Learning Church

Susan H. Jones

• Publisher: SCM Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780334044123
• eBook ISBN: 9780334052265
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Religione

The Learning Church series offers a range of short and accessible introductions on some of the key themes in Christian theology and discipleship.This book discusses the basic Christian belief that God has a purpose and plan for the World and that God calls us to work with God to bring that purpose and plan to fruition. In contemporary Christian thinking God's call is to discipleship and ministry. This book is designed to help readers grasp the theology of call and of vocation and to discern God's call to them.

1. Listening for God’s Call

The idea of call is at the heart of the Christian gospel. The very first thing that Jesus does in Mark’s Gospel, before he begins teaching or healing, is to call two pairs of brothers to follow him, Simon Peter and Andrew, James and John. What is not clear from the gospel account is just why these four were chosen to start things off.

A more important question, however, concerns just what these four men were called from and what precisely they were called to. Sometimes the call of Simon Peter and Andrew is construed as the archetypal call into ministry. In that case only a few of us can feel that we are called to follow in their footsteps. Sometimes that call might at least be widened out enough to embrace the call to lay ministries (in a variety of forms). Yet again, the call of Simon Peter and Andrew might be construed as the archetypal call into discipleship. In that case many more of us can feel that we are called to follow in their footsteps.

Mark’s Gospel goes on to show how Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John did not remain lonely for long. Jesus calls others to join them. We do not know why Jesus called those first four, but we can see what it was in Mark’s Gospel that Jesus called them to. Jesus called them to be with him and to learn from him what life is like when God reigns. Simon Peter and Andrew, James and John learned from being with Jesus in two specific ways: from hearing what Jesus said and from seeing what Jesus did. The call to discipleship is the call to be learners, to become a learning people, to be a Learning Church.

In Mark’s Gospel there is then a second call. Jesus calls many to be disciples (that is, to be learners), and some of them he calls to be apostles (that is, to be commissioned and sent in his name to do his kind of things). In the gospel tradition, the call to discipleship and the call to ministry are separate and distinct experiences.

The present series of books is concerned – among other things – with ordinary theology, with listening to the ways in which ordinary people speak of their experiences of God. Within the series this particular book is concerned to listen to how ordinary followers of Jesus speak about their experience of being called: to listen to the ways in which they use the word, the ways in which they handle the concept, and the deeper understandings to which the word and the concept point.

Here we meet a number of ordinary people who speak in a variety of ways about their experiences of being called by Jesus. Some speak about their call to be disciples, their call to be part of the Learning Church, their call to serve Jesus in their daily work, their call to participate in a variety of lay ministries, their call to authorized lay ministries or their call to ordained ministries. Most speak about their call in explicitly theological words, using traditional religious phraseology; others, however, talk of their vocation and ministry in less overt terms.

Listening to their many voices reminds us just how varied and rich the Christian experience of call can be. At the same time, listening to these many voices reminds us of the complexity of the ideas of vocation, discipleship and ministry. To chart a way through this complexity, each of the eight following chapters takes the experiences of a small number of these people and engages their voices in conversation with specific parts of the Christian tradition.

As the chapters unfold, conversations draw on particular ways in which we test our experiences of call and vocation alongside major themes from the Bible, major Christian doctrines and the developing understanding and practices of the Christian Church.

Throughout the book, the purpose of these conversations is twofold. On the one hand, our commitment to belonging to a Learning Church is a commitment to discover the resources of the Bible, Christian doctrine and Church practice, and to see just how these rich theological resources can illuminate our experience of God and open us up to the revelation of God. There is just enough space in these chapters to whet the appetite and to give signposts to places where more can be discovered.

On the other hand, our commitment to belong to a Learning Church is a commitment to go deeper into our own sense of Christian call and Christian vocation. Each chapter is short, but it is not intended to be read quickly. The chapters are punctuated with opportunities to reflect on experience. If the conversation is really to work, it must become a three-way conversation, engaging not only the characters introduced into the narrative and the theological resources but you as the reader as well.

Like all books, this book is written for the individual reader to read in her or his solitude, sitting at a desk, curled up on a sofa, propped up in bed or (more likely) in a crowded and noisy bus or train on the way to work. The opportunities to reflect on experience are just that – opportunities to close the eyes, to shut out the distractions and to look inside.

While this book is written for the solitary reader to read alone, it may be even more profitable if it is read as part of a local education group. Some of the reflective tasks are suitable for wider discussion in such groups. Our eyes can be opened to the revelation of God by going deep inside ourselves and by listening to our own deep reflection. Yet often we need to be startled, challenged or provoked by somebody else saying something else, something we had not really ever considered saying ourselves but that instantly helps to make sense of what we have been trying to articulate.

So here is a book about listening for God’s call: God’s call into the growing commitment of discipleship, God’s call into the unravelling challenges of ministry and God’s call to be the Learning Church.

Enjoy the opportunities and learning that this book offers, follow up the ideas it suggests and allow your sense of call and vocation to mature and grow.

2. God’s Call in the Bible

Introduction

This chapter begins by listening to the ways in which ordinary Christian people express their experience of ‘call’ and then sets this experience in conversation with the rich tradition of call in Scripture. Old Testament models of call draw on the accounts of Abraham, Shiphrah and Puah, Moses, Samuel and David. New Testament models of call draw on the accounts of Simon Peter and Andrew, Mary and Martha and Paul. Attention is given to those passages of Scripture that highlight God’s call to each individual. The chapter is designed to help us identify the biblical roots for our own sense of call and vocation.

Introducing Alison and John

Alison and John are discussing their call to follow God. For Alison that call began over 40 years ago when she was a young woman. Alison had been brought up in the Church. She was baptized as a baby and had attended church schools, both primary and secondary. Religion was very much part of her life. In her teenage years the Church’s influence dwindled and Alison left the Church. It was not until Alison was in her mid-twenties that she felt a gap in her life and heard the call of God to attend church once again and to follow Christ. There was no dramatic conversion, but a sense of coming home, a feeling that God had been guiding her life, even in the years when she felt abandoned by the institutional Church. This journey of call is still ongoing, as Alison continues to discern God’s path for her in the quiet contemplative prayer life that is so much a part of her spiritual journey to God. Alison has come over the years to appreciate worship that is quiet and reflective. She is aware that she likes to be challenged in sermons with the big picture and with deep theological questions. She also likes order and structure in her worship.

John’s journey began later in life when he was converted to Christianity as a student at university. John’s parents had brought him up to be open to the different religions found in his locality. He had Muslim friends and engaged with them in discussion about God, but was always sceptical. At university, John shared a flat with committed Christians and spent many a night discussing Christianity. It was after one particular discussion that his friends invited him to the local student church. The minister was a young man with a deep personal relationship with Jesus. He encouraged John to be open to the Spirit and to welcome God into his life. After one memorable evening, John’s life was transformed as he welcomed Jesus into his life. He was baptized and became an ardent and powerful speaker for Christianity and for the Church at university; and he has continued this zeal into his working life. Now John feels called by God to work among the homeless, which is so much part of his active and engaging spiritual life, evidenced by doing and helping others. John is happiest when worship is engaging and when people sing and pray together. He likes to feel through worship and sermons that all are loved and cared for by God. He is keen to make people feel welcomed and to attend to people’s needs. But most of all he likes worship to be flexible and open to the Spirit.

TO DO Draw a diagram or note down: your earliest experiences of God; key moments as you have grown in faith; where you are now. In what ways have you felt a sense of being called by God to something, or observed a sense of call in someone else?

The call of Abraham

In Genesis 17.1–7 we hear of God’s encounter with Abram. Abram is a very old man, a man without much of a future, a geriatric with few prospects; but God calls Abram as the person he is and, in calling him, gives him a new name, Abraham.

Like our opening stories, Abraham’s call is personal and particular to him, and it is ongoing. In those stories we recognize that God’s call is always ongoing; what God calls us to is based on where we have come from, and so our history with God is deeply linked to who we are.

The call of God is thus particular to individual people. Like Abraham, we are named and known by God. In the Old Testament, names express a person’s character and destiny. In giving Abram the new name of Abraham, God is telling us that Abraham will be the ‘father of nations’.

In calling Abraham, God is entering into a covenant with him. In verse 1 God outlines what he expects of Abraham, ‘walk before me, and be blameless’. Abraham is to trust in the promise and adopt a God-centred attitude, sharing in God’s eternal promises in the world. As part of the covenant, God will give him land and children, for Abraham had neither at the time when God called him. In this call, we hear that it is God who takes the initiative; God comes to Abraham and speaks to him. What is clear is that God is the initiator of the covenant. Abraham’s response is to fall on his face before the living God and la...

Table of contents

• Copyright information
• Contents
• Preface
• 1. Listening for God’s Call
• 2. God’s Call in the Bible
• 3. Discipleship in Today’s Church
• 4. Called to Be Lay
• 5. Called to a Variety of Lay Ministries
• 6. Called to Reader and Local Preacher Ministry
• 7. Called to Ministry as Priest and Presbyter
• 8. Called to Ordained Local Ministry, Pioneer Ministry and the Ministry of Deacon
• 9. Called to Self-Supporting Ministry and Ordained Ministry in Secular Employment
• References