I am reproducing a paper by Steve de Gruchy from the Micah Network. We are exploring how we can integrate mission and social action (or as de Gruchy calls it, ‘development’) which has been separated from each other through the historic separation of the evangelicals and liberals.
I have given a bit of explanation to this series in post 1 and also in post 5. We have looked at Jesus inaugurating the Kingdom (part 3), which could be described as bringing shalom (part 2). Although we see this in part, it also hidden, slowly working its influence in our society (part 4). The Church’s task is participates in God’s mission of bringing Shalom to the world. Now we look at how the church does that:
The Church’s participation in the missio Dei is of necessity inclusive and ecumenical.
Because God calls the Church into existence for the task of shalom, the Church can therefore never be an end in itself. It is not the kingdom of God, but it bears witness to the kingdom. In many ways this is not something the Church does, but it is what the Church is. For it is the sign community of the coming kingdom and this means that in its life and witness, it presents to the world what the kingdom will look like. It is thus the place in which shalom and the life that conquers death is found. Because the Church exists in history, and is thus subject to the experience of sin, this is, sadly, not always the case; yet it remains as a crucial calling of the Church to bear witness to God’s love and justice in its own life and witness.
Now because shalom is the way of God in the world, the way in which the embrace of the Trinity is extended to the world, so the community of believers understands that they have been embraced by God in an act of grace. Because God embraces the world, because shalom is the experience of right relationships with all creation, and because the Church is a sign of the coming kingdom, so the community of faith is a welcoming and inclusive community. No-one is excluded, because no-one can join due to their own efforts, status or origins. Because of God’s particular concern for the poor - those who suffer in the absence of shalom - the Church is especially a community in which the poor belong and participate. A Church that is built upon national, ethnic, class, racial or other exclusive characteristics, loses the right to be called the Church. The ecumenical nature of the Church is thus of the very essence of the Church that is
faithful to the missio Dei.
My Comment: Well, de Gruchy is going against the flow here. We live in the age of youth churches, student churches, churches in night-clubs, skate-parks, businesses, old-people’s homes, white churches, black churches, churches for South Africans, middle class people or professionals. But that isn’t church according to de Gruchy. I agree, I think church should be something that expresses the Kingdom to the world, expressing the unity that exists in the midst of our diversity and differences.
In a world that is becoming increasingly tribal, the church should be the one organisation that bucks that trend. Perhaps the biggest cultural difference existed in the early days of the church: the Jews and the Gentiles just didn’t mix! But in the church, they were to come together, the dividing wall (Eph 2) was to be destroyed and God was creating His Body, to carry on the mission of Jesus, on earth.
So, what about contextualisation? Should we be creating different types of churches to reach out to different groups of people? Or will churches naturally swerve towards a particular culture, and become mono-culture? Or should we constantly work towards creating intergenerational, multi ethnic, multi racial, multi class community that demonstrates the Kingdom to a watching world?
Tags: Development, Kingdom, Kingdom of God, Micah Network, Missio Dei, Mission, Missional Church, Social Development
Isn’t there really just one church? With different geographical locations? Or maybe amongst different groups of people. It might be too much to re-orientate a traditional church towards a group they previously haven’t been interested in. Although some steps can be taken. In a church building near me they opened up their foyer and put couches in specifically for breast-feeding mothers so they could still be part of the service.
It is really good to ask this question though. We are about diversity and difference but against division. Kind of like the trinity we need to have very different groups which are also the same church. That doesn’t mean we can’t meet in different ways. I’d be wary of a mono/super-culture that everyone conforms to, this would be more in line with a monistic religion like Zen Buddhism or even Koranic Islam. The church should model true love, grace and diversity to society.
Good comment thanks. I agree there is one church in the city, with a number of different congregations. However it seems to me that each congregation should reflect the diversity of the body of Christ. We may not have every people group represented that I think that should be some diversity otherwise I wonder if something isn’t right?
It is so much easier to be in community with people like us but that doesn’t seem to me to be the picture of heaven pictured in Revelation..
Although I agree with the distinction between church and kingdom, I think de Gruchy has gone too far here. I’d like to pushback on a few notions which seem contrary to scripture and/or common-sense (!).
“No-one is excluded” — I think a statement like this should be clarified. Given the high number of parables that Jesus told that features exclusion, and the number of people we see being excluded from fellowship in the epistles, such a statement needs obvious qualification. I would prefer to say something like “no one particular group is discriminated against; God’s offer of community is extended to all” or something like that.
“A Church that is built upon national, ethnic, class, racial or other exclusive characteristics, loses the right to be called the Church.” Oh dear. In that case most churches are no longer true churches, according to de Gruchy. That’s a bit much. For example, the thousands that have come to faith through HTB’s Alpha course may be surprised to know that they do not in fact belong a true church. Why? Because HTB is a blatantly middle-class educated church. They may not explicitly exclude other classes, but the defacto-contextualisation and culture of the church succeeds in doing so. I’ve never seen a non-contextualised church, whether it tries or not, every church I’ve seen is steeped in a particular culture, language, style etc and attracts a certain sort of person.
I think the thing about the gopsel is that it unites people groups that the Powers have separated. But not all distinctions are created by the Powers. For example, one youth subculture likes rock music, another likes dance music. I don’t believe the Powers are creating a divide here. We are talking about culture (or sub-culture), not division.
I suppose I would agree that the class-divide we see in British churches is a bit of joke. But I wouldn’t say that a church with only working class people isn’t a church. Churches, after all, are meant to be composed of people from the local community. If the local community is all XYZ (insert your category), then I don’t see how its local church can be anything different.
Hi Alastair- I just a long reply that somehow got deleted, so will reply tomorrow. Sorry it has taken me so long.
OK - that was really frustrating, and i was just too tired to retype what got deleted. But here goes on a reponse Alastair…
There is much here that i agree with … i do agree that churches need to be contextualised, and i do think that de gruchy goes too far by not calling it church. However, i think there is a good challenge that he is bringing: often it is easy to keep in our sub-cultures, and i think there is something that runs throughout scripture that God is calling people out of their subcultures. Mostly, for example, people only know people in roughly the same stage of life as them. They don’t tend to know people older, or younger, married, or with kids, or retired. But that, i think, should be true in the church. We need the older people around to teach, model, guide the younger ones.
As i replied to lincoln, i don’t think that in one congregration or church, we will have all the different people groups represented, but i think diversity (and unity in the midst of that) should be something that we aim for.
I guess we might have different expressions of the church (say to a particular people group), but i would hope would be in the context of a larger more diverse group of people. So to have a youth congregation is great if it is part of a larger church, but for me i think it misses something if it exists on its own…
I am thinking about blogging about inclusivity at some point, so maybe we can save a discussion for then … but i do agree it needs some clarifying, and i don’t think you can get away from the message of scripture that does seem to teach there is a separation …
“Mostly, for example, people only know people in roughly the same stage of life as them. They don’t tend to know people older, or younger, married, or with kids, or retired. But that, i think, should be true in the church. We need the older people around to teach, model, guide the younger ones.” — agreed, I don’t think a mono-generation church is a good idea, especially if the community its in is not mono-generational.
I know what you mean when you talk of (I think) contextualisation going too far: I suppose the problem is when the culture you are trying to reach has many subcultures: how does a church trully engage with them all? Most of the time, it doesn’t at all, which is the problem. But the alternative is…?
Here’s a thought. Can one (local) church be fully contextualised into both a post-modern and a modern culture? Or would that be contradictory?
Good comment … i agree, i don’t think one church can reach all subcultures, unless you are the size of Kensington Temple and have loads of different congregations all part of one church.
I think your questions is really good. I am hoping that we can … as i think that is what i think exists within community church and is what we are trying to do. I think over the next 20 years we will see culture moving increasingly postmodern, but in the meantime i think both have to co-exist in the same church. Difficult - yes! Lots of grace from both groups needed! But at its best, i think both can learn from each other…
What do you think?