the essence of church
there is an understandable reluctance in the emerging church conversation to speculate about the future shape of the church. the emphasis on adventure, experiment and journeying into an unknown future is crucial to the logic of being unencumbered by traditional understandings of the church so that something truly new and culturally relevant may emerge. this, however, leads to the question of what actually makes a christian community 'church', or how we are to know 'church' when we see it. in other words, how can we meaningfully speak about the 'essence' of the church?
when considering the nature of church as christian community, however, the emerging conversation also encourages us to think beyond the local gathering (notwithstanding a central meaning of 'ekklesia') to network realities of persons whose common life is not dependent upon geographical (or face to face) proximity. this has led some to even question the usefulness of the word 'church' at all in this conversation, unless it merely designates the church 'universal' - or all those spiritually joined to christ beyond the constraints of time and place - which may take on a diversity of 'expression' from time to time and place to place. insofar as this may even be used to justify the internet church, we are into new realms of thinking about what it could possibly mean to be incarnational.
i think i could more readily agree, for the sake of mission, that the essence of church cannot be identified with the institutional structures, theological opinions, or modes of worship etc. associated with any inherited/denominational tradition. i can also agree with rowan williams (msc, p.vii) that the church may be defined simply as a community gathered around the risen Jesus; where two or three are gathered... indeed, this kind of simplicity is crucial for the adventure of church planting. yet i think it must also be acknowledged that the life of any church (which actually affirms the gathered christian community and its common life in christ) cannot ultimately escape the formation of 'institutional' structures, theological opinions, and modes of worship suitable to its particular time and place - whether they are inherited or emerging. (i use the idea of 'institution' in the sociological sense of a community that has made any kind of settled choices about its common life).
to simplify the essence of the church in this way, however, still cannot be a means of avoiding the questions of accountability, i.e. how is the claim to be 'church' made intelligible. even rowan williams goes on to say that we must have ways of identifying the 'family likeness' shared between different expressions of church. encouraged by the metaphors of reproduction and family likeness, it has become something of a commonplace to talk about the 'dna' of the church which has the merit of reminding us how our 'offspring' is similar-yet-different from the parent, or how the essence of our ecclesial traditions may be preserved through church planting, but in quite unpredictable ways. although this metaphor may help us understand 'that' there may be such a thing as family likeness, it still doesn't help us understand in 'what' such a likeness consists.
in a bid to speak of essence without resorting to particular issues of structure, substance, system or style etc., the emerging church conversation has tended to recover the classic 'marks' of the church, but reworked and abstracted from any hint of tradition: one becomes 'in'; holy becomes 'up'; catholic becomes 'of'; apostolic becomes 'out'. others prefer to speak of essence in terms of 'values' such as being trinitarian, incarnational, transformational, relational etc. i can't help wondering whether this falls foul of the modern 'fact-value' distinction in which the idea of 'value' can be thought of as entirely indifferent to the 'facts' of its concrete embodiment. can this be true of anything called 'church' if it is to be a sign of the kingdom? can the meaning of the kingdom be reduced to a mere collection of values? or, if we are to talk about values, can we agree that they call forth a more particular and visible likeness as rowan williams suggests?
[ aside: of course, to settle on such a possibility could actually be the kind of discernment that already necessitates a tradition, thus holding us to the kind of accountability that this conversation is trying to avoid. again, it seems inescapable to me that identity must always be found in the context of particular narrative tradition, either inherited or emerging, or both. on these terms, there is something self-defeating about the emerging church if it seeks to find its identity in a conversation that refuses to be a narrative tradition. my hunch is that this conversation will, over time, clearly exhibit the particularity of such positive commitments, even by way of negation.]
i'm not sure i have an answer, but my first response would be to remember that there are ways of speaking about essence that are neither about concrete structures nor abstract values. we might, for example, speak about enduring patterns of practice or consistency of character. we could say that the essence of the church consists in the gathering of a christian community around the risen jesus, who intentionally seek to do the things that he did (which may also be identified as the gifts of his spirit, and perhaps the 'one-anothers' of Paul's epistles etc.) and to be the kind of person that he was (identified by the fruit of his spirit, beatitudes etc.) in an engagement with the culture of our particular time and place. perhaps this is a way of thinking about what it means to be incarnational and to live eschatologically as a sign of the new creation, the now and not-yet kingdom.
and, just in case this is still too abstract, perhaps we need to gather around the risen jesus with the whole communion of saints who have sought to embody this family likeness throughout the history of the church. that is, to study their lives and allow ourselves to be challenged by them, as well as find their weaknesses. just a thought.
when considering the nature of church as christian community, however, the emerging conversation also encourages us to think beyond the local gathering (notwithstanding a central meaning of 'ekklesia') to network realities of persons whose common life is not dependent upon geographical (or face to face) proximity. this has led some to even question the usefulness of the word 'church' at all in this conversation, unless it merely designates the church 'universal' - or all those spiritually joined to christ beyond the constraints of time and place - which may take on a diversity of 'expression' from time to time and place to place. insofar as this may even be used to justify the internet church, we are into new realms of thinking about what it could possibly mean to be incarnational.
i think i could more readily agree, for the sake of mission, that the essence of church cannot be identified with the institutional structures, theological opinions, or modes of worship etc. associated with any inherited/denominational tradition. i can also agree with rowan williams (msc, p.vii) that the church may be defined simply as a community gathered around the risen Jesus; where two or three are gathered... indeed, this kind of simplicity is crucial for the adventure of church planting. yet i think it must also be acknowledged that the life of any church (which actually affirms the gathered christian community and its common life in christ) cannot ultimately escape the formation of 'institutional' structures, theological opinions, and modes of worship suitable to its particular time and place - whether they are inherited or emerging. (i use the idea of 'institution' in the sociological sense of a community that has made any kind of settled choices about its common life).
to simplify the essence of the church in this way, however, still cannot be a means of avoiding the questions of accountability, i.e. how is the claim to be 'church' made intelligible. even rowan williams goes on to say that we must have ways of identifying the 'family likeness' shared between different expressions of church. encouraged by the metaphors of reproduction and family likeness, it has become something of a commonplace to talk about the 'dna' of the church which has the merit of reminding us how our 'offspring' is similar-yet-different from the parent, or how the essence of our ecclesial traditions may be preserved through church planting, but in quite unpredictable ways. although this metaphor may help us understand 'that' there may be such a thing as family likeness, it still doesn't help us understand in 'what' such a likeness consists.
in a bid to speak of essence without resorting to particular issues of structure, substance, system or style etc., the emerging church conversation has tended to recover the classic 'marks' of the church, but reworked and abstracted from any hint of tradition: one becomes 'in'; holy becomes 'up'; catholic becomes 'of'; apostolic becomes 'out'. others prefer to speak of essence in terms of 'values' such as being trinitarian, incarnational, transformational, relational etc. i can't help wondering whether this falls foul of the modern 'fact-value' distinction in which the idea of 'value' can be thought of as entirely indifferent to the 'facts' of its concrete embodiment. can this be true of anything called 'church' if it is to be a sign of the kingdom? can the meaning of the kingdom be reduced to a mere collection of values? or, if we are to talk about values, can we agree that they call forth a more particular and visible likeness as rowan williams suggests?
[ aside: of course, to settle on such a possibility could actually be the kind of discernment that already necessitates a tradition, thus holding us to the kind of accountability that this conversation is trying to avoid. again, it seems inescapable to me that identity must always be found in the context of particular narrative tradition, either inherited or emerging, or both. on these terms, there is something self-defeating about the emerging church if it seeks to find its identity in a conversation that refuses to be a narrative tradition. my hunch is that this conversation will, over time, clearly exhibit the particularity of such positive commitments, even by way of negation.]
i'm not sure i have an answer, but my first response would be to remember that there are ways of speaking about essence that are neither about concrete structures nor abstract values. we might, for example, speak about enduring patterns of practice or consistency of character. we could say that the essence of the church consists in the gathering of a christian community around the risen jesus, who intentionally seek to do the things that he did (which may also be identified as the gifts of his spirit, and perhaps the 'one-anothers' of Paul's epistles etc.) and to be the kind of person that he was (identified by the fruit of his spirit, beatitudes etc.) in an engagement with the culture of our particular time and place. perhaps this is a way of thinking about what it means to be incarnational and to live eschatologically as a sign of the new creation, the now and not-yet kingdom.
and, just in case this is still too abstract, perhaps we need to gather around the risen jesus with the whole communion of saints who have sought to embody this family likeness throughout the history of the church. that is, to study their lives and allow ourselves to be challenged by them, as well as find their weaknesses. just a thought.
posted by Phil at
2:18 AM
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