Category: local congregations

Towards an Anatomy of Belief

This is not about the meaning of word belief in the English language, or Western Christendom either. Nor is it about the relationship between belief and belonging that has characterised so much of sociology of religion since Grace Davy’s book in 1996. What I am going to do is simpler and that is try to pull out for me three elements that twisted together form my understanding of what it means to believe as a Christian today. They do not stay tidily in neat strands but branch out and they are not totally separate from belonging but they do not encompass the full scale of it. So what are they: Content, Piety and Obedience but each will need spelling out in much more detail because each take their meaning within the context of the Christian faith.

Content is perhaps the easy one. To proclaim Jesus is Lord, the accept as true the Historic Creeds of the Church, to hold that God is Love. However, it is more than that, it is the claim to “believe the Bible”, to accept quite secondary doctrine whether that is speaking in tongues as evidence of Baptism of the Holy Spirit, praying the sinners prayer is necessary to be saved or the Assumption of Mary into Heaven. This secondary layer is not normally seen as central but if forms the context within which the central core is held.

Then there is Piety, at its simplest to Love God and to Love your neighbour. However it too has a whole range of behaviour around it, from keeping the ten commandments, participating in worship and the sacraments, prayer, almsgiving, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, the teaching of Christ in the beatitudes. Add onto it all the moral and spiritual teaching of various branches of the church and you will see that there is plethora of secondary practices that also come under piety whether it is tea-totalism, walking the camino or snake handling.

Then I have put obedience except I do not mean normal obedience. Rather I am taking it from its latin root “ob+audire” which means “in the direction of” + “to listen”. So the question is “Who do you listen to?” and to recall James 1:22 “Be doers of the word, and not hearers only” it is easy to see how this links to more modern ideas of obedience. However who do you listen to when it comes to making sense of Christian faith? God? well yes but he tends not to speak directly. The Bible? but any reading of a two thousand year old text requires us to read through a lens and if we claim we have no lens then that usually means our lense is our own prejudices and blindspots. However, there is at least your priest, minister, pastor, elder or other leader of your fellowship who gives the teaching, preaching, word, sermon, or homily during your time of worship. You listen to her or him, maybe no very carefully and if it is the same person quite often you will feel that you have heard it all before but you do listen. Then there are places where that person changes every week, and even in churches where there is a single leader so often someone else will will be invited to give a Word or testimony. Then there are others who hold influence. In hierarchical churches these may be people with institutional authority such as Popes or Bishops. In other churches these may have celebrities because of their learning, because of the congregation they founded, because of the media presence or their ability to heal. Then there are the books and other resources we read about Christianity, the friends we talk with who share our faith. We are all the time making choices about which voices we listen to and about which voices we ignore. This community of voices creates the context in which we make our faith decisions even down to our understanding of what we understand ourselves as doing when we say “I believe”

Groupings – A historic memory of why

There is a lot of hitting out at groupings suggesting that they are causingdecline at present. I have a memory that goes back to the early days of grouping within the URC, and I think it is time to tell the story of why they originated. I am talking of things that happened in my teenage years.

Let’s be clear Congregationalism had a loose form of groupings probably going further back than the 1950s. My father’s first pastorate was “Oundle and Wheeldon” i.e. two separate congregations who had combined resources in order to be able to employ a minister. Equally in my childhood from 1972 my father was the minister for a group of churches. The key characteristic of these groups is that a number of congregations came together to employ a single minister.

In 1976 my Dad stopped being in parish ministry, and we worshipped in an experimental group of churches. That is it had a team of ministers and also a large number of churches. It was a deliberate attempt to go against the then policy which was often to merge small churches together. The statement I remember went along the lines that merge two churches with fifty members and in then years you have a congregations with fifty members. In other words, it was a serious attempt to reduce the decline closure and merger was creating. The argument was that people were motivated to keep their congregation going but were often not motivated to keep the merged congregation going.

They worked at least short term. The group I was part of lasted from the seventies through to the nineties and maybe even into the zeros. Some of those congregations found through various initiatives a lease of life during those years and actually the level of lay leadership increased through those projects. The congregation I was closest associated closed shortly after its social outreach was taken from it. I suspect that if it had remained there may have been another decade of life in the congregation. In other words it worked, it slowed the rate of decline. There is one church (maybe two) in an area of Manchester where under merge and close there would be none.

Now the study was not academic, the ministers who were trying different things to see if they could halt decline were of course the innovative and go ahead ministers. You cannot sort out the quality of the minister from the experiment. It also gives a hint of what might be wrong with the current debate. If a successful minister is one who has a single pastoral charge may it not be that there is a tendency for ministers not to seek group positions if they can get a single pastorate?

Of course, the big problem is not that groups cause decline. The sort of grouping being talked about is what the Methodist have done for centuries and forgive me although Methodism is currently in decline, I would be very reluctant to describe it as that in the middle on 19th Century! So what to make of it.

The problem is that grouping that is often talked of is done without concern for the Ecclesiology of the tradition. The relationship between the minister and the congregation is not the a top-down relationship within the Reformed tradition. Ministers are NOT appointed by Bishops (like the Roman Catholics), General Assembly (like the Methodists)  nor by other ministers. They are appointed by the local Church. The local Church has normally been associated with the local congregation. There is however no reason why it should be a single congregation. Could not a local Church consist of a number of worshipping communities serving different  constituencies within a wider community? These constituencies could be defined by place, age, theology, worship style preference or missional service. The one thing they would need to agree on is an Ecclesial structure (or how they interact formally with each other)

A grouping of local congregations under a central-governing body is not something new within the Reformed tradition.  This is what seems to have happened with the Geneva Consistory. It needs to be noted the consistory did not belong to one congregation but to the whole of Geneva and had responsibility for discipline of ministers among other concerns.  It was however primarily made up of lay people with the chair being the senior minister and as far as I can tell no other ministerial representation. Ministers were given responsibility for specific congregations or missional work by the Consistory.

I do not think this will be popular with anyone, but I do think that it highlights what is theoretically missing in the current discussion. That is a coherent thinking on the relationship between congregation and minister. At present I see the talk of grouping and the resistance to it being a discussion about power. If the local congregation can retain the power to appoint a minister then the members understand their connection to the minister. If, however, groups are created with minister or synod appointing other ministers then we become a denomination ruled by ministers.  Unfortunately that model, I can see members deciding that the denomination has lost interest in them so there is no reason to belong.

A Doctor in the Church?

There has been a blog discussed on facebook suggesting that it might be a good idea for congregations to employ theologians. The blog was taken down, but I did find this article on Christian Century describing Theologians in Residence. Now before we go any further let me be clear I have a vested interest. I am a lay person just about to complete my doctoral studies in theology. So it looks as if the church is about to create positions for people like me. O this is America so it may come about in the UK about the time I am due to retire, so I am not holding my breath.

However I want to question the whole idea, but not for the usual arguments. The usual two are as follows. Firstly that all Christians (Muslims, Jews and Atheist as well) are theologians. That is they have a conceptual frame work that works around the idea of God (even if in the case of most* Atheists this is God’s non-existence).  I am quite happy with that, I would encourage such people to work at and thus clarify their understanding as much as possible. Trying to speak honestly about the nature of God is in my opinion a good thing. The second is that the cleric/minister/priest is a theologian in residence, and to an extent they are right. That is the cleric/minister/priest will have spent time in theological education, should have an understanding of the wider debates within Christianity and has a role in helping members of the local church grow in their understanding as well as action, character and devotion to the faith.

However “the Theologian” is not new, not within Reformed circles, it goes right back to at least John Calvin. His five fold ministry was Apostles, Prophet, Minister, Doctor and Elder (yes no Deacon although the role is explained in the Institutes).  What I am interested in is the office called “Doctor”. This is what I take a theologian of the Church to be. One thing should be immediately clear, those offices are in order of seniority, “Doctor” is lower than “Minister”. You technically would expect to be more of them, but there have been fewer recognised. Oddly enough it never go to none but you needed to listen carefully to discover who is Doctor and not a Minister. They also tended to fill roles that looked senior to ministers such as being involved in ministerial training.

Apostles and Prophets arise in time of crisis; the Apostles providing leadership and the Prophets warnings. However on a day to day basis they are not needed. He however then folds them back so that Ministers are the common place equivalent of Apostles and Doctors are thus common or garden prophets. Lets look at the two senior roles in ancient Israel Priest and Prophet. The Apostle would map to priest roughly. In one important aspect at least, the priest was entitled to income for his religious role. This is acknowledged for ministers. The snag for this is that the prophet isn’t. If a prophet was a priest then he did get the income as a priest to enable him to fulfil that role but he did not get it for being a prophet. The prophet needed independency to fulfil their role as prophet in ancient Israel. The doctor/theologian needs independency to fulfil their role in the church and the congregation needs an independency from them. A theologian is only as good as the insights that they bring.

So no a theologian in residency is not the way to go. In fact in some ways if a theologian takes such a post then they are compromising their role. They become over reliant on the hand that feeds them and can end up saying what it wants them to say rather than struggling with the word of God.

Remember I said that Doctors of the church should be more numerous than ministers, but few are recognised. They are there, indeed they exist already in every congregation in my experience. They quite possibly have done some extra study, fulfil teaching roles e.g. lay preacher, head of junior church and are known in the congregation for their deep spirituality. They probably make up the core members of your bible study groups. They may or may not be elders and not all elders are Doctors of the Church. Some ministers are, and some are not; just as some priests were prophets and some were not.

*I am aware that there are individuals who would use the badge Atheist, but do not make such a clear statement.

Who should the local congregation be evangelising?

I have heard that someone recently preached on how the church should be doing outreach to people whose alcohol addiction leads them to drink on the streets, people who are homeless and people who are sustainably addicted to drugs. Well I admit those are challenging areas to do outreach in. It is like it is a bit of a challenge to take the gospel to groups of people who no one has tried to take the gospel before. There are challenges and I fully accept its worth doing but…

… as someone who has been vaguely involved with it can I say there is one big problem, the area is over subscribed with those who want to be involved in it!  The people who around here fall into those categories go from one Christian mission to the next Christian mission and get food, clothing, worship etc from that.

The real challenge, the biggie, the one I fail at is …

To take the gospel to people who outwardly are the same as us. To cross the taboo line in society and talk about the faith with your friends. To be prepared to be ridiculed amongst those you socialise with. To be prepared to adapt church so those people who have never been to church feel welcomed and treated with respect, because they believe they won’t be. The challenge is not to bring the very different to Christ but the almost like us to Christ, who can and will ask awkward questions, may think you a religious freak and suspect you of judging them even if you don’t.