Vicar's letter
| A Kingdom Shaped Church |
Vicar's letter |
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In 2004 a report was made to the General Synod of the Church of England by a Committee under the chairmanship of the Bishop of Maidstone entitled ‘A Mission Shaped Church’. To describe it briefly does not do justice to the report. But in essence it suggests that if the Christian faith is to be passed on to future generations it has to be done in a new way; the church must change so it becomes a mission shaped church. The report goes on to outline a number of ways in which a new approach is being pioneered.
Last month, John Hull who was a Professor of Religious Education at the University of Birmingham has published a booklet very critical of the theological understandings of the Mission Shaped Church report. John Hull argues that the fundamental concern of the gospel is the kingdom of God, that time and place where ‘God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven’. The church’s mission is to assist the kingdom of God. The shape of church needed is a kingdom shaped church. He claims that the Bishop of Maidstone’s Report proposed a church shaped mission rather than a mission shaped church; for that report came close to proposing the mission of the church is to perpetuate the church.
I am quite distressed that the Church of England’s General Synod accepts reports which are not rigorous in their thinking and which only include in the committees making reports those of one sort of thinking. Unless we welcome and seek to relate and discuss a range of thinking we will not do justice to the increasingly diverse and varied emerging world.
One of the approaches ‘A Mission Shaped Church’ takes is that networks based on friendships and shared interests are more important today than geographically based parishes. Two points need to be made; first poorest people and elderly people most often do not have a car (over 30 % of households in High Street Ward in Maidstone do not have a car) and for them the neighbourhood is really important. Secondly, the church has traditionally been a place where people of different backgrounds and interests gather and this sort of diverse gathering is needed more than ever in a rapidly fragmenting world.
As so often it is a case of ‘both and’. I believe that the church needs new ways and it needs to think carefully about what might be appropriate in this or that situation and what might be enduring for it takes a lifetime for Christ to be formed in people and moving from one way to another is unlikely to achieve this.
What is most amazing of all in the report to my mind is that there is no consideration given to forming a Christian spirituality that leads to collaboration in service. Today the world so often is let down by the failure to develop a spirituality of service in so many areas of life. Without this in health, education, public services, industry and commerce life becomes the law of the jungle and the weakest suffer and sometimes suffer terribly. This surely is not the way of the kingdom.
I long for the day when the Church of England will think and feel more widely and deeply upon these matters. On the way, as always, we seek to pray and to serve, to worship and trust that as we walk with God in the service of our neighbour God will guide us more and more in his ways.
Christopher Morgan - Jones
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