 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Editorial:
"There's Nothing New About Change"
Anna Rankin
Comment:
Embracing the Stranger
Denise Wright
From
the Director: Change and Decay – so what's new?
David W Porter
Alwyn
Thomson
Ethel White
A
Changing Church
Chris Easton
Women,
the Church and Change
Lesley Carroll
Interview
with Noel Fallows: Multi-cultural Church Life
Anna Rankin
Urban
Grit
Ken Groves
Higher
Throne
Keith
Getty & Kristyn Lennox
2003
Conference: Reconciliation – Illusion or Elusive?
What's
Jesus got to do with Forgiveness?
Stuart Noble
Review:
Lost in Translation
Gareth Higgins
Review:
The Church Beyond the Congregation by James Thwaites
Claire Martin
Review:
A Time for Mission by Samuel Escobar
Ben
Walker
Review:
Against the Stream by David W Smith
Cheryl
Reid
Review:
Evangelicalism and National Identity in Ulster, 1921-1998 by Patrick
Mitchel
David Hewitt
Review:
I was a teenage Catholic by Malachi O'Doherty
Fran
Porter
FROM THE DIRECTOR: CHANGE AND DECAY – SO WHAT'S NEW?
THERE ARE really only two issues at stake when we think about the church and change: leadership and spirituality. However, they are rarely the focus of discussion. Instead we wade through the funny-if-it-weren.t-so-serious anecdotes about the usual reaction to change in the church. 'There'll be drums [insert your own particular bete noir] in this church over my dead body!'
And that is precisely the point – it usually is over your dead body. For, in spite of being followers of a faith that confronts the world with the stark truth of its own mortality; and looks death in the eye and exposes it, triumphant in the wake of a resurrected Christ; we are peculiarly reticent to live in the freedom of this truth. No more so than when it comes to change in the church.
You may not like to acknowledge it, but you are dying from the moment you are conceived. Death is the ultimate statistic – everyone dies. Many evangelicals currently surround themselves with triumphalist spiritualities in the hope of putting off the moment of truth. Few of us are in congregations where the discipline of Lent interjects into our mortality-defying, lifestyle-choice Christianity with the sombre truth of word and ashes, 'From dust you have been made and to dust you will return.'
The truth that we easily ignore is not that the world is changing, but that it has changed. Through change, the sovereign God speaks both to confront us with our mortality and provide for our salvation. Only as the church renews its life are we in a position to be spiritually present to a dying world and available to a saving God.
It is a built-in principle of a fallen world that both decay and renewal are part of change. There can be no flower bud of spring without the decay of autumn. To me, it seems that the staunchest opponent of all change and the most fervent advocate of change – which is often purely for change's sake – both share the same fundamental blindness: tomorrow they die.
Do we really want to be remembered for the fact that the old organ was removed from the church within a month of our funeral? How many changes have been introduced after their influential opponent has faced their mortal end, only to be judged as too late to do any good? There are issues on which to take a stand but, from what I hear of congregational life as I travel, there are too many who make the wrong stand. And if only it was just about organs or drums! Holding on to the familiar will not save us from death.
Equally, are we so lacking in eternal perspective that we buy into every new fad and package for renewal and growth all in the name of relevance? Os Guinness in his latest book, Prophetic Untimeliness, speaks powerfully to challenge the idol of relevance. The bandwagon surrounding Mel Gibson's epic, The Passion of the Christ, exposes some of the worst excess in this regard. Defending giving out free tickets to the film, an Anglican vicar is quoted in Newsweek as saying, 'We are competing for people's attention with things like the 9/11 disaster and Kylie Minogue's rear end, so we are not going to get people in by running a jumble sale.'
Leaving aside the inappropriate use of the tragedy of the World Trade Centre, what are we doing to the profound events of Christ's suffering in the rush to adopt what is, after all, only a Hollywood blockbuster movie?
Such unthinking embrace of change in order to be relevant often loses sight of the transitory nature of our present moment and the futile quest of putting off mortality by living solely for the moment. How sad that we can do this with the very truths that free us from death and its sting.
That brings us to leadership. Leading any organisation through change is a major challenge and is a skill that few possess. Much discussion of Christian leadership seems increasingly focussed on technique and authority, with little attention to its true, spiritual nature. Christian leadership must involve the ability to guide the people of God through a changing world in full knowledge of their mortality, prepared to meet their God and equipped to bear witness to Christ in us, the hope of glory, in our lives as individuals and as part of the church community. There is so much concern with fulfilling my calling, my purpose, and protecting my ministry in many conversations about leadership that Paul himself has a hard job getting in on the conversation. To get Paul's perspective on ministry read the whole of 1 Corinthians 15 and 2 Corinthians 4.
'I die every day!' (1 Corinthians 15:31) I fear, the over-realised eschatology of the prevalent models of ministry today, at best, blinkers and, at worst, blinds us to the Eucharistic vocation of both the church and its leaders. The church can be the constant voice of God in a changing world. The church can change. Why? Because it too is dying. In the words of George Weigel,
'The church capable of proposing to 'the world' that it consider the possibility of its redemption in Christ is emphatically not conceived in mundane terms as another voluntary organisation with a political task. Rather, the church that can ask the world to consider itself redeemable (and redeemed) is a church that conceives of itself eucharistically as the Body of Christ. And as Christ'.s Body, such a church would share Christ's destiny, which is not a destiny to power, but rather a destiny in which 'being given' means being broken and shared out.'
David W Porter
Director of ECONI
 |
||
 |
 |
|