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Editorial:
Life begins at forty Comment:
Leadership on the move From
the director: The discipleship factor Four
things for leaders to do at the end of the world Pastoring
people in prophetic living Being
a servant leader Interview
with Maria Garvey: Oil and water Nurturing
the next generation The
Word made flesh - East Belfast The
Word made flesh - North Belfast The
Word made flesh - Derry The
Word made flesh - Enniskillen The
Word made flesh - Poleglass Resisting
temptation Review:
And now let's move into a time of nonesense Review:
Christianity for Dummies |
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FOUR THINGS FOR LEADERS TO DO AT THE END OF THE WORLD THE WORLD OF 'REALITY' we took for granted is giving way to a new world of ideas and values. This transformation, from one way of thinking to another, has significantly undermined ‘traditional’ world-views and discredited previously held assumptions. It is the end of the world as we know it and it has come, as TS Elliot says, ‘Not with a bang but a whimper’.a World endings are never clean and precise affairs and are rarely apocalyptic. We tend to stumble from one epoch to another through a messy and gradual process. But that is not to say that social change is an ‘accident’ of history. Economic, philosophical and political agents are the driving force of change with the intent of making history according to their agendas. Therefore, fundamental to Christian leadership is the discipline of discerning who and what is shaping our world. Or, to put it biblically, learning how to read the signs of the times. The current shift in western democracies from modernity to what sociologists nervously call postmodernity is selfevident; we are in the middle of a major cultural revolution. However, the inadequate rubric of postmodernity is indicative of the uncertainty of what this change really means and where socially it will take us. What is certain is that an emerging ‘consciousness’ has significantly shaped our attitudes and practice in relation to everything from education to architecture. The old world of knowledge, power structures, beliefs etc., and, significantly for us, the ‘metanarrative’ of religion, has been deconstructed of its former meaning and authority. Luca Petryshyn suggests that postmodernism can be defined as, ‘a procedural rebellion against totalizing systems of thought with an eventual affirmation of no centers of value.’b If that is true, then at the end of Christendom the church has at least some understanding as to why it is feeling the cold wind of marginalisation and why the world is now ordered as though God did not exist. In a culture incredulous at the Christian story, what should those with responsibility for giving leadership be concerned with at the end of the world as we know it? In the style of good postmodern uncertainty I would have to say that I don’t know, but I’m willing to open a few tentative conversations around three themes: building intentional community, nurturing authentic Christian worship, leading Christianly and planting a tree. Building
intentional church community Antithetical to this vocation of the church is the raw individualism that marked modernity and that continues to be a social and economic necessity for the maintenance of capitalism. The consumer culture that now defines our sense of identity and worth has so normalised the ethic of greed and the values of materialism that we no longer question their effect on our lives. But we can see the fallout and it is self-evidently one of ruthless individualism, personal rights, private lives, hedonistic ambitions and an obsession with the accumulation of material goods. Ironically, we are fast becoming both satiated and empty at the same time; our lives are cluttered with ‘stuff’ and our souls are void of meaning. And it doesn’t end there, for as sure as night follows day, hedonism follows materialism and, with it, the exploitation of the poor. A culture fixated on materialism is incompatible with a genuine vision of the common good. And a church seduced by consumer notions of personal fulfilment will struggle to create a meaningful community of love and justice. We are all co-opted into the status quo more than we know. So how do those who preach the gospel to us disentangle our lives from fragmented individualism and the uneasy comfort of privatisation? And how do people of faith restore, or maybe learn for the first time, the biblical meaning of ‘life together’? And what vision do we need to create in us an alternative consciousness about what is true, valuable, meaningful and just? There is an immense challenge here for church leaders who are commissioned to call us to repentance and recall for us the human story as seen in the face of Christ. An intentional community is the context in which we understand and fulfil this gospel vision of life in a culture of death. Nurturing
authentic Christian worship Now, by ‘liturgy’ I have no particular ecclesiology in mind, simply to say that every church from high to low has a liturgical model, either ordered or free, but inevitability formed and informed by a theology and tradition. My concern here is the challenge for leadership in creating and sustaining a model of worship that calls for an intellectual, emotional and volitional (of the will) response to God. That is, worship that is a means of grace and not therapy or entertainment. It is beyond the scope of this article to suggest what is necessary for liturgical and worship renewal in the life of any particular congregation. It may involve some superficial changes like the removal of the pews, the inclusion of contemporary music or as one leader facetiously said, ‘our worship has been transformed by the inclusion of PowerPoint’. Whatever cosmetic changes are to be made, the essential issue is one of authenticity. There are many
aspects to authentic worship but here are four to help your thinking.
Christian worship involves: Worship is authentic when it results in a community of forgiveness, love, trust and common vision. In this we need a serious recovery of the Pauline metaphor of the church as the Body of Christ. Worship that does not create an ethical community of right relationships, social compassion and commitment to justice is vain repetition. Worship needs to be contextualised. When we separate worship from the concrete lives of the people who come to church and those who live in the wider community, we sanitise it. To worship in an area of high unemployment, new migrant communities, sectarianism etc. without including these issues in our prayers and liturgical commitments is to undermine worship's sacramental purpose. Christian worship should be trinitarian. It is in the choreography of a trinitarian model of worship that the quintessential themes of Christian theology are woven into the fabric of people’s lives. Creation, redemption, sanctification, mission, justice etc. are all affirmed when the symbols and language of worship move consciously between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. These are some of the themes and issues that inform Christian worship. The work of leadership is to not only wrestle with the mechanics and style of worship appropriate for their church but to include the texts, prayers, songs, etc. that will act as a means of grace between God and God’s people. This is no mean task and it is inappropriate for one person to have to create it. Perhaps the word liturgy, which translates as ‘the work of the people’, holds a clue to the corporate dimension of the church’s worship. What is also needed here is a commitment of time, creativity, theological training, imagination and resources. This, of course, raises the tedious discussion about the role of ordained and lay leadership and the development of people’s gifts. The debate may be an old one but most churches in Ireland have changed little since the imposition of a Victorian model on the order of church services. Finally, let me say one thing that worship is not. It is not entertainment. If leaders are pressurised to compete with the cult of entertainment that dominates popular culture they will not only discredit the gift of worship but set themselves up to fail. The church by attempting to turn worship into Christian cabaret undermines the purpose of its liturgy, becomes complicit in obsession with celebrity, confuses feeling good with being healed and sacrifices substance for relevancy. The liturgical life of the church is for the formation of Christ in us. If I want entertained I’ll go to a jazz club. Leading
christianly At the risk of sounding like a technophobic reactionary, this is a questionable assumption. Technology’s promise to reconnect the world with caring community and effective communication simply doesn’t deliver: try your bank, Social Services or a car insurance helpline for an exacerbating example. More importantly, the conviction that learned and ordered management techniques will give the kind of leadership we need in a changing church is potentially a misplaced confidence. Management is primarily focused on processes, achievements, goals, quantifiable outcomes. It is a technological approach to leadership sanctioned by the enlightenment values of progress and efficiency. It is fundamentally about the exercise of power, the manipulation of human compliance and social engineering. Its relational basis is legal contract and its definitions of reality are severely restrictive. Leadership as ‘the management of life’ is highly susceptible to the illusion of control and the reduction of truth to technique and formula. Christian leadership is inseparable from the biblical view of life conveyed in words like covenant, imagination, vision and vocation. In particular, Christian leadership is about fidelity to the story entrusted to the church. A story which goes to the heart of the human condition (brokenness) and the human predicament (meaninglessness). The gospel is not a learned set of techniques through which to manage life but a radical encounter with Christ. It is the vocation of Christian leadership to consistently and imaginatively recover this memory and to disturb us with it. This is not to say that leadership doesn’t need life- and people-skills like decision-making, group dynamics, conflict resolution, etc. But if Christian leaders are reduced to being maintainers of institutions and managers of people’s needs we will undermine the very reason we called them to preach to us in the first place – for our salvation. Most congregations have a growing expectation of their leaders in terms of wanting them to be social workers, managers, programme designers and entertainers. There is an equal expectation that the church exists to enhance personal fulfilment and lifestyle choices. Consequently, people move from one church to another not in search of discipleship but for a better ‘quality of life’. These misdirected needs are in part rooted in middle-class ‘bourgeois’ expectations that if we pay a ‘professional’ to do a job we expect professional results. The pressure on leaders to meet the bottomless abyss of human need and personal expectations is phenomenal and, ultimately, unachievable. It’s not only destructive to the health of many leaders but it subverts the radical nature of their ministry. We mustn’t confuse the biblical metaphor of servanthood with the expectation of a service-economy. Christian leadership and congregations alike need to renounce the idea of leader as lifestyle guru and recover, as the old Anglican definition so poetically and insightfully states, leadership as ‘curer of souls’. Planting
a tree DEREK POOLE is Programme Director at the Centre for Contemporary Christianity in Ireland. NOTES |
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