A few weeks ago, I
stood at the back of the little village church in Grasmere in the Lakes
District. This is surely one of the most quintessential of little English
villages! The poet William Wordsworth who lived in here for fourteen years,
described it as "the loveliest spot that man hath ever found."
The little stone
church has been there since 642. It’s one of the oldest chapels in England.
With its high wooden pews, stained glass windows, pulpits, organ, fading hymn
books and other pieces of typical church paraphernalia it looked and felt and even smelt
“Churchy.” I had the sense of being whisked back in my imagination to every
archetypal memory of childhood associated with being in “Church.”
Not many generations
ago the shape and functions of a
local parish church were well understood and more or less unchanging: funerals,
weddings, worship services ,hymns, maybe some choruses, Sunday School, pews,
organs, offerings, youth clubs, cucumber sandwiches, fetes, lunches, fellowship
events, holiday camps, dedications, children’s talks, missionary weekends,
prayer meetings, working bees, craft groups and the occasional inter-church gathering or outreach.
The buildings were
all designed along the same lines, the dusty old fellowship rooms all smelt the same! The liturgical hangings and occasional
stained glass worked together to create a particular mood or space. There was a
minister, with larger churches employing a part time youth pastor or maybe
student minister or curate, and very occasionally even a children’s worker or pastoral care assistant. The Church stood at the
centre of the community. A place for worship; a place that told the story of
that town; the theatre where the of the rites of passage for each generation
were enacted time and again.
To aspire to
pastoral ministry meant describing
a vocational pathway most practicing Christians could imagine, and most comedic
TV shows could caricature with ease (e.g. Vicar of Dibley).
Ministers managed
and cultivated stable congregations whose members often had long histories in the church. The minister presided
over the rites of passage for these close knit communities - hatches, matches
and dispatches! The events on the annual church calendar were organized in a
similar fashion year by year. The minister maintained and conserved the marks
of a gracious and compassionate community that was often quite well connected
and appreciated by it’s broader community.
Such a minister
might expect to serve for maybe five to ten fruitful years in such a
congregation before moving to take their particular gifts and insights to
strengthen another, not dissimilar church. In a long ministry, that might
encompass several congregations. Whilst there were cultural and geographic
differences from place to place, the paradigms and patterns and expectations
were common - even across denominational boundaries the patterns were not
dissimilar.
This has now
changed. Most denominations are both aging and declining. Many denominations face the likelihood of
disappearing altogether in the future. Society is becoming increasingly pluralistic and secular. Most under
forties have little memory of their parents faith-stories and practices, and those that
do often come from non-english speaking communities. Careers are no longer ‘life-long’ vocations, but will change
several times. Society itself is going through a season of rapid change.
How people socially
organize themselves; where they live, how they associate, and the nature of
those groupings keeps changing! Multiculturalism, economic status,
associational groups and generational silos (e.g. Generation X and Y, and Baby Boomers
etc) have replaced local villages, and extended family clans and geographic
neighbourhoods as the indicators of belonging.
In consequence, many
local churches that were once most effective are now in crisis. The posture of
the leader to preserve, protect and shepherd the is no longer the most helpful.
“Conservatism” rather than preserving
the good, can become a means for ignoring the new and pressing changes.
Says Al Roxburgh: “The
classic skills of pastoral leadership in which most pastors were trained were
not wrong, but the level of discontinuous change renders many of them
insufficient and often unhelpful at this point. It is as if we are prepared to
play baseball and suddenly discover that everyone else is playing basketball.
The game has changed and the rules are different. The situation requires
cultivation of new leadership capacities. Alongside the standard skills of
pastoral ministry, leaders need re- sources and tools to help them cultivate an
environment for missional transformation.”
We live in a time
where minister leaders are going to need to be able to help congregations to
manage their lament of loss whilst also to begin to engage a world which can
seem quite threatening. Especially to those of us who have lived in the
traditional church and world.
Leaders will need to
be able to live in two church realities - the passing regime of how church used
to be and the emerging and often messy new expression of church. This means
being compassionate and generous on the one hand and courageous and creative on
the other.
In the next few
years there are going to be a multitude of differing church shapes, sizes and functions.
Different people groups; changing neighbourhoods and and fluid work
arrangements will require a variety of responses ranging from the traditional
(which still has a place in some contexts) to other approaches that will seem
very uncomfortable to those of us who have appreciated the traditional
paradigms.
Minister leaders
will function in a multiplicity of different ways. They may have a call to a
particular people group and sub-culture where specific capacities and skills
are needed, and may never desire to serve in a ‘traditional’ minister’s role.
Some will be
entrepreneurial and evangelistic,
creating ‘start-up’ ministries. Others will be youth or children’s focussed for
their foreseeable vocational life; others will work in industry contexts or
amongst the aging; yet others will serve primarily in some sort of team context
in a larger organisation or network of churches. Some will function more as
community organizers or in a welfare context.
We will begin
noticing that the New Testament focuses on different types of leaders with
unique gift sets.
Imagine an
Advertisement in the Christian paper: “ Wanted - Part time Apostle for ....” Or, “A vacancy
exists for a casual prophet...” Or, “Experienced evangelist required for a
consortium of three rural churches...”
It sounds funny
thinking in these terms because in the past, we’ve tended to seek pastors or
teachers, who can manage well the inherited paradigms. But things have changed.
So how do we
identify a call to ministry? What does it mean for a local church to discern
the gifts being seeded amongst its people? How do we cultivate and encourage
these locally - long before any thought of bible college surfaces?
It may well mean
that one-size-fits-all training for ministry is no longer a helpful idea. Maybe
it will mean a range of varied ministry apprenticeships for different ministry
‘trades’ each apprentice with their own experienced mentor in that field of
gifting!
So how will we
‘accredit’ someone for ministry in this new world?
How will we help
them find their place of call?
What about things
like ordination? Will we do away with it as a hindrance?
What about Marriage Licenses? Why do we assume that taking weddings is an integral part of being a
minister in this new world? What if the role of the minister leader were
something very different to that?
We need to think creatively about what it means to be
raising, forming, sending, and accrediting minister leaders for this new
century. I’d be interested in your thoughts about this too!
