Changing the Conversation
A Third Way for Congregations
Anthony B. Robinson
Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing Co 2008
Princeton missiologist Darrell Guder has written of the "missional church": such a congregation does not view America as a Christian nation but as a context for mission. The congregation is called to be a leavening influence, the yeast in a loaf, and a seasoning salt to the world, to use New Testament images. Guder's missional church cannot be reduced to either liberal or conservative, left or right; it is something new. It is a congregation that relates to its community and setting while taking Christian formation seriously. "The word mission means 'sending,' and the church is the primary way in which God's sending is happening," says Guder. "Mission no longer begins when we cross a cultural or national boundary." Mission happens today in the context of a Western society that is "radically secularized." [Darrell Guder, "Leadership in New Congregations: New-Church Development from the Perspective of Missional Theology," in Extraordinary Leaders in Extraordinary Times, vol.1: Unadorned Clay Pot Messengers, ed. H. Stanley Wood (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), pp. 1-29.]
As I noted in my book What's Theology Got to Do with It? set theory enables us to name and differentiate three different kinds of "sets," or social groups or congregations: the open, the bounded, and the centered. I have found that many mainline Protestant congregations have seen their only alternatives as either the bounded or open set, and yet they find the centered option to be both energizing and a better description of the reality of what they are and also of what they seek.
An open-set congregation is one where one is likely to hear people say things like, "We're an open congregation--people have all kinds of different beliefs." Or they will say, "You can believe whatever you want to here." This kind of congregation can be visually represented as a random bunch of dots on a page, the dots representing different individuals or subgroups. There are no boundaries at all: that is, there are no lines between who belongs and who does not belong. But neither is there any center.
The bounded-set congregation is the opposite. Visually, the bounded set has very clear, bold, and heavy boundaries. Visualize a square, rectangle, or circle with some dots (representing individuals or groups) inside and others outside of the line defining the shape of the set. You can easily tell who is in and who is not. If the open set seems inclusive, the bounded set appears exclusive. Often in congregations, conversation about identity seems to pit open and bounded-set options against one another as if no other alternatives exist.
But there is an alternative, a third way. For many congregations, a better choice is to think about their church as--and work toward its becoming --a centered set. The centered set may be pictured as having a clear center -- for example, a large dot or small circle at the center--but no boundaries; or, if there are boundaries, those boundaries are highly permeable, perhaps a broken line defining inside and outside. Dots representing individuals and groups are scattered around the center. In a centered set the key question, rather than who is in and who is out, is, What direction are you moving in? Are you moving toward the center or away from the center?
In the centered set the task of the congregation, or its leaders, is not so much to police the boundaries as it is to define and articulate its center. "This is who we are and what we are about. You decide if it's right for you." This is the message of the centered-set congregation. In contrast to the open set, the centered set has an identity, a coherent core that gives definition and content to the group or body; in contrast to the bounded set, the focus is not so much on the boundaries, which are permeable, but on the center. Such a centered set allows both identity/purpose and openness. It may be summed up as "strong center/open boundaries." Many congregations will find the centered-set concept helpful in a world in which the extremes of open and bounded sets are both common, and each in their way inadequate. Moreover, the centered-set theory demonstrates conceptually the power of a third way. This third way is more than a compromise between alternatives; it has a vitality and power of its own.
The purpose of the church has shifted. During Christendom the purposes of the church included: (1) being the conscience of the community; (2) serving as the instrument of aid to the less fortunate; and (3) being the center of family and community life. [Robinson, Transforming Congregational Culture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003) pp. 25-30.] All of these made sense in their time, and they all persist in some ways; but none of them are fully adequate depictions of the purpose of the church for this new time. Today the purpose of the church is closer to that of the pre-Constantinian era: the church exists to change lives. We are in the business of teaching and living a particular way of life. The church's purpose is to be and to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the sake of the world. Having said that, I must add that there is no one way to be a disciple, or follower, of Jesus. We do not have a predetermined outcome or mold, but we do have a direction and a purpose. Churches exist to grow people of faith.
This means that the primary mission of the church is not overseas, nor can it be reduced to charitable work. The primary mission of the church is to change lives, to be and to form disciples for the sake of God's world. This means -- and this is a key idea -- that the church is itself, in Darrell Guder's term, "missional." [Darrell Guder, The Continuing Conversion of the Church (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), pp.52-53.] Everything the church does and is needs to embody the mission of the church to be witnesses in word and deed to Jesus Christ. It is all about growing people of faith for the sake of the world.
This shift has yet another implication. If the church is missional to its very core and being, and its primary purpose is to change lives and to grow people of faith who are disciples of Jesus for the sake of the world, then we can no longer think of the church as "for us" and mission as "for others." That is no longer a helpful framework, description, or division. The church, our church, is not "ours." It is God's church, called to be an instrument of God's mission of healing and mending God's creation.
However, if the purpose of the church in our new time is to change lives and grow people of faith for the sake of the world's healing, the minister/priest/pastor is no longer the primary or exclusive God-person or God-channel, nor is he or she the chaplain who provides all religious meaning and services to a congregation's members and to the wider community. Every baptized Christian is a God-person and God-channel, at least potentially. The mission and witness belong to the community of faith, the congregation, and not exclusively to the ordained.
The civic faith that was operative in many of our congregations for so many years was a compound of good citizenship, personal moral virtues, and doing what we could to make the world a better place. Of course, there's nothing wrong with that; it's just that there's nothing specifically Christian about it. Merely renewing civic faith will not get us headed in the right direction. Something more -- something deeper -- is required.
We sometimes construe "repentance" as simply meaning personal remorse, but that's too narrow. It means something more and something better, It means "turning around," facing and moving in a new and different direction. One of the difficulties of civic faith is that it allows us, and in a way encourages us, to think of ourselves as "the good people," those whose task is to do for others. This blinds us to our own need for repentance, our own need to get a new heart. If we are to change the conversation in our churches, we will not lose our emphasis on helping those in need, but we will perceive and confess our own need.
To make progress and be vital in our new time, the word of "repentance" must be addressed to us as well, not as a scolding but as an invitation to a new heart.
We speak too readily of a loving God who forgives all and everything and expects nothing. At times we seem to have lost the words and way to speak of a living God who just might ask us to abandon our entire way of life.
Will Willimon tells the story of a youth pastor who was planning a Bible study on Mark's story of the baptism of Jesus. Typical of Mark's terse and powerful style, he reports that, when Jesus came up out of the water, "He saw the heavens torn apart" (the Greek word is schizomei, literally "torn apart"). The youth group members were responding to the Bible study the way youth group members often do, with indifference bordering on sullenness. So the pastor, eager to provoke some sort of response, said: "This is amazing, truly! Look at this: Mark says the heavens have been torn apart. Do you know what that means? That means that now we all have direct access to God. There's nothing between us and God! Isn't that wonderful?"
"No, that's not what it means," said a young man, shifting in his seat.
The pastor was nonplussed.
"What," he said to the young man, "you know Greek?"
"Yeah," said the kid. "Schizomei, torn apart. It means that now God can get at us. It means that now no one is safe."
It sometimes seems that the achievement of all socially established religions is to render God "safe."
Civic faith did not require or entail a relationship with God or a lived experience of the gospel. In fact, keeping faith civil and socially acceptable may seem to disallow such experiences or at least require that you keep them strictly to yourself. For these reasons, according to missiologist Darrell Guder, it is the church and congregations that need conversion. Guder tells a poignant story that caught him "up short." A seminary student, doing field work, came back with this observation: "I see a lot of people in the church who don't have any experience of the blessing of the gospel anymore but are still trying to do mission." [Guder, The Continuing Conversion of the Church (Grand Rapids; Eerdmans, 200). pp. 149-51.] When this is the case, mission, service, and outreach are like a cut flower: they are neither rooted and nurtured in God's grace and presence nor in our own experience and understanding of the gospel.
My point is simple: the roles and skills that served us well in the Christendom era are not especially helpful today. In fact, they may be counterproductive. The pastor who functions only as a chaplain who ministers to the needs of individuals and families within his or her congregation may be excellent in that regard but deficient as a congregational leader. Moreover, clergy who have been nurtured within Christendom and its ways, and are thus disposed to be de facto religious civil servants, may be ill equipped for the challenges of our new time. We may find more guidance for our future in looking to our distant past, the early, pre-Constantinian church, than in looking to our more recent past in American Christendom. To put it another way, pastors who would be leaders have to unlearn some old habits, habits of establishment, and learn new habits and skills to be pastoral leaders in a post-Christendom and postmodern world.
If a congregation is to succeed in making change in its culture, in its ways of doing church and being church, it needs to have a leadership team.
Let's clarify what I mean by "leadership team." I do not necessarily mean elected leaders, chairs of boards or committees, or presidents of guilds or fellowships in the congregation. I have in mind something less formal: a fluid group of people who have some capacity to influence others in the congregation and who share, or have the potential to share, a common vision.
In his book Behold I Do a New Thing, sociologist of religion C. Kirk Hadaway cites Peter Drucker's pithy observation: "The business of a church is to change people; the business of a corporation is to satisfy them. (p.11)
Hadaway also declares that purpose is more important than vision, and I agree with him. Vision is about where a group or congregation is going; purpose is about why we are here. Thus purpose precedes and shapes vision. Without a fairly clear sense of purpose, congregations can get caught up in the game of cultural catch-up or what's newest and latest. "A neighboring church is using video clips in the service and people like. Let's try that." "A congregation in [a nearby city] has a rock band for its service, and lots of kids are coming. We should do that." "Their church is having huge success with its new Celtic Communion service." "At our denomination's convention, I heard about this neat program for outreach that's really working. Let's do it." These may or may not be good programs or strategies, but they usually raise the issue of purpose or ends. Why are we here? What are we trying to accomplish? The new strategies or programs set congregations and clergy on the spinning wheel of constantly implementing the latest hot innovation. It is better, Hadaway suggests, to be clear about why we are here and to work on being faithful to our purpose.
If, as Hadaway claims, the purpose of the church is to change lives and grow people of faith, the small-membership congregation that is clear about its purpose is as capable of fulfilling that purpose as the large-membership church is. There is no need to "grow up and become a real church." Smaller congregations in which lives are being changed, where people are truly growing in faith and the life of faith, are real churches --regardless of size.
Congregations today need to be reasonably clear about their purpose, and they need to articulate it consistently and winsomely. But simply writing a mission or purpose statement should not deceive us. Writing or stating purpose is one thing, but living it and making it real is another.
A vision plan has three levels: purpose ("Why are we here?"); and then vision ("Given our purpose, what is God calling us to do in the next period of time [you determine your timelines]?"); and then strategies, which are more specific steps toward making progress on the particular priority that is part of the vision. As we do the work and learn together, we may discover that we will need to make adjustments to our plan. The Spirit will move in ways we did not anticipate. A vision plan is a guideline to be taken seriously, but we will need to stay open and responsive to what God is doing in our midst, and open to new learning as we go.
Part of the diminution of the historic Christian faith and theology in the mainline has been a failure to deal seriously with evil and sin; there is tendency to repeat more positive words, such as "love" and "compassion." Good biblical words and concepts such as "peace" and "justice" are often turned into a kind of chant or mantra, and this diminishes the complexity and depth of those concepts and realities. There is simply too much sin and evil in our world for people to take seriously a church and its message that does not seem to take account of these destructive realities. Life is hard and tragic, and people both encounter evil and commit evil. Too often the church seems to have bracketed out a serious consideration of these realities and indulged in a very sentimental distortion of the Christian faith.
Some congregations need to die. Some died a long time ago, only no one has come along and given them last rites, pronounced them dead, or signed the death certificate. There is something to be said for not going "gentle into that good night," as Dylan Thomas put it. But as Christians we believe (at least in theory) that death is not the end and is not the worst thing that can happen. God is the beginning and God is the end.
Death precedes a resurrection because, on the other side of death, God is still God.
Over the next fifty years or more, we are likely to witness significant changes in the way people do and are the church. Some experiments will fail; others will succeed. All of them--successes and failures--will have teaching and learning potential. While some congregations will be able to retool and renew in place, others will entertain--will be forced to entertain--more radical forms of transformation. It is my hope that we dream new dreams and see new visions (Acts 2:17), and to discover the God-given courage and strength to enable these new dreams and visions to become new realities.
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