WHAT SHOULD CHARACTERISE THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH IN A POSTMODERN CONTEXT?

Steve Morgan

Introduction 

Graham Cray comments that one of the best descriptions of post-modern culture is that of ‘shopping’ [i].    The world and all of history is likened to a vast supermarket where people pick out the ingredients they like and assemble them into their own version of life’s meaning or purpose.     In the face of this it is Bosch who issues a timely word of caution.    He wisely notes that the Church should respond to the paradigm change of post-modernity by reform and not replacement [ii].       He urges, “Neither extreme reactionary nor excessively revolutionary approaches...will help the Christian Church and mission to arrive at greater clarity or serve God’s cause in a better way." ^[iii]

A Starting Point — Mission as ‘Incarnation’

Shenk describes the Church’s normal relationship with every culture as one of missionary encounter [iv] .      He describes this encounter as one of incarnation. By this he means that the Church’s mission must embrace a full identification with the culture that is balanced by the motive of disclosing God’s love and will for humankind.    I would like to explore what Shenk describes as ‘missionary encounter of incarnation’ for the Church in a post-modern context.     I hope to be able to show that within the theology of the incarnation there are both challenges to the Church and encouragements for a variety of differing expressions of mission in post-modern contexts.

Historical background

It is widely acknowledged that the Church in the West is having major problems in being able to engage effectively with postmodern culture [v].    This has to be set within the context of the contention that since the formation of Christendom in the 4^th  century the established Church very rarely acted as a critique of culture.    Prior to the formation of Christendom, the Church was a powerless and persecuted movement on the margins of society.    After the formation of Christendom, the Church became a powerful institution that could impose its beliefs and practices upon society.    A paradigm shift took place with regards to mission.    Murray notes that mission in a New Testament sense became irrelevant after the formation of Christendom which followed the conversion of Constantine.    The Church now saw its missionary role as one that involved ensuring doctrinal conformity, enforcing Church attendance, enshrining moral standards in criminal law, and eradicating choice in the area of religion [vi].     Kee disagrees with Eusebius and others [vii] who thought that the establishment of Christendom was a God-given opportunity to assert the Lordship of Christ over all areas of life and society.    Instead, he saw Christendom as the domestication and perversion of Christianity, the 'fall’ of the Church ^[viii].      Although the truth may lie somewhere between these two positions, Corrie rightly notes that the established Church has largely contributed to its marginalisation as a result of the debilitating effects of the inflexibility and rigidity of institutionalisation, clericalism and traditionalism [ix].     These three characteristics are a major legacy from Christendom and their continued presence within the established Church are some of the principal reasons why the Church has had difficulty in engaging effectively with culture.

Our Post-modern Context

Leslie Newbigin long championed the view that our contemporary society is pagan.    He claimed that this paganism was born out of a rejection of Christianity and is far more resistant to the gospel than the pre-Christian paganism.    He wrote,  “We are in a radically new situation and cannot dream either of a Constantinian authority or of a pre-­Constantinian innocence”. [x]       I believe that Newbigin found in the incarnation of Jesus starting points for relevant and effective mission today.    He strongly rejected the Pelagian heresy that envisaged a triumphalist Church acting as God’s viceroy on earth until the conversion of the world had been completed [xi].     Instead, he challenged the Church to rediscover and promote the gospel as public truth.     He claimed that this could be done effectively if the Church would rediscover the role of servanthood that was exampled by Jesus in his incarnation.    Jesus declared his Lordship through his servanthood (Mark 10:45).    It was Jesus as the Suffering Servant who accomplished the will of his Father.    Newbigin makes the important point that the mission of the Church must exclude exercising the kind of power which “the rulers of the Gentiles exercise” (Luke 22:25-26), whilst at the same time rejecting the notion that the Church’s mission is simply a response to the aspirations of the people.    Jesus entered into the individual stories of people’s lives and gave them a revelation in words and deeds that pointed them to discover for themselves who he was.

  Newbigin believed that there was only one way in which the Church could be fully open to the needs of the world and at the same time have its eyes fixed always on God [xii] .      Lie contended,  “The only hermeneutic of the gospel is a congregation of men and women who believe it and live by it.” [xiii]        If the gospel is to be effectively incarnated in a culture it must be proclaimed by the Christian community through a profile of servanthood within that community.    Such an incamational approach to mission looks for the entry points, the doors, in the lives of people and communities.      As the Church enters these doors it enters into the individual and community stories, listens to their voices, and then seeks to incarnate the love, healing, hope, and forgiveness of Jesus.

The Challenge to the Established Churches

Bosch quite rightly insists that the Church must listen and understand its context before it can discover a contextual missionary strategy of involvement and jdentjfication [xiv].    Stuart gives an example of this perspective from Melbourne, Australia.    He recognised the centrality of the doctrine of the incarnation in the discovery of an effective mission strategy in a postmodern context.    He maintains that the Church, as a Christian community, should be incarnational in the sense that it should present itself in a contemporary and culturally accessible way. [xv]      This represents a significant challenge to the Church in at least two important directions.   Firstly, it has to be acknowledged that much of Church life at the local level is still that of a self-contained community that is introverted and regards itself as a ‘counter-culture’.    Corrie is surely right in claiming that present hierarchical structures of the Church are an anachronism that are a stumbling block to effective mission to postmodern people [xvi].    One of the features of postmodernism is a lack of trust in powerful authority structures, institutions and hierarchies, and so the Church needs to rediscover the profile of servanthood and provide less authoritarian leadership and more flexible structures.    To this end postmodern contexts for mission will respond more readily to grass-roots action, small groups and networking.

Tumbull quotes from the social commentary Britain Towards 2010 in highlighting three changes that are important for the church to understand as it prepares its mission activity.    The first is that there is a growing gap between institutions and people.     The second is that organised social culture is giving way to network culture.   The third is that rational thinking is threatened by polysensorial experience.    Although Turnbull is fairly pessimistic about such changes, I prefer to see these changes as a God-given opportunity to rediscover a practical theology of mission in a postmodern context.    Institutions tend to become self-preserving and can marginalize both individuals and smaller interest groups.    Network culture can be a much more fulfilling experience for individuals than that which is to be found in large social institutions.    Rational thinking has tended to scorn spiritual experience, whereas today, there is resurgence in society for spiritual encounter.    Steed affirms the importance of experiences for postmodern society.    People want to have experiences that work for them.    He goes on to say that, ” If Christianity can’t stand the test, then we have not grasped anything about how the Holy Spirit transforms belief into event.[xvii] ”    Steed also notes that postmodern people want a pathway that includes giving dignity to emotions and intuitions, relationships and a place for the spiritual dimension once again.[xviii]     He is right to claim that these features of postmodem culture provide immense opportunities for the gospel.

Warren makes the interesting observation that one of the marks of the emerging Church is that of the understanding of what a 'community’ of the faithful can mean in a postmodern context.    He claims that, “the power of Christian community resides in the transparency of its mixture of transcendence and immanence.” [xix]    Here again we see the significance of the incarnation in that the Church, as the Body of Christ, is also called to reflect transcendence and immanence.    Warren claims that the transcendence of God is experienced because the Christian community points to the Trinity of Divine community.    Jesus prayed, “that all of them may be one, Father, just as your are in me and I am in you      May they be brought to complete unity to let the world now that you sent me...” (John 17:21&23). There is a dynamic here that points to the truth that the effectiveness of mission is related to the extent to which the Church community reflects the unity that is to be found in the Trinity.    In the past, the denominational churches have tended to organise their own independent programmes for local mission.    One of the challenges for the Church today is to recognise that there is only one Church in each town and city and that is the Church of Jesus Christ.    The denominational fragmentation and competition within the one Church is very often a testimony to disunity and one of the causes of impotency in mission.

When Warren writes of incarnation as immanence he suggests that this is expressed because it is in intimacy that personal relationships of love are encountered in which spiritual transformation can be experienced. [xx]      Steed affirms this by stating that postmodern people are frantically searching for community, whether it is on the Internet, relationships with people of like mind and who share common interests or  through casual sex .[xxi]      The Church will need to respond to this by developing real community and genuine relationships amongst its members and not just be a club of like-minded people who only meet together for an hour or so once a week.    If this community is to have a transforming mission dimension to it, it must seek ways in which those inside the faith community can discover entry points into every sphere of cultural engagement.

New forms of Church

Murray and Wilkinson-Hayes relate a striking example of how ‘Church’ can be rediscovered. [xxii]      'Living Proof ' in a deprived area on the outskirts of Cardiff is heralded as an outstanding example of a church developing as a result of Christians responding to a considerable local need without imposing an establishment package upon them.     In 1984 a house group started some traditional church-based youth work amongst a group of disenfranchised young people.    It started as a community project and grew until they were running clubs six days a week.    In 1993, following a visit to New Jersey, they started to teach life skills on how to care for each other.   Their catch phrase became 'everybody is special’.    The children noticed that the staff met regularly for prayer and some of them asked if they could join them.    Living Proof ‘weeks’ were introduced and a growing number became Christians.    The leaders of Living Proof wisely discerned that these youngsters would not fit into any of the local churches and so they started their own meetings.    A church was birthed and the leaders had to be trained.    The leaders have now been ordained and the church is recognised as an Anglican Church plant with an inter-denominational congregation.   The leaders have been allowed to enfranchise all the members to discover their own style and practices and to formulate their mission strategy.    No traditional forms of sacramental ministry or ecclesiology have been imposed and the work continues to flourish.

Here we see an incarnation principle at work.    A small group of Christians entered the stories of a marginalized group of young people.    Their ‘preaching’ was in the form of listening to the young people, caring for them, and meeting some of their perceived needs.    In so doing, the young people began to ask questions as to why they were being loved in this way.    When they began asking these questions they also began to enter into the stories of the Christians' faith journeys.    These Christians had incarnated their love by their actions.    They solicited a response that resulted in many wanting to know the person who initiated such commitment to them.    I believe that Sunderland is right when he wrote that, “When people sense the relevance of our stories they will begin seriously to ask questions about whether the underlying belief in God is also true” .[xxiii]

Lessons for today from yesterday

In that the Church in this post-Christendom era has been transposed from the centre to the margins of society, we may find useful resources for mission in the movements that were not part of Christendom.    These movements operated from the margins of society and are becoming increasingly influential in many Churches today.

Features of the Celtic movement are seen by many to be relevant for today.    Its foci on mystery and personal experience within small communities that care for and nurture the individual are access points into postmodern society.    The Anabaptist movement flourished despite persecution from Christendom.    It offered a different perspective on what a Christian community should be like.    In its best examples it had a radical view of discipleship, justice, discipline and holiness that embraced every member of the community and gave each member a real sense of personal worth and meaning to life.

Conclusion

If the gospel is to have a transforming effect upon postmodern society, then the Church will have to develop a plethora of missionary strategies that will embrace a variety of expressions of community and leadership.    Many of these expressions will only need to be temporary as the Church responds flexibly to changing cultural contexts.    Murray warns that the new churches and the fresh theological insights that will emerge will need to counter the tendency to ecclesiological ossification that turns structures into strictures. [xxiv]    What will be critical to these models is that mission involves improving the lives of others. This will mean entering into the stories of community needs.    It is an incarnational approach in that it means being prepared to leave our own securities and preferences in order to relate meaningfully to different and changing contexts.    Bosch affirms this in stating that by its very nature contextualisation points to the experimental and contingent nature of all theology. [xxv]      So if our mission in postmodern contexts is to be meaningful and effective we are going to have to discover in our generation what William Temple meant by the Church being the only organisation that exists for those who do not belong to it.   Newbigin describes this as the challenge to the local congregations to, "renounce an introverted concern for their own lives and to recognise that they exist for the sake of those who are not members, as sign, instrument, and foretaste of God’s redeeming grace for the whole life of society.” [xxvi]

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