REnewAL of the Church
Alison Morgan
"Now, here, you see [said the Red Queen to Alice], it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that."
Packaging reality
Someone remarked to us recently that if you take the new out of renewal you get real. Reality is indeed what we are aiming at; if renewal is about anything it's about getting in touch with God, the only real reality in the universe. And yet often it doesn't feel like that. For many, renewal is a matter of running faster and faster in order to stay in the same place, an exhausting process of disentangling the competing voices of tradition and change. For some, it's what happened yesterday, in the charismatic renewal of a previous generation, marked by the recovery of a missing dimension of spiritual vitality which was needed at the time - but now renewal is old hat, and it's time to move on. For others again, renewal is a package, a matter of becoming what a friend of mine describes as 'culturally charismatic', a way of looking for a tried and tested way of becoming a fruitful church. For many, that works, just as it works to speak French in France; but for others it fails to articulate the reality of life in the communities which surround them - where there may not be a church at all. How do we get real, exactly?
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Renewal has a patternWe are, remarked Bernard of Chartres in the 12th century, like dwarves standing on the shoulders of giants. It's an image I like. We don't need to crack ourselves out to be anything in particular. It's not who we are, it's where we are that matters. History teaches us there is a complex relationship between the Christian church and the society in which it is set. |
From our vantage point on the shoulders of our forebears we are able
to look not just backwards but also forwards, into places they could
not see. And as we look over the hills and valleys of history, we find
that getting real has meant different things at different times.
Getting real for the Roman church meant bringing life and hope into
communities devastated by plague. Getting real for the 13th century
church meant taking vows of poverty and engaging with God in the
context of a society obsessed with power and patronage. Getting real
for the church of the Enlightenment meant Wesley galloping round the
country on horseback, bringing a living faith to a populace left cold
by the rationalism of the ruling classes.
What then of us? I think we have to start by looking at the forms
renewal has taken in the recent past. The last 100 years have been
about the development of science and technology, about our ability to
build and control and achieve. They've been about war too, as we have
lost touch in the process with much of our own humanity, vulnerability,
and spirituality. We're perhaps sadder now, but wiser, as we begin to
recognise what it is that we've cast aside. What has renewal meant, in
the context of all this? It has meant getting back in touch with the
only real reality, with the Lord, the giver of life, and coming to him
one by one to be made real in our turn. It has meant allowing the water
of life to land in us, and learning to let the ripples spread out into
our churches. There is a pattern to renewal, and what we have seen in
recent times is its first two phases:
Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God's sight, and like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 2.4-5)
Renewal in the first half of the 20th century meant allowing
ourselves to be touched by the finger of God, to become living stones.
Renewal in the second half of the 20th century meant allowing our
churches to rediscover what it meant to be the body of Christ, united
and equipped for ministry. It still means both those things; but
perhaps now increasingly it means connecting with the community, and
learning to be a holy but flexible priesthood in a society which knows
something is missing, but doesn't know where to look to fill the void.
Renewal is not yesterday's movement; renewal is only just arriving
where it's meant to be.
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Context mattersWhen everything is crumbling, then one is facing reality - Augustine |
It follows that renewal of the church is a work in progress; a work
which we often hinder. It has been said that the renewal movement has
suffered from 3 core problems: firstly, it has been socially
monochrome; secondly, it has been expressed in ways which jar with some
constituencies, and has become identified with particular styles and
rituals; and thirdly, it has not taken scripture seriously enough.(1)
All these things have served to put people off, and to cause us to take
our eyes off the bigger picture of God's engagement with us in the
context of a world which has lost conscious touch with the Holy Spirit.
For the first time in centuries we are seeing a sharp increase in
spiritual awareness in the community - and we know from history that it
is at such times of felt need that people are willing to turn to God.
Renewal is not just about us, or about our churches. Renewal is about
the kingdom; renewal is for mission. Renewal comes because, as Cyprian
put it 2000 years ago, God is building for himself a people - and many
of those people are as yet outside the church, doing a myriad different
things in a society which require us to engage with them in a myriad
different ways.
A patchwork world
One of the characteristics of the society in which we live is
diversity. Not so much diversity of belief, perhaps, as diversity of
expression, arising from the emphasis we place on choice. The greatest
master and creator of diversity is of course God; and in the church we
are recognising that it is no longer helpful to offer uniformity in the
way we express, develop and share our faith. In this issue of ReSource
we have tried to capture something of the variety of the ways the
church is responding to this new context. Nicky tells the story of how
her church is exploring pantomime as a means of engaging with the
secularised community of a modern German town. Dave tells the story of
the way the ARocha movement is trying to bring people in touch with the
God who breathes life into the wonderful world he created. Edward shows
us on the front cover how our young people are prepared for risk and
adventure, and how vital it is to offer them open horizons rather than
an invitation to conformity. Diversity is all important. And yet we
mustn't fall into the trap of thinking that diversity is in itself
renewal. Renewal comes from somewhere else.
Identifying our resources
All genuine renewal begins and ends in receiving from the living God - William Abraham
We do need to pay attention to the context in which we live, but we
must be clear that the reason is to identify need, and not to find
solutions; to find culturally accessible ways of expressing our faith,
but to do that by looking to the resources we have in the living God
and not by jumping on the bandwagons of a world which doesn't know him.
Renewal in history has come not by joining in, but by daring to be
different. The nature of renewal within the church will depend on what
is going on outside the church, in the culture which forms us; but the
answers won't come from the outside, but from the resources we have
within - the resources which flow from the living reality of God
himself. We may express what we have received in new ways; but the
reality we express will come to us in the old ways, through creative
engagement with God through scripture and in prayer - the ways that we
as dwarves have inherited from the giants on whose shoulders we stand.
It has been said that the Church will always spring back, because is
the only institution which has the seeds of renewal built into it,
seeds that are found in prayer for repentance and in renewed study of
the word of God.(2)
Our hope is that as we immerse ourselves in the source of life, we will
be made real in ways which are recognised by those for whom we exist:
those who as yet have no idea what riches are available to them in
Christ.
1) Rowan Williams, in conversation with Martin and Cesca Cavender, May 2004
2) Os Guinness, 'Sounding Out the Idols of Church Growth', in O
Guinness and J Seal (eds): No God but God - breaking with the idols of
our age, Chicago 1992 - see gospel-culture.org.uk
