility and Gentile scepticism. In today’s culture, with knowledge of the basic tenets of Christian faith fast receding, but where many continue to seek in a variety of ways for a faith that satisfies their desire for an integrated and meaningful life, the aspect of the gospel capable of being received as ‘good news’ for a person in one situation may well be different from that for another in a different context. So Hollinghurst presents the idea of the gospel as a packet of seeds, some of which may take root best in one soil, some in another. For those asking questions of meaning and purpose, desiring to live a better life, the hope of transformation in a relationship with Christ may speak most clearly. For others, wanting to make sense of their own spiritual experience, an approach through the imagination may be more effective. The full gospel, Hollinghurst insists, is made up of all the seeds; therefore the way to faith is one of continuing nurture both before and after the point of Christian commitment.30 Because the aspect of the gospel appropriate for each particular situation differs, the first step in evangelism is listening. The kind of listening required, writes Steven Croft, goes beyond the politeness of allowing others to speak first, beyond listening simply in order to identify a point of connection for the gospel, to ‘third level’ listening, in which the Christian genuinely seeks to engage in dialogue with another and is open to learn as well as to share.31 Dialogue with people of other faiths is an exemplar of this kind of engagement. But interfaith dialogue is not a separate case: in our pluralist context virtually all evangelism is cross-cultural and must begin with mutual listening. Effective listening, Croft points out,

30 Hollinghurst, Evangelism, pp. 167–8, 203–8. 31 Steven Croft, ‘Transforming Evangelism’ in Archbishops’ Council, Evangelism in a Spiritual Age, London: Church House Publishing, 2006, pp. 126–47.

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is the fruit of character rather than technique; it requires the humility in which the would-be evangelist is genuinely open to new insights. Such humility also helps to ensure that when the time comes to speak, the tone of what is shared is respectful and attractive. Social action, especially when it takes place with and not just for the community, is another way of coming alongside, a way in which the church puts itself in the shoes of the community and seeks to hear God in and through the local culture. What kingdom-centred social action also does is to challenge the principalities and powers, the ways of thinking that enslave people and blind them to the good news held out in the gospel. In doing so, it frees people to believe. At Thornbury the vicar, Paul Hackwood, realized that the real issues went far deeper than crime and drug abuse. The deeper problem was a lack of hope. His answer was to make sure that every programme run by the centre enabled those taking part to discover their potential. Nothing was to be done for them, only by them. Accurately discerning the powers was a guide to the way they were to be challenged. What we are really trying to do is to create an alternative … that says there is a different way to live and relate to others. You don’t have to live solely for your own survival; it’s possible to live in a way where you trust others and are prepared to listen and work together with them … If someone were to say that our work in the community is a distraction from our duty to evangelize, then I would say that they don’t understand what evangelism is. Evangelism is about telling people the good news of Jesus Christ in a way that affects them both personally and socially … In our society as a whole, and certainly in Thornbury, there are too many spoken words. It’s only when people see that those words are backed up with integrity that they are really heard.32 32 Hackwood, ‘Thornbury Centre’, pp. 27–8.

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The servant of the Lord Having described the church’s ministry, the next vital task is to propose a model to give this description a secure theological and sociological foundation. The model I am proposing is the ‘servant of the Lord’ as described in Isaiah chapters 40 to 55 and in particular in the four ‘servant songs’: Isaiah 42.1–4; 49.1–6; 50.4– 9 and 52.13—53.12. The first thing to say in justification for this is that all the major New Testament writers see Jesus as the fulfilment of these passages. Some books, like Matthew and 1 Peter, refer to the servant songs by direct quotation (Matt. 12.18–21; John 12.38; 1 Peter 2.22–24), others by allusion (Mark 10.45; Acts 4.27; Rom. 5.9–10). And if the figure of the servant serves as a model for Jesus’ ministry, the same must be true of the church, Jesus’ Body and the agent of his mission. The idea of the servant as the model for both Jesus and the church is strengthened when we look at the role of the servant in the prophet’s own thought. Clearly, the servant of the first song in Isaiah 42 is Israel itself. This identification is made in 41.8–10, in which Israel is not only called ‘servant’ but also ‘chosen’ and ‘upheld’ like the servant of 42.1. But the servant of Isaiah 42 is not ‘empirical’ Israel, the discouraged and unbelieving congregation of the exile to whom the prophet is speaking. Rather, this passage speaks of ‘ideal’ Israel, ‘the Israel whom God wants his chosen people to be’, a picture the prophet is holding out to empirical Israel as a vision and aspiration.33 The servant, understood as a description of Israel’s divine vocation, portrays the ministry of God’s people to the nations. In chapter 49, however, the figure of the servant no longer refers to Israel, but to the prophet himself. His problem was that the exiles he was called to preach to were unreceptive. They were 33 H. G. M. Williamson, Variations on a Theme: King, Messiah and Servant in the Book of Isaiah, Carlisle: Paternoster, 1998, p. 142; see D. R. Jones, ‘Isaiah II and III’ in Peake’s Commentary on the Bible, ed. M. Black and H. H. Rowley, London: Nelson, 1962.

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‘blind’ and ‘deaf ’ (Isa. 43.8), unwilling to believe his message. By holding their vocation before them at the cost of misunderstanding and rejection, the prophet himself plays the role of the servant, whose ministry is first of all to unbelieving Israel and only then, through them, to the nations. Thus the second of the servant songs in 49.1–6 expresses the prophet’s frustration and consequent need to trust in God for the outcome of his ministry and sees God’s purpose to provide a ‘light to the nations’, which is part of the vocation of Israel in 42.6, now the outcome of the prophet’s ministry.34 This will be of vital importance when we come to explore the role of the ordained clergy, because it means that the figure of the servant can also serve as a model for the individual with a ministry to the people of God, whose task is to hold before them their God-given vocation. In the light of this, let us examine the role of God’s servant as portrayed by the unknown prophet of the exile as a pattern for the ministry of God’s people today: Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations. He will not cry or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street; a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice. He will not grow faint or be crushed until he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his teaching. (Isa. 42.1–4) In the first place, the servant is loved and chosen. Our status with God and our position in his heart forms the foundation of the 34 For this interpretation see Williamson, Variations, pp. 142–55.

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church’s ministry. We have been drawn into the loving, intimate relationship of God the holy Trinity and our ministry is to be the agent through which he draws the whole world into the sphere of his love. Reconciled to God we become ambassadors of reconciliation to others.‘We love because he first loved us’ (1 John 4.19); the church’s whole life and ministry is a response to love. As persons in God’s image, human beings are made to love and be loved. To become a Christian is to recognize and receive the love of God, to be loved by him and to be transformed by that love. The church is where we learn to become comfortable in God’s love, to love and be loved by one another. Our ministry to the world should be an overflow of that love. The more we come to know ourselves loved, the less our ministry serves our own need and the more the needs of others. Not only loved, but chosen: discipleship and the ministry that emerges from it are a response to a call, the inward call that comes through the passion that springs up within us and the outward call through the church to a specific place of service. Jesus’ call is to be his friends, members of his koinonia or partnership, who know what the Father is doing because they share his mind (John 15.15). Next the servant is filled with the Spirit. The Spirit is the agent of God’s mission, without whom fruitful ministry is impossible. Jesus, whose own ministry was empowered by the Spirit (Luke 4.1), told his disciples to wait for the coming of the Spirit (Luke 24.49; Acts 1.4). In several places in the Old Testament there occurs a picture of a river, flowing from the throne of God, the Temple in Jerusalem. In Psalm 46 it is the river ‘whose streams make glad the city of God’. In Ezekiel 47 the river brings life wherever it flows. On its banks grow trees whose fruit is for food and their leaves for healing. In Revelation 22, the river is part of the new heaven and the new earth, and this time its leaves are for the healing ‘of the nations’. In John 7, Jesus proclaims that he himself is the source of the river and invites the thirsty to come to him and drink. Having drunk, the thirsty themselves become sources of living water. Jesus, 179

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the passage tells us, was speaking ‘about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive’ (John 7.39). Jesus fills the church with his Spirit so that we may take his life to the world. This life takes the form of ‘justice’ and ‘teaching’ (in Hebrew, torah). In this respect, the servant’s role is kingly: it recalls the designation of the king in Psalm 89, who is also spoken of as God’s chosen servant, whom he upholds.35 Like the king of Psalm 72, he is to exercise God’s kingly rule in justice and righteousness. His role fulfils the vision of Isaiah 2.1–4 in which the nations come to Jerusalem to learn the ways of the Lord and to receive his peaceable justice. The church is called to exercise the rule of God and to teach ‘the nations’ his ways. This may be through courses in marriage, parenting, managing money or Christian prayer, offered in public forums like local adult education organizations perhaps more effectively than in the safe environment of church premises. It may be through upholding truth in the public sphere, whether locally or nationally. The church is called to play its part in establishing God’s justice through action on behalf of the poor and needy. This is a teaching for which the ‘coastlands wait’, a justice for which people long, because it answers the desire placed in the heart of all for a God who is true and just. As the ‘Isaiah vision’ provides an agenda around which public agencies and other faith groups can all unite, the Lord’s justice and his torah fulfil those perceptions of truth and right relating embedded in human cultures. But the church as God’s servant exercises his justice humbly and gently. ‘He will not cry or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street.’ The church does not plead its own cause. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote,‘The Church is her true self only when she exists for humanity.’36 She must earn the right to be heard through costly service, living alongside the ‘bruised reeds’ and the ‘dimly burning wicks’, the weak, the poor and the uncertain, with patience and compassion. In Isaiah 50.4 the servant wakes each morning to 35 Williamson, Variations, pp. 119–23. 36 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, London: Collins, 1959, p. 166.

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listen to God for the word that ‘sustains the weary’. The church’s gospel is embodied in the work of people like Mother Theresa, who, on finding an old woman dying in a dustbin, determined to witness through a work of compassion to the fact that everyone matters, including those the world writes off. Or in the work of street pastors, providing blankets for drunk and cold young people late at night on the streets and flip-flops for girls no longer able to walk in high heels, witnessing to God’s love for a generation with little sense of hope.37 Finally, the servant endures despite the cost. ‘He will not grow faint or be crushed’; like love, he never gives up (1 Cor. 13.8). Christian ministry involves suffering. A ministry of justice and truth, through which Jesus is exalted as Lord, challenges the principalities and powers and thus draws opposition. Reviewing his work in Thornbury, Paul Hackwood writes: None of what we have done has been easy. In fact it has been absolute agony … I have experienced some personal attacks that have left me absolutely devastated. Once I went through weeks when I hardly slept because I was so anxious about it all. In fact I have lived through four years of self-doubt in a way that I would never have imagined was possible before.38 Suffering also forms the ministers, challenging our pride and selfsufficiency. At the same time as the 24–7 prayer movement was gaining momentum, bearing fruit in sometimes miraculous answers to prayer, Pete Grieg’s wife Samie was diagnosed with brain cancer and most of the other leaders were struggling with sickness, family problems, money worries or bereavement. ‘At a time when we might have become triumphalistic, intoxicated with the excitement of miracles and movements, we were suddenly confronted with the stark reality of suffering, unanswered prayer, 37 Les Isaac, Street Pastors, Eastbourne: David C. Cook, 2009; www.streetpastors.co.uk/ 38 Hackwood, ‘Thornbury Centre’, p. 28.

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and even death.’ Like Paul’s thorn in the flesh, Greig sees these sufferings as serving to ‘keep them from being conceited’, teaching them to rely on the sufficiency of God’s grace.39 But beyond these specific causes of suffering, Christians are called to bear with God the pain of the world. Adoption as his children lets us in to the ‘groaning’ of creation longing to be set free. In our prayers, the Spirit expresses this groaning through us to God and, moulded by our praying, we learn God’s heart for the world (Rom. 8.17–27). Dietrich Bonhoeffer was one who saw this clearly. Jesus, he wrote, has become one with humanity in his incarnation, so that we might become one with him. For this to take place, ‘We must become assimilated to the form of Christ in its entirety, the form of Christ incarnate, crucified and glorified.’ This is why, for Paul, to know Christ meant to know both the power of his resurrection and the koinonia of his suffering (Phil. 3.10).‘If we would have a share in that glory and radiance, we must first be conformed to the image of the Suffering Servant who was obedient to death on the cross.’40

The ministry of the ordained I have argued that ‘ministry’ describes the church’s participation in the mission of God and that, since mission is the task of the whole church, the model of ministry we need for the church of the twenty-first century should apply to the ministry of the whole church rather than the ministry of the ordained. It would be easy to infer from this that I see the ministry of the ordained as unimportant or even dispensable. There have been writers who have taken this position, either explicitly or by implication, but I am not one of them. I believe the ministry of the ordained to be an essential part of the ministry of the whole church, so essential that the church cannot function without it. 39 Greig and Roberts, Red Moon Rising, pp. 155–64. 40 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, New York: Macmillan, 1963, p. 341.

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It would also be easy to infer from my description of the church’s ministry that what is required in its leaders is a new form of omnicompetence. My description calls for leaders with the discernment to recognize the way God is working and call the church to join in, worship leaders who also help others to understand and lead worship, leaders who will recognize and affirm the gifts and vocations of others, ‘community theologians’, and conflict managers, and all in addition to the ordinary skills of leadership, pastoral care, preaching and administration that are normally required of the ordained. In brief, the answer to the question that flows from this observation is threefold. First, the role of the clergy in this new model of ministry requires of them more professional expertise rather than less. But second, their social role is no longer to be understood as that of the ‘professional’, whose status is based on the possession of specialist knowledge. Instead, their calling is to give away the status and power their training might qualify them for by using their expertise to empower the whole church. And third, no one person is required to display all the expertise required for ordained ministry because the leadership of God’s people is to be seen as collaborative. Local collaborative ministry There is a variety of possible models of collaboration in the church today and no consensus as to what exactly ‘collaborative ministry’ should look like. Some models major on the sharing of tasks, others on the sharing of vision; some owe a good deal to patterns derived from the world of business management, others are more consciously theologically based. Accordingly, I will need to set out my own understanding of collaborative ministry, for which I do not claim infallibility. In the New Testament, there is only one single leader: Jesus. After his resurrection the church is expected to discern the guidance of the Holy Spirit together. The best example of this occurs over the crucial issue of the inclusion of the Gentiles in the 183

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middle chapters of Acts, where we see the church’s leadership deciding together whether Peter’s experience with Cornelius and Paul and Barnabas’ approach to their Gentile converts represented a genuine leading of the Spirit. Their final decision is introduced by the significant words, ‘It has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us’ (Acts 15.28), a phrasing that suggests the decision has emerged as the result of a process of corporate discernment as to where the Spirit is leading. As the church grows, two types of leadership are established: the leadership of the local churches and trans-local travelling apostolic teams, of which Paul’s team is the one we see in close-up. Both of these are corporate: the leadership of the local churches is made up of several elders or bishops and deacons (Acts 14.23; 20.17; Phil. 1.1; 1 Peter 5.1–2), while Paul is always found with companions, and although he is clearly the leader we can also discern that, rather than simply deferring to Paul, the team’s practice was to discern the Spirit’s leading together (Acts 15.36— 16.10). Much is sometimes made of what appears to be a pattern of patriarchal leadership in the Pastoral epistles, in which Paul is portrayed as sending Timothy and Titus to set right the problems of the churches in Ephesus and Crete. But what emerges from those letters is that this is to be done by appointing elders, bishops and deacons (1 Tim. 3.1–13; Titus 1.5–9). In the case of Ephesus, these replace the elders who had previously led the church astray (Acts 20.30). Thus, in my view, the single hierarchical leader only develops after New Testament times and represents a departure from the clear biblical pattern. The appointment of elders was clearly an integral part of the early church’s strategy for church planting. The elders’ task was to see that the church grew ‘into its natural form’ as the priestly Body of Christ.41 In theological language, the ministry of the ordained ‘animates’ that of the whole church. This is most succinctly 41 Christopher Cocksworth and Rosalind Brown, Being a Priest Today, 2nd edn, Norwich, Canterbury Press, 2006, p. 20.

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expressed in a report drawn up for the Church of England in 1987, which sees the ordained ministry and that of the whole church ‘animating’ one another: The Church of England is committed to a ministry of the whole people of God and within that to an ordained ministry. Each of these is seen as essential to the task of the Church and … the nature of the Church … Corporate and ordained ministry therefore animate each other, each focusing the activity of God – the work of the Holy Spirit – in the other; each therefore ‘brings the other to be’ in the way which God’s mission in the world requires.42 The various leadership tasks that have emerged from our study of the church’s ministry – discerning the work of the Spirit, building a learning community, managing conflict and so on – are just some of the ways in which ordained ministry ‘animates’ the ministry of the church. But the report also points out that the ordained ministry is animated by that of the church as a whole. This is because ordained ministry is essentially relational. One of the key questions surrounding the ordained ministry is whether the role of the ordained minister should be conceived of primarily in terms of function or of ‘ontology’ or being. Are we to explain the place of ordained ministry in the church in terms of what the ordained minister does or of who he or she is? A relational understanding of ministry resolves this issue. In ordination the minister is placed in a new relationship with the church. This new relationship both requires certain tasks and moulds the ordained minister’s identity. She will be exercising leadership, but this is not so much a task in itself; rather, leadership is exercised through the way she carries out other tasks. Through her ministry in and to the church she will be formed into the image of Christ the servant of 42 Advisory Council for the Church’s Ministry, Education for the Church’s Ministry, London: ACCM, 1987, para. 28–9 (emphasis in the original).

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the Lord, thus modelling and representing to the church its own vocation.43 In the Christendom model of church, the ordained ministry formed a hierarchy whose chief characteristic was the exercise of spiritual power. In the professional model of ministry their defining characteristic is expertise in a branch of knowledge. But when we understand the church in relation to the mission of God, called into being as God’s partners in that mission, ordained ministry too is defined by its role in mission. The church requires to be ‘ordered’ for mission, its relationship with God so maintained that it continues to be responsive to the Spirit’s leading, its capacity for ministry built up. The ordained ministry is called into being to fulfil this requirement: to exercise the oversight the church needs (1 Peter 5.1–2), to equip the church for ministry (Eph. 4.12), to keep it facing in the right direction,“in step with the Spirit” (Gal. 5.25).44 This is why we should understand the role of president of the Eucharist as fittingly belonging to the ordained ministry: not as an exercise of power according to the Christendom model, nor as a reflection of clerical expertise according to the professional model, but because the Eucharist represents the character of the mission of God in and through the death and resurrection of Christ. It is the place where the life of the new creation is made real in the old. To act as president at the Eucharist sums up the relationship in which God places the ordained minister to the church as a whole. The mission of God is contextual and therefore local. Therefore the ordained ministry through which the church’s ministry is ‘brought to be’ must also be local. Its task is to enable the church to discern the leading of the Spirit in a particular context, the way in 43 For a relational understanding of ordained ministry see Cocksworth and Brown, Being a Priest, p. 15; John Zizioulas, Being as Communion, London; Darton, Longman and Todd, 1985, pp. 225–7; Stephen Pickard, Theological Foundations for Collaborative Ministry, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009, pp. 160–2. 44 Stephen Pickard, who uses a system approach, explains the ordained ministry as an ‘emergent property’ of the system. The ‘system’ is that set of relationships orientated towards the goal of God’s kingdom; the ordained ministry is called into being as part of those relationships to keep the church faithful to its purpose. Collaborative Ministry, pp. 123–44.

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which the kingdom is drawing near in that particular time and place. This means the ordained minister must ‘inhabit’ her context, know it as a ‘local’, identify with its people and love them; she must either be or become ‘indigenous’. Ted Roberts recalls Trevor Huddlestone returning in 1968 from Tanzania to the Diocese of Southwark with a passion that both shared: ‘the hope of creating an indigenous church’. Overseas it had long been accepted that if a genuinely indigenous church is to grow, then it must have an indigenous ministry, but in Britain we were slow to accept that principle. We had failed to see that working-class people are best equipped to lead the church in the working-class areas of our cities.45 As vicar of St James the Less Bermondsey and St Mark Victoria Park, Roberts was vicar to the Church of England’s first Ordained Local Ministers and went on to become Bishop’s adviser on urban ministry. His vision was for men, and later women, genuinely shaped by a particular locality appropriately to be trained to become leaders of the church for that place. The idea of local ministry, in which men and women are trained together with a view to ministry in a particular place, involves a ‘reframing of concepts of ministry’.46 But, argues Adrian Dorber, Many of the precepts and experiences of the Local Ministry movement help to orient the Church to being part of the missio Dei and fundamentally provide the structure and opportunity for a more wholehearted embrace of mission as the pivotal idea in the constitution of the Church.47 45 Ted Roberts, ‘A Novelty or Back to Basics? The Bethnal Green and Bermondsey Experiments’ in Ordained Local Ministry, ed. Malcolm Torry and Jeffrey Heskins, Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2006, p. 11. 46 Robin Greenwood, Practising Community, London: SPCK, 1996, p. 13. 47 Adrian Dorber, ‘Why is Local Ministry important for a mission-shaped Church?’ in Local Ministry: story, process and meaning, ed. Robin Greenwood and Caroline Pascoe, London: SPCK, 2006, p. 75.

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The growth of local ministry over the past 20 to 30 years is another of the ways in which the church has been adapting its theology and practice as it responds to and learns about the mission of God. Local ministry is built on the recognition that the local church is not a ‘branch’ of the universal church but is the universal church present in each locality. It recognizes the contextual nature of the mission of God. It recognizes the need for the locally ordained minister to serve collaboratively as a member of a team of both lay and ordained ministers. Moreover, it honours the right of the local church to the ministry it requires in order to be a full expression of the church for its locality and the importance of the church’s call to those in whom it discerns the appropriate gifts.48 It also reflects the practice of the earliest centuries of the church, during which ordination was never absolute but only ever to a specific locality.49 The problem with local ministry, at least in the way it operates in the Church of England, is that the local minister is very firmly seen as auxiliary to the ministry of the stipendiary clergy. Fulltime professional ministry is ‘real’ ministry, local ministry a part-time subsidiary ministry, especially useful for those situations where stipendiary ministry is unavailable. This understanding, based on the professional model, is precisely the wrong way round. From the New Testament and from the theology of the mission of God it is clear that local ministry provides the paradigm for the ordained leadership of the local church. This is not to say that there is no role for the full-time stipendiary. What it means is that local ministry should be seen as the norm. If the church’s ministry is to be shaped by and for the mission of God, then instead of relying on the ministry of an outside professional provided by the national denomination, each local church should be encouraged 48 See Edward Schillebeeckx, Ministry: A Case for Change, London: SCM, 1981; Leonardo Boff, Ecclesiogenesis, London: Collins, 1986; Roland Allen, The Ministry of the Spirit, ed. David M. Paton, Cambridge: Lutterworth Press, 1960, pp. 137–89. 49 Coxworth and Brown, Being a Priest, p. 17; Francis Dewar, Called or Collared?, London: SPCK, 1991, pp. 7–12.

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to identify and support its own local ministry with the calling to shape the church under the guidance of the Holy Spirit for its unique local expression of that mission. One group of trainees quoted by Robin Greenwood described the task of the local ministry team as ‘enabling the local church to discover how it is called to make God visible in the local community’. Another said, ‘Local ministry is directed to the community and not just to the church. Hence it needs a form appropriate to this community.’50 And Elizabeth Jordan suggests that a distinctive function of locally ordained ministers is to be ‘local missionary theologians’, who bring together the wisdom of the church’s past with the hopes and fears of the local community.51 In the Church of England it is the norm that candidates for local ministry are trained together with a team of ministers called out by the local church. Like local ministry, I suggest that collaborative ministry honours the witness of the New Testament, which always speaks of ‘elders’ rather than of single leaders. When Jesus was on earth he was the embodiment of God’s mission, the true servant of the Lord and the presence of the kingdom. After his resurrection, the apostles, who had followed him and become his koinonia, were to discern the leading of the Spirit together. This is what we see them doing in the early chapters of Acts and what we see Paul and his team doing during their missionary journeys. Thus, instead of replacing the leadership of Jesus with that of a single individual, collaborative ministry maintains the pattern of following Jesus as a team.52 One aspect of this situation that is very noticeable in the New Testament is the way that authority functions. Despite his role as the founder of the churches of Asia, Macedonia and Greece, despite his pastoral concern for them whether with them or away 50 Both quotations from Greenwood, Practising Community, p. 24. 51 Elizabeth Ann Jordan, ‘The place of Ordained Local Ministry in the Church of England’, Practical Theology 1.2, 2008, p. 225. 52 David Robertson, Collaborative Ministry, Oxford: Bible Reading Fellowship, 2007, pp. 30–40.

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from them, despite the fact that he can call them his children and even remind Philemon that he owes him his very life, Paul never dictates. He teaches, exhorts, encourages, rebukes, argues from theological principles but never lays down the law. Even in the case of the wayward and rebellious Corinthians Paul prefers to appeal from a position of weakness than to dictate from a position of hierarchical authority. In this, as becomes clear especially in 2 Corinthians, he exemplifies the pattern of Christ, the suffering servant of God. The New Testament picture of the authority of ministry is thus utterly different from the paternalism found in later Christian writings like the letters of Ignatius of Antioch, which has unfortunately become the norm for the church since his time.53 Since the essence of ordained ministry is relationship rather than task, it is these two aspects – the nature of discernment and of authority – that constitute the most important elements of collaborative ministry. But collaborative ministry also has the advantage of distributing the necessary tasks of ministry among a team. With the calling out of the team, ministry becomes something that the church does for itself rather than something done for or to it. Instead of requiring non-specialist omnicompetent individuals, ministry as a team values the uniqueness of each. Where the local ministry team is functioning as it should it becomes a model for the way that the gifts of each member of the church and the vocations that the Holy Spirit constantly contribute to the mission of God for that place. Overseeing local ministry However, as Anthony Russell points out, on its own the local community ministry may have serious drawbacks. A local ministry team may come to be dominated by a strong personality.

53 Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, London: SCM, 1977, p. 305; for the letters of Ignatius see Early Christian Writings, tr. Maxwell Staniforth, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968.

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It may become a clique, keeping the task of ministry to itself and failing to encourage the ministry of the whole church. It may become inward looking, averse to partnership with neighbouring congregations and forgetting its connection with the wider church. It may become embroiled in internal conflict. In the context of rural ministry, Russell’s answer is the ‘multi-parish benefice’, in which the full-time stipendiary ordained minister trains, equips and oversees the work of the local community ministry teams. Rather than ‘strong’ and ‘authoritarian’ his leadership is enabling and empowering, exercised alongside that of the teams rather than up front and over against them. He would also play an important part in discerning the mission of God for the locality. With sufficient local knowledge to understand the context, but with a more detached point of view, he would be able to play the role of ‘local outsider’, leading or contributing to the team’s reflections in such a way as to ensure that the process of reflection was conscientiously followed, helping the team to avoid mistaking the strongly held opinions of one or two of its members for the leading of the Holy Spirit, and encouraging them to be open to the insights of the wider church.54 Entrusting this role to just one person, however, also has its disadvantages. One man may very easily find it difficult to see beyond his own agenda for the parishes under his care. He may not be able to provide all the resources required to train, equip and support the local community ministry teams for the full range of tasks involved; pastoral care, preaching, evangelism, administration and the leading of worship. When called upon to help resolve conflict, he himself has no obvious source of support. Not only may the range of skills required be beyond the resources of the single stipendiary minister, but the stress upon him or her may be too great. A development of Russell’s model would be the oversight of a group of local churches, each with its own local ministry team, by 54 Anthony Russell, The Country Parson, London: SPCK, 1993, pp. 184–8.

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a further team, each of whose members was able to offer their own specialist area of expertise. Some years ago it was my task to facilitate the formation of a team ministry involving three Anglican churches. Each church had previously had its own vicar, but now the staffing was to be reduced to just two full-time posts. One church was never really happy with the process and continued to hanker after its own vicar, but the other two were eager to explore the possibilities of co-operation. Eventually all agreed that both clergy should minister to all three churches and that as far as possible they should have complementary gifts. If one were a gifted teacher or evangelist, the other should be able to offer pastoral care; one might cope with the administration and be present at all the PCC meetings, the other develop work with the schools, and so on. During the same period a more extensive experiment in team leadership was being developed in Byker in East Newcastle. There, in an urban context with several struggling congregations, it was agreed that the parishes would work together to form the Urban Ministry and Theology Project. The clergy were to be appointed not simply to pastor the congregations but to contribute an area of specialism: community engagement, church development and theological education and training. One massive advantage of this was that Jeremy Clark-King, who became vicar of St Antony’s Byker in January 2000, was able to devote time to developing strategic links with the local Council, statutory agencies and neighbourhood groups. In that role, he was to have a significant impact on the process of regeneration in the area as a whole and in the way the churches’ ministry developed in response. Another feature of UMTP was that, at least for a period, there was a significant ecumenical dimension through the involvement of the Methodist lay worker Chris Carroll.55 This combination of local ministry teams under the oversight 55 Hilary Russell, report on the Urban Ministry and Theology Project, Newcastle East Deanery, August 2004, www.umtp.org/sitev2/documents/

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of another team not only maintains the local and collaborative nature of the church’s ordained ministry but also helps to combine the different dimensions of locality. In our Stoke-on-Trent parish there were five or six separate areas, each of which formed a ‘locality’, with differing histories and differing needs. On the other hand, the City of Stoke was also a ‘locality’. When ministers from a variety of denominations from throughout the city began to meet together for mutual support and to pray for the needs of the city, we were able to address this further level of locality. From the links created at these meetings developed co-operation in ministries to marginalized groups such as prostitutes and asylum seekers, for which a city-wide vision was required. By combining the broader city-wide sense of ‘local’ with the smaller parish or neighbourhood sense, the churches have been equipped to serve their community – both the larger and smaller communities – and ‘build for the kingdom’ much more effectively. In addition, the group of ministers informally co-operating also includes the ‘complementary minister’ appointed to create a ‘network church’ among single young people. Through collaboration, this nongeographical sense of ‘locality’ has also been integrated with the ministry of the various geographically based churches. There is no single blueprint for the deployment of ordained ministry, and in the present financial situation of the churches, there are limits on what is possible. But local ministry teams, including both lay and ordained ministers, supervised and resourced by teams relating to a wider sense of locality, which may also include both lay and ordained members, seems to be a practical way in which the church’s ministry might adapt to the needs of a new century. If such an arrangement could include ecumenical co-operation this would be likely to prove a further considerable advantage. Most importantly, it expresses a biblically and theologically grounded approach to ministry, arising from our developing understanding of the mission of God, which supersedes the now defunct professional model. It is not that ordained ministers no longer need areas of expertise; in many 193

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ways they will need greater expertise and a more ‘professional’ approach. But they will not be required to be omnicompetent and, most importantly, their role will no longer be to provide ministry to or for a passive and disabled laity, but to resource and equip the whole church for its ministry. Qualities for ordained ministry What then will be distinctive about the ordained ministry? What characteristics, skills or qualities will distinguish the ordained ministers, who will fittingly preside at the Eucharist, the church’s characteristic act of worship and the centre of its corporate life, from their fellow-members of the Body of Christ, many of whom will be exercising significant leadership alongside them? I have suggested that the model for the church’s ministry that best reflects the character of the mission of God is the servant of the Lord as we see it set out most clearly in the servant songs of Isaiah and then lived out in the life of Jesus. In Isaiah the pattern of the servant is seen to describe not only the ‘ideal Israel’, her mission as a nation to the rest of the world, but also those, of whom the prophet himself was one, who were called to represent this pattern in their own lives and by doing so call Israel to its vocation. In the same way, the ordained minister is someone called by God and the church into a particular relationship with the church, in which he or she ‘animates’ the ministry of the whole. The ordained minister fulfils this calling not only through what he or she does, offering their own particular gifts to resource the church, but also and perhaps most importantly by who he or she is, through a life in the process of formation into the image of the servant. The ordained minister bears the church’s vocation on their heart and represents this vocation to the church in the quality of their relationships and actions. This, more than any particular area of expertise, will distinguish the ministry of the ordained. Having said this, I would like to suggest three qualities that are required for this ministry. At one level, these qualities might be referred to as ‘skills’. Each one certainly requires elements of skill. 194

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But it is not sufficient to think of them simply as skills. Rightly to exercise the skills involved requires a disposition that might be described as an orientation of one’s whole life. They are not only acquired through training, although training is important; they are formed through obedience to Christ. First, the ordained minister needs to be a listener. She needs not only to acquire and practise the skills of attentive listening; she needs to be a listener, someone whose mode of life includes a disposition to put aside her own agendas, needs and desires in order to be open to others. Listening to others, their needs and concerns, their feelings, expressed and often unexpressed; listening to situations, the effects of history on particular places, the cry of the poor in society; and listening to God in prayer and study of the Bible will be a consistent habit of life. The servant of the Lord is someone who wakens each morning ‘to listen as those who are taught’ (Isa. 50.4), a listening that implies obedience. She maintains a discipline of attentive listening to God that forms the foundation of all she is and does. This discipline equips her with the ‘word that sustains the weary’. Her attentive openness allows others to share their burdens and to receive through her the priceless gift of knowing themselves really ‘heard’, their feelings and concerns valued. Ability to be attentive to others also equips her to ‘balance listening and advocacy’. She learns through experience when to listen and when to speak in order to build consensus and facilitate agreement. She practises in her own life that openness to the power of truth which is an essential characteristic of a reflective, learning and growing community. And all this is costly. Commitment to listen to both God and others on a daily basis means not only dealing with her own inner rebelliousness but also encountering the opposition of the rebellious. The ordained minister is one who ‘gives her back to those who strike her and does not hide from insults’ (Isa. 50.6). The second essential quality is discernment. The ordained minister must be equipped to lead the church in discerning God’s call and the Holy Spirit’s direction. The skill basis of this is 195

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reflection. The ordained minister makes a regular practice of theological reflection. But beyond this, his practice of reflection equips him with the ‘spectacles’ through which to interpret experience. Whether or not he has expertise in academic theology, his intuitive approach is through action and reflection, discerning the signs of the kingdom and recognizing the challenges to theology in everyday experience. Theology becomes a ‘wisdom for living’ through which his understanding of and relationship with God permeates each area of his life. Living out a vision of the kingdom becomes second nature. Finally the ordained minister is ‘an apt teacher’ (1 Tim. 3.2), someone who is effective in passing on Christian faith. To be a teacher is a multifaceted vocation. It involves the straightforward explanation of Christian truth, the guarding and passing on of the church’s tradition. It involves the skills of adult education and the qualities of life that equip him to make best use of them. It is the skill and personal orientation that will enable him to form the church as a learning community, open to the truth, confident in its ministry, adaptable and creative. In collaborative ministry it is not necessary for each and every ordained minister to have these specific skills. But what is required of all is the orientation of the teacher: the desire that others should learn, a disposition to recognize the expertise of others rather than taking a stand on one’s own, the ability to share power in the process of empowering others. The ordained minister’s teaching role might be seen to embrace another dimension. The church in South America has become familiar with ‘liberation education’, pioneered by Paolo Freire. It is one of the sources of the ‘liberation theology’ that has emerged from the base communities among the poor and oppressed. As Freire pointed out, the normal condition of the poor is to define themselves in the way they are seen by the rich and powerful: as less important, even as being to blame for their own plight. Accepting the mental models of the rich, their way out of poverty appears to be to aspire to become wealthy themselves. This 196

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situation is dehumanizing not just for the poor, but also for the rich. Not only are the poor, as ‘have-nots’, defined by what they do not have, but the rich, as the ‘haves’, are defined by what they have. Real liberation could only come about through a change of consciousness which would, in effect, be a change of identity. The solution for the poor was to experience the alternative gospelbased power of mutual love flowing from faith in Christ, to recognize what is possible through mutual co-operation and thus arrive at a new sense of identity, based on empowerment.56 Thus the role that Laurie Green calls ‘people’s theologian’ might equally well be understood as ‘liberation educator’ and the task of the ordained minister as liberation education. It is not difficult to see in the situation Freire addresses the influence of the principalities and powers, the dominating mindsets that determine social relationships and create a false sense of identity. In our own society the power of wealth, celebrity culture and consumerism exercise a similar effect. These governing mindsets are among the things from which Christians need to be freed if the church is to be fully equipped for the mission of God. And yet it is only through that participation, one aspect of which is action and reflection in community, that this liberation is achieved. Just as for Freire, the goal of such action is humanization, new identity in community; in the case of the church an identity modelled on the pattern of full humanity revealed in Jesus Christ. The ordained minister thus ‘animates’ the church not simply by calling out, equipping and directing its shared ministry but by helping the church to recognize and grow into its true shape as the beloved, chosen and Spirit-filled servant of the Lord. This means that she herself embodies that shape in her own life and discipleship. She conducts herself in the Christian community with an awareness of the koinonia to which it is called, allowing the koinonia of the Holy Spirit to shape and direct her relationships. 56 Paolo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970; Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation, London: SCM, 1974.

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She models the disciplines of spiritual warfare: prayer, speaking the truth, living out the way of life of God’s future kingdom in the present, and readiness to suffer when necessary. Like that of the apostle Paul, her competence for this ministry comes from God (2 Cor. 3.5). It rests on his call and her willingness to allow him to work in and through her own life. All this is a very long way from the professional model. And since our mental models are embodied in institutions and, indeed, in structures of power, it implies the need for changes not just in the way ministry is understood but in the way it is organized. This book will not be complete, therefore, without a glance at some of the changes required to move away from a defunct, nineteenthcentury model of ministry to one more in tune with the requirements of mission in contemporary culture.

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Conclusion Reimagining Ministry We are in a period of transition. More and more churches are moving from ‘inherited’ to ‘emerging’ mode. More and more are discovering and beginning to practise the centrality of mission. Fresh expressions and emerging churches continue to spring up. Local ministry is slowly becoming more firmly rooted. Dioceses and denominations are beginning to explore methods of deployment that facilitate mission. And the chorus of protest at the old ways, and in particular at the burdens they pile on to the shoulders of the clergy, grows in volume. With the growing centrality of mission comes a gradual shift in our understanding of ministry. In the introduction I described the ministry of a group of ecumenical colleagues to the Salisbury Chamber of Commerce. It is possible to imagine that situation in different ways. We might see it through the lens of the professional model of ministry: the ordained clergy carrying out ministry on behalf of their churches and relating to the business community as professionals in a similar way to that of a lawyer or accountant. Alternatively, we can reimagine the situation. We can view it through the lens of a model of ministry based on mission, in which these clergy accept the invitation of the business community to walk alongside them, praying for them, looking for signs of God’s kingdom, and seeking to discern ways in which the justice and torah of God might bring transformation for the benefit of the whole community. These two ways of seeing are not mutually exclusive: in a time of transition both are present. The key question is, ‘Which is the more fruitful for the mission of God?’ It is often the old ways of imagining that form the most effective 199

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obstacle to change. ‘New insights fail to get put into practice,’ writes Peter Senge, ‘because they conflict with deeply held internal images of how the world works, images that limit us to familiar ways of thinking and acting.’1 In 1983 John Tiller pointed out that a man would need to be ‘foolish or conceited’ to think he could match up to the requirements of the professional model, but this devastating indictment did little to change the Church of England’s mindset.2 Two years previously a ‘Partners in Mission’ consultation involving visiting consultants from the Anglican Communion and other churches both at home and overseas had been entitled To a Rebellious House? It had told us that, We are shackled by an accumulation of traditions … We believe, wrongly, that we can respond to God’s call to mission without disturbing our inherited structures … We are still too dominated by the false view that the ministry of the Church is confined to bishops, priests and deacons. The whole pilgrim people of God share in ministry, and clergy and laity must be trained for this shared ministry …3 Like the Tiller report, this clear challenge also failed to disturb the ‘inherited structures’ based on existing mental models. In an earlier chapter I suggested that the antidote to this conceptual blindness is the habit of reflection, through which we constantly examine our own ways of seeing. But hierarchical organizations, which the churches tend to be, have a built-in resistance to reflection. Because reflection systematically questions the status quo it constitutes a challenge to institutional structures of power. The professional model is built on the power of expertise and firmly rooted in the institutional forms and mental models of Christendom, in which the church is a privileged and powerful 1 Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline, 2nd edn, New York: Random House, 2006, p. 163. 2 John Tiller, A Strategy for the Church’s Ministry, London: CIO, 1983, p. 101. 3 Church of England General Synod, To a Rebellious House?, London: CIO, 1981, p. 47.

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institution in society. To change this particular mental model would mean a massive surrender of power from the church and in particular from the clergy. But the pattern of death and resurrection is deeply embedded in the church’s call. Nothing is more likely both to express and to facilitate the coming of God’s kingdom than a prayerful and considered movement in the direction of weakness and vulnerability. During this period of transition, the old expectations, of clergy, congregations and society at large, for an ordained ministry functioning in the traditional way continue to offer avenues for mission and ministry. Traditional church inhabits a broad cultural niche familiar to a considerable proportion of the population. Requests for baptisms and marriage in churches continue, and most people still expect or are at least content for their funeral to be conducted by a member of the clergy. Churches and the clergy play an enormous role in education at all levels. In many communities, church buildings are a spiritual focus. Moreover, traditional church still largely pays the bills: all denominations rely heavily on the contribution of existing churchgoers to provide the finance needed for new developments. And yet, change is required. The proportion of the population for whom traditional church is culturally appropriate is rapidly declining. The status of the churches in society is rapidly changing. Financial resources are dwindling. And there are signs that the traditional approach to ministry actually alienates an increasing number of Christian believers, who leave churches in order to continue living faithful Christian lives.4 Most important, our existing ‘theology-in-practice’ of ministry has yet to catch up with the lessons we are learning about the mission of God. All this means that clergy are faced with an increasingly difficult challenge:

4 See Michael J. Fanstone, The Sheep that Got Away, Tunbridge Wells: Monarch, 1993; Alan Jamieson, A Churchless Faith, London: SPCK, 2002; Leslie J. Francis and Philip Richter, Gone for Good?: Church Leaving and Returning in the 21st Century, Peterborough: Epworth, 2007.

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to maintain the old and continue to minister to those who expect the traditional pattern of professional ministry while at the same time adapting to the roles and relationships required by the new, mission-centred way of working. If, as I have suggested, the next step forward in mission to which the churches are called requires a recognition and embrace of ‘whole-life’ discipleship, there are considerable obstacles to overcome, greater by far than those that might have held back process evangelism, community mission or emerging church. Firmly rooted in Christendom, with its division between the realms of sacred and secular, the professional model identifies ‘ministry’ as what the clergy do, mainly within the gathered congregation, and identifies the remaining 98 per cent of the church as their ‘clients’. ‘Lay ministry’ still largely involves training lay people to do the things the clergy do as their helpers and auxiliaries. Nationally trained and deployable clergy, with the onesize-fits-all understanding of ministry that accompanies this pattern, are still seen as the norm from which other forms of ministry, though closer to biblical models, are a departure. And despite the increasing importance of theological reflection as an element in the training of the clergy, academic patterns of training emphasizing expertise in a field of knowledge still predominate. Adapting our understanding and practice of ministry to the pattern of the missio Dei as we are gradually coming to understand it will require ‘systemic change at every level’.5 It will require us to reimagine not only ministry but each area of the church’s life associated with it. First we will need to reimagine selection and deployment. Procedures will need to adapt to the recognition of collaborative local ministry as the paradigmatic form of ministry for the local congregation. This will require a genuinely local form of selection separate and different from the procedures for those

5 Adrian Dorber, ‘Why is Local Ministry important for a mission-shaped Church?’ in Local Ministry: story, process and meaning, ed. Robin Greenwood and Caroline Pascoe, London: SPCK, 2006, p. 81.

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to be trained for full-time stipendiary ministry.6 These two forms of ministry will also need to be clearly separated from ‘pioneer’ ministry, with its focus on cross-cultural evangelism and church planting. Stipendiary ministry itself will become much more ‘episcopal’: increasingly stipendiary ministers will be involved in resourcing, training and supporting the local community ministry teams.7 This in turn will involve a reappraisal of the role of the bishop. The provision of episcope, oversight or supervision (the Greek, Anglo-Saxon and Latin forms of the same word) will need to be brought much closer to the situation on the ground. They cannot be exercised effectively by bishops or superintendants with scores or even hundreds of clergy in their care.8 We will need to reimagine training. A mission-centred understanding of ministry, writes Dan Hardy, ‘places a premium on the education, insight and character of those who minister … This will call for new conceptions of theological education and formation, not simply forms of the old adapted for wider use.’9 Training for local ministry and all forms of lay ministry will be based around reflective practice and an action–reflection approach to theological understanding, resisting the pressure to use the more theoretically orientated criteria of the Academy for evaluating candidates.10 Training for all forms of ordained ministry will include the skills of listening, reflection and education as foundational elements. And there will be a decisive shift from ‘initial’ to ‘in-service’ training. From the standpoint of

6 See Geoff Mason, ‘Selecting Ordained Local Ministers’ in Ordained Local Ministry, ed Malcolm Torry and Jeffrey Heskins, London: SCM, 2006, p. 125. 7 Anthony Russell, The Country Parson, London: SPCK, 1993, pp. 184–7; Steven Croft, Ministry in Three Dimensions, London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1999, pp. 141–92; Dorber, ‘Local Ministry’, p. 81. 8 Stephen Pickard, Theological Foundations for Collaborative Ministry, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009, pp. 169–88. 9 Daniel W. Hardy, ‘Afterword: Evaluating Local Ministry for the future of the Church’ in Local Ministry, ed Greenwood and Pascoe, pp. 146–7. 10 Nigel Godfrey, ‘Training Ordained Local Ministers’ in Ordained Local Ministry, eds Torry and Heskins, pp. 142–3.

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the professional model, the most important training priority has been the acquisition of sufficient expertise prior to ordination. For a reimagined ministry the focus of training moves in the direction of lifelong learning. It means recognizing that lay ministry, Ordained Local Ministry, full-time stipendiary ministry and a variety of other expressions of ministry are different ways in which the church participates in the mission of God. Not only does each have its own integrity but for a particular person each may be stages on a journey. Accordingly, the emphasis will shift towards providing the training and equipping required for each stage as the journey progresses. Reimagining ministry entails reimagining congregational life. The professional model both belongs with and reinforces the model of ‘inherited church’, with its focus on the provision of buildings and services for a largely passive laity. For these lay people, ‘ministry’ is largely confined to offering time, energy and skills to fulfil the tasks required for the maintenance of church life: upkeep of the building, pastoral care of the congregation, teaching and preaching. As a result the Christian discipleship of those at the centre of church life comes to revolve more and more around these necessary tasks while the majority remain passive and frequently fail to grow in faith. In contrast our reimagined model places the focus on the ministry of all God’s people not only within the life of the congregation but in secular life and work. Accordingly the focus of congregational life shifts to promoting vocation and resourcing the whole congregation for discipleship in the world. Local churches become less busy with churchcentred activities, learning instead to ‘do a few things and do them well’. The time, energy and gifts required to maintain healthy congregational life are seen in the wider context of the church’s mission to the locality, which is the responsibility of all its members. In this pattern moreover, worship is participative. The task of the ordained minister shifts from using his professional expertise to do it for the people to teaching and encouraging them to do it for themselves. The authority pattern in teaching and 204

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preaching also shifts: the expertise of the laity in the details of their own lives, their knowledge of the history of the church and locality is valued alongside the expertise of the minister in the interpretation of the Bible. Preaching itself may even become interactive and participative.11 Finally, the most momentous change of all will take place as the churches’ institutions adapt to a different, mission-centred concept of what it means to be a Christian. In brief, what is required is a reaffirmation of Christian faith as ‘wisdom for living’, a recovery of the experience of the first disciples, for whom faith in Christ was simply, ‘the Way’ (Acts 9.2; 18.26). The first important theological insight we noted in connection with the growth of process evangelism was that ‘people are asking searching questions’. In connection with community mission we saw that it is possible to invite people who are not part of the church into partnership because the vision of God’s kingdom underlying the mission of God strikes a chord with many, connects with the ‘foundational’ and ‘vocational’ dimensions of faith and expresses the longing for harmonious, grace-filled society characteristic of the human heart. One of the attractions for many of emerging church in several of its forms is its holistic approach, a refusal to divide the sacred from the secular, the opportunity to integrate Christian faith with the whole of life. Finally, I have mentioned the research that suggests that a major reason why some people give up on church is its failure to address the concerns of everyday life. Religious faith consists of several different elements, often found in uneasy relationship with each other. There are the beliefs about God and the world that form a religion’s doctrinal system. There are the practices: going to church, taking communion, celebrating the festivals and so on. There is experience: of awe and wonder, of excitement and joy, of recognition and acceptance. There is lifestyle, 11 See Tim Stratford, Interactive Preaching: Opening the Word then Listening, Cambridge: Grove, 1998; Doug Pagitt, Preaching Reimagined, Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2005; Sam Wells, ‘Imagination’ in Wells and Sara Coakley (ed), Praying for England, London: Continuum, 2008; Jonny Baker, Transforming Preaching, Cambridge: Grove, 2009.

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the moral values and expectations of life that emerge from beliefs and practice. And there are the institutions through which the religious community is led and administered, and the faith passed on. For different people, different elements of their religion will take on different levels of importance and the answer to the question, ‘What does it mean to be a Christian?’ may well be very different. For many, practices play the central role. Countless people have attended church for most of their lives without having any more than the sketchiest understanding of what Christians are supposed to believe. Many others attend church looking for an experience but fail to translate this into a transformed way of living. For the official institutions of the churches in Britain, there is no doubt that some of these elements are considerably more important than others. In the mainstream denominations, the institutions themselves, intellectual belief and religious practices hold a privileged position. For example, when a Church of England minister is licensed to a new ministry, he must declare that his beliefs accord with Anglican teaching, promise to use only officially permitted forms of worship and swear allegiance to the monarch and his bishop. In other words, beliefs, practices and the institution take centre stage: it is on these that his training will have concentrated and around these that his ministry is expected to revolve. The relative lack of importance of a concept of Christian faith as a way of living, in which these very beliefs and practices both help to integrate and are themselves enlivened by Christian discipleship in the world, is one of the most important reasons that the churches have grown increasingly out of touch with society. While for those already members of the churches, increasingly drawn from an older generation, religious practices have formed the dominant element in their understanding and experience of faith, the majority of those outside the church, from the age of 50 downwards, are looking for a way of living. While they fight shy of the institution and refuse to be thought of as ‘religious’, increasingly people are looking for a satisfying, morally and spiritually coherent 206

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lifestyle. What they are looking for is a sense of identity, an answer to the question,‘Who am I really?’ with the power to integrate their increasingly fragmented lives.12 Thus finally, we will need to reimagine Christian faith as ‘wisdom for living’, which is precisely what theology at its heart has always been.13 The key that turns intellectual belief into practical wisdom is reflection on action. The practice of reflection enables the local congregation truly to become a learning community and thus a community of disciples, open to transformation through their engagement in the missio Dei. It enables a congregation to articulate their ‘ordinary theology’ and thus to grow in their understanding of God, applying this understanding as a guide in everyday discipleship. In this way Christianity becomes a liberating faith, transforming not only individual Christian believers, but the churches as corporate fellowships and the communities with which they engage. What I have sought to do is to ‘reimagine’ ministry, to explore the way in which the church’s rediscovery of mission over the past generation is beginning to transform its understanding of the church, ministry and discipleship and to weave together some of the theological strands emerging. If this model of ministry commends itself, the task for the church is to discover ways to put it into practice, recognizing those elements of the old, professional model which now hinder its mission, and letting go of structures of power that may no longer be appropriate. This will not be an easy task, but God is a gracious, gentle and yet powerful transformer of minds and hearts. ‘Who is sufficient for these things?’ asked Paul in the course of setting out for the Corinthians his own theology of ministry, and answered his own question: ‘Our competence is from God’ (2 Cor. 2.16; 3.5).

12 For the background to the previous three paragraphs see John Drane, Do Christians Know How to be Spiritual? and After McDonaldization, London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2005 and 2008. 13 See Edward Farley, Theologia, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983.

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Index of Scripture references

Genesis 1.28 142 2.15 83, 84 3.17–19 84 26.28–31 78 37.14 78 Exodus 20.10 85 22.25–27 86–7 Leviticus 19.9–10 86 23.10 86 25.1–7 85 25.8–17 86 25.18–22 85 Numbers 6.24–26 77 Deuteronomy 15.1–8 85–6 Joshua 9.15 78 Ruth 2.1–7 86 1 Samuel 17.18 78 Psalms 33.6 71

34.12–14 38.3 42.2 46.4 47.2 69.32 72.1 72.1–14 73.3 82.1–8 84.7 85.10 89.27 93.2 104.21 127.2–3 145.13 146.7–9 Proverbs 11.1 Isaiah 2.1–4 5.8 25.6 32.17 35.1–10

81 78 140 179 71 77 180 75, 78, 80 79 96–7 140 79 180 71 84 87 71 75 79 75, 180 86 75 77, 79 75

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40.10 40.15 40.28 41.8 42.1 42.1–4

71 71 71 177 177 177, 178–81 42.6 178 43.8 177–8 48.18 79 48.22 79 49.1–6 177, 178 50.4 180–81, 195 50.4–9 177 50.6 195 52.13–53.12 177 57.21 79 61.1–3 75 65.20–23 73 Jeremiah 1.10 71 5.28 79 6.13 79 6.14 79 8.8–10 79 8.11 79

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10.7 20.10 29.7 29.11 Ezekiel 47.1–12 Daniel 10.12–20 Hosea 11.1–9 Micah 4.1–4 Matthew 5.3–10 5.16 5.38–45 5.43–48 6.20 6.33 8.1–3 9.10–13 11.2–6 12.18–21 12.28 12.14–15 12.29 14.13 15.21 16.4 23.8–12 Mark 1.35–38 1.40–44 2.1–2

71 77, 78 69, 79– 80 78 179 97 54 75 104 124 104 56 166 87 56 56 71 177 71–2 57 72 59 59 59 55 55 53 53

2.6–11 2.15–16 3.14 5.18–19 6.30–44 7.1–8 8.31 9.31 10.32–45 10.41–45

72 124 120, 160 53 56 56 57 57 57 57, 104, 154 10.45 177 12.41–44 56 14.36 55 Luke 1.79 81 2.14 81 3.22 56 4.1 56, 179 4.5–6 72 4.14 54 4.49 54 5.7 118 5.16 55 6.1–10 56 7.36 56 8.1–3 56 10–25–37 56 11.5–11 124, 161 14.1 56 14.7–14 56 14.12–14 104 17.11–19 53 18.9–14 56 18.18–23 53 210

22.53 72 23.50–24.10 56 24.49 179 John 1.12 139 2.5 155 2.9 155 4.34 123 5.14 53 5.19 52 6.15 55 6.35 123 6.40 123 6.47 123 6.54 123 6.56 123 6.67 53–4 7.37–39 179–80 8.10–11 53 8.17 139 9.4 52 12.31 72 12.38 177 13.15 55 13.34–35 117–18 14.12–16 54 14.15–27 120 14.18 54 14.24 52 14.25–6 54 14.27 81 14.30–31 72 15.1–17 120 15.4 125 15.15 123, 179

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15.15–16 124, 161 15.16 150 16.12–15 54 16.33 81 20.21–22 54, 112 Acts 1.3 72 1.4 179 1.4–8 54 1.17 155 1.25 155 2.42 118 4.27 177 9.2 205 14.23 184 15.28 184 15.36–16.10 184 18.26 205 20.17 184 20.24 155 20.30 184 21.19 155 28.3 172 Romans 1.21 107 5.3–5 140 5.9–10 177 5.17 142 8.2 143 8.16 142 8.17 165 8.17–27 182 8.18–25 106, 164– 5 8.26–27 142

8.38–39 12.2

92 76, 142, 143 13.1–7 99 15.26 121 1 Corinthians 1.9 118, 120 2.8 92 3.5 155 3.9 155–6 4.1 156–7 12.1–31 82 13.8 183 13.12 140 2 Corinthians 1.3–7 122 2.6–16 142–3 2.16 207 3.5 198, 207 3.18 140 4.1 155 4.4 107 4.6 140 5.18 155–6 8.4 123 10.13–17 89 12.7–10 182 13.13 120 Galatians 2.6–10 122 2.20 143–4 3.29 82 4.8 93–4 4.9 93 4.19 139, 163 211

5.25 186 Ephesians 2.6 142 3.10 94, 99, 107 4.12 82, 186 4.16 157, 160 4.22–24 141 4.24 140 5.21 76, 168 5.21–30 169 5.21–6.4 168 6.12 92, 94 Philippians 1.1 184 1.5–7 122 2.1–2 119 2.5 143 2.6 102 2.8 55 2.12–13 140–41 3.10 122, 182 4.15 121–2 Colossians 1.28 139 2.1 163 2.7 113 2.8 93 2.15 93 2.18 93 2.17–20 81 2.20 93 3.5 141 3.12 141 3.12–4.6 168

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4.12 163 4.17 155 1 Thessalonians 1.8 124 1 Timothy 3.1–13 184 3.2 196 2 Timothy 4.5 155 Titus 1.5–9 184 Philemon 6 121 15–16 170

Hebrews 5.11–6.12 James 1.2–4 1.24 1.9–10 1 Peter 2.15 2.13–37 2.18–21 2.22–24 4.12–14 5.1–2

139 40 139 55, 82 124 168 170 177 122 184, 186

212

John 1.1–4 3.2 4.19 Revelation 2.1–3.22 8.1–5 11.15 12.7–9 13.1–8 13.11–18 17.1–8 22.1–2

120 140 179 97 106 72 96 96, 97 96 96, 97 179

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Index of names

Aristotle 141 Atkyns, Martyn 113 Avis, Paul 50 Ball, Peter 19 Ballard, Paul 130 Barth, Karl 31 Bayes, Paul 36 Berkhof, Hendrickus 97 Boff, Leonardo 111 Bolger, Ryan 36, 37, 52 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich 27, 57, 117, 180, 182 Bosch, David 50, 112 Bowden, Andrew 6 Bowsher, Andii 94, 98 Breuggemann, Walter 78, 82, 91 Calvin, Jean 62 Carroll, Chris 192 Chalke, Steve 168 Clark, David 9 Clark–King, Jeremy 192 Cohen, Abraham 77 Collins, John 155–6 Cooke, Lloyd 69 Cooling, Trevor 152–3 Cottrell, Stephen 21, 22, 48, 133–4, 174

Covey, Stephen 151–2 Cray, Graham 32, 48 Croft, Steven 32, 52, 109, 175–6 de Cassade, Pierre 89 Dewar, Francis 149–50 Donovan, Vincent 46 Dorber, Adrian 187 Drane, John 8 Einstein, Albert 10 Finney, John 20, 59 Fraser, Ian 171 Freire, Paolo 100, 196–7 Frost, Michael 38, 115 Fung, Raymond 73 Gamble, Robin 18, 41, 48 Gibbs, Eddie 36, 37, 52 Gilchrist, Alison 47, 134 Gilpin, Janet 38 Glasson, Barbara 33 Graham, Billy 1 Green Laurie 130–31, 136, 147, 197 Greenwood, Robin 9, 121, 189 Greig, Pete 162, 181–2 Greirson, Denham 127 Groome, Thomas 128 Gumbel, Nicky 16 213

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Hackwood, Paul 176, 181 Hanson, Norbert Russell 10 Hirsch, Alan 38, 115 Hodgson, Janet 43, 59 Holbrook, John 42, 46 Hollinghurst, Steve 102, 174–5 Huddlestone, Trevor 187 Hudson, Paul 171 Ignatius of Antioch 190 Ireland, Mark 18–19 Jackson, Bob 15 Jones, Andrew 172 Jordan, Elizabeth 189 Kierkegaard, Soren 152 Kuhn, Thomas 10, 11 Lewis-Anthony, Justin 5 Lings, George 35 Luther, Martin 62 Marnham, Charles 16 McKenzie, Leon 144 Moltmann, Jurgen 50, 62, 73, 123–4, 151, 159 Morisy, Ann 27–9, 52, 57, 69, 74, 151, 173 Mother Theresa 181 Moule, C.F.D. 142 Moynagh, Michael 36 Newbigin, Lesslie 92–3, 112–15 Newton, Sir Isaac 10 Otis, George Jr 97 Parker, Russ 103–4 Pickard, Stephen 186 Polanyi, Michael 11 Popper, Sir Karl 10 Pritchard, John 9, 130

Rahner, Karl 28 Roberts, Ted 187 Russell, Anthony 2–5, 9, 190–92 Savage, Sara 22, 136–7 Seldon, Anthony 90–91 Senge, Peter 10, 100, 131, 137, 200 Smith, Adam 99 Spencer, Neil 160 St Theresa 157 Stevens, R. Paul 157 Taylor, John V. 51, 87, 118–121 Thomson, John 18 Thornton, Lionel S. 122–3 Tilby, Angela 95 Tiller, John, 4–5, 10, 200 Tomlin, Graham 124 Tomlinson, Dave 37 Tutu, Desmond 164 Volf, Miroslav 62, 88, 151 Wagner, C. Peter 97 Walton, Roger 146–7 Warren, Robert 45–7, 65, 74 Westerhoff, John H. III 127 Wilberforce, William 89 Williams, Rowan 32, 74, 116, 139, 146 Wink, Walter 98, 105–6, 162, 164 Wooderson, Michael 16–17 Woodforde, James 2 Wright, Tom 94, 141–2, 166 Yoder, John Howard 101–2, 168–9 Yoder, Perry 78 Zizioulas, John 121 214

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Index of subjects

24–7 prayer movement 161–2, 181 adult catechumenate 17, 20 adult education 144–8, 196 After Sunday project 61 Alpha course 16–23, 45 Anglican Consultative Council 51 animation 184–5, 194, 197 Back to Church Sunday 40–41, 47 Baptist Church 15, 40 Beatitudes 76 Beyond the Fringe project 48–9, 102–3 Breaking New Ground 32 Byker, Newcastle 192 Cable Street Community Church 38 Called to New Life 64 cascade of grace 57, 117, 175 cathedrals 42 Christendom 8, 13, 66, 186, 200– 202 Christian Aid 167 Church of England 2–6, 11, 15, 18, 22, 40, 42, 58, 64, 109, 184, 188, 189, 200, 206 Churches Together in England 20

Citizens UK 168 clergy stress 2, 5, 6 collaborative ministry 12–13, 183–94 Common Worship 18, 58 community mission 24–31, 45, 49, 58, 166, 205 community, church as 38, 46–7, 49, 82, 101, 110, 112, 131, 159, see koinonia contextualisation 37–9, 57–8, 103, 110, 113, 115, 154, 186, 188 Decade of Evangelism 15–16, 20 defensive routines 137 diakonia 154–8 discipleship 27–8, 57, 62–5, 74, 76, 110, 138–53, 157–8, 170– 71, 202, 204, 207 Doxa course 18 emerging church, see fresh expressions of church Emmaus course 18–23, 45, 59, 134, 173 eucharist 115, 117, 119, 122–3, 186 evangelism 172–6 explicit domain of faith 7, 63 215

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Faith at Work network 61 Faithful Cities 80 five marks of mission 51, see mission Dei formation 125–8 foundational domain of faith 7–8, 14, 63, 205 Fresh Expressions network 32–3, 35–6 fresh expressions of church 32– 40,49, 109, 111, 159, 205 friendship 123–4, 161, 179 Glendale, Northumberland 69– 70, 73, 79, 132–3 Good News Down the Street 16– 17 healing, ministry of 53, 75–6, 167 healthy church 43–4, 59, 82, 134 hidden curriculum 44–5, 47, 126– 7 hierarchy 55, 132, 184, 186, 190, 200 Holy Spirit 29–31, 39–40, 49, 50– 51, 54, 58, 62, 64, 88, 97, 106, 111–14, 117–18, 119–121, 125, 141–2, 142–4, 147–8, 157, 165, 173, 179–80, 184, 186, 188, 189, 195 Holy Trinity Brompton 16, 159 hospitality 23, 47, 152, 161 incarnational mission 30, 37, 45, 57–8, 110, 113, 182 inter-faith dialogue 175–6 Isaiah Agenda 73–4, 180 Jacobus Kirche 159

jubilee, year of 86 justice 30, 75, 79–80, 82, 86–8, 166–8, 180–81, 199 Keep Sunday Special 168 kingdom of God 28–29, 31, 51, 53–5, 58, 62, 64–7, 68–108, 112, 113, 120, 141, 151, 165–71, 172, 180, 198, 199, 205 koinonia 118–125, 126, 160, 167, 179, 182, 189, 197 lay ministry 11, 13, 41, 64–5, 202, 204 learning cycle 129 listening 54, 56, 58, 175–6, 195, 203 liturgical renewal 41 London Institute for Contemporary Christianity 61, 171 Make Poverty History 168 mental models 10–11, 50, 59, 93, 100, 101, 111, 127, 131, 133, 136–7, 158 , 162, 195–7, 200– 205 Methodist Church 15, 33, 40 missio Dei, mission of God 50–59, 62, 65, 77, 110, 112–13, 120–23, 150, 156–7, 158, 165, 173, 186, 187, 202, 207 Mission-shaped Church 32, 34, 36, 59, 109, 115 mixed economy 58, see fresh expressions of church Network course 148, 150 opposite spirit, living in 104–5, 168–70, 198

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ordained local ministry 41, 183– 94 ordinary theology 171, 207 paradigms, see mental models Partners in Mission consultation 200 patronage system 5 people’s theologian 136, 138, 197 pluralism 6, 174–5 poor, God’s bias to 30, 75, 180–81 power 75, 91–108, 183, 186, 198, 200–201 prayer 55, 91, 105–6, 124, 147, 158, 161–5, 198, see spirituality principalities and powers 72, 91– 108, 114, 122, 127, 158, 162–5, 176, 181, 197 process evangelism 16–23, 46, 49, 59, 205, see also Alpha course, Emmaus course professional model of ministry 2– 14, 101, 133, 136, 138, 145, 159, 186, 188, 193, 198, 199, 201–2, 204 radical subordination 168–70 Re: New 33–4 relational basis of ministry 185–6, 190 Ripon College Cuddesdon 3, 146 Roman Catholic Church 15, 17, 111, 115 Sabbath 56, 83–91, 101, 141–2, 167–8 Salisbury 13, 199

Sanctus 1 38–40, 66 selection procedures 202–3 Sermon on the Mount 76 Servant of the Lord 30, 55, 57, 121, 122, 136, 154–5, 177–82, 190, 194, 197 shalom 76–7, 77–82, 83, 86–8, 90– 91, 101, 120, 141–2, 167–8 Shape course 148, 150 Sheffield Centre 24, 36, 174 social capital 107 Somewhere Else 33, 38 Soul of Britain survey 48–9 spiritual mapping 97, 103 spiritual warfare 101–8, 198 spirituality 41, 42, 47–9, 116–7 St Michael’s Blackheath 24–31, 36, 59, 73, 79, 135 St Paul’s Longton Hall 6, 28, 47, 103 St Thomas Aldridge 16–17 Start! course 18 Stoke-on-Trent 6, 68–9, 79, 94, 96, 148, 162, 193 Stop the Traffik 168 Storehouse project 82 Street pastors 181 suffering 57, 104–5, 122, 158, 165, 181, 198 supervision 203 systems theory 10, 95, 102 Tear Fund 167 theological reflection 35–6, 42, 63, 101, 113, 125, 128–38, 171, 195–6, 200, 203, 207

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training for ministry 203–4 Thornbury Centre 173, 176, 181 Twenty-Four/Seven course 146 United Reformed Church 40 Urban Ministry and Theology Project 192 venturesome love 28, 57, 82, 151 virtue ethics 141 vocation 87–8, 148–53, 179, 188, 190, 204 vocational domain of faith 63, 74, 151–2, 205

volunteer mentality 136–7 wells and fences 115–16 wisdom 7, 138, 152, 196, 205, 207 work, faith and 6–8, 59–67, 76, 83, 142, 153 work, theology of 62, 83–5, 87–8, 151, 165 World Vision 167 worship 42, 46, 158–60 XS Centre 33 Youth Hostels Association 70

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