Читать книгу Jesus' People - Steven Croft - Страница 7

1

Finding the compass

Jesus said to him: ‘I am the way.’ (John 14.6)

Navigation is difficult. Every time I attempt to drive through Reading or Watford I get lost. One night I tried to find my way out of London. I drove for an hour and ended up more or less exactly where I set off. One evening in Wales I took a wrong turning, went 40 miles out of my way and ended up being very late for a conference of Welsh archdeacons (something you do only once in your life).

It was at that point that I invested in a Sat Nav system. We have had our moments, my Sat Nav and I. It has a strong preference for short cuts down exceptionally narrow country lanes (especially in the dark). But on the whole I always know exactly where I am and most of the time it takes me to my destination.

The Church, too, urgently needs its aids to navigation in the present climate. Where will we look for that perspective and direction?

Everyone inside and outside the Church in Britain agrees that we face real questions. The relationship between Church and society has changed rapidly over the last hundred years or so. That change has been accelerating in the last 25 years and shows no sign of slowing down. Some of the symptoms of that changing relationship are there to see in the way our society chooses to live its life. Sundays are no longer protected days for rest and worship. The Christian voice is no longer the dominant one in the framing of our laws. Most people are far more aware than they were of other world faiths. Church attendance over most of the last century was in significant decline.

There is more recent evidence since the year 2000 that the picture is changing: the decline is slowing down overall. New patterns of church attendance are emerging, with more people attending on different days and fresh expressions of church emerging alongside traditional worship. It’s possible to discover many different places and traditions where there is real growth again. Large numbers of people still claim some kind of allegiance to Christian faith in census returns and opinion polls, but many local churches struggle to keep going with small and ageing congregations and fewer ministers to go round.

A goldfish finds it very difficult to see the water in which it swims. In the same way, it is extremely difficult to understand a changing situation in which we are caught up and to read it well, with a good sense of perspective. As I have travelled the country over the last five years listening to how people read this changing situation, I have found two very different accounts being presented to me again and again of where we are and how we arrived. One focuses on failure and the other on change. I have come to the conclusion that the first is deeply flawed and the second much more hopeful.

Have we failed?

The first account says that all of this change is happening because the Christian Church in Britain has failed and is failing. We must bear the responsibility for shrinking congregations and declining influence in society.

This is the story that is told back to the Church by the media again and again. The Church is in massive decline and it is all our fault. It is also a story that the Church tells back to itself again and again with disastrous consequences. The failure story saps strength and morale from God’s people. It does so in one of two ways, depending on where we lay the blame.

Blaming others

The first way is when people lay the blame on some other group within the life of the Church. It is all the fault of the senior church leaders, says one group. It is all the fault of the liberals or the catholics or the evangelicals says another. If only everyone was ‘like us’, then this decline would never have happened. It is because we have been too tolerant and lax, say others. It is because we have not been tolerant and loving enough, say a different group. One party argues that the decline is because our worship is not modern and accessible. Another group argue that the same decline is because our worship is too contemporary and accessible and has lost all sense of mystery.

What is the end-product of all this blame? It is, of course, to increase bitter division in the Christian community. At the very moment when the Church most needs to be united, we blame one another for the mess we are in and become further divided. Picture an army on a field of battle surrounded by an enemy who has no need to attack at all. Different sections of the army have turned their fire on one another. Hardly anyone is even aware that they are in the midst of a wider conflict at all, which profoundly affects the future of our society. The main object seems to be to point the finger and blame everyone else within the Church as effectively as possible. As we do that, it is no surprise really that the Church becomes a deeply unattractive community to those outside.

Blaming ourselves

The second route we take is, in its way, even more corrosive. If we follow this route we lay the blame for the ‘failure’ not on other people but on ourselves. The decline is because we ourselves are at fault in some way. We have not loved enough, preached well enough, prayed long enough, organized effectively enough, worked hard enough to have prevailed and seen off the minor difficulties the Church faced in the twentieth century. If we had been as faithful as our ancestors, Britain would still be a deeply Christian country and our churches would all be full on Sundays.

Here the focus is entirely on our own efforts. How foolish we are. When the disciples are caught in the storm on Lake Galilee no one argues that their failure caused the wind or the rain. They do not waste time and energy blaming one another for poor weather forecasting. To have done this would have sapped strength and energy when they needed it most. They do what they can from their own resources to fight the storm, and when it proves too much they turn to exactly the person we need to turn to in our present tempests: the one who is sleeping in the boat.

When we blame ourselves, the acid of despair takes hold in the heart of the Church. At the very moment when the Church most needs the strength of Christian hope and assurance of God’s grace and love, we find in our hearts nothing but despair. Our eyes turn away from God and the world and turn inwards. Despair and cynicism sap strength for new life and growth and the possibility of new things.

One of the most powerful images in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings is the picture of Theoden, King of Rohan, when we first meet him. His strength has been sapped by the lies of his servant, Wormtongue, who is an agent of the evil wizard Saruman. Wormtongue’s half-truths have fed the despair in the heart of the once mighty king and convinced him he can no longer lift his sword in battle and that he is powerless against the forces around him. All he can do is retrench and retreat. There are those who offer similar counsels to God’s people today.

Is the failure narrative true or false?

The failure narrative has been swallowed whole by much of the Church. Either someone else is to blame or we blame ourselves. It affects ministers, church members and those who plan at local, regional and national level. But is the failure narrative the right interpretation of the present context? Where should our starting point be?

When I first became a vicar I was 29 and very wet behind the ears (some would say signs of dampness remain). One of the Readers in the church, Ken, was a Christian of great experience. Ken took me in hand like a sergeant major with an officer fresh from cadet school. One of the best things he ever taught me was what he called the ‘fruit test’. Jesus says that one of the tests we need to apply to everything is the fruit test:

‘You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? In the same way every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit.’ (Matthew 7.16-17)

One of the great saints, Ignatius Loyola, developed a similar principle for discerning God’s will but it lacks the catchy title. Put bluntly, the failure narrative fails the fruit test. What are its fruits? They are blame and division, cynicism and despair. These are not fruits of the Holy Spirit or the signs of God’s handiwork. But there are other reasons also why we should reject it.

The failure story depends on something of a myth of a golden age in British Christianity in earlier generations from which we have fallen. That myth simply does not stand up to historical examination. In every period in Church history when we look closely there are good things to find and also bad things to discover. At the time of the greatest excesses of the medieval papacy we find the simplicity of Francis. When the Church is all dry formality, God raises up Whitfield and Wesley. Christian witness and church life have always been something of a struggle since the Acts of the Apostles and the Church has always been imperfect. For every Peter and John there is an Ananias and a Simon the Magician.

This is not to deny the truth that many measures of Christian allegiance have been in decline or that our situation is serious – simply to explode as fiction that there was once a time when things were perfect. There was no golden age.

The failure story also makes us close our eyes to the very good things happening in the Church in the present. We are blind to them because these good things do not fit the script that everything is in decline and going to the dogs and it’s all our (or someone else’s) fault. I’ve often felt when talking with some people about all the good things happening in fresh expressions of church that some groups will not take them on board. New growth and new hope in the British Church simply can’t happen (according to their worldview). The story of the established Church in particular has to be a tragedy with a bad ending despite the evidence of their eyes and ears. It’s more important to their own identity to preserve the frame of this tragic story than to recognize the truth of growth and renewal before their very eyes. Eeyore is alive and well in many congregations, synods and pressure groups. In the last of the Narnia stories, C. S. Lewis paints a compelling picture of a group of dwarves who are admitted to the great banquet at the end of time but they can neither see nor taste the good things because of their own cynicism and despair. It’s not hard to find similar groups in the councils of the Church. But they need to be challenged.

But the main and final reason why I do not believe the failure story is that it is simply much too Church-centred. We have lived in the last hundred years through massive change in our society, which has embraced two world wars, a seismic shift in Europe’s place in the world order, immense technological change, economic shifts that still surprise us, political change and counterchange, philosophical and cultural revolutions. The Church has been part of all of this change but it has not been a leading instrument. It is these different levels of change in the culture that have led to the immense shifts in the relationship between Church and society. To argue that the Church is primarily to blame for this shift is, quite simply, to give the Church too important a place in the scheme of things. Like the disciples we find ourselves in a storm. It would be foolish indeed to see that storm as caused by our own actions.

As I read the Scriptures, the people of God are often caught up in immense cultural changes. They have to respond to them, but they do not cause them. The prophet Samuel at the end of his life found himself in a settled pattern of ministry, judging Israel on an annual circuit and maintaining order. But he, like us, lived in a time when the world was changing rapidly. There were huge people movements caused by migration. There was great technological change as iron replaced bronze. There was economic change in the great empires to the north and south of Israel. There was religious and moral change as all of these other changes threatened Israel’s way of life.

God’s people had to respond to these massive changes, but they did not cause them. 1 Samuel 8 tells the story of Israel’s request for a king, for a different pattern of society and governance that would enable the nation to survive and flourish in this changing context. Samuel is uncertain about the request at first. He is inclined to blame others and to blame himself. But his final position is to accept that change is indeed necessary and to devote the remainder of his ministry to bring it about.

Navigating change

The failure narrative itself fails the fruit test, the test of history, the test of present reality and the test of Scripture. Much more convincing and wholesome for me is the narrative that says the Church, like the rest of society, is living through times of immense change. We can only understand this change in part as yet. This change has affected every single part of our society and culture and that includes the Christian Church and the relationship between Church and society.

Does the change narrative pass the fruit test? The idea that we are navigating change produces much better fruit. People searching for a way forward tend to draw together as a community in the midst of a bewildering environment. Our focus is finding a way to progress rather than apportioning blame in the past. We are, therefore, open to help from others and generally willing to explore the past and the present, the Scriptures and the Christian tradition. We can look back to the story of God’s people in the Scriptures and find many stories of journeys and moments of change in which new direction was needed. We can look back in Christian history and discover similar moments of change. Perhaps most of all, in times of change, we are encouraged to look deeper to the very core of our faith to find inspiration and a path to move on.

Discovering the compass

I believe that the sense of being lost in a strange landscape fits the present situation of the Church much better than the narrative of failure, which produces only blame and despair. Many others think so too. But if we think we are lost, that means we have to pay careful attention to how we find a path.

When I was learning how to be a Scout and walk the Yorkshire Dales I was taught how to use two vital pieces of equipment. The first was a map. The Ordnance Survey series we used was detailed, tried and tested and in clear weather with lots of landmarks it was easy to find our way. But if the fog closed in or we were on the moors without landmarks or we were simply unsure where we were, the second piece of equipment was much more vital. When we were having trouble finding the way, it was the compass rather than the map that was essential.

In this present moment for the Church we lack the precision of a satellite navigation system. We have only the sketchiest of maps. We are blazing a trail in the new territory of a global post-Christian culture. No Christian and no Church has been this way before us. But we do have a compass: a means of navigating forward creatively, constructively and fruitfully at local level, in a diocese or district or in the Church nationally. It is a compass we can all own whatever our tradition or emphasis or history.

The compass and the content of our vision for the Church is Jesus Christ. In times of uncertainty and confusion, if we navigate by this compass we are likely to stay on course. In so far as the Church reflects the nature and priorities and values and character of Jesus Christ, then we will be on course whatever the changes around us. In so far as we do not, we will be drifting away and losing our vision and direction. It is Jesus who gives the Church its DNA, its genetic code. While the Church may need to take a variety of shapes as our culture changes, it will be on course providing we discern that the risen Christ is at the centre.

This may sound a very simple and obvious thing to say. But it is worth pausing to reflect on the rock-solid biblical foundation for this idea. As I read the New Testament the idea of the Christian Church is absolutely inseparable from the person and the work of Christ. We are baptized into Christ, members of the Body of Christ and together we form the Bride of Christ. We are branches of the true vine, which is Jesus Christ, and part of the flock of which Christ is the good shepherd and for which he gave his life. We are fed and shaped in the Eucharist by the body and blood of our Lord. We are called like the disciples to live in a rhythm of being with Jesus in community and being sent out. We are called to live and proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ after the manner and the pattern of the Son of God until that same Christ returns as king.

Whatever our tradition, flavour, party or denomination, all Christians agree that the Church is the Body of Christ and needs to be centred upon Christ. Knowing Jesus and being centred on Christ will lead us inevitably deeper into the fellowship of God the Father and the life of the Holy Spirit and into a richer understanding of the Trinity. But our starting point for the Church and our compass must be Jesus.

A mission-shaped Church is not enough

For several decades now the Church in Britain has been gradually rediscovering what it means to share in and be shaped by God’s mission to our own culture and society. A kind of sketch map has emerged for the next part of the journey. We need to continue to grow traditional churches that welcome children and adults into faith and bless their communities. We need to plant many fresh expressions of church in all kinds of places and networks to reach those who cannot connect with traditional congregations and to bless different parts of our society. Since 2004, the Church of England and the Methodist Church have been seeking intentionally to grow a mixed economy Church: flourishing fresh expressions of church alongside flourishing traditional congregations. There is a short section at the very back of the book that gives an introduction to these terms (see here).

The desire to set the mission of God right at the heart of the life of the Church is absolutely right. But there are many questions it still doesn’t answer. We may all acknowledge that we will serve our society best by developing a mixed economy of fresh expressions of church and traditional churches. But even if we agree on that question (and most of us do), we then have to go deeper and ask the next question: but how precisely are these churches of all kinds to be shaped? How are we to build their life? How are we to guide them forward? What is our dream – our vision – for God’s Church in the midst of all of this change?

In this respect, the vicar of a traditional parish faces exactly the same question as a youth leader creating church in a skate park or the leader of a café church for young adults or church in a secondary school. The question is this. I am trying to grow and form a Christian community – a church. But what template am I working to? What pattern is in my head? What image do I have in my mind? What vision inspires my work? Unless I have that picture clear in my mind how can I form this community for the future?

One of the most profound effects of rapid change on clergy and congregations is that it takes away our default models for answering that key question of vision. Our default model is the recent past. What is our vision for the Church? To keep something going as we have known it from 10 years ago or 20 years ago or in our childhood or as we think it was in the nineteenth century? Change knocks away that model, that default answer, and makes us dig deeper and ask the question of vision again. There can, in the end, be only one answer to the question: what is the Church called to become? That answer is ‘more like Jesus’.

As I come to the end of this five-year period of travelling across the country I have been lost many times. But my vision for the Church has grown clearer. My prayer is that over the next 20 years we will become even more than mission shaped. To be mission shaped is vital and it is essential that we learn those lessons fully. But they only take us so far. My hope is that we will find our compass again and be shaped by and take on the character of Jesus Christ in our communities. It is being centred on this vision that will, I think, give us the capacity not only to navigate through the next two decades but to flourish and be fruitful within them.

The vision to be shaped around the character of Christ is a vision that can be pursued by a small group of Christians meeting in an upper room, by a parish church, by a mixed economy deanery in its mission and by a diocese in its pursuit of discipleship.

Back to the disciples, in danger of drowning in Lake Galilee – they don’t waste time and energy blaming one another; they do what they can from their own resources, but in the end that isn’t enough. At that point and only at that point they turn their attention to Jesus. Isn’t it time for us to do the same?

For reflection and discussion

Is the idea of the Church navigating change a more fruitful way of seeing the present situation, or do you want to hold on to the failure story? If so, why?

Do you agree that a sketch map for the Church is emerging around growing a mixed economy Church?

If the Church is meant to be like Jesus, where would you begin to explore what that might mean in practice?