Moderator's Address Part III
Part I - A Key Moment
Part II - Contemporary Mission
Part III - The Local Church
Part IV - A New Framework
Part V - Key Areas
Local Church Programmes and Conciliar Frameworks
for Mission
The national church cannot prescribe for a local
congregation, but it fails its duty if it does not provide a framework
within which faithful ways of being church can be created appropriate to
local contexts.
We are being called and challenged to find patterns of
obedience through which people will encounter Church in what we are saying
and doing. But that will only be possible if we break through the insularity
which so often holds us captive in order to become an encountering church,
one which has relearned that mission, understood in its most inclusive
sense, is the veryraison d'etre of the church. I never agreed with Bishop
Lesslie Newbigin's analysis of contemporary society, finding it unduly
negative and his prescriptions for our ills unnecessarily exclusivist and
damagingly dogmatic. But I have never forgotten a passage from his Honest
Religion for Secular Man which I read when a science undergraduate:
The church . . . has listened to the words 'Come unto
me', but not listened to the words 'Go-and I am with you'. It has
interpreted election as if it meant being chosen for special privilege in
relation to God, instead of being chosen for special responsibility before
God for other men. It has interpreted conversion as if it was simply a
turning towards God for purposes of one's own private inner religious life,
instead of seeing conversion as it is in the Bible, a turning towards God
for the doing of his will in the secular world. It has understood itself
more as an institution than as an exhibition. Its typical shape in the eyes
of its own members as well as those outside has been not a band of pilgrims
who have heard the word 'Go', but a large and solid building which, at its
best, can only say 'Come', and at its worst says, all too clearly, 'Stay
away' [1]
And, yes, let's face it; we have far too many
buildings at the moment which tell people to 'stay away'!
But what would the 'encountering church' I'm
advocating actually look like? It will be a community which makes a
difference to people and the world around it and beyond; its focus will be
the empowering and equipping of young and old to live Christ-like lives in
their ordinary encounters at home, work and play; it will invite people 'in'
in order to send them 'out' more confident and hopeful; it will be a thorn
in the flesh of all unjust structures and practices. But what of its
programme? For several reasons, I do not think that it is Assembly business
to determine such a programme. That task belongs to each covenanting
collection of God's saints in the context which is uniquely theirs.
Different times will require different emphases, as will different age and
interest groups - one size will not fit all! Nor can we prescribe from a
distance if we take local church contexts seriously. Mission after the
example of Christ needs to be more 'bottom up' than 'top down', otherwise it
so easily becomes manipulative and insensitive. Everything rests therefore
with the ability of local outcroppings of gathered saints to be signs and
sacraments of God's acceptance and generosity in their gloriously ordinary
lives and communities. Lying underneath this observation, of course, is our
Reformed conviction that all the marks of the true church can indeed be
found within a faithful local congregation.
While a programme for the encountering church must be
hammered out at a local congregational level, the fact that each
congregation is in fellowship with other similar congregations through the
Councils of the church suggests a role for the wider church in facilitating
their work. Collectively we might devise a broad framework within which
local programmes for encountering church can be developed, as well as
suggest key areas for churches to work on as they strive for missionary
effectiveness. In what follows I will offer some suggestions concerning a
framework for local church mission as well as delineate those key areas in
church life which most need our renewed attention. While I will not have
time to develop my thinking on these key areas in this address, I hope to
work on them with the members of this year's Holiday Forum and during my
visits around the URC constituency.
[1]
Lesslie Newbigin, Honest Religion for
Secular Man (London:SCM Press, 1996), pp.101-102
[ Back ] [ Next ]
|
