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Since returning from holiday I have been silent mostly in this blog space. I have in part been working out a rhythm of rest/work. But next week we have Holy Week and a few things have been cropping up as I have begun to process the Easter truth. So I want to begin some reflecting in the hope that others might help me process some stuff regarding our mission approach.
It would seem that the church’s missionary struggle today is concerned with an ever increasing engagement with matters of ‘relative truth’, where the manner of our knowing, though a thoroughgoing relativism would deny any truth being known. It means we can chose what we want, hence there is also a pervading pluralism in ethics, culture, personal, religious/spiritual. Here is the supermarket for lifestyle choice, church/ denominational choice, etc. Hence, we see and indeed, experience fragmentation whereby the new forms of community are no longer purely geographical, indeed they transcend such bounds on a large scale. However, not all bring people into face to face relationships/community.
In a world as complex as this, the church as a community is falling apart. The frayed edges may be seen as part of the fragmenting and impact upon the church of these wider issues. In recent days Chris Erdman on leadership has been engaging:
The Gospel of Leading “Out of Control”Says Roxburgh: Leaders must develop capacities to lead change when congregations are living in the tensions of discontinuity. You lack clarity on the shape of the future and how it is going to be shaped; this is expected. Therefore, those leaders who believe they can address the kind of change we are facing by simply defining a future that people want and then setting plans to achieve that future are not innovating missional congregations. They are only finding new ways of preventing congregations from facing the nature of the discontinuous change that confronts them.
Just last Monday I attended a meeting entitled ‘Focus on the future conversations 2005 . It was part of a series of national gatherings throughout the PCANZ’. It was concerned with the future priorities and tasks of the PCANZ, but it reflected our difficulty to face the nature of discontinous change that is confronting us. In the Foreword of the ‘Focus’ document is a vitally reflective quote from the Presbyterian Outlook (USA) which, as stated, may be said to be the opinion of any member of the PCANZ; ‘budget cuts, painful staff eliminations and heavy turnover… are signs of a denomination that does not understand who it is and how it’s members are connected to one another.’ (bold mine) The reformation or reshaping for today’s mission context asks of us ‘how are we connected?’ What was striking, indeed frightening was the sense of desperation, albeit with the sincere desire of all to find a way through the relativity, pluralism and fragmentation the church is experiencing head on here, where secularization and postmodernity is not simply an arms length encounter for the church, but here in Aotearoa New Zealand is being rubbed in our faces. I use the term ‘desparation’ not simply emotively, but in terms of the confusion of language and a jumping to ask the ‘What should we do…? sorts of questions. The setting of new priorities was immediately set against the financial budget situation we find ourselves in. A prior question to be considered before we can effectively look at future priorities, is to ask ourselves, Who are we? What is the core calling/purposes of the Church (PCANZ)?
Do not get me wrong, my critique is borne out of a desire for this church to be obedient to it’s call to mission and I am committed to it. It is painful, and I am not the only one to see, that we were truly reshuffling the deckchairs on the sinking ship.
It is at this point that I would contend that we can repackgage ‘church’ through various means in our congregations, we can repackage faith as a life option in the supermarket; indeed, we can market our church to bits by resetting our priorities, but does this not simply reveal that we are so consumed by maintaining a Christendom model that we have lost touch with what is at stake in regard to the gospel and not understanding people today.
How can gospel truth claims fulfil their mission in a world of relativity, pluralism and fragmentation?
