Anglicans - where are we going? The Way in the New Millenium
Address to the New Cranmer Society on Friday 16 July 1999The Right Revd R David Farrer, Bishop of Wangaratta
I wish to address this topic in the positive sense of a Vision for a Missionary Church.
At a recent Patronage Board Meeting a report of a parish meeting was presented. The church had been looked after for some months by a locum for two days each week. There has been a small decline in attendance. The final paragraph of their report read, "We are satisfied as we are". I expressed some anger at this statement. How could a parish with about fifty Sunday worshippers say, "we are satisfied as we are?" Indeed, I don't believe a parish with five hundred worshippers should talk about being satisfied.
Such an attitude speaks of a Chaplaincy mentality about the Clergy and a Club mentality about the parish.
In Dancing with Dinosaurs: Ministry in a hostile and hurting world (1933),
William Easum says,
'Congregations whose membership has plateaued or is declining have much in
common with dinosaurs. Both require immense amounts of food. Both become
endangered species. Like the dinosaurs they have a voracious appetite. Much of
their time, energy, and money is spent on foraging for food (for themselves)
so that little time is left to feed the unchurched.'
If we are to move from this attitude we need to hear the words of Proverbs 29: 18: 'Where there is no vision the people perish'.
We must seek a renewed vision for the Church.
In the tenth Chapter of the Acts of the Apostles we find a remarkable story, the story of Cornelius and Peter's vision of unclean foods which he is called to eat. On the surface the story is about strict food taboos, but the vision which Peter experienced was a turning point in the expansion of the Church. The Church was at the crossroads. On the one hand it could remain a Jewish sect, yet on the other hand it could be a missionary Church for all, Jews and Gentiles. It was through the vision Peter experienced that the Church developed new meaning and became a missionary Church. We seek a vision for the Church now.
The Church does not exist for itself but for the world. We are not called to be a sect but we are called to engage with the world, this messy world in which Jesus was born" The Church is only the Church when it exists for others."(Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letter from Prison SCM 1971)
William Temple, that great Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote, in Readings in
St John's Gospel
"The Church is the only institution which exists for the benefit of those
who are not its members."
Hugh Dawes, writing in Theology in March/April 1990, said: "The Church matters not for itself, not for its paid-up members, but for what it says about everyone mattering, what it affirms about all, not merely believers-belonging to the family of humanity and being children of God."
That is our mission.
I believe that the real problem these days is not so much the sharp contrast between maintenance and mission, so often talked about, although as I have indicated that is the contrast there. The fascinating thing to think about is the state of constant preparation, always getting ready for mission: talking about it but not doing it.
Bishop Roy Williamson, former Bishop of Southwark, gives a rather pointed illustration of this in his book For such a Time as This (DLT 1996) I was watching television recently when there was horse racing from one of our well-known racecourses. As I watched the horses milling around the starting stalls before the race I suddenly had a flight of fancy: how like the Church and its problems about getting ready for mission and evangelism. An important race is on, but the horses are reluctant to go into the stalls. In fact the attempt to get them into place takes days rather than minutes and the jockeys, owners, trainers, stewards starters and even punters and bookmakers are all to be found trying to persuade, nudge or equip the horses to enter the stalls. Even the horses are nudging each other: 'We need all the talents, all the gifts, all the riches of all kinds of horseflesh in this race. I'm ready to go myself but I've just stepped out of line for a minute or two to help you get ready.' Many are getting ready. Others are prevaricating. All need to come 'under starter's orders'.
In my experience the fantasy is just a little too near the truth for comfort. There is always something else to do. The time is never quite right. The prevailing circumstances are not conducive. A sense of urgency is replaced with wishful thinking. If only the Church' commissioners hadn't lost all that money. If only the Church hadn't been preoccupied with the ordination of women. If only we were like the Early Church, uncluttered with bureaucracy. If only we were better organised. If only we prayed more. If only our Church leaders were more prophetic. If only there was a Wilberforce or a Wesley. if only the Churches were united. In other words, if only the times were different, mission wouldn't be a problem. But, of course, if we believe that, we will believe anything.
We are great talkers; planners: it is so much easier than doing anything.
When do you think the following words were written?
We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganised. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situations by reorganising: and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralisation.
Petronius Arbiter, 210 BC (Quoted by Kenneth Leech in The Sky is Red, DLT 1W7).
Where there is no vision the people perish.
We seek a theological vision for the Church
"We believe in a God who is completely engaged in mission and whose very life is a movement outwards, giving and sharing divine life and joy".
1 Called to live and proclaim the Good News Lambeth Report, 1998
Mission is not our invention or even choice. It has always started already. To be 'in' Jesus is not to have a static relationship with him: it is to be moving with him from the heart of God to the ends of the earth. "As the Father has sent me, so I send you", says Jesus. Mission or being missionary is not an option for Christians, it is simply part of being in Christ.
The Christian notion of God is by definition the notion of God at mission. This is the essential activity of the one who loves the world. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son". Gave from "to give" in the sense of sending or throwing.
We have to bring our theology into the real world. Theology must not be allowed to languish on the library shelves in a section set apart for specialist philosophy. Theology is not some esoteric study concerned with ideas about God. Anthony Bloom says (rightly, I believe): "Theology is knowing God, not knowing about God, much less knowing what other people know about God".
Eastern Orthodox Churches know that the good theologian is one who prays seriously: "lex orandi est lex credendi".
Our theology must become an activity of our whole person and life: more the stuff of front-line living and worshipping than of the lecture hall.
Christianity is not a set of ideas about God; not ideology; not so much anything as somebody: Jesus and the resurrection. Too much emphasis these days is placed on holding opinions about Jesus. This attitude has put Christianity on the spiritual supermarket shelf. To observers outside the Churches (in the Western World) many Christians do not appear to believe anything in particular, or perhaps they appear to believe anything.
I was speaking recently with one of the little brothers who worked alongside Mother Teresa and her sisters in India. He said to me (about the fact that he, a Roman Catholic priest, was happy to celebrate the Eucharist for an Anglican Religious community), "The divide is no longer between the different denominations but across the Churches between those who believe in the spiritual and the supernatural and those for whom everything is relative.
The writer of the second Epistle to Timothy makes the point (2 Tim 3: 5): "...in the last days ... [There will be people]... holding the form of religion but denying the power of it."
We are rather too keen on sweet reasonable religion; domesticated mission. Often Anglicanism has been better at teaching people how to hold the knife and fork than to know Jesus.
We Anglicans believe, rightly, that our mission/evangelism begins with the Eucharist but too often we have made the engine room of our faith the cosy fireplace in the clubhouse. Maybe we should now spend a lot more time on thinking about the baptised community, the missionary commission we all have as Christians or the Kingdom Community where the emphasis is living: "Your will... on earth as in heaven".
At Lambeth there was an attempt to set up another 'Decade of'- this time, 'The Decade of Transformation'. You may be surprised to hear that the Decade of Evangelism (the Decade of the sharp end of mission) has been a remarkable success in many places around our communion.
I was one of those who was very pleased when we did not proceed with another 'Decade of'. But, having said that, it is also true that Transformation must be at the centre of our understanding of the theology of mission. Transformation is a word which represents an understanding of salvation that is holistic and corporate, touching the whole person and embracing the sociopolitical dimension of society as well as the environmental
The key to understanding missionary is here.
The missionary is at once the medium of the message as well as the message. The missionary Christian individual and the missionary Church incorporate the Good News and become the facilitators of the Kingdom Values of integrity, altruistic love, justice, healing and restoration. Transformation is at the very heart of the nature of the incarnate person of the Trinity. "God became flesh" - a transformation. In that one act, God transformed all things in Christ: divinising (sanctifying) flesh, and humanising God. (St Athanasius).
God is moving in history right now. The breaking down of walls, the ending of division, the dawning of peace, provide humanity with possibilities for new life, new freedom and the mutual enrichment that can result from the creative celebration of our diversity. Such moments are fragile, as the continuing litany of conflicts around the world bears all too ready testimony.
"If the Church is to be a sign of God's presence and activity among the nations, 'thy Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven', then she must give increasing attention to the relation between mission and culture, have a more integrated understanding of the relation between justice and the Gospel, and show an awareness of the reality of structural sin as well as personal sin" Mary Motte, The Missing Imperative in Modern Western Culture USPG 1995.
"The task of mission has at its heart the recognition that the earth is the Lord's and it is about the transformation of the life, not only of individuals but also of society, nations and the created order. "I came that they may have life and have it abundantly" (John 10: 10) Towards a Dynamic Theology for Mission in the 21st Century MISSIO January 1996.
Where there is no vision the people perish
We seek a Vision for our world
There is so much to be said here and so little time to say it.
Effective mission requires of us a clear witness to the presence of God in all creation and our responsibility as stewards of the created order-a fact that the Holy Spirit is reminding us about from outside the Church in all sorts of environmental and conservation movements.
In Christ there is the possibility of a right relationship to the whole creation. The Church too must see economics as a theological issue. We are called to live in the spirit of Jubilee, the freeing of debt from the poorest people and nations and the freeing of prisoners of conscience. Jubilee was central to Jesus' ministry as is evident in parable and miracle.
Talking like this brings the response of ridicule, of heroic idealism and unachievable utopian vision. True: with human resources it is impossible, but not for God- "for with God everything is possible" (Mark l0: 27).
We also live in a world of rapidly growing and changing technology. Communication and information growth and development is phenomenal though, I believe, may be a generation or two away from the translation of information into knowledge. There are fundamental questions in our inevitable engagement with this new world. One question is whether everyone will get a chance to be involved or will large sections of the world be excluded? Is this technology able to become a genuine advance in the quality of life around the world or will it simply be the greatest witness to the divide between rich and poor?
Of the 150 million people with access to the Internet now, 20 million are in North America, 35 million in Europe, but only one million in Africa. Fifty percent of people in the world have never touched a telephone. There is great potential for the internet to transform the communications of developing countries: will it be harnessed? What role do we play?
Taking hold of the Vision
Mission begins with prayer because mission is God's not ours. While we must
plan and prepare, there is no salvation through programmes. We must work on a
strategy: we must look at the statistics. If, however, we neglect prayer we
will soon perceive mission as ours and not God's.
We need to hear, too, that God is not confined to the Church. God the Holy Spirit is alive in the Church and the world. "The chief actor in the historic mission of the Christian Church is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the director of the whole enterprise. The mission consists of the things the Holy Spirit is doing in the world." (J V Taylor The Go Between God SCM 1972) We must not be like the timid ones who, in the words of 2 Tim 3:5, "Hold the form of religion but deny the power of it'.
THE VISION FOR THE FUTURE
Becoming a Missionary Church
There is at present a spirit-created opportunity for mission in our world.
There is a hunger which is evident world-wide. People are looking for answers
as to what life is all about.
In the face of this it seems that we as a Church have a level of debilitation and are turned in on ourselves. It's too easy to blame it on the disagreements within the life of our Church. There is a sense in which our greatest witness to the Spirit is the fact that this quarrelsome bunch stays together.
The context of the following is different but the message is the same and is one we need to hear (2 Kings 7:9) "What we are doing is not right. This is a day of good news and we are keeping it to ourselves". Jesus taught a very similar truth in what, for his hearers, would have been a very funny comment in his Sermon of the Mount-the folly of lighting a lamp and putting it under a bushel so that the light was hidden. He was saying that when you have something to share, share it. J B Phillips translated the passage as, "Come out from under your bucket!" There is a need for repentance.
It is significant too, that Jesus did not write a book. Instead he came in a body, living and preaching, and he trusted his most precious sayings to the blemished reputation and the precarious memory of his friends.
God chose a body and the spoken word, life and preaching if you like, to bring the Church to birth. This birth of the Church came through life, cross, resurrection, the fireworks of the Spirit and a sermon from Peter. With dazzling pyrotechnics and much more at his disposal, God chose a life and a preacher by which to bring the Church to birth. Where are the preachers?
The very dynamic Bishop of Alaska, Mark Macdonald made a very strong point at Lambeth when he said, "God is working in the world today quite beyond the horizon of our budgets, structures and expectation. The gospel has a power to break out beyond our timidity, insufficiency and, amazingly, our desire. There is an urgency and importance to the call of God in this moment. We are on the threshold of our greatest opportunity for mission. If we don't grab it, God will raise up Anglicans from the stones around us!".
A vision for the future as a missionary Church needs to begin with the simplicity of God's gift of love. Our vision of mission is the chief end of humanity, to give glory to God and enjoy God forever. Mission is love (John 13: 34 &34): "A new commandment 1 give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also may love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples; if you have love for one another'. How well do our structures provide an environment of loving joy which transforms people and the communities in which they live?
Our prayer and vision must be for a revitalised Church which, in witness and communion, is a true sign of God's Kingdom in context: celebrating God's faithfulness; rooted in biblical faith; dynamic in mission and evangelism; creative and joyful in worship; caring in fellowship; generous in giving for mission; committed to social transformation through transformed people.
We will need to change our way of being Church in some places, change attitudes and welcome and nurture people. All this implies transformation. There are, of course, many issues to be dealt with if we are to come near to this missionary vision. There us the matter which one English writer has described as "the meeting of Tesco ergo sum with Christus natus est. I decided not to Australianise it: K-Mart ergo sum does not have the same ring about it! What it highlights is the clash between a consumer culture and faith. Contrast' I shop, therefore I am', with 'Christ is born'.
Pope Paul VI wrote: "The split between Gospel and culture is without doubt the drama of our time The question the Church faces is how we proclaim the gospel to the sort of culture in which we live; a consumer culture which is, however, said to be undergoing a profound change in which we seem to be moving from secularism to spirituality and from human rights to nationalism and fundamentalism.
We are told that we live not so much in a secular age as in a religious 'pick and mix' age where people draw on the supermarket of spiritual resources to suit 'me'.
Then there are the other issues in the Church herself. The wonderful pastoral tradition of Anglicanism has left us with many clergy working as chaplains to diminishing congregations. I remember going, as a very young priest, to a parish many years ago where the members of the Incumbency Committee said to me, "We are at the crossroads. We can decline and become a part-time sinecure for a university priest, or we can grow. Your appointment is our commitment to growth". Well, with the exception of a small group in the parish, that is where it began and ended until there was a dramatic culture change.
Everyone said they wanted a full church. What I discovered was that while that was true, they didn't want any new people. Full, yes, but full of the people who used to come, who had moved away or were now dead. As new people came into the life of the parish the older members of the congregation complained about having to buy new hymn books and more cups; they refused to 90 to functions- "those functions are for the new people!" In time the enthusiasm was irresistible, but the pain had been great.
Another of the issues to be dealt with in forming our vision is the present domestication of lay ministry which is rivalling the clerical domestication. In the Diocese of Wangaratta we have just completed an exhaustive process of putting together a manual for the Authorised Specific Lay Ministries in the Diocese. A very good and important work. I insisted that the original title,"Authorised Lay Ministry in the Diocese of Wangaratta", be removed.
It frightens me that, having in many instances (though not all) successfully domesticated the clergy and tied them to their club commitments, we are now creating imitation clergy out of the laity.
A battalion of lay people now seems to fill the sanctuary, turning the liturgy into a sort of Punch and Judy show: "guess who is going to do the next bit... " Let me say immediately that I am absolutely committed to lay involvement in the liturgy. I would not have spent the time having a manual for Authorised Specific Lay Ministries put together I if was not so committed. But, and it's a big but, the present practices are reinforcing the view that mission and ministry are done entirely within the comfort zone of the ecclesiastical clubhouse.
Other issues relate to other social changes. Loss of community: in urban areas there is a level of fear- security is at a premium, doors and letter boxes are becoming more and more like fortresses. Housing in the densest urban areas is dormitory style living: people live at work and at recreation. Children and young people are most influenced by these changes. In rural areas the Church in many small towns is the last bastion of any sense of community. Banks and schools are gone- "don't tell me you're going too!"
There is much more that can be said, but 1 could finish up with a book. I wish to turn now to how.
The first point is that it is always God's mission.
The second point is patience. God's time is not our time: a flower forced open is nothing like one that opens in the sun.
The third point is prayer, prayer and more prayer. Prayer of thanks. Prayer for the right sort of confidence in the Gospel. There can be no triumphalist, fundamentalist arrogance, but there must be something distinctive about the message of Jesus for all people. It comes at best from a spontaneous desire to share the Christ we know. The Apostle Peter prayed for boldness, courage and confidence; Paul asked others to pray that he might "fearlessly make known the mystery of the Gospel" (Eph 6:19-20).
The fourth point is expectation, that is, being aware of the power of the Holy Spirit to transform. In an age of unprecedented spiritual hunger we can expect the miraculous. "With God all things are possible."
Christianity is a relation rather than a religion. Christian holiness is always being in true and creative relation with God and others, in gratitude to God, in justice to the world.
Repentance is a key. It is the significant feature we have to offer about our fragile humanity: repentance and change with the God of new beginnings. There needs ' to be a recovery of Confession and Absolution as a life-giving moment, both in helping us to examine our everyday lives in the light of the Gospel and in hearing the word of grace that enables us to live as forgiven people.
This leads on to the quality of congregational life. How such quality is to be developed will vary from congregation to congregation because of size (eg need for cell groups), or location. It will vary considerably from the urban to the rural setting.
We also need to look at different ways of belonging. We can no longer assume that it is possible for people to attend the 9.30am service every Sunday or even that it is possible to provide such a convenient time slot. Before we examine this we need to know that not all people are clubbable. That some people can make a monthly commitment when a weekly one is out of the question. In my last parish we began a monthly Childrens' Church Service which six or seven years later is still providing, once a month, a connection for sixty or seventy families who were not attending Church before. Some have begun to attend more frequently: others have not. Should we knock 'folk-religion'? Is committed Church membership a specialised vocation?
There are different ways of belonging and of being in the process of inclusion in the Christian family. House and cell groups provide for some. We need also, though, 'to develop domestic liturgies, activities in which the household can express and deepen their faith. In all of this we must keep our focus on faithfulness, not on our notion of success.
Childrens' ministry must be a highlight of our missionary outlook. Every child must have the chance to discover that he or she has a loving heavenly Father. To deny that possibility is a type of abuse which ranks alongside the actual abuses which have so damaged this imagery. Work with children can help create a proper child-likeness in the whole Christian community, thus fulfilling the mandate of Jesus.
We must, of course, examine our structures. It is not an insignificant point that David laid aside Saul's armour when he went to fight Goliath. We must take risks. We fear the risks that love demand because it leave us open to the hurtfulness of being rejected. Risks inevitably express our vulnerability.
I was speaking with Brother Andrew whom I mentioned earlier about his work with Mother Teresa. He was amused at those who want to attach themselves to her name now. When he first knew here thirty or forty years ago people thought, her very odd indeed. He remarked about the Church's mission: "Movements for growth have usually required an eccentric". Will we take the risk?
As well as risk we need a level of honesty and trust of one another and even of such institutions as the media (if that is not risk, what is?).We ought not be ashamed of strategy and planning. It is very important that we should be quite clear and intentional about how we set about mission while at the same time remembering that there is no salvation through programmes.
Those who are in positions of leadership at all levels must have clear means of defining and owning accountability. Being a missionary diocese will require effective leadership.
There are clear implications for our diocesan structures. Restructuring for missions means that:
- Diocesan structures must be reorganised to allow delegation, not only of responsibility but also of authority for decision-making. There must be ways found for diocesan funding to be effective in local areas. This is essential to ensure maximum contribution from all members of the Body of Christ. This makes the Bishop's ministry clearly a servant ministry, not an hierarchical one. Episcopal leadership must be transformed.
Leaders at all levels of Church life must, under God, be committed to the Church, to mission, to evangelism, and to social justice.
- Lay people must be encouraged and empowered to be the front line missioners of the Church.
To enable that, there must be effective support for the contribution of Christians as citizens in this society. We are moderately good at equipping people for attending Church. We have a lot of work to do on equipping people for effective Christian citizenship.
There has to be clear priority for the mission strategies in our giving.
To put all this into straightforward terms, we need to listen to the young. I've just had my Diocesan Youth Synod and a great joy it is too. Instead of a charge 1 said that I wanted to listen to them. What could they tell me about the Church of the future? How could we ensure a future for the Church? How can the Church be missionary?
This was their response:
The majority gave one or other version of the theme of
(a) authentic living, or (b) people seeing Jesus in us.
There was a strong view that the Church should go outside the buildings for services from time to time. Let people see our life, get away from the secret society.
- To thine own self be true: security of belief-courage.
- Advertise - competition, the corporate world and Sunday sport-get out there and fight for the space!
- Do what we do well.
- Preaching focuses too much on what, for example, St Paul did. Let's have a bit more serious stuff about how to live our lives; how we can influence others.
- A firm critique of "We have always done it this way"!
And my own footnote: in my charge to our Diocesan Synod last year I referred to those very words which the young people found so debilitating. I described "We have always done it this way" as the seven last words of the Church.
- Bishop David Farrer