The Core Business of the Church

This week I have been thinking about the experience of attending church and it struck me that we often fail to understand what we come to church for.

• We don’t come to church to pray – although we do always pray.

• We don’t come to church to sing hymns – although singing is often one of the things we do.

• We don’t come to church to listen to scripture – although again, that is always a feature of our gathering.

• We don’t come to church to hear a finely crafted, interesting, and erudite sermon – which is just as well, as it rarely happens! But no, having scripture explained and applied is very often a key part of our gathered activity, but it is not the goal.

• We don’t even come to church to receive holy communion – although that certainly takes a central place.

But the real goal, the ultimate goal of all of these features of our coming to church is this – that we might meet with the risen Jesus and be transformed by the encounter.

That is the core business of the church – to create spaces where people can meet with the risen Jesus and be transformed by that encounter. That encounter happens in prayer, in worship, in hearing scripture and having it explained and applied, in receiving the sacrament of Holy Communion – and it is that encounter that is the goal, not the activity in and of itself.

So the church’s core business is not therefore the maintenance of religious buildings – as wonderful and inspiring as they are, with their 1,000-year history. For the first 3 centuries there were no church buildings, so buildings cannot be our core business. And in the future, we are going to have a lot less of these buildings as we cannot find people willing to pay for their upkeep, or willing to work to keep them open.

Neither is the church’s core business bound up with paid clergy like me. In the early church few church leaders were paid, yet the church grew at a faster rate then than at any time in its history. So, paid clergy aren’t essential to the core business of the church. And, in the future we will certainly have fewer people like me because we don’t have the money to afford them.

But the core business of the church will go on, as small communities of Christians find ways of helping their friends and neighbours to meet with the risen Jesus and to be transformed by that encounter.

• It might be a group of blokes in a pub, drinking beer, thinking about the deep issues of life and exploring what the Christian faith has to say about those issues.

• It might be a group of people gathering to have a short meditation from scripture, then go for a run, think about what that scripture says to them, then gathering at the end to share their thoughts and to offer up a prayer.

• It might be an arts and crafts group gathering to explore spiritual themes through their creativity.

• It might be a group that gathers to read together one of the classic texts of spiritual writing, and to explore how that text speaks to them.

• It might be a group gathering around a kitchen table to share life and faith, to pray for one another and the world.

The core business of the church is helping people meet with the risen Jesus and to be transformed by that encounter and this can be expressed in a million different ways. As part of your baptism, Jesus has commissioned each one of you and sent you out into the world to discover new ways on introducing people to Jesus. When we say at the end of the service, “Go in peace to love and serve the Lord” that is our commission re-stated.

So, I am not frightened by the graphs that show the Church of England becoming extinct by 2060. The core business of the church is not structures, staff, buildings, or religious services – as good and as wonderful as all of those have sometimes been.

The core business of the church is small communities that can help other people meet with the risen Jesus and to be transformed by that encounter.

That is the business that I want to be involved in.

Rip it up and start again

The vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as seemed good to him…
Then the word of the Lord came to me: Can I not do with you, O house of Israel, just as this potter has done? says the Lord.

Jeremiah 18:1-6

What do you do when things go wrong?

Sometimes, you spot the mistake early enough and you can re-adjust. You can do a work-around. You can modify what you were doing in some way. It’s recoverable.

But what if you don’t spot the mistake until it is too late. What if the mistake is so big, so crucial, so serious, that no work-around is possible?

When I was a boy my Mom used to knit a lot of jumpers for the family. Aran jumpers and then Lopi sweaters were in vogue, both of which have quite complicated patterns.

Every now and then I would see my Mom quietly unravelling her knitting. She had gone wrong so badly that she had to undo a section and then re-do it. Rip it up and start again.

The lesson from the potter’s house is that if God’s people go wrong God has the right to rip us up and start again. If we are not achieving the purpose God wants us to have, being the community that God wants us to be, living out the values God wants us to embody – God can simply rip everything up and start again. God has the right to re-work His Church if it goes wrong.

As we see the Church of England, along with all pre-1900 denominations in the Northern hemisphere, in constant decline since 1900 and the C of E is predicted to disappear by 2060, we might wonder what is going on?

[From Churchmodel.org.uk]

[churchmodel.org.uk]

Is this God re-modelling a Church that has failed to make disciples, failed to take the message of Jesus to its communities, failed to hold on to the faith handed down from the apostles?

Is this a judgement? Is God re-working a Church that is no longer fit for purpose?

The situation is obviously more complex than that. A variety of factors are at play – the final dismantling of Christendom – a culture that had Christian values enshrined within it, and which tended to guide people towards the Church. Secularisation and its atheistic prophets ever more strident against faith in all its forms and Christianity in particular.
So, it’s not a simple situation we find ourselves in.

But, nevertheless I do believe there is an element in God re-working His Church at play.

My experience has been that when the message of Jesus is presented in a relevant way, when people are given space and time to explore faith, to encounter Jesus in worship, to be part of a Christian community – they do respond.

The problem we have is that traditional forms of Church only enable this to happen to a very small part of the population; we need other ways alongside this to reach the vast majority of people for whom traditional church is unappealing, unhelpful, indecipherable – fresh expressions of Church.

As a church we have failed over a couple of generations to adapt, to change, to modify – not our message which is unchanging – but our way of presenting that message, in a way that engages, allows for exploration, gives opportunities for people to begin a faith journey.

We are recalcitrant clay, unwieldy wool, we need to be re-worked, ripped up, and to let God start again.

Films, Beer and Jesus

Whilst the title of this blog might sound like an interesting night out, it is actually an attempt to think through some of the major cultural changes we are currently living through.

We live in a time of rapid cultural transition. This is brought about in part by the possibilities of new technologies, but is also driven by changes in behaviour that are chosen for a variety of different reasons.

Industries are being forced to adapt to this new and quickly evolving reality. This has led to some major changes.

For much of the history of the UK the local pub has been an important place for social meeting. People went to their local, had a pint or two of beer and spent a pleasant hour with their neighbours.

‘Since 2000, a quarter of pubs have closed in the UK, totalling more than 13,000 locations. Four out of five people have seen a pub close down within five miles of their home.’[1]

The recent COVID-19 pandemic looks likely to accelerate this process. There may be around 25% of pubs who will not survive.

This would have been very bad news for brewers, who traditionally sold most of their product through the pubs. However, the brewers have changed their business model. So much so that in 2015 beer sales in supermarkets overtook pub sales for the first time[2].

They have responded to the new social reality – people prefer to drink at home – and adapted their business model to work in this new situation.

The film business has also been in a period of rapid change. It used to be the case that cinemas were the only place you could watch films. But, first VHS and then DVD technologies, enabled people to buy films to watch at home, then the internet enabled the creation of streaming services that allowed you to download a film direct to your tv.

The film industry has had to adapt.

Cinemas have adapted –

1. they have either become more broad in their offering – more screens, more variety – quality and comfort of seats, food options, loyalty schemes, 3D showings, event packages etc.
2. or they have become more niche – tailoring their offering to a specific customer group.

The film business has also embraced the new options of digital delivery of content.

‘This year, OTT[3] revenues will overtake theatrical revenues for the first time, according to Ampere Analysis. SVoD[4] has already surpassed cinema in the US, and the trend is widening to include European and Chinese markets. All in, OTT is predicted to reach US$46 billion in 2019, beating worldwide box office receipts of US$40 billion[5].

So the beer industry and the film industry have adapted to the changing realities of modern life and their businesses have survived.

If we turn now to the church we see a similar effect at play. Between 1980 and 2015 church attendance halved in the Church of England in the UK[6]. I attended a Christian Vision for Men event a few years ago, where it was stated that if the current rates continue, the last man will leave the Church of England in 2030.

So, if we find, as brewers and film producers have, that our offering is no longer something that people find attractive, what should we do?

One answer might be ‘Nothing’. Maybe we just hold out, dig in, maintain our existing practices. Maybe the world just needs to come around to our way of doing things?

We could circle the wagons and create an exclusive club for the cognoscenti.

Whilst this might have the quality of ‘faithfulness to Tradition’, (or at least our most recent ‘tradition’), it does not sit easily with the history of the Christian movement from its earliest days.

The Christian faith has always considered itself as being for the masses. The foundation charter of the Church is the command given by Jesus to his discipes;

Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”[7]

In other words the Church is fundamentally about world-wide expansion; about creating communities of faith centred upon Jesus and living in the experience of his presence.

The early Church quickly learned to adapt itself as it expanded into different contexts. We see the first example of this in the way that it quickly adapted itself from a Jewish movement to one that was more open to Gentiles.

We see this adaptability at play in the ministry of St Paul. He wrote about becoming ‘all things to all men, that I might save some’[8]. We see this played out concretely in the way that he quoted Greek poetry when speaking to the Athenians[9], in how he used a lecture hall in order to share his ideas with the philosophers[10]. Yet he also made his Gentile assistant get circumcised, so that no offence might be given to Jewish Christians.

The content of Paul’s message never changed, but the manner of its presentation and the way in which he led people into an exploration of it, was always contextually shaped.

Those who study how we can take the Christian message to different cultures (missiologists) are ahead of the game in this. Contextualisation – the process of expressing the unchanging message of Christ in a particular context – is vital if the Christian message is to really live within that culture. Often this process enables those taking the gospel to see it with new eyes, appreciate aspects that were underdeveloped within their own culture[11].

So, as our culture is changing and we see industries and businesses adapting in order to maintain themselves, in what ways might the church change?

More Variety –

Our culture is less monolithic than it once was. Relationship and family patterns have changed. Working patterns have changed. Leisure patterns have changed. The idea of holding one particular event, once a week, in one place for the whole local community to come to, is unlikely to survive.

People will need to have options, both in terms of the day and the time but also in terms of content and form. It is rather hopeful to think that one event can help –

– all ages – seniors, the middle-aged, young adults, teenagers, small children,

– all personality types,

– all stages in spiritual development, etc. etc.

to help them explore and/or express faith.

I think that the future is more likely to be multiple – multiple activities at multiple times in multiple locations.

More Innovation –

In order to develop these new ways of exploring faith and being Church we will need more innovators, explorers, pioneers. More people with the capacity and skill to see possibilities and explore them.

In technical Christian language these people are apostles – they take the gospel in to new contexts and see it established there.

More Failure –

The one certainty about innovation is that it involves risky experiments that often don’t work. Also I think the future is inherently unstable – things will be successful for a while, but not necessarily endure long-term.

This will require a process for continual evaluation and of implementing a good death for things that have served their purpose but then looking to see how resurrection might come in a new form.

More Prayer –

It is a truism to say that mostly we pray only when we have to. When our circumstances are stable, when life is plodding on predictably and comfortably, we have little felt sense of the need of prayer.

When we are in the maelstrom of constant change and things around us and being birthed, flourishing, dying and resurrected, I think we will feel a much greater need for prayer. The fact of mission being God’s work (missio dei) will become more obvious and our reliance on God’s activity more urgent.

Less Professional –

Whilst the complexity of church looks likely to increase, with this new landscape of rapid change and multiple forms, I think that this will not lead to more highly trained, full-time, tertiary educated, professional ministers but it will actually be more about unpaid, part-time activists.

I think the church will be more artisanal than professional. It will be more about having a passion, an idea, a vision and chasing it, than about people being formed within an institution in order to maintain that institution.

There may certainly be a mix but I think that the kind of smaller groupings we can envisage as the new ways in which Church will express itself will be capable of being led by people with less training but with on-going oversight and support, and achievable as a spare time, or part-time engagement.

More Fun –

I think that the Church will be more interesting, more varied, more playful in this new future. In a word more fun.

I wonder what your ideas are? What have I missed? Where am I wrong? It would be good to hear your ideas.

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[1] https://www.companydebt.com/articles/pub-closures-in-the-uk/

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/sep/26/supermarket-beer-sales-overtook-pub-sales-first-time-last-year

[3] OTT = Over the Top – streamed film content over the internet (the content provider is going ‘over the top’ of existing internet services).

[4] SVOD is a video sales strategy based on recurring revenue, usually monthly or annual subscriptions and stands for Subscription Video on Demand.

[5] https://www.ibc.org/trends/streaming-vs-cinema-what-does-the-future-hold-for-film/3517.article

[6] https://faithsurvey.co.uk/uk-christianity.html

[7] Matthew 28:28-30, NIV

[8] 1 Corinthians 9:22

[9] Acts 17:28

[10] Acts 19:9

[11] The classic example of this is Vincent DONOVAN’s book ‘Christianity Rediscovered – An epistle form the Masai.