Doorways to the Sacred

Developing Sacramentality in Fresh Expressions of Church

Ian Mobsby, Phil Potter

• Publisher: Canterbury Press
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781848259539
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

Fresh Expressions of Church are key aspect of mission strategy for many denominations in the UK and beyond. Here, a stellar line-up of writers explores the central question of how Fresh Expressions turn from mission projects into authentic forms of church, developing a sacramental life of their own. Chapters include:•Lucy Moore on Messy Church and Holy Communion •Graham Cray on the sacraments for the unchurched •Jonathan Clark on baptism and mission •John Drane on seeing the world as sacramental •Sue Wallace on the sacramentality of sacred space •Reagan Humber (pastor at Nadia-Bolz Weber's church) on liturgy and evangelism •Adrian Chatfield on healing

PART 1

Sacraments in Context and Culture

God has made known to us the mystery of God’s will, according to God’s good pleasure that God set forth in Christ, and how the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I wrote above in a few words, and to make everyone see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things. (Ephesians 1.9, 3.3, 3.9)

Introduction

Olive Drane’s Chapter 3 sets the scene that sacramentality begins with creativity as the outworking of the Holy Spirit, and that this sacramentality begins in the world. The reader should note that the sacraments don’t start in church, but begin with the presence of God the Holy Spirit in contemporary culture. John Drane’s Chapter 2 reminds us again that even in a post-religious culture, many are still deeply searching for spirituality and significance, and that the sacraments have a lot to do with spiritual and transformational experience. Lots of great wisdom here from Olive and John.

Graham Cray’s Chapter 1 not only stresses how important the development of a sacramentality is for fresh expressions of church, but he goes further to share some wisdom. Rightly he recognizes the categories of pilgrims, seekers and suppressors, and how fresh expressions are often focused on these last two groupings, along with the challenge of holding the tension of being an ecclesial community with the need to let ‘de-and-unchurched’ people ‘belong before they believe’. Graham engages with the need to consider a sacramental development, of making new paths to take unchurched people forward through a process that recognizes the different stages of being an enquirer, initiate through to being a disciple. This requires prayerful discernment, and great skill to map out this development, particularly in terms of an emerging sacramentality as the fresh expression shifts from being a mission project to missional church.

1

Doors to the Sacred through Fresh Expressions of Church

GRAHAM CRAY

A question has been raised about the validity of ‘fresh expressions of church’. How can they be authentic expressions of the Church if they do not minister the dominical sacraments? The challenge is fair but shows little understanding of the missionary context in which fresh expressions are established, nor the process of planting them, including the establishing of sacramental life. Forty per cent of those attending fresh expressions of church in the Church of England have no previous history with any church. The establishment of church life for them, including sacramental life, involves both a culture of ‘belonging before believing’ and a form of catechumenate. This chapter will demonstrate how fresh expressions open doors to the sacred for those who have never previously engaged with them.

The primary purpose of fresh expressions of church is to gain, as Christian disciples, those who have no connection to the Church, and who are unlikely to be drawn into more traditional congregations. The good news from the research carried out across ten dioceses is that, from the leaders’ perspective, 40% of those attending had never had any significant church experience, and a further 35% had once been involved in a church, some just as children, some as adults, but were no longer attending.1 The fresh expressions movement appears to be succeeding in its primary aim. But the aim is more than attendance. It is committed discipleship in Christ’s church. To make disciples, and to be authentic expressions of the Christian Church, fresh expressions of church must develop an appropriate practice of sacramental life. But the critics who make this point often fail to understand either the process required, or the issues involved in that development.

The sacraments of the Christian Church were famously described by the Roman Catholic theologian Joseph Martos as ‘Doors to the Sacred’.2 This chapter will largely limit itself to the dominical sacraments of baptism and Holy Communion, but Martos is right, the sacraments are doors to the sacred, to the reality of the gospel of Jesus Christ in his church. Sadly, for much of the population of the UK, these are overgrown doors, concealed at the end of long disused footpaths. To pilot men, women and children, with no prior experience of church, along these footpaths and through those doors requires patience, faith and openness to change. For this reason fresh expressions do not normally start with a public worship service, but with engagement with a community rooted in prayerful listening.

Overgrown doors

Part of the responsibility for the cultural and spiritual gap between the Church, and those who have no connection with it, lies with the local church.

It might simply be an issue of hospitality and welcome. It is easy to confuse the ease we have with those with whom we have worshipped regularly, with hospitality to newcomers. The one is no guarantee of the other. This is a key missional issue, as hospitality lies at the heart of the gospel.3 We are recipients and beneficiaries of God’s costly hospitality, through his Son. However, lack of hospitality can be addressed easily if there is the will to do so.4 The answer is not necessarily to plant a fresh expression of church. Most churches could expand the range of people they reach by better attention to invitation, welcome and hospitality.

But the problem can be more serious. The church is an incarnational community. It is called to embody Christ, to be the body of Christ, in a particular locality.5 As it embodies Christ in that place, it is sign, instrument and foretaste of God’s purposes for that place.6 So when a congregation loses touch with its community, or parts of its community, it has departed from its vocation, by failing to be incarnational. This is often because the locality has changed, but the congregation has not. Such change is gradual. It is only noticeable over time. But the consequence can be a church culture alien to the current community (for all the wrong reasons), or a museum piece, simply preserving the way things used to be. Loyal, but more mission minded, members of the congregation acknowledge that they are attending services to which they could never bring a friend. Worship and everyday life become divorced. If the situation is long term it can have serious consequences. ‘Our lack of inculturation (embodying Christ in culture) has fostered both the cultural alienation of some Christians, and an over-ready willingness of others to live in two cultures, one of their religion and the other of their everyday life.’7

Such congregations may still serve those who do attend very well. Lack of inculturation is not the same as lack of spiritual vitality. They will often be capable of adding new members from their own generation, or cultural group. But mission to the locality may require a mixed economy approach, by complementing the existing congregation with a fresh expression.

Not all church doors are overgrown. Sadly the exit doors are well used, as considerable numbers of people have left their churches over recent decades.8 But there is hope: 35% of the attendance of fresh expressions of church in ten Church of England dioceses are ‘de-churched’, people returning, in addition to the 40% who were never part of a church. Some new doors are being opened.

Disused footpaths

Some half of the population of England has had little regular contact with any church, even as children.9 Footpaths to Christian faith and Christian worship, well known to previous generations, are unknown to them. Nor is it simply a matter of erecting some new signposts. Important though it is that we be an inviting church,10 many people outside the Church have little that would motivate them to accept, were they to be invited.

These unchurched people have been identified as three groups within the British public. First, there are a few ‘pilgrims’, eclectic seekers in search of a spirituality. There is no real difficulty in engaging these extensively about spirituality. But the problem is that they are often allergic to any exclusive commitment to one particular pathway, be it the Christian faith or any other. Some seem to prefer the journey to the destination. Second, there are a larger number of ‘seekers’, on a therapeutic quest, looking for healing more than spirituality. ‘The contemporary climate is therapeutic not religious. People hunger not for personal salvation . . . but for the feeling, the momentary illusion, of personal well-being, health and psychic security.’11 The ‘seekers’ may well be engaged by the gospel through sacramental ministry – the Church’s ministry of healing – whether in a charismatic or more catholic form. ‘Healing On the Streets’, Christian engagement in Mind, Body and Spirit fairs, and the growing interest in retreats all provide appropriate points of contact. But third, the majority he describes as ‘suppressors’, those who have a God-given capacity to engage with the spiritual and the transcendent, but have no knowledge of how to use it, and therefore ignore it.12 The primary missional challenge is how to engage with this majority group. Humans made in the image of God have an innate ability to engage with God, and a potential desire for transcendence, but whether that has been suppressed or diverted by sin, or simply never activated, the question is how to engage it.

St Paul wrote that ‘the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God’ (2 Corinthians 4.4). The ‘world’ here represents the way a culture works to provide a plausible world view and way of life, which makes the Christian faith seem implausible or irrelevant. Cultures are habit-forming, disciple-making entities. Our Western consumer culture provides a counterfeit transcendence that inoculates many people against the real thing.13

Both modernity and postmodernity are reductionist. Mod­ernity reduced questions of purpose to questions of cause and effect. Postmodernity’s individualism and relativism reduces them to pragmatism: what works for me. Neither has room for a grand narrative about God’s purposes for the whole human race.

Research into ‘Generation Y’14 revealed contentment with a ‘happy midi-narrative’ in which, ‘This world and all life in it, is meaningful as it is; there is no need to think of significance as being somewhere else.’15 Each individual’s family and friends were seen to be the only necessary resource. There was no awareness of a ‘God-shaped gap’ longing to be filled. ‘These results do not lead us to think many young people are involved in a great deal of spiritual searching.’16 From a Christian perspective the ‘happy midi-narrative’ is a (largely) contented two-dimensional life, which is unaware of the possibilities of three-dimensional life in Christ. The Eucharist is the core Christian celebration of life in God in three dimensions. Linking our lives to Christ’s’ past, present and future. ‘Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.’17 Generation Y needs Christ and his community’s meal. The question is how to introduce them to it.

The Generation Y researchers then published a book about Ambiguous Evangelism18 suggesting ways to approach people who had little if any knowledge of the Christian faith and no overt spiritual appetite. The point I make here is simply that for most people, shaped by consumerist post-Christian culture, the journey to Christian faith and worship can be a long one. Paul Moore, vicar of the original Messy Church, warns practitioners to ‘allow for the long journey people go on as they come from initial interest to openness to respond to the gospel’.19

The Generation Y researchers distinguished between ‘formative’ and ‘transformative’ spirituality.20 ‘Format...

Table of contents

• Doorways to the Sacred
• Contents
• The Contributors
• Introduction
• PART 1 Sacraments in Context and Culture
• PART 2 Sacraments in Formation and Worship
• PART 3 Sacraments in Initiation
• PART 4 Sacraments in Eucharist and Holy Communion
• PART 5 Sacraments of Healing, Confession and Reconciliation
• Afterword