Characteristics of Church After Christendom

I'm going to be pondering on this for a long time, but I think I have three to start with:

Simplicity without being simplistic.

Empowering the kind of effective leadership that doesn't take centre stage or cultivate dependency

Culturally attuned but counter cultural

I might try and unpack these a bit ... but not today.

Thy Kingdom Come

Today is Pentecost Sunday

The last of the questions I'm thinking about is:

How do we allow God's kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven - in this place?

I'm coming to the end of the book 'Church After Christendom,' and I'll just have a few thoughts here.

1   

De-emphasise worship, and make Mission and Community Building just as central

2   

Reduce the number of church focused commitments to allow congregation members to be involved in other activities and mission opportunities outside church.

3   

Cultivate simplicity - which does not necessarily mean blandness or lacking in creativity.

4   

Take a long look at ourselves, using tools that are there to help us identify areas of strength and weakness - especially in areas of conflict within the church.  Use resources such as Appreciative Inquiry, The Healthy Churches Audit, Bridgebuilders.

5   

Promote lay participation and become less 'leader centric.' Encourage multi voiced worship.

7   

Refocused commitment - we live in an age when it is often said that people do not want commitment - yet movements like extinction rebellion show that where people see something worth struggling for, they will do it.

I love this prayer, with four words that are used to describe the way we are called to be ... full of generosity, joy, imagination and courage

Living God, draw us deeper into your love;

Jesus our Lord, send us to care and serve;

Holy Spirit, make us heralds of good news.

Stir us, strengthen us, teach and inspire us,

to live your love with generosity and joy,

imagination and courage;

for the sake of your world,

and in the name of Jesus, Amen.

What could we hold onto ?

This question is posed to us - a church community in the middle of the coronovirus lockdown.

What might we hold onto from the experience of the last 9 weeks or so ?

I think that is such a big question.  For me the bigger question that it leads to is

How can we learn from both the inherited church, and the emerging 'new ways of being church' to enable us to be a church fit for a post Christendom world ?

But for now, I'll focus on what have I learned from lockdown, especially with regard to worship.

So - for the last two weeks, our 'zoom church' has been like this:

Short 'hellos' and a prayer

* Brief reading of and introduction to one of the Bible passages for the day. (Usually, but not always the Gospel).

This has been done in a way that is accessible to all ages from pre-schoolers up.  E.G Godly Play.

* Some open questions to think about what might emerge from the introduction.

* Break out groups of 4/5 people.  This for me has been great, because I have 'met' people who I have known a little bit before, but got to know them much better through these small zoom groups.

* Come back together for some prayers.

* Close and further chat over coffee etc.

I would like to hold on to this much simpler approach to worship.  I like the way it has given us something to reflect on, rather than a sermon with a possibly complicated train of thought.

It's very 'word light' in the sense that we don't have a lot of the quite wordy prayers and responses typical of Anglican worship.  This is good for inclusivity.  Some prayers that we all can learn off by heart would be good to give structure and stability.  (But not too many, or prayers that are too long)

I like the way that it invites everyone to contribute.  This makes it more empowering and engaging.

Maybe there are some principles to draw that can be adapted back in a church setting.  In fact this is something we were beginning to experiment with before lockdown, with the time to break up in the middle of the service to respond to the opening introduction in a variety of ways. 

The drawback is that it's harder to be a bystander, which can be quite threatening/challenging, so there should always be the option of using this time for personal reflection.