1. CHURCH – in Liminal Space heading into New Season

CHURCH, the ESSENTIALS (1 of 7)

For many people in my home nation, Australia, the word ‘church’ carries a lot of baggage. It is fast becoming a byword. As our society finds ever new ways to to implode and fragment, diminishing church memberships are inventing similarly new ways to talk themselves out of their God given mission. We carry the scars of betrayal at the hands of moral failure by leaders and compromised discipleship by members.  I’ve lived in Canberra for nearly 40 years. During that time, I ‘ve seen a lot of people drop out of church. Often, it’s a result of some real or perceived flaw in the way churches operate. But they don’t often find or create a better one. They just get lost in the self-gratifying maze of post-modern society.

Despite all of this, I am someone who loves the church, despite its shortcomings. Not only do I love it but I know God has no other redemptive agency in mind other than church. It’s not about whether we can survive. It’s about whether we are willing and able to finish the mission. The issue will not be whether there will continue to be church.  It comes down to “what kind of church” are we going to become?

I have belonged to a lot of different kinds of churches in my 56 years as a follower of Jesus. I came to Christ through the Baptist church in Goulburn (NSW) and joined the Methodist Church in my small rural village of Gunning (NSW). Soon after we were married, Nola and I attended an interdenominational Bible College in Katoomba largely run by Open Brethren evangelists. We attended a little Church of Christ at Wentworth Falls. While I was a student at Moore Theological College in Sydney, I worked in two churches: Cronulla Methodist Church on Sunday morning and as a catechist at St. Luke’s Anglican Church in Clovelly Friday nights and Sunday afternoon and evening. Despite the warnings of sober-minded reformed theological lecturers at Moore, I was filled with the Holy Spirit and discovered Charismatics and Pentecostals from all over the place through meetings and conferences. When we started having children and Nola was no longer able to support my theological addictions, I got a job as a Home Missionary at Balmain Methodist Mission, while continuing B.Div. studies at Moore. Then, I became a candidate for the Methodist ministry and attended the United Faculty of Theology (Methodist, Presbyterian and Congregational). After working as an ordained minister in the Uniting Church for 17 years most of the members of O’Connor Uniting Church in Canberra separated from our denomination and ended up as a founding member of a kingdom of God Network called Crosslink. I’m worn out just by writing all of that down. My reason for mentioning these things is to explain why I have no sense of being “rusted on” to a particular form of church or to a narrow stream of theology.

 Most of the influences mentioned above relate to distinctive systems of theology and different ways of running services on Sunday. I am sad to say, most of the differences between the various streams of “church” have related to what happens on the inside of a set of buildings. Most of the training I did and the emphases I was aware of had to do with liturgy and a list of propositional statements. Very few had much to do with finishing the mission, or even being involved in the mission. By this I am referring to six statements, all made by Jesus to his disciples about the work they were to be involved in until the “end of the age.” It is generally referred to as the “Great Commission.”

 I am certain that God has very little concern about the names and distinctives of the many kinds of churches formed through the Christian centuries. We are about ten years shy of notching up twenty-one of them if Pentecost.  These centuries have been full of rises and falls.  Individuals and groups, denominations and movements all represent various defining characteristics.  I would like someone to show me evidence to support the idea that God’s favour and purpose was permanently defined by any of those names. They were usually invented as a defence weapon based on the presumption that they were right and everyone else is less right at best and wrong at worst.  Time has repeatedly demonstrated  the futile arrogance of such attitudes.

 God has demonstrated his willingness to sponsor reformation and restoration in the church. Renewal movements through Christian history are usually about what God does through people seeking more than the contemporary status quo. Perhaps some of the 46,000 different denominations in the world are testament to the fact. They rediscover authentic Biblical revelation. Others get to see what they see and join them. The status quo churches object and push back. A new expression of church is established. That church defines itself by its perceived distinctives. The structures of these churches become defensive walls and soon the life has gone and they become the new status quo that needs to be challenged. When our congregation at O’Connor decided to separate from the Uniting Church, we were warned repeatedly that we would not survive if we left. History also proved that to be false.

 I am certain the church in the global north, (ie. developed nations) is poised in a liminal space.  The best way of explaining liminal space is when large city buildings have two sets of doors. One set open to and from the outside and the others open to the inside. Between them is liminal space. Many of us have left many of the styles and priorities of the past. We are not going back there. The truth is, that we have not yet shifted into the new. We are poised in the space between the two sets of doors.  We have come out of a former order and have no desire to return.  We have not yet discovered the new order enough to be shaped by it.  But there is new wine around and we are being called to manufacture new wineskins to get this new wine to our customers.

In conversations with colleagues in leadership both here in Australia as well as overseas, I have noticed a hesitation to define the new season. I think the hesitation is healthy. The new shape of church needs to be discovered and embraced in the same way as the first church discovered their journey by walking it rather than pre-empting it. And it isn’t about one thing. It is a more complex. I am talking about church. This series of articles seek to identify some of the key issues needing to be rediscovered so that can get through the liminal space and out into God’s freshening breeze.

 NEXT:  The following postings will identify the five essentials elements of church as revealed in the experience of the first disciples and described in Acts 1.  When we think about what kind of church we should build, we should be taking into account the authentic essentials, not those dictated by our godless culture.