The truth is that the Early Christians were more focused on Mission than Church; in fact we would think they were zealots for Mission in comparison today. Focused on Mission they won more and more, day after day, to Christ and their numbers grow exponentially, and then whoops we need to organise this lot: oh yes Jesus said about building His Church, so that’s what we will call it and in case folk haven’t got the point another name will be the Body of Christ. That’s thank God how it all started and if it hadn’t then I am not sure we would be sitting here today. Sadly over the years the Christian pendulum has swung between Mission and Church. Up to AD 300 it was Mission that predominated and from 300 AD to the Reformation it was Church and the name History ascribes to that period is the Dark Ages. Thankfully Mission began to reassert itself from the Reformation but it took till Wesley & Whitfield to swung the pendulum back to Mission. Since then Pendulum has largely been more towards Church with a few wonderful individual and corporate exceptions. Focus on Church creates a religious elite or dependency and squeezes out the Missionary zeal and endeavour, which is the life flow of the Holy Spirit, formed Missionary Church.
In Northern Synod, within the URC, and over much of the Body of Christ in the UK we have stark choice to make. We can continue to allow the pendulum to dictate our preoccupation with Church and not with Mission or we can begin to turn the Titanic and decide as congregations what our core business really is and start through some small steps to turn our hearts towards Mission once again.
I believe that when congregations do this the Lord lets out a loud hallelujah and sends His Holy Spirit of Mission to assist as well as an army of angels to protect us as we go out.
Here in Northern Synod we want to encourage churches in this decision: that’s why the Mission 4 Life Fund was established: not so we could feel go we had paid lip service to Mission but so we could engage in Mission once more and become missionary congregations within a Missionary Synod!! And so to our challenge to every congregation.
Before the end of June decide on at least one new initiative in Mission and to go for it. And if you need help financially to fund such a Mission project then please apply for help. We want to hear from every congregation what your initiative is and whether you need help from the fund. If we get more than we have resources to fund we will find the resources from somewhere (perhaps our bigger congregations) but what we are asking of you all is a seed change in thinking, a new step of faith, a leadership decision to become Missionary congregations once again.
The alternative you know as well as I do: this is God’s time and God’s Call to the Synod and its congregations: we ignore it at our peril. Apply or die?
I just feel so sad when I read this kind of thing. I can hardly understand why anyone would ever think to separate church from mission, let along put them in opposition to one another. What on earth is the Church without mission? But what on earth (in God's scheme of things made apparent in the Gospel) is his mission without the Church?
ReplyDeleteI always envy David his energy and enthusiasm, but sorry: so much of this seems so wrong-headed that I hardly know where to start!
Give a dog a bad name... All right, Matthew didn't like the Pharisees, and no doubt the gospel traditions are accurate in portraying Jesus as pretty rigorous in his criticisms of some of their priorities. But it's the Pharisees who kept Judiasm alive after AD130, and it is their rabbinic traditions that have been an inspiration ever since. On the other hand, most of the area where the early church was strongest (North Africa, and the eastern Church recently so fascinating described by Diarmad McCulloch) was not able to hold on in opposition. Perhaps a "Christianised version of the Pharisees" would have done better!
And then there's the Dark Ages! Well I didn't think anyone called them that now, or thought them dark, or reckoned they lasted 1200 years!
Who might we think about? Those Dark Age Celtic missionaries who came to Northumberland? You could hardly read a page from Bede without seeing my point, that mission and church are just inseparable. And then there's the phenomenon of the church spreading across the whole map of Europe, there are the Franciscans and preaching orders, there's the eastern church's mission among the Slavs - it's laughable to suggest that Church rather than Mission predominated up to the Reformation.
I sense David half admits that the Reformation didn't swing his pendulum as far as he might have wished: not only were the Reformers were pretty busy with a church agenda, but they were also living with the end-phase of Christendom, and (Jews excepted) were not aware of their non-Christian neighbours. Is it perhaps the opening up of the world that led the Wesleys and the Whitfields to that greater evangelistic awareness which from that point on becomes a significant dimension of mission, but which surely should not subsume it?
I think, I hope, I'm as keen to support Mission4Life as David clearly is. But I cannot agree with the statement that we have a stark choice to make between church and mission. I would like to see us get beyond all the silly sloganising such as "Maintenance or Mission?", and come to understand that Mission is at the very heart of all that we share as God's people. The Brunner dictum that "the Church exists by mission as a fire by burning" was I imagine intended to make that point. If there's not mission, then we're not the church - it's as simple as that. We can put the word Church on our headed paper and in our trust deeds and all the rest of it - but if we're not instruments of God's continuing mission, we're not the Church!
(And on the other hand, as I've pleaded over the years in this synod, to absolutely no effect - by putting the word Mission in the names of our committees and groupings does NOT make us missionary, and does not guarantee our existence as Church!)
Sorry David! But I'm reaching out to belong to the church and to work and pray for its life and unity, because I reckon that's a pretty important part of this mission that pray God is driving us all.