Recorded 22 June, 2008 at StHils.com.
(You may also download MP3 as a podcast)
This sermon speaks about the universal longings we all experience for love and justice, beauty and purity, forgiveness and redemption and how God is speaking to us in them, how God is calling us home to Himself.
Recorded 22 February, 2009.
(You may also download MP3 as a podcast)
This sermon is a challenge to the local congregation to be a more welcoming community. It discusses practical ways in which this can be done and calls us to be like the welcoming father in Jesus’ parable, arms wide open ready to receive all who come.
By Peter Corney
There has been a profound change in the way many western people understand themselves in relation to God, spirituality and religious concepts. In short God and the self have blurred into one. The forces that have brought about this change are complex but here are three key factors in the process.
First, out of the Renaissance and the Reformation there emerged a form of Christian humanism. Following and flowing out of the Renaissance the Enlightenments influence gradually disconnected humanism from its Christian roots. What eventually emerged was what we have come to call secular humanism.
Secular humanism encouraged the idea of the autonomous individual who, independent of God, possessed within themselves alone the power to discover, to understand, to create and control whatever they determined. The rise of modern science accompanied and reinforced this process. By the late nineteenth century the philosopher and radical thinker Friedrich Nietzsche had declared that the idea and necessity of God was dead. These processes laid the ground work for the change by over inflating reason and the self. As a result the western idea of the self began to gradually break free from its biblical theological frame work and Christian world view. The idea of the autonomous self was born.
Second, is a little known today, but highly influential thinker called Feuerbach, another nineteenth century German. He began by studying theology but turned away from Christianity to become a hostile critic. Feuerbach put forward the idea that God is the outward projection of mans inward nature, a wish fulfillment, a projection of our own aspirations and desires on to a non existent divine being. “God,” he said “is the realized wish of the heart.” “Knowledge of God is nothing else than the knowledge of man.” He was very hostile to the idea of revelation which he described as a “poison that destroys the divine feeling in man.” These ideas were promoted in his book “The Essence of Christianity.” (1)
Feuerbach had a deep influence on a group of thinkers and writers who have profoundly shaped the modern world: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the intellectual source of Marxism/Communism who together wrote the Communist Manifesto, and Sigmund Freud the father of modern psychiatry. Freud’s research, ideas and terminology attempted to describe the self in new terms and in the process succeeded in reshaping the modern view of the self. Many of the ideas and ways of describing and understanding ourselves that we commonly use today are influenced by Freud and his disciple Karl Jung. (2)
At the time of its publication (1841) Engels said of Feuerbach’s book “One must himself have experienced the liberating effect of this book to get an idea of it. Enthusiasm was general; we all became at once Feuerbachians.” Interestingly it was Feuerbach who first said “Religion is as bad as opium” a phrase later echoed by Marx, “Religion is the opium of the people.” Another quotation from Marx reveals Feuerbach’s influence, “Religion is only the illusory sun, around which man revolves until he begins to revolve around himself.” Freud treated religion as an illusion or wish fulfillment, an idea that has influenced so much of psychology and psychiatry in our times.
This is not only the beginning of the psychologising of religion it is the beginning of the grand inflation of the self. We are now the creators of God! God is just a projection of our own imagination, fantasies and wishes. Of course if we created him then we can also dismiss him, which was indeed the final result of the enlightenment experiment and announced by Nietzsche. That is what makes the next step in the process so paradoxical and contradictory – turning the self into God! If we have now decided that God is just a projection of our wishes and imagination, and an idea we have outgrown, why would we make the self divine? But that is exactly what we have done.
The reasons are deeply theological – our overweening desire to inflate the self to the place of independence from God. It’s beginning, described in the powerful mythic language of Genesis, has now reached its climax. In offering the great temptation: The serpent says “You will not surely die, for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God.” (Gen 3:4-5)
In the West, given where we had arrived at through the Enlightenment, we achieved this next paradoxical step by embracing a new, at least to the West, and very exotic influence, Eastern Mysticism (EM). This is the third force in the reshaping of the western mind.
As the West tired of secular materialism in the 1960’s and 70’s the counter culture flowered and the Baby Boomers embraced Eastern Mysticism. The Beatles went to India and everyone followed! The interest has continued but the result is not what anyone who really understands Eastern Mysticism might have expected.
At the heart of Eastern Mysticism (EM), particularly in its Buddhist form, is the question of how to solve the problem of suffering. The East’s solution is detachment. Our suffering, it is claimed, comes about through our attachment to our desires in this world. If we break our attachments we can free ourselves from that which is the source of our suffering. So the teaching and practice is geared towards this process of detachment and disengagement from the world. The ultimate step is to become detached from the conscious self, to become the “not self”, where individuality is extinguished in the “great deathless lake of Nirvana.”
Whereas Christianity is about incarnation the central idea here is excarnation – disembodiment, the annihilation of the self. The mental and physical disciplines of EM are part of the means to this end. The aim is to realise your oneness with the cosmic oneness or consciousness as a pinch of salt is absorbed into a glass of water. This is certainly not about the inflation of the self!
Closely related to this is the idea of transcending the material plane of the illusion of difference and absorption into the one, the great unity. This idea from EM is more associated with forms of Hinduism and is seen as the solution to what is believed to be another aspect of our suffering and burdens in this world. These are the troubles that arise from our insistence on the differences around us, differences of human and animal, plants and insects, race and religion, health and sickness, material and spiritual, rich and poor, etc. These differences are said to be an illusion that we need to transcend. The task of the spiritual journey, they say, is to transcend the plane of illusion and realize our unity with the one. (This and the above idea have a common source in the East’s pantheistic world view that God and nature are one and there is no distinction between them. This is described philosophically as Monism – from mono meaning one.)
It seems that the declared end result of EM is the shedding not just of self consciousness but of our unique personal identity. This has been critiqued as really the annihilation or suicide of the self.
Annihilation of the self is not very congenial to the Western mind shaped as it is, first, by Christianity’s view of the value of each human person made in the image of God which is reinforced by the incarnation of Christ in human flesh. Then, second, by the enlightenment and the forces we have described above. Years of humanist thought that celebrates the uniqueness and importance of the individual and their creativity and power and right to decide and choose and shape and control the world does not give up so easily. We are prone not to the annihilation of the self but to its inflation!
So we have adapted Eastern Mysticism and adopted it’s ideas selectively to achieve the very opposite of its declared goal. We have used EM not to annihilate the self but to further inflate it in the most grandiose inflation of all, to transform the self into God!
We have done this by taking from EM those things that are congenial to the Western mind and life style and ignored or flirted superficially with the rest. The things that are congenial to the Western mind are: The idea of unity. Western culture has been promised so much by material progress through the industrial and technological revolutions, by science and modern medicine and yet now finds itself in a confusing and fragmenting society. International migration has created multicultural societies where once a more mono culture and uniform national identity was assumed. This has caused significant tensions. They are acutely aware of the growing disunity of their world, the fragmenting of marriages and families, the loss of community, the environmental crisis and the divisions of the world through international conflicts. In this environment the unitary idea of EM is immensely attractive.
We invite the Dali Lama to visit the West and listen approvingly as the rather exotic figure talks about world peace and unity. His lectures on Tibetan Buddhism are also well attended but much less understood and quoted in the press as they take one into the more opaque labyrinth of Eastern thought.
As the West has become a more pluralist culture it has embraced moral relativism in its ethics and syncretism in its approach to religion – the “blender” view. It is also increasingly influenced by post modern subjectivism in its evaluation of spiritual and religious ideas. For these reasons the idea of pantheism is attractive because it supports the notion that all religions are really just different expressions of the one. It requires no hard thinking or difficult decisions about what might be true or false, reasonable or nonsense, consistent or illogical. The fact that some of the fundamental ideas of different religious systems are mutually exclusive and logically contradictory is either brushed aside as too hard to think about or, as in most cases, not even considered out of shear ignorance. These days the West likes its religion lite!
We flirt with detachment from our materialism with expensive eco tourist retreats and high tech costly push bikes and lycra riding outfits. We borrow some of the meditation techniques and go to Yoga classes to ease our stress and keep our bodies in shape. But not to really detach from our frenetic work and entertainment but to refuel to re-engage more energetically! Our engagement with EM is at best simplistic and naive and at worst cynical and dishonest.
Another idea in EM that is congenial to the western mind is the notion that there is a divine spark in all of us. The idea is that because we are all part of the one, potentially we are all little Gods. Our task is to realise the divine light in ourselves, realise our divinity and our true unity with the one. To go thus far with EM is very congenial to the Western tendency to inflate the self – the self has now become divine! ( A brilliant recent analysis of this trend is Ross Douthart’s book “Bad Religion” Free Press, 2012, see chp 7)
Some eastern teachers are fond of quoting Jesus’ words in Luke 17:21 “The kingdom of God is within you” to reinforce their ideas with a biblical phrase still familiar to some western ears. This gives the impression that essentially EM and Jesus’ teaching are the same. The context of the Gospels and the teaching of Jesus makes it quite clear that what Jesus meant by these words is in fact the complete opposite to what EM teaches! (3) Jesus, standing in the midst of the crowd, is saying: ‘The kingdom of God is entered by an inner act of faith and trust in me its King. I am here in your midst now and if you want to enter my kingdom you must submit to my rule, obey and follow me.’ Jesus is not found within us he must be invited in and submitted to and we must first turn away from our inflated selves and seek forgiveness for our pride and independence.
In John 10:1-18 Jesus takes the metaphor of the sheepfold and the shepherd and says that only those who come into the fold via the shepherd are members of the flock of God. The shepherd sleeps across the entrance to the fold. Any one trying to enter the sheepfold some other way is either a thief or a wolf! (4)
In the Christian faith when a person is encountered by God in Jesus Christ and they respond and submit to him in repentance and faith the image of God in which they were created is restored. They are not absorbed and their identity and personhood annihilated or lost, they in fact find it renewed. (5) They have now entered into a union with Christ who became incarnate, took on human flesh, lived, died and then rose from the dead. For Christians the resurrected body is a real body, renewed, but in continuity with our former body. Christianity is about incarnation not excarnation! Christians are about the renewing and perfecting of the self in the image of Christ not its annihilation. (6)
It is very instructive that the development of hospitals, orphanages, and modern medicine did not develop in the East but in the West influenced by the Christian teaching of the value of the individual life, the body, and the importance of the physical world. The physical world is to be respected and enjoyed but not worshiped for it is not God. It was made, like us, by God and reflects his glory but it is not God. These distinctions lie at the heart of the difference between EM and Christianity. (7)
References:
By Peter Corney
Our Father in heaven holy is your name. (Mathew 6:9)
A passion for the preaching of the Cross, a desire for a holy life and the pursuit of social justice has a common source. The spring from which these three are refreshed and renewed in the church is an acute awareness of the holiness and love of God.
These three vital elements of the Church’s life and mission are notably weak in the contemporary Western church, and the reason is clear, it is because our sensitivity to and awareness of the holy love of God is dull. We are like the man in Plato’s story who was chained in a cave so that all he could see of the brilliant world outside were passing shadows on the rear wall. Occasionally he was aware of a bird flying past or clouds passing over and the indirect light of the sun or moon. The experience of the reality of the world beyond his cave, the beauty, colors, and vastness were all inaccessible to him because he could not get to the entrance of his cave. His imagination, his understanding and his sensibilities were dulled, stunted and distorted by the limitation of his vision.
Ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. Ascribe to the Lord the glory due to his name: worship the Lord in the splendour (beauty) of his holiness (Psalm 29:1-2)
It is only when we break our chains and go to the entrance of our cave and once again gaze out upon the biblical vision of the holiness and love of God that we will recover a true understanding of and passion for these three vital elements of our life and mission.
Let me explain.
1. The preaching of the cross and the priority of grace.
Our God is a consuming fire (Hebrews 12;29)
We need to re-establish in our minds and hearts that God in his blazing purity can not co – exist with evil (Habakkuk1:13, Psalm 5:4-6); that our God is a consuming fire of holy righteousness. We need to understand afresh that fallen humanity is unholy and we are unable to approach Him because of our impurity, our selfishness, greed and violence, and our persistent inhumanity to others. When we re-establish this understanding, then will we see the preaching of the Cross return with urgency to the centre of the churches message. That is because a true vision of God in his holiness will drive us to see that the only point at which we, in our unholiness, can meet Him and live, is in judgment and grace, and the place where judgment and grace intersect is in Christ and the Cross. This is the heart of holy love (1John 4:10). This is where God’s glory, which is his holiness and love, is revealed (John12:23-33, 13:31-32). The only entry point for us to the most holy place, the presence of God, is at the Cross (Hebrews 9:12- 14, 10:19-22).
If we reject God’s holy love in Christ and his Cross then we meet God only in judgment and for unholy people it is “a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God”. (Hebrews 10:31). We have to feel the force of the question that earlier generations asked themselves with awe and trembling: ‘How can a Holy God co-exist with an unholy and impure people?’
When Isaiah experienced the overwhelming vision of God in all his holy glory in the temple he cried out: Woe to me! I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty. (Isaiah 6: 1- 5)
When we re-assert the holiness of God, by contrast, we feel and see with greater clarity the “heart of darkness” that infects us all. The pervasive monstrosity of evil, its immense destructiveness, and the absolute necessity for its judgment is pressed in upon us again, breaking through our carefully constructed distractions and diversions.
Should we be tempted to think this approach is all too negative and unnecessary, then a brief reflection on the horrors we have inflicted upon each other in the recent past will correct that temptation, e.g; the genocides of: the Jewish holocaust, Armenia, Kurdistan, the Ukraine, the Balkans, Ruanda, Kampuchea, the Sudan, the list goes on with a terrible monotony. We cannot escape the call for accountability, no one is innocent!
The Spanish artist Antonio Saura has a painting of the crucifixion that captures not just its physical brutality but something of the terrible significance of what the Cross means and represents when God in Christ bears the cost of accountability for human sin and evil. (1) The picture is very large and confronting, painted in stark black and white. The body of Christ is distorted to the point of destruction. The face has become a hideous grimace. The picture has a feeling of malevolence. The figure has become almost robotic, as if it’s become something of what it bears – a weapon of destruction, a killing machine. Here, in a way that language struggles to express, is graphically depicted the concentration of human sin and evil, violence and cruelty, and there is Jesus, carrying, bearing, becoming that for us and absorbing its judgment. It is only this radical primal message of the cross that can heal the wounds of evil in the hearts of us all.
As the call for accountability for all our inhumanity to one another rises up to God so also another cry goes up, the desperate cry for forgiveness and redemption. We hear that cry over and over again in contemporary literature and film. (2) We also hear it in the pain of those who have become aware of how their selfishness has fractured or destroyed a relationship. Anyone who has had the responsibility to sit with and council those confronting the folly of their addictions or their selfish and cruel decisions that have hurt others irreparably, or their betrayal and abandonment of those to whom they once promised faithfulness for life, will also have heard the desperate cry for redemption. Only the radical meaning of the Cross can meet this desperate longing for the removal of guilt and the need to be forgiven. ‘Can I be loved in my unloveliness?’ ‘How will I face the moment of accountability?’ ‘Is it possible to be forgiven?’ This is the cry for grace and there is only one place where it can be found – the Cross.
We are tempted to feel today that the very primal nature of the Cross is alien and alienating to contemporary people. That death, blood, vicarious suffering, substitutionary sacrifice, atonement and redemptive suffering are all concepts that either repel or puzzle them. At this point we may have been most subtly seduced by modernity.
Ironically the most widely sold and read novels of our time are Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” and close behind them C S Lewis’s Narnia Chronicles, both now made into blockbuster films seen by millions of viewers. These stories are full of primal myths and symbols of sacrifice. Their popularity may well represent the hunger of a generation starved of spiritual realities and old wisdom by the closed box of scientific rationalism, the emptiness of secular humanism, materialism and the failure of the church to faithfully proclaim its transcendent message.
The temptation to reduce the radical meaning of the Cross is ever present in the contemporary church, to turn away from the biblical ideas of God’s uncompromising holiness and his provision of atonement in the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ. As I write this a new debate is raging about these very matters as many Christian teachers turn away from historic orthodoxy’s teaching on the Cross.(3) There is also an unconscionable and wide spread practice in our churches where the original symbols are retained but their classical first order meaning is denied or changed. This may be our greatest act of theological treason, when we preserve the appearance of the biblical concepts in our worship, in the language we employ, the symbols we use, the celebration of Communion and the words of our songs, but empty them of their biblical meaning. No wonder so many of our people are spiritually undernourished and our churches dying. This process leaves us with signs without substance, the wrapper without the content. It is this process that hollows out our message till there is no substance or power left. We hold the form of religion but deny its power. (4)
P.T. Forsyth, an important English theologian of the early twentieth century, wrote: “Christianity is concerned with God’s holiness before all else, which issues to man as love, acts upon sin as grace, and exercises grace through judgment. The idea of God’s holiness is inseparable from the idea of judgment as the mode by which grace goes into action. And by judgment is meant….the acceptance by Christ of God’s judgment on man’s behalf and its conversion in him to our blessing by faith.”(5)
In re-asserting the preaching of the Cross, we need to take care not to create a false dichotomy and pit God’s holiness and love against each other. God’s love is not an alternative to his holiness, or his holiness an alternative to his love: they are expressions of each other. The atoning death of Christ on the cross is the ultimate expression of God’s holy love. When we recapture our awareness of that blazing holy love we will return to the preaching of the Cross
2. Holiness of life and the distinctive Christian lifestyle.
Just as he who has called you is holy so be holy in all you do: for it is written, ‘Be holy for I am holy’. (1Peter 1:15-16)
As we re-establish in our minds the biblical vision of the holiness of God, we will find ourselves re examining our life style. We will realize how far we have drifted with the current of our society and how far back we have to row.
We live in a self-indulgent excessive society preoccupied with comfort, pleasure, leisure, possessions and security. We live in a society dominated by a popular entertainment media that is saturated with the portrayal of violence, conflict and promiscuous sexuality. The advertising that fills our lives is centered on the creation of discontent to drive our consumerism – this mobile phone is better than your old one. It uses covetousness, greed, self indulgence – why deny yourself? – and the false promise of creating an identity through possessions – succesfull people drive a … as its driving motivations. Living in the midst of all this is deeply corrosive to Christian values. To live a distinctively Christian lifestyle is a constant challenge and requires deliberate and conscious choice.
The constant underlying pressure of consumerism makes us self focused, we expect to be served rather than to serve. It feeds the drive for instant self gratification rather than self discipline and delayed gratification. One of the implications is that the development of character is affected and the end result is often character that is stunted and deeply flawed, producing self obsessed and narcissistic people.(6) To pursue the call to be like the suffering servant Jesus in such a culture requires real commitment and sacrifice.
The foundational idea of holiness in scripture is to be set apart and consecrated for a specific purpose. God has called us, reconciled us to his holy self in Christ so we will be consecrated to serve his purposes in the world. We are called to be a sign that points people to God and his kingdom. Our lives are to express the character and purposes of God and the values of his kingdom. Peter expresses it in this way in his letter:
You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light…..I urge you as aliens and strangers in the world to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God. (1Peter 2:9-12)
When we set apart a utensil for some special task such as a baking dish, we do not use it to mix paint in and we make sure we keep it clean! In the same way we must set ourselves aside for God. (2Tim 2:20 – 21) Paul goes on in the same passage to say that we are to run away from evil and pursue goodness. The original word he uses suggests the idea of a hunter pursuing their prey. We are to hunt down goodness! (2Tim 2:22)
In another arresting image Paul says that our lives are to shine like stars in a dark night sky as we hold out the word of life to the culture in which we are set. (Phil 2:14-16)
Our personal lives, our family life and our Christian communities are to reflect God’s holy love. We are set apart to serve God and his world, but to do that we need to maintain our Christian distinctiveness. There is always of course a fine line between distinctiveness and disengagement from the culture, between being a strong community with a clear identity and a ghetto.
In reasserting the call to a holy life that reflects the Holy God we serve we need to take care that we do not repeat the past mistakes of legalism, exclusivism and disengagement from the culture. Our prayer should be:
O Lord, grant us:
A holiness without legalism,
Discipline with celebration,
An unworldliness that is life affirming,
A simplicity of life that is aesthetically aware,
A frugality that is not mean,
A distinctiveness that is hospitable,
A clarity of belief that is gracious.
Amen.
3. Social justice
The Lord Almighty will be exalted by his justice, and the holy God will show himself holy by his righteousness.(Isaiah 5:16)
There is a very close link in scripture between God’s holiness, righteousness and justice and the ethical demands he makes on his people, especially in their communal relations. In Leviticus 19:1-37 and 1Peter 1:15-2:1 the command “Be holy for I am holy” is followed by ethical and moral directions particularly focused on community relations.
The moral source of social ethics and social justice is in God’s holiness. It is located in the heart of God who hates injustice, who defends the poor and exploited who loves goodness and truthfulness and is repelled by all immorality and hubris. (Psalm 146:7-9, Proverbs 6:16)
These are the things you are to do: speak the truth to each other, and render true and sound judgment in your courts; do not plot evil against your neighbor, and do not love to swear falsely. I hate all this declares the LORD.
(Zechariah 8:16-1)
Biblical faith is essentially relational, it is about our relationship with God and our neighbor. We are commanded to love God and our neighbor. (Mark 12:29-31. Deut. 6:4. Lev.19:8) The way we are to relate to our neighbor is determined by the character of God, with whom we are in relationship, the God who is holy love, who is righteous and just.
To achieve social justice in a society requires, enough people who have a sense of responsibility to others and personal accountability. Personal accountability declines when we subtly move sin from being an offence against God’s holiness to “personal failure” or “a mistake” or merely the result of social and environmental forces.
Personal motivation to strive for justice and goodness increases when we reassert the holiness of God.
We live in a culture that increasingly sees legislation as the way to generate public morality. But as P.T Forsyth wisely said, “Public liberty rests on inward freedom and the cross alone gives moral freedom.” (7) Gratitude for God’s grace to us in Christ is a far better and stronger motivation for public morality than the coercion of the law. The person moved by grace does that which is good when no one is looking! Without inner freedom we are driven by all sorts of selfish and dark agendas.
When we have glimpsed the vision of God’s holy purity, absolute goodness, truthfulness and justice, when we realize afresh his implacable opposition to injustice and all moral corruption (Habakkuk 1:13, Zechariah 8:16-17, Isaiah 1:10-17, 30:12.), we will be driven to two actions; to our knees in repentance and to our feet in justice for the world. (Micha 6:8)
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: with two wings they covered their faces, with two wings they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another:
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.”
At the sound of their voices the door posts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke. “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the king, the Lord Almighty.” (Isaiah 6:1-5)
It is this vision that we must reclaim if we are to see a renewal of these three key elements of our mission.
Peter Corney.
References:
Biblical quotations are from the NIV Inclusive language version, 1996.
By Peter Corney
(The title for this address was inspired by Reno Elms book “In the Ruins of the Church” (1)
In the book of Nehemiah chapters 1 and 2, when Nehemiah, who is in exile, learns of the ruined state of Jerusalem he is deeply distressed and calls out: “Jerusalem lies in ruins and its gates have been burned with fire.” (Neh 2:17 & 1:3). He is moved to two responses: a profound prayer of repentance and a decision to return and rebuild the city and its walls.
This is a metaphor for the contemporary Australian Church. We find ourselves at this point in our history in a serious crisis. Unless this crisis is confronted and dealt with then the ruin of the church will continue and our crucial and unique contribution to the Nation will be so weakened that we will become almost completely ineffective.
The future and the relevance of the Australian Church lie in our response to the following crises:
If we are to rebuild the Australian Church so it is once again a credible and effective witness to Christ then, like Nehemiah, we need to begin with repentance and then commit ourselves to the decisions and actions that are necessary to rebuild.
Let me begin with the first crisis of integrity and credibility.
Much is currently being done around the Australian Church to put in place protocols and structures for reporting and dealing with sexual abuse.
In my own denomination in the Diocese of Melbourne, in addition to new protocols and structures, all licensed clergy have participated in a series of excellent seminars entitled, “Power and Trust”. Regular police checks are now mandatory and commitments are required to new professional codes of conduct, including regular assessment. All of this is commendable, necessary and long overdue.
But there are other matters that must also be faced. The toleration of abuse and the justification of immoral and disordered sexuality can only be deeply and radically challenged by the recovery of the Biblical vision of God’s holy love. The call to the distinctive Christian lifestyle originates in the vision of God’s holiness and that vision is found in God’s word. That is why I believe that the first crisis is a crisis of holiness.
With regard to relationships and sexuality between adults the following predictable pattern has emerged. When certain sections of the Church have arrived at a view that is inconsistent with God’s Word and the historic belief of the Church, they then pursue the following approach to justify their view. First they construct a creative hermeneutic that alters or circumvents the clear meaning of the text. They do this, I believe, not because they themselves feel overtly constrained by Scripture, but because they know the majority of the church still does. Then there are those who think that the texts are so ambiguous that the matter is not settled by the Bible. They of course conveniently exclude the discussion of the wider context of the Bibles teaching on sexuality such as the creation account in chapters 1and 2. of Genesis.
Second, they then create a false contrast between the orthodox view and the new view. The orthodox view is caricatured as excluding, intolerant, rejecting, and therefore unlike the Gospel of grace and loving acceptance. On the other hand, the new view is portrayed as inclusive, tolerant, accepting and loving. This is of course a deeply flawed and deceptive approach. Acceptance, tolerance and inclusion when applied appropriately are good and godly. But not everything should be tolerated and accepted, indeed when applied inappropriately these attitudes can be deeply destructive. It would take only a short time for any of us to compile a list of attitudes and actions that ought to be rejected, excluded and never tolerated.
We must not accept within God’s people relationships and behaviours that God has declared as unholy. The call of God to us in all our relationships is to holy love. Love and truth cannot be separated without the distortion of one or the other.
A great Syrian Christian, St Ephraim wrote: “Truth and love are wings that cannot be separated, for truth cannot fly without love, nor can love soar aloft without truth, their yoke is one of friendship.”
The ancient baptismal questions and promises make it perfectly clear that while all are invited to the feast in the Kingdom of Heaven there are decisions to be made, things to be rejected and things to be embraced when we accept the invitation (1 Cor 6:9-20)
The parables of Jesus and the apostolic preaching make it very clear that inclusion in the people of God is not unqualified. (Acts 2: 37-39)
A community without boundaries is destined to disappear. As Thomas Oden has written of the circle of faith, “A centre without a circumference is just a dot, nothing more … to eliminate the boundary is to eliminate the circle itself.” (2)
In the Old Testament immorality is frequently the bi-product of idolatry. When the gaze of the people of God is distracted from the vision of God we become vulnerable to the temptation to turn our gaze toward unholy things. (1 Cor 10:1-12)
We need to re-establish in our hearts and minds the Biblical vision of God’s blazing purity.
“Lord … your eyes are too pure to look upon evil, you cannot tolerate wrong.” (Hab 1:13).
“Worship God acceptably with reverence and awe for our God is a consuming fire.” (Heb 12:29)
We need to soak our imaginations again in visions from God’s Word, like:
We need to relearn and memorise these exhortations from Scripture:
So many of us in the contemporary church are like the man in Plato’s story who was chained to the back of a cave. He was so manacled that he could only face the rear wall, condemned to live out his life seeing on that stone wall only dim reflections and shadows produced by the brilliant light outside that sometimes filtered through the entrance of his cave – his understanding of reality, his imagination, his knowledge of himself, hardly touched by the light, the beauty, the seasons and the vast landscape outside.
We need to unshackle our minds from our contemporary accommodation to the Spirit of this age. Turn around and go the entrance of our cave and look out on the Biblical vision of the glorious and holy God.
When our minds and imaginations are gripped once again by this vision we will find ourselves rediscovering not only the foundation and the motivation for Godly sexual ethics but also, and perhaps surprisingly to some, the true motivation for social justice and a renewed passion for preaching the cross. Let me explain:
The essential motivation for Christians to work for social justice is not some political ideology but the Biblical vision of God in his absolute righteousness and justice. This vision may indeed influence a political agenda but it always stands above them.
There is an intimate link in Scripture between God’s holiness, righteousness, and justice, and the ethical demands he makes on his people, especially in their social relations.
The command “Be holy for I am holy” occurs in Lev 19:1-37, Isaiah 5:16, and 1 Peter 1:15-2:1. In each case it is followed by ethical and moral directions focussed on our social relations.
The moral source of social ethics lies in God’s holiness. It is located in the heart of God who hates injustice, who defends the poor and exploited who is repelled by immorality and deceit, and loves truthfulness and goodness. (Ps 146:7-9; Prov 6:16).
As we rehabilitate the vision of God’s holy love the other priority that will re-emerge is the preaching of the Cross. Once again we will see that the cross is the pre-eminent place of access to God’s grace.
The reasons are as follows:
First, when we reassert God’s holiness, in contrast we begin to feel and see the ‘heart of darkness’ with greater clarity. The pervasive monstrosity of evil and its immense destructiveness is pressed in upon us again.
Second, we see the absolute necessity for its judgement and defeat.
Third, we see the desperate need for redemption and grace by those caught up in its corrupting and destroying power.
Fourth, we realise afresh that the only point at which we can meet God in our unholiness is in judgement and grace, and the place where judgement and grace meet is in the cross. Here is the heart of holy love (1 John 4:10).
In Exodus 33:18 when Moses was personally trying to come to grips with the shattering apostasy of the people of God in their manufacture and worship of the Golden Calf, he cries out to God: “Show me your glory”. God’s gracious answer to Moses’ desperate prayer enables him to find the courage and confidence to go on and to lead the people out of their crisis of faith and disobedience. That must now be our prayer – “Lord, show me your glory.”
The second crisis is the betrayal of historic Christianity – a crisis of truth and faith.
The future of the Church lies in the recovery of a vital orthodoxy, the recovery of biblical and credal faith, the recovery of classical Christian belief.
Let me be very clear that I am not calling for a retreat into fundamentalism. Fundamentalism is not the only alternative to theological liberalism. There is a third alternative – ‘intelligent orthodoxy’.
The other side of the action to recover classical Christian belief is the rejection of much of what liberal-reductionist theology has constructed by its relentless accommodation to modernity and the Spirit of the age.
By ‘liberal-reductionist theology’ I mean an approach to Christian truth that critiques the Gospel with the prevailing worldview rather than other way around.
Liberal-reductionism allows the Spirit of the age to over influence its interpretation of the Gospel. It then seeks to reduce and revise the Gospel to fit what the surrounding culture finds plausible or implausible.
It claims to be broad and open but it is frequently intellectually narrow and provincial, trapped in the immediate landscape of current thought.
It is frequently reactive rather than proactive. Having lost its confidence in orthodoxy it then fails to offer, from the perspective of classical Christian belief, an intelligent critique of the prevailing intellectual fashion. It rolls over to the pressure of the Spirit of the age. This can have devastating results as in the accommodation of large parts of the German Church to Hitler and fascism in the late 1930’s. (3) Karl Bath sounded the warning, predicting the tragic direction in which liberal theology would take the German protestant Church. The stakes are high in this matter.
Thomas Oden, whom I quoted before, describes himself as a “recovered liberal theologian”. He is from the liberal American Methodist tradition. He explains his past captivity in this way, “We sought to be inclusive but managed to be so only within the strict limits of modern ideologies trapped in secular premises. In this captivity we systematically excluded most premodern wisdom.” (4)
Let me list some of the touchstones of classical Christianity that liberal-reductionists are most uncomfortable with and equivocal about. These are frequent targets for their relentless revisionism:
The paradigm for orthodoxy is Moses and the burning bush. The revelation of God to Moses in that extraordinary and unexpected event creates the response of faith and obedience in Moses. It is not Moses’ faith that creates the burning bush!
Orthodoxy begins with God’s revelation of himself to us. In this encounter, God is at the centre, God has the initiative, God is challenging and disturbing our fallen human categories and perspectives, God is calling for our submission and our obedience.
Our task as Christian teachers, preachers, apologists, and conversationalists is not to revise and reduce the Gospel to make it credible to the contemporary world but to challenge the most precious assumptions of the contemporary world with the Gospel.
Certainly we must find every possible point of contact, tap into every human longing expressed in literature, art, music and popular culture. We must learn the language of contemporary people so we can communicate the Gospel intelligibly and intelligently – but we fail the world if we revise and reduce the Gospel so it fits the landscape of contemporary belief.
Alister McGrath in his systematic theology, Christian Truth, defines heterodoxy as: “That which preserves the appearance of Christianity but contradicts its essence.” (5)
This tendency in the contemporary church has had a devastating impact. Because liberal theology retains the language and the symbols of faith but changes their original meaning the damage to the faith of ordinary church members is subtle and devastating. The heritage of classical meaning is stolen away by stealth. But worse – the power of the Gospel is also destroyed because the power lies in the original meaning. Once evacuated of their first order meaning the words and symbols are emptied of their spiritual power because they are emptied of truth. So the people are robbed and the church rendered powerless.
These first two crises are leading a number of people in the Australian Church to seriously consider the formation of a ‘confessing church’ within the mainstream denominations that would cross denominational boundaries. Recent events in the Uniting Church in Australia have sharpened this discussion as have events overseas in the Anglican Communion. In North America we now have a large new province created that has broken away from the Episcopal Church but is seeking to be in communion with continuing Anglican diocese in other parts of the Anglican Communion. (6)
The third crisis is our failure to focus on our core values and purposes – a crisis of purpose and mission.
Each denomination and tradition has in its own way allowed its own denominational culture and preoccupations to deflect it from our prime mission directive.
In Anglicanism, my own tradition, our emotional attachment to an anglophile and sentimental 19th Century ethos of the English village church and cathedral culture has trapped too many of our congregations in a quaint cul de sac of irrelevance to Australian culture.
The whole Vicar of Dibley Syndrome, through which the watching world can say “how eccentric, harmless and amusing” and by which the Gospel is trivialised, marginalised, and dismissed.
Our polite discomfort with enthusiasm and evangelism has left us powerless and ineffective in communicating the Gospel in our generation.
The unstated cultural snobbery frequently reflected in precious liturgy and music that appeals to an almost invisible percentage of Australians.
The failure of large numbers of Anglican clergy and their leaders to understand, learn or even be open to the wealth of insights and skills available today for leading and growing effective churches is a sad fact of ignorance and sometimes just plain arrogance.
As someone once observed, too many Anglican clergy fit the description of the ‘bland leading the bland’!
I will risk just one anecdote from another tradition. I have been privileged to be involved in a number of consultations and training events with the Salvation Army. I remember one corps where they were involved in a knock down drag out over the wearing of bonnets in the choir!
Here is a movement that in the 19th Century was a radical force for mission and evangelism. The Army metaphor, the uniforms, the brass bands were up to the minute culturally contextualised tools for mission in the 19th Century British Empire. Now, what was a radical methodology has become a tradition locked down in a time warp with all the force that a military organization can bring to bear. The Army is currently engaged in a battle to recover the radical passion for mission in which it was born. I deeply admire the Salvation Army and pray they will rediscover their heritage.
In a period when socially and culturally everything is in dynamic and rapid change, where we have to largely reinvent the way we do ministry, church and mission, we have to be clear about what is essential and non-negotiable and what can be left behind.
Much of the denominational baggage we have carried with us into the 21st Century is frankly non-essential, indeed much of it is a weight and a hindrance. The mission is primary. The mission is more important than the denominational culture. The mission has priority!
The irony is that the very “tradition” we should have preserved – the tradition of the faith – large sections of the church have been busily revising, reducing or jettisoning. On the other hand, the traditions we should be leaving behind we cling to desperately.
Perhaps this is what happens when you empty the signs and symbols of faith of their content. You are left clinging to the outward trappings of belief.
Our prime mission directive was given on a mountaintop.
Matthew 28:16-20
16Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. 17When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. 18Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
Mountaintops are magical places; they give you perspectives and inspiration, they fill you with awe and a sense of majesty. They are also exciting, scary, dangerous, and unforgettable places.
We need leaders who have received and heard the prime mission directive on the mountaintop. Who have been to the mountaintop with Jesus? Who have experienced the spiritual awe and majesty of that place. Who have seen the vast panorama of need and opportunity. Who have seen a perspective that’s larger and bigger and more noble than the limited outlooks of their denominations and individual congregations.
On the mountain top the distance between heaven and earth seems thin. The possibility and the hope of drawing the nation to God seem possible.
There has never been a time in this nation when we needed Christian leaders more who have been to the mountaintop and heard the prime directive from Jesus, “go and make disciples … baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
I said earlier that without boundaries the Christian community is destined to disappear. It is also true that a Christian community that is not focussed beyond its boundaries is equally destined to disappear. Our future lies in our obedience to both imperatives, to distinctiveness and mission. We must live and work in the creative tension between the two commandments – “Be holy for I am holy” and “go and make disciples.”
The fourth and final crisis we face is the need for a whole new generation of young leaders with ability, integrity, creativity, and a passion for the Gospel – a crisis of leadership.
In 1913 and 1914 two Polar expeditions were launched, one to the North Pole and one to the South Pole.
The 1913 expedition to the North Pole was mounted by the Canadians and led by a man called Steffanson in a boat called the “Kaluk”.
But it was an unusually cold winter and their boat was trapped in the ice and crushed. The expedition ended in tragedy, the team disintegrated into a rabble, men turned on each other in the extreme conditions, stealing food and fighting, eleven of them died in the ice.
The next year, in 1914, a British expedition led by Ernest Shackleton with a team of 28, including one Australian, set out for the South Pole. Almost the identical circumstances befell them. Their boat “The Endurance” was also trapped by the ice and eventually crushed and sunk. Twenty-eight men found themselves camped on the ice in the most extreme survival conditions.
But from there on the two stories are completely different. In fact, the Shackleton Expedition is probably one of the most inspiring and amazing stories of survival ever recorded. Alfred Lansing tells the story in his gripping account entitled, Endurance. (7)
Shackleton led his party across the ice to Elephant Island on the edge of the arctic land mass. There they survived under upturned lifeboats. Shackleton then took five men and sailed a 20-foot open lifeboat 800 miles to the Island of South Georgia to a whaling station to organise a rescue party.
For the sailors among us – this is one of the most treacherous and storm lashed pieces of open sea in the world. They had to constantly knock the ice from the boat with a hammer to stop it weighing them down and sinking them. The temperature was below freezing and the conditions appalling.
The feat of navigation alone in those conditions was extraordinary. But they made it! It took two attempts to rescue the men left on Elephant Island but they finally succeeded – this whole process took over 18 months.
Every man was rescued and no one was badly injured or became critically sick.
And here is a significant fact – when sometime later Shackleton raised a new expedition almost every man volunteered again!
What was the difference between the two expeditions? LEADERSHIP!
In a situation of great danger and in extreme conditions Shackleton’s leadership was outstanding. It is no surprise that in today’s world this leadership example has become the focus of much attention by students of leadership.
The difference between the Australian Church having a creative and effective future or drifting further to the margins of Australian life is leadership – leadership that responds decisively to the crises I have described.
I want to suggest 6 principles that should guide our strategy for leadership development:
Let me conclude with this quotation from David Wells:
“What has most been lost needs most to be recovered – namely, the unsettling, disconcerting fact that God is holy and we place ourselves in great peril if we seek to render him a plaything of our piety, an ornamental decoration on the religious life, a product to answer our inward dissatisfactions. God offers himself on his own terms or not at all. The deity who now appears to lie so limply upon the church is, in fact, the living and glorious God. His hand may be stayed by patience and grace, but it is certain that he will eventually pass judgement on the world. It is this holy God, glorious in his being, doing wonders, who beckons his people to a deeper working knowledge of himself, and it is he who breaks the power of modernity.” (8)
A prayer:
Dear Lord, lead us to:
A holiness without legalism,
A discipline with celebration,
An unworldliness that is life affirming
A simplicity of life that is aesthetically aware,
A frugality that is not mean,
A distinctiveness that is hospitable,
A clarity of belief that is gracious,
We ask this through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Peter Corney
November 2003. Revised May 2009
References:
All Biblical references from the NIV.
By Peter Corney
Albert Einstein said: Not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted. Einstein’s insight is very valuable but it is also true that counting some things can be an important tool for evaluation of effectiveness and a reality check on our ministry.
Numbers are not everything – quality is more important than quantity – faithfulness is more important than success … These comments are each valid in certain circumstances of Christian ministry but they can also be used as justifications and excuses for incompetence, failure and laziness; for lack of courage, skills and planning and even disobedience. An unwillingness to count is sometimes a form of denial of ineffective ministry, of inappropriate methods, failed approaches and out dated models.
The following are reasons why counting counts.
Now of course counting can be misused and abused. Numbers don’t necessarily reflect quality or depth. Size doesn’t always equal strength or spiritual health. Statistics can be a source of pride and confidence in ourselves and not in God. Not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted. They can also be the source of despair and disappointment when they are made the sole standard of faithful and effective ministry.
But counting is also a very important way for us to be forced to face reality and to seriously evaluate our methods, models and results. It is part of the process of accountability, avoiding denial and facing up to whether we are being obedient to our Lords commands.
In this matter Gods sovereignty and human responsibility must be kept in a healthy balance. It is God who gives the increase but we must also obey the command to go and make disciples.
By Peter Corney
Imagine a fourteenth century church which has a series of beautiful stained glass windows that tell the biblical story.
They begin on the south side of the nave near the entrance and font with a window that depicts Adam and Eve as the crown of God’s creation, their act of disobedience and their ejection from the garden. As we proceed along the south wall the windows continue the story. There is the flood and the ark and the rainbow of promise. Then we see the call of Abraham. Further along is a striking window of the young David, the future king slaying Goliath; and then on to the great Prophet Isaiah foretelling the coming of the eternal king the Messiah.
When we turn to the north side wall of the nave we begin with a nativity scene and then John the Baptist by the river Jordan with Christ coming to be baptized; then there is the healing of the blind man and then the Sermon on the Mount. As we approach the chancel steps the last window on the north side is of the last supper and betrayal by Judas.
Finally as we walk up through the chancel towards the sanctuary there on the east wall above the Holy Table is the powerful crucifixion widow with its red and blue – black glass with touches of translucent gold. It has a terrible beauty. The cross takes our eyes upwards to a triumphant mosaic of the risen and ascended Christ. Finally they reach the apex of the great arch in which is placed a circular window, or more correctly three intersecting circles. Each circle contains a symbol – a crown for God the Father, a lamb for God the Son and a dove for God the Holy Spirit. The light shining through the brilliant colors crowns the whole east end picture with a transcendent glow.
The whole is a magnificent artistic depiction of the great Judeo/Christian meta – narrative of creation, fall and redemption that interpret’s history, the future and reality; the story and the values on which Western culture has been constructed.
But a catastrophe is about to overtake this place. There is a great earthquake and the building is almost completely destroyed. Such is the magnitude of the shocks that every window is shattered, even the mosaic on the east wall is shaken free and destroyed.
If you were to approach the building now, although a ruin, its shape is still discernable, but the beautiful windows and mosaic lay shattered and scattered in a thousand fragments on the stone floor of the building.
Imagine visiting the site many years’ later, you see people picnicking on the grass nearby and a child sitting on the remains of the flagstone floor. As you come closer you see that she is playing with fragments of stained glass and mosaic that she has collected. She moves them in little random patterns of color and shape lost in her game unaware of the origin of the colored pieces in her game.
As you observe this scene you wonder how you could explain to her or her parents what all these fragments really mean, what they once represented. That is the challenge that Christians in the Post Modern West are now confronted with as they seek to evangelize their culture.
Jean Baudrillard, an influential writer on Post Modernism, describing the results of the deconstruction of all objective universals and norms says: “All that is left are the pieces. All that remains to be done is to play with the pieces. Playing with the pieces that is Post Modernism”*
(*Jean Baudrillard. Quoted in ‘Truth Decay’ by Douglas Groothuis. IVP 2000 p169)
By Peter Corney
A worrying trend is at large in the Australian church today. The servant leadership model of Jesus is being misused and distorted to justify an inadequate style of leadership that is exercised by some pastors and ministers of local congregations. A leadership style that avoids creative initiative, is reactive and passive rather than proactive, that emphasises pastoral maintenance over growth, that downplays organisation, structure, leadership development and strategic planning and criticises those who exercise these skills as adopting a corporate model.
There is no question that Jesus modelled and taught servant leadership for the church. He identified himself with the suffering servant of Isaiah in Luke 4:17-21. In Luke 22:26 He clearly taught the principle and in John 13 :1-17 he modelled the servant/slave by washing the disciples feet. The NT church followed his example. Paul describes himself as a servant/slave of Christ (Rom1:1). Peter exhorts Christian leaders to be eager to serve (1Peter 5:2-3).
The basin and the towel is a powerful metaphor for Christian ministry but what exactly does it mean or describe? First century household servant/slaves did not preach, teach, evangelise, exhort, discipline, counsel, chair meetings, organise events, recruit and train leaders, develop peoples gifts, inspire and motivate volunteers, develop vision, encourage generous giving, resolve conflict and manage constructive change in a community!
The model and metaphor are given to reinforce in the Christian leaders mind and heart the right attitude to their task and the right relationship with those the lead and to whom they minister. It describes the motive, the spirit, the attitude in which ministry is to be exercised. The Christian leader ministers to serve those they lead, they do not minister be served. They are not to exercise the role for power, recognition, status, control or self aggrandisement. The welfare of those they lead is their primary purpose. The motivation is to be love and the spirit humility. The leaders behaviour to others must reflect these things. They are also to understand that they serve under orders from the head of the household of God – Jesus Christ, and that they will be held accountable by him for every action and attitude that is contrary to this motivation and spirit.
The model and the metaphor are crystal clear about attitude and spirit but they do not tell us much at all about the skills and competencies of Christian leadership and ministry.
(The only use of the metaphor that is of any application in this regard is the manager/steward/servant in the parables e.g.: Luke 12:42-46 and 16:1-12. Such a person would have been required to take significant initiative and have a range of management skills in running the large extended household of the first century and its complex affairs including finances.)
If we look at the leadership of Jesus and Paul it can hardly be described as passive, reactive and lacking in creative initiative or strategic action! Paul would not have used these words but his practice of establishing churches in the great urban centers of influence was a brilliant strategy for evangelising the regions those centers serviced. Jesus’ concentration on selecting and developing and mentoring the twelve as the future leadership was also strategic. The leadership of Jesus and Paul is not weak indecisive or bland.It does not shrink from conflict either interpersonal or at the level of ideas. It is frequently deeply challenging, particularly in relation to personal and institutional change.
At the same time both lay down their lives for the people of God, both are entirely indifferent to any personal ambition. They are not ego driven people. Their ambition is singular and selfless – the establishment and extension of the Kingdom of God. Their focus is beyond themselves on the evangelisation of those outside the Kingdom of God and the care of the church.
Inspite of all this there is this really unhelpful and incorrect idea floating around the Australian church that misuses and distorts the servant leader model .The reality is that the pastoral leader who fails to exercise positive leadership and effective leadership skills will fail to serve their people at a most important and fundamental level of responsibility. If , for example, they fail to take the initiative to create the structures and organisation that releases and mobilises peoples ministry gifts then they fail to empower people and so to multiply ministry. They have failed to serve them with a key responsibility of leadership. Indeed they can inadvertently hold back the growth of the congregation both in maturity and numerically.
In growing congregations it is imperative that pastoral leaders gradually shift the weight of their time to working ON ministry rather than IN ministry. Working ON ministry is focussing on strategy, vision, staff and leadership development, multiplying ministry through releasing others into ministry, infrastructure, organisation, resources, constructive change and adaptation to the changing culture and creative new ways to reach out and connect with the community.
There are a number of reasons why this misuse and distortion of the servant leader model has arisen:
Many churches are hurt more by a failure of pastoral leadership than by pastoral domination.
2.
By Peter Corney
In part one of these two articles I made the point that while we are in a difficult environment for growing Churches there are healthy growing congregations out there. It is only common sense that Christian leaders should be studying them to identify what makes them effective.
The following are the principles and practices adopted by healthy growing churches and their leaders. I have observed these across a range of denominations. This is not an exhaustive list and of course leadership, congregational health and growth are more complex than a list of principles and practices can fully explain. Nevertheless this is a very useful guide for action and reflection and for further research.
Fundamentals.
The leader is committed to the following fundamentals:
(a) A commitment to and a confidence in the Gospel; that if it is communicated truthfully, clearly and relevantly people will respond.
(b) A dependence on God expressed in prayer that under girds the work.
(c) A commitment to the authority of the Bible and teaching it in a relevant and applied way.
(d) A commitment to mission and outreach – evangelism and service.
(e) A commitment to the congregation by the leader that is expressed in a willingness to hang in for the long hall. Turning around congregations that have been in decline for some years is a long process, there is no quick fix.
(f) The leader is able to gather a core of voluntary leaders around them who are also committed to these fundamentals.
Leadership.
Leadership is required – the minister has to be a leader as well as a pastor and a preacher. The kind of leadership exercised must be “transformational leadership.”
Transformational leaders come in all sizes and shapes but they are all intentional and have a clearly worked out philosophy of ministry. They also possess or are prepared to acquire the following skills: how to cast a vision and inspire people and how to put legs on a vision by creating practical plans, achievable staged goals and the basic organizational structures to make it happen. They are able to empower and involve others through these means. Transformational leaders want to see people and organizations transformed. They have a strong desire to bring renewal and growth.
They understand the change process and know how to initiate change constructively. Putting legs on a vision inevitably means change. How much? How fast and in what areas first? These are critical questions. They know how to bring people with them, to consult and to involve others in negotiating the change rather than imposing it.
They know how to motivate, recruit and enthuse volunteers, how to involve others on committees and teams and projects, how to release their gifts and abilities. The local congregation is a voluntary organization, when it has been in decline and its resources of people and structures are depleted or have become irrelevant a key task is recruiting and envisioning a new generation of volunteers and leaders.
This is a people task and so people skills are paramount! Effective leaders have EQ or “emotional intelligence” as well as IQ. They know how their emotional responses to people affect their willingness to help, their involvement and their reaction to ideas and tasks. They have learnt how to positively manage their emotional responses to people and people’s responses to them. This is one of the keys to being able to form and lead teams effectively.
They have practical experience in starting new projects in a voluntary organization, creating committees or working groups and leading and chairing meetings towards effective decisions. These skills may have been learnt in previous voluntary work; youth or children’s ministry, in local community work or even in business. Such prior experience is invaluable but these skills can be learnt.
They have a good ability to communicate verbally.
The leader who is short on any of these skills needs to put themselves on a steep training and learning curve if they want to become a transformational leader.
The practices of healthy growing churches:
(a) They are committed to mission, outreach and evangelism. They have a holistic approach to mission. They contextualize their methods, which means they will vary from place to place, but all are outwardly focused. They develop groups and programs to interface with and serve their surrounding community. They have a commitment to mission beyond the parish and this is significantly reflected in their budget.
(b) They develop small groups and build community. They get smaller as they get bigger. In the early stages the minister may have to be the “group starter”. Using their skills and experience they begin a new group every six months and then as they are established move on and start another. Other forms of community building include parish camps or weekend residential conferences, family festivals, family working Bee’s, parish dinners, etc.
(c) They are intentional and plan well ahead for all activities.
(d) They have an “every member” approach to ministry and actively discover, encourage and release people’s gifts and abilities. They also regularly train and equip people through special courses and events. They actively develop new leaders. They have a “discipleship pathway” for new Christians and develop a strong view of membership.
(e) Their worship services are relevant and contextualized for the people they are trying to reach. They create regular special services that are aimed at and culturally accessible to their unchurched target group. (Where a group of existing members want to continue a traditional service without major change then provision can be made for that at another time. This avoids alienating people and the evidence indicates that adding services usually increases attendance.)
(f) Early additional staff appointments are usually made for potential growth areas, e.g.: Children’s or Youth ministry or an evangelist to run and follow up programs like Alpha.
(g) Their music is contemporary and the standard as high as possible, given the resources available, with the constant aim of developing the standard. Music is a key factor for contemporary people.
(h) The preaching is given a high priority, prepared well, is biblical and practically applied to every day life. The preaching program and teaching topics are planned at least six months ahead.
(i) There is a well developed and organized welcoming and incorporating system for newcomers and visitors. People are carefully followed up. Growth will not be sustained without this.
(j) There is effective children’s and youth ministry. If you want to attract young families you have to provide these. If there is no youth ministry then it is probably best to start at the junior high level first and establish a committed core group of young people before you tackle the harder senior high level.
(k) Pastoral care is organized using lay people in a pastoral care team. The leader meets weekly with the minister where contacts are allotted. This is for the basic care with the minister following up the more difficult or sensitive cases.
(l) An administration center is developed with basic office facilities, copiers, phones etc. A computer and data base with names and addresses needs to be developed early. Begin with volunteer staff at first then later part time people, gradually developing a more sophisticated operation as growth takes place.
(m) A team is developed to work with the minister. Initially this will be some key volunteers, e.g.: the leader of the pastoral care team, the volunteer office person, maybe a key lay leader who is a retired person, and later additional staff. This is a great support to the minister and sends a message to the congregation that ministry is a team thing.
(n) They constantly evaluate what they are doing to see if it continues to be relevant, is achieving their goals and that the standard of ministry and worship is rising.
(o) They regularly teach about the stewardship of time, abilities and money and have a variety of ways people can serve and a variety of giving mechanisms, e.g., Envelopes, cheques, cash, periodic payment, credit card.
(p) They ask the question: “Is there a new immigrant group in our area for whom we could start a new congregation?”
For growing congregations the mission is more primary than the denominational traditions and so they are willing to expand their thinking and push the boundaries of traditional denominational models and styles of church. This does not mean abandoning all denominational distinctives and traditions but it will mean adaptation and change and challenging traditions that are irrelevant, don’t work or are culturally inappropriate. Most people under 50 yrs today, and certainly all newcomers to church, are post denominational. The denominational tag is not the most important thing to them rather it is the quality, substance and relevance of the ministry.
These are the most common principles and practices of healthy growing Protestant churches in Australia today.
By Peter Corney
There is sometimes a real tension between Biblical theology and some of the pragmatics promoted by proponents of Church growth. But there can also be a false dichotomy created between them, particularly by those who do not understand the difference between ministry and leadership.(1) It is now well established that to plant a new church successfully requires not only ministry by a Godly and Biblically grounded person but also ministry by a leader with a certain set of gifts and abilities. It is also true that to renew and grow a small church in serious decline requires not only ministry by a Godly and Biblically grounded person but also ministry by a transformational leader; someone who has acquired or will learn particular skills and is able to initiate a particular process.
What follows is not a list of the skills of a transformational leader that would be another paper! Below is a list of some of the key principles a minister who wants to be a transformational leader will follow.
If a leader wants their church to grow what do they do? Where do they start? Well there are no simple pre packaged solutions but here is a set of principles to follow:
Notes:
(1) See “The Empowered Church” by Ian Jagelman (Open Book)
(2) See “Change and the Church” by Peter Corney (Aquila press)
