This post is a flashback to an original post from 2013 when we were in the UK:
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.” [The Missional Leader]
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 leaders for this new century. I wonder what you think?
